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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/18649-0.txt b/18649-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea0cbb5 --- /dev/null +++ b/18649-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10278 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by +Edmund William Gosse + +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: Some Diversions of a Man of Letters + +Author: Edmund William Gosse + +Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18649] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + + + + + +SOME DIVERSIONS +OF +A MAN OF LETTERS + + +BY +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + + +LONDON +WILLIAM HEINEMANN +1920 + + +_First published October 1919_ +_New Impressions November 1919; February 1920_ + + + +_OTHER WORKS BY MR. EDMUND GOSSE_ + + +_Northern Studies_. 1879. + +_Life of Gray_. 1882. + +_Seventeenth-Century Studies_. 1883. + +_Life of Congreve_. 1888. + +_A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature_. 1889. + +_Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S._ 1890. + +_Gossip in a Library_. 1891. + +_The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance_. 1892. + +_Questions at Issue_. 1893. + +_Critical Kit-Kats_. 1896. + +_A Short History of Modern English Literature_. 1897. + +_Life and Letters of John Donne_. 1899. + +_Hypolympia_. 1901. + +_Life of Jeremy Taylor_. 1904. + +_French Profiles_. 1904. + +_Life of Sir Thomas Browne_. 1905. + +_Father and Son_. 1907. + +_Life of Ibsen_. 1908. + +_Two Visits to Denmark_. 1911. + +_Collected Poems_. 1911. + +_Portraits and Sketches_. 1912. + +_Inter Arma_. 1916. + +_Three French Moralists_. 1918. + + + + +TO + +EVAN CHARTERIS + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +Preface: On Fluctuations of Taste 1 + +The Shepherd of the Ocean 13 + +The Songs of Shakespeare 29 + +Catharine Trotter, the Precursor of the Bluestockings 37 + +The Message of the Wartons 63 + +The Charm of Sterne 91 + +The Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe 101 + +The Author of "Pelham" 115 + +The Challenge of the Brontës 139 + +Disraeli's Novels 151 + +Three Experiments in Portraiture-- + I. Lady Dorothy Nevill 181 + II. Lord Cromer 196 + III. The Last Days of Lord Redesdale 216 + +The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy 231 + +Some Soldier Poets 259 + +The Future of English Poetry 287 + +The Agony of the Victorian Age 311 + +Index 338 + + + + +PREFACE: + +ON FLUCTUATIONS OF TASTE + + +When Voltaire sat down to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his +first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day +might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to +expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard +in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing +years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed by the recurrence of +them. In early youth we fight for the new forms of art, for the new +æsthetic shibboleths, and in that happy ardour of battle we have no time +or inclination to regret the demigods whom we dispossess. But the years +glide on, and, behold! one morning, we wake up to find our own +predilections treated with contempt, and the objects of our own idolatry +consigned to the waste-paper basket. Then the matter becomes serious, +and we must either go on struggling for a cause inevitably lost, or we +must give up the whole matter in indifference. This week I read, over +the signature of a very clever and very popular literary character of +our day, the remark that Wordsworth's was "a genteel mind of the third +rank." I put down the newspaper in which this airy dictum was printed, +and, for the first time, I was glad that poor Mr. Matthew Arnold was no +longer with us. But, of course, the evolutions of taste must go on, +whether they hurt the living and the dead, or no. + +Is there, then, no such thing as a permanent element of poetic beauty? +The curious fact is that leading critics in each successive generation +are united in believing that there is, and that the reigning favourite +conforms to it. The life of a reputation is like the life of a plant, +and seems, in these days, to be like the life of an annual. We watch the +seed, admiration for Wordsworth, planted about 1795, shoot obscurely +from the ground, and gradually clothe itself with leaves till about +1840; then it bursts into blossom of rapturous praise, and about 1870 is +hung with clusters of the fruit of "permanent" appreciation. In 1919, +little more than a century from its first evolution in obscurity, it +recedes again in the raggedness of obloquy, and cumbers the earth, as +dim old "genteel" Wordsworth, whom we are assured that nobody reads. But +why were "the best judges" scornful in 1800 and again in 1919 of what +gave the noblest and the most inspiriting pleasure to "the best judges" +in 1870? The execution of the verse has not altered, the conditions of +imagination seem the same, why then is the estimate always changing? Is +every form of poetic taste, is all trained enjoyment of poetry, merely a +graduated illusion which goes up and down like a wave of the sea and +carries "the best judges" with it? If not, who is right, and who is +wrong, and what is the use of dogmatising? Let us unite to quit all vain +ambition, and prefer the jangle of the music-halls, with its direct +"æsthetic thrill." + +So far as I know, the only philosopher who has dared to face this +problem is Mr. Balfour, in the brilliant second chapter of his +"Foundations of Belief." He has there asked, "Is there any fixed and +permanent element in beauty?" The result of his inquiry is +disconcerting; after much discussion he decides that there is not. Mr. +Balfour deals, in particular, with only two forms of art, Music and +Dress, but he tacitly includes the others with them. It is certain that +the result of his investigations is the singularly stultifying one that +we are not permitted to expect "permanent relations" in or behind the +feeling of poetic beauty, which may be indifferently awakened by Blake +to-day and by Hayley to-morrow. If the critic says that the verse of +Blake is beautiful and that of Hayley is not, he merely "expounds +case-made law." The result seems to be that no canons of taste exist; +that what are called "laws" of style are enacted only for those who make +them, and for those whom the makers can bully into accepting their +legislation, a new generation of lawbreakers being perfectly free to +repeal the code. Southey yesterday and Keats to-day; why not Southey +again to-morrow, or perhaps Tupper? Such is the cynical _cul-de-sac_ +into which the logic of a philosopher drives us. + +We have had in France an example of _volte-face_ in taste which I +confess has left me gasping. I imagine that if Mr. Balfour was able to +spare a moment from the consideration of fiscal reform, he must have +spent it in triumphing over the fate of M. Sully-Prudhomme. In the month +of September 1906 this poet closed, after a protracted agony, "that long +disease, his life." He had compelled respect by his courage in the face +of hopeless pain, and, one might suppose, some gratitude by the +abundance of his benefactions. His career was more than blameless, it +was singularly exemplary. Half-blind, half-paralysed, for a long time +very poor, pious without fanaticism, patient, laborious, devoted to his +friends, he seems to have been one of those extraordinary beings whose +fortitude in the face of affliction knows no abatement. It would be +ridiculous to quote any of these virtues as a reason for admiring the +poetry of Sully-Prudhomme. I mention them merely to show that there was +nothing in his personal temperament to arouse hatred or in his personal +conditions to excuse envy. Nothing to account for the, doubtless, +entirely sincere detestation which his poetry seemed to awaken in all +"the best minds" directly he was dead. + +As every one knows, from about 1870 to 1890, Sully-Prudhomme was, +without a rival, the favourite living poet of the French. Victor Hugo +was there, of course, until 1885--and posthumously until much later--but +he was a god, and the object of idolatry. All who loved human poetry, +the poetry of sweetness and light, took Sully-Prudhomme to their heart +of hearts. The _Stances et Poèmes_ of 1865 had perhaps the warmest +welcome that ever the work of a new poet had in France. Théophile +Gautier instantly pounced upon _Le Vase Brisé_ (since too-famous) and +introduced it to a thousand school-girls. Sainte-Beuve, though grown old +and languid, waked up to celebrate the psychology and the music of this +new poetry, so delicate, fresh and transparent. An unknown beauty of +extreme refinement seemed to have been created in it, a beauty made up +of lucidity, pathos and sobriety. Readers who are now approaching +seventy will not forget with what emotion they listened, for instance, +to that dialogue between the long-dead father and the newly-buried son, +which closes:-- + + "J' ai laissé ma sÅ“ur et ma mère + Et les beaux livres que j' ai lus; + Vous n'avez pas de bru, mon père, + On m'a blesse, je n'aime plus." + + "De tes aïeux compte le nombre, + Va baiser leurs fronts inconnus, + Et viens faire ton lit dans l'ombre + A côté des derniers venus. + + "Ne pleure pas, dors dans l'argile + En espérant le grand reveit." + "O père, qu'il est difficile + De ne plus penser au soleil!" + +This body of verse, to which was presently added fresh collections--_Les +Epreuves_ (1886), _Les Vaines Tendresses_ (1875), _Le Prisme_ +(1886),--was welcomed by the elder Sanhedrim, and still more +vociferously and unanimously by the younger priesthood of criticism. It +pleased the superfine amateurs of poetry, it was accepted with +enthusiasm by the thousands who enjoy without analysing their enjoyment. +In 1880, to have questioned that Sully-Prudhomme was a very noble poet +would have been like challenging Tennyson in 1870, or Cowley in 1660. +Jules Lemaître claimed that he was the greatest artist in symbols that +France had ever produced. Brunetière, so seldom moved by modern +literature, celebrated with ardour the author of _Les Vaines Tendresses_ +as having succeeded better than any other writer who had ever lived in +translating into perfect language the dawn and the twilight of emotion. +That Gaston Paris and M. Anatole France competed in lofty praise of the +lyrics of Sully-Prudhomme, is perhaps less remarkable than that Paul +Verlaine, whom all the younger schools still look upon as their apostle +and guide, declared, in reviewing _Les Ecuries d'Augias_, that the force +of style of Sully-Prudhomme was excelled only by the beauty of his +detail. It is needless to multiply examples of the unanimous praise +given by the divers schools of criticism to Sully-Prudhomme up to about +1890. His was, perhaps, the least contested literary glory of France. + +His death startlingly reminded us that this state of things had to be +entirely reversed. It is true that the peculiar talent of +Sully-Prudhomme, being almost exclusively lyrical, scarcely survived his +youth, and that he cumbered his moon of sands with two huge and clumsy +wrecks, _La Justice_ (1878) and _Le Bonheur_ (1898), round which the +feet of the fairies could hardly be expected to trip. One must be an +academician and hopelessly famous before one dares to inflict two +elephantine didactic epics on one's admirers. Unfortunately, too, the +poet undertook to teach the art of verse in his _Réflexions_ (1892) and +his _Testament Poétique_ (1901), brochures which greatly irritated the +young. It is probably wise for academicians, whether poets or the +reverse, to sit beside their nectar, and not to hurl bolts down into the +valley. But, behind these errors of judgment, there they remain--those +early volumes, which seemed to us all so full of exquisite little +masterpieces. Why is it that nobody, except a few elderly persons, any +longer delights in them? The notices which Sully-Prudhomme's death +awakened in the Paris Press were either stamped with the mark of old +contemporary affection, or else, when they were not abusive, were as +frigid as the tomb itself. "Ses tendresses sucrées, sirupeuses, sont +vaines en effet," said a critic of importance! Indeed, it would appear +so; and where are the laurels of yester-year? + +To those who were young when Sully-Prudhomme entered into his +immortality it seems impossible to realise that the glory has already +departed. Gaston Paris celebrated "the penetrating sincerity and the +exquisite expression of feeling" which distinguished Sully-Prudhomme +above all other poets. He was the bard of the inner life, sincere and +dignified, full of melancholy reverie. A great critic compared _La Vote +Lactic_ and _Les Stalactites_ with the far-off sound of bells heard down +some lovely valley in a golden afternoon. Yet the images and the +language were precise; Sully-Prudhomme was a mathematician, and if he +was reproached with anything like a fault, it was that his style was +slightly geometrical. It would be otiose to collect any more tributes to +his genius, as it appeared to all Frenchmen, cultivated or +semi-cultivated, about the year 1880. With an analysis of +Sully-Prudhomme's poetry I am not here concerned, but with the question +of why it is that such an authority as Rémy de Gourmont could, in 1907, +without awakening any protest among persons under fifty say that it was +a "sort of social crime" to impose such balderdash as the verse of +Sully-Prudhomme on the public. + +It is not needful to quote other living critics, who may think such +prolongation of their severities ungraceful. But a single contrast will +suffice. When, in 1881, Sully-Prudhomme was elected to the French +Academy, expert opinion throughout the Press was unanimous in admitting +that this was an honour deservedly given to the best lyric poet of the +age. In 1906, when a literary journal sent out this question, "Who is +the poet you love best?" and was answered by more than two hundred +writers of verse, the diversity of opinion was indeed excessive; such +poets as Sainte-Beuve, as Brizeux, as Rodenbach, received votes, all the +great masters received many. But Sully-Prudhomme, alone, received not +one vote. A new generation had arisen, and one of its leaders, with +cruel wit, transferred to the reputation of the author his own most +famous line:--"N'y touchez pas, il est brisé." + +It is necessary to recollect that we are not dealing with the phenomenon +of the inability of very astute literary people to recognise at once a +startling new sort of beauty. When Robert Browning lent the best poems +of Keats to Mrs. Carlyle, she read them and returned them with the +remark that "almost any young gentleman with a sweet tooth might be +expected to write such things." Mrs. Carlyle was a very clever woman, +but she was not quite "educated up to" Keats. The history of letters is +full of these grotesque limitations of taste, in the presence of great +art which has not yet been "classed." But we are here considering the +much stranger and indeed extremely disconcerting case of a product which +has been accepted, with acclamation, by the judges of one generation, +and is contemptuously hooted out of court by the next. It is not, on +this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics. +If Théophile Gautier was right in 1867, Rémy de Gourmont must have been +wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of +criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however +ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact +that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that +another whole generation is of the same mind as Rémy de Gourmont. + +Then it is that Mr. Balfour, like Galuppi with his "cold music," comes +in and tells us that this is precisely what we have to expect. All +beauty consists in the possession of certain relations, which being +withdrawn, beauty disappears from the object that seemed to possess it. +There is no permanent element in poetic excellence. We are not to demand +any settled opinion about poetry. So Mr. Balfour seems to creak it, and +we want the heart to scold. But is it quite so certain that there is no +fixed norm of beauty imaginable? Is it the fact that poetic pleasure +cannot "be supposed to last any longer than the transient reaction +between it" and the temporary prejudice of our senses? If this be true, +then are critics of all men most miserable. + +Yet, deeply dejected as it leaves me to know that very clever people +despise the "genteel third-rate mind" of Wordsworth, I am not quite +certain that I yield to Mr. Balfour's brilliant and paralysing logic. +That eminent philosopher seems to say "you find the poets, whom you +revered in your youth, treated with contempt in your old age. Well! It +is very sad, and perhaps it would annoy me too, if I were not a +philosopher. But it only shows how right I was to tell, you not to +expect permanent relations behind the feeling of beauty, since all is +illusion, and there is no such thing as a principle of taste, but only +a variation of fashion." + +Is it, however, quite so certain, after all, that there is no standard? +It must be admitted that there seems to be no fixed rule of taste, not +even a uniformity of practice or general tendency to agreement in +particular cases. But the whole study of the fine arts would lead to +despair if we allowed ourselves to accept this admission as implying +that no conceivable principle of taste exists. We may not be able to +produce it, like a yard-measure, and submit works of imagination to it, +once and for all, in the eyes of a consternated public. But when we +observe, as we must allow, that art is no better at one age than at +another, but only different; that it is subject to modification, but +certainly not to development; may we not safely accept this stationary +quality as a proof that there does exist, out of sight, unattained and +unattainable, a positive norm of poetic beauty? We cannot define it, but +in each generation all excellence must be the result of a relation to +it. It is the moon, heavily wrapt up in clouds, and impossible exactly +to locate, yet revealed by the light it throws on distant portions of +the sky. At all events, it appears to me that this is the only theory by +which we can justify a continued interest in literature when it is +attacked, now on one side, now on another, by the vicissitudes of +fashion. + +The essays which are here collected deal, for the most part, with +figures in the history of English literature which have suffered from +the changes of fortune and the instability of taste. In every case, +there has been something which is calculated to attract the sympathy and +interest of one who, like myself, has been closely concerned with two +distinct but not unrelated branches of his subject, the literary +character and the literary craft. More than fifty years have +passed--like a cloud, like a dream!--since I first saw my name printed +below a passage of critical opinion. How many reputations, within that +half-century, have not been exalted, how many have not been depressed! +We have seen Tennyson advanced beyond Virgil and Victor Hugo beyond +Homer. We have seen the latest freak of futurism preferred to _The Lotus +Eaters_, and the first _Légende des Siècles_ rejected as unreadable. In +face of this whirlwind of doctrine the public ceases to know whether it +is on its head or its feet--"its trembling tent all topsy-turvy wheels," +as an Elizabethan has it. To me it seems that security can only be found +in an incessant exploration of the by-ways of literary history and +analysis of the vagaries of literary character. To pursue this analysis +and this exploration without bewilderment and without prejudice is to +sum up the pleasures of a life devoted to books. + +_August 1919._ + + + + +THE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN[1] + + +Three hundred years have gone by to-day since Sir Walter Raleigh was +beheaded, in presence of a vast throng of spectators, on the scaffold of +Old Palace Yard in Westminster. General Gordon said that England is what +her adventurers have made her, and there is not in all English history a +more shining and violent specimen of the adventurous type than Raleigh. +I am desired to deliver a brief panegyric on this celebrated freebooter, +and I go behind the modern definition of the word "panegyric" (as a +pompous and ornamented piece of rhetoric) to its original significance, +which was, as I take it, the reminder, to a great assembly of persons, +of the reason why they have been brought together in the name of a man +long dead. Therefore I shall endeavour, in the short space of time +allotted to me, not so much to eulogise as to explain and to define what +Sir Walter Raleigh was and represents. + +I suggest, therefore, before we touch upon any of the details of his +career and character, that the central feature of Raleigh, as he appears +to us after three hundred years, is his unflinching determination to see +the name of England written across the forehead of the world. Others +before him had been patriots of the purest order, but Raleigh was the +first man who laid it down, as a formula, that "England shall by the +favour of God resist, repel and confound all whatsoever attempts +against her sacred kingdom." He had no political sense nor skill in +statecraft. For that we go to the Burghleys or the Cecils, crafty men of +experience and judgment. But he understood that England had enemies and +that those enemies must be humbled and confounded. He understood that +the road of England's greatness, which was more to him than all other +good things, lay across the sea. The time was ripe for the assertion of +English liberty, of English ascendancy, too; and the opportunity of the +moment lay in "those happy hands which the Holy Ghost hath guided," the +fortunate adventurers. Of these Raleigh was the most eminent as he was +also, in a sense, the most unfortunate. + +A heavy shadow lay all over the Western world, the shadow of a fierce +bird of prey hovering over its victim. Ever since Ferdinand expelled the +Moors out of Granada, Spain had been nursing insensate dreams of +universal empire. She was endeavouring to destroy the infant system of +European civilisation by every means of brutality and intrigue which the +activity of her arrogance could devise. The Kings of Spain, in their +ruthless ambition, encouraged their people in a dream of Spanish +world-dominion. Their bulletins had long "filled the earth with their +vainglorious vaunts, making great appearance of victories"; they had +spread their propaganda "in sundry languages in print," distributing +braggart pamphlets in which they boasted, for the benefit of neutrals, +of their successes against England, France, and Italy. They had "abused +and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of the Low Countries, and they +held that the force of arms which they brandished would weigh against +justice, humanity, and freedom in the servitude which they meant to +inflict upon Europe. It was to be _Spanien über alles_. + +But there was one particular nation against which the malignity of the +great enemy blazed most fiercely. The King of Spain blasphemously +regarded himself as the instrument of God, and there was one country +which more than the rest frustrated his pious designs. This was England, +and for that reason England was more bitterly hated than any other +enemy. The Spaniards did "more greedily thirst after English blood than +after the lives of any other people of Europe." The avowed purpose of +Castile was to destroy that maritime supremacy of England on which the +very existence of the English State depends. The significance of Sir +Walter Raleigh consists in the clairvoyance with which he perceived and +the energy with which he combated this monstrous assumption. Other noble +Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and +had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, +but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with +resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight full +upon him. The classic writing of the crisis is contained in the _Last +Fight of the Revenge at Sea_ of 1591, where the splendid defiance and +warning of the Preface are like trumpets blown to the four quarters of +the globe. Raleigh stands out as the man who above all others laboured, +as he said, "against the ambitious and bloody pretences of the +Spaniards, who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves +devoured." + +There is a blessing upon the meek of the earth, but I do not present +Raleigh to you as a humble-minded man. In that wonderful Elizabethan age +there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the +subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable +wisdom of Shakespeare. Raleigh had no part in any of these, and to +complain of that would be to grumble because a hollyhock is neither a +violet nor a rose. He had his enemies during his life and his detractors +ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He +was a typical man of that heroic age in that he possessed, even to +excess, all its tropic irregularity of ethics. He lived in a perpetual +alternation of thunderstorm and blazing sunshine. He admitted himself +that his "reason," by which he meant his judgment, "was exceeding weak," +and his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his +courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made +him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where +everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did +not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we +are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with +serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from +ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his +protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive +pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong +silent" type of soldier which the nineteenth century invented for +exclusive British consumption. + +In judging his character we must take into consideration not only the +times in which he lived, but the leaders of English policy with whom he +came into collision. He was not thirty years of age, and still at the +height of his vivacity, when he was taken into the close favour of Queen +Elizabeth. There can be no question that he found in the temper of the +monarch something to which his own nature intimately responded. The +Queen was an adventurer at heart, as he was, and she was an Englishman +of Englishmen. We are accustomed to laugh at the extravagance of the +homage which Raleigh paid to a woman old enough to be his mother, at the +bravado which made him fling his new plush cloak across a puddle for the +Queen to tread over gently, as Fuller tells us, "rewarding him +afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so +fair a footcloth," or at the story of the rhymes the couple cut on the +glass with their diamond rings. In all this, no doubt, there was the +fashion of the time, and on Raleigh's part there was ambition and the +desire to push his fortunes without scruple. But there was, you may be +sure, more than that; there was the instinctive sympathy between the two +who hated with the most unflagging and the most burning hate the wicked +aggression of Spain. We may be sure that Elizabeth never for a day +forgot that Pope Alexander VI. had generously bestowed the Western world +on the Crown of Spain. Raleigh spoke a language which might be +extravagant and which might be exasperating, which might, in fact, lead +to outrageous quarrels between his Cynthia and himself, but which, at +least, that Cynthia understood. + +But in 1602, when Raleigh was fifty years of age and had his splendours +behind him, there came another Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. James I. was +the type of the cautious man who only looks to the present, who hopes by +staving off a crisis till Tuesday that something fresh will "turn up" by +Wednesday. He was disposed, from the very first, to distrust and to +waylay the plans of Raleigh. We are told, and can well believe it, that +he was "diffident" of Sir Walter's designs. He was uncomfortable in the +presence of that breezy "man of desperate fortunes." A very excellent +example of the opposition of the two types is offered by the discussion +about the golden city of Manoa. Raleigh believed, and after all +disappointments continued to be sure, that in the heart of the swamps of +the Orinoco there existed a citadel of magnificent wealth, an emporium +of diamonds and gold, from which Spain was secretly drawing the riches +with which she proposed to overwhelm civilisation. He struggled for +nearly a quarter of a century to win this marvellous city for England. +James I. chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that +any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere in nature," as he craftily +said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May +1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the +seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no +golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams +were more real than reality; they existed in the future; he looked far +ahead, and our sympathies to-day, and our gratitude also, are all for +the noble and valorous knight who sailed out into the West searching for +an unknown El Dorado. + +It is not so easy to defend the character of our hero against those who, +like Hume, have objected to his methods in the prosecution of his +designs. To Hume, as to many others before and since, Raleigh seemed +"extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both." +The excellent historians of the eighteenth century could not make up +their minds whether he was a hero or an impostor. Did he believe in the +Guiana mine, or was he, through all those strenuous years, hoodwinking +the world? Had he any purpose, save to plunder the Spaniard? Perhaps his +own family doubted his sanity, for his son Walter, when he charged the +Spanish settlement at San Thomé, pointed to the house of the little +colony and shouted to his men: "Come on, this is the true mine, and none +but fools would look for any other!" Accusations of bad faith, of +factious behaviour, of disloyal intrigue, were brought up against Sir +Walter over and over again during the "day of his tempestuous life, +drawn on into an evening" of ignominy and blood. These charges were the +"inmost and soul-piercing wounds" of which he spoke, still "aching," +still "uncured." + +There is no need to recount to you the incidents of his life, but I may +remind you that after the failure of the latest expedition to South +America the Privy Council, under pressure from the Spanish Ambassador, +gave orders to Sir Lewis Stukeley to bring the body of Sir Walter +Raleigh speedily to London. This was the culmination of his fall, since, +three days after Raleigh landed at Plymouth, the King had assured Spain +that "not all those who have given security for Raleigh can save him +from the gallows." His examination followed, and the publication of the +_Apology for the Voyage to Guiana_. The trial dragged on, while James +I., in a manner almost inconceivable, allowed himself to be hurried and +bullied by the insolent tyrant Philip II. If the English King did not +make haste to execute Raleigh the Spaniards would fetch him away and +hang him in Madrid. In these conditions, and clutching at life as a man +clutches at roots and branches when he is sliding down a precipice, the +conduct of Raleigh has given cause to his critics to blaspheme. He +wriggled like an eel, he pretended to be sick, he pretended to be mad, +in order to protract his examination. He prevaricated about his mine, +about the French alliance, about the Spanish treaties, about his stores +and instruments. Did he believe, or did he not believe, in the Empire of +the Inca, in the Amazons or Republic of Women, in the gold lying hidden +in the hard white spar of El Dorado? We do not know, and his own latest +efforts at explanation only cloud our counsel. He was perhaps really a +little mad at last, his feverish brain half-crazed by the movement on +land and sea of the triumphant wealth of Spain. + +Let us never overlook that the master-passion of his whole career was +hatred of this tyrannous prosperity of England's most formidable rival. +He acted impulsively, and even unjustly; there was much in his methods +that a cool judgment must condemn; but he was fighting, with his back to +the wall, in order that the British race should not be crowded out of +existence by "the proud Iberian." He saw that if Spain were permitted to +extend her military and commercial supremacy unchecked, there would be +an end to civilisation. Democracy was a thing as yet undeveloped, but +the seeds of it were lying in the warm soil of English liberty, and +Raleigh perceived, more vehemently than any other living man, that the +complete victory of Spain would involve the shipwreck of England's hopes +of future prosperity. Nor was he exclusively interested in England, +though all his best hopes were ours. When he had been a lad at Oxford he +had broken away from his studies in 1569 to help the Protestant princes +as a gentleman volunteer in France, and he took part in the famous +battle of Jarnac. He is supposed to have fought in France for six years. +From early youth his mind was "bent on military glory," and always in +opposition to Spain. His escape from the bloody Vespers of Saint +Bartholomew had given him a deep distrust of the policy of Rome. The +Spaniard had "abused and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of +Flanders. Sir Walter Raleigh dreamed that by the combination in arms of +England, France, and the Low Countries, the Spaniards "might not only be +persuaded to live in peace, but all their swelling and overflowing +streams might be brought back into their natural channels and old +banks." + +Raleigh stood out, as he put it himself, against "the continuance of +this boundless ambition in mortal men." The rulers in Madrid, +transported by their own arrogance, had determined to impose their +religion, their culture, their form of government, on the world. It was +a question whether the vastly superior moral and intellectual energy of +England and France would not be crushed beneath the heel of Spain. +Raleigh was ready to sacrifice everything, to imperil his own soul, to +prevent that. He says you might as well "root out the Christian religion +altogether" as join "the rest of all Europe to Spain." In his zeal to +prevent "the continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men," he +lent himself to acts which we must not attempt to condone. There is no +use in trying to explain away the facts of his cruel and even savage +fanaticism in Ireland when he was governor of Munster. He was always apt +to be abruptly brutal to a man who crossed his path. But even his Irish +career offers aspects on which we may dwell with pure pleasure. Nothing +could be more romantic than those adventures, like the feats of a +paladin of the Faerie Queen, which he encountered in the great wood of +Lismore; while the story of how he carried off Lord and Lady Roche from +their breakfast-table in their own castle of Ballyinharsh, and how he +rode with them up ravines and round precipices in that mad flight from +their retainers, is as rousing as any scene ever imagined by Dumas +_père_. + +Raleigh called himself the Shepherd of the Ocean, and the name fits him +well, even though his flock were less like sheep than like a leash of +hunting leopards. His theory was that with a pack of small and active +pinnaces he could successfully hunt the lumbering Spanish galleons +without their being able to hit back. He was, in contradistinction to +many preceding English admirals, a cautious fighter at sea, and he says, +in a striking passage of the _History of the World_, written towards the +end of his career, "to clap ships together without any consideration +belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war." He must have taken the +keenest interest in the gigantic failure of the Felicissima Armada in +1588, but, tantalisingly enough, we have no record of his part in it. On +the other hand, the two finest of his prose pamphlets, the _Relation of +the Action in Cadiz Harbour_ and the incomparable _Report on the Fight +in the Revenge_, supply us with ample materials for forming an idea of +his value as a naval strategist. Raleigh's earliest biographer, Oldys +the antiquary, speaks of him as "raising a grove of laurels out of the +sea," and it is certainly upon that element that he reaches his highest +effect of prominence. It was at sea that he could give fullest scope to +his hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. He had to be at once a +gamekeeper and a poacher; he had to protect the legitimate interests of +English shipping against privateers and pirates, while he was persuaded +to be, or felt himself called upon to become, no little of a pirate +himself. He was a passionate advocate of the freedom of the seas, and +those who look upon Raleigh as a mere hot-brained enthusiast should read +his little book called _Observations on Trade and Commerce_, written in +the Tower, and see what sensible views he had about the causes of the +depression of trade. These sage opinions did not check him, or his +fleets of hunting-pinnaces, from lying in wait for the heavy wallowing +plate-ships, laden with Indian carpets and rubies and sandalwood and +ebony, which came swinging up to the equator from Ceylon or Malabar. The +"freedom of the seas" was for Raleigh's ship, the _Roebuck_; it was by +no means for the _Madre de Dios_. We find these moral inconsistencies in +the mind of the best of adventurers. + +A sketch of Raleigh's character would be imperfect indeed if it +contained no word concerning his genius as a coloniser. One of his main +determinations, early in life, was "to discover and conquer unknown +lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name." We celebrate in +Sir Walter Raleigh one of the most intelligent and imaginative of the +founders of our colonial empire. The English merchantmen before his time +had been satisfied with the determination to grasp the wealth of the New +World as it came home to Spain; it had not occurred to them to compete +with the great rival at the fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake +and Frobisher had been content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the +poet Wither said, "to check our ships from sailing where they please." +South America was already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was +still open to invasion. It was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey +Gilbert, who first thought of planting an English settlement in what is +now the United States, in 1578. But Gilbert had "no luck at sea," as +Queen Elizabeth observed, and it was Raleigh who, in 1584, took up the +scheme of colonisation. He did not drop it until the death of Elizabeth, +when, under the east wind of the new _régime_, the blossom of his +colonial enterprises flagged. + +The motion for the ceremony of to-day originated with the authorities of +an important American city, which proudly bears the name of our +adventurer. The earliest settlement in what are now the United States +was made at Roanoke, in Virginia, on a day which must always be +prominent in the annals of civilisation, August 17th, 1585. But this +colony lasted only ten months, and it was not until nearly two years +later that the fourth expedition which Raleigh sent out succeeded in +maintaining a perilous foothold in the new country. This was the little +trembling taper to which his own name was given, the twinkling spark +which is now the flourishing city of Raleigh in North Carolina. We may +well marvel at the pertinacity with which Sir Walter persisted, in the +face of innumerable difficulties, in sending out one colonising fleet +after another, although, contrary to common legend, he himself never set +foot in North America. It was fortunate that at this period of his +career he was wealthy, for the attempts to plant settlements in the vast +region which he named Virginia cost him more than £40,000. We note at +all turns of his fortune his extraordinary tenacity of purpose, which he +illustrated, as though by a motto, in the verses he addressed to a +comrade towards the end of his imprisonment in the Tower:-- + + "Change not! to change thy fortune 'tis too late; + Who with a manly faith resolves to die + May promise to himself a lasting State, + Though not so great, yet free from infamy." + +So we may think of him in his prime, as he stood on the Hoe of Plymouth +twenty years before, a gallant figure of a man, bedizened with precious +stones, velvets, and embroidered damasks, shouting his commands to his +captains in a strong Devonshire accent. We think of him resolutely +gazing westward always, with the light of the sea in his eyes. + +We come to the final scene which we are here to-day to commemorate. +Little honour to the rulers of England in 1618 redounds from it, and yet +we may feel that it completed and even redeemed from decay the character +of Raleigh. This tragedy, which was almost a murder, was needed to round +off the accomplishment of so strange and frantic a career of romantic +violence, and to stamp it with meaning. If Raleigh had been thrown from +his horse or had died of the ague in his bed, we should have been +depressed by the squalid circumstances, we should have been less +conscious than we are now of his unbroken magnanimity. His failures and +his excesses had made him unpopular throughout England, and he was both +proud and peevish in his recognition of the fact. He declared that he +was "nothing indebted" to the world, and again that, "the common people +are evil judges of honest things." But the thirteen years of his +imprisonment caused a reaction. People forgot how troublesome he had +been and only recollected his magnificence. They remembered nothing but +that he had spent his whole energy and fortune in resisting the +brutality and avarice of the Spaniard. + +Then came the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at Westminster, +and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of a paltry king. +It became known, or shrewdly guessed, that Spain had sent to James I. a +hectoring alternative that Raleigh must be executed in London or sent +alive for a like purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and +ignominious submission of the English Government to the insolence of +England's hereditary enemy. Raleigh seemed for the moment to have failed +completely, yet it was really like the act of Samson, who slew more men +at his death than in all his life. Samuel Pepys, who had some fine +intuitions at a time when the national _moral_ was very low, spoke of +Raleigh as being "given over, as a sacrifice," to our enemies. This has +been, in truth, the secret of his unfailing romantic popularity, and it +is the reason of the emotion which has called us together here three +hundred years after his death upon the scaffold. + +[Footnote 1: Address delivered at the Mansion House, October 29th, 1918, +on occasion of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh's death.] + + + + +THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE + + +Among the "co-supremes and stars of love" which form the constellated +glory of our greatest poet there is one small splendour which we are apt +to overlook in our general survey. But, if we isolate it from other +considerations, it is surely no small thing that Shakespeare created and +introduced into our literature the Dramatic Song. If with statistical +finger we turn the pages of all his plays, we shall discover, not +perhaps without surprise, that these contain not fewer than fifty +strains of lyrical measure. Some of the fifty, to be sure, are mere +star-dust, but others include some of the very jewels of our tongue. +They range in form from the sophisticated quatorzains of _The Two +Gentlemen of Verona_ (where, however, comes "Who is Silvia?") to the +reckless snatches of melody in _Hamlet_. But all have a character which +is Shakespearean, and this regardless of the question so often raised, +and so incapable of reply, as to whether some of the wilder ones are +Shakespeare's composition or no. Whoever originally may have written +such scraps as "They bore him bare-faced on the bier" and "Come o'er the +bourne, Bessy, to me," the spirit of Shakespeare now pervades and +possesses them. + +Our poet was a prodigious innovator in this as in so many other matters. +Of course, the idea and practice of musical interludes in plays was not +quite novel. In Shakespeare's early youth that remarkable artist in +language, John Lyly, had presented songs in several of his plays, and +these were notable for what his contemporary, Henry Upchear, called +"their labouring beauty." We may notice that Lyly's songs were not +printed till long after Shakespeare's death, but doubtless he had +listened to them. Peele and Greene had brilliant lyrical gifts, but they +did not exercise them in their dramas, nor did Lodge, whose novel of +Rosalynde (1590) contains the only two precedent songs which we could +willingly add to Shakespeare's juvenile repertory. But while I think it +would be rash to deny that the lyrics of Lodge and Lyly had their direct +influence on the style of Shakespeare, neither of those admirable +precursors conceived the possibility of making the Song an integral part +of the development of the drama. This was Shakespeare's invention, and +he applied it with a technical adroitness which had never been dreamed +of before and was never rivalled after. + +This was not apprehended by the early critics of our divine poet, and +has never yet, perhaps, received all the attention it deserves. We may +find ourselves bewildered if we glance at what the eighteenth-century +commentators said, for instance, about the songs in _Twelfth Night_. +They called the adorable rhapsodies of the Clown "absurd" and +"unintelligible"; "O Mistress mine" was in their ears "meaningless"; +"When that I was" appeared to them "degraded buffoonery." They did not +perceive the close and indispensable connection between the Clown's song +and the action of the piece, although the poet had been careful to point +out that it was a moral song "dulcet in contagion," and too good, except +for sarcasm, to be wasted on Sir Andrew and Sir Toby. The critics +neglected to note what the Duke says about "Come away, come away, +Death," and they prattled in their blindness as to whether this must not +really have been sung by Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant +dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of +the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of _Twelfth Night_ is burdened +with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and at each +change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string. +The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this +musical tension at its height. + +Rather different, and perhaps still more subtle, is the case of _A +Winter's Tale_, where the musical obsession is less prominent, and where +the songs are all delivered from the fantastic lips of Autolycus. Here +again the old critics were very wonderful. Dr. Burney puts "When +daffodils begin to peer" and "Lawn as white as driven snow" into one +bag, and flings it upon the dust-heap, as "two nonsensical songs" sung +by "a pickpocket." Dr. Warburton blushed to think that such "nonsense" +could be foisted on Shakespeare's text. Strange that those learned men +were unable to see, not merely that the rogue-songs are intensely human +and pointedly Shakespearean, but that they are an integral part of the +drama. They complete the revelation of the complex temperament of +Autolycus, with his passion for flowers and millinery, his hysterical +balancing between laughter and tears, his impish mendacity, his sudden +sentimentality, like the Clown's + + "Not a friend, not a friend greet + My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown!" + +It is in these subtle lyrical amalgams of humour and tenderness that the +firm hand of the creator of character reveals itself. + +But it is in _The Tempest_ that Shakespeare's supremacy as a writer of +songs is most brilliantly developed. Here are seven or eight lyrics, and +among them are some of the loveliest things that any man has written. +What was ever composed more liquid, more elastic, more delicately +fairy-like than Ariel's First Song? + + "Come unto these yellow sands, + And then take hands: + Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd,-- + The wild waves whist." + +That is, not "kissed the wild waves," as ingenious punctuators pretend, +but, parenthetically, "kissed one another,--the wild waves being silent +the while." Even fairies do not kiss waves, than which no embrace could +be conceived less rewarding. Has any one remarked the echo of Marlowe +here, from _Hero and Leander_, + + "when all is whist and still, + Save that the sea playing on yellow sand + Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land!" + +But Marlowe, with all his gifts, could never have written the lyrical +parts of _The Tempest_. This song is in emotional sympathy with +Ferdinand, and in the truest sense dramatic, not a piece of pretty verse +foisted in to add to the entertainment. + +Ariel's Second Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin +redbreast" in _The White Devil_, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it +tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls +it, is like a breath of the west wind over an æolian harp. Where, in any +language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's +Fourth Song,--"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative +genius of English poetry, recently delivered from Sycorax. If we glance +at Dry den's recension of _The Tempest_ we may be inclined to think that +the "wicked dam" soon won back her mastery. With all respect to Dryden, +what are we to think of his discretion in eking out Shakespeare's +insufficiencies with such staves as this:-- + + "Upon the floods we'll sing and play + And celebrate a halcyon day; + Great Nephew Aeolus make no noise, + Muzzle your roaring boys." + +and so forth? What had happened to the ear of England in seventy years? + +As a matter of fact the perfection of dramatic song scarcely survived +Shakespeare himself. The early Jacobeans, Heywood, Ford, and Dekker in +particular, broke out occasionally in delicate ditties. But most +playwrights, like Massinger, were persistently pedestrian. The only man +who came at all close to Shakespeare as a lyrist was John Fletcher, +whose "Lay a garland on my hearse" nobody could challenge if it were +found printed first in a Shakespeare quarto. The three great songs in +"Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's, +though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of +"Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be +the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their +sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection +gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately +procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be +certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was +by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure +of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of +Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent +portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of +Shakespeare, and perhaps of him alone. + + + + +CATHARINE TROTTER, + +THE PRECURSOR OF THE BLUESTOCKINGS + + +The practically complete absence of the Woman of Letters from our +tropical and profuse literature of the early and middle seventeenth +century has often been observed with wonder. While France had her +Madeleine de Scudéry and her Mlle. de Gournay and her Mère Angelique +Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into +philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they +read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to +write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with +every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional +woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose +genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers. +Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had left no +heritage to her sex. But there presently appeared a set of female +writers, who enlivened the last years of the century, but who were soon +eclipsed by the wits of the age of Anne, and who have been entirely +forgotten. It is to the most interesting of these "transient phantoms" +that I wish to draw attention. + +The extreme precocity of Catharine Trotter makes her seem to belong to +the age of Dryden, but she was in reality younger than Addison and most +of the other contemporaries of Pope. She was born on August 16th, 1679, +the younger daughter of a naval officer, Captain David Trotter, R.N.; +her mother's maiden name had been Sarah Ballenden, probably of the +well-known Catholic family of that ilk. She "had the honour of being +nearly related to the illustrious families of Maitland, Duke of +Lauderdale and Drummond, Earl of Perth." The Jacobite fourth Earl of +Perth seems to have been the patron of Captain Trotter, of whom he wrote +in 1684 that he was "an ornament to his country." Apparently the gallant +captain was attached to Trinity House, where his probity and integrity +earned him the epithet of "honest David," and where he attracted the +notice of George, first Lord Dartmouth, when that rising statesman was +appointed Master. Captain Trotter had served the Crown from his youth, +"with great gallantry and fidelity, both by land and sea," and had been +very successful in the Dutch wars. He had a brother who was a commander +in the Navy. We get an impression of high respectability in the outer, +but not outermost, circles of influential Scottish society. Doubtless +the infancy of Catharine was spent in conditions of dependent +prosperity. These conditions were not to last. When she was four years +old Lord Dartmouth started on the famous expedition to demolish Tangier, +and he took Captain Trotter with him as his commodore. In this affair, +as before, the captain distinguished himself by his ability, and instead +of returning to London after Tangier he was recommended to King Charles +II. as the proper person to convoy the fleet of the Turkey Company to +its destination. Apparently it was understood that this would be the +final reward of his services and that he was to "make his fortune" out +of the Turks. Unhappily, after convoying his charge safely to +Scanderoon, he fell sick of the plague that was raging there, and died, +in the course of January 1684, in company with all the other officers of +his ship. Every misfortune now ensued; the purser, who was thus left to +his own devices, helped himself to the money destined for the expenses +of the voyage, while, to crown all, the London goldsmith in whose hands +the captain had left his private fortune took this occasion to go +bankrupt. The King, in these melancholy circumstances, granted an +Admiralty pension to the widow, but when he died early in the following +year this was no longer paid, and the unfortunate ladies of the Trotter +family might well murmur:-- + + "One mischief brings another on his neck, + As mighty billows tumble in the seas." + +From the beginning of her fifth year, then, Catharine experienced the +precarious lot of those who depend for a livelihood on the charity of +more or less distant relatives. We dimly see a presentable mother +piteously gathering up such crumbs as fell from the tables of the +illustrious families with whom she was remotely connected. But the Duke +of Lauderdale himself was now dead, and the Earl of Perth had passed the +zenith of his power. No doubt in the seventeenth century the protection +of poor relations was carried on more systematically than it is to-day, +and certainly Mrs. Trotter contrived to live and to bring up her two +daughters genteelly. The first years were the worst; the accession of +William III. brought back to England and to favour Gilbert Burnet, who +became Bishop of Salisbury in 1688, when Catharine was nine years old. +Mrs. Trotter found a patron and perhaps an employer in the Bishop, and +when Queen Anne came to the throne her little pension was renewed. + +There is frequent reference to money in Catharine Trotter's writings, +and the lack of it was the rock upon which her gifts were finally +wrecked. With a competency she might have achieved a much more prominent +place in English literature than she could ever afford to reach. She +offers a curious instance of the depressing effect of poverty, and we +get the impression that she was never, during her long and virtuous +career, lifted above the carking anxiety which deadens the imagination. +As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order. +She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an +illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female +darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own +application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some +assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject +became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an +abstract" of that science "for her own use." Thus she prepared for her +future communion with Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small, +in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of +England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the +Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the +conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned +out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman, +her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the Anglican +faith when she was twenty-eight years of age.) + +She was in her tenth year when the unhappy reign of James II. came to a +close. Mrs. Trotter's connections were now in a poor plight. The new +Earl of Lauderdale was in great distress for money; Lord Dartmouth, +abandoned by the King in his flight, was thrown into the Tower, where he +died on October 25th, 1691, in which year the estates of the Earl of +Perth were sequestered and he himself hunted out of the country. Ruin +simultaneously fell on all the fine friends of our infant prodigy, and +we can but guess how it affected her. Yet there were plenty of other +Jacobites left in London, and Catharine's first public appearance shows +that she cultivated their friendship. She published in 1693 a copy of +verses addressed to Mr. Bevil Higgons on the occasion of his recovery +from the smallpox; she was then fourteen years of age. Higgons was a +young man of twenty-three, who had lately returned from the exiled court +in France, where he had distinguished himself by his agreeable manners, +and who had just made a name for himself by poems addressed to Dryden +and by a prologue to Congreve's _Old Batchelor_. He was afterwards to +become famous for a little while as a political historian. Catharine +Trotter's verses are bad, but she addresses Higgons as "lovely youth," +and claims his gratitude for her tribute in terms which are almost +boisterous. This poem was not only her introduction to the public, but, +through Bevil Higgons, was probably the channel of her acquaintance with +Congreve and Dryden. + +Throughout her life she was fond of writing letters to celebrated +people; she now certainly wrote to Congreve and doubtless to Dryden. A +freedom in correspondence ran in the family. Her poor mother is revealed +to us as always "renewing her application" to somebody or other. We next +find the youthful poet in relation with the Earl of Dorset, from whom +she must have concealed her Jacobite propensities. Dorset was the great +public patron of poetry under William III., and Catharine Trotter, aged +sixteen, having composed a tragedy, appealed to him for support. It was +very graciously granted, and _Agnes de Castro_, in five acts and in +blank verse, "written by a young lady," was produced at the Theatre +Royal in 1695, under the "protection" of Charles Earl of Dorset and +Middlesex, Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household. The event caused +a considerable commotion. No woman had written for the English stage +since the death of Mrs. Behn, and curiosity was much excited. Mrs. +Verbruggen, that enchanting actress, but in male attire, recited a +clever, ranting epilogue at the close of the performance, in which she +said:-- + + "'tis whispered here + Our Poetess is virtuous, young and fair," + +but the secret was an open one. Wycherley, who contributed verses, knew +all about it, and so did Mrs. Manley, while Powell and Colley Cibber +were among the actors. We may be sure that little Mistress Trotter's +surprising talents were the subjects of much discussion at Will's Coffee +House, and that the question of securing her for the rival theatre was +anxiously debated at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her success in Agnes de +Castro was the principal asset which Drury Lane had to set that season +against Congreve's splendid adventure with Love for Love. + +Agnes de Castro is an immature production, and shows a juvenile +insensibility to plagiarism, since the subject and treatment are +borrowed implicitly from a French novel by Mlle. de Brillac, published +in Paris and London a few years before.[2] The conception of court life +at Coimbra in the fourteenth century is that of this French lady, and is +innocent of Portuguese local colour. But, as the dramatic work of a girl +of sixteen, the play is rather extraordinary for nimble movement and +adroit theatrical arrangements. It is evident that Catharine Trotter was +well versed in the stage traditions of her own day, and we may wonder +how a highly respectable girl of sixteen found her opportunity. The +English playhouse under William III. was no place for a very young lady, +even if she wore a mask. There is a good deal of meritorious +character-drawing in Agnes de Castro. The conception of a benevolent and +tenderly forgiving Princess is well contrasted with the fierce purity of +Agnes and the infatuation of the Prince. Towards the close of the first +act there is a capital scene of exquisite confusion between this +generous and distracted trio. The opening of the third act, between +Elvira and her brother Alvaro, is not at all young-ladyish, and has some +strong turns of feeling. The end of the play, with the stabbing of the +Princess and the accusation of Agnes by Elvira, is puerile, but was +doubtless welcome to a sentimental audience. It is a bad play, but not +at all an unpromising one. + +Early in 1696 _Agnes de Castro_, still anonymous, was published as a +book, and for the next five or six years we find Catharine Trotter +habitually occupied in writing for the stage. Without question she did +so professionally, though in what way dramatists at the close of the +seventeenth century lived by their pens is difficult to conjecture. A +very rare play, _The Female Wits; or, the Triumvirate of Poets_, the +authorship of which has hitherto defied conjecture, was acted at Drury +Lane after Catharine Trotter had been tempted across to Lincoln's Inn +Fields, and is evidently inspired by the intense jealousy which +smouldered between the two great houses. The success of Miss Trotter +incited two older ladies to compete with her; these were Mrs. +Delariviere Manley, who was a discarded favourite of Barbara Villiers, +and fat Mrs. Mary Pix, the stage-struck consort of a tailor. These +rather ridiculous women professed themselves followers of Catharine, and +they produced plays of their own not without some success. With her they +formed the trio of Female Wits who were mocked in the lively but, on the +whole, rather disappointing play I have just mentioned, in the course of +which it is spitefully remarked of Calista--who is Miss Trotter--that +she has "made no small struggle in the world to get into print," and is +"now in such a state of wedlock to pen and ink that it will be very +difficult" for her "to get out of it." + +In acting _The Female Wits_ Mrs. Temple, who had played the Princess in +_Agnes de Castro_, took the part of Calista, and doubtless, in the +coarse fashion of those days, made up exactly like poor Catharine +Trotter, who was described as "a Lady who pretends to the learned +Languages, and assumes to herself the name of a Critic." This was a +character, however, which she would not have protested against with much +vigour, for she had now quite definitely taken up the position of a +reformer and a pioneer. She posed as the champion of women's +intellectual rights, and she was accepted as representing in active +literary work the movement which Mary Astell had recently foreshadowed +in her remarkable _Serious Proposal to Ladies_ of 1694. We turn again to +_The Female Wits_, and we find Marsilia (Mrs. Manley) describing Calista +to Mrs. Wellfed (Mrs. Fix) as "the vainest, proudest, senseless Thing! +She pretends to grammar! writes in mood and figure! does everything +methodically!" Yet when Calista appears on the stage, Mrs. Manley rushes +across to fling her arms around her and to murmur: "O charmingest Nymph +of all Apollo's Train, let me embrace thee!" Later on Calista says to +Mrs. Pix, the fat tailoress, "I cannot but remind you, Madam ... I read +Aristotle in his own language"; and of a certain tirade in a play of Ben +Jonson she insists: "I know it so well, as to have turn'd it into +Latin." Mrs. Pix admits her own ignorance of all these things; she "can +go no further than the eight parts of speech." This brings down upon her +an icy reproof from Calista: "Then I cannot but take the Freedom to say +... you impose upon the Town." We get the impression of a preciseness of +manner and purpose which must have given Catharine a certain air of +priggishness, not entirely unbecoming, perhaps, but very strange in that +loose theatre of William III. + +Accordingly, in her next appearance, we find her complaining to the +Princess (afterwards Queen Anne) that she has become "the mark of ill +Nature" through recommending herself "by what the other Sex think their +peculiar Prerogative"--that is, intellectual distinction. Catharine +Trotter was still only nineteen years of age when she produced her +tragedy of _Fatal Friendship_, the published copy of which (1698) is all +begarlanded with evidences of her high moral purpose in the shape of a +succession of "applausive copies" of verses. In these we are told that +she had "checked the rage of reigning vice that had debauched the +stage." This was an allusion to the great controversy then just raised +by Jeremy Collier in his famous _Short View of the Immorality and +Profaneness of the Stage_, in which all the dramatists of the day were +violently attacked for their indecency. Catharine Trotter has the +courage to side with Collier, and the tact to do so without quarrelling +with her male colleagues. She takes the side of the decent women. + + "You as your Sex's champion art come forth + To fight their quarrel and assert their worth," + +one of her admirers exclaims, and another adds:-- + + "You stand the first of stage-reformers too." + +The young poetess aimed at reconciling the stage with virtue and at +vindicating the right of woman to assume "the tragic laurel." + +This was the most brilliant moment in the public career of our +bluestocking. _Fatal Friendship_ enjoyed a success which Catharine +Trotter was not to taste again, and of all her plays it is the only one +which has ever been reprinted. It is very long and extremely +sentimental, and written in rather prosy blank verse. Contemporaries +said that it placed Miss Trotter in the forefront of British drama, in +company with Congreve and Granville "the polite," who had written a +_She-Gallants_, which was everything that Miss Trotter did not wish her +plays to be. _Fatal Friendship_ has an ingenious plot, in which the +question of money takes a prominence very unusual in tragedy. Almost +every character in the piece is in reduced circumstances. Felicia, +sister to Belgard (who is too poor to maintain her), is wooed by the +wealthy Roquelaure, although she is secretly married to Gramont, who is +also too poor to support a wife. Belgard, afraid that Gramont will make +love to Felicia (that is, to his own secret wife), persuades him--in +order that his best friend, Castalio, may be released from a debtor's +prison--bigamously to many Lamira, a wealthy widow. But Castalio is in +love with Lamira, and is driven to frenzy by Gramont's illegal marriage. +It all depends upon income in a manner comically untragical. The quarrel +between the friends in the fifth act is an effective piece of +stage-craft, but the action is spoiled by a ridiculous general butchery +at the close of all. However, the audience was charmed, and even "the +stubbornest could scarce deny their Tears." + +_Fatal Friendship_ was played at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, and no doubt +it was Congreve who brought Miss Trotter over from Drury Lane. His warm +friendship for her had unquestionably a great deal to do with her +success and with the jealousy of her rivals. A letter exists in which +the great dramatist acknowledges, in 1697, the congratulations of his +young admirer, and it breathes an eager cordiality. Congreve requested +Betterton to present him to Catharine Trotter, and his partiality for +her company is mentioned by several writers. The spiteful author of _The +Female Wits_ insinuates that Congreve made the looking-over of +Catharine's scenes "his pretence for daily visits." Another satirist, in +1698, describes Congreve sitting very gravely with his hat over his +eyes, "together with the two she-things called Poetesses which write for +his house," half-hidden from the public in a little side-box. Farquhar, +too, seeing the celebrated writer of _Fatal Friendship_ in the theatre +on the third night of the performance of his _Love and a Bottle_, had +"his passions wrought so high" by a sight of the beautiful author that +he wrote her a letter in which he called her "one of the fairest of the +sex, and the best judge." If Catharine Trotter, as the cynosure of +delicacy, at the age of nineteen, sat through _Love and a Bottle_ +without a blush, even _her_ standard of decency was not very exacting. +But in all this rough, coarse world of wit her reputation never suffered +a rebuff. + +Encouraged by so much public and private attention, our young dramatist +continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts +were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national +temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary +historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had +been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had sunk deeply +into the conscience of the people. There followed with alarming +abruptness a general public repulsion against the playhouses, and to +this, early in 1699, a roughly worded Royal Proclamation gave voice. +During the whole of that year the stage was almost in abeyance, and even +Congreve, with _The Way of the World_, was unable to woo his audience +back to Lincoln's Inn. During this time of depression Catharine Trotter +composed at least two tragedies, which she was unable to get performed, +while the retirement of Congreve in a paroxysm of annoyance must have +been a very serious disadvantage to her. + +On May 1st, 1700, Dryden died, and with him a dramatic age passed away. +What Miss Trotter's exact relations with the great poet had been is +uncertain; she not only celebrated his death in a long elegy, in which +she speaks on behalf of the Muses, but wrote another and more important +poem, in which she gives very sound advice to the poetical beginner, who +is to take Dryden as a model, and to be particularly careful to disdain +Settle, Durfey, and Blackmore, typical poetasters of the period. She +recommends social satire to the playwright:-- + + "Let the nice well-bred beau himself perceive + The most accomplished, useless thing alive; + Expose the bottle-sparks that range the town,-- + Shaming themselves with follies not their own,-- + But chief these foes to virgin innocence, + Who, while they make to honour vain pretence, + With all that's base and impious can dispense." + +Honour to those who aim high and execute boldly! + + "If Shakespeare's spirit, with transporting fire, + The animated scene throughout inspire; + If in the piercing wit of Vanbrugh drest, + Each sees his darling folly made a jest; + If Garth's and Dryden's genius, through each line, + In artful praise and well-turn'd satire shine,-- + To us ascribe the immortal sacred flame." + +In this dead period of the stage Catharine Trotter found a warm friend +and doubtless an efficient patron in a Lady Piers, of whom we should be +glad to know more. Sir George Piers, the husband of this lady, was an +officer of rank under the Duke of Marlborough, later to become useful to +Catharine Trotter. Meanwhile the latter returned to the Theatre Royal in +Drury Lane, where, in 1701, under the patronage of Lord Halifax--Pope's +"Bufo"--she produced her third tragedy, _The Unhappy Penitent_. The +dedication of this play to Halifax is a long and interesting essay on +the poetry of the age. The author passes Dryden, Otway, Congreve, and +Lee under examination, and finds technical blemishes in them all:-- + + "The inimitable Shakespeare seems alone secure on every side from + an attack. I speak not here of faults against the rules of poetry, + but against the natural Genius. He had all the images of nature + present to him, studied her thoroughly, and boldly copied all her + various features, for though he has chiefly exerted himself on the + more masculine passions, 'tis as the choice of his judgment, not + the restraint of his genius, and he has given us as a proof he + could be every way equally admirable." + +Lady Piers wrote the prologue to _The Unhappy Penitent_ in verses better +turned than might have been expected. She did not stint praise to her +young friend, whom she compares to the rising sun:-- + + "Like him, bright Maid, Thy great perfections shine + As awful, as resplendent, as divine!... + Minerva and Diana guard your soul!" + +_The Unhappy Penitent_ is not a pleasing performance: it is amorous and +violent, but yet dull. Catharine's theory was better than her practice. +Nevertheless, it seems to have been successful, for the author some time +afterwards, speaking of the town's former discouragement of her dramas, +remarks that "the taste is mended." Later in 1701 she brought out at +Drury Lane her only comedy, _Love at a Loss_, dedicated in most +enthusiastic terms to Lady Piers, to whom "I owe the greatest Blessing +of my Fate," the privilege of a share in her friendship. _Love at a +Loss_ was made up of the comic scenes introduced into an old tragedy +which the author had failed to get acted. This is not a fortunate method +of construction, and the town showed no favour to Love at a Loss. The +first and only public section of Catharine Trotter's career was now +over, and she withdrew, a wayworn veteran at the age of twenty-two, to +more elevated studies. + +When _Love at a Loss_ was published the author had already left town, +and after a visit to Lady Piers in Kent she now settled at Salisbury, at +the house of a physician, Dr. Inglis, who had married her only sister. +Her growing intimacy with the family of Bishop Burnet may have had +something to do with her determination to make this city her home. She +formed a very enthusiastic friendship with the Bishop's second lady, who +was an active theologian and a very intelligent woman. Our poetess was +fascinated by Mrs. Burnet. "I have not met," she writes in 1701, "such +perfection in any of our sex." She now visited in the best Wiltshire +society. When the famous singer, John Abell, was in Salisbury, he gave a +concert at the palace, and Catharine Trotter was so enchanted that she +rode out after him six miles to Tisbury to hear him sing again at Lord +Arundell of Wardour's house. She had a great appreciation of the +Bishop's "volatile activity." It is now that the name of Locke first +occurs in her correspondence, and we gather that she came into some +personal contact with him through a member of the Bishop's +family--George Burnet of Kemney, in Aberdeenshire--probably a cousin, +with whom she now cultivated an ardent intellectual friendship. He left +England on a mission which occupied him from the middle of 1701 until +1708, and this absence, as we may suspect, alone prevented their +acquaintance from ripening into a warmer feeling. The romance and +tragedy of Catharine Trotter's life gather, it is plain, around this +George Burnet, who was a man of brilliant accomplishments and +interested, like herself, in philosophical studies. + +These, it would appear, Catharine Trotter had never abandoned, but she +applied herself to them closely at Salisbury, where she made some +superior acquaintances. One of these was John Norris of Bemerton, whose +_Theory of an Ideal and Intelligible World_ had just made some +sensation. By the intermediary of George Burnet she came in touch with +some of the leading French writers of the moment, such as Malebranche +and Madame Dacier. There is a French poet, unnamed, who understands +English, but he is gone to Rome before he can be made to read _The Fatal +Friendship_. Meanwhile, Catharine Trotter's obsession with the ideas of +Locke was giving some anxiety to her friends. That philosopher had +published his famous _Essay on the Human Understanding_ in 1690, and it +had taken several years for the opposition to his views, and in +particular to his theological toleration, to take effect. But in 1697 +there were made a number of almost simultaneous attacks on Locke's +position. The circle at Salisbury was involved in them, for one of these +was written by Norris of Bemerton, and another is attributed to a member +of the Burnet family. Catharine Trotter, who had studied Locke's later +works with enthusiastic approval, was scandalised by the attacks, and +sat down to refute them. This must have been in 1701. + +Although the intellectual society of Salisbury was prominent in taking +the conservative view of Locke, our bluestocking could not refrain from +telling Mrs. Burnet what she had done, nor from showing her treatise to +that friend under vows of confidence. But Mrs. Burnet, who was impulsive +and generous, could not keep the secret; she spoke about it to the +Bishop, and then to Norris of Bemerton, and finally (in June 1702) to +Locke himself. Locke was at Oates, confined by his asthma; he was old +and suffering, but still full of benevolence and curiosity, and he was +graciously interested in his remarkable defender at Salisbury. As he +could not himself travel, he sent his adopted son to call on Catharine +Trotter, with a present of books; this was Peter King, still a young +man, but already M.P. for Beer Alston, and later to become Lord +Chancellor and the first Lord King of Ockham. George Burnet, writing +from Paris, had been very insistent that Catharine should not publish +her treatise, but she overruled his objections, and her _Defence of Mr. +Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding_ appeared anonymously in May +1702. People were wonderfully polite in those days, and Locke himself +wrote to his "protectress" a charming letter in which he told her that +her "_Defence_ was the greatest honour my Essay could have procured me." + +She sent her _Defence_ to Leibnitz, who criticised it at considerable +length:--[3] + + "J'ai lu livre de Mlle. Trotter. Dans la dedicace elle exhorte M. + Locke à donner des démonstrations de morale. Je crois qu'il aurait + eu de la peine à y reussir. L'art de démontrer n'est pas son fait. + Je tiens que nous nous appercevons sans raisonnement de ce qui est + juste et injuste, comme nous nous appercevons sans raison de + quelques theoremes de Geometrie; mais il est tousjours bon de venir + à la démonstration. Justice et injustice ne dependent seulement de + la nature humaine, mais de la nature de la substance intelligente + en général; et Mlle. Trotter remarque fort bien qu'elle vient de la + nature de Dieu et n'est point arbitraire. La nature de Dieu est + tousjours fondée en raison." + +Notwithstanding all this, the commentators of Locke appear, without +exception, to ignore the _Defence_, and it was probably never much read +outside the cultivated Salisbury circle. + +In this year, 1702, the health of Catharine Trotter began to give her +uneasiness, and it was for this reason that she left Salisbury for a +while. She was once more living in that city, however, from May 1703 to +March 1704, making a special study of geography. "My strength," she +writes to George Burnet, "is very much impaired, and God knows whether I +shall ever retrieve it." Her thoughts turned again to the stage, and in +the early months of 1703 she composed her fifth and last play, the +tragedy of _The Revolution in Sweden_; "but it will not be ready for +the stage," she says, "till next winter." Her interest in philosophy +did not flag. She was gratified by some communications, through Burnet, +with Leibnitz, and she would have liked to be the intermediary between +Locke and some philosophical "gentlemen" on the Continent, probably +Malebranche and Leibnitz, in a controversy. But this was hopeless, and +she writes (March 16th, 1704):-- + + "Mr. Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen + you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him, + for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only + employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend + the mind." + +Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained +his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end +approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was +least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into +discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine +Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest +object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was +rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at +Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke and to throw +suspicion on their influence. She read over and over again his +philosophical, educational, and religious treatises, and ever found them +more completely to her taste. If she had enjoyed the power to do so she +would have proclaimed the wisdom and majesty of Locke from every +housetop, and she envied Lady Masham her free and constant intercourse +with so beautiful a mind. Catharine Trotter watched, but from a +distance, the extinction of a life thus honoured, which came to a +peaceful end at Oates on October 28th, 1704. The following passage does +not appear--or I am much mistaken--to have attracted the attention of +Locke's biographers:-- + + "I was very sensibly touched with the news of Mr. Locke's death. + All the particulars I hear of it are that he retained his perfect + senses to the last, and spoke with the same composedness and + indifference on affairs as usual. His discourse was much on the + different views a dying man has of worldly things; and that nothing + gives him any satisfaction, but the reflection of what good he has + done in his life. Lady Masham went to his chamber to speak to him + on some, business; when he had answered in the same manner he was + accustomed to speak, he desired her to leave the room, and, + immediately after she was gone, turned about and died." + +She records that, after the death of Locke, Lady Masham communicated +with Leibnitz, and Catharine is very indignant because a doubt had been +suggested as to whether the writer's thoughts and expressions were her +own. This was calculated to infuriate Catharine Trotter, who outpours in +forcible terms her just indignation:-- + + "Women are as capable of penetrating into the grounds of things, + and reasoning justly, as men are, who certainly have no advantage + of us, but in their opportunities of knowledge. As Lady Masham is + allowed by everybody to have great natural endowments, she has + taken pains to improve them; and no doubt profited much by a long + intimate society with so extraordinary a man as Mr. Locke. So that + I see no reason to suspect a woman of her character would pretend + to write anything that was not entirely her own. I pray, be more + equitable to her sex than the generality of your's are, who, when + anything is written by a woman that they cannot deny their + approbation to, are sure to rob us of the glory of it by + concluding 'tis not her own." + +This is the real voice of Catharine Trotter, raised to defend her sex, +and conscious of the many intellectual indignities and disabilities +which they suffered. + +The first draft of _The Revolution in Sweden_ being now completed, she +sent it to Congreve, who was living very quietly in lodgings in Arundell +Street. He allowed some time to go by before, on November 2nd, 1703, he +acknowledged it. His criticism, which is extremely kind, is also +penetrating and full. "I think the design in general," he says, "very +great and noble; the conduct of it very artful, if not too full of +business which may run into length and obscurity." He warns her against +having too much noise of fighting on the stage in her second act, and +against offending probability in the third. The fourth act is confused, +and in the fifth there are too many harangues. Catharine Trotter has +asked him to be frank, and so he is, but his criticism is practical and +encouraging. This excellent letter deserves to be better known. + +To continue the history of Miss Trotter's fifth and last play, _The +Revolution in Sweden_ was at length brought out at the Queen's Theatre +in the Haymarket, towards the close of 1704. It had every advantage +which popular acting could give it, since the part of the hero, Count +Arwide, was played by Betterton; that of Constantia, the heroine, by +Mrs. Barry; Gustavus by Booth; and Christina by Mrs. Harcourt. In spite +of this galaxy of talent, the reception of the play was unfavourable. +The Duchess of Marlborough "and all her beauteous family" graced the +theatre on the first night, but the public was cold and inattentive. +Some passages of a particularly lofty moral tone provoked laughter. _The +Revolution in Sweden_, in fact, was shown to suffer from the +ineradicable faults which Congreve had gently but justly suggested. It +was very long, and very dull, and very wordy, and we could scarcely find +a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was +dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being +styled--by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of +Prussia--"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to +readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further +revision, she published _The Revolution in Sweden_, she dedicated it in +most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter, +Henrietta Godolphin. + +How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from +various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now +physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the +General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced, +Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be +supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke, +with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem +enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord +Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said +they were better than any other which had been written on the subject. +George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased +with her--"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped, +with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no +longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of £20 from Queen Anne +gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was +wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was +ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet +would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that he sent +her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une +Demoiselle fort spirituelle." + +Catharine Trotter now left London and Salisbury, and took up her abode +at Ockham Mills, close to Ripley, in Surrey, as companion to an invalid, +Mrs. De Vere. She probably chose this place on account of the Locke +connection and the friendship of Peter King, since there is now much in +her correspondence about Damaris, Lady Masham, and others in that circle +in which George Burnet himself was intimate. But great changes were +imminent. Although her correspondence at this time is copious it is not +always very intelligible, and it is very carelessly edited. Her constant +interchange of letters with George Burnet leaves the real position +between them on many points obscure. In 1704, when he thought that he +was dying in Berlin, he wrote to Catharine Trotter that he had left her +£100 in his will, and added: "Pray God I might live to give you much +more myself." He regrets that he had so easily "pulled himself from her +company," and suggests that if she had not left London to settle in +Salisbury he would have stayed in England. Years after they had parted +we find him begging her to continue writing to him "at least once a +week." She, on her part, tells him that he well knows that there is but +one person she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her +want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, +but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a +fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her +by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who +might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing +(Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with +extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, passionately +in love with a man whom she had just accepted as her future husband, +was expected, in 1705, to close her letter by describing herself as +"Sir, your very humble servant." + +If George Burnet hinted of "parties" in Hanover, Catharine Trotter on +her side could boast of Mr. Fenn, "a young clergyman of excellent +character," who now laid an ardent siege to her heart. Embarrassed by +these attentions, she took the bold step of placing the matter before +Mr. Cockburn, a still younger clergyman, of even more excellent +character. The letter in which she makes this ingenuous declaration as +to a father confessor is one of the tenderest examples extant of the +"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" form of correspondence. Mr. +Cockburn, one of the minor clergy of the Salisbury set, did speak for +himself, and George Burnet having at length announced his own projected +marriage with a lady of old acquaintance, Catharine Trotter hesitated no +longer but accepted the hand of Mr. Cockburn. They were married early in +1708. Thackeray could have created an amusing romance out of the +relations of these four people to one another, and in particular it +would have been very interesting to see what he would have made of the +character of George Burnet. + +Catharine Cockburn was now, after so eventful a life of emotional and +intellectual experience, still a young woman, not far past her +twenty-eighth birthday. She was to survive for more than forty-three +years, during which time she was to correspond much, to write +persistently, and to publish whenever opportunity offered. But I do not +propose to accompany her much further on her blameless career. All +through her married life, which was spent at various places far from +London, she existed almost like a plant in a Leyden jar. Constant +genteel poverty, making it difficult for her to buy books and impossible +to travel was supported by her with dignity and patience, but it dwarfed +her powers. Her later writings, on philosophy, on morality, on the +principles of the Christian religion, are so dull that merely to think +of them brings tears into one's eyes. She who had sparkled as a girl +with Congreve and exchanged polite amenities with Locke lived on to see +modern criticism begin with Samuel Johnson and the modern novel start +with Samuel Richardson, but without observing that any change had come +into the world of letters. Her husband, owing to his having fallen "into +a scruple about the oath of abjuration," lost his curacy and "was +reduced to great difficulties in the support of his family." +Nevertheless--a perfect gentleman at heart--he "always prayed for the +King and Royal family by name." Meanwhile, to uplift his spirits in this +dreadful condition, he is discovered engaged upon a treatise on the +Mosaic deluge, which he could persuade no publisher to print. He reminds +us of Dr. Primrose in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and, like him, Mr. +Cockburn probably had strong views on the Whistonian doctrine. + +So little mark did poor Mrs. Cockburn make on her younger contemporaries +that she disappeared forthwith from literary history. Her works, +especially her plays, have become so excessively rare as to be almost +unprocurable. The brief narrative of her life and her activities which I +have taken the liberty of presenting to-day would be hopelessly engulfed +in obscurity, and we should know as little of Catharine Trotter as we do +of Mary Pix, and Delariviere Manley, and many late seventeenth-century +authors more eminent than they, had it not been that in 1751, two years +after her death, all her papers were placed in the hands of an ingenious +clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Birch, who printed them for subscribers +in two thick and singularly unpleasing volumes. This private edition was +never reissued, and is now itself a rare book. It is the sort of book +that for two hundred and fifty years must fatally have been destroyed as +lumber whenever an old country mansion that contained it has been +cleared out. + +During all that time no one, so far as I can discover, has evinced the +smallest interest in Catharine Trotter. We gain an idea of the blackness +of her obscurity when we say that even Mr. Austin Dobson appears to have +never heard of her. The champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent +of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar, +she seems to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on +time. But I hope her thin little lady-like ghost, still hovering in a +phantom-like transparence round the recognised seats of learning, will +be a little comforted at last by the polite attention of a few of my +readers. + +[Footnote 2: Around the story of Agnes de Castro there gathered a whole +literature of fiction, which Mr. Montague Summers has investigated in +his _Works of Aphra Behn_, Vol. V. pp. 211-212.] + +[Footnote 3: Printed in Otto Klopp's _Correspondance de Leibnitz avec +l'Electrice Sophie_. Hanover, 1875.] + + + + +TWO PIONEERS OF ROMANTICISM: + +JOSEPH AND THOMAS WARTON[4] + + +The origins of the Romantic Movement in literature have been examined so +closely and so often that it might be supposed that the subject must be +by this time exhausted. But no subject of any importance in literature +is ever exhausted, because the products of literature grow or decay, +burgeon or wither, as the generations of men apply their ever-varying +organs of perception to them. I intend, with your permission, to present +to you a familiar phase of the literary life of the eighteenth century +from a fresh point of view, and in relation to two men whose surname +warrants a peculiar emphasis of respect in the mouth of a Warton +Lecturer. It is well, perhaps, to indicate exactly what it is which a +lecturer proposes to himself to achieve during the brief hour in which +you indulge him with your attention; it certainly makes his task the +easier if he does so. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to divine for +you, by scanty signs and indications, what it was in poetry, as it +existed up to the period of their childhood, which was stimulating to +the Wartons, and what they disapproved of in the verse which was +fashionable and popular among the best readers in their day. + +There is an advantage, which I think that our critics are apt to +neglect, in analysing the character and causes of poetic pleasure +experienced by any sincere and enthusiastic reader, at any epoch of +history. We are far too much in the habit of supposing that what +we--that is the most instructed and sensitive of us--admire now must +always have been admired by people of a like condition. This has been +one of the fallacies of Romantic criticism, and has led people as +illustrious as Keats into blaming the taste of foregoing generations as +if it were not only heretical, but despicable as well. Young men to-day +speak of those who fifty years ago expatiated in admiration of Tennyson +as though they were not merely stupid, but vulgar and almost wicked, +neglectful of the fact that it was by persons exactly analogous to +themselves that those portions of Tennyson were adored which the young +repudiate to-day. Not to expand too largely this question of the +oscillation of taste--which, however, demands more careful examination +than it has hitherto received--it is always important to discover what +was honestly admired at a given date by the most enthusiastic and +intelligent, in other words by the most poetic, students of poetry. But +to do this we must cultivate a little of that catholicity of heart which +perceives technical merit wherever it has been recognised at an earlier +date, and not merely where the current generation finds it. + +Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of an Oxford professor of poetry, +an old Jacobite of no observable merit beyond that of surrounding his +family with an atmosphere of the study of verse. The elder brother was +born in 1722, the younger in 1728. I must be forgiven if I dwell a +little tediously on dates, for our inquiry depends upon the use of them. +Without dates the whole point of that precedency of the Wartons, which I +desire to bring out, is lost. The brothers began very early to devote +themselves to the study of poetry, and in spite of the six years which +divided them, they appear to have meditated in unison. Their writings +bear a close resemblance to one another, and their merits and their +failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we +can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the +woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with +ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of +birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas +were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." They avoided, +with a certain disdain, the affectation of vague and conventional +reference to definite objects. + +Above all they read the poets who were out of fashion, and no doubt the +library of their father, the Professor of Poetry, was at their disposal +from a very early hour. The result of their studies was a remarkable +one, and the discovery was unquestionably first made by Joseph. He was, +so far as we can gather, the earliest person in the modern world of +Europe to observe what vain sacrifices had been made by the classicists, +and in particular by the English classicists, and as he walked +enthusiastically in the forest he formed a determination to reconquer +the realm of lost beauty. The moment that this instinct became a +purpose, we may say that the great Romantic Movement, such as it has +enlarged and dwindled down to our own day, took its start. The Wartons +were not men of creative genius, and their works, whether in prose or +verse, have not taken hold of the national memory. But the advance of a +great army is not announced by a charge of field-marshals. In the +present war, the advance of the enemy upon open cities has generally +been announced by two or three patrols on bicycles, who are the heralds +of the body. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the bicyclist-scouts who +prophesied of an advance which was nearly fifty years delayed. + +The general history of English literature in the eighteenth century +offers us little opportunity for realising what the environment could be +of two such lads as the Wartons, with their enthusiasm, their +independence, and their revolutionary instinct. But I will take the year +1750, which is the year of Rousseau's first _Discours_ and therefore the +definite starting-point of European Romanticism. You will perhaps find +it convenient to compare the situation of the Wartons with what is the +situation to-day of some very modern or revolutionary young poet. In +1750, then, Joseph was twenty-eight years of age and Thomas twenty-two. +Pope had died six years before, and this was equivalent to the death of +Swinburne in the experience of our young man of to-day. Addison's death +was as distant as is from us that of Matthew Arnold; and Thomson, who +had been dead two years, had left The _Castle of Indolence_ as an +equivalent to Mr. Hardy's _Dynasts_. All the leading writers of the age +of Anne--except Young, who hardly belonged to it--were dead, but the +Wartons were divided from them only as we are from those of the age of +Victoria. I have said that Pope was not more distant from them than +Swinburne is from us, but really a more just parallel is with Tennyson. +The Wartons, wandering in their woodlands, were confronted with a +problem such as would be involved, to a couple of youths to-day, in +considering the reputation of Tennyson and Browning. + +There remains no doubt in my mind, after a close examination of such +documents as remain to us, that Joseph Warton, whose attitude has +hitherto been strangely neglected, was in fact the active force in this +remarkable revolt against existing conventions in the world of +imaginative art. His six years of priority would naturally give him an +advantage over his now better-known and more celebrated brother. +Moreover, we have positive evidence of the firmness of his opinions at a +time when his brother Thomas was still a child. The preface to Joseph's +_Odes_ of 1746 remains as a dated document, a manifesto, which admits of +no question. But the most remarkable of his poems, "The Enthusiast," was +stated to have been written in 1740, when he was eighteen and his +brother only twelve years of age. It is, of course, possible that these +verses, which bear no sign of juvenile mentality, were touched up at a +later date. But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and +we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph, +that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a +fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary +importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it +would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much +discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had +"no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to +stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and +poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express himself with +creative charm. But this is not what constitutes his interest for us, +which is moreover obscured by the tameness of his Miltonic-Thomsonian +versification. What should arrest our attention is the fact that here, +for the first time, we find unwaveringly emphasised and repeated what +was entirely new in literature, the essence of romantic hysteria. "The +Enthusiast" is the earliest expression of full revolt against the +classical attitude which had been sovereign in all European literature +for nearly a century. So completely is this expressed by Joseph Warton +that it is extremely difficult to realise that he could not have come +under the fascination of Rousseau, whose apprenticeship to love and +idleness was now drawing to a close at Les Charmettes, and who was not +to write anything characteristic until ten years later. + +But these sentiments were in the air. Some of them had vaguely occurred +to Young, to Dyer, and to Shenstone, all of whom received from Joseph +Warton the ardent sympathy which a young man renders to his immediate +contemporaries. The Scotch resumption of ballad-poetry held the same +relation to the Wartons as the so-called Celtic Revival would to a young +poet to-day; the _Tea-Table Miscellany_ dates from 1724, and Allan +Ramsay was to the author of "The Enthusiast" what Mr. Yeats is to us. +But all these were glimmerings or flashes; they followed no system, they +were accompanied by no principles of selection or rejection. These we +find for the first time in Joseph Warton. He not merely repudiates the +old formulas and aspirations, but he defines new ones. What is very +interesting to observe in his attitude to the accepted laws of poetical +practice is his solicitude for the sensations of the individual. These +had been reduced to silence by the neo-classic school in its +determination to insist on broad Palladian effects of light and line. +The didactic and moral aim of the poets had broken the springs of +lyrical expression, and had replaced those bursts of enthusiasm, those +indiscretions, those rudenesses which are characteristic of a romantic +spirit in literature, by eloquence, by caution, by reticence and +vagueness. + +It is not necessary to indicate more than very briefly what the +principles of the classic poetry had been. The time had passed when +readers and writers in England gave much attention to the sources of the +popular poetry of their day. Malherbe had never been known here, and the +vigorous _Art poétique_ of Boileau, which had been eagerly studied at +the close of the seventeenth century, was forgotten. Even the Prefaces +of Dryden had ceased to be read, and the sources of authority were now +the prose of Addison and the verse of Pope. To very young readers these +stood in the same relation as the writings of the post-Tennysonian +critics stand now. To reject them, to question their authority, was +like eschewing the essays of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. In +particular, the _Essay on Criticism_ was still immensely admired and +read; it had crystallised around cultivated opinion very much as the +_Studies in the Renaissance_ did from 1875 onwards. It was the last +brilliant word on the aims and experiences of poetical art, and how +brilliant it was can be judged by the pleasure with which we read it +to-day, in spite of our total repudiation of every æsthetic dogma which +it conveys. It is immortal, like every supreme literary expression, and +it stands before us in the history of poetry as an enduring landmark. +This was the apparently impregnable fortress which the Wartons had the +temerity to bombard. + +Pope had said that Nature was the best guide to judgment, but what did +he mean by nature? He had meant the "rules," which he declared were +"Nature methodis'd" or, as we should say, systematised. The "rules" were +the maxims, rather than laws, expressed by Aristotle in a famous +treatise. The poet was to follow the Stagirite, "led"--as Pope says in +one of those rare lines in which he catches, in spite of himself, the +Romantic accent--"led by the light of the Mæonian Star." Aristotle +illustrated by Homer--that was to be the standard of all poetic +expression. But literature had wandered far from Homer, and we have to +think of what rules the _Essay on Criticism_ laid down. The poet was to +be cautious, "to avoid extremes": he must be conventional, never +"singular"; there was constant reference to "Wit," "Nature," and "The +Muse," and these were convertible terms. A single instance is luminous. +We have the positive authority of Warburton for saying that Pope +regarded as the finest effort of his skill and art as a poet the +insertion of the machinery of the Sylphs into the revised edition of +_The Rape of the Lock_ (1714). Now this insertion was ingenious, +brilliant, and in strict accordance with the practice of Vida and of +Boileau, both of whom it excelled. But the whole conception of it was as +unlike that of Romanticism as possible. + +In particular, the tendency of the classic school, in its later +development, had been towards the exclusion of all but didactic and +ethical considerations from treatment in verse. Pope had given great and +ever-increasing emphasis to the importance of making "morals" prominent +in poetry. All that he wrote after he retired to Twickenham, still a +young man, in 1718, was essentially an attempt to gather together "moral +wisdom" clothed in consummate language. He inculcated a moderation of +feeling, a broad and general study of mankind, an acceptance of the +benefits of civilisation, and a suppression of individuality. Even in so +violent and so personal a work as the _Dunciad_ he expends all the +resources of his genius to make his anger seem moral and his indignation +a public duty. This conception of the ethical responsibility of verse +was universal, and even so late as 1745, long after the composition of +Warton's "Enthusiast," we find Blacklock declaring, with general +acceptance, that "poetical genius depends entirely on the quickness of +moral feeling," and that not to "feel poetry" was the result of having +"the affections and internal senses depraved by vice." + +The most important innovation suggested by Joseph Warton was an +outspoken assertion that this was by no means the object or the proper +theme of poetry. His verses and those of his brother, the _Essay on +Pope_ of the elder, the critical and historical writings of the younger, +may be searched in vain for the slightest evidence of moral or didactic +sentiment. The instructive and ethical mannerisms of the later +classicists had produced some beautiful and more accomplished verse, +especially of a descriptive order, but its very essence had excluded +self-revelation. Dennis, at whom Pope taught the world to laugh, but +who was in several respects a better critic than either Addison or +himself, had come close to the truth sometimes, but was for ever edged +away from it by the intrusion of the moral consideration. Dennis feels +things æsthetically, but he blunders into ethical definition. The result +was that the range of poetry was narrowed to the sphere of didactic +reflection, a blunt description of scenery or objects being the only +relief, since + + "who could take offence + While pure description held the place of sense?" + +To have perceived the bankruptcy of the didactic poem is Joseph Warton's +most remarkable innovation. The lawlessness of the Romantic Movement, or +rather its instinct for insisting that genius is a law unto itself, is +first foreshadowed in "The Enthusiast," and when the history of the +school comes to be written there will be a piquancy in tracing an +antinomianism down from the blameless Wartons to the hedonist essays of, +Oscar Wilde and the frenzied anarchism of the Futurists. Not less +remarkable, or less characteristic, was the revolt against the quietism +of the classical school. "Avoid extremes," Pope had said, and +moderation, calmness, discretion, absence of excitement had been laid +down as capital injunctions. Joseph Warton's very title, "The +Enthusiast," was a challenge, for "enthusiasm" was a term of reproach. +He was himself a scandal to classical reserve. Mant, in the course of +some excellent lines addressed to Joseph Warton, remarks + + "Thou didst seek + Ecstatic vision by the haunted stream + Or grove of fairy: then thy nightly ear, + As from the wild notes of some airy harp, + Thrilled with strange music." + +The same excess of sensibility is still more clearly divulged in +Joseph's own earliest verses:-- + + "All beauteous Nature! by thy boundless charms + Oppress'd, O where shall I begin thy praise, + Where turn the ecstatic eye, _how ease my breast + That pants with wild astonishment and love_?" + +The Nature here addressed is a very different thing from the "Nature +methodis'd" of the _Essay on Criticism_. It is not to be distinguished +from the object of pantheistic worship long afterwards to be celebrated +in widely differing language, but with identical devotion, by Wordsworth +and Senancour, by Chateaubriand and Shelley. + +Closely connected with this attitude towards physical nature is the +determination to deepen the human interest in poetry, to concentrate +individuality in passion. At the moment when the Wartons put forth their +ideas, a change was taking place in English poetry, but not in the +direction of earnest emotion. The instrument of verse had reached an +extraordinary smoothness, and no instance of its capability could be +more interesting than the poetry of Shenstone, with his perfect +utterance of things essentially not worth saying. In the most important +writers of that very exhausted moment, technical skill seems the only +quality calling for remark, and when we have said all that sympathy can +say for Whitehead and Akenside, the truth remains that the one is vapid, +the other empty. The Wartons saw that more liberty of imagination was +wanted, and that the Muse was not born to skim the meadows, in short low +flights, like a wagtail. They used expressions which reveal their +ambition. The poet was to be "bold, without confine," and "imagination's +chartered libertine"; like a sort of Alastor, he was + + "in venturous bark to ride + Down turbulent Delight's tempestuous tide." + +These are aspirations somewhat absurdly expressed, but the aim of them +is undeniable and noteworthy. + +A passion for solitude always precedes the romantic obsession, and in +examining the claim of the Wartons to be pioneers, we naturally look for +this element. We find it abundantly in their early verses. When Thomas +was only seventeen--the precocity of the brothers was remarkable--he +wrote a "Pleasures of Melancholy," in which he expresses his wish to +retire to "solemn glooms, congenial to the soul." In the early odes of +his brother Joseph we find still more clearly indicated the intention to +withdraw from the world, in order to indulge the susceptibilities of the +spirit in solitary reflection. A curious air of foreshadowing the +theories of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an +effect which is faintly indicated, but in its phantom way unique in +English literature up to that date, 1740. There had been a tendency to +the sepulchral in the work of several writers, in particular in the +powerful and preposterous religious verse of Isaac Watts, but nothing +had been suggested in the pure Romantic style. + +In Joseph Warton, first, we meet with the individualist attitude to +nature; a slightly hysterical exaggeration of feeling which was to be +characteristic of romance; an intention of escaping from the vanity of +mankind by an adventure into the wilds; a purpose of recovering +primitive manners by withdrawing into primitive conditions; a passion +for what we now consider the drawing-master's theory of the +picturesque--the thatched cottage, the ruined castle with the moon +behind it, the unfettered rivulet, the wilderness of + + "the pine-topped precipice + Abrupt and shaggy." + +There was already the fallacy, to become so irresistibly attractive to +the next generation, that man in a state of civilisation was in a +decayed and fallen condition, and that to achieve happiness he must +wander back into a Golden Age. Pope, in verses which had profoundly +impressed two generations, had taken the opposite view, and had proved +to the satisfaction of theologian and free-thinker alike that + + "God and Nature link'd the general frame, + And bade Self-love and Social be the same." + +Joseph Warton would have nothing to say to Social Love. He designed, or +pretended to design, to emigrate to the backwoods of America, to live + + "With simple Indian swains, that I may hunt + The boar and tiger through savannahs wild, + Through fragrant deserts and through citron groves," + +indulging, without the slightest admixture of any active moral principle +in social life, all the ecstasies, all the ravishing emotions, of an +abandonment to excessive sensibility. The soul was to be, no longer the +"little bark attendant" that "pursues the triumph and partakes the gale" +in Pope's complacent _Fourth Epistle_, but an æolian harp hung in some +cave of a primeval forest for the winds to rave across in solitude. + + "Happy the first of men, ere yet confin'd + To smoky cities." + +Already the voice is that of Obermann, of René, of Byron. + +Another point in which the recommendations of the Wartons far outran the +mediocrity of their execution was their theory of description. To +comprehend the state of mind in which such pieces of stately verse as +Parnell's _Hermit_ or Addison's _Campaign_ could be regarded as +satisfactory in the setting of their descriptive ornament we must +realise the aim which those poets put before them. Nothing was to be +mentioned by its technical--or even by its exact name; no clear picture +was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite +or vivid. We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this +conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if +we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the +sudden advent of a heavy shower at a funeral in these terms-- + + "'Tis done, and nature's various charms decay; + See gloomy clouds obscure the cheerful day! + Now hung with pearls the dropping trees appear, + Their faded honours scatter'd on her bier," + +it was not because he had not the skill to come into closer touch with +reality, but that he did not wish to do so. It had been plainly laid +down by Malherbe and confirmed by Boileau that objects should be named +in general, not in precise terms. We are really, in studying the +descriptive parts of the Classicist poets, very close to the theories of +Mallarmé and the Symbolists which occupied us twenty years ago. The +object of the poet was not to present a vivid picture to the reader, but +to start in him a state of mind. + +We must recollect, in considering what may seem to us the sterility and +stiffness of the English poets from 1660 to 1740, that they were +addressing a public which, after the irregular violence and anarchical +fancy of the middle of the seventeenth century, had begun to yearn for +regularity, common sense, and a moderation in relative variety. The +simplest ideas should be chosen, and should depend for their poetical +effect, not upon a redundant and gorgeous ornament, but solely upon +elegance of language. There were certain references, certain channels of +imagery, which were purely symbolical, and these could be defended only +on the understanding that they produced on the mind of the reader, +instantly and without effort, the illustrative effect required. For +instance, with all these neo-classicists, the mythological allusions, +which seem vapid and ridiculous to us, were simplified metaphor and a +question of style. In short, it rested the jaded imagination of Europe, +after Gongora and Marini, Donne and D'Aubigné, to sink back on a poetry +which had taken a vow to remain scrupulous, elegant, and selected. + +But the imagination of England was now beginning to be impatient of +these bonds. It was getting tired of a rest-cure so prolonged. It asked +for more colour, more exuberance, more precise reproduction of visual +impressions. Thomson had summed up and had carried to greater lengths +the instinct for scenery which had never entirely died out in England, +except for a few years after the Restoration. It was left to Joseph +Warton, however, to rebel against the whole mode in which the cabbage of +landscape was shredded into the classical _pot-au-feu_. He proposes +that, in place of the mention of "Idalia's groves," when Windsor Forest +is intended, and of milk-white bulls sacrificed to Phoebus at +Twickenham, the poets should boldly mention in their verses English +"places remarkably romantic, the supposed habitation of druids, bards, +and wizards," and he vigorously recommends Theocritus as a model far +superior to Pope because of the greater exactitude of his references to +objects, and because of his more realistic appeal to the imagination. +Description, Warton says, should be uncommon, exact, not symbolic and +allusive, but referring to objects clearly, by their real names. He very +pertinently points out that Pope, in a set piece of extraordinary +cleverness--which was to be read, more than half a century later, even +by Wordsworth, with pleasure--confines himself to rural beauty in +general, and declines to call up before us the peculiar beauties which +characterise the Forest of Windsor. + +A specimen of Joseph Warton's descriptive poetry may here be given, not +for its great inherent excellence, but because it shows his resistance +to the obstinate classic mannerism:-- + + "Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell, + To thy unknown sequestered cell, + Where woodbines cluster round the door, + Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor, + And on whose top an hawthorn blows, + Amid whose thickly-woven boughs + Some nightingale still builds her nest, + Each evening warbling thee to rest; + Then lay me by the haunted stream, + Rapt in some wild poetic dream, + In converse while methinks I rove + With Spenser through a fairy grove." + +To show how identical were the methods of the two brothers we may +compare the foregoing lines with the following from Thomas Warton's "Ode +on the Approach of Summer" (published when he was twenty-five, and +possibly written much earlier):-- + + "His wattled cotes the shepherd plaits; + Beneath her elm the milkmaid chats; + The woodman, speeding home, awhile + Rests him at a shady stile; + Nor wants there fragrance to dispense + Refreshment o'er my soothèd sense; + Nor tangled woodbine's balmy bloom, + Nor grass besprent to breathe perfume, + Nor lurking wild-thyme's spicy sweet + To bathe in dew my roving feet; + Nor wants there note of Philomel, + Nor sound of distant-tinkling bell, + Nor lowings faint of herds remote, + Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot; + Rustle the breezes lightly borne + O'er deep embattled ears of corn; + Round ancient elms, with humming noise, + Full loud the chafer-swarms rejoice." + +The youthful poet is in full revolt against the law which forbade his +elders to mention objects by their plain names. Here we notice at once, +as we do in similar early effusions of both the Wartons, the direct +influence of Milton's lyrics. To examine the effect of the rediscovery +of Milton upon the poets of the middle of the eighteenth century would +lead us too far from the special subject of our inquiry to-day. But it +must be pointed out that _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ had been +entirely neglected, and practically unknown, until a date long after the +rehabilitation of _Paradise Lost_. The date at which Handel set them to +music, 1740, is that of the revived or discovered popularity of these +two odes, which then began to be fashionable, at all events among the +younger poets. They formed a bridge, which linked the new writers with +the early seventeenth century across the Augustan Age, and their +versification as well as their method of description were as much +resisted by the traditional Classicists as they were attractive, and +directly preferred above those of Pope, by the innovators. Joseph +Warton, who attributed many of the faults of modern lyrical writing to +the example of Petrarch, sets Milton vehemently over against him, and +entreats the poets "to accustom themselves to contemplate fully every +object before they attempt to describe it." They were above all to avoid +nauseous repetition of commonplaces, and what Warton excellently calls +"hereditary images." + +We must not, however, confine ourselves to a consideration of "The +Enthusiast" of 1740 and the preface to the _Odes_ of 1746. Certain of +the expressions, indeed, already quoted, are taken from the two very +important critical works which the brothers published while they were +still quite young. We must now turn particularly to Joseph Warton's +_Essay on the Genius of Pope_ of 1756, and to Thomas Warton's +_Observations on the Faerie Queene_ of 1754. Of these the former is the +more important and the more readable. Joseph's _Essay on Pope_ is an +extraordinary production for the time at which it was produced. Let me +suggest that we make a great mistake in treating the works of old +writers as if they had been always written by old men. I am trying to +present the Wartons to you as I see them, and that is as enthusiastic +youths, flushed with a kind of intellectual felicity, and dreaming how +poetry shall be produced as musicians make airs, by inspiration, not by +rote. Remember that when they took their walks in the forest at +Hackwood, the whole world of culture held that true genius had expired +with Pope, and this view was oracularly supported by Warburton and +such-like pundits. I have already pointed out to you that Pope was +divided from them not more than Swinburne is divided from us. Conceive +two very young men to-day putting their heads together to devise a +scheme of poetry which should entirely supersede that, not of Swinburne +only, but of Tennyson and Browning also, and you have the original +attitude of the Wartons. + +It is difficult for us to realise what was the nature of the spell which +Pope threw over the literary conscience of the eighteenth century. Forty +years after the revolt of the Wartons, Pope was still looked upon by the +average critic as "the most distinguished and the most interesting Poet +of the nation." Joseph Warton was styled "the Winton Pedant" for +suggesting that Pope paid too dearly for his lucidity and lightness, and +for desiring to break up with odes and sonnets the oratorical mould +which gave a monotony of form to early eighteenth-century verse. His +_Essay on Pope_, though written with such studied moderation that we +may, in a hasty reading, regard it almost as a eulogy, was so shocking +to the prejudices of the hour that it was received with universal +disfavour, and twenty-six years passed before the author had the moral +courage to pursue it to a conclusion. He dedicated it to Young, who, +alone of the Augustans, had admitted that charm in a melancholy +solitude, that beauty of funereal and mysterious effects, which was to +be one of the leading characteristics of the Romantic School, and who +dimly perceived the sublime and the pathetic to be "the two chief nerves +of all genuine poetry." + +Warton's _Essay on the Genius of Pope_ is not well arranged, and, in +spite of eloquent passages, as literature it does not offer much +attraction to the reader of the present day. But its thesis is one which +is very interesting to us, and was of startling novelty when it was +advanced. In the author's own words it was to prove that "a clear head +and acute understanding are not sufficient, alone, to make a poet." The +custom of critics had been to say that, when supported by a profound +moral sense, they were sufficient, and Pope was pointed to as the +overwhelming exemplar of the truth of this statement. Pope had taken +this position himself and, as life advanced, the well of pure poetry in +him had dried up more and more completely, until it had turned into a +sort of fountain of bright, dry sand, of which the _Epilogue to the +Satires_, written in 1738, when Joseph Warton was sixteen years of age, +may be taken as the extreme instance. The young author of the _Essay_ +made the earliest attempt which any one made to put Pope in his right +place, that is to say, not to deny him genius or to deprecate the +extreme pleasure readers found in his writings, but to insist that, by +the very nature of his gifts, his was genius of a lower rank than that +of the supreme poets, with whom he was commonly paralleled when he was +not preferred to them all. + +Warton admitted but three supreme English poets--Spenser, Shakespeare, +Milton--and he vehemently insisted that moral, didactic and panegyrical +poetry could never rise above the second class in importance. To assert +this was not merely to offend against the undoubted supremacy of Pope, +but it was to flout the claims of all those others to whom the age gave +allegiance. Joseph Warton does not shrink from doing this, and he gives +reason for abating the claims of all the classic favourites--Cowley, +Waller, Dryden, Addison. When it was advanced against him that he showed +arrogance in placing his opinion against that of a multitude of highly +trained judges, he replied that a real "relish and enjoyment of poetry" +is a rare quality, and "a creative and glowing imagination" possessed by +few. When the _dicta_ of Boileau were quoted against him, he repudiated +their authority with scarcely less vivacity than Keats was to display +half a century later. + +Joseph Warton's _Essay_ wanders about, and we may acknowledge ourselves +more interested in the mental attitude which it displays than in the +detail of its criticism. The author insists, with much force, on the +value of a grandiose melancholy and a romantic horror in creating a +poetical impression, and he allows himself to deplore that Pope was so +ready to forget that "wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but +nature and passion are eternal." We need not then be surprised when +Joseph Warton boldly protests that no other part of the writings of Pope +approaches _Eloisa to Abelard_ in the quality of being "truly poetical." +He was perhaps led to some indulgence by the fact that this is the one +composition in which Pope appears to be indebted to Milton's lyrics, but +there was much more than that. So far as I am aware, _Eloisa to Abelard_ +had never taken a high place with Pope's extreme admirers, doubtless +because of its obsession with horror and passion. But when we read how + + "o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, + Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves, + Black melancholy sits, and round her throws + A death-like silence and a dead repose," + +and still more when we reflect on the perpetual and powerful appeals +which the poem makes to emotion unbridled by moral scruple, we have no +difficulty in perceiving why _Eloisa to Abelard_ exercised so powerful +an attraction on Joseph Warton. The absence of ethical reservation, the +licence, in short, was highly attractive to him, and he rejoiced in +finding Pope, even so slightly, even so briefly, faithless to his +formula. It is worth while to note that Joseph Warton's sympathy with +the sentimental malady of the soul which lies at the core of Romanticism +permitted him to be, perhaps, the first man since the Renaissance who +recognised with pleasure the tumult of the _Atys_ of Catullus and the +febrile sensibility of Sappho. + +Both brothers urged that more liberty of imagination was what English +poetry needed; that the lark had been shut up long enough in a gilded +cage. We have a glimpse of Thomas Warton introducing the study of the +great Italian classics into Oxford at a very early age, and we see him +crowned with laurel in the common-room of Trinity College at the age of +nineteen. This was in the year before the death of Thomson. No doubt he +was already preparing his _Observations on the Faerie Queene_, which +came out a little later. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford before he +was thirty. Both the brothers took great pleasure in the study of +Spenser, and they both desired that the supernatural "machinery" of +Ariosto, in common with the romance of _The Faerie Queene_, should be +combined with a description of nature as untrimmed and unshackled as +possible. Thomas Warton, in his remarkable Oxford poem, "The Painted +Window," describes himself as + + "A faithless truant to the classic page, + Long have I loved to catch the simple chime + Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rhyme," + +and again he says:-- + + "I soothed my sorrows with the dulcet lore + Which Fancy fabled in her elfin age," + +that is to say when Spenser was writing "upon Mulla's shore." + +After all this, the Observations on the Faerie Queene of 1754 is rather +disappointing. Thomas was probably much more learned as a historian of +literature than Joseph, but he is not so interesting a critic. Still, he +followed exactly the same lines, with the addition of a wider knowledge. +His reading is seen to be already immense, but he is tempted to make too +tiresome a display of it. Nevertheless, he is as thorough as his brother +in his insistence upon qualities which we have now learned to call +Romantic, and he praises all sorts of old books which no one then spoke +of with respect. He warmly recommends the _Morte d'Arthur_, which had +probably not found a single admirer since 1634. When he mentions Ben +Jonson, it is characteristic that it is to quote the line about "the +charmed boats and the enchanted wharves," which sounds like a foretaste +of Keats's "magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas." The +public of Warton's day had relegated all tales about knights, dragons, +and enchanters to the nursery, and Thomas Warton shows courage in +insisting that they are excellent subjects for serious and adult +literature. He certainly would have thoroughly enjoyed the romances of +Mrs. Radcliffe, whom a later generation was to welcome as "the mighty +magician bred and nourished by the Muses in their sacred solitary +caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition," and he despised +the neo-classic make-believe of grottoes. He says, with firmness, that +epic poetry--and he is thinking of Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser--would +never have been written if the critical judgments current in 1754 had +been in vogue. + +Thomas Warton closely studied the influence of Ariosto on Spenser, and +no other part of the _Observations_ is so valuable as the pages in which +those two poets are contrasted. He remarked the polish of the former +poet with approval, and he did not shrink from what is violently +fantastic in the plot of the _Orlando Furioso_. On that point he says, +"The present age is too fond of manner'd poetry to relish fiction and +fable," but perhaps he did not observe that although there is no +chivalry in _The Schoolmistress_, that accomplished piece was the +indirect outcome of the Italian mock-heroic epics. The Classicists had +fought for lucidity and common sense, whereas to be tenebrous and vague +was a merit with the precursors of Romanticism, or at least, without +unfairness, we may say that they asserted the power of imagination to +make what was mysterious, and even fabulous, true to the fancy. This +tendency, which we first perceive in the Wartons, rapidly developed, and +it led to the blind enthusiasm with which the vapourings of Macpherson +were presently received. The earliest specimens of _Ossian_ were +revealed to a too-credulous public in 1760, but I find no evidence of +any welcome which they received from either Joseph or Thomas. The +brothers personally preferred a livelier and more dramatic presentation, +and when Dr. Johnson laughed at Collins because "he loved fairies, +genii, giants, and monsters," the laugh was really at the expense of his +school-fellow Joseph Warton, to whom Collins seems to have owed his +boyish inspiration, although he was by a few months the senior. + +Johnson was a resolute opponent of the principles of the Wartons, though +he held Thomas, at least, in great personal regard. He objected to the +brothers that they "affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of +revival," and his boutade about their own poetry is well known:-- + + "Phrase that time hath flung away, + Uncouth words in disarray, + Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, + Ode and elegy and sonnet." + +This conservatism was not peculiar to Johnson; there was a general +tendency to resist the reintroduction into language and literature of +words and forms which had been allowed to disappear. A generation later, +a careful and thoughtful grammarian like Gilpin was in danger of being +dismissed as "a cockscomb" because he tried to enlarge our national +vocabulary. The Wartons were accused of searching old libraries for +glossaries of disused terms in order to display them in their own +writings. This was not quite an idle charge; it is to be noted as one of +the symptoms of active Romanticism that it is always dissatisfied with +the diction commonly in use, and desires to dazzle and mystify by +embroidering its texture with archaic and far-fetched words. Chatterton, +who was not yet born when the Wartons formed and expressed their ideas, +was to carry this instinct to a preposterous extreme in his Rowley +forgeries, where he tries to obtain a mediæval colouring by transferring +words out of an imperfect Anglo-Saxon lexicon, often without discerning +the actual meaning of those words. + +Both the Wartons continued, in successive disquisitions, to repeat their +definition of poetry, but it cannot be said that either of them +advanced. So far as Joseph is concerned, he seems early to have +succumbed to the pressure of the age and of his surroundings. In 1766 he +became head master of Winchester, and settled down after curious +escapades which had nothing poetical about them. In the head master of a +great public school, reiterated murmurs against bondage to the Classical +Greeks and Romans would have been unbecoming, and Joseph Warton was a +man of the world. Perhaps in the solitude of his study he murmured, as +disenchanted enthusiasts often murmur, "Say, are the days of blest +delusion fled?" Yet traces of the old fire were occasionally manifest; +still each brother woke up at intervals to censure the criticism of +those who did not see that imagination must be paramount in poetry, and +who made the mistake of putting "discernment" in the place of +"enthusiasm." I hardly know why it gives me great pleasure to learn that +"the manner in which the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton read the Communion +Service was remarkably awful," but it must be as an evidence that he +carried a "Gothick" manner into daily life. + +The spirit of pedantry, so amicably mocked by the Wartons, took its +revenge upon Thomas in the form of a barren demon named Joseph Ritson, +who addressed to him in 1782 what he aptly called _A Familiar Letter_. +There is hardly a more ferocious pamphlet in the whole history of +literature. Ritson, who had the virulence of a hornet and the same +insect's inability to produce honey of his own, was considered by the +reactionaries to have "punched Tom Warton's historick body full of +deadly holes." But his strictures were not really important. In +marshalling some thousands of facts, Warton had made perhaps a couple of +dozen mistakes, and Ritson advances these with a reiteration and a +violence worthy of a maniac. Moreover, and this is the fate of angry +pedants, he himself is often found to be as dustily incorrect as Warton +when examined by modern lights. Ritson, who accuses Warton of "never +having consulted or even seen" the books he quotes from, and of +intentionally swindling the public, was in private life a vegetarian who +is said to have turned his orphan nephew on to the streets because he +caught him eating a mutton-chop. Ritson flung his arrows far and wide, +for he called Dr. Samuel Johnson himself "that great luminary, or rather +dark lantern of literature." + +If we turn over Ritson's distasteful pages, it is only to obtain from +them further proof of the perception of Warton's Romanticism by an +adversary whom hatred made perspicacious. Ritson abuses the _History of +English Poetry_ for presuming to have "rescued from oblivion irregular +beauties" of which no one desired to be reminded. He charges Warton with +recommending the poetry of "our Pagan fathers" because it is untouched +by Christianity, and of saying that "religion and poetry are +incompatible." He accuses him of "constantly busying himself with +passages which he does not understand, because they appeal to his ear +or his fancy." "Old poetry," Ritson says to Warton, "is the same thing +to you, sense or nonsense." He dwells on Warton's marked attraction to +whatever is prodigious and impossible. The manner in which these +accusations are made is insolent and detestable; but Ritson had +penetration, and without knowing what he reached, in some of these +diatribes he pierced to the heart of the Romanticist fallacy. + +It is needful that I should bring these observations to a close. I hope +I have made good my claim that it was the Wartons who introduced into +the discussion of English poetry the principle of Romanticism. To use a +metaphor of which both of them would have approved, that principle was +to them like the mystical bowl of ichor, the _ampolla_, which Astolpho +was expected to bring down from heaven in the _Orlando Furioso_. If I +have given you an exaggerated idea of the extent to which they foresaw +the momentous change in English literature, I am to blame. No doubt by +extracting a great number of slight and minute remarks, and by putting +them together, the critic may produce an effect which is too emphatic. +But you will be on your guard against such misdirection. It is enough +for me if you will admit the priority of the intuition of the brothers, +and I do not think that it can be contested. + +Thomas Warton said, "I have rejected the ideas of men who are the most +distinguished ornaments" of the history of English poetry, and he +appealed against a "mechanical" attitude towards the art of poetry. The +brothers did more in rebelling against the Classic formulas than in +starting new poetic methods. There was an absence in them of "the pomps +and prodigality" of genius of which Gray spoke in a noble stanza. They +began with enthusiasm, but they had no native richness of expression, no +store of energy. It needed a nature as unfettered as Blake's, as wide +as Wordsworth's, as opulent as Keats's, to push the Romantic attack on +to victory. The instinct for ecstasy, ravishment, the caprices and +vagaries of emotion, was there; there was present in both brothers, +while they were still young, an extreme sensibility. The instinct was +present in them, but the sacred fire died out in the vacuum of their +social experience, and neither Warton had the energy to build up a style +in prose or verse. They struggled for a little while, and then they +succumbed to the worn verbiage of their age, from which it is sometimes +no light task to disengage their thought. In their later days they made +some sad defections, and I can never forgive Thomas Warton for arriving +at Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_ and failing to observe its beauties. We +are told that as Camden Professor he "suffered the rostrum to grow +cold," and he was an ineffective poet laureate. His brother Joseph felt +the necessity or the craving for lyrical expression, without attaining +more than a muffled and a second-rate effect. + +All this has to be sadly admitted. But the fact remains that between +1740 and 1750, while even the voice of Rousseau had not begun to make +itself heard in Europe, the Wartons had discovered the fallacy of the +poetic theories admitted in their day, and had formed some faint +conception of a mode of escape from them. The Abbé Du Bos had laid down +in his celebrated _Réflexions_ (1719) that the poet's art consists of +making a general moral representation of incidents and scenes, and +embellishing it with elegant images. This had been accepted and acted +upon by Pope and by all his followers. To have been the first to +perceive the inadequacy and the falsity of a law which excluded all +imagination, all enthusiasm, and all mystery, is to demand respectful +attention from the historian of Romanticism, and this attention is due +to Joseph and Thomas Warton. + +[Footnote 4: Delivered, as the Warton Lecture, before the British +Academy, October 27th, 1915.] + + + + +THE CHARM OF STERNE[5] + + +It is exactly two hundred years to-night since there was born, at +Clonmel, in Ireland, a son to a subaltern in an English regiment just +home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, +"was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with +many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world +with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of +perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, +daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been +the widow of a soldier before she married Roger Sterne. In the +extraordinary fashion of the army of those days, the regiment was +hurried from place to place--as was that of the father of the infant +Borrow a century later--and with it hastened the unhappy Mrs. Sterne, +for ever bearing and for ever losing children, "most rueful journeys," +marked by a long succession of little tombstones left behind. Finally, +at Gibraltar, the weary father, pugnacious to the last, picked a quarrel +about a goose and was pinked through the body, surviving in a thoroughly +damaged condition, to die, poor exhausted pilgrim of Bellona, in +barracks in Jamaica. + +It would be difficult to imagine a childhood better calculated than this +to encourage pathos in a humorist and fun in a sentimentalist. His +account, in his brief autobiography, of the appearance and +disappearance of his hapless brothers and sisters is a proof of how +early life appealed to Laurence Sterne in the dappled colours of an +April day. We read there of how at Wicklow "we lost poor Joram, a pretty +boy"; how "Anne, that pretty blossom, fell in the barracks of Dublin"; +how little Devijehar was "left behind" in Carrickfergus. We know not +whether to sob or to giggle, so tragic is the rapid catalogue of dying +babies, so ridiculous are their names and fates. Here, then, I think, we +have revealed to us the prime characteristic of Sterne, from which all +his other characteristics branch away, for evil or for good. As no other +writer since Shakespeare, and in a different and perhaps more intimate +way than even Shakespeare, he possessed the key of those tears that +succeed the hysteria of laughter, and of that laughter which succeeds +the passion of tears. From early childhood, and all through youth and +manhood, he had been collecting observations upon human nature in these +rapidly alternating moods. + +He observed it in its frailty, but being exquisitely frail himself, he +was no satirist. A breath of real satire would blow down the whole +delicate fabric of _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_. +Sterne pokes fun at people and things; he banters the extravagance of +private humour; but it is always with a consciousness that he is himself +more extravagant than any one. If we compare him for a moment with +Richardson, who buttonholes the reader in a sermon; or with Smollett, +who snarls and bites like an angry beast; we feel at once that Sterne +could not breathe in the stuffiness of the one or in the tempest of the +other. Sympathy is the breath of his nostrils, and he cannot exist +except in a tender, merry relation with his readers. His own ideal, +surely, is that which he attributed to the fantastic and gentle Yorick, +who never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of old and +young. "Labour stood still as he passed; the bucket hung suspended in +the middle of the well; the spinning-wheel forgot its round, even +chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got +out of sight." Like Yorick, Sterne loved a jest in his heart. + +There are, it seems to me, two distinct strains in the intellectual +development of Sterne, and I should like to dwell upon them for a +moment, because I think a lack of recognition of them has been apt to +darken critical counsel in the consideration of his writings. You will +remember that he was forty-six years of age before he took up the +business of literature seriously. Until that time he had been a country +parson in Yorkshire, carrying his body, that "cadaverous bale of goods," +from Sutton to Stillington, and from Stillington to Skelton. He had +spent his life in riding, shooting, preaching, joking, and philandering +in company, and after a fashion, most truly reprehensible from a +clerical point of view, yet admirably fitted to prepare such an artist +for his destined labours as a painter of the oddities of average +Englishmen. But by the side of this indolent search after the enjoyment +of the hour, Sterne cultivated a formidable species of literature in +which he had so few competitors that, in after years, his indolence +prompted him to plagiarise freely from sources which, surely, no human +being would discover. He steeped himself in the cumbrous learning of +those writers of the Renaissance in whom congested Latin is found +tottering into colloquial French. He studied Rabelais perhaps more +deeply than any other Englishman of his time, and certainly Beroalde de +Verville, Bruscambille, and other absurdities of the sixteenth century +were familiar to him and to him alone in England. + +Hence, when Sterne began to write, there were two streams flowing in his +brain, and these were, like everything else about him, inconsistent with +one another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with +the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the +annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and +there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained +readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is +the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the +real merits of Sterne. When so acute a writer as Bagehot condemns much +of _Tristram Shandy_ as "a sort of antediluvian fun, in which uncouth +saurian jokes play idly in an unintelligible world," he hits the nail on +the head of why so many readers nowadays turn with impatience from that +work. But they should persevere, for Sterne himself saw his error, and +gradually dropped the "uncouth saurian jokes" which he had filched out +of Burton and Beroalde, relying more and more exclusively on his own +rich store of observations taken directly from human nature. In the +adorable seventh volume of _Tristram_, and in _The Sentimental Journey_, +there is nothing left of Rabelais except a certain rambling artifice of +style. + +The death of Sterne, at the age of fifty-four, is one of those events +which must be continually regretted, because to the very end of his life +he was growing in ease and ripeness, was discovering more perfect modes +of self-expression, and was purging himself of his compromising +intellectual frailties. It is true that from the very first his +excellences were patent. The portrait of my Uncle Toby, which Hazlitt +truly said is "one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature," +occurs, or rather begins, in the second volume of _Tristram Shandy_. But +the marvellous portraits which the early sections of that work contain +are to some extent obscured, or diluted, by the author's determination +to gain piquancy by applying old methods to new subjects. Frankly, much +as I love Sterne, I find Kunastrockius and Lithopaedus a bore. I suspect +they have driven more than one modern reader away from the enjoyment of +_Tristram Shandy_. + +Towards the end of the eighteenth century a leading Dissenting minister, +the Rev. Joseph Fawcett, said in answer to a question: "Do I _like_ +Sterne? Yes, to be sure I should deserve to be hanged if I didn't!" That +was the attitude of thoughtful and scrupulous people of cultivation more +than one hundred years ago. But it was their attitude only on some +occasions. There is no record of the fact, but I am ready to believe +that Mr. Fawcett may, with equal sincerity, have said that Sterne was a +godless wretch. We know that Bishop Warburton presented him with a purse +of gold, in rapturous appreciation of his talents, and then in a +different mood described him as "an irrevocable scoundrel." No one else +has ever flourished in literature who has combined such alternating +powers of attraction and repulsion. We like Sterne extremely at one +moment, and we dislike him no less violently at another. He is attar of +roses to-day and asafÅ“tida to-morrow, and it is not by any means easy +to define the elements which draw us towards him and away from him. Like +Yorick, he had "a wild way of talking," and he wrote impetuously and +impudently "in the naked temper which a merry heart discovered." As he +"seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without +much ceremony, he had but too many temptations in life of scattering his +wit and his humour, his gibes and his jests, about him." + +So that even if he had been merely Yorick, Sterne would have had +manifold opportunities of giving offence and causing scandal. But lie +was not only a humorist with "a thousand little sceptical notions to +defend," but he was a sentimentalist as well. Those two characteristics +he was constantly mingling, or trying to mingle, since sentimentality +and humour are in reality like oil and wine. He would exasperate his +readers by throwing his wig in their faces at the moment when they were +weeping, or put them out of countenance by ending a farcical story on a +melancholy note. A great majority of Englishmen like to be quite sure of +the tone of what they read; they wish an author to be straightforward; +they dread irony and they loathe impishness. Now Sterne is the most +impish of all imaginative writers. He is what our grandmothers, in +describing the vagaries of the nursery, used to call "a limb of Satan." +Tristram Shandy, in his light-hearted way, declared that "there's not so +much difference between good and evil as the world is apt to imagine." +No doubt that is so, but the world does not like its preachers to play +fast and loose with moral definitions. + +The famous sensibility of Sterne was a reaction against the seriousness, +the ponderosity, of previous prose literature in England. We talk of the +heaviness of the eighteenth century, but the periods of even such +masters of solid rhetoric as Johnson and Gibbon are light as thistledown +in comparison with the academic prose of the seventeenth century. Before +the eighteenth century is called lumbering, let us set a page of Hume +against a page of Hobbes, or a passage out of Berkeley by a passage out +of Selden. Common justice is seldom done to the steady clarification of +English prose between 1660 and 1750, but it was kept within formal lines +until the sensitive recklessness of Sterne broke up the mould, and gave +it the flying forms of a cloud or a wave. He owed this beautiful +inspiration to what Nietzsche calls his "squirrel-soul," which leaped +from bough to bough, and responded without a trace of conventional +restraint to every gust of emotion. Well might Goethe be inspired to +declare that Sterne was the most emancipated spirit of his century. + +His very emancipation gives us the reason why Sterne's admirers nowadays +are often divided in their allegiance to him. A frequent part of his +humour deals very flippantly with subjects that are what we have been +taught to consider indelicate or objectionable. It is worse than useless +to try to explain this foible of his away, because he was aware of it +and did it on purpose. He said that "nothing but the more gross and +carnal parts of a composition will go down." His indecency was objected +to in his own age, but not with any excluding severity. And I would like +to call your attention to the curious conventionality of our views on +this subject. Human nature does not change, but it changes its modes of +expression. In the eighteenth century very grave people, even bishops, +allowed themselves, in their relaxed moments, great licence in jesting. +Yet they would have been scandalised by the tragic treatment of sex by +our more audacious novelists of to-day. We are still interested in these +matters, but we have agreed not to joke about them. I read the other day +a dictum of one of those young gentlemen who act as our moral policemen: +he prophesied that a jest on a sexual subject would, in twenty years, be +not merely reprehensible, as it is now, but unintelligible. Very proper, +no doubt, only do not let us call this morality, it is only a change of +habits. + +Sterne is not suited to readers who are disheartened at irrelevancy. It +is part of his charm, and it is at the same time his most whimsical +habit, never to proceed with his story when you expect him to do so, and +to be reminded by his own divagations of delightful side-issues which +lead you, entranced, whither you had no intention of going. He did not +merely not shun occasions of being irrelevant, but he sought them out +and eagerly cultivated them. Remember that a whole chapter of _Tristram_ +is devoted to the _attitude_ of Corporal Trim as he prepared himself to +read the Sermon. Sterne kept a stable of prancing, plump little +hobby-horses, and he trotted them out upon every occasion. But this is +what makes his books the best conversational writing in the English +language. He writes for all the world exactly as though he were talking +at his ease, and we listen enchanted to the careless, frolicking, idle, +penetrating speaker who builds up for us so nonchalantly, with +persistent but unobtrusive touch upon touch, the immortal figures of Mr. +Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Yorick, the Widow Wadman, and so many more. + +This, I am inclined to think, in drawing this brief sketch to an end, is +Sterne's main interest for ourselves. He broke up the rhetorical manner +of composition, or, rather, he produced an alternative manner which was +gradually accepted and is in partial favour still. I would ask you to +read for yourselves the scene of the ass who blocked the way for +Tristram at Lyons, and to consider how completely new that method of +describing, of facing a literary problem, was in 1765. I speak here to +an audience of experts, to a company of authors who are accustomed to a +close consideration of the workmanship of their _métier_. I ask them +where, at all events in English, anything like that scene had been found +before the days of Sterne. Since those days we have never been without +it. + +To trace the Shandean influence down English literature for the last +century and a half would take me much too long for your patience. In +Dickens, in Carlyle, even in Ruskin, the Shandean element is often +present and not rarely predominant. None of those great men would have +expressed himself exactly as he does but for Laurence Sterne. And coming +down to our own time, I see the influence of Sterne everywhere. The +pathos of Sir James Barrie is intimately related to that of the creator +of Uncle Toby and Maria of Moulines, while I am not sure that of all the +books which Stevenson read it was not the _Sentimental Journey_ which +made the deepest impression upon him. + +[Footnote 5: Address delivered to the Authors' Club, November 24th, +1913] + + + + +THE CENTENARY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE + + +In the announcements of the approaching celebration of the centenary of +Poe in this country, the fact of his having been a poet was concealed. +Perhaps his admirers hoped that it might be overlooked, as without +importance, or condoned as the result of bad habits. At all events, the +statement that the revels on that occasion would be conducted by Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle was quite enough to prove that it was the prose +writer of "The Black Cat" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and not +the verso writer of "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee" who would be the centre +of attention. On that side of Poe's genius, therefore, although it is +illustrated by such masterpieces of sullen beauty as "The Fall of the +House of Usher" and such triumphs of fantastic ingenuity as "The Gold +Bug," I feel it needless to dwell here, the more as I think the +importance of these tales very slight by the side of that of the best +poems. Edgar Poe was, in my opinion, one of the most significant poetic +artists of a century rich in poetic artists, and I hold it to be for +this reason, and not because he wrote thrilling "detective" stories, +that he deserves persistent commemoration. + +The dominance of Poe as an important poetic factor of the nineteenth +century has not been easily or universally admitted, and it is only +natural to examine both the phenomena and the causes of the objections +so persistently brought against it. In the first instance, if the fame +of Browning and Tennyson advanced slowly, it advanced firmly, and it +was encouraged from the beginning by the experts, by the cultivated +minority. Poe, on the other hand, was challenged, and his credentials +were grudgingly inspected, by those who represented the finest culture +of his own country, and the carpings of New England criticism are not +quite silent yet. When he died, in 1849, the tribunal of American +letters sat at Cambridge, in the neighbourhood of Boston, and it was +ill-prepared to believe that anything poetical could deserve salvation +if it proceeded from a place outside the magic circle. Edgar Poe, the +son of Irish strolling players, called "The Virginia Comedians," settled +in the South and was educated in England. By an odd coincidence, it now +appears that he actually was a native, as it were by accident, of Boston +itself. In the words of the Psalmist, "Lo! there was he born!" This +Gentile poet, such was the then state of American literature, could not +arrive on earth elsewhere than in the Jerusalem of Massachusetts. But +that concession was not known to the high priests, the Lowells, the +Holmeses, the Nortons, to whom Poe seemed a piratical intruder from +Javan or Gadire. + +Nothing is so discouraging to a young poet of originality as to find +himself isolated. Everything new is regarded with suspicion and dislike +by the general world of readers, and usually by the leaders of criticism +as well. Yet the daring prophet feels supported if he has but his Aaron +and his Hur. In the generation that immediately preceded Poe, Wordsworth +and Coleridge had been derided, but they had enjoyed the emphatic +approbation of one another and of Southey. Shelley had been a pariah of +letters, yet he was cordially believed in by Byron and by Peacock. Even +Keats could shrink from the mud-storms of the Scotch reviewers behind +the confident zeal of Leigh Hunt and Reynolds. At a still later moment +Rossetti and Morris would shelter themselves securely, and even +serenely, from the obloquy of criticism, within a slender peel-tower of +the praise of friends. In all these cases there could be set against the +stupidity of the world at large the comfortable cleverness of a few +strong persons of taste, founded, as all good taste must be, upon +principles. The poet could pride himself on his eclecticism, on his +recognition within, as Keats said, "a little clan." But Poe's misfortune +was to have no clan of his own, and to be rejected by precisely those +persons who represented, and on the whole justly represented, good taste +in America. + +His behaviour in this predicament was what might have been expected from +a man whose genius was more considerable than his judgment or his +manners. He tried, at first, to conciliate the New England authorities, +and he flattered not merely the greater planets but some of the very +little stars. He danced, a plaintive Salome, before Christopher P. +Cranch and Nathaniel P. Willis. When he found that his blandishments +were of no avail, he turned savage, and tried to prove that he did not +care, by being rude to Bryant and Longfellow. He called the whole solemn +Sanhedrim a college of Frog-pondian professors. Thus, of course, he +closed upon himself the doors of mercy, since the central aim and object +of the excellent men who at that time ruled American literature was to +prove that, in what this impertinent young man from Virginia called the +Frog Pond, the United States possessed its Athens and its Weimar, its +home of impeccable distinction. Indeed, but for the recognition of +Europe, which began to flow in richly just as Poe ceased to be able to +enjoy it, the prestige of this remarkable poet might have been +successfully annihilated. + +Nor was it only the synod of Boston wits who issued the edict that he +should be ignored, but in England also many good judges of literature, +especially those who belonged to the intellectual rather than the +artistic class, could not away with him. I recollect hearing Leslie +Stephen say, now nearly thirty years ago, that to employ strong terms of +praise for Poe was "simply preposterous." And one whom I admire so +implicitly that I will not mention his name in a context which is not +favourable to his judgment, wrote (in his haste) of Poe's "singularly +valueless verses." + +This opposition, modified, it is true, by the very different attitude +adopted by Tennyson and most subsequent English poets, as well as by +Baudelaire, Mallarmé and the whole younger school in France, was +obstinately preserved, and has not wholly subsided. It would be a +tactical mistake for those who wish to insist on Poe's supremacy in his +own line to ignore the serious resistance which has been made to it. In +the canonisation-trial of this whimsical saint, the Devil's advocates, +it may be confessed, are many, and their objections are imposing. It is +possible that local pique and a horror of certain crude surroundings may +have had something to do with the original want of recognition in New +England, but such sources of prejudice would be ephemeral. There +remained, and has continued to remain, in the very essence of Poe's +poetry, something which a great many sincere and penetrating lovers of +verse cannot endure to admit as a dominant characteristic of the art. + +To recognise the nature of this quality is to take the first step +towards discovering the actual essence of Poe's genius. His detractors +have said that his verses are "singularly valueless." It is therefore +necessary to define what it is they mean by "value." If they mean an +inculcation, in beautiful forms, of moral truth; if they mean a +succession of ideas, clothed in exalted and yet definite language; if +they are thinking of what stirs the heart in reading parts of _Hamlet_ +and _Comus_, of what keeps the pulse vibrating after the "Ode to Duty" +has been recited; then the verses of Poe are indeed without value. A +poet less gnomic than Poe, one from whom less, as they say in the +suburbs, "can be learned," is scarcely to be found in the whole range of +literature. His lack of curiosity about moral ideas is so complete that +evil moves him no more than good. There have been writers of eccentric +or perverse morality who have been so much irritated by the preaching of +virtue that they have lent their genius to the recommendation of vice. +This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is +vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as +innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers +than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is +hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any +ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains +of valuable thoughts" must go elsewhere. + +In 1840 they might, in New England, go to Bryant, to Emerson, to +Hawthorne; and it is more than excusable that those who were +endeavouring to refine the very crude community in the midst of which +they were anxiously holding up the agate lamp of Psyche, should see +nothing to applaud in the vague and shadowy rhapsodies then being issued +by a dissipated hack in Philadelphia. What the New England critics +wanted, patriotically as well as personally, was as little like +"Ulalume" as can possibly be conceived. They defined what poetry should +be--there was about that time a mania for defining poetry--and what +their definition was may be seen no less plainly in the American _Fable +for Critics_ than in the preface to the English _Philip van Artevelde_. +It was to be picturesque, intellectual, pleasing; it was to deal, above +all, with moral "truths"; it was to avoid vagueness and to give no +uncertain sound; it was to regard "passion" with alarm, as the siren +which was bound sooner or later to fling a bard upon the rocks. It is +not necessary to treat this conception of poetry with scorn, nor to +reject principles of precise thought and clear, sober language, which +had been illustrated by Wordsworth in the present and by Gray in the +past. The ardent young critics of our own age, having thrown off all +respect for the traditions of literature, speak and write as if to them, +and them alone, had been divinely revealed the secrets of taste. They do +not give themselves time to realise that in Apollo's house there are +many mansions. + +It is sufficient for us to note here that the discomfort of Poe's +position resided in the fact that he was not admitted into so much as +the forecourt of the particular mansion inhabited by Bryant and Lowell. +There is a phrase in one of his own rather vague and "valueless" essays +(for Poe was a poor critic) which, as it were accidentally, describes +his ideal in poetry, although it is not his own verse of which he is +speaking. He described--in 1845, when his ripe genius had just brought +forth "The Raven"--the poetic faculty as producing "a sense of dreamy, +wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight." This +shadowy but absorbing and mastering pleasure impregnated his own best +writings to such a degree that it gives us the measure of his unlikeness +to his contemporaries, and states the claim of his individuality. +Without precisely knowing it or perceiving his revolution, in an age of +intelligent, tame, lucid and cautiously-defined poetry, Edgar Poe +expressed the emotions which surged within him in numbers that were, +even to excess, "dreamy, wild, indefinite and indefinable." + +His early verses are remarkably exempt from the influences which we +might expect to find impressed on them. He imitated, as every man of +genuine originality imitates while he learns his trade, but his models +were not, as might have been anticipated, Coleridge and Shelley; they +were Byron and Scott. In the poetry of Byron and Scott, Poe found +nothing to transfer to his own nature, and the early imitations, +therefore, left no trace on him. Brief as is the volume of his poems, +half of it might be discarded without much regret. Scattered among his +Byron and Scott imitations, however, we find a few pieces which reveal +to us that, while he was still almost a child, the true direction of his +genius was occasionally revealed to him. The lyric "To Helen," which is +said to have been composed in his fourteenth year, is steeped in the +peculiar purity, richness and vagueness which were to characterise his +mature poems:-- + + "On desperate seas long wont to roam, + Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, + Thy Naiad airs have brought me home + To the glory that was Greece, + And the grandeur that was Rome." + +This was not published, however, until the author was two-and-twenty, +and it may have been touched up. Here is a fragment of a suppressed +poem, "Visit of the Dead," which Poe certainly printed in his eighteenth +year:-- + + "The breeze, the breath of God, is still, + And the mist upon the hill, + Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, + Is a symbol and a token; + How it hangs upon the trees, + A mystery of mysteries!" + +This is not so perfect, but it is even more than "To Helen" symptomatic +of Poe's peculiar relation to the poetic faculty as fostering a state of +indefinite and indeed indefinable delight. And from these faint +breathings how direct is the advance to such incomparable specimens of +symbolic fancy as "The City in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and finally +"Ulalume"! + +The determination to celebrate, in a minor key, indefinite and +melancholy symbols of fancy, is a snare than which none more dangerous +can be placed in the path of a feeble foot. But Poe was not feeble, and +he was protected, and permanent value was secured for his poetry, by the +possession of one or two signal gifts to which attention must now be +paid. He cultivated the indefinite, but, happily for us, in language so +definite and pure that when he succeeds it is with a cool fulness, an +absence of all fretting and hissing sound, such as can rarely be +paralleled in English literature. The finest things in Milton's 1645 +volume, Wordsworth at his very best, Tennyson occasionally, Collins in +some of his shorter odes, have reached that perfection of syllabic +sweetness, that clear sound of a wave breaking on the twilight sands, +which Poe contrives to render, without an effort, again and again:-- + + "By a route obscure and lonely, + Haunted by ill angels only, + Where an Eidolon,[6] nam'd Night, + On a black throne reigns upright, + I have reached these lands but newly + From an ultimate dim Thule, + From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime. + Out of space, out of time." + +The present moment is one in which the reaction against plastic beauty +in poetry has reached such a height that it is almost vain to appeal +against it. There is scarcely a single English poet of consequence in +the younger school who does not treat the strings of his lyre as though +he were preluding with a slate-pencil upon a slate. That this is done +purposely, and in accordance with mysterious harmonic laws entirely +beyond the comprehension of ordinary ears, makes the matter worse. There +is no heresiarch so dangerous as the priest of holy and self-abnegating +life, and it is to a poet no less learned than Mr. Robert Bridges, that +the twentieth century seems to owe the existing rage for cacophony. He +holds something of the same place in relation to Swinburne and Poe, that +Donne did to Spenser three hundred years ago. In this condition of +things it may seem useless to found any claim for Poe on the ground of +the exquisite mellifluousness of his versification. We may hope, +however, some day to regain the use of our ears, and to discover once +more that music and metre are utterly distinct arts. When that +re-discovery has been made, Poe will resume his position as one of the +most uniformly melodious of all those who have used the English +language. + +Critics who have admitted the extraordinary perfection of his prosody +have occasionally objected that in the most popular examples of it, "The +Raven" and "The Bells," he obtains his effect by a trick. It might be +objected, with equal force, that Victor Hugo in "Les Djinns" and even +Tennyson in "The Lotus Eaters" made use of "tricks." On the other hand, +if the charge be deserved, it seems odd that in the course of nearly +seventy years no other juggler or conjurer has contrived to repeat the +wonderful experiment. In each poem there are what must be judged +definite errors against taste in detail--Poe's taste was never very +sure--but the skill of the long voluptuous lamentation, broken at equal +intervals by the croak of the raven, and that of the verbal translation, +as if into four tones or languages, of the tintinabulation of the bells, +is so extraordinary, so original, and so closely in keeping with the +personal genius of the writer, that it is surely affectation to deny its +value. + +It is not, however, in "The Bells" or in "The Raven," marvellous as are +these _tours de force_, that we see the essential greatness of Poe +revealed. The best of his poems are those in which he deals less +boisterously with the sentiment of mystery. During the latest months of +his unhappy life, he composed three lyrics which, from a technical +point of view, must be regarded not only as the most interesting, which +he wrote, but as those which have had the most permanent effect upon +subsequent literature, not in England merely, but in France. These are +"Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," "For Annie." One of Poe's greatest inventions +was the liquidation of stanzaic form, by which he was able to mould it +to the movements of emotion without losing its essential structure. Many +poets had done this with the line; it was left for Poe to do it with the +stanza. In the three latest lyrics this stanzaic legerdemain is +practised with an enchanting lightness, an ecstasy of sinuous and +elastic grace. Perhaps, had it been subjected to the poet's latest +revision, "For Annie" would have been the most wonderful of all in the +sensitive response of its metre to the delicate fluctuations of +sentiment. + +We may, then, briefly summarise that Poe's first claim to commemoration +is that he was the pioneer in restoring to the art of poetry a faculty +which it had almost lost in its attempt to compete with science and +philosophy. It had become the aim of the poets to state facts; it was +given to Poe to perceive that no less splendid a future lay before those +who only hinted feelings. He was the earliest modern poet who +substituted the symbol for the exact description of an object or an +event. That "expression directe," about which the French have been +debating for the last quarter of a century, and over which M. Adolphe +Retté and M. Albert Mockel periodically dispute like Fathers of the +Church, was perceived and was deliberately repudiated by Poe eighty +years ago. He was deeply impregnated with the sense that the harmony of +imagination is not destroyed, but developed, by drawing over a subject +veil after veil of suggestion. His native temperament aided him in his +research after the symbol. He was naturally a cultivator of terror, one +who loved to people the world with strange and indefinable powers. His +dreams were innocent and agitating, occupied with supernatural terrors, +weighed upon by the imminence of shadowy presentments. He trembled at he +knew not what; in this he was related to the earliest poets of the +world, and in his perpetual recurrence to symbol he recalls the action +of their alarms. + +The cardinal importance, then, of Poe as a poet is that he restored to +poetry a primitive faculty of which civilisation seemed successfully to +have deprived her. He rejected the doctrinal expression of positive +things, and he insisted upon mystery and symbol. He endeavoured to +clothe unfathomable thoughts and shadowy images in melody that was like +the wind wandering over the strings of an æolian harp. In other words, +he was the pioneer of a school which has spread its influence to the +confines of the civilised world, and is now revolutionising literature. +He was the discoverer and the founder of Symbolism. + +1909. + +[Footnote 6: A shocking false quantity; but how little that would matter +to Poe] + + + + +THE AUTHOR OF "PELHAM" + + +One hundred and twenty years have nearly passed since the birth of +Bulwer-Lytton, and he continues to be suspended in a dim and ambiguous +position in the history of our literature. He combined extraordinary +qualities with fatal defects. He aimed at the highest eminence, and +failed to reach it, but he was like an explorer, who is diverted from +the main ascent of a mountain, and yet annexes an important table-land +elsewhere. Bulwer-Lytton never secured the ungrudging praise of the best +judges, but he attained great popularity, and has even now not wholly +lost it. He is never quoted as one of our great writers, and yet he +holds a place of his own from which it is improbable that he will ever +be dislodged. Although he stood out prominently among his fellows, and +although his career was tinged with scandal and even with romance, very +little has been known about him. Curiosity has been foiled by the +discretion of one party and the malignity of another. The public has not +been in a position to know the truth, nor to possess the real portrait +of a politician and a man of letters who has been presented as an angel +and as a gargoyle, but never as a human being. Forty years after his +death the candour and the skill of his grandson reveal him to us at last +in a memoir of unusual excellence. + +In no case would Lord Lytton's task have been an easy one, but it must +have been made peculiarly difficult by the work of those who had +preceded him. Of these, the only one who deserves serious attention is +Robert Lytton, who published certain fragments in 1883. That the son +wished to support the memory of his father is unquestionable. But it is +difficult to believe that he intended his contribution to be more than +an aid to some future biographer's labour. He scattered his material +about him in rough heaps. Apart from the "Literary Remains," which +destroyed the continuity of even such brief biography as he gave, Robert +Lytton introduced a number of chapters which are more or less of the +nature of essays, and are often quite foreign to his theme. Moreover, he +dedicated several chapters to literary criticism of his father's works. +It is, in fact, obvious to any one who examines the two volumes of 1883 +which Robert Lytton contrived to fill, that he was careful to contribute +as little as he possibly could to the story which he had started out to +relate. Although there is much that is interesting in the memoirs of +1883, the reader is continually losing the thread of the narrative. The +reason is, no doubt, that Robert Lytton stood too close to his parents, +had seen too much of their disputes, was too much torn by the agonies of +his own stormy youth, and was too sensitively conscious of the scandal, +to tell the story at all. We have the impression that, in order to +forestall any other biography, he pretended himself to write a book +which he was subtle enough to make unintelligible. + +This baffling discretion, this feverish race from hiding-place to +hiding-place, has not only not been repeated by Lord Lytton in the new +_Life_, but the example of his father seems to have positively +emphasised his own determination to be straightforward and lucid. I know +no modern biography in which the writer has kept more rigidly to the +business of his narrative, or has less successfully been decoyed aside +by the sirens of family vanity. It must have been a great difficulty to +the biographer to find his pathway cumbered by the volumes of 1883, set +by his father as a plausible man-trap for future intruders. Lord +Lytton, however, is the one person who is not an intruder, and he was +the only possessor of the key which his father had so diplomatically +hidden. His task, however, was further complicated by the circumstance +that Bulwer-Lytton himself left in MS. an autobiography, dealing very +fully with his own career and character up to the age of twenty-two. The +redundancy of all the Lyttons is amazing. Bulwer-Lytton would not have +been himself if he had not overflowed into reflections which swelled his +valuable account of his childhood into monstrous proportions. Lord +Lytton, who has a pretty humour, tells an anecdote which will be read +with pleasure:-- + + "An old woman, who had once been one of Bulwer-Lytton's trusted + domestic servants, is still living in a cottage at Knebworth. One + day she was talking to me about my grandfather, and inadvertently + used an expression which summed him up more perfectly than any + elaborate description could have done. She was describing his house + at Copped Hall, where she had been employed as caretaker, and + added: 'In one of his attacks of _fluency_, I nursed him there for + many weeks.' 'Pleurisy,' I believe, was what she meant." + +The bacillus of "_fluency_" interpenetrates the Autobiography, the +letters, the documents of every kind, and at any moment this disease +will darken Bulwer-Lytton's brightest hours. But curtailed by his +grandson, and with its floral and heraldic ornaments well pared away, +the Autobiography is a document of considerable value. It is written +with deliberate candour, and recalls the manner of Cobbett, a writer +with whom we should not expect to find Bulwer-Lytton in sympathy. It is +probable that the author of it never saw himself nor those who +surrounded him in precisely their true relation. There was something +radically twisted in his image of life, which always seems to have +passed through a refracting surface on its way to his vision. No doubt +this is more or less true of all experience; no power has given us the +gift "to see ourselves as others see us." But in the case of +Bulwer-Lytton this refractive habit of his imagination produced a +greater swerving aside from positive truth than is usual. The result is +that an air of the fabulous, of the incredible, is given to his +narratives, and often most unfairly. + +A close examination, in fact, of the Autobiography results in confirming +the historic truth of it. What is surprising is not, when we come to +consider them, the incidents themselves, but Bulwer-Lytton's odd way of +narrating them. Lord Lytton, without any comment, provides us with +curious material for the verification of his grandfather's narrative. He +prints, here and there, letters from entirely prosaic persons which +tally, often to a surprising degree, with the extravagant statements of +Bulwer-Lytton. To quote a single instance, of a very remarkable +character, Bulwer-Lytton describes the effect his scholarship produced, +at the age of seventeen, upon sober, elderly people, who were dazzled +with his accomplishments and regarded him as a youthful prodigy. It is +the sort of confession, rather full-blooded and lyrical, which we might +easily set down to that phenomenon of refraction. But Lord Lytton prints +a letter from Dr. Samuel Parr (whom, by the way, he calls "a man of +sixty-four," but Parr, born in 1747, was seventy-four in 1821), which +confirms the autobiographer's account in every particular. The aged Whig +churchman, who boasted a wider knowledge of Greek literature than any +other scholar of his day, and whose peremptory temper was matter of +legend, could write to this Tory boy a long letter of enthusiastic +criticism, and while assuring Bulwer-Lytton that he kept "all the +letters with which you have honoured me," could add: "I am proud of +such a correspondent; and, if we lived nearer to each other, I should +expect to be very happy indeed in such a friend." Letters of this kind, +judiciously printed by Lord Lytton in his notes, serve to call us back +from the nebulous witchcraft in which Bulwer-Lytton was so fond of +wrapping up the truth, and to remind us that, in spite of the +necromancer, the truth is there. + +From the point where the fragment of autobiography closes, although for +some time much the same material is used and some of the same letters +are quoted, as were quoted and used by Robert Lytton, the presentation +of these is so different that the whole effect is practically one of +novelty. But with the year 1826, when Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at the age +of three-and-twenty, became engaged to Rosina Doyle Wheeler, all is +positively new. The story of the marriage, separation, and subsequent +relations has never before been presented to the world with any approach +to accuracy or fulness. No biographical notices of Bulwer-Lytton even +touch on this subject, which has been hitherto abandoned to the gossip +of irresponsible contemporaries. It is true that a Miss Devey composed a +"Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," in which the tale was told. This work was +immediately suppressed, and is inaccessible to the public; but the only +person who is known to be familiar with its contents reports that it +"contains fragments of the narrative, obviously biassed, wholly +inaccurate, and evidently misleading." So far as the general public is +concerned, Lord Lytton's impartial history of the relations between his +grandfather and his grandmother is doubtless that portion of his book +which will be regarded as the most important. I may, therefore, dwell +briefly upon his treatment of it. + +The biographer, in dealing with a subject of this incalculable +difficulty, could but lay himself open to the censure of those who +dislike the revelation of the truth on any disagreeable subject. This +lion, however, stood in the middle of his path, and he had either to +wrestle with it or to turn back. Lord Lytton says in his preface that it +was necessary to tell all or nothing of the matrimonial adventures of +his grandparents, but, in reality, this was not quite the alternative, +which was to tell the truth or to withdraw from the task of writing a +Life of Bulwer-Lytton. The marriage and its results were so predominant +in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour +of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear +reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the +Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord +Lytton shall give his own apology:-- + + "As it was impossible to give a true picture of my grandfather + without referring to events which overshadowed his whole life, and + which were already partially known to the public, I decided to tell + the whole story as fully and as accurately as possible, in the firm + belief that the truth can damage neither the dead nor the living. + The steps which led to the final separation between my + grandparents, and the forces which brought about so disastrous a + conclusion of a marriage of love, apart from their biographical + interest, afford a study of human nature of the utmost value; and + so great are the moral lessons which this story contains, that I + venture to hope that the public may find in much that is tragic and + pitiful much also that is redeeming, and that the ultimate verdict + of posterity may be that these two unfortunate people did not + suffer entirely in vain." + +His story, therefore, is not written with any partiality, and it seems +to be as full and as truthful as the ample materials at the author's +disposal permitted. The reader will conjecture that Lord Lytton could +have given many more details, but apart from the fact that they would +often have been wholly unfit for publication, it is difficult to see +that they would in any degree have altered the balance of the story, or +modified our judgment, which is quite sufficiently enlightened by the +copious letters on both sides which are now for the first time printed. + +Voltaire has remarked of love that it is "de toutes les passions la plus +forte, parce qu'elle attaque, à la fois, la tête, le cÅ“ur, le corps." +It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have +been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is true in +measure of every strong juvenile attachment: but it is rarely indeed so +copiously or so fatally true as it was in his case. His existence was +overwhelmed by this event; it was turned topsy-turvey, and it never +regained its equilibrium. In this adventure all was exaggerated; there +was excess of desire, excess of gratification, an intense weariness, a +consuming hatred. + +On the first evening when the lovers met, in April 1826, an observer, +watching them as they talked, reflected that Bulwer's "bearing had that +aristocratic something bordering on _hauteur_" which reminded the +onlooker "of the passage, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou!'" The same +observer, dazzled, like the rest of the world, by the loveliness of Miss +Wheeler, judged that it would be best "to regard her as we do some +beautiful caged wild creature of the woods--at a safe and secure +distance." It would have preserved a chance of happiness for +Bulwer-Lytton to possess something of this stranger's clairvoyance. It +was not strange perhaps, but unfortunate, that he did not notice--or +rather that he was not repelled by, for he did notice--the absence of +moral delicacy in the beautiful creature, the radiant and seductive +Lamia, who responded so instantly to his emotion. He, the most +fastidious of men, was not offended by the vivacity of a young lady who +called attention to the vulgarity of her father's worsted stockings and +had none but words of abuse for her mother. These things, indeed, +disconcerted the young aristocrat, but he put them down to a lack of +training; he persuaded himself that these were superficial blemishes and +could be remedied; and he resigned his senses to the intoxication of +Rosina's beauty. + +At first--and indeed to the last--she stimulated his energy and his +intellect. His love and his hatred alike spurred him to action. In +August 1826, in spite of the violent opposition of his mother, he and +Rosina were betrothed. By October Mrs. Bulwer had so far prevailed that +the engagement was broken off, and Edward tossed in a whirlpool of +anger, love, and despair. It took the form of such an attack of +"fluency" as was never seen before or after. Up to that time he had been +an elegant although feverish idler. Now he plunged into a strenuous life +of public and private engagements. He prepared to enter the House of +Commons; he finished _Falkland_, his first novel; he started the +composition of _Pelham_ and of another "light prose work," which may +have disappeared; he achieved a long narrative in verse, _O'Neill, or +the Rebel_; and he involved himself in literary projects without bound +and without end. The aim of all this energy was money. It is true that +he had broken off his betrothal; but it was at first only a pretence at +estrangement, to hoodwink his mother. He was convinced that he could not +live without possessing Rosina, and as his mother held the strings of +the common purse, he would earn his own income and support a wife. + +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, who had a Roman firmness, was absolutely determined +that her son should not marry "a penniless girl whose education had been +so flagrantly neglected, who was vain and flighty, with a mocking humour +and a conspicuous lack of principle." At this point the story becomes +exceedingly interesting. A Balzac would strip it of its romantic +trappings, and would penetrate into its physiology. Out of Rosina's +sight, and diverted by the excess of his literary labours, Edward's +infatuation began to decline. His mother, whose power of character would +have been really formidable if it had been enforced by sympathy or even +by tact, relaxed her opposition; and instantly her son, himself, no +longer attacked, became calmer and more clear-sighted. Rosina's faults +were patent to his memory; the magic of her beauty less invincible. +Within a month all was changed again. Rosina fretted herself into what +she contrived to have reported to Bulwer-Lytton as an illness. She +begged for an interview, and he went with reluctance to bid her farewell +for ever. It was Bulwer-Lytton's habit to take with him a masterpiece of +literature upon every journey. It seems unfortunate that on this +occasion _The Tempest_ was not his companion, for it might have warned +him, as Prospero warned Ferdinand, against the fever in the blood:-- + + "No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall + To make this contract grow; but barren hate, + Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall bestrew + The union of your bed, with weeds so loathly + That you shall hate it, both." + +When his short interview, which was to have been a final one, was over, +that had happened which made a speedy marriage necessary, whatever the +consequences might be. + +The new conditions were clearly stated to old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, but +that formidable lady belonged to an earlier generation, and saw no +reason for Quixotic behaviour. Her conscience had been trained in the +eighteenth century, and all her blame was for Rosina Wheeler. Torn +between his duty and his filial affection, Bulwer-Lytton now passed +through a period of moral agony. He wrote to his mother: "I am far too +wretched, and have had too severe a contest with myself, not to look to +the future rather with despondency than pleasure, and the view you take +of the matter is quite enough to embitter my peace of mind." Miss +Wheeler, not unnaturally stung to anger, used disrespectful expressions +regarding Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, and these bickerings filled the lover and +son with indignation. His life, between these ladies, grew to be hardly +worth living, and in the midst of one such crisis this brilliant young +dandy of four-and-twenty wrote:--"I feel more broken-hearted, +despondent, and sated than any old valetudinarian who has seen all his +old hopes and friends drop off one by one, and finds himself left for +the rest of his existence to the solitary possession of gloom and gout." +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton fought fiercely to the last, and Edward determined to +close the matter; on August 29th, 1827, he married Rosina. + +At first, in spite of, and even because of, the wild hostility of his +mother, the marriage seemed successful. The rage of the mother drove the +husband to the wife. Lord Lytton has noted that in later years all that +his grandfather and his grandmother said about one another was +unconsciously biassed by their memory of later complications. Neither +Bulwer-Lytton nor Rosina could give an accurate history of their +relations at the beginning, because the mind of each was prejudiced by +their knowledge of the end. Each sought to justify the hatred which both +had lived to feel, by representing the other as hateful from the first. +But the letters survive, and the recollections of friends, to prove that +this was entirely untrue. It must be admitted that their union was never +based upon esteem, but wholly upon passion, and that from the first they +lacked that coherency of relation, in moral respects, which was needed +to fix their affections. But those who have dimly heard how bitterly +these two unfortunate people hated one another in later life will be +astonished to learn that they spent the two first years together like +infatuated turtle-doves. + +Their existence was romantic and absurd. Cut off from all support by the +implacable anger of old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, they depended on a combined +income of £380 a year and whatever the husband could make to increase +it. Accordingly they took a huge country house, Woodcot in Oxon, and +lived at the rate of several thousands a year. There they basked in an +affluent splendour of bad taste which reminds us of nothing in the world +so much as of those portions of _The Lady Flabella_ which Mrs. +Wititterly was presently to find so soft and so voluptuous. The +following extract from one of Rosina's lively letters-and she was a very +sprightly correspondent--gives an example of her style, of her husband's +Pelhamish extravagance, and of the gaudy recklessness of their manner of +life. They had now been married nearly two years:-- + + "How do you think my audacious husband has spent his time since he + has been in town? Why, he must needs send me down what he termed a + little Christmas box, which was a huge box from Howel and James's, + containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours + not made up, four Gros des Indes, two merino ones, four satin ones, + an amber, a black, a white and a blue, eight pocket handkerchiefs + that look as if they had been spun out of lilies and air and + _brodée_ by the fairies, they are so exquisitely fine and so + beautifully worked. Four pieces (16 yards in each) of beautiful + white blonde, two broad pieces and two less broad, a beautiful and + very large blue real cashmere shawl, a Chantilly veil that would + reach from this to Dublin, and six French long pellerines very + richly embroidered on the finest India muslin, three dozen pair of + white silk stockings, one dozen of black, a most beautiful black + satin cloak with very pretty odd sort of capes and trimmed round + and up the sides with a very broad band of a new kind of figured + plush--I forget what they call it (it came from Paris), and a hat + of the same--such a hat as can only be made in the Rue Vivienne. + You would think that this 'little Christmas box' would have been + enough to have lasted for some time. However, he thought + differently, for on New Year's morning before I was out of bed, + there came a parcel by the mail, which on opening proved to be a + large red Morocco case containing a bright gold chain, a yard and a + half long, with the most beautiful and curious cross to it that I + ever saw--the chain is as thick as my dead gold necklace, and you + may guess what sort of a thing it is when I tell you that I took it + to a jeweller here to have it weighed, and it weighed a pound all + but an ounce. The man said it never was made for less than fifty + guineas, but that he should think it had cost more." + +Rosina, who has only £80 a year of her own, will not be outdone, and +cannot "resist ordering" Edward "a gold toilette, which he has long +wished for.... Round the rim of the basin and the handle of the ewer I +have ordered a wreath of _narcissus_ in dead gold, which, for Mr. +Pelham, you'll own, is not a bad idea." + +It would be expected that all this crazy display would lead the young +couple rapidly and deeply into debt. That it did not do so is the most +curious phase of the story. Bulwer-Lytton immediately, and apparently +without the slightest difficulty, developed a literary industry the +sober record of which approaches the fabulous. Walter Scott alone may be +held to have equalled it. The giants of popular fiction did, indeed, +enjoy larger single successes than Bulwer-Lytton did, but none of them, +not Dickens himself, was so uniformly successful. Everything he wrote +sold as though it were bread displayed to a hungry crowd. Even his +poetry, so laboriously and lifelessly second-hand, always sold. He did +not know what failure was; he made money by _Devereux_; even _The New +Timon_ went into many editions. To earn what was required, however--and +in these early years he seems to have made £3000 his minimum of needful +return--to live in the insane style which his wife and he demanded, an +enormous nervous strain was required. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's temper had +always been warm and eager; it now grew irritable to the highest degree. +His mother continued to exasperate him; his wife suddenly failed to +please him; his health waned; and he became the most miserable of men; +yet without ceasing for a moment to be the most indefatigable of +authors. The reader will follow the evolution of the tragedy, which is +of poignant interest, in Lord Lytton's pages. The whole story is one of +the most extraordinary in the history of literature. + +It has been a feature of Bulwer-Lytton's curious posthumous fortune that +he has seemed solitary in his intellectual if not in his political and +social action. We think of him as one of those morose and lonely bees +that are too busy gathering pollen to join the senate of the hive, and +are dwellers in the holes of the rocks. It is quite true that, with a +painful craving for affection, he had not the genius of friendship. The +general impression given by his biography is one of isolation; in "the +sea of life" he was one of those who are most hopelessly "enisled." +Nothing is sadder than this severance of a delicate and sensitive +temperament from those who surround it closely and to whom it stretches +out its arms in vain. But a careful reading of these interesting volumes +leaves us in no doubt of the cause of this loneliness. Bulwer-Lytton, +with all his ardour and his generosity, was devoid of the gift of +sympathy. In characters of a simpler mould a natural kindliness may take +the place of comprehension. But Bulwer-Lytton had a lively and protean +fancy which perpetually deceived him. In human relations he was always +moving, but always on the wrong track. + +The letters to his mother, to his wife, to his son, exemplify this +unfortunate tendency. They are eloquent, they are even too eloquent, for +Bulwer-Lytton intoxicated himself with his own verbosity; they are meant +to be kind, they are meant to be just, they are meant to be wise and +dignified and tender; but we see, in Lord Lytton's impartial narrative, +that they scarcely ever failed to exasperate the receiver. His dealings +with his son, of whom he was exquisitely proud and sensitively fond, are +of the saddest character, because of the father's want of comprehension, +haste of speech and intolerance of temper. The very fact that a son, a +wife, or a mother could with impunity be addressed in terms of +exaggerated sensibility, because there could be no appeal, was a snare +to the too-ready pen of Bulwer-Lytton, which, poured out its oceans of +ink without reflection and without apprehension. If violent offence were +given, the post went out again later in the day, and equally violent +self-humiliation would restore the emotional balance. But what could not +be restored was the sense of confidence and domestic security. + +In his contact with other literary men of his own age more restraint was +necessary, and we learn from Lord Lytton's pages of valuable and +prolonged acquaintanceships which were sometimes almost friendships. His +company was much sought after, and occasionally by very odd persons. +Lord Lytton prints a series of most diverting letters from the notorious +Harriette Wilson, who, in spite of the terror into which her "Memoirs" +had thrown society, desired to add the author of _Pelham_ to the aviary +of her conquests. But the snare was set in vain before the eyes of so +shrewd a bird as Bulwer-Lytton; he declined to see the lady, but he kept +her amazing letters. This was in 1829, when the novelist seems to have +had no literary or political associates. But by 1831, we find him +editing the _New Monthly Magazine_, and attaching himself to Lord +Melbourne and Lord Durham on the one hand and to Disraeli and Dickens on +the other. When to these we have added Lady Blessington and Letitia +Landon, we have mentioned all those public persons with whom +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have been on terms of intimacy during his early +manhood. All through these years he was an incessant diner-out and +party-goer, and the object of marvellous adulation, but he passed +through all this social parade as though it had been a necessary portion +of the exterior etiquette of life. Why he fatigued himself by these +formal exercises, in which he seems to have found no pleasure, it is +impossible to conceive, but a sense of the necessity of parade was +strangely native to him. + +He had, however, one close and constant friend. John Forster was by far +the most intimate of all his associates throughout his career. +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have met him first about 1834, when he was +twenty-eight and Forster only twenty-two. In spite of this disparity in +age, the younger man almost at once took a tone of authority such as the +elder seldom permitted in an acquaintance. Forster had all the gifts +which make a friend valuable. He was rich in sympathy and resource, his +temper was reasonable, he comprehended a situation, he knew how to hold +his own in argument and yet yield with grace. Lord Lytton prints a very +interesting character-sketch of Forster, which he has found among his +grandfather's MSS. It is a tribute which does equal credit to him who +makes it and to him of whom it is made:-- + + "John Forster.... A most sterling man, with an intellect at once + massive and delicate. Few, indeed, have his strong practical sense + and sound judgment; fewer still unite with such qualities his + exquisite appreciation of latent beauties in literary art. Hence, + in ordinary life, there is no safer adviser about literary work, + especially poetry; no more refined critic. A large heart naturally + accompanies so masculine an understanding. He has the rare capacity + for affection which embraces many friendships without loss of depth + or warmth in one. Most of my literary contemporaries are his + intimate companions, and their jealousies of each other do not + diminish their trust in him. More than any living critic, he has + served to establish reputations. Tennyson and Browning owed him + much in their literary career. Me, I think, he served in that way + less than any of his other friends. But, indeed, I know of no + critic to whom I have been much indebted for any position I hold in + literature. In more private matters I am greatly indebted to his + counsels. His reading is extensive. What faults he has lie on the + surface. He is sometimes bluff to rudeness. But all such faults of + manner (and they are his only ones) are but trifling inequalities + in a nature solid and valuable as a block of gold." + +This was written with full experience, as the names of Tennyson and +Browning will remind us, for Bulwer-Lytton was slow to admit the value +of these younger talents. His relations with Tennyson have always been +known to be unfortunate; as they are revealed in Lord Lytton's biography +they approach the incredible. He met Browning at Covent Garden Theatre +during the Macready "revival" of the poetic stage, but it was not until +after the publication of _Men and Women_ that he became conscious of +Browning's claim, which he then very grudgingly admitted. He was +grateful to Browning for his kindness to Robert Lytton in Italy, but he +never understood his genius or his character. + +What, however, we read with no less pleasure than surprise are the +evidences of Bulwer-Lytton's interest in certain authors of a later +generation, of whom the general public has never suspected him to have +been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867 +between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew +Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds +it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure +those of his immediate contemporaries. The _Essays in Criticism_ and +_The Study of Celtic Literature_ called forth from the author of _My +Novel_ and _The Caxtons_ such eulogy as had never been spared for the +writings of Thackeray or Carlyle. Matthew Arnold appeared to +Bulwer-Lytton to have "brought together all that is most modern in +sentiment, with all that is most scholastic in thought and language." +Arnold was a guest at Knebworth, and brought the Duke of Genoa with him. +He liked Bulwer-Lytton, and their relations became very cordial and +lasted for some years; Arnold has given an amusing, but very +sympathetic, account of the dignified hospitalities of Knebworth. + +No revelation in Lord Lytton's volumes is, however, more pleasing or +more unexpected than his grandfather's correspondence with Swinburne. It +is thought that he heard of him through Monckton Milnes; at all events, +he was an early reader of _Atalanta in Calydon_. When, in 1866, all the +furies of the Press fell shrieking on _Poems and Ballads_, Bulwer-Lytton +took a very generous step. He wrote to Swinburne, expressing his +sympathy and begging him to be calm. The young poet was extremely +touched, and took occasion to beg the elder writer for his advice, the +publisher having, without consulting him, withdrawn his volume from +sale. Bulwer-Lytton's reply was a most cordial invitation to stay with +him at Knebworth and talk the matter over. Swinburne gratefully +accepted, and John Forster was asked to meet him. It was Bulwer-Lytton, +it appears, who found another publisher for the outraged volume, and +helped Swinburne out of the scrape. He was always kindness itself if an +appeal was made to his protection, and to his sense of justice. However, +pleasant as the visit to Knebworth was, there is no evidence that it was +repeated. Bulwer-Lytton considered Swinburne's opinions preposterous, +and indeed if he told Swinburne, as in 1869 he told his son Robert, that +Victor Hugo was "but an epileptic dwarf in a state of galvanism," there +must have been wigs on the green at Knebworth. + +The student of the biography, if he is already familiar with the more +characteristic works of Bulwer-Lytton, will find himself for the first +time provided with a key to much that has puzzled him in the nature of +that author. The story itself, apart from the tragic matrimonial trouble +which runs through it like a blood-red cord, is of unusual interest. It +is a story of strife, without repose, without enjoyment, but with a good +deal of splendour and satisfaction. Almost to the end Bulwer-Lytton was +engaged in struggle. As an ambitious social being he was fighting the +world; as an author he was battling with his critics; as a statesman he +was always in the wild storm of party politics. As a private individual +he was all the time keeping his head up against the tide of social +scandal which attacked him when he least expected it, and often +threatened to drown him altogether. This turmoil contrasts with the calm +of the evening years, after the peerage had been won, the ambition +satisfied, the literary reputation secured. + +Few writers have encountered, in their own time and after their death, +so much adverse criticism, and yet have partly survived it. It is hardly +realised, even perhaps by Lord Lytton, how unwilling the reviewers were +to give credit to his grandfather. He never found favour in their eyes, +and it was a matter of constant resentment with him that they did him, +as he thought, injustice. The evidence of his wounded feelings is +constant in his letters. The Quarterly Review never mentioned him +without contempt until 1865, when the publication of his works, in +forty-three volumes, forced it to consider this indefatigable and +popular writer with a measure of respect. Sir Walter Scott, with his +universal geniality, read _Pelham_ in 1828 and "found it very +interesting: the light is easy and gentlemanlike, the dark very grand +and sombrous." He asked who was the author, and he tried to interest his +son-in-law in the novel. But Lockhart was implacable: "_Pelham_," he +replied, "is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I +have not read the book, from disliking the author." Lockhart, however, +did read _Devereux_, and three years afterwards, when reviewing some +other novel, he said of the historical characters in that romance: "It +seems hard to disquiet so many bright spirits for the sole purpose of +showing that they _could_ be dull." That was the attitude of the higher +criticism to Bulwer-Lytton from, let us say, 1830 to 1860; he was "a +horrid puppy" and he was also "dull." + +But this was far from being the opinion of the reading public. We have +seen that he never failed, and sometimes he soared into the very +empyrean of popularity. In 1834, when he published _The Last Days of +Pompeii_, again in 1837 when he published _Ernest Maltravers_, the +ecstasy of his adorers discovered their favourite in a moment under the +mask of anonymity which he chose to assume. This was just before the +outburst of the great school of Victorian novelists; Bulwer had as yet +practically no one but Disraeli to compete with. These two, the author +of _Pelham_ and the author of _Vivian Grey_, raced neck and neck at the +head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them +forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted +personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm" +was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest +and most powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so +shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until +Bulwer-Lytton adopted his _Caxtons_ manner in the middle of the century. +As always in Byronic periods, the portrait of the author himself was +searched for among his most fatal conceptions. To the young library +subscriber the stoical, solitary figure of Mordaunt, in _The Disowned_, +was exactly what was wanted as a representation of the mysterious +novelist himself. Pelham was the apotheosis of the man of fashion, and +it is amusing to read how, when the Bulwer-Lyttons travelled, they were +gazed at in reverence as the Pelham and the Pelhamess. + +It would be difficult to improve upon the language used so early as 1832 +by one of the very few critics who attempted to do justice to +Bulwer-Lytton's merits. The _Edinburgh Review_ found in him "a style +vigorous and pliable, sometimes strangely incorrect, but often rising +into a touching eloquence." Ten years later such was the private opinion +of D.G. Rossetti, who was "inspired by reading _Rienzi_ and _Ernest +Maltravers_, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at +Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more +justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one +thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we +must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his +own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful +ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of +Continental history, he made realistic and humorous studies of +middle-class life, he engaged in vehement controversy on topics of the +hour, he prophesied of the order of the future, he wrote comedies and +tragedies, epics and epistles, satires and lyrics. His canvasses were +myriad and he crowded every one of them with figures. At his most +Byronic moment he flung his dark cloak aside, and danced in motley +through _Paul Clifford_, with its outrageous caricature of George IV. +and his Ministers as a gang of Hounslow highwaymen. Perhaps his best +claim to regard is the insatiability of his human curiosity, evinced in +the almost infinite variety of his compositions. + +The singular being who wrote so large a library of works and whose +actual features have so carefully been concealed from the public, will +be known at last. The piety of his grandson has presented him to us with +no reservations and no false lights. Here he stands, this half-fabulous +being, not sheathed in sham armour and padding the stage in buskins, but +a real personality at length, "with all his weaknesses and faults, his +prejudices, affectations, vanities, susceptibilities, and +eccentricities, and also with all his great qualities of industry, +courage, kindness of heart; sound judgment, patience, and perseverance." +Lord Lytton has carried through to the close a biographical enterprise +of unusual difficulty, and he deserves the thanks of all students of +English literature. + + + + +THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRONTËS[7] + + +Although I possess in no degree the advantage which so many of the +members of your society enjoy in being personally connected with the +scenes and even, perhaps, with the characters associated with the Brontë +family, I cannot begin my little address to you to-day without some +invocation of the genius of the place. We meet at Dewsbury because the +immortal sisters were identified with Dewsbury. Is it then not +imperative that for whatever picture of them I may endeavour to present +before you this afternoon, Dewsbury should form the background? +Unfortunately, however, although in the hands of a skilful painter the +figures of the ladies may glow forth, I fear that in the matter of +taking Dewsbury as the background some vagueness and some darkness are +inevitable. In the biographies of Mrs. Gaskell and of Mr. Clement +Shorter, as well as in the proceedings of your society, I have searched +for evidences of the place Dewsbury took in the lives of the Brontës. +What I find--I expect you to tell me that it is not exhaustive--is this. +Their father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, was curate here from 1809 to +1811. In 1836, when Charlotte was twenty, Miss Wooler transferred her +school from Roe Head to Heald's House at the top of Dewsbury Moor. In +this school, where Charlotte had been a pupil since 1831, she was now a +governess, and a governess she remained until early in 1838. In April of +that year Miss Wooler was taken ill and Charlotte was for a little while +in charge. Then there was an explosion of temper, of some kind, and +Charlotte went back to Haworth. + +That, then, in the main, is the limit of what the scrupulous Muse of +history vouchsafes to tell us about Charlotte Brontë's relation to +Dewsbury. But it also supplies us with one or two phrases which I cannot +bring myself to spare you. In January 1838, Charlotte reviews her +experience at Dewsbury Moor; "I feel," she says, "in nothing better, +nothing humbler nor purer." Again, in 1841, after there had passed time +enough to mellow her exacerbations, she continues to express herself +with vigour. Miss Wooler is making overtures to Charlotte and Emily to +take over the school at Heald's House; perhaps a place might be found +for Anne as well. Miss Wooler, one of the kindest of women, is most +thoughtful, most conciliatory. Charlotte will have none of the idea; she +puts it roughly from her. Of Dewsbury she has nothing to say but that +"it is a poisoned place for me." This is all we know of Charlotte's +relation to Dewsbury, yet nothing, you will tell me, in Froude's phrase, +to what the angels know. Well, I must be frank with you and say that I +am afraid the angels have been inclined to record exceedingly little of +Charlotte Brontë's residence in your inoffensive neighbourhood. I have +to paint a background to my picture, and I find none but the gloomiest +colours. They have to be what the art-critics of the eighteenth century +called "sub-fusc." But it is not the fault of Dewsbury, it is the fault, +or the misfortune, of our remarkable little genius. She was here, in +this wholesome and hospitable vicinity, for several months, during which +time "she felt in nothing better, neither humbler nor purer," and +looking back upon it, she had to admit that it was "a poisoned place" +to her. + +I cannot help fancying that you will agree with me, that on such an +occasion as the present, and especially when dealing with a group of +writers about whom so much as has been said as about the Brontës, it is +wise not to cover too wide a ground, but to take, and keep to, one +aspect of the subject. Our little excursion into the history seems to +have given us, under the heading "Dewsbury," a rather grim text, from +which, nevertheless, we may perhaps extract some final consolation. Let +me say at the outset that for the grimness, for the harshness, Dewsbury +is not at all to blame. I fancy that if, in the years from 1836 to 1838, +the Brontë girls had been visitors to Kubla Khan, and had been fed on +honey by his myrmidons at Xanadu, that pleasure-dome would yet have been +"poisoned" to them. It was not poverty, and cold, and the disagreeable +position of a governess, it was not the rough landscape of your moors, +nor its lack of southern amenity which made Charlotte wretched here. It +was not in good Miss Wooler, nor in the pupils, nor in the visitors at +Heald's House that the mischief lay, it was in the closed and patient +crater of Charlotte's own bosom. And I am almost persuaded that, if you +had lived in Dewsbury sixty-five years ago, you would have heard on very +quiet days a faint subterranean sound which you would never have been +able to guess was really the passion, furiously panting, shut up in the +heart of a small, pale governess in Heald's House schoolroom. + +If you accuse me of fatalism, I am helpless in your hands, for I confess +I do not see how it could be otherwise, and do scarcely wish that it +could have been. Let us not be too sentimental in this matter. Figures +in literature are notable and valuable to us for what they give us. The +more personal and intense and definite that is, the greater the gift, +the more strenuous the toil and the more severe the initiation which +lead to its expression. The Brontës had a certain thing to learn to +give; what that was we shall presently try to note. But whatever we find +it to be, we start with allowing that it was extremely and boldly +original. It was not to be mastered by lying upon padded sofas and +toying with a little Berlin wool-work. It involved pain, resistance, a +stern revision of things hitherto taken for granted. The secrets which +they designed to wring from nature and from life were not likely to be +revealed to the self-indulgent and the dilettante. The sisters had a +message from the sphere of indignation and revolt. In order that they +should learn it as well as teach it, it was necessary that they should +arrive on the scene at an evil hour for their own happiness. _Jane Eyre_ +and _Shirley_ and _Villette_ could not have been written unless, for +long years, the world had been "a poisoned place" for Charlotte Brontë. + +It has been excellently said by Mrs. Humphry Ward that in many respects, +and to the very last, the Brontës challenge no less than they attract +us. This is an aspect which, in the midst of rapturous modern +heroine-worship, we are apt to forget. Thackeray, who respected the +genius of the family, and was immensely kind to the author of _Jane +Eyre_, never really felt comfortable in her company. We know how he +stole out of his own front-door, and slipped away into the night to +escape her. "A very austere little person," he called her, and we may +put what emphasis on the austerity we will. I feel sure that any +maladroit "white-washing of Charlotte" will tend, sooner or later, +good-natured though it may be, in a failure to comprehend what she +really was, in what her merit consisted, what the element in her was +that, for instance, calls us here together nearly half a century after +she completed her work and passed away. Young persons of genius very +commonly write depressing books; since, the more vivid an unripe +creature's impression of life is, the more acute is its distress. It is +only extremely stupid Sunday-school children who shout in chorus, "We +are so happy, happy, happy!" Genius thrown naked, with exposed nerves, +on a hard indifferent world, is never "happy" at first. Earth is a +"poisoned place" to it, until it has won its way and woven its garments +and discovered its food. + +But in the case of Charlotte Brontë, unhappiness was more than juvenile +fretfulness. All her career was a revolt against conventionality, +against isolation, against irresistible natural forces, such as climate +and ill-health and physical insignificance. Would this insubmissive +spirit have passed out of her writings, as it passed, for instance, out +of those of George Sand? I am not sure, for we see it as strongly, +though more gracefully and skilfully expressed, in _Villette_ as in the +early letters which her biographers have printed. Her hatred of what was +commonplace and narrow and obvious flung her against a wall of +prejudice, which she could not break down. She could only point to it by +her exhausting efforts; she could only invite the generation which +succeeded her to bring their pickaxes to bear upon it. Hence, to the +very last, she seems, more than any other figure in our literature, to +be forever ruffled in temper, for ever angry and wounded and indignant, +rejecting consolation, crouched like a sick animal in the cavern of her +own quenchless pride. This is not an amiable attitude, nor is it +historically true that this was Charlotte Brontë's constant aspect. But +I will venture to say that her amiabilities, her yielding moods, are +really the unessential parts of her disposition, and that a certain +admirable ferocity is the notable feature of her intellectual character. + +Her great heart was always bleeding. Here at Dewsbury, in the years we +are contemplating, the hemorrhage was of the most doleful kind, for it +was concealed, suppressed, it was an inward flow. When once she became +an author the pain of her soul was relieved. She said, in 1850, looking +back on the publication of the hapless first volume of poems, "The mere +effort to succeed gave a wonderful zest to existence." Then, a little +later, when no one had paid the slightest attention to the slender trio +of maiden voices, "Something like the chill of despair began to invade +their hearts." With a less powerful inspiration, they must have ceased +to make the effort; they must have succumbed in a melancholy oblivion. +But they were saved by the instinct of a mission. It was not their +private grief which primarily stirred them. What urged them on was the +dim consciousness that they gave voice to a dumb sense of the suffering +of all the world. They had to go on working; they had to pursue their +course, though it might seem sinister or fatal; their business was to +move mankind, not to indulge or please it. They "must be honest; they +must not varnish, soften, or conceal." + +What Charlotte Brontë was learning to do in her grim and, let us admit +it, her unlovely probation on Dewsbury Moor, was to introduce a fresh +aspect of the relations of literature to life. Every great writer has a +new note; hers was--defiance. All the aspects in which life presented +itself to her were distressing, not so much in themselves as in herself. +She rebelled against the outrages of poverty, and she drank to its dregs +the cup of straitened circumstances. She was proud, as proud as Lucifer, +and she was forced into positions which suppleness and cheerfulness +might have made tolerable, if not agreeable. She wrung from these +positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of +this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by +universal report, were generous, genial, and unassuming. To Charlotte +Brontë these kindly, if somewhat commonplace folk, grew to seem what a +Turkish pasha seems to the inhabitants of a Macedonian village. It was +not merely the surroundings of her life--it was life itself, in its +general mundane arrangements, which was intolerable to her. She fretted +in it, she beat her wings against its bars, and she would have done the +same if those bars had been of gold, and if the fruits of paradise had +been pushed to her between them. This, I think, is why the expression of +her anger seems too often disproportionate, and why her irony is so apt +to be preposterous. She was born to resist being caged in any form. Her +defiance was universal, and often it was almost indiscriminate. + +Do not let us presume to blame this insubmission. Still less let us +commit the folly of minimising it. A good cheerful little Charlotte +Brontë, who thought the best of everybody, who gaily took her place +without a grudging sigh, whose first aim was to make those about her +happy and to minister to their illusions, would have been a much more +welcome inmate of Miss Wooler's household than the cantankerous +governess whom nobody could please, whose susceptibilities were always +on edge, whose lonely arrogance made her feared by all but one or two +who timidly persisted in loving her. But such a paragon of the obvious +virtues would have passed as the birds pass and as the flowers. She +would have left no mark behind. She would never have enriched the +literature of England by one of its master-evidences of the force of +human will. She would never have stirred hundreds of thousands of +consciences to a wholesome questioning of fate and their own souls. + +Let us endeavour to pursue the inquiry a few steps further. It is +impossible to separate the ethical conditions of an author's mind from +the work that he produces. The flower requires the soil; it betrays in +its colour and its perfume the environment of its root. The moral +constitution of the writer is reflected in the influence of the written +page. This is the incessant contention; on one hand the independence of +art asserts itself; on the other, it is impossible to escape from the +implicit influence of conduct upon art. There have been few writers of +any age in whom this battle raged more fiercely than it did in Charlotte +Brontë. Her books, and those of her sisters, seem anodyne enough to-day; +to readers of a sensitive species they seemed, when they were published, +as dangerous as _Werther_ had been, as seductive as the _Nouvelle +Heloïse_. The reason of this was, in the main, the spirit of revolt +which inspired them. There was something harsh and glaring in their +landscape; there was that touch of Salvator Rosa which one of their +earliest critics observed in them. But more essential was the +stubbornness, the unflinching determination to revise all accepted +formulas of conduct, to do this or that, not because it was usual to do +it, but because it was rational, and in harmony with human nature. + +Into an age which had become almost exclusively utilitarian, and in +which the exercise of the imagination, in its real forms, was sedulously +discountenanced, Charlotte Brontë introduced passion in the sphere of +prose fiction, as Byron had introduced it in the sphere of verse thirty +years earlier. It was an inestimable gift; it had to come to us, from +Charlotte Brontë or another, to save our literature from a decline into +triviality and pretension. But she suffered, as Byron had suffered, in +the direct ratio of her originality. If a writer employs passion in an +age which has ceased to recognise it as one of the necessities of +literary vitality he is safe to be accused of perverting his readers. +Balzac says, "When nothing else can be charged against an author, the +reproach of immorality is thrown at his head." When we study the record +of the grim life of the sisters at Haworth, like that of three young +soldiers round a camp-fire with the unseen enemy prowling in the +darkness just out of their sight--when we think of the strenuous vigil, +the intractable and indomitable persistence, the splendour of the +artistic result--we may console ourselves in our anger at the insults +they endured, by reflecting how little they cared. And their noble +indifference to opinion further endears them to us. We may repeat of +them all what Charlotte in a letter once said of Emily, "A certain +harshness in her powerful and peculiar character only makes me cling to +her more." + +This insubmissiveness, which was the unconscious armour given to protect +her against the inevitable attacks of fortune, while, on the other hand, +it was the very sign-manual of Charlotte's genius, was, on the other, a +drawback from which she did not live long enough to emancipate her +nature. It is responsible for her lack of interest in what is delicate +and complex; it excused to herself a narrowness of vision which we are +sometimes tempted to find quite distressing. It is probably the cause of +a fault that never quits her for long, a tendency to make her characters +express themselves with a lyrical extravagance which sometimes comes +close to the confines of rodomontade. Charlotte Brontë never arrives at +that mastery of her material which permits the writer to stand apart +from his work, and sway the reader with successive tides of emotion +while remaining perfectly calm himself. Nor is she one of those whose +visible emotion is nevertheless fugitive, like an odour, and evaporates, +leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. On +the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her +sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with +serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager +spirit, immortal in its active force, seems to throb beside it. + +The aspect of Charlotte Brontë which I have tried to indicate to you +to-day, and which I have sketched thus hastily and slightly against the +background of her almost voiceless residence in Dewsbury, is far from +being a complete or unique one. I offer it to you only as a single facet +of her wonderful temperament, of the rich spectacle of her talent. I +have ventured to propose it, because, in the multiplication of honours +and attentions, the tendency to deify the human, to remove those +phenomena of irregularity which are the evidence of mortal strength, +grows irresistible, and we find ourselves, unconsciously, substituting a +waxen bust, with azure eyes and golden hair, for the homely features +which (if we could but admit it) so infinitely better match the honest +stories. Let us not busy ourselves to make excuse for our austere little +genius of the moors. Let us be content to take her exactly as she was, +with her rebellion and her narrowness, her angers and her urgencies, +perceiving that she had to be this sorrowful offspring of a poisoned +world in order to clear the wells of feeling for others, and to win from +emancipated generations of free souls the gratitude which is due to a +precursor. + +[Footnote 7: Address delivered before the Brontë Society in the Town +Hall of Dewsbury, March 28th, 1903.] + + + + +THE NOVELS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI + + +It is not easy for a man whose sovereign ambition is seen to be leading +him with great success in a particular direction to obtain due credit +for what he accomplishes with less manifest success in another. There is +no doubt that Disraeli as an author has, at all events until very +lately, suffered from the splendour of his fame as a politician. But he +was an author long before he became a statesman, and it certainly is a +little curious that even in his youth, although he was always +commercially successful with his books, they were never, as we say, +"taken seriously" by the critics. His earliest novels were largely +bought, and produced a wide sensation, but they were barely accepted as +contributions to literature. If we look back to the current criticism of +those times, we find such a book as _Dacre_, a romance by the Countess +of Morley, which is now absolutely forgotten, treated with a dignity and +a consideration never accorded to _The Young Duke_ or to _Henrietta +Temple_. Even Disraeli's satiric squibs, in the manner of Lucian and +Swift, which seem to us among the most durable ornaments of light +literature in the days of William IV., were read and were laughed at, +but were not critically appraised. + +So, too, at the middle period of Disraeli's literary life, such books as +_Coningsby_ and _Tancred_ were looked upon as amusing commentaries on +the progress of a strenuous politician, not by any means, or by any +responsible person, as possible minor classics of our language. And at +his third period, the ruling criticism of the hour was aghast at faults +which now entertain us, and was blind to sterling merits which we are +now ready to acknowledge. Shortly after his death, perhaps his most +brilliant apologist was fain to admit that if Disraeli had been +undistinguished as a speaker, his novels would have been "as the flowers +of the field, charming for the day which was passing over them, and then +forgotten." It is only since the beginning of the present century that a +conviction has been gaining ground that some of these books were in +themselves durable, not because they were the work of a man who became +Prime Minister of England and made his sovereign Empress of India, but +as much or as little as if they had been composed by a recluse in a +hermitage. This impression has now become so general with enlightened +critics that the danger seems to be that we should underrate certain +excesses of rhetoric and the Corinthian mode the errors of which used to +be over-emphasised, but should not, in a comparative survey of Victorian +literature, be neglected as serious drawbacks to our perfect enjoyment +of the high-spirited, eloquent, and ardent writings of Benjamin +Disraeli. It is in this spirit of moderation that I now attempt a rapid +sketch of his value as an English author. + + +I + +There is, perhaps, no second example of a writer whose work is divided, +as is that of Disraeli, into three totally distinct periods. Other +authors, as for example, the poet Crabbe, and in a less marked degree +Rogers, have abandoned the practice of writing for a considerable number +of years, and then have resumed it. But the case of Disraeli seems to be +unique as that of a man who pursued the writing, of books with great +ardour during three brief and independent spaces of time. We have his +first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with _Vivian Grey_ +(1826) and closed with _Venetia_ (1837). We have a second epoch, opening +with _Coningsby_ (1844) and ending with _Tancred_ (1847), during which +time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels +which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. +Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, +but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted +for. It will, therefore, be convenient to treat them successively. + +As oblivion scatters its poppy over the prose fiction of the reigns of +George IV. and William IV., it becomes in creasingly dangerous that +criticism should take the early "fashionable" novels of Disraeli as +solitary representations of literary satire or observation. It is true +that to readers of to-day this class of romance is exclusively +suggestive of _Vivian Grey_ and its fellows, with perhaps the _Pelham_ +of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of +these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary +in their treatment of society. In the course of _The Young Duke_, +written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances +"written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had +only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as +it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of _Tremaine_ +(1825) and _De Vere_ (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English +gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough. +But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold +the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they +lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the +age. + +The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing +years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were +welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books +as _Granby_ and _Dacre_. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli +belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned. +They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge +flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in +general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a +sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded +innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who +think of _Vivian Grey_ as a work of amazing novelty, to the fact that +the _genre_ it represents to us was one which had been lifted into high +credit the year before by the consecrated success of _Tremaine_, and was +at that moment cultivated by a multitude of minor novelists. + +There was, however, a distinction, and it lay in the greater fund of +animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. _Vivian Grey_ was +absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the +opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent +young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid +for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to +be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." _Vivian +Grey_ is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli +himself called it "a hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he +had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing +lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has +exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the +impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has +always been a tendency to exalt _Vivian Grey_ at the expense of _The +Young Duke_ (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the +former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in +this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be +supposed. In _The Young Duke_ the manner is not so burlesque, but there +is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and +fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to +our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the +existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron +Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche? +The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is +particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always +hovering between sublimity and a giggle. + +But here is an example, from _Vivian Grey_, of Disraeli's earliest +manner:-- + + "After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice, + and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke + of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured + views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes, + his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in + his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of + human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which + now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon + his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet! + my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been + imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!' + + "She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head + still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her + off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive + her. But when he tried to lay her a moment on the bank, she clung + to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He + leant over her; he did not attempt to disengage her arms; and, by + degrees, by very slow degrees, her grasp loosened. At last her arms + gave way and fell by her side, and her eyes partly opened. + + "'Thank God! Violet, my own, my beloved, say you are better!' + + "She answered not, evidently she did not know him, evidently she + did not see him. A film was on her sight, and her eye was glassy. + He rushed to the water-side, and in a moment he had sprinkled her + temples, now covered with a cold dew. Her pulse beat not, her + circulation seemed suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he + covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the + bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No + one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he + shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no + answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not + leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were + still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her + hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the + warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he + prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting + like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the + screech of an owl! + + "Once more at the river-side, once more bending over her with + starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the + soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have + given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her + position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was + a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite + cold, her limbs stiffened. He gazed, and gazed, and gazed. He bent + over her with stupor rather than grief stamped on his features. It + was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind, very + slowly that the horrible truth seized upon his soul. He gave a loud + shriek, and fell on the lifeless body of VIOLET FANE!" + +A line in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of _Alarcos_ pathetically +admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli +was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased +should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his +writings. _Henrietta Temple_ is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell +a great consecutive story of passion, and no doubt there have been those +who have palpitated over the love-at-first-sight of Ferdinand Armine and +Henrietta Temple. But Disraeli's serious vein is here over-luscious; the +love-passages are too emphatic and too sweet. An early critic spoke of +this _dulcia vitia_ of style which we meet with even in _Contarini +Fleming_ as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His +attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often +deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine +against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn +who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or +murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy +nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry +us over such marshlands of cold style. + +Of these imperfections, fewer are to be found in _Venetia_ and fewest in +_Contarini Fleming_. This beautiful romance is by far the best of +Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can +be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is +thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any direct sense an +autobiography, and yet the mental and moral experiences of the author +animate every chapter of it. This novel is written with far more ease +and grace than any previous book of the author's, and Contarini gives a +reason which explains the improvement in his creator's manner when he +remarks: "I wrote with greater facility than before, because my +experience of life was so much increased that I had no difficulty in +making my characters think and act." _Contarini Fleming_ belongs to +1831, when its writer, at the comparatively ripe age of twenty-seven, +had already seen a vast deal of man and of the world of Europe. + +We are not to believe the preposterous account that Contarini-Disraeli +gives of his methods of composition:-- + + "My thoughts, my passion, the rush of my invention, were too quick + for my pen. Page followed page; as a sheet was finished I threw it + on the floor; I was amazed at the rapid and prolific production, + yet I could not stop to wonder. In half a dozen hours I sank back + exhausted, with an aching frame. I rang the bell, ordered some + refreshment, and walked about the room. The wine invigorated me and + warmed up my sinking fancy, which, however, required little fuel. I + set to it again, and it was midnight before I retired to bed." + +At this rate we may easily compute that the longest of his novels would +be finished in a week. _Contarini Fleming_ seems to have occupied him +the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him, +exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes, +flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a +matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts of +composition. + +It is to be noted that the whole tone of _Contarini Fleming_ is +intensely literary. The appeal to the intellectual, to the fastidious +reader is incessant. This is an attitude always rare in English fiction, +but at that epoch almost unknown, and its presence in the writings of +Disraeli gives them a cachet. Under all the preposterous conversation, +all the unruly turmoil of description, there runs a strong thread of +entirely sober, political, and philosophical ambition. Disraeli striving +with all his might to be a great poet, of the class of Byron and Goethe, +a poet who is also a great mover and master of men--this is what is +manifest to us throughout _Contarini Fleming_. It is almost pathetically +manifest, because Disraeli--whatever else he grew to be--never became a +poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over +the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never +persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a +poet. + +A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial +one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his +serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the +mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in +verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain +buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome, +in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had +been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he +had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding +admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who +complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna +insupportable and the _naïveté_ of Christiana mawkish. There are pages +in _Alroy_ that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how +much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been +conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous gravity +of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his +earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired, +especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift. + +But in _Contarini Fleming_ we detect a new flavour, and it is a very +fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with +the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of +reading _Zadig_ and _Candide_ was the completion of the style of +Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth" +which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic _contes_ +of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does +not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a +tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de +Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the +old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the +startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those +which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in +Parliament. + +In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of _Contarini +Fleming_ cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and +Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is +a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with +Alcesté Contarini is plainly borrowed from _Epiphsychidion_. Disraeli +does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his +voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is +bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through +it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the +extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as _Contarini +Fleming_ are borrowed from no exotic source. + +It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice exercises +over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to +indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's _Life +and Letters_ and the completion of Rogers' _Italy_ with Turner's +paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic +interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city." +Whenever Disraeli reaches Venice his style improves, and if he mourns +over her decay, his spirits rise when he has to describe her +enchantments by moonlight. He reserves his most delicate effects for +Greece and Venice:-- + + "A Grecian sunset! The sky is like the neck of a dove! the rocks + and waters are bathed with a violet light. Each moment it changes; + each moment it shifts into more graceful and more gleaming shadows. + And the thin white moon is above all; the thin white moon, followed + by a single star, like a lady by a page." + +There are many passages as sumptuous as this in _Venetia_, the romance +about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in +publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia +is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron +(Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the +indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which +the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord +Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and refined spirits that have +adorned these our latter days" is highly characteristic of Disraeli. The +reception of Lord Cadurcis in the House of Peers and the subsequent riot +in Palace Yard mark, perhaps, the highest point in direct narrative +power which the novelist had yet reached; but _Venetia_ was not liked, +and Disraeli withdrew from literature into public life. + + +II + +When Disraeli resumed the art of the novelist, he was no longer talking +of what lay outside his experience when he touched on politics. In 1837 +he had entered the House at last, as Member for Maidstone, and although +his enemies roared him down on the first occasion of his rising to +speak, he soon learned how to impose his voice on Parliament. In 1839 +his declaration that "the rights of labour are as sacred as the rights +of property" made him famous, and in 1841 he was one of Sir Robert +Peel's Conservative army in the House. Then followed the formation of +the Young England Party, with Disraeli as one of its leaders; these men +broke away from Peel, and held that the Tory Party required stringent +reform from within. It was in 1843 that Henry Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, +urged, at a meeting of the Young Englanders, the expediency of +Disraeli's "treating in a literary form those views and subjects which +were the matter of their frequent conversations." Disraeli instantly +returned to literary composition, and produced in quick succession the +four books which form the second section of his work as an author; these +are _Coningsby_, _Sybil_, _Tancred_, and the _Life of Lord George +Bentinck_. + +In this group of books we observe, in the first place, a great advance +in vitality and credibility over the novels of the earlier period. +Disraeli is now describing what he knows, no longer what he hopes in +process of time to know. He writes from within, no longer from without +the world of political action. These three novels and a biography are +curiously like one another in form, and all equally make a claim to be +considered not mere works of entertainment, but serious contributions to +political philosophy. The assumption is borne out by the character of +the books, each of which had a definite aim and purpose. _Coningsby_ +was designed to make room for new talent in the Tory Party by an +unflinching attack on the "mediocrities." In _Sybil_ the heartless abuse +of capital and the vices of class distinction are exposed. _Tancred_ is +a vision of better things to follow upon the reforms already indicated. +In _Lord George Bentinck_, under the guise of a record of the struggle +between Protection and Free Trade, we have a manual of personal conduct +as applied to practical politics. + +In all these works narrative pure and simple inclines to take a +secondary place. It does so least in _Coningsby_ which, as a story, is +the most attractive book of Disraeli's middle period, and one of the +most brilliant studies of political character ever published. The tale +is interspersed with historical essays, which impede its progress but +add to its weight and value. Where, however, the author throws himself +into his narrative, the advance he has made in power, and particularly +in truth of presentment, is very remarkable. In the early group of his +novels he had felt a great difficulty in transcribing conversations so +as to produce a natural and easy effect. He no longer, in _Coningsby_, +is confronted by this artificiality. His dialogues are now generally +remarkable for their ease and nature. The speeches of Rigby (who +represents John Wilson Croker), of Lord Monmouth (who stands for Lord +Hertford), of the Young Englanders themselves, of the laughable chorus +of Taper and Tadpole, who never "despaired of the Commonwealth," are +often extremely amusing. In _Coningsby_ we have risen out of the +rose-coloured mist of unreality which hung over books like _The Young +Duke_ and _Henrietta Temple_. The agitated gentleman whose peerage hangs +in the balance, and who on hearing that the Duke of Wellington is with +the King breathes out in a sigh of relief "Then there _is_ a +Providence," is a type of the subsidiary figure which Disraeli had now +learned to introduce with infinite lightness of irony. + +Disraeli had a passion for early youth, and in almost all his books he +dwells lovingly upon its characteristics. It is particularly in +_Contarini Fleming_ and in _Coningsby_--that is to say, in the best +novels of his first and of his second period--that he lingers over the +picture of schoolboy life with tenderness and sympathy. We have only to +compare them, however, to see how great an advance he had made in ten +years in his power of depicting such scenes. The childish dreams of +Contarini are unchecked romance, and though the friendship with Musæus +is drawn with delicacy and insight, and though that is an extremely +pretty scene where Christiana soothes the pride of Contarini, yet a +manliness and a reality are missing which we find in the wonderful Eton +scenes of _Coningsby_. + +Disraeli's comprehension of the feelings of half-grown ambitious boys of +good family was extraordinary, and when we consider that he had never +been to a public school, his picture of the life and conversation at +Eton is remarkable for its fidelity to nature. The relation of the elder +schoolboys to one another--a theme to which he was fond of recurring--is +treated in a very adroit and natural spirit, not without a certain +Dorian beauty. This preoccupation with the sentiments and passions of +schoolboys was rather crudely found fault with at the time. We need have +no difficulty in comprehending the pleasure he felt in watching the +expansion of those youthful minds from whom he hoped for all that was to +make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at +Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed, +and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour--an act +of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of--is +justified by the dignified success of a very dangerous experiment. + +The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest +good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the +most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the +caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's +poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as +Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he +was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just +scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might +want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who "might have +acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so +many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely +have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all +the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale +stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the +forest, over the celebrated dish of "still-hissing bacon and eggs that +looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur, +and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli +himself. + +When we pass from _Coningsby_ to _Sybil_ we find the purely narrative +interest considerably reduced in the pursuit of a scheme of political +philosophy. This is of all Disraeli's novels the one which most +resembles a pamphlet on a serious topic. For this reason it has never +been a favourite among his works, and his lighter readers have passed it +over with a glance. _Sybil_, however, is best not read at all if it is +not carefully studied. In the course of _Coningsby_, that young hero had +found his way to Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world, +"poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and +feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in +our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the +portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But +it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the +working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract +his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious +and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear +witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied +Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that +he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he +was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers. + +All this is reflected on the surface of _Sybil_, and, notwithstanding +curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and +true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted +than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard, +the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his +daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell +you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant +answer, "You _are_ a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You +are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town." +This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations +among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave _Sybil_ no +chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the +depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to +produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories, +which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier +simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given +fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of +Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not +blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures +of human suffering in _Sybil_. + +Then followed _Tancred_, which, as it has always been reported, +continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary +offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties +which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he +became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began +to despair of discovering any cure for it. In _Tancred_ he laid aside in +great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book +is steeped in the colours of poetry--of poetry, that is to say, as the +florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens--as all his books love to +open--with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is +commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type +of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a +flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative. +Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely +picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream. + +The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in +_Coningsby_, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central +theme of the story in _Tancred_. This novel is inspired by an outspoken +and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its +future. In the presence of the mighty monuments of Jerusalem, Disraeli +forgets that he is a Christian and an ambitious member of the English +Parliament. His only solicitude is to recover his privileges as a Jew, +and to recollect that he stands in the majestic cradle of his race. He +becomes interpenetrated with solemn mysticism; a wind of faith blows in +his hair. He cries, "God never spoke except to an Arab," and we are +therefore not surprised to find an actual Divine message presently +pronounced in Tancred's ears as he stands on the summit of Mount Sinai. +This is, perhaps, the boldest flight of imagination which occurs in the +writings of Disraeli. Tancred endeavours to counteract the purely +Hebraic influences of Palestine by making a journey of homage to +Astarte, a mysterious and beautiful Pagan queen--an "Aryan," as he loves +to put it--who reigns in the mountains of Syria. But even she does not +encourage him to put his trust in the progress of Western Europe. + +_Tancred_ is written in Disraeli's best middle style, full, sonorous, +daring, and rarely swelling into bombast. It would even be too uniformly +grave if the fantastic character of Facredeen did not relieve the +solemnity of the discourse with his amusing tirades. Like that of all +Disraeli's novels, the close of this one is dim and unsatisfactory. If +there is anything that the patient reader wants to know it is how the +Duke and Duchess of Bellemont behaved to the Lady of Bethany when they +arrived at Jerusalem and found their son in the kiosk under her +palm-tree. But this is curiosity of a class which Disraeli is not +unwilling to awaken, but which he never cares to satisfy. He places the +problems in a heap before us, and he leaves us to untie the knots. It is +a highly characteristic trait of his mind as a writer that he is for +ever preoccupied with the beginnings of things, and as little as +possible with their endings. + +It is not, however, from _Tancred_ but from _Coningsby_, that we take +our example of Disraeli's second manner:-- + + "Even to catch Lord Monmouth's glance was not an easy affair; he + was much occupied on one side by the great lady, on the other were + several gentlemen who occasionally joined in the conversation. But + something must be done. + + "There ran through Coningsby's character, as we have before + mentioned, a vein of simplicity which was not its least charm. It + resulted, no doubt, in a great degree from the earnestness of his + nature. There never was a boy so totally devoid of affectation, + which was remarkable, for he had a brilliant imagination, a quality + that, from its fantasies, and the vague and indefinite desires it + engenders, generally makes those whose characters are not formed, + affected. The Duchess, who was a fine judge of character, and who + greatly regarded Coningsby, often mentioned this trait as one + which, combined with his great abilities and acquirements so + unusual at his age, rendered him very interesting. In the present + instance it happened that, while Coningsby was watching his + grandfather, he observed a gentleman advance, make his bow, say and + receive a few words and retire. This little incident, however, made + a momentary diversion in the immediate circle of Lord Monmouth, and + before they could all resume their former talk and fall into their + previous positions, an impulse sent forth Coningsby, who walked up + to Lord Monmouth, and standing before him, said, + + "'How do you do, grandpapa?' + + "Lord Monmouth beheld his grandson. His comprehensive and + penetrating glance took in every point with a flash. There stood + before him one of the handsomest youths he had ever seen, with a + mien as graceful as his countenance was captivating; and his whole + air breathing that freshness and ingenuousness which none so much + appreciates as the used man of the world. And this was his child; + the only one of his blood to whom he had been kind. It would be an + exaggeration to say that Lord Monmouth's heart was touched; but his + good-nature effervesced, and his fine taste was deeply gratified. + He perceived in an instant such a relation might be a valuable + adherent; an irresistible candidate for future elections: a + brilliant tool to work out the Dukedom. All these impressions and + ideas, and many more, passed through the quick brain of Lord + Monmouth ere the sound of Coningsby's words had seemed to cease, + and long before the surrounding guests had recovered from the + surprise which they had occasioned them, and which did not + diminish, when Lord Monmouth, advancing, placed his arms round + Coningsby with a dignity of affection that would have become Louis + XIV., and then, in the high manner of the old Court, kissed him on + each cheek. + + "'Welcome to your home,' said Lord Monmouth. 'You have grown a + great deal.' + + "Then Lord Monmouth led the agitated Coningsby to the great lady, + who was a Princess and an Ambassadress, and then, placing his arm + gracefully in that of his grandson, he led him across the room, and + presented him in due form to some royal blood that was his guest, + in the shape of a Russian Grand Duke. His Imperial Highness + received our hero as graciously as the grandson of Lord Monmouth + might expect; but no greeting can be imagined warmer than the one + he received from the lady with whom the Grand Duke was conversing. + She was a dame whose beauty was mature, but still radiant. Her + figure was superb; her dark hair crowned with a tiara of curious + workmanship. Her rounded arm was covered with costly bracelets, but + not a jewel on her finely-formed bust, and the least possible rouge + on her still oval cheek. Madame Colonna retained her charms." + + +III + +Nearly a quarter of a century passed, during which Disraeli slowly rose +to the highest honours in the State. Lord Derby died, and the novelist, +already Leader of the House of Commons, found himself called to be Prime +Minister of England. His first administration, however, was brief, and +in the last days of 1868 he resigned in favour of Mr. Gladstone. The +Liberals were in for five years, and Disraeli, in opposition, found a +sort of tableland stretch in front of him after so much arduous +climbing. It was at this moment, shortly after the resignation of the +Tory Minister, that the publisher of a magazine approached him with the +request that he would write a novel to appear in its pages. He was +offered, it is said, a sum of money far in excess of what any one, at +that time, had ever received for "serial rights." Disraeli refused the +offer, but it may have drawn his thoughts back to literature, and in the +course of 1869, after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was +completed, he found time to write what is unquestionably the greatest of +his literary works--the superb ironic romance of _Lothair_. + +Eminent as he was and eminently successful, Disraeli was far, in 1870, +from having conquered public opinion in England. The reception of his +new novel was noisy, and enjoyed to the full the clamours of +advertisement, but it was not favourable. The critics laughed it to +scorn, and called it a farce and a failure. The _Quarterly Review_, in +the course of a savage diatribe, declared that it was "as dull as +ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it +as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the +criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as +Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to +kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit +that if the stormy Parliamentarian life Disraeli had led so long had +given him immense personal advantages, it had also developed some +defects. It had taught him boundless independence and courage, it had +given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his +satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had +encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the +bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of _Coningsby_ and +of _Tancred_ he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But +_Lothair_, even in its corrected form--and the first edition is a +miracle of laxity--is curiously incorrect. It reads as though it were +taken down from the flowing speech of a fine orator, not as though it +were painfully composed in a study; it contains surprising ellipses, +strange freaks of grammar. There was all this, and more, to encourage +the critics, whom Disraeli had gone out of his way to affront in a +violent epigram, to attack _Lothair_ with contempt and resentment. + +The critics took irony for timidity; they thought that the sardonic +novelist was the dupe of the splendours which he invented and gloated +over. But if one thing is more evident than another to-day it is that +this gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl +and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an +immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in +another sense, the keynote of _Lothair_ is "mockery blended with Ionian +splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been +more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise +that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life, +and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous, +but he let himself go in _Lothair_; all is like the dream of a Lorenzo +dei Medicis or an Aurungzebe. Nothing is done by halves. Muriel Towers +was set on "the largest natural lake that inland England boasts"--some +lake far larger than Windermere and entirely unsuspected by geographers. +This piece of water is studded with "green islands," which is natural. +But the author cannot stay his hand: this largest of the English lakes +is also alive with "golden gondolas," which are rarer objects. In one of +the odd little flashes of self-criticism which illuminate the book +Lothair says of a certain northern garden, with its fanes and its +fountains, its glittering statues and its Babylonian terraces, that +there are "perhaps too many temples." + +There are perhaps too many temples in the landscape of _Lothair_, but +they were put in on purpose. The splendour is part of the satire. When +the hero has ordered an architect to make some plans for a building, the +door opens and servants enter bearing "a large and magnificent portfolio +of morocco, made of prelatial purple with broad bands of gold and +alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet." It is the sort of +portfolio that Belshazzar might have used, but no English master-builder +since time began ever launched forth into such splendour. This is +characteristic of Disraeli and of his book; it pleased him to wrap all +his fancies in jewelled cloth of gold. He chose that the world should +consist of nothing but Tudor palaces in colossal parks, and that time +should be no other than a perpetual Holy Week of golden ceremonial. He +knew his public, and that it adored these follies. He spoke to them in +the language that they loved, but in a tone of the most seraphical +disdain and irony. + +What marks the whole of Disraeli's writings more than any other quality +is the buoyant and radiant temperament of their author. In _Lothair_ he +is like an inspired and enfranchised boy, set free from all the trammels +of reality, and yet bringing to the service of his theme the results of +an extraordinary inherited experience. If the picture is not real, we +may take courage to say that it is far better than reality--more rich, +more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly +written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and +when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a +mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is +seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of _Lothair_, and have become +part of our habitual speech--the phrase about eating "a little fruit on +a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the +gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that +Disraeli is one of those who have felt most vividly and expressed most +gaily the peculiar physical beauty of London. He saw the Park as the +true Londoner sees it--when "the chestnuts are in silver bloom, and the +pink may has flushed the thorns, and banks of sloping turf are radiant +with plots of gorgeous flowers; when the water glitters in the sun, and +the air is fragrant with that spell which only can be found in +metropolitan mignonette." He describes as no one else has ever done with +equal mastery a stately and successful house-party in a great country +mansion. He had developed, when he composed _Lothair_, a fuller sense of +beauty than he had ever possessed before, but it revelled in forms that +were partly artificial and partly fabulous. An example of these forms +may now be welcome:-- + + "Mr. Giles took an early easy opportunity of apprising Lady + Farringford that she had nearly met Cardinal Grandison at dinner, + and that his Eminence would certainly pay his respects to Mrs. + Putney Giles in the evening. As Lady Farringford was at present a + high ritualist, and had even been talked of as 'going to Rome,' + this intelligence was stunning, and it was observed that her + Ladyship was unusually subdued during the whole of the second + course. + + "On the right of Lothair sate the wife of a Vice-Chancellor, a + quiet and pleasing lady, to whom Lothair, with natural good + breeding, paid snatches of happy attention, when he could for a + moment with propriety withdraw himself from the blaze of + Apollonia's coruscating conversation. Then there was a rather + fierce-looking Red Ribbon, medalled as well as be-starred, and the + Red Ribbon's wife, with a blushing daughter, in spite of her + parentage not yet accustomed to stand fire. A partner and his + unusually numerous family had the pleasure also of seeing Lothair + for the first time, and there were no less than four M.P.'s, one of + whom was even in office. + + "Apollonia was stating to Lothair, with brilliant perspicuity, the + reasons which quite induced her to believe that the Gulf Stream had + changed its course, and the political and social consequences that + might accrue. + + "'The religious sentiment of the Southern races must be wonderfully + affected by a more rigorous climate,' said Apollonia. 'I cannot + doubt,' she continued, 'that a series of severe winters at Rome + might put an end to Romanism. + + "'But is there any fear that a reciprocal influence might be + exercised on the Northern nations?' inquired Lothair. 'Would there + be any apprehension of our Protestantism becoming proportionately + relaxed?' + + "'Of course not,' said Apollonia. 'Truth cannot be affected by + climate. Truth is truth alike in Palestine and Scandinavia.' + + "'I wonder what the Cardinal would think of this,' said Lothair, + 'who, you tell me, is coming to you this evening.' + + "'Yes, I am most interested to see him, though he is the most + puissant of our foes. Of course he would take refuge in sophistry; + and science, you know, they deny.' + + "'Cardinal Grandison is giving some lectures on science,' said the + Vice-Chancellor's lady, quietly. + + "'It is remorse,' said Apollonia. 'Their clever men can never + forget that unfortunate affair of Galileo, and think they can + divert the indignation of the nineteenth century by mock zeal about + red sandstone or the origin of species.' + + "'And are you afraid of the Gulf Stream?' inquired Lothair of his + calmer neighbour. + + "'I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor + and I went down to a place we have near town on Saturday, where + there is a very nice piece of water; indeed, some people call it a + lake; it was quite frozen, and my boys wanted to skate, but that I + would not permit.' + + "'You believe in the Gulf Stream to that extent,' said Lothair; 'no + skating.' + + "The Cardinal came early; the ladies had not long left the + dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even + Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the + inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence with + Caprera. + + "Nothing could exceed the simple suavity with which the Cardinal + appeared, approached, and greeted them. He thanked Apollonia for + her permission to pay his respects to her, which he had long + wished to do; and then they were all presented, and he said exactly + the right thing to every one." + +Disraeli began his career, as I have pointed out in the earlier part of +this essay, as a purveyor of entertainment to the public in a popular +and not very dignified kind. He contended with the crowd of fashionable +novelists whose books consoled the leisure of Mrs. Wititterly as she +reclined on the drawing-room sofa. He found rivals in Bulwer and Mrs. +Gore, and a master in Plumer Ward. His brilliant stories sold, but at +first they won him little advantage. Slowly, by dint of his inherent +force of genius, his books have not merely survived their innumerable +fellows, but they have come to represent to us the form and character of +a whole school; nay, more, they have come to take the place in our +memories of a school which, but for them, would have utterly passed away +and been forgotten. Disraeli, accordingly, is unique, not merely because +his are the only fashionable novels of the pre-Victorian era which any +one ever reads nowadays, but because in his person that ineffable manner +of the "thirties" reaches an isolated sublimity and finds a permanent +place in literature. But if we take a still wider view of the literary +career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the +interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence +their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do +what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and +Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite +resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices +of convention, and trod English society beneath his foot in the +triumphant irony of success. It is the living Disraeli who is always +more salient than the most fascinating of his printed pages. + + + + +THREE EXPERIMENTS IN PORTRAITURE + + +I + +LADY DOROTHY NEVILL + +AN OPEN LETTER + + Dear Lady Burghclere, + + When we met for the first time after the death of our friend, you + desired me to produce what you were kind enough to call "one of my + portraits." But the art of the portrait-writer is capricious, and + at that time I felt wholly disinclined for the adventure. I excused + myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her + reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected, + though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the + evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy were insuperable. + I partly think so still, but your command has lingered in my memory + all these months, and I have determined to attempt to obey you, + although what I send you can be no "portrait," but a few leaves + torn out of a painter-writer's sketch-book. + + The existence of the three published volumes does, after all, not + preclude a more intimate study, because they are confessedly + exterior. They represent what she saw and heard, not what others + perceived in her. In the first place, they are very much better + written than she would have written them herself. I must dwell + presently on the curious fact that, with all her wit, she + possessed no power of sustained literary expression. Her Memoirs + were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised + writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public. + On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all + the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has + been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better + part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he + extracted these old anecdotes of my early years." This is as + bravely characteristic of her modesty as it is of her candour, but + I think it shows that there is still room for some record of the + more intimate features of her charming and elusive character. I + take up my pencil, but with little hope of success, since no more + formidable task could be set me. I will at least try to be, as she + would have scorned me for not being, sincere. + + My friendship with Lady Dorothy Nevill occupied more than a quarter + of a century. I met her first in the house of Sir Redvers and Lady + Audrey Buller in the winter of 1887, soon after their return from + Ireland. She had done me the great honour of desiring that I should + be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the + zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in + years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked + together on that first occasion for hours, and it seems to me that + I was lifted, without preliminaries, into her intimacy. From that + afternoon, until I drank tea with her for the last time, ten days + before her death, the precious link was never loosened. + + In 1887, her great social popularity had not begun. She was, I now + know, already near sixty, but it never occurred to me to consider + her age. She possessed a curious static quality, a perennial + youthfulness. Every one must have observed how like Watts' picture + of her at twenty she still was at eighty-six. This was not + preserved by any arts or fictile graces. She rather affected, + prematurely, the dress and appearance of an elderly woman. I + remember her as always the same, very small and neat, very pretty + with her chiselled nose, the fair oval of her features, the + slightly ironic, slightly meditative smile, the fascinating colour + of the steady eyes, beautifully set in the head, with the eyebrows + rather lifted as in a perpetual amusement of curiosity. Her head, + slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little + sideways, like a bird's that contemplates a hemp-seed. She had no + quick movements, no gestures; she held herself very still. It + always appeared to me that, in face of her indomitable energy and + love of observation, this was an unconscious economy of force. It + gave her a very peculiar aspect; I remember once frivolously saying + to her that she looked as though she were going to "pounce" at me; + but she never pounced. When she had to move, she rose energetically + and moved with determination, but she never wasted a movement. Her + physical strength--and she such a tiny creature--seemed to be + wonderful. She was seldom unwell, although, like most very healthy + people, she bewailed herself with exaggerated lamentations whenever + anything was the matter with her. But even on these occasions she + defied what she called "coddling." Once I found her suffering from + a cold, on a very chilly day, without a fire, and I expostulated. + She replied, with a sort of incongruity very characteristic of her, + "Oh! none of your hot bottles for me!" In her last hours of + consciousness she battled with the doctor's insistence that she + must have a fire in her bedroom, and her children had to conceal + the flame behind screens because she threatened to get out of bed + and put it out. Her marvellous physical force has to be insisted + on, for it was the very basis of her character. + + Her humorous petulance, her little sharp changes of voice, the + malice of her downcast eyes, the calmness of her demure and easy + smile--how is any impression to be given of things so fugitive? + Her life, which had not been without its troubles and anxieties, + became one of prolonged and intense enjoyment. I think that this + was the main reason of the delight which her company gave to almost + every one. She was like a household blaze upon a rainy day, one + stretched out one's hands to be warmed. She guarded herself against + the charge of being amiable. "It would be horrid to be amiable," + she used to say, and, indeed, there was always a touch of sharpness + about her. She was amused once because I told her she was like an + acidulated drop, half sweet and half sour. "Oh! any stupid woman + can be sweet," she said, "it's often another name for imbecile." + + She had curious little prejudices and antipathies. I never fathomed + the reason of her fantastic horror of the feasts of the Church, + particularly of Christmas. She always became curiously agitated as + the month of December waned. In her notes she inveighed, in quaint + alarm, against the impending "Christmas pains and penalties." I + think she disliked the disturbance of social arrangements which + these festivals entailed. But there was more than that. She was + certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century + sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly + said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after any project, + even of the most frivolous kind. The idea was that one should be + polite all round, in case of any contingency. When she was in the + Riviera, she was much interested to hear that the Prince of Monaco + had built and endowed a handsome church at Monte Carlo. "Very + clever of him," she said, "for you never can tell." + + Lady Dorothy's entire absence of affectation was eminently + attractive. She would be mistress of herself, though China fell. + Her strange little activities, her needlework, her paperwork, her + collections, were the wonder of everybody, but she did not require + approval; she adopted them, in the light of day, for her own + amusement. She never pushed her peculiarities on the notice of + visitors, but, at the same time, if discovered in the act of some + incredible industry, she went on with it calmly. When she was in + Heidelberg in 1892 and successive years, what interested her was + the oddity of the students' life; she expatiated to me on their + beer and their sabre-cuts. Whenever I went abroad of late years, I + was exhorted to send her picture post-cards from out-of-the-way + places, and "Remember that I like vulgar ones best," she added + imperturbably. The story is perhaps known to you of how, in a + circle of superfine ladies, the conversation turned to food, and + the company outdid one another in protestations of delicacy. This + one could only touch a little fruit, and that one was practically + confined to a cup of tea. Lady Dorothy, who had remained silent and + detached, was appealed to as to her opinion. In a sort of loud + cackling--a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted--she replied, + "Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of + the _précieuses_. She had a wholesome respect for food, quite + orthodox and old-fashioned, although I think she ate rather + markedly little. But she liked that little good. She wrote to me + once from Cannes, "This is not an intellectual place, but then the + body rejoices in the cooking, and thanks God for that." She liked + to experiment in foods, and her guests sometimes underwent strange + surprises. One day she persuaded old Lord Wharncliffe, who was a + great friend of hers, to send her a basket of guinea-pig, and she + entertained a very distinguished company on a fricassee of this + unusual game. She refused to say what the dish was until every one + had heartily partaken, and then Mr. George Russell turned suddenly + pale and fled from the room. "Nothing but fancy," remarked the + hostess, composedly. When several years ago there was a proposal + that we should feed upon horse-flesh, and a purveyor of that dainty + opened a shop in Mayfair, Lady Dorothy was one of the first of his + customers. She sallied forth in person, followed by a footman with + a basket, and bought a joint in the presence of a jeering populace. + + She had complete courage and absolute tolerance. Sometimes she + pretended to be timid or fanatical, but that was only her fun. Her + toleration and courage would have given her a foremost place among + philanthropists or social reformers, if her tendencies had been + humanitarian. She might have been another Elizabeth Fry, another + Florence Nightingale. But she had no impulse whatever towards + active benevolence, nor any interest in masses of men and women. + And, above all, she was not an actor, but a spectator in life, and + she evaded, often with droll agility, all the efforts which people + made to drag her into propagandas of various kinds. She listened to + what they had to say, and she begged for the particulars of + specially awful examples of the abuses they set out to remedy. She + was all sympathy and interest, and the propagandist started with + this glittering ally in tow; but he turned, and where was she? She + had slipped off, and was in contemplation of some other scheme of + experience. + + She described her life to me, in 1901, as a "treadmill of + friendship, perpetually on the go"; and later she wrote: "I am + hampered by perpetual outbursts of hospitality in every shape." + Life was a spectacle to her, and society a congeries of little + _guignols_, at all of which she would fain be seated, in a front + stall. If she complained that hospitality "hampered" her, it was + not that it interfered with any occupation or duty, but simply that + she could not eat luncheon at three different houses at once. I + remember being greatly amused when I congratulated her on having + enjoyed some eminent public funeral, by her replying, grudgingly: + "Yes--but I lost another most interesting ceremony through its + being at the same hour." She grumbled: "People are tugging me to + go and see things," not from any shyness of the hermit or + reluctance to leave her home, but simply because she would gladly + have yielded to them all. "Such a nuisance one can't be in two + places at once, like a bird!" she remarked to me. + + In this relation, her attitude to country life was droll. After + long indulgence in her amazing social energy in London, she would + suddenly become tired. The phenomenon never ceased to surprise her; + she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this + must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to + Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the + soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss + of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the + future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short + while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, D.N.," would show the + dawn of a return to nature. Then _boutades_ of increasing vehemence + would mark the rising impatience. Sept 12: "How dreadful it is that + the country is so full of ladies." Sept. 15: "I am surrounded by + tall women and short women, all very tiresome." Sept. 20: "So dull + here, except for one pleasant episode of a drunken housemaid." + Sept. 23: "Oh! I am so longing for the flesh-pots of dear dirty old + London"; and then one knew that her return to Charles Street would + not be long delayed. She was very fond indeed of country life, for + a short time, and she was interested in gardens, but she really + preferred streets. "Eridge is such a paradise--especially the + quadrupeds," she once wrote to me from a house in which she found + peculiar happiness. But she liked bipeds best. + + However one may postpone the question, sooner or later it is + necessary to consider the quality of Lady Dorothy Nevill's wit, + since all things converge in her to that. But her wit is so + difficult to define that it is not surprising that one avoids, as + long as possible, coming actually to grips with it. We may lay the + foundation of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound + of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality of speech. + The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly + intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of + such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who + enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with + annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did + not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of + solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right + and sane; it was exhilarating to a high degree; it was lighted up + by merriment, and piquancy, and salt; but it was the result of a + kind of magic which needed the wand of the magician; it could not + be reproduced by an imitator. It is very unfortunate, but the fact + has to be faced. When we tell our grandchildren that Lady Dorothy + Nevill was the finest female wit of her age, they will ask us for + examples of her talent, and we shall have very few to give. + + She liked to discuss people better than books or politics or + principles, although she never shrank from these. But it was what + she said about human beings that kept her interlocutors hanging on + her lips. She made extraordinarily searching strictures on persons, + without malice, but without nonsense of any kind. Her own + favourites were treated with reserve in this respect: it was as + though they were put in a pen by themselves, not to be criticised + so long as they remained in favour; and she was not capricious, + was, on the contrary, conspicuously loyal. But they always had the + impression that it was only by special licence that they escaped + the criticism that every one else was subjected to. Lady Dorothy + Nevill was a stringent observer, and no respecter of persons. She + carried a bow, and shot at folly as it flew. But I particularly + wish to insist on the fact that her arrows, though they were + feathered, were not poisoned. + + Light was thrown on the nature of Lady Dorothy's wit by her + correspondence. She could in no accepted sense be called a good + letter-writer, although every now and then brilliantly amusing + phrases occurred in her letters. I doubt whether she ever wrote one + complete epistle; her correspondence consisted of tumultuous, + reckless, sometimes extremely confused and incorrect notes, which, + however, repeated--for those who knew how to interpret her + language--the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with + her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary + value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, + and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was + generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what + stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She once wrote to me: "I + should like to tell you all about it, but alas! old Horace + Walpole's talent has not descended on me." Unfortunately, that was + true; so far as literary expression and the construction of + sentences went, it had not. Her correspondence could never be given + to the world, because it would need to be so much revised and + expanded and smoothed out that it would no longer be hers at all. + + Nevertheless, her reckless notes were always delightful to receive, + because they gave the person to whom they were addressed a + reflection of the writer's mood at the moment. They were ardent and + personal, in their torrent of broken sentences, initials, mis-spelt + names and nouns that had dropped their verbs. They were not so good + as her talk, but they were like enough to it to be highly + stimulating and entertaining; and in the course of them phrases + would be struck out, like sparks from flint, which were nearly as + good, and of the very same quality, as the things she used to say. + She wrote her letters on a fantastic variety of strangely coloured + paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey, + paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or frilled like + a lace handkerchief, or embossed with forget-me-nots like a child's + valentine. She had tricks of time-saving; always put "I" for "one," + and "x" for "cross," a word which she, who was never cross, loved + to use. "I did not care for any of the guests; we seemed to live in + a storm of x questions and crooked answers," she would write, or "I + am afraid my last letter was rather x." + + Lady Dorothy, as a letter-writer, had no superstitious reverence + for the parts of speech. Like M. Bergeret, she "se moquait de + l'orthographie comme une chose méprisable." The spelling in her + tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the + seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of + her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected + her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering + denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns + and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to + 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most + of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to + him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.," + she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from + "Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she + had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to + recognise the author of _English Monastic Life_. She would laugh + herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her + about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be + a bright specimen--like you!" When she made arrangements to come to + see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always + wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle. + + One curious observation which the recipient of hundreds of her + notes is bound to make, is the remarkable contrast between the + general tone of them and the real disposition of their writer. Lady + Dorothy Nevill in person was placid, indulgent, and calm; she never + raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her + individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the + amused and attentive spectator in the theatre of life. But in her + letters she pretended to be, or supposed herself called upon to + seem, passionate and distracted. They are all twinkling with + humorous or petulant exaggeration. She happens to forget an + engagement, which was of no sort of importance, and this is how she + apologises:-- + + "To think that every hour since you said you would come I have + repeated to myself--Gosse at 5, Gosse at 5, and then after all to + go meandering off and leaving you to cuss and swear on the + doorstep, and you will never come again now, really. No punishment + here or hereafter will be too much for me. Lead me to the Red Hill + Asylum, and leave me there." + + This was written nearly twenty years ago, and she was not less + vivacious until the end. Lord Lansdowne tells me of an anonymous + letter which he once received, to which she afterwards pleaded + guilty. A cow used to be kept at the back of Lansdowne House, and + the animal, no doubt feeling lonely, was in the habit of lowing at + all sorts of hours. The letter, which was supposed to voice the + complaint of the neighbours in Charles Street, was couched in the + broadest Wiltshire dialect, and ended with the postscript: "Dang + 'un, there 'ee goes again!" As a matter of fact, her letters, about + which she had no species of vanity or self-consciousness, were to + her merely instruments of friendship. There was an odd mingling of + affection and stiffness in them. She marshalled her acquaintances + with them, and almost invariably they were concerned with + arrangements for meeting or explanations of absence. In my own + experience, I must add that she made an exception when her friends + were abroad, when she took considerable pains to tell them the + gossip, often in surprising terms. I was once regaled with her + experiences as the neighbour of a famous African magnate, and with + the remark, "Mrs. ----," a London fine lady of repute, "has been + here, and has scraped the whole inside out of Mr. ----, and gone + her way rejoicing." Nor did she spare the correspondent himself:-- + + "Old Dr. ---- has been here, and tells me he admires you very much; + but I believe he has lost his memory, and he never had good taste + at any time." + + This was not a tribute which self-esteem could hug to its bosom. Of + a very notorious individual she wrote to me:-- + + "I thought I should never be introduced to him, and I had to wait + 100 years, but everything is possible in the best of worlds, and he + was very satisfactory at last." Satisfactory! No word could be more + characteristic on the pen of Lady Dorothy. To be "satisfactory," + whether you were the President of the French Republic or Lord + Wolseley or the Human Elephant (a pathetic freak in whom she took a + great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her + unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by + Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he + did his job thoroughly. The only entirely unsatisfactory people + were those who were insipid, conventional, and empty. "The first + principle of society should be to extinguish the bores," she once + said. I remember going with her to the Zoo in 1898, and being + struck with a remark which she made, not because it was important, + but because it was characteristic. We were looking at the wolves + which she liked; and then, close by, she noticed some kind of + Indian cow. "What a bore for the wolves to have to live opposite a + cow!" and then, as if talking to herself, "I do hate a ruminant!" + + Her relations to literature, art, and science were spectacular + also. She was a sympathetic and friendly onlooker, always on the + side of those things against the Philistines, but not affecting + special knowledge herself. She was something of a virtuoso. She + once said, "I have a passion for reading, but on subjects which + nobody else will touch," and this indicated the independence of her + mind. She read to please herself, and to satisfy her thirst for + experience. When our friendship began, Zola was in the act of + producing the tremendous series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. It + was one of our early themes of conversation. Zola was then an + object of shuddering horror to the ordinary English reader. Lady + Dorothy had already read _L'Assommoir_, and had not shrunk from it; + so I ventured to tell her of _La Terre_, which was just appearing. + She wrote to me about it: "I have been reading Zola. He takes the + varnish off rural life, I must say. Oh! these horrid demons of + Frenchmen know how to write. Even the most disgusting things they + know how to describe poetically. I wish Zola could describe + Haslemere with all the shops shut, rain falling, and most of the + inhabitants in their cups." She told me later--for we followed our + Zola to _Lourdes_ and _Paris_--that some young Oxford prig saw _La + Bête Humaine_ lying on the table at Charles Street, and remarked + that Lady Dorothy could surely not be aware that that was "no book + for a lady." She said, "I told him it was just the book for me!" + + She read Disraeli's novels over again, from time to time, with a + renewal of sentiment. "I am dedicating my leisure hours to + _Endymion_. What a charm after the beef and mutton of ordinary + novels!" She gradually developed a cult for Swinburne, whom she had + once scorned; in her repentance after his death, she wrote: "I + never hear enough about that genius Swinburne! My heart warms when + I think of him and read his poems." I think she was very much + annoyed that he had never been a visitor at Charles Street. When + Verlaine was in England, to deliver a lecture, in 1894, Lady + Dorothy was insistent that, as I was seeing him frequently, I + should bring the author of _Parallelement_ to visit her. She + said--I think under some illusion--"Verlaine is one of my pet + poets, though," she added, "not of this world." I was obliged to + tell her that neither Verlaine's clothes, nor his person, nor his + habits, admitted of his being presented in Mayfair, and that, + indeed, it was difficult to find a little French eating-house in + Soho where he could be at home. She then said: "Why can't you take + me to see him in this eating-house?" I had to explain that of the + alternatives that was really the least possible. She was not + pleased. + + Nor am I pleased with this attempt of mine to draw the features of + our wonderful fairy friend. However I may sharpen the pencil, the + line it makes is still too heavy. I feel that these anecdotes seem + to belie her exquisite refinement, the rapidity and delicacy of her + mental movement. To tell them is like stroking the wings of a moth. + Above all, it is a matter of despair to attempt to define her + emotional nature. Lady Dorothy Nevill was possessed neither of + gravity nor of pathos; she was totally devoid of sentimentality. + This made it easy for a superficial observer to refuse to believe + that the author of so many pungent observations and such apparently + volatile cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in + company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, + and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was + shown, with great fidelity, to those whom she really honoured with + her favour. I do not know whether it would be strictly correct to + say that she had the genius of friendship, because that supposes a + certain initiative and action which were foreign to Lady Dorothy's + habits. But she possessed, to a high degree, the genius of + comradeship. She held the reins very tightly, and she let no one + escape whom she wished to retain. She took immense pains to + preserve her friendships, and indeed became, dear creature, a + little bit tyrannical at last. Her notes grew to be excessively + emphatic. She would begin a letter quite cheerfully with "Oh, you + demon!" or complain of "total and terrible neglect of an old + friend; I could fill this sheet of paper with an account of your + misdeeds!" She was ingenious in reproach: "I cannot afford to waste + penny after penny, and no assets forthcoming," or "I have only two + correspondents, and one of them is a traitor; I therefore cease to + write to you for ever!" This might sound formidable, but it was + only one of the constant surprises of her humour, and would be + followed next day by the most placable of notelets. + + Her curiosity with regard to life spread to her benevolences, which + often took somewhat the form of voyages of discovery. Among these + her weekly excursion to the London Hospital, in all weathers and in + every kind of cheap conveyance, was prominent. I have to confess + that I preferred that a visit to her should not be immediately + prefaced by one of these adventures among the "pore dear things" at + the hospital, because that was sure to mean the recital of some + gruesome operation she had heard of, or the details of some almost + equally gruesome cure. She enjoyed the whole experience in a way + which is blank to the professional humanitarian, but I suspect the + "pore dear things" appreciated her listening smile and sympathetic + worldliness much more than they would have done the admonitions of + a more conscious philanthropist. + + And, indeed, in retrospect, it is her kindliness that shines forth. + She followed all that her friends did, everything that happened to + those who were close to them. She liked always to receive the + tribute of what she called my "literary efforts," and was + ruthlessly sharp in observing announcements of them: "Publishing + again, and of course no copy for poor old me," when not a volume + had yet left the binders. She took up absurd little phrases with + delightful _camaraderie_; I have forgotten why at one time she + took to signing herself "Your Koh-i-Noor," and wrote: "If I can + hope to be the Koh-i-Noor of Mrs. Gosse's party, I shall be sure to + come on Monday." One might go on indefinitely reviving these + memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close + on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She + had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the + tone of her persiflage rather excessive; a few hours later came a + second note, which began: "You have made my life happier for me + these last years--you, and Lady Airlie, and dearest Winifred." From + her who never gave way to sentimentality in any form, and who + prided herself on being as rigid as a nut-cracker, this was worth + all the protestations of some more ebullient being. And there, dear + Lady Burghclere, I must leave this poor sketch for such approval as + you can bring yourself to give it. + + Very faithfully yours, + EDMUND GOSSE. + _January 1914._ + + +II + +LORD CROMER AS A MAN OF LETTERS + +In the obituary notices which attended the death of Lord Cromer, it was +necessary and proper that almost the whole space at the command of the +writers should be taken up by a sketch of his magnificent work as an +administrator, or, as the cant phrase goes, "an empire-builder." For +thirty years, during which time he advanced to be one of the most +powerful and efficient of proconsuls, he held a place in the political +world which arrested the popular imagination, and must continue to +outweigh all other aspects of his character. Of this side of Lord +Cromer's splendid career I am not competent to say a word. But there +was another facet of it, one more private and individual, which became +prominent after his retirement, I mean his intellectual and literary +activity, which I had the privilege of observing. It would be a pity, +perhaps, to let this be wholly submerged, and I propose to give, from my +own recollection, some features of it. Lord Cromer was the author of six +or seven published volumes, but these are before the public, and it is +needless to speak much about them. What may be found more interesting +are a few impressions of his attitude towards books and towards ideas. + +On the first occasion on which I met him, he was characteristic. It was +some fifteen years ago, at the time when the brilliant young politicians +who called themselves (or were rather ineptly called) the Hooligans had +the graceful habit of asking some of their elders to dine with them in a +private room of the House of Commons. At one of these little dinners the +only guests were Lord Cromer and myself. I had never seen him before, +and I regarded him with some awe and apprehension, but no words had +passed between us, when the division-bell rang, and our youthful hosts +darted from the room. + +The moment we were left alone, Lord Cromer looked across the deserted +tablecloth and said quietly, as though he were asking me to pass the +salt, "Where is Bipontium?" I was driven by sheer fright into an +exercise of intelligence, and answered at once, "I should think it must +be the Latin for Zweibrücken. Why?" "Oh! I saw this afternoon that my +edition of Diodorus Siculus was printed _ex typographia societatis +Bipontinæ_, and I couldn't imagine for the life of me what 'Bipontium' +was. No doubt you're quite right." Nothing could be more characteristic +of Lord Cromer's habit of mind than this sudden revulsion of ideas. His +active brain needed no preparation to turn from subject to subject, but +seemed to be always ready, at a moment's notice, to take up a fresh +line of thought with ardour. What it could not endure was to be left +stranded with no theme on which to expatiate. In succeeding years, when +it was often my daily enjoyment to listen to Lord Cromer's desultory +conversation, as it leaped from subject to subject, I often thought of +the alarming way in which "Bipontium" had pounced upon me at the +dinner-table in the House of Commons. + +Some years passed before I had the privilege of renewing my experience +of that evening. It was not until after his retirement from Egypt in the +autumn of 1907 that I saw him again, and not then for some months. He +returned, it will be remembered, in broken health. He used to say that +when King Edward VII. wrote out to Cairo, strongly pressing him to stay, +he had replied, in the words of Herodotus, "I am too old, oh King, and +too inactive; so bid thou one of the younger men here to do these +things." He very soon, however, recovered elasticity of mind and body +when the load of office was removed from his shoulders, and "inactive" +was the last epithet which could ever be applied to Lord Cromer. He +began to attend the House of Lords, but, like a wise man, he was in no +hurry to speak there till he had grown accustomed to the tone of the +place. His earliest utterance (I may note the date, February 6th, 1908) +we listened to with equal respect and curiosity; this was a new element +from which much enjoyment might be expected. + +This maiden speech was not long, but it produced a very happy +impression. The subject was the Anglo-Russian Convention, of which the +orator cordially approved, and I recall that a certain sensation was +caused by Lord Cromer's dwelling on the dangers of the Pan-Islamite +intrigues in Egypt. This is the sort of thing that the House of Lords +enjoys--a man of special knowledge speaking, almost confidentially, of +matters within his professional competency. During that year and the +next Lord Cromer spoke with increasing frequency. There were great +differences of opinion with regard to his efficiency in Parliament. I +may acknowledge that I was not an unmeasured admirer of his oratory. +When he rose from his seat on the Cross-bench, and advanced towards the +table, with a fine gesture of his leonine head, sympathy was always +mingled with respect. His independence and his honesty were patent, and +his slight air of authority satisfactory. His public voice was not +unpleasing, but when he was tired it became a little veiled, and he had +the sad trick of dropping it at the end of his sentences. I confess that +I sometimes found it difficult to follow what he was saying, and I do +not think that he understood how to fill a large space with his voice. +He spoke as a man accustomed to wind up the debates of a council sitting +round a table, rather than as a senator addressing the benches of +Parliament. + +He was interested in the art of eloquence, and fond of criticising in +private the methods of other speakers. He had a poor opinion of much +studied oratory, and used to declare that no one had ever convinced him +by merely felicitous diction. Perhaps he did not sufficiently realise +that his own strength of purpose offered rather a granitic surface to +persuasion. But no doubt he was right in saying that, coming as he did +from the florid East, he found English eloquence more plain and +businesslike than he left it. He used to declare that he never spoke +impromptu if he could possibly help doing so, and he made great fun of +the statesmen who say, "Little did I think when I came down to this +House to-day that I should be called upon to speak," and then pour out +by heart a Corinthian discourse. Lord Cromer always openly and frankly +prepared his speeches, and I have seen him entranced in the process. As +he always had a classical reference for everything he did, he was in the +habit of mentioning that Demosthenes also was unwilling to "put his +faculty at the mercy of Fortune." + +He became an habitual attendant at the House of Lords, and, while it was +sitting, he usually appeared in the Library about an hour before the +House met. He took a very lively interest in what was going on, +examining new books, and making a thousand suggestions. If the Lords' +Library contains to-day one of the most complete collections of Latin +and Greek literature in the country, this is largely due to the zeal of +Lord Cromer, who was always egging me on to the purchase of fresh +rarities. He was indefatigable in kindness, sending me booksellers' +catalogues in which curious texts were recorded, and scouring even Paris +and Leipzig in our behalf. When I entered into this sport so heartily as +to provide the Greek and Latin Fathers also for their Lordships, Lord +Cromer became unsympathetic. He had no interest whatever in Origen or +Tertullian, and I think it rather annoyed him to recall that several of +these oracles of the early Church had written in Greek. Nothing in +history or philosophy or poetry which the ancient world had handed down +to us came amiss to Lord Cromer, but I think he considered it rather +impertinent of the Fathers to have presumed to use the language of +Attica. He had not an ecclesiastical mind. + +Lord Cromer's familiar preoccupation with the classics was a point in +his mental habits which deserves particular attention. I have always +supposed that he inherited it from his mother, the Hon. Mrs. Baring, who +was a Windham. She was a woman of learning; and she is said to have +discomfited Sir William Harcourt at a dinner-table by quoting Lucan in +direct disproof of a statement about the Druids which he had been rash +enough to advance. She sang the odes of Anacreon to her son in his +infancy, and we may conjecture that she sowed in his bosom the seeds of +his love of antiquity. Lord Cromer made no pretension to be what is +called an "exact" scholar, but I think it is a mistake to say, as has +been alleged, that he did not take up the study of Latin and Greek until +middle life. It is true that he enjoyed no species of university +training, but passed from Woolwich straight into the diplomatic service. +In 1861, at the age of twenty, he was appointed A.D.C. to Sir Henry +Storks in the Ionian Islands, and I believe that one of the first things +he did was to look about for an instructor in ancient Greek. He found +one in a certain Levantine in Corfu, whose name was Romano, and their +studies opened with the odes of Anacreon. Whether this was a +coincidence, or a compliment to Mrs. Baring, I do not know. This is a +rather different account from what Lord Cromer gave in the preface to +his _Paraphrases_, but I report it on his own later authority. + +If his scholarship was not professorial, it was at least founded upon a +genuine and enduring love of the ancient world. I suppose that for fifty +years, after the episode in Corfu, however busy he was, however immersed +in Imperial policy, he rarely spent a day without some communing with +antiquity. He read Latin, and still more Greek, not in the spirit of a +pedant or a pedagogue, but genuinely for pleasure and refreshment. He +had no vanity about it, and if he had any doubt as to the meaning of a +passage he would "consult the crib," as he used to say. We may +conjecture further that he did not allow his curiosity to be balked by +the barrier of a hopelessly obscure passage, but leaped over it, and +went on. He always came back to Homer, whom he loved more than any other +writer of the world, and particularly to the _Iliad_, which I think he +knew nearly by heart. But he did not, as some pundits consider dignified +and necessary, confine himself to the reading of the principal classics +in order to preserve a pure taste. On the contrary, Lord Cromer, +especially towards the close of his life, pushed up into all the byways +of the Silver Age. As he invariably talked about the books he happened +to be reading, it was easy to trace his footsteps. Eight or nine years +ago he had a sudden passion for Empedocles, whose fragments he had found +collected and translated by Mr. Leonard, an American. Lord Cromer used +to march into the Library, and greet me by calling out, "Do you know? +Empedocles says" something or other, probably some parallelism with a +modern phrase, the detection of which always particularly amused Lord +Cromer. + +In 1908 he took a fancy to Theognis, whose works I procured for him at +the House of Lords, since he happened not to possess that writer at 36 +Wimpole Street. He would settle himself in an armchair in the +smoking-room, his eyes close to the book, and plunge into those dark +waters of the gnomic elegist. He loved maxims and the expression of +principles, and above all, as I have said, the discovery of identities +of thought between the modern and the ancient world. He was delighted +when he found in Theognis the proverb about having an ox on the tongue. +I suppose this was quite well known to the learned, but the charm of the +matter for Lord Cromer was that he was not deterred by any fear of +academic criticism, and found out these things for himself. He read +Theognis as other people read Rudyard Kipling, for stimulus and +pleasure. He swept merely "scholarly" questions aside. He read his +_Iliad_ like a love-letter, but he was bored to death by discussions +about the authorship of the Homeric epics. + +In one matter, the serene good sense which was so prominently +characteristic of Lord Cromer tinged his attitude towards the classics. +He was not at all like Thomas Love Peacock, who entreated his friends to +desist from mentioning anything that had happened in the world for the +last 2,000 years. On the contrary, Lord Cromer was always bent on +binding the old and the new together. It was very noticeable in his +conversation that he was fond of setting classic instances side by side +with modern ones. If books dealt with this parallelism, they exercised a +charm over Lord Cramer's imagination which may sometimes have led him a +little astray about their positive value. I recall a moment when he was +completely under the sway of M. Ferrero's _Greatness and Decline of +Rome_, largely because of the pertinacity with which the Italian +historian compares Roman institutions with modern social arrangements. +It was interesting to the great retired proconsul to discover that +Augustus "considered that in the majority of cases subject peoples had +to be governed through their own national institutions." It is scarcely +necessary to point out that these analogies form the basis of what is, +perhaps, Lord Cromer's most important late essay, his _Ancient and +Modern Imperialism_. + +In a practical administration of India and Egypt, those oceans of +unplumbed antiquity, the ordinary British official has neither time nor +taste to do more than skim the surface of momentary experience. But Lord +Cromer had always been acutely aware of the mystery of the East, and +always looked back into the past with deep curiosity. Sometimes the +modern life in Egypt, exciting as it was, almost seemed to him a +phantasmagoria dancing across the real world of Rameses. This tendency +of thought coloured one branch of his reading; he could not bear to miss +a book which threw any light on the social and political manners of +antiquity. Works like Fowler's _Social Life at Rome_ or Marquardt's _Le +Culte chez les Romains_ thrilled him with excitement and animated his +conversation for days. He wanted, above all things, to realise how the +ancients lived and what, feelings actuated their behaviour. On one +occasion, in a fit of gaiety, I ventured to tell him that he reminded me +of Mrs. Blimber (in _Dombey and Son_), who could have died contented had +she visited Cicero in his retirement at beautiful Tusculum. "Well!" +replied Lord Cromer, laughing, "and a very delightful visit that would +be." + +In the admirable appreciation contributed to the _Times_ by "C." (our +other proconsular "C."!) it was remarked that the "quality of mental +balance is visible in all that Lord Cromer wrote, whether, in his +official despatches, his published books, or his private +correspondence." It was audible, too, in his delightful conversation, +which was vivid, active, and yet never oppressive. He spoke with the +firm accent of one accustomed to govern, but never dictatorially. His +voice was a very agreeable one, supple and various in its tones, neither +loud nor low. Although he had formed the life-long habit of expressing +his opinions with directness, he never imposed them unfairly, or took +advantage of his authority. On the contrary, there was something +extremely winning in his eagerness to hear the reply of his +interlocutor. "Well, there's a great deal in that," he would graciously +and cordially say, and proceed to give the opposing statement what +benefit he thought it deserved. He could be very trenchant, but I do not +think that any one whom he had advanced to the privilege of his +confidence can remember that he was so to a friend. + +The attitude of Lord Cromer to life and letters--I speak, of course, +only of what I saw in the years of his retirement from office--was not +exactly representative of our own or even of the last century. He would +have been at home in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, +before the French Revolution. I judge him to have been born with an +inflexible and commanding character, which in the person of many men +exposed to such dangerous successes as he enjoyed might have degenerated +into tyranny. On Lord Cromer, on the other hand, time produced a +humanising and mellowing effect. It may very well prove that he has +stamped his mark on the East of the twentieth century, as Turgot did his +on the West of the nineteenth century; but without straying into the +perilous fields of prophecy we are safe in recording the impression that +Lord Cromer was not altogether a man of to-day; he looked forward and he +looked backward. Probably the nearest counterpart to his manner of mind +and conversation may be found in the circle of whom we read in the +_Diary_ of Fanny Burney. We can conceive Lord Cromer leaning against the +Committee Box in earnest conversation with Mr. Windham and Mr. Burke at +Warren Hastings' trial. We can restore the half-disdainful gesture with +which he would drop an epigram ("from the Greek") into the Bath Easton +Vase. His politeness and precision, his classical quotations, his +humour, his predilections in literature and art, were those of the inner +circle of Whigs nearly a century and a half ago, and I imagine that +their talk was very much like his. + +He was fond of repeating Bagehot's description of the Whigs, and it +seems to me to apply so exactly to himself that I will quote part of +it:-- + + "Perhaps as long as there has been a political history in this + country there have been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute + firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little prone to + enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and + speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of + the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong conviction + that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief that + the present would, can, and should be quietly improved." + +In a full analysis of Lord Cromer's character, I think that every clause +of this description might be expanded with illustrations. In the +intellectual domain, Bagehot's words, "little prone to enthusiastic +sentiment," seem made to fit Lord Cromer's detachment from all the +tendencies of romanticism. His literary tastes were highly developed +and eagerly indulged, but they were all in their essence +pre-Revolutionary. Those who are familiar with a book once famous, the +_Diary of a Lover of Literature_ of Thomas Green, written down to the +very end of the eighteenth century, have in their hands a volume in +which the very accents of Lord Cromer may seem to be heard. Isaac +d'Israeli said that Green had humbled all modern authors in the dust; +Lord Cromer had a short way with many of the writers most fashionable at +this moment. When he was most occupied with the resuscitations of +ancient manners, of which I have already spoken, I found to my surprise +that he had never read _Marius the Epicurean_. I recommended it to him, +and with his usual instant response to suggestion, he got it at once and +began reading it. But I could not persuade him to share my enthusiasm, +and, what was not like him, he did not read _Marius_ to the end. The +richness and complication of Pater's style annoyed him. He liked prose +to be clear and stately; he liked it, in English, to be Addisonian. Even +Gibbon-though he read _The Decline and Fall_ over again, very carefully, +so late as 1913--was not entirely to his taste. He enjoyed the limpidity +and the irony, but the sustained roll of Gibbon's antitheses vexed him a +little. He liked prose to be quite simple. + +In many ways, Lord Cromer, during those long and desultory conversations +about literature which will be so perennial a delight to look back upon, +betrayed his constitutional detestation of the Romantic attitude. He +believed himself to be perfectly catholic in his tastes, and resented +the charge of prejudice. But he was, in fact, irritated by the excesses +and obscurities of much that is fashionable to-day in the world of +letters, and he refused his tribute of incense to several popular idols. +He thought that, during the course of the nineteenth century, German +influences had seriously perturbed the balance of taste in Europe. I do +not know that Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or +that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was +very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always +found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical +order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as +he should not be drawn to the pathetic figure of Pascal, but he was +puzzled by him. He described him as "manifestly a man full of contrasts, +difficult to understand, and as many-sided as Odysseus." On another +occasion, losing patience with Pascal, he called him "a half-lunatic man +of genius." Fénélon annoyed him still more; the spiritual experiences of +the Archbishop of Cambrai he found "almost incomprehensible." His +surprising, but after all perfectly consistent, comment on both Fénélon +and Pascal was, "How much more easy Buffon is to understand!" + +He recommended all young men who intend to take a part in politics +carefully to study pre-Revolutionary history, and one of his objections +to the romantic literature of Rousseau downwards was that it did not +help such study. It was too individualistic in its direction. It tended, +moreover, Lord Cromer thought, to disturb the balance of judgment, that +"level-headedness" which he valued so highly, and had exercised with +such magnificent authority. He disliked the idea that genius involved a +lack of sanity, or, in other words, of self-command. He regretted that +Dryden had given general currency to this idea by his famous lines in +_Absalom and Achitophel_:-- + + "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, + And thin partitions do their bounds divide;" + +but Lord Cromer was himself, perhaps, too ready to account by insanity +for every odd or confused expression in literature. He had nothing to +say about Mazzini, whom he swept aside impatiently, except that he "was +a semi-lunatic," and I have heard him declare of Chatterton and +Verlaine--a strange couple--that they were a pair of madmen. He objected +violently to Baudelaire, but I think he knew very little about that +poet's works. + +If I mention these things, it is because they seem to be necessary to +give human character to any sketch of the mind of Lord Cromer. He +himself hated mere eulogy, which he said had ruined most of the +biographies of the world. The official lives of Disraeli and Gladstone +did not escape a measure of his blame in this respect, and it will be +recalled that resentment against what he thought a shadowless portrait +led to his own very vivacious paper on Disraeli, which he afterwards +issued as a pamphlet. He was an avid reader of memoirs, and of political +memoirs in particular, but he almost always passed upon them the same +criticism--that they were too _public_. "I don't want Mr. ----," he +would say, "to tell me what I can learn for myself by turning up the +file of the _Morning Post_. I want him to tell me what I can't find out +elsewhere. And he need not be so very much afraid of hinting that his +hero had faults, for if he had not had defects we should never have +heard of his qualities. We are none of us perfect, and we don't want a +priggish biographer to pretend that we are." He was speaking here mainly +of political matters; but Lord Cromer's training and experience had a +strong bearing on his literary tastes. With him politics reacted on +literature, although he liked to fancy that he kept them wholly apart. + +No doubt a selection from his correspondence will one day be given to +the world, for he was a vivid, copious, and daring letter-writer. I +suppose that he wrote to each of his friends mainly on the subject which +absorbed that friend most, and as his own range of sympathies and +interests was very wide, it is probable that his letters will prove +excellent general reading. As in so many other of the departments of +life, Lord Cromer did not think letter-writing a matter to be lightly +regarded or approached without responsibility. He said:-- + + "There are two habits which I have contracted, and which I have + endeavoured to pass on to my children, as I have found them useful. + One is to shut the door after me when I leave the room, and the + other is always to affix the day of the month and the year to every + document, however unimportant, that I sign. I have received numbers + of letters, not only from women, one of whose numerous privileges + it is to be vague, but also from men in high official positions, + dated with the day of the week only. When the document is + important, such a proceeding is a fraud on posterity." + +He often, both in conversation and in letters, took up one of his +favourite classic tags, and wove a shrewd modern reflection round it. +For instance, a couple of years before the war, a phrase of Aristotle +recommending a ruthless egotism in the conduct of war, led him to say:-- + + "I think that at times almost every modern nation has acted on this + principle, though they gloss it over with fine words. Its principal + exponents of late have unquestionably been the Hohenzollerns." + +And, in connection with the axiom of Thucydides that war educates +through violence, he wrote, about the same time:-- + + "The Germans, who, in spite of their culture, preserve a strain of + barbarism in their characters, are the modern representatives of + this view. There is just this amount of truth in it--that at the + cost of undue and appalling sacrifices, war brings out certain + fine qualities in individuals, and sometimes in nations." + +This may, surely, be taken as a direct prophecy of the magnificent +effort of France. Lord Cromer's reflections, thrown off in the warmth of +personal contact, often had a pregnant directness. For instance, how +good this is:-- + + "The prejudice against the BÅ“otians was probably in a large + measure due to the fact that, as the late Lord Salisbury might have + said, they 'put their money on the wrong horse' during the Persian + war. So also, it may be observed, did the oracle at Delphi." + +Lord Cromer's public speeches and published writings scarcely give a +hint of his humour, which was lambent and sometimes almost boyish. He +loved to be amused, and he repaid his entertainer by being amusing. I +suppose that after his return from Cairo he allowed this feature of his +character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked +upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was +not the man, we may be sure, to be funny with a Young Turk, or to crack +needless jokes with a recalcitrant Khedive. But retirement softened him, +and the real nature of Lord Cromer, with its elements of geniality and +sportiveness, came into full play. + +Eight years ago, I regret to admit, Mr. Lloyd George was not the +universal favourite in the House of Lords that he has since become. Lord +Cromer was one of those who were not entirely reconciled to the +financial projects of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. He compared +the Chancellor with Pescennius Niger, + + "who aspired to be Emperor after the death of Pertinax, and was + already Governor of Syria. On being asked by the inhabitants of + that province to diminish the land tax, he replied that, so far as + he was concerned, not only would he effect no diminution, but he + regretted that he could not tax the air which they breathed." + +The strained relations between Mr. Lloyd George and the House of Lords +inspired Lord Cromer with a really delightful parallel from Dryden's +_Absalom and Achitophel_ (which, by the way, was one of his favourite +poems):-- + + "Thus, worn or weakened, well or ill content, + Submit they must to DAVID'S government; + Impoverished and deprived of all command, + Their taxes doubled as they lost their land; + And--what was harder yet to flesh and blood, + Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood." + +When he pointed this out to me, I entreated him to introduce it into a +speech on the Budget. But he said that he was not sure of his audience, +and then it was most painful to an orator to make a literary reference +which was not taken up. Once at Sheffield, when he was urging the +necessity of a strong Navy upon a large public meeting, he quoted +Swinburne's splendid lines:-- + + "All our past comes wailing in the wind, + And all our future thunders on the sea," + +without producing any effect at all. But the House of Lords is not an +illiterate audience, and I recollect that on one occasion, when Lord +Cromer himself was speaking on preferential treatment for the Colonies, +and quoted Prior:-- + + "Euphemia (that is Preference) serves to grace my measure, + But Chloe (that is Protection) is my real flame," + +the Peers received the couplet with hilarious appreciation. + +He was very entertaining about the oddities of his life in the East, and +his stories were numberless. One was of a petition which he once +received from a young Egyptian with a grievance, which opened with these +words:-- + + "O Hell! Lordship's face grow red when he hear quite ghastly + behaviour of Public Works Department towards our humble servant." + +He used to repeat these things with an inimitable chuckle of enjoyment. + +We have been told that he who blows through bronze may breathe through +silver. The severe preoccupations of Lord Cromer's public life did not +prevent him from sedulously cultivating the art of verse. In 1903, +before his retirement from Egypt, he published a volume of _Paraphrases +and Translations from the Greek_, in the preparation or selection of +which I believe that he enjoyed the advice of Mr. Mackail. It was rather +unlucky that, with a view to propitiate the angry critics, Lord Cromer +prefixed to this little book a preface needlessly modest. He had no +cause to apologise so deeply for exercises which were both elegant and +learned. It is a curious fact that, in this collection of paraphrases, +the translator did not touch the Attic authors whom he knew so well--he +used to copy out pages of Æschylus and Sophocles in his loose Greek +script, with notes of his own--but dealt entirely with lyric and +epigrammatic poets of the Alexandrian age. Perhaps it seemed to him less +daring to touch them than to affront Æschylus. He was not quite sure +about these verses of his; he liked them, and then he was afraid that +they were unworthy of the original. Out in Cairo it was so difficult, he +said, to get a critical opinion. + +Among his unpublished translations there is one, from a fragment of +Euripides, which should not be lost, if only because Lord Cromer himself +liked it better than any other of his versions. It runs:-- + + "I learn what may be taught; + I seek what may be sought; + My other wants I dare + To ask from Heaven in prayer." + +Of his satirical _vers-de-société_, which it amused him to distribute in +private, he never, I believe, gave any to the world, but they deserve +preservation. Some serious reflections on the advantages of the British +occupation of Egypt close with the quotation:-- + + "Let them suffice for Britain's need-- + No nobler prize was ever won-- + The blessings of a people freed, + The consciousness of duty done." + +These were, in a high degree, the rewards of Lord Cromer himself. + +After his settlement in London, Mr. T.E. Page sent him a book, called +_Between Whiles_, of English verse translated into Latin and Greek. Lord +Cromer was delighted with this, and the desire to write in metre +returned to him. He used to send his friends, in letters, little +triolets and epigrams, generally in English, but sometimes in Greek. But +he was more ambitious than this. So lately as February 1911, during the +course of one of our long conversations upon literature, he asked me to +suggest a task of translation on which he could engage. It was just the +moment when he was particularly busy with Constitutional Free Trade and +Woman Suffrage and other public topics, but that made no difference. It +had always seemed to me that he had been most happy in his versions of +the Bucolic poets, and so I urged him to continue his translations by +attempting the _Europa_ of Moschus. He looked at it, and pronounced it +unattractive. I was therefore not a little surprised to receive a +letter, on March 25th, in which he said:-- + + "Not sleeping very well last night, I composed in my head these few + lines merely as a specimen to begin _Europa_:-- + + "When dawn is nigh, at the third watch of night, + What time, more sweet than honey of the bee, + Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, + To lift the veil which hides futurity, + Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar + The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes + Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, + And she, Europa, was the victor's prize." + + "They are, of course, only a first attempt, and I do not think much + of them myself. But do you think the sort of style and metre + suitable?" + +He went steadily on till he completed the poem, and on April 27th I +received a packet endorsed "Patched-up Moschus returned herewith." So +far as I know, this version of the _Europa_, conducted with great spirit +in his seventieth year, has never been published. It is the longest and +most ambitious of all his poetical experiments. + +Lord Cromer was fond of saying that he considered the main beauty of +Greek poetry to reside in its simplicity. In all his verses he aimed at +limpidity and ease. He praised the Greek poets for not rhapsodising +about the beauties of nature, and this was very characteristic of his +own eighteenth-century habit of mind. His general attitude to poetry, +which he read incessantly and in four languages, was a little difficult +to define. He was ready to give lists of his life-long prime favourites, +and, as was very natural, these differed from time to time. But one list +of the books he had "read more frequently than any other" consisted of +the _Iliad_, the Book of Job, _Tristram Shandy_, and _Pickwick_, to +which he added _Lycidas_ and the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It would +require a good deal of ingenuity to bring these six masterpieces into +line. He was consistent in declaring that the 28th chapter of Job was +"the finest bit of poetry ever written." + +He was violently carried away in 1912 by reading Mr. Livingstone's book +on _The Greek Genius_. It made him a little regret the pains he had +expended on the Hymns of Callimachus and the Bucolics of Theocritus, +and he thought that perhaps he ought to have confined himself to the +severer and earlier classics. But surely he had followed his instinct, +and it would have been a pity if he had narrowed his range. It was the +modernness of the Alexandrian authors, and perhaps their Egyptian +flavour, which had justly attracted him. He did not care very much for +an antiquity which he could not revivify for his own vision. I urged him +to read a book which had fascinated me, _The Religion of Numa_, by a +learned American, the late Mr. Jesse Carter. Lord Cromer read it with +respect, but he admitted that those earliest Roman ages were too remote +and cold for him. + +Lord Cromer was very much annoyed with Napoleon for having laid it down +that _après soixante ans, un homme ne vaut rien_. The rash dictum had +certainly no application to himself. It is true that, under the strain +of the long tropical years, his bodily health declined as he approached +the age of sixty. But his mental activity, his marvellous receptivity, +were not merely maintained, but seemed steadily to advance. He continued +to be consumed by that lust for knowledge, _libido sciendi_, which he +admired in the ancient Greeks. When the physicians forbade him, four +years ago, to expend his failing strength any longer on political and +social propaganda, instead of retiring, as most men of his age would +have done, to dream in the recesses of his library, he plunged with +renewed ardour into the one occupation still permitted to him: +literature. The accident of his publishing a criticism which excited +wide popular attention led to his becoming, when past his seventieth +birthday, a "regular reviewer" for the _Spectator_, where the very +frequent papers signed "C." became a prominent feature. Those articles +were, perhaps, most remarkable for the light they threw on the writer's +own temperament, on his insatiable desire for knowledge. Lord Cromer's +curiosity in all intellectual directions was, to the last, like that of +a young man beginning his mental career; and when he adopted the +position, so uncommon in a man of his experience and authority, of a +reviewer of current books, it was because he wished to share with others +the excitement he himself enjoyed in the tapping of fresh sources of +information. + + +III + +THE LAST DAYS OF LORD REDESDALE + +The publication of Lord Redesdale's _Memories_--which was one of the +most successful autobiographies of recent times--familiarised thousands +of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but, +when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his taste +and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his +earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one. He +took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become a +classic--_Tales of Old Japan_. He did not immediately pursue this +success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which +distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out _The +Bamboo Garden_, and from that time--until, in his eightieth year, he +died in full intellectual energy--he constantly devoted himself to the +art of writing. His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was +impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and +that zeal suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his +life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He +retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain +stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself was always acutely +conscious. + +This did not interfere with the direct and sincere appeal made to +general attention by the 1915 _Memories_, a book so full of geniality +and variety, so independent in its judgments and so winning in its +ingenuousness, that its wider popularity could be the object of no +surprise. But, to those who knew Lord Redesdale intimately, it must +always appear that his autobiography fails to explain him from what we +may call the subjective point of view. It tells us of his adventures and +his friendships, of the strange lands he visited and of the unexpected +confidences he received, but it does not reveal very distinctly the +character of the writer. There is far more of his intellectual +constitution, of his personal tastes and mental habits, in the volume of +essays of 1912, called _A Tragedy in Stone_, but even here much is left +unsaid and even unsuggested. + +Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Lord Redesdale was the redundant +vitality of his character. His nature swarmed with life, like a drop of +pond-water under a microscope. There cannot be found room in any one +nature for all the qualities, and what he lacked in some degree was +concentration. But very few men who have lived in our complicated age +have done well in so many directions as he, or, aiming widely, have +failed in so few. He shrank from no labour and hesitated before no +difficulty, but pushed on with an extraordinary energy along many +various lines of activity. But the two lines in which he most desired +and most determined to excel, gardening and authorship, are scarcely to +be discerned, except below the surface, in his _Memories_. Next to his +books, what he regarded with most satisfaction was his wonderful garden +at Batsford, and of this there is scarcely a word of record in the +autobiography. He had always intended to celebrate this garden, and when +he was preparing to return to Batsford in 1915 he wrote to me that he +was going to write an _Apologia pro Horto meo_, as long before he had +composed one _pro Banibusis meis_. A book which should combine with the +freest fancies of his intellect a picture of the exotic groves of +Batsford was what was required to round off Lord Redesdale's literary +adventures. It will be seen that he very nearly succeeded in thus +setting the top-stone on his literary edifice. + +One reason, perhaps, why Batsford, which was ever present to his +thoughts, is so very slightly and vaguely mentioned in Lord Redesdale's +_Memories_, may be the fact that from 1910 onwards he was not living in +it himself, and that it was irksome to him to magnify in print +horticultural beauties which were for the time being in the possession +of others. The outbreak of the war, in which all his five sons were +instantly engaged, was the earliest of a series of changes which +completely altered the surface of Lord Redesdale's life. Batsford came +once more into his personal occupation, and at the same time it became +convenient to give up his London house in Kensington Court. Many things +combined to transform his life in the early summer of 1915. His eldest +son, Major the Hon. Clement Mitford, after brilliantly distinguishing +himself in battle, was received by the King and decorated, to the +rapturous exultation of his father. Major Mitford returned to the French +front, only to fall on May 13th, 1915. + +At this time I was seeing Lord Redesdale very frequently, and I could +not but be struck by the effect of this blow upon his temperament. After +the first shock of sorrow, I observed in him the determination not to +allow himself to be crushed. His dominant vitality asserted itself +almost with violence, and he seemed to clench his tooth in defiance of +the assault on his individuality. It required on the part of so old a +man no little fortitude, for it is easier to bear a great and heroic +bereavement than to resist the wearing vexation of seeing one's system +of daily occupation crumbling away. Lord Redesdale was pleased to be +going again to Batsford, which had supplied him in years past with so +much sumptuous and varied entertainment, but it was a matter of alarm +with him to give up all, or almost all, the various ties with London +which had meant so much to his vividly social nature. + +Meanwhile, during the early months of 1915 in London, he had plenty of +employment in finishing and revising his _Memories_, which it had taken +him two years to write. This was an occupation which bridged over the +horrid chasm between his old active life in London, with its thousand +interests, and the uncertain and partly dreaded prospect of exile in the +bamboo-gardens of a remote corner of Gloucestershire, where he foresaw +that deafness must needs exclude him from the old activities of local +life. + +He finished revising the manuscript of his _Memories_ in July, and then +went down, while the actual transference of his home was taking place, +to the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, Cowes, where he had been accustomed +to spend some of the most enjoyable hours of his life. But this scene, +habitually thronged with people, and palpitating with gaiety, in the +midst of which Lord Redesdale found himself so singularly at home, was +now, more than perhaps any other haunt of the English sportsman, in +complete eclipse. The weather was lovely, but there were no yachts, no +old chums, no charming ladies. "It is very dull," he wrote; "the sole +inhabitant of the Club besides myself was Lord Falkland, and now he is +gone." In these conditions Lord Redesdale became suddenly conscious that +the activity of the last two or three years was over, that the aspect of +his world had changed, and that he was in danger of losing that hold +upon life to which he so resolutely clung. In conditions of this kind he +always turned to seek for something mentally "craggy," as Byron said, +and at Cowes he wonderfully found the writings of Nietzsche. The result +is described in a remarkable letter to myself (July 28th, 1915), which +I quote because it marks the earliest stage in the composition of his +last unfinished book:-- + + "I have been trying to occupy myself with Nietzsche, on the theory + that there must be something great about a man who exercised the + immense influence that he did. But I confess I am no convert to any + of his various moods. Here and there I find gems of thought, but + one has to wade through a morass of blue mud to get at them. Here + is a capital saying of his which may be new to you--in a letter to + his friend Rohde he writes: 'Eternally we need midwives in order to + be delivered of our thoughts,' We cannot work in solitude. 'Woe to + us who lack the sunlight of a friend's presence.' + + "How true that is! When I come down here, I think that with so much + time on my hands I shall be able to get through a pile of work. Not + a bit of it! I find it difficult even to write a note. To me it is + an imperative necessity to have the sympathetic counsel of a + friend." + +The letter continued with an impassioned appeal to his correspondent to +find some definite intellectual work for him to undertake. "You make me +dare, and that is much towards winning a game. You must sharpen my wits, +which are blunt enough just now." In short, it was a cry from the island +of boredom to come over the water and administer first-aid. + +Accordingly, I started for Cowes, and was welcomed at the pier with all +my host's habitual and vivacious hospitality. Scarcely were we seated in +our wicker-chairs in face of the Solent, not twinkling as usual with +pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than +he began the attack. "What am I to do with myself?" was the instant +question; "what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of +leisure?" To which the obvious reply was: "First of all, you must +exhibit to me the famous attractions of Cowes!" "There are none," he +replied in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit, +which extended over several radiant days of a perfect August, was +diversified with walks and excursions by land and water, in which my +companion was as active and as ardent as though he had been nineteen +instead of seventy-nine. In a suit picturesquely marine, with his +beautiful silver hair escaping from a jaunty yachting cap, he was the +last expression of vivacity and gaiety. + +The question of his intellectual occupation in the future came, however, +incessantly to the front; and our long talks in the strange and uncanny +solitude of the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle always came to this: What +task was he to take up next? His large autobiography was now coming back +to him from the printers in packets of proof, with which he was closeted +night and morning; and I suggested that while this was going on there +was no need for him to think about future enterprises. To tell the +truth, I had regarded the _Memories_ as likely to be the final labour of +Lord Redesdale's busy life. It seemed to me that at his advanced age he +might now well withdraw into dignified repose. I even hinted so much in +terms as delicate as I could make them, but the suggestion was not well +received. I became conscious that there was nothing he was so little +prepared to welcome as "repose"; that, in fact, the terror which +possessed him was precisely the dread of having to withdraw from the +stage of life. His deafness, which now began to be excessive, closed to +his eager spirit so many of the avenues of experience, that he was more +than ever anxious to keep clear those that remained to him, and of +these, literary expression came to be almost the only one left. In the +absence of a definite task his path in this direction led through +darkness. + +But it was not until after several suggestions and many conversations +that light was found. The friend so pressingly appealed to returned to +London, where he was stern in rejecting several projects, hotly flung at +his head and then coldly abandoned. A study of the Empress Maria +Theresa, suggested by a feverish perusal of Pechler, was the latest and +least attractive of these. Lord Redesdale then frankly demanded that a +subject should be found for him. "You have brought this upon yourself," +he said, "by encouraging me to write." What might prove the scheme of a +very pleasant book then occurred to me, and I suggested to the fiery and +impatient author, who had by this time retired for good to Batsford, +that he should compose a volume of essays dealing with things in +general, but bound together by a constantly repeated reference to his +wild garden of bamboos and the Buddha in his secret grove. The author +was to suppose himself seated with a friend on the terrace at the top of +the garden, and to let the idea of the bamboo run through the whole +tissue of reflections and reminiscences like an emerald thread. Lord +Redesdale was enchanted, and the idea took fire at once. He replied:-- + + "You are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones! I + shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now proceeding to + my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try to make a picture of + the VELUVANA, the bamboo-garden which was the first Vikara or + monastery of Buddha and his disciples. There I will sit, and, + looking on the great statue of Buddha in meditation, I shall begin + to arrange all sorts of wild imaginings which may come into my + crazy brain." + +In this way was started the book, of which, alas! only such fragments +were composed as form the earlier part of the volume published after his +death. It is, however, right to point out that for the too-brief +remainder of his life Lord Redesdale was eagerly set on the scheme of +which a hint has just been given. The _Veluvana_ was to be the crowning +production of his literary life, and it was to sum up the wisdom of the +East and the gaiety of the West. He spoke of it incessantly, in letters +and conversation. "That will do to go into _Veluvana_," was his cry when +he met with anything rare or strange. For instance, on September 15th, +1915, he wrote to me:-- + + "To-day, all of a sudden I was struck by the idea that plants, + having many human qualities, may also in some degree have human + motives--that they are not altogether mere automata--and as I + thought, I began to imagine that I could detect something + resembling purpose in the movements of certain plants. I have + jotted down a few notes, and you will see when I expand them that + at any rate the idea calls attention to the movements themselves, + some of which seem never to have been noticed at all, or certainly + at best very inadequately. You will see that this brings in the + bamboo-garden and Buddha, and so keeps to the scheme of + _Veluvana_." + +The monasteries of twelfth-century Japanese Buddhism, which he had +visited long before in the neighbourhood of Kioto, now recurred to his +memory, and he proposed to describe in what a monk of Hiyeisan differed +from an Indian Buddhist monk. This was a theme of extraordinary +interest, and wholly germane to his purpose. It drove him back to his +Japanese books, and to his friend Sir Ernest Satow's famous dictionary. +He wrote to me:-- + + "No praise can be too high for the work which Satow did in the + early days of our intercourse with Japan. He was a valuable asset + to England, and to Sir Harry Parkes, who, with all his energy and + force of character, would never have succeeded as he did without + Satow. Aston was another very strong man." + +These reveries were strictly in accordance with the spirit of +_Veluvana_, but unfortunately what Lord Redesdale wrote in this +direction proved to be too slight for publication. He met with some +expressions of extremely modern Japanese opinion which annoyed him, and +to which he was tempted to give more attention than they deserve. It +began to be obvious that the enterprise was one for which great +concentration of effort, and a certain serenity of purpose which was not +to be secured at will, were imperatively needed. In leaving London, he +was not content, and no one could have wished him to be willing, to +break abruptly all the cords of his past life. He was still a Trustee of +the National Gallery, still chairman of the Marlborough Club, still +occupied with the administration of the Wallace Collection, and he did +not abate his interest in these directions. They made it necessary that +he should come up to town every other week. This made up in some measure +for the inevitable disappointment of finding that in Gloucestershire his +deafness now completely cut him off from all the neighbourly duties +which had in earlier years diversified and entertained his country life. +He had been a great figure among the squires and farmers of the +Cotswolds, but all this was now at an end, paralysed by the hopeless +decay of his hearing. It grieved him, too, that he was unable to do any +useful war-work in the county, and he was forced to depend upon his pen +and his flying visits to London for refreshment. He was a remarkably +good letter-writer, and he now demanded almost pathetically to be fed +with the apples of correspondence. He wrote (November 26th, 1915):-- + + "Your letters are a consolation for being deprived of taking a part + any longer in the doings of the great world. The Country + Mouse--even if the creature were able to scuttle back into the + cellars of the great--would still be out of all communion with the + mighty, owing to physical infirmity. And now comes the kind Town + Mouse and tells him all that he most cares to know." + +He had books and his garden to enjoy, and he made the most of both. "I +hate the autumn," he said, "for it means the death of the year, but I +try to make the death of the garden as beautiful as possible." Among his +plants, and up and down the high places of his bamboo-feathered +rockeries, where little cascades fell with a music which he could no +longer hear into small dark pools full of many-coloured water-lilies, +his activity was like that of a boy. He had the appearance, the tastes, +the instincts of vigorous manhood prolonged far beyond the usual limit +of such gifts, and yet all were marred and rendered bankrupt for him by +the one intolerable defect, the deafness which had by this time become +almost impenetrable to sound. + +Yet it seemed as though this disability actually quickened his mental +force. With the arrival of his eightieth year, his activity and +curiosity of intellect were certainly rather increased than abated. He +wrote to me from Batsford (December 28th, 1915):-- + + "I have been busy for the last two months making a close study of + Dante. I have read all the _Inferno_ and half of the _Purgatorio_. + It is hard work, but the 'readings' of my old schoolfellow, W.W. + Vernon, are an incalculable help, and now within the last week or + two has appeared Hoare's Italian Dictionary, published by the + Cambridge University Press. A much-needed book, for the previous + dictionaries were practically useless except for courier's work. + How splendid Dante is! But how sickening are the Commentators, + Benvenuto da Imola, Schartazzini and the rest of them! They won't + let the poet say that the sun shone or the night was dark without + seeing some hidden and mystic meaning in it. They always seem to + _chercher midi à quatorze heures_, and irritate me beyond measure. + There is invention enough in Dante without all their embroidery. + But this grubbing and grouting seems to be infectious among Dante + scholars--they all catch the disease." + +He flung himself into these Italian studies with all his accustomed +ardour. He corresponded with the eminent veteran of Dante scholarship, +the Honourable W.W. Vernon, whom he mentions in the passage just quoted, +and Mr. Vernon's letters gave him great delight. He wrote to me again:-- + + "This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course, I knew + the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before attempted to read + him. The difficulty scared me." + +Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away +for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the _Purgatorio_ without +flagging, but he broke down early in the _Paradiso_. He had no sympathy +whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored +by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took +advantage of this to recall his attention to _Veluvana_, for which it +was no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any +material out of Dante. + +An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during +the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian +chapters of his _Memories_, but it was another distraction. It took his +thoughts away from _Veluvana_, although he protested to me that he +could prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his +fancies for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for +he wrote (March 17th, 1916):-- + + "You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my + troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking part + in society, the Three R's alone remain to me, and, indeed, of those + only two--for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton education in days + when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of the intellectual + panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add, subtract, nor divide! I + am a gluttonous reader, and only write from time to time." + +He was really composing more actively than he himself realised. About +this time he wrote:-- + + "Just now I am busy trying to whitewash Lord Hertford--not the + Marquess of Steyne, that would be impossible--but the unhappy + hypochondriac recluse of the Rue Lafitte, who I believe has been + most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in + Paris--all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even + hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look + upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to + be told that he had many admirable points." + +At the beginning of last year the aspect of Lord Redesdale was very +remarkable. He had settled down into his life at Batsford, diversified +by the frequent dashes to London. His years seemed to sit upon him more +lightly than ever. His azure eyes, his curled white head thrown back, +the almost jaunty carriage of his well-kept figure, were the external +symbols of an inner man perpetually fresh, ready for adventure and +delighted with the pageant of existence. He found no fault at all with +life, save that it must leave him, and he had squared his shoulders not +to give way to weakness. Perhaps the only sign of weakness was just that +visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character +had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which +Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless +of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His +curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in +spite of his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was +his memory of passing events. In the petulance of his optimism he was +like a lad. + +There was no change in the early part of last year, although it was +manifest that the incessant journeying between Batsford and London +exhausted him. The garden occupied him more and more, and he was +distracted by the great storm of the end of March, which blew down and +destroyed at the head of the bridge the wonderful group of cypresses, +which he called "the pride of my old age." But, after a gesture of +despair, he set himself energetically to repair the damage. He was in +his usual buoyant health when the very hot spell in May tempted him out +on May 18th, with his agent, Mr. Kennedy, to fish at Swinbrook, a +beautiful village on his Oxfordshire property, of which he was +particularly fond. He was not successful, and in a splenetic mood he +flung himself at full length upon a bank of wet grass. He was not +allowed to remain there long, but the mischief was done, and in a few +hours he was suffering from a bad cold. Even now, the result might not +have been serious had it not been that in a few days' time he was due to +fulfil certain engagements in town. Nothing vexed Lord Redesdale more +than not to keep a pledge. In all such matters he prided himself on +being punctual and trustworthy, and he refused to change his plans by +staying at home. + +Accordingly, on May 23rd he came to London to transact some business, +and to take the chair next day at a meeting of the Royal Society of +Literature, of which he was a vice-president. This meeting took place in +the afternoon, and he addressed a crowded assembly, which greeted him +with great warmth. Those who were present, and saw his bright eyes and +heard his ringing voice, could have no suspicion that they would see him +again no more. His intimate friends alone perceived that he was making a +superlative effort. There followed a very bad night, and he went down to +Batsford next day, going straight to his bed, from which he never rose +again. His condition, at first, gave rise to little alarm. The disease, +which proved to be catarrhal jaundice, took its course; but for a long +time his spirit and his unconsciousness of danger sustained him and +filled those around him with hope. There was no disturbance of mind to +the very last. In a shaky hand, with his stylograph, he continued to +correspond with certain friends, about politics, and books, and even +about Veluvana. In the beginning of August there seemed to be symptoms +of improvement, but these were soon followed by a sudden and final +relapse. Even after this, Lord Redesdale's interest and curiosity were +sustained. In his very last letter to myself, painfully scrawled only +one week before his death, he wrote:-- + + "Have you seen Ernest Daudet's book just published, _Les auteurs de + la guerre de_ 1914? Bismarck is the subject of the first volume; + the second will deal with the Kaiser and the Emperor Joseph; and + the third with _leurs complices_. I know E.D., he is a brother of + Alphonse, and is a competent historian. His book is most + illuminating. Of course there are exaggerations, but he is always + well _documenté_, and there is much in his work that is new. I + don't admire his style. The abuse of the historic present is bad + enough, but what can be said in favour of the historic future with + which we meet at every step? It sets my teeth on edge." + +But he grew physically weaker, and seven days later he passed into an +unconscious state, dying peacefully at noon on August 17th, 1916. He was +saved, as he had wished to be, from all consciousness of decrepitude. + + + + +THE LYRICAL POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY + + +When, about Christmas time in 1898, Mr. Hardy's admirers, who were +expecting from him a new novel, received instead a thick volume of +verse, there was mingled with their sympathy and respect a little +disappointment and a great failure in apprehension. Those who were not +rude enough to suggest that a cobbler should stick to his last, reminded +one another that many novelists had sought relaxation by trifling with +the Muses. Thackeray had published _Ballads_, and George Eliot had +expatiated in a _Legend of Jubal_. No one thought the worse of +_Coningsby_ because its author had produced a _Revolutionary Epic_. It +took some time for even intelligent criticism to see that the new +_Wessex Poems_ did not fall into this accidental category, and still, +after twenty years, there survives a tendency to take the verse of Mr. +Hardy, abundant and solid as it has become, as a mere subsidiary and +ornamental appendage to his novels. It is still necessary to insist on +the complete independence of his career as a poet, and to point out that +if he had never published a page of prose he would deserve to rank high +among the writers of his country on the score of the eight volumes of +his verse. It is as a lyrical poet, and solely as a lyrical poet, that I +propose to speak of him to-day. + +It has been thought extraordinary that Cowper was over fifty when he +published his first secular verses, but Mr. Hardy was approaching his +sixtieth year when he sent _Wessex Poems_ to the press. Such +self-restraint--"none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with +more unwearied spirit none shall"--has always fascinated the genuine +artist, but few have practised it with so much tenacity. When the work +of Mr. Hardy is completed, nothing, it is probable, will more strike +posterity than its unity, its consistency. He has given proof, as scarce +any other modern writer has done, of tireless constancy of resolve. His +novels formed an unbroken series from the _Desperate Remedies_ of 1871 +to _The Well-Beloved_ of 1897. In the fulness of his success, and +unseduced by all temptation, he closed that chapter of his career, and +has kept it closed. Since 1898 he has been, persistently and +periodically, a poet and nothing else. That he determined, for reasons +best left to his own judgment, to defer the exhibition of his verse +until he had completed his work in prose, ought not to prejudice +criticism in its analysis of the lyrics and the colossal dramatic +panorama. Mr. Hardy, exclusively as a poet, demands our undivided +attention. + +It is legitimate to speculate on other probable causes of Mr. Hardy's +delay. From such information as lies scattered before us, we gather that +it was from 1865 to 1867 that he originally took poetry to be his +vocation. The dated pieces in the volume of 1898 help us to form an idea +of the original character of his utterance. On the whole it was very +much what it remains in the pieces composed after a lapse of half a +century. Already, as a very young man, Mr. Hardy possessed his +extraordinary insight into the movements of human character, and his +eloquence in translating what he had observed of the tragedy and pain of +rustic lives. No one, for sixty years, had taken so closely to heart the +admonitions of Wordsworth in his famous Preface to the 1800 edition of +_Lyrical Ballads_ to seek for inspiration in that condition where "the +passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful forms of nature." +But it may well be doubted whether Mr. Hardy's poems would have been +received in the mid-Victorian age with favour, or even have been +comprehended. Fifty years ahead of his time, he was asking in 1866 for +novelty of ideas, and he must have been conscious that his questioning +would seem inopportune. He needed a different atmosphere, and he left +the task of revolt to another, and, at first sight, a very unrelated +force, that of the _Poems and Ballads_ of the same year. But Swinburne +succeeded in his revolution, and although he approached the art from an +opposite direction, he prepared the way for an ultimate appreciation of +Mr. Hardy. + +We should therefore regard the latter, in spite of his silence of forty +years, as a poet who laboured, like Swinburne, at a revolution against +the optimism and superficial sweetness of his age. Swinburne, it is +true, tended to accentuate the poetic side of poetry, while Mr. Hardy +drew verse, in some verbal respects, nearer to prose. This does not +affect their common attitude, and the sympathy of these great artists +for one another's work has already been revealed, and will be still more +clearly exposed. But they were unknown to each other in 1866, when to +both of them the cheap philosophy of the moment, the glittering +femininity of the "jewelled line," the intense respect for Mrs. Grundy +in her Sunday satin, appeared trumpery, hateful, and to be trampled +upon. We find in Mr. Hardy's earliest verse no echo of the passionate +belief in personal immortality which was professed by Ruskin and +Browning. He opposed the Victorian theory of human "progress"; the +Tennysonian beatific Vision seemed to him ridiculous. He rejected the +idea of the sympathy and goodness of Nature, and was in revolt against +the self-centredness of the Romantics. We may conjecture that he +combined a great reverence for _The Book of Job_ with a considerable +contempt for _In Memoriam_. + +This was not a mere rebellious fancy which passed off; it was something +inherent that remained, and gives to-day their peculiar character to Mr. +Hardy's latest lyrics. But before we examine the features of this +personal mode of interpreting poetry to the world, we may collect what +little light we can on the historic development of it. In the pieces +dated between 1865 and 1867 we find the germ of almost everything which +has since characterised the poet. In "Amabel" the ruinous passage of +years, which has continued to be an obsession with Mr. Hardy, is already +crudely dealt with. The habit of taking poetical negatives of small +scenes--"your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, and a pond edged +with grayish leaves" ("Neutral Times")--which had not existed in English +verse since the days of Crabbe, reappears. There is marked already a +sense of terror and resentment against the blind motions of chance--In +"Hap" the author would positively welcome a certainty of divine hatred +as a relief from the strain of depending upon "crass casualty." Here and +there in these earliest pieces an extreme difficulty of utterance is +remarkable in the face of the ease which the poet attained afterwards in +the expression of his most strange images and fantastic revelations. We +read in "At a Bridal":-- + + "Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree, + And each thus found apart, of false desire + A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire + As had fired ours could ever have mingled we!" + +This, although perfectly reducible, takes time to think out, and at a +hasty glance seems muffled up in obscurity beyond the darkness of Donne; +moreover, it is scarcely worthy in form of the virtuoso which Mr. Hardy +was presently to become. Perhaps of the poems certainly attributable to +this earliest period, the little cycle of sonnets called "She to Him" +gives clearest promise of what was coming. The sentiment is that of +Ronsard's famous "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la +chandelle," but turned round, as Mr. Hardy loves to do, from the man to +the woman, and embroidered with ingenuities, such as where the latter +says that as her temperament dies down the habit of loving will remain, +and she be + + "Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, + True to the wind that kissed ere canker came," + +which attest a complexity of mind that Ronsard's society knew nothing +of. + +On the whole, we may perhaps be safe in conjecturing that whatever the +cause, the definite dedication to verse was now postponed. Meanwhile, +the writing of novels had become the business of Mr. Hardy's life, and +ten years go by before we trace a poet in that life again. But it is +interesting to find that when the great success of _Far from the Madding +Crowd_ had introduced him to a circle of the best readers, there +followed an effect which again disturbed his ambition for the moment. +Mr. Hardy was once more tempted to change the form of his work. He +wished "to get back to verse," but was dissuaded by Leslie Stephen, who +induced him to start writing _The Return of the Native_ instead. On +March 29th, 1875, Coventry Patmore, then a complete stranger, wrote to +express his regret that "such almost unequalled beauty and power as +appeared in the novels should not have assured themselves the +immortality which would have been conferred upon them by the form of +verse." This was just at the moment when we find Mr. Hardy's +conversations with "long Leslie Stephen in the velveteen coat" +obstinately turning upon "theologies decayed and defunct, the origin of +things, the constitution of matter, and the unreality of time." To this +period belongs also the earliest conception of _The Dynasts_, an old +note-book containing, under the date June 20th, 1875, the suggestion +that the author should attempt "An Iliad of Europe from 1789 to 1815." + +To this time also seems to belong the execution of what has proved the +most attractive section of Mr. Hardy's poetry, the narratives, or short +Wessex ballads. The method in which these came into the world is very +curious. Many of these stories were jotted down to the extent of a +stanza or two when the subject first occurred to the author. For +instance, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," first published by Lionel +Johnson in 1894, had been begun as early as 1867, and was finished ten +years later. The long ballad of "Leipzig" and the savage "San +Sebastian," both highly characteristic, were also conceived and a few +lines of each noted down long before their completion. "Valenciennes," +however, belongs to 1878, and the "Dance at the PhÅ“nix," of which the +stanza beginning "'Twas Christmas" alone had been written years before, +seems to have been finished about the same time. What evidence is before +us goes to prove that in the 'seventies Mr. Hardy became a complete +master of the art of verse, and that his poetic style was by this time +fixed. He still kept poetry out of public sight, but he wrote during the +next twenty years, as though in a backwater off the stream of his +novels, the poems which form the greater part of the volume of 1898. If +no other collection of his lyrical verse existed, we should miss a +multitude of fine things, but our general conception of his genius would +be little modified. + +We should judge carelessly, however, if we treated the subsequent +volumes as mere repetitions of the original _Wessex Poems_. They present +interesting differences, which I may rapidly note before I touch on the +features which characterise the whole body of Mr. Hardy's verse. _Poems +of the Past and Present_, which came out in the first days of 1902, +could not but be in a certain measure disappointing, in so far as it +paralleled its three years' product with that of the thirty years of +_Wessex Poems_. Old pieces were published in it, and it was obvious that +in 1898 Mr. Hardy might be expected to have chosen from what used to be +called his "portfolio" those specimens which he thought to be most +attractive. But on further inspection this did not prove to be quite the +case. After pondering for twelve years on the era of Napoleon, his +preoccupation began in 1887 to drive him into song:-- + + "Must I pipe a palinody, + Or be silent thereupon?" + +He decides that silence has become impossible:-- + + "Nay; I'll sing 'The Bridge of Lodi'-- + That long-loved, romantic thing, + Though none show by smile or nod, he + Guesses why and what I sing!" + +Here is the germ of _The Dynasts_. But in the meantime the crisis of the +Boer War had cut across the poet's dream of Europe a hundred years ago, +and a group of records of the Dorsetshire elements of the British army +at the close of 1899 showed in Mr. Hardy's poetry what had not been +suspected there--a military talent of a most remarkable kind. Another +set of pieces composed in Rome were not so interesting; Mr. Hardy always +seems a little languid when he leaves the confines of his native Wessex. +Another section of _Poems of the Past and Present_ is severely, almost +didactically, metaphysical, and expands in varied language the daring +thought, so constantly present in Mr. Hardy's reverie, that God Himself +has forgotten the existence of earth, this "tiny sphere," this "tainted +ball," "so poor a thing," and has left all human life to be the +plaything of blind chance. This sad conviction is hardly ruffled by "The +Darkling Thrush," which goes as far towards optimism as Mr. Hardy can +let himself be drawn, or by such reflections as those in "On a Fine +Morning":-- + + "Whence comes Solace? Not from seeing + What is doing, suffering, being; + Not from noting Life's conditions, + Not from heeding Time's monitions; + But in cleaving to the Dream, + And in gazing on the gleam + Whereby gray things golden seem." + +Eight years more passed, years marked by the stupendous effort of _The +Dynasts_, before Mr. Hardy put forth another collection of lyrical +poems. _Time's Laughingstocks_ confirmed, and more than confirmed, the +high promise of _Wessex Poems_. The author, in one of his modest +prefaces, where he seems to whisper while we bend forward in our anxiety +not to miss one thrifty sentence, expresses the hope that _Time's +Laughingstocks_ will, as a whole, take the "reader forward, even if not +far, rather than backward." + +The book, indeed, does not take us "far" forward, simply because the +writer's style and scope were definitely exposed to us already, and yet +it does take us "forward," because the hand of the master is +conspicuously firmer and his touch more daring. The _Laughingstocks_ +themselves are fifteen in number, tragical stories of division and +isolation, of failures in passion, of the treason of physical decay. No +landscape of Mr. Hardy's had been more vivid than the night-pictures in +"The Revisitation," where the old soldier in barracks creeps out on to +the gaunt down, and meets (by one of Mr. Hardy's coincidences) his +ancient mistress, and no picture more terrible than the revelation of +each to the other in a blaze of sunrise. What a document for the future +is "Reminiscences of a Dancing Man"? If only Shakespeare could have left +us such a song of the London in 1585! But the power of the poet +culminates in the pathos of "The Tramp Woman"--perhaps the greatest of +all Mr. Hardy's lyrical poems--and in the horror of "A Sunday Morning's +Tragedy." + +It is noticeable that _Time's Laughingstocks_ is, in some respects, a +more daring collection than its predecessors. We find the poet here +entirely emancipated from convention, and guided both in religion and +morals exclusively by the inner light of his reflection. His energy now +interacts on his clairvoyance with a completeness which he had never +quite displayed before, and it is here that we find Mr. Hardy's +utterance peculiarly a quintessence of himself. Especially in the +narrative pieces--which are often Wessex novels distilled into a +wine-glass, such as "Rose-Ann," and "The Vampirine Fair"--he allows no +considerations of what the reader may think "nice" or "pleasant" to +shackle his sincerity or his determination; and it is therefore to +_Time's Laughingstocks_ that the reader who wishes to become intimately +acquainted with Mr. Hardy as a moralist most frequently recurs. We +notice here more than elsewhere in his poems Mr. Hardy's sympathy with +the local music of Wessex, and especially with its expression by the +village choir, which he uses as a spiritual symbol. Quite a large +section of _Time's Laughingstocks_ takes us to the old-fashioned gallery +of some church, where the minstrels are bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount +Ephraim," or to a later scene where the ghosts, in whose melancholy +apparition Mr. Hardy takes such pleasure, chant their goblin melodies +and strum "the viols of the dead" in the moonlit churchyard. The very +essence of Mr. Hardy's reverie at this moment of his career is to be +found, for instance, in "The Dead Quire," where the ancient +phantom-minstrels revenge themselves on their gross grandsons outside +the alehouse. + +Almost immediately after the outbreak of the present war Mr. Hardy +presented to a somewhat distraught and inattentive public another +collection of his poems. It cannot be said that _Satires of +Circumstance_ is the most satisfactory of those volumes; it is, perhaps, +that which we could with the least discomposure persuade ourselves to +overlook. Such a statement refers more to the high quality of other +pages than to any positive decay of power or finish here. There is no +less adroitness of touch and penetration of view in this book than +elsewhere, and the poet awakens once more our admiration by his skill in +giving poetic value to minute conditions of life which have escaped less +careful observers. But in _Satires of Circumstance_ the ugliness of +experience is more accentuated than it is elsewhere, and is flung in our +face with less compunction. The pieces which give name to the volume are +only fifteen in number, but the spirit which inspires them is very +frequently repeated in other parts of the collection. That spirit is one +of mocking sarcasm, and it acts in every case by presenting a +beautifully draped figure of illusion, from which the poet, like a +sardonic showman, twitches away the robe that he may display a skeleton +beneath it. We can with little danger assume, as we read the _Satires of +Circumstance_, hard and cruel shafts of searchlight as they seem, that +Mr. Hardy was passing through a mental crisis when he wrote them. This +seems to be the _Troilus and Cressida_ of his life's work, the book in +which he is revealed most distracted by conjecture and most overwhelmed +by the miscarriage of everything. The wells of human hope have been +poisoned for him by some condition of which we know nothing, and even +the picturesque features of Dorsetshire landscape, that have always +before dispersed his melancholy, fail to win his attention:-- + + "Bright yellowhammers + Made mirthful clamours, + And billed long straws with a bustling air, + And bearing their load, + Flew up the road + That he followed alone, without interest there." + +The strongest of the poems of disillusion which are the outcome of this +mood, is "The Newcomer's Wife," with the terrible abruptness of its last +stanza. It is not for criticism to find fault with the theme of a work +of art, but only to comment upon its execution. Of the merit of these +monotonously sinister _Satires of Circumstance_ there can be no +question; whether the poet's indulgence in the mood which gave birth to +them does not tend to lower our moral temperature and to lessen the +rebound of our energy, is another matter. At all events, every one must +welcome a postscript in which a blast on the bugle of war seemed to have +wakened the poet from his dark brooding to the sense of a new chapter in +history. + +In the fourth year of the war the veteran poet published _Moments of +Vision_. These show a remarkable recovery of spirit, and an ingenuity +never before excelled. With the passage of years Mr. Hardy, observing +everything in the little world of Wessex, and forgetting nothing, has +become almost preternaturally wise, and, if it may be said so, +"knowing," with a sort of magic, like that of a wizard. He has learned +to track the windings of the human heart with the familiarity of a +gamekeeper who finds plenty of vermin in the woods, and who nails what +he finds, be it stoat or squirrel, to the barn-door of his poetry. But +there is also in these last-fruits of Mr. Hardy's mossed tree much that +is wholly detached from the bitterness of satire, much that simply +records, with an infinite delicacy of pathos, little incidents of the +personal life of long ago, bestowing the immortality of art on these +fugitive fancies in the spirit of the Japanese sculptor when he chisels +the melting of a cloud or the flight of an insect on his sword hilt:-- + + "I idly cut a parsley stalk + And blew therein towards the moon; + I had not thought what ghosts would walk + With shivering footsteps to my tune. + + "I went and knelt, and scooped my hand + As if to drink, into the brook, + And a faint figure seemed to stand + Above me, with the bye-gone look. + + "I lipped rough rhymes of chance not choice, + I thought not what my words might be; + There came into my ear a voice + That turned a tenderer verse for me." + +We have now in brief historic survey marshalled before us the various +volumes in which Mr. Hardy's lyrical poetry was originally collected. +Before we examine its general character more closely, it may be well to +call attention to its technical quality, which was singularly +misunderstood at first, and which has never, we believe, been boldly +faced. In 1898, and later, when a melodious _falsetto_ was much in +fashion amongst us, the reviewers found great fault with Mr. Hardy's +prosody; they judged him as a versifier to be rude and incorrect. As +regards the single line, it may be confessed that Mr. Hardy, in his +anxiety to present his thought in an undiluted form, is not infrequently +clogged and hard. Such a line as + + "Fused from its separateness by ecstasy" + +hisses at us like a snake, and crawls like a wounded one. Mr. Hardy is +apt to clog his lines with consonants, and he seems indifferent to the +stiffness which is the consequence of this neglect. Ben Jonson said that +"Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; perhaps we may go +so far as to say that Mr. Hardy, for his indifference to a mellifluous +run lays himself open to a mild rebuke. He is negligent of that eternal +ornament of English verse, audible intricacy, probably because of +Swinburne's abuse of it. But most of what is called his harshness should +rather be called bareness, and is the result of a revolt, conscious or +unconscious, against Keats' prescription of "loading the rifts with +ore." + +In saying this, all has been said that an enemy could in justice say in +blame of his metrical peculiarities. Unquestionably he does +occasionally, like Robert Browning, err in the direction of cacophony. +But when we turn to the broader part of prosody, we must perceive that +Mr. Hardy is not only a very ingenious, but a very correct and admirable +metricist. His stanzaic invention is abundant; no other Victorian poet, +not even Swinburne, has employed so many forms, mostly of his own +invention, and employed them so appropriately, that is to say, in so +close harmony with the subject or story enshrined in them. To take an +example from his pure lyrics of reflection first, from "The +Bullfinches":-- + + "Brother Bulleys, let us sing + From the dawn till evening! + For we know not that we go not + When the day's pale visions fold + Unto those who sang of old," + +in the exquisite fineness and sadness of the stanza we seem to hear the +very voices of the birds warbling faintly in the sunset. Again, the +hurried, timid irresolution of a lover always too late is marvellously +rendered in the form of "Lizbie Browne":-- + + "And Lizbie Browne, + Who else had hair + Bay-red as yours, + Or flesh so fair + Bred out of doors, + Sweet Lizbie Browne?" + +On the other hand, the fierceness of "I said to Love" is interpreted in +a stanza that suits the mood of denunciation, while "Tess's Lament" +wails in a metre which seems to rock like an ageing woman seated alone +before the fire, with an infinite haunting sadness. + +It is, however, in the narrative pieces, the little _Wessex Tales_, +that Mr. Hardy's metrical imagination is most triumphant. No two of +these are identical in form, and for each he selects, or more often +invents, a wholly appropriate stanza. He makes many experiments, one of +the strangest being the introduction of rhymeless lines at regular +intervals. Of this, "Cicely" is an example which repays attention:-- + + "And still sadly onward I followed, + That Highway the Icen + Which trails its pale riband down Wessex + O'er lynchet and lea. + + "Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, + Where legions had wayfared, + And where the slow river up-glasses + Its green canopy"; + +and one still more remarkable is the enchanting "Friends Beyond," to +which we shall presently recur. The drawling voice of a weary old +campaigner is wonderfully rendered in the stanza of "Valenciennes":-- + + "Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls + Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. + Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls + As we did Valencieën!" + +whereas for long Napoleonic stories like "Leipzig" and "The Peasant's +Confession," a ballad-measure which contemporaries such as Southey or +Campbell might have used is artfully chosen. In striking contrast we +have the elaborate verse-form of "The Souls of the Slain," in which the +throbbing stanza seems to dilate and withdraw like the very cloud of +moth-like phantoms which it describes. It is difficult to follow out +this theme without more frequent quotation than I have space, for here, +but the reader who pursues it carefully will not repeat the rumour that +Mr. Hardy is a careless or "incorrect" metricist. He is, on the +contrary, a metrical artist of great accomplishment. + +The conception of life revealed in his verses by this careful artist is +one which displays very exactly the bent of his temperament. During the +whole of his long career Mr. Hardy has not budged an inch from his +original line of direction. He holds that, abandoned by God, treated +with scorn by Nature, man lies helpless at the mercy of "those purblind +Doomsters," accident, chance, and time, from whom he has had to endure +injury and insult from the cradle to the grave. This is stating the +Hardy doctrine in its extreme form, but it is not stating it too +strongly. This has been called his "pessimism," a phrase to which some +admirers, unwilling to give things their true name, have objected. But, +of course, Mr. Hardy is a pessimist, just as Browning is an optimist, +just as white is not black, and day is not night. Our juggling with +words in paradox is too often apt to disguise a want of decision in +thought. Let us admit that Mr. Hardy's conception of the fatal forces +which beleaguer human life is a "pessimistic" one, or else words have no +meaning. + +Yet it is needful to define in what this pessimism consists. It is not +the egotism of Byron or the morbid melancholy of Chateaubriand. It is +directed towards an observation of others, not towards an analysis of +self, and this gives it more philosophical importance, because although +romantic peevishness is very common among modern poets, and although +ennui inspires a multitude of sonnets, a deliberate and imaginative +study of useless suffering in the world around us is rare indeed among +the poets. It is particularly to be noted that Mr. Hardy, although one +of the most profoundly tragic of all modern writers, is neither +effeminate nor sickly. His melancholy could never have dictated the +third stanza of Shelley's "Lines written in Dejection in the Bay of +Naples." His pessimism is involuntary, forced from him by his experience +and his constitution, and no analysis could give a better definition of +what divides him from the petulant despair of a poet like Leopardi than +the lines "To Life":-- + + "O life, with the sad scared face, + I weary of seeing thee, + And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, + And thy too-forced pleasantry! + + "I know what thou would'st tell + Of Death, Time, Destiny-- + I have known it long, and know, too, well + What it all means for me. + + "But canst thou not array + Thyself in rare disguise, + And feign like truth, for one mad day, + That Earth is Paradise? + + "I'll tune me to the mood, + And mumm with thee till eve, + And maybe what as interlude + I feign, I shall believe!" + +But the mumming goes no deeper than it does in the exquisite poem of +"The Darkling Thrush," where the carolings of an aged bird, on a frosty +evening, are so ecstatic that they waken a vague hope in the listener's +mind that the thrush may possibly know of "some blessed hope" of which +the poet is "unaware." This is as far as Mr. Hardy ever gets on the +blest Victorian pathway of satisfaction. + +There are certain aspects in which it is not unnatural to see a parallel +between Mr. Hardy and George Crabbe. Each is the spokesman of a +district, each has a passion for the study of mankind, each has gained +by long years of observation a profound knowledge of local human +character, and each has plucked on the open moor, and wears in his coat, +the hueless flower of disillusion. But there is a great distinction in +the aim of the two poets. Crabbe, as he describes himself in _The Parish +Register_, was "the true physician" who "walks the foulest ward." He was +utilitarian in his morality; he exposed the pathos of tragedy by +dwelling on the faults which led to it, forgetful of the fatality which +in more consistent moments he acknowledged. Crabbe was realistic with a +moral design, even in the _Tales of the Hall_, where he made a gallant +effort at last to arrive at a detachment of spirit. No such effort is +needed by Mr. Hardy, who has none of the instinct of a preacher, and who +considers moral improvement outside his responsibility. He admits, with +his great French contemporary, that + + "Tout désir est menteur, toute joie éphémère, + Toute liqueur au fond de la coupe est amère," + +but he is bent on discovering the cause of this devastation, and not +disposed to waste time over its consequences. At the end he produces a +panacea which neither Crabbe nor Byron dreamed of--resignation. + +But the poet has not reached the end of his disillusion. He thinks to +secure repose on the breast of Nature, the _alma mater_, to whom Goethe +and Wordsworth and Browning each in his own way turned, and were +rewarded by consolation and refreshment. We should be prepared to find +Mr. Hardy, with his remarkable aptitude for the perception of natural +forms, easily consoled by the influences of landscape and the inanimate +world. His range of vision is wide and extremely exact; he has the gift +of reproducing before us scenes of various character with a vividness +which is sometimes startling. But Mr. Hardy's disdain of sentimentality, +and his vigorous analysis of the facts of life, render him insensible +not indeed to the mystery nor to the beauty, but to the imagined +sympathy, of Nature. He has no more confidence in the visible earth than +in the invisible heavens, and neither here nor there is he able to +persuade himself to discover a counsellor or a friend. In this +connection, we do well to follow the poet's train of thought in the +lyric called "In a Wood," where he enters a copse dreaming that, in that +realm of "sylvan peace," Nature would offer "a soft release from man's +unrest." He immediately observes that the pine and the beech are +struggling for existence, and trying to blight each other with dripping +poison. He sees the ivy eager to strangle the elm, and the hawthorns +choking the hollies. Even the poplars sulk and turn black under the +shadow of a rival. In the end, filled with horror at all these crimes of +Nature, the poet flees from the copse as from an accursed place, and he +determines that life offers him no consolation except the company of +those human beings who are as beleaguered as himself:-- + + "Since, then, no grace I find + Taught me of trees, + Turn I back to my kind + Worthy as these. + There at least smiles abound, + There discourse trills around, + There, now and then, are found, + Life-loyalties." + +It is absurd, he decides, to love Nature, which has either no response +to give, or answers in irony. Let us even avoid, as much as we can, deep +concentration of thought upon the mysteries of Nature, lest we become +demoralised by contemplating her negligence, her blindness, her +implacability. We find here a violent reaction against the poetry of +egotistic optimism which had ruled the romantic school in England for +more than a hundred years, and we recognise a branch of Mr. Hardy's +originality. He has lifted the veil of Isis, and he finds beneath it, +not a benevolent mother of men, but the tomb of an illusion. One short +lyric, "Yell'ham-Wood's Story," puts this, again with a sylvan setting, +in its unflinching crudity:-- + + "Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan, + And Clyffe-hill Clump says 'Yea!' + But Yell'ham says a thing of its own: + It's not, 'Gray, gray, + Is Life alway!' + That Yell'ham says, + Nor that Life is for ends unknown. + + "It says that Life would signify + A thwarted purposing: + That we come to live, and are called to die. + Yes, that's the thing + In fall, in spring, + That Yell'ham says:-- + Life offers--to deny!'" + +It is therefore almost exclusively to the obscure history of those who +suffer and stumble around him, victims of the universal disillusion, men +and women "come to live but called to die," that Mr. Hardy dedicates his +poetic function. "Lizbie Browne" appeals to us as a typical instance of +his rustic pathos, his direct and poignant tenderness, and if we compare +it with such poems of Wordsworth's as "Lucy Gray" or "Alice Fell" we see +that he starts by standing much closer to the level of the subject than +his great predecessor does. Wordsworth is the benevolent philosopher +sitting in a post-chaise or crossing the "wide moor" in meditation. Mr. +Hardy is the familiar neighbour, the shy mourner at the grave; his +relation is a more intimate one: he is patient, humble, un-upbraiding. +Sometimes, as in the remarkable colloquy called "The Ruined Maid," his +sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the +system of Victorian morality. Mr. Hardy, indeed, is not concerned with +sentimental morals, but with the primitive instincts of the soul, +applauding them, or at least recording them with complacency, even when +they outrage ethical tradition, as they do in the lyric narrative called +"A Wife and Another." The stanzas "To an Unborn Pauper Child" sum up +what is sinister and what is genial in Mr. Hardy's attitude to the +unambitious forms of life which he loves to contemplate. + +His temperature is not always so low as it is in the class of poems to +which we have just referred, but his ultimate view is never more +sanguine. He is pleased sometimes to act as the fiddler at a dance, +surveying the hot-blooded couples, and urging them on by the lilt of +his instrument, but he is always perfectly aware that they will have "to +pay high for their prancing" at the end of all. No instance of this is +more remarkable than the poem called "Julie-Jane," a perfect example of +Mr. Hardy's metrical ingenuity and skill, which begins thus:-- + + "Sing; how 'a would sing! + How 'a would raise the tune + When we rode in the waggon from harvesting + By the light o' the moon! + + "Dance; how 'a would dance! + If a fiddlestring did but sound + She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance, + And go round and round. + + "Laugh; how 'a would laugh! + Her peony lips would part + As if none such a place for a lover to quaff + At the deeps of a heart," + +and which then turns to the most plaintive and the most irreparable +tragedy, woven, as a black design on to a background of gold, upon this +basis of temperamental joyousness. + +Alphonse Daudet once said that the great gift of Edmond de Goncourt was +to, "_rendre l'irrendable_." This is much more true of Mr. Hardy than it +was of Goncourt, and more true than it is of any other English poet +except Donne. There is absolutely no observation too minute, no flutter +of reminiscence too faint, for Mr. Hardy to adopt as the subject of a +metaphysical lyric, and his skill in this direction has grown upon him; +it is nowhere so remarkable as in his latest volume, aptly termed +_Moments of Vision_. Everything in village life is grist to his mill; he +seems to make no selection, and his field is modest to humility and yet +practically boundless. We have a poem on the attitude of two people with +nothing to do and no book to read, waiting in the parlour of an hotel +for the rain to stop, a recollection after more than forty years. That +the poet once dropped a pencil into the cranny of an old church where he +was sketching inspires an elaborate lyric. The disappearance of a rotted +summer-house, the look of a row of silver drops of fog condensed on the +bar of a gate, the effect of candlelight years and years ago on a +woman's neck and hair, the vision of a giant at a fair, led by a dwarf +with a red string--such are amongst the subjects which awaken in Mr. +Hardy thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears, and call for +interpretation in verse. The skeleton of a lady's sunshade, picked up on +Swanage Cliffs, the pages of a fly-blown Testament lying in a railway +waiting-room, a journeying boy in a third-class carriage, with his +ticket stuck in the band of his hat--such are among the themes which +awake in Mr. Hardy's imagination reveries which are always wholly +serious and usually deeply tragic. + +Mr. Hardy's notation of human touches hitherto excluded from the realm +of poetry is one of the most notable features of his originality. It +marked his work from the beginning, as in the early ballad of "The +Widow," where the sudden damping of the wooer's amatory ardour in +consequence of his jealousy of the child is rendered with extraordinary +refinement. The difficulty of course is to know when to stop. There is +always a danger that a poet, in his search after the infinitely +ingenious, may lapse into _amphigory_, into sheer absurdity and +triviality, which Cowper, in spite of his elegant lightness, does not +always escape. Wordsworth, more serious in his intent, fell headlong in +parts of _Peter Bell_, and in such ballads as "Betty Foy." Mr. Hardy, +whatever the poverty of his incident, commonly redeems it by the oddity +of his observation; as in "The Pedigree":-- + + "I bent in the deep of night + Over a pedigree the chronicler gave + As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, + The uncurtained panes of my window-square + Let in the watery light + Of the moon in its old age: + And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past + Where mute and cold it globed + Like a dying dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave." + +Mr. Hardy's love of strange experiences, and of adventures founded on a +balance of conscience and instinct, is constantly exemplified in those +ballads and verse-anecdotes which form the section of his poetry most +appreciated by the general public. Among these, extraordinarily +representative of the poet's habit of mind, is "My Cicely," a tale of +the eighteenth century, where a man impetuously rides from London +through Wessex to be present at the funeral of the wrong woman; as he +returns, by a coincidence, he meets the right woman, whom he used to +love, and is horrified at "her liquor-fired face, her thick accents." He +determines that by an effort of will the dead woman (whom he never saw) +shall remain, what she seemed during his wild ride, "_my_ Cicely," and +the living woman be expunged from memory. A similar deliberate electing +that the dream shall hold the place of the fact is the motive of "The +Well-Beloved." The ghastly humour of "The Curate's Kindness" is a sort +of reverse action of the same mental subtlety. Misunderstanding takes a +very prominent place in Mr. Hardy's irony of circumstance; as, almost +too painfully, in "The Rash Bride," a hideous tale of suicide following +on the duplicity of a tender and innocent widow. + +The grandmother of Mr. Hardy was born in 1772, and survived until 1857. +From her lips he heard many an obscure old legend of the life of Wessex +in the eighteenth century. Was it she who told him the terrible Exmoor +story of "The Sacrilege;" the early tale of "The Two Men," which might +be the skeleton-scenario for a whole elaborate novel; or that +incomparable comedy in verse, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," with its +splendid human touch at the very end? We suspect that it was; and +perhaps at the same source he acquired his dangerous insight into the +female heart, whether exquisitely feeble as in "The Home-coming" with +its delicate and ironic surprise, or treacherous, as in the desolating +ballad of "Rose-Ann." No one, in prose or verse, has expatiated more +poignantly than Mr. Hardy on what our forefathers used to call "cases of +conscience." He seems to have shared the experiences of souls to whom +life was "a wood before your doors, and a labyrinth within the wood, and +locks and bars to every door within that labyrinth," as Jeremy Taylor +describes that of the anxious penitents who came to him to confession. +The probably very early story of "The Casterbridge Captains" is a +delicate study in compunction, and a still more important example is +"The Alarm," where the balance of conscience and instinct gives to what +in coarser hands might seem the most trivial of actions a momentous +character of tragedy. + +This is one of Mr. Hardy's studies in military history, where he is +almost always singularly happy. His portraits of the non-commissioned +officer of the old service are as excellent in verse as they are in the +prose of _The Trumpet-Major_ or _The Melancholy Hussar_. The reader of +the novels will not have to be reminded that "Valenciennes" and the +other ballads have their prose-parallel in Simon Burden's reminiscences +of Minden. Mr. Hardy, with a great curiosity about the science of war +and a close acquaintance with the mind of the common soldier, has +pondered on the philosophy of fighting. "The Man he Killed," written in +1902, expresses the wonder of the rifleman who is called upon to shoot +his brother-in-arms, although + + "Had he and I but met, + By some old ancient inn, + We should have set us down to wet + Right many a nipperkin." + +In this connection the _Poems of War and Patriotism_, which form an +important part of the volume of 1918, should be carefully examined by +those who meditate on the tremendous problems of the moment. + +A poet so profoundly absorbed in the study of life could not fail to +speculate on the probabilities of immortality. Here Mr. Hardy presents +to us his habitual serenity in negation. He sees the beautiful human +body "lined by tool of time," and he asks what becomes of it when its +dissolution is complete. He sees no evidence of a conscious state after +death, of what would have to be, in the case of aged or exhausted +persons, a revival of spiritual force, and on the whole he is +disinclined to cling to the faith in a future life. He holds that the +immortality of a dead man resides in the memory of the living, his +"finer part shining within ever-faithful hearts of those bereft." He +pursues this theme in a large number of his most serious and affecting +lyrics, most gravely perhaps in "The To-be-Forgotten" and in "The +Superseded." This sense of the forlorn condition of the dead, surviving +only in the dwindling memory of the living, inspires what has some +claims to be considered the loveliest of all Mr. Hardy's poems, "Friends +Beyond," which in its tenderness, its humour, and its pathos contains in +a few pages every characteristic of his genius. + +His speculation perceives the dead as a crowd of slowly vanishing +phantoms, clustering in their ineffectual longing round the footsteps of +those through whom alone they continue to exist. This conception has +inspired Mr. Hardy with several wonderful visions, among which the +spectacle of "The Souls of the Slain" in the Boer War, alighting, like +vast flights of moths, over Portland Bill at night, is the most +remarkable. It has the sublimity and much of the character of some +apocalyptic design by Blake. The volume of 1902 contains a whole group +of phantasmal pieces of this kind, where there is frequent mention of +spectres, who address the poet in the accents of nature, as in the +unrhymed ode called "The Mother Mourns." The obsession of old age, with +its physical decay ("I look into my glass"), the inevitable division +which leads to that isolation which the poet regards as the greatest of +adversities ("The Impercipient"), the tragedies of moral indecision, the +contrast between the tangible earth and the bodyless ghosts, and endless +repetition of the cry, "Why find we us here?" and of the question "Has +some Vast Imbecility framed us in jest, and left us now to +hazardry?"--all start from the overwhelming love of physical life and +acquaintance with its possibilities, which Mr. Hardy possesses to an +inordinate degree. + +It would be ridiculous at the close of an essay to attempt any +discussion of the huge dramatic panorama which many believe to be Mr. +Hardy's most weighty contribution to English literature. The spacious +theatre of _The Dynasts_ with its comprehensive and yet concise +realisations of vast passages of human history, is a work which calls +for a commentary as lengthy as itself, and yet needs no commentary at +all. No work of the imagination is more its own interpreter than this +sublime historic peep-show, this rolling vision of the Napoleonic +chronicle drawn on the broadest lines, and yet in detail made up of +intensely concentrated and vivid glimpses of reality. But the subject of +my present study, the lyrical poetry of Mr. Hardy, is not largely +illustrated in _The Dynasts_, except by the choral interludes of the +phantom intelligences, which have great lyrical value, and by three or +four admirable songs. + +When we resume the effect which the poetry of Mr. Hardy makes upon the +careful reader, we note, as I have indicated already, a sense of unity +of direction throughout. Mr. Hardy has expressed himself in a thousand +ways, but has never altered his vision. From 1867 to 1917, through half +a century of imaginative creation, he has not modified the large +outlines of his art in the smallest degree. To early readers of his +poems, before the full meaning of them became evident, his voice sounded +inharmonious, because it did not fit in with the exquisite melodies of +the later Victorian age. But Mr. Hardy, with characteristic pertinacity, +did not attempt to alter his utterance in the least, and now we can all +perceive, if we take the trouble to do so, that what seemed harsh in his +poetry was his peculiar and personal mode of interpreting his thoughts +to the world. + +As in his novels so in his poems, Mr. Hardy has chosen to remain local, +to be the interpreter for present and future times of one rich and +neglected province of the British realm. From his standpoint there he +contemplates the wide aspect of life, but it seems huge and misty to +him, and he broods over the tiny incidents of Wessex idiosyncracy. His +irony is audacious and even sardonic, and few poets have been less +solicitous to please their weaker brethren. But no poet of modern times +has been more careful to avoid the abstract and to touch upon the real. + + + + +SOME SOLDIER POETS + + +The two years which preceded the outbreak of the war were marked in this +country by a revival of public interest in the art of poetry. To this +movement coherence was given and organisation introduced by Mr. Edward +Marsh's now-famous volume entitled _Georgian Poetry_. The effect of this +collection--for it is hardly correct to call it an anthology--of the +best poems written by the youngest poets since 1911 was two-fold; it +acquainted readers with work few had "the leisure or the zeal to +investigate," and it brought the writers themselves together in a +corporate and selected relation. I do not recollect that this had been +done--except prematurely and partially by _The Germ_ of 1850--since the +_England's Parnassus_ and _England's Helicon_ of 1600. In point of fact +the only real precursor of Mr. Marsh's venture in our whole literature +is the _Songs and Sonnettes_ of 1557, commonly known as _Tottel's +Miscellany_. Tottel brought together, for the first time, the lyrics of +Wyatt, Surrey, Churchyard, Vaux, and Bryan, exactly as Mr. Marsh called +public attention to Rupert Brooke, James Elroy Flecker and the rest of +the Georgians, and he thereby fixed the names of those poets, as Mr. +Marsh has fixed those of our youngest fledglings, on the roll of English +literature. + +The general tone of the latest poetry, up to the moment of the outbreak +of hostilities, was pensive, instinct with natural piety, given somewhat +in excess to description of landscape, tender in feeling, essentially +unaggressive except towards the clergy and towards other versifiers of +an earlier generation. There was absolutely not a trace in any one of +the young poets of that arrogance and vociferous defiance which marked +German verse during the same years. These English shepherds might hit at +their elders with their staves, but they had turned their swords into +pruning-hooks and had no scabbards to rattle. This is a point which +might have attracted notice, if we had not all been too drowsy in the +lap of our imperial prosperity to observe the signs of the times in +Berlin. Why did no one call our attention to the beating of the big drum +which was going on so briskly on the Teutonic Parnassus? At all events, +there was no echo of such a noise in the "chambers of imagery" which +contained Mr. Gordon Bottomley, or in Mr. W.H. Davies' wandering "songs +of joy," or on "the great hills and solemn chanting seas" where Mr. John +Drinkwater waited for the advent of beauty. And the guns of August 1914 +found Mr. W.W. Gibson encompassed by "one dim, blue infinity of starry +peace." There is a sort of German _Georgian Poetry_ in existence; in +time to come a comparison of its pages with those of Mr. Marsh may throw +a side-light on the question, Who prepared the War? + +The youngest poets were more completely taken by surprise in August 1914 +than their elders. The earliest expressions of lyric military feeling +came from veteran voices. It was only proper that the earliest of all +should be the Poet Laureate's address to England, ending with the +prophecy:-- + + "Much suffering shall cleanse thee! + But thou through the flood + Shalt win to Salvation, + To Beauty through blood." + +As sensation, however, followed sensation in those first terrific and +bewildering weeks, much was happening that called forth with the utmost +exuberance the primal emotions of mankind; there was full occasion for + + "exultations, agonies, + And love, and man's unconquerable mind." + +By September a full chorus was vocal, led by our national veteran, Mr. +Thomas Hardy, with his _Song of the Soldiers_:-- + + "What of the faith and fire within us, + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, + To hazards whence no tears can win us; + What of the faith and fire within us, + Men who march away?" + +Already, before the close of the autumn of 1914, four or five +anthologies of war-poems were in the press, and the desire of the +general public to be fed with patriotic and emotional verse was +manifested in unmistakable ways. We had been accustomed for some time +past to the issue of a multitude of little pamphlets of verse, often +very carefully written, and these the critics had treated with an +indulgence which would have whitened the hair of the stern reviewers of +forty years ago. The youthful poets, almost a trade-union in themselves, +protected one another by their sedulous generosity. It was very unusual +to see anything criticised, much less "slated"; the balms of praise were +poured over every rising head, and immortalities were predicted by the +dozen. Yet, as a rule, the sale of these little poetic pamphlets had +been small, and they had been read only by those who had a definite +object in doing so. + +The immediate success of the anthologies, however, proved that the war +had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse, an attention +anxious to be stirred or soothed by the assiduous company of poets who +had been ripening their talents in a little clan. These had now an +eager world ready to listen to them. The result was surprising; we may +even, without exaggeration, call it unparalleled. There had never +before, in the world's history, been an epoch which had tolerated and +even welcomed such a flood of verse as was poured forth over Great +Britain during the first three years of the war. Those years saw the +publication, as I am credibly informed, of more than five hundred +volumes of new and original poetry. It would be the silliest +complaisance to pretend that all of this, or much of it, or any but a +very little of it, has been of permanent value. Much of it was windy and +superficial, striving in wild vague terms to express great agitations +which were obscurely felt by the poet. There was too much of the bathos +of rhetoric, especially at first; too much addressing the German as +"thou fell, bloody brute," and the like, which broke no bones and took +no trenches. + +When once it was understood that, as a cancelled line in Tennyson's +_Maud_ has it, + + "The long, long canker of peace was over and done," + +the sentiments of indignation and horror made themselves felt with +considerable vivacity. In this direction, however, none of the youngest +poets approached Sir Owen Seaman in the vigour of their invective. Most +of them seemed to be overpowered by the political situation, and few +could free themselves from their inured pacific habit of speech. Even +when they wrote of Belgium, the Muse seemed rather to weep than to +curse. Looking back to the winter of 1914, it is almost pathetic to +observe how difficult it was for our easy-going British bards to hate +the Germans. There was a good deal of ineffective violence, and +considerable misuse of technical terms, caused, in many cases, by a too +hasty reference to newspaper reports of gallantry under danger, in the +course of which the more or less obscure verbiage of military science +was picturesquely and inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious +reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he +cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a +family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from +another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British +prejudice, and to a horrible confidence in England's power of "muddling +through," which look rather ghastly in the light of subsequent +struggles. + +There was, however, a new spirit presently apparent, and a much +healthier one. The bards became soldiers, and in crossing over to France +and Flanders, each had packed his flute in his kit. They began to send +home verses in which they translated into music their actual experiences +and their authentic emotions. We found ourselves listening to young men +who had something new, and what was better, something noble to say to +us, and we returned to the national spirit which inspired the Chansons +de Geste in the eleventh century. To the spirit--but not in the least to +the form, since it is curious that the war-poetry of 1914-17 was, even +in the most skilful hands, poetry on a small scale. The two greatest of +the primal species of verse, the Epic and the Ode, were entirely +neglected, except, as will later be observed, in one notable instance by +Major Maurice Baring. As a rule, the poets constrained themselves to +observe the discipline of a rather confined lyrical analysis in forms of +the simplest character. Although particular examples showed a rare +felicity of touch, and although the sincerity of the reflection in many +cases hit upon very happy forms of expression, it is impossible to +overlook the general monotony. There used to be a story that the +Japanese Government sent a committee of its best art-critics to study +the relative merits of the modern European painters, and that they +returned with the bewildered statement that they could make no report, +because all European pictures were exactly alike. A student from +Patagonia might conceivably argue that he could discover no difference +whatever between our various poets of the war. + +This would be unjust, but it is perhaps not unfair to suggest that the +determined resistance to all restraint, which has marked the latest +school, is not really favourable to individuality. There has been a very +general, almost a universal tendency to throw off the shackles of poetic +form. It has been supposed that by abandoning the normal restraints, or +artificialities, of metre and rhyme, a greater directness and fidelity +would be secured. Of course, if an intensified journalistic impression +is all that is desired, "prose cut up into lengths" is the readiest +by-way to effect. But if the poets desire--and they all do desire--to +speak to ages yet unborn, they should not forget that all the experience +of history goes to prove discipline not unfavourable to poetic +sincerity, while, on the other hand, the absence of all restraint is +fatal to it. Inspiration does not willingly attend upon flagging metre +and discordant rhyme, and never in the whole choral progress from Pindar +down to Swinburne has a great master been found who did not exult in the +stubbornness of "dancing words and speaking strings," or who did not +find his joy in reducing them to harmony. The artist who avoids all +difficulties may be pleased with the rapidity of his effect, but he will +have the vexation of finding his success an ephemeral one. The old +advice to the poet, in preparing the rich chariot of the Muse, still +holds good:-- + + "Let the postillion, Nature, mount, but let + The coachman, Art, be set." + +Too many of our recent rebellious bards fancy that the coach will drive +itself, if only the post-boy sticks his heels hard into Pegasus. + +It is not, however, the object of this essay to review all the poetry +which was written about the war, nor even that part of it which owed its +existence to the strong feeling of non-combatants at home. I propose to +fix our attention on what was written by the young soldiers themselves +in their beautiful gallantry, verse which comes to us hallowed by the +glorious effort of battle, and in too many poignant cases by the +ultimate sacrifice of life itself. The poet achieves his highest meed of +contemporary glory, if + + "some brave young man's untimely fate + In words worth, dying for he celebrate," + +and when he is himself a young man striving for the same deathless +honour on the same field of blood it is difficult to conceive of +circumstances more poignant than those which surround his effort. On +many of these poets a death of the highest nobility set the seal of +eternal life. They were simple and passionate, radiant and calm, they +fought for their country, and they have entered into glory. This alone +might be enough to say in their praise, but star differeth from star in +brightness, and from the constellation I propose to select half a dozen +of the clearest luminaries. What is said in honest praise of these may +be said, with due modification, of many others who miss merely the +polish of their accomplishment. It is perhaps worth noticing, in +passing, that most of the poets are men of university training, and that +certain literary strains are common to the rank and file of them. The +influence of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and Rossetti is almost +entirely absent. The only one of the great Victorians whom they seem to +have read is Matthew Arnold, but it is impossible to help observing that +the _Shropshire Lad_ of Mr. A.E. Housman was in the tunic-pocket of +every one of them. Among the English poets of the past, it is mainly the +so-called "metaphysical" writers in the seventeenth century whom they +studied; Donne seems to have been a favourite with them all, and Vaughan +and Treherne were not far behind. + +The spontaneous instinct of readers has taken the name of Rupert Brooke +to illustrate the poetic spirit of the great war in a superlative +degree. His posthumous volume, brought out in May 1915, a few weeks +after his death, has enjoyed a success which is greater, perhaps, than +that of all the other poems of the war put together. He has become a +sort of symbol, even a sort of fetish, and he is to English sentiment +what Charles Péguy is to France, an oriflamme of the chivalry of his +country. It is curious, in this connection, that neither Péguy nor +Brooke had the opportunity of fighting much in the cause; they fell, as +it seemed for the moment, obscurely. Rupert Brooke was a pawn in the +dark and dolorous flight from Antwerp. He died in the Ægean, between +Egypt and Gallipoli, having never seen a Turkish enemy. So Péguy faded +out of sight on the very opening day of the battle of the Marne, yet +each of these young men was immediately perceived to have embodied the +gallantry of his country. The extraordinary popularity of Rupert Brooke +is due to the excellence of his verse, to the tact with which it was +presented to the public, but also to a vague perception of his +representative nature. He was the finest specimen of a certain type +produced at the universities, and then sacrificed to our national +necessity. + +It is needless to describe the verses of Rupert Brooke, which have +attained a circulation which any poet might envy. They are comprised in +two slender volumes, that above mentioned, and one of 1911, published +while he was still at Cambridge. He was born in 1887, and when he died +off Skyros, in circumstances of the most romantic pathos, he had not +completed his twenty-eighth year. He was, unlike the majority of his +contemporaries, a meticulous and reserved writer, little inclined to be +pleased with his work, and cautious to avoid the snare of improvisation. +Hence, though he lived to be older than did Keats or Fergusson, he left +a very slender garland of verse behind him, in which there is scarcely a +petal which is not of some permanent value. For instance, in the volume +of 1911 we found not a few pieces which then seemed crude in taste and +petulant in temper; but even these now illustrate a most interesting +character of which time has rounded the angles, and we would not have +otherwise what illustrates so luminously--and so divertingly--that +precious object, the mind of Rupert Brooke. + +Yet there is a danger that this mind and character may be +misinterpreted, even by those who contemplate the poet's memory with +idolatry. There is some evidence of a Rupert Brooke legend in the +process of formation, which deserves to be guarded against not less +jealously than the R.L. Stevenson legend of a few years ago. We know +that for some people gold and lilies are not properly honoured until +they are gilded and painted. Rupert Brooke was far from being either a +plaster saint or a vivid public witness. He was neither a trumpet nor a +torch. He lives in the memory of those who knew him as a smiling and +attentive spectator, eager to watch every flourish of the pageantry of +life. Existence was a wonderful harmony to Rupert Brooke, who was +determined to lose no tone of it by making too much noise himself. In +company he was not a great talker, but loved to listen, with sparkling +deference, to people less gifted than himself if only they had +experience to impart. He lived in a fascinated state, bewitched with +wonder and appreciation. His very fine appearance, which seemed to glow +with dormant vitality, his beautiful manners, the quickness of his +intelligence, his humour, were combined under the spell of a curious +magnetism, difficult to analyse. When he entered a room, he seemed to +bring sunshine with him, although he was usually rather silent, and +pointedly immobile. I do not think it would be easy to recollect any +utterance of his which was very remarkable, but all he said and did +added to the harmonious, ardent, and simple effect. + +There is very little of the poetry of Rupert Brooke which can be +definitely identified with the war. The last six months of his life, +spent in conditions for which nothing in his previous existence in +Cambridge or Berlin, in Grantchester or Tahiti, had in the least +prepared him, were devoted--for we must not say wasted--to breaking up +the _cliché_ of civilised habits. But of this harassed time there remain +to us the five immortal Sonnets, which form the crown of Rupert Brooke's +verse, and his principal legacy to English literature. Our record would +be imperfect without the citation of one, perhaps the least hackneyed of +these:-- + + "Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! + There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, + But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. + These laid the world away; poured out the red + Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be + Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, + That men call age; and those who would have been, + Their sons, they gave, their immortality. + + "Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, + Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain. + Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, + And paid his subjects with a royal wage; + And Nobleness walks in our ways again; + And we have come into our heritage." + +If the fortune of his country had not disturbed his plans, it is more +than probable that Rupert Brooke would have become an enlightened and +enthusiastic professor. Of the poet who detains us next it may be said +that there was hardly any walk of life, except precisely this, which he +could not have adorned. Julian Grenfell, who was a poet almost by +accident, resembled the most enlightened of the young Italian noblemen +of the Renaissance, who gave themselves with violence to a surfeit of +knowledge and a riot of action. He was a humanist of the type of the +fifteenth century, soldier, scholar, and man of pleasure, such as we +read of in Vespasiano's famous book. Everything he did was done in the +service of St. Epicurus, it was done to _darsi buon tempo_, as the +Tuscans used to say. But this was only the superficial direction taken +by his energy; if he was imperious in his pleasures, he was earnest in +his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of +the physical, intellectual, and emotional faculties at his disposal. +Julian Grenfell was a master of the body and of the mind, an unrivalled +boxer, a pertinacious hunter, skilled in swimming and polo, a splendid +shot, a swift runner, and an unwearying student. That an athlete so +accomplished should have had time left for intellectual endowments is +amazing, but his natural pugnacity led him to fight lexicons as he +fought the wild boar, and with as complete success. + +The record of the brief and shining life of Julian Grenfell has been +told in an anonymous record of family life which is destined to +reverberate far beyond the discreet circle of friends to which it is +provisionally addressed. It is a document of extraordinary candour, +tact, and fidelity, and it is difficult to say whether humour or courage +is the quality which illuminates it most. It will be referred to by +future historians of our race as the most vivid record which has been +preserved of the red-blooded activity of a spirited patrician family at +the opening of the twentieth century. It is partly through his place at +the centre of this record that, as one of the most gifted of his elder +friends has said, the name of Julian Grenfell will be linked "with all +that is swift and chivalrous, lovely and courageous," but it is also +through his rare and careless verses. + +Julian Grenfell, who was born to excel with an enviable ease, was not a +poet by determination. In a family where everything has been preserved, +no verses of his that are not the merest boyish exercises are known to +exist previous to the war. He was born in 1888, and he became a +professional soldier in India in 1911. He was on his way home from South +Africa when hostilities broke out, and he was already fighting in +Flanders in October 1914. After a very brilliant campaign, in the course +of which he won the D.S.O. and was twice mentioned in despatches, he was +shot in the head near Ypres and died of his wounds at Boulogne on May +26th, 1915. During these months in France, by the testimony of all who +saw him and of all to whom he wrote, his character received its final +touch of ripeness. Among his other attainments he abruptly discovered +the gift of noble gnomic verse. On receiving news of the death of Rupert +Brooke, and a month before his own death, Julian Grenfell wrote the +verses called "Into Battle," which contain the unforgettable stanzas:-- + + "The fighting man shall from the sun + Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; + Speed with the light-foot winds to run, + And with the trees to newer birth.... + + "The woodland trees that stand together, + They stand to him each one a friend; + They gently speak in the windy weather; + They guide to valley and ridge's end. + + "The kestrel hovering by day, + And the little owls that call by night, + Bid him be swift and keen as they, + As keen of ear, as swift of sight. + + "The blackbird sings to him 'Brother, brother, + If this be the last song you shall sing, + Sing well, for you may not sing another, + Brother, sing.'" + +The whole of this poem is memorable, down to its final prophetic +quatrain:-- + + "The thundering line of battle stands, + And in the air Death moans and sings; + But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, + And Night shall fold him in soft wings." + +"Could any other man in the British Army have knocked out a heavy-weight +champion one week and written that poem the next?" a brother officer +asked. "Into Battle" remains, and will probably continue to remain, the +clearest lyrical expression of the fighting spirit of England in which +the war has found words. It is a poem for soldiers, and it gives noble +form to their most splendid aspirations. Julian Grenfell wrote, as he +boxed and rode, as he fought in the mud of Flanders, as the ideal +sporting Englishman of our old, heroic type. + +The ancient mystery of verse is so deeply based on tradition that it is +not surprising that all the strange contrivances of twentieth-century +warfare have been found too crabbed for our poets to use. When great +Marlborough, as Addison puts it, "examin'd all the dreadful scenes of +war" at Blenheim, he was really in closer touch with Marathon than with +the tanks and gas of Ypres. But there is one military implement so +beautiful in itself, and so magical in the nature of its service, that +it is bound to conquer a place in poetry. The air-machine, to quote _The +Campaign_ once more, "rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." But +the poets are still shy of it. In French it has, as yet, inspired but +one good poem, the "Plus haut toujours!" of Jean Allard-Méeus, a hymn of +real aerial majesty. In English Major Maurice Baring's ode "In Memoriam: +A.H." is equally unique, and, in its complete diversity from +Allard-Méeus' rhapsody, suggests that the aeroplane has a wide field +before it in the realms of imaginative writing. Major Baring's subject +is the death of Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas, who was killed on November +3rd, 1916. This distinguished young statesman and soldier had just been +promoted, after a career of prolonged gallantry in the air, and would +have flown no more, if he had returned in safety to our front on that +fatal day. + +Major Baring has long been known as an excellent composer of sonnets and +other short pieces. But "In Memoriam: A.H." lifts him to a position +among our living poets to which he had hardly a pretension. In a long +irregular threnody or funeral ode, the great technical difficulty is to +support lyrical emotion throughout. No form of verse is more liable to +lapses of dignity, to dull and flagging passages. Even Dryden in _Anne +Killigrew_, even Coleridge in the _Departing Year_, have not been able +to avoid those languors. Many poets attempt to escape them by a use of +swollen and pompous language. I will not say that Major Baring has been +universally successful, where the success of the great masters is only +relative, but he has produced a poem of great beauty and originality, +which interprets an emotion and illustrates an incident the poignancy of +which could scarcely be exaggerated. I have no hesitation in asserting +that "A.H." is one of the few durable contributions to the literature of +the present war. + +It is difficult to quote effectively from a poem which is constructed +with great care on a complicated plan, but a fragment of Major Baring's +elegy may lead readers to the original:-- + + "God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift + And maimed you with a bullet long ago, + And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift, + And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow, + Gave back your youth to you, + And packed in moments rare and few + Achievements manifold + And happiness untold, + And bade you spring to Death as to a bride, + In manhood's ripeness, power and pride, + And on your sandals the strong wings of youth." + +There is no rhetoric here, no empty piling up of fine words; it is a +closely followed study in poetical biography. + +The water has its marvels like the air, but they also have hardly yet +secured the attention of the poets. In _A Naval Motley_, by Lieut. +N.M.F. Corbett, published in June 1916, we encounter the submarine:-- + + "Not yours to know delight + In the keen hard-fought fight, + The shock of battle and the battle's thunder; + But suddenly to feel + Deep, deep beneath the keel + The vital blow that rives the ship asunder!" + +A section of the new war-poetry which is particularly pathetic is that +which is inspired by the nostalgia of home, by the longing in the midst +of the guns and the dust and the lice for the silent woodlands and cool +waters of England. When this is combined with the sense of extreme +youth, and of a certain brave and beautiful innocence, the poignancy of +it is almost more than can be borne. The judgment is hampered, and one +doubts whether one's critical feeling can be trusted. This particular +species of emotion is awakened by no volume more than by the slender +_Worple Flit_ of E. Wyndham Tennant, who died on the Somme in September +1916. He was only nineteen when he fell, at an age when, on the one +hand, more precocious verse than his has been written, and when yet, on +the other, some of the greatest poets had not achieved a mastery of +words equal to that already possessed by this young Wykehamist. The +voice is faltering, and there is a want of sureness in the touch; the +metrical hammer does not always tap the centre of the nail's head. But +what pathos in the sentiment, what tenderness in the devotion to beauty! +Tennant had, we may suppose, read Flecker before he wrote "How shall I +tell you of the roads that stretch away?"; or was it merely the family +likeness in the generation? But I know not what but his own genius can +have inspired the "Home Thoughts in Laventie," a poem about a little +garden left unravished among the rubble of the wrecked village, a poem +which ends thus:-- + + "I saw green banks of daffodil, + Slim poplars in the breeze, + Great tan-brown hares in gusty March + A-courting on the leas. + And meadows, with their glittering streams--and silver-scurrying dace-- + Home, what a perfect place." + +Among these boy-poets, so cruelly and prematurely snatched from the +paternal earth, Tennant suggests to us the possibility that a talent of +very high order was quenched by death, because in few of them do we find +so much evidence of that "perception and awe of Beauty" which Plotinus +held to be the upward path to God. + +In June 1917 there was published a slender volume which is in several +ways the most puzzling and the most interesting of all that lie upon my +table to-day. This is the _Ardours and Endurances_ of Lieut. Robert +Nichols. I knew nothing of the author save what I learned from his +writings, that he is very young, that he went out from Oxford early in +the war, that he was fighting in Flanders before the end of 1914, that +he was wounded, perhaps at Loos, in 1915, and that he was long in +hospital. I felt the hope, which later information has confirmed, that +he was still alive and on the road to recovery. Before _Ardours and +Endurances_ reached me, I had met with _Invocation_, a smaller volume +published by Lieut. Nichols in December 1915. There has rarely been a +more radical change in the character of an artist than is displayed by a +comparison of these two collections. _Invocation_, in which the war +takes a small and unconvincing place, is creditable, though rather +uncertain, in workmanship, and displays a tendency towards experiment in +rich fancy and vague ornament. In _Ardours and Endurances_ the same +accents are scarcely to be detected; the pleasant boy has grown into a +warworn man; while the mastery over the material of poetic art has +become so remarkable as to make the epithet "promising" otiose. There is +no "promise" here; there is high performance. + +Alone among the poets before me, Lieut. Nichols has set down a reasoned +sequence of war impressions. The opening Third of his book, and by far +its most interesting section, consists of a cycle of pieces in which the +personal experience of fighting is minutely reported, stage by stage. We +have "The Summons," the reluctant but unhesitating answer to the call in +England, the break-up of plans; then the farewell to home, "the place of +comfort." "The Approach," in three successive lyrics, describes the +arrival at the Front. "Battle," in eleven sections, reproduces the +mental and physical phenomena of the attack. "The Dead," in four +instalments, tells the tale of grief. "The Aftermath," with +extraordinary skill, records in eight stages the gradual recovery of +nerve-power after the shattering emotions of the right. The first +section of "Battle," as being shorter than the rest, may be quoted in +full as an example of Lieut. Nichols's method:-- + + "It is mid-day: the deep trench glares-- + A buzz and blaze of flies-- + The hot wind puffs the giddy airs, + The great sun rakes the skies, + + "No sound in all the stagnant trench + Where forty standing men + Endure the sweat and grit and stench, + Like cattle in a pen. + + "Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs + Or twangs the whining wire; + Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs + As in hell's forging fire. + + "From out a high cool cloud descends + An aeroplane's far moan; + The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends, + The black speck travels on. + + "And sweating, dizzied, isolate + In the hot trench beneath, + We bide the next shrewd move of fate + Be it of life or death." + +This is painfully vivid, but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what +follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from +the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the +hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken +melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section of +_Ardours and Endurances_:-- + + "In a far field, away from England, lies + A Boy I friended with a care like love; + All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries, + The melancholy clouds drive on above. + + "There, separate from him by a little span, + Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free, + Two Grenfells, lie, and my Boy is made man, + One with these elder knights of chivalry." + +It is difficult to qualify, it seems almost indelicate to intrude upon, +such passionate grief. These poems form a revelation of the agony of a +spirit of superabundant refinement and native sensuousness suddenly +stunned, and as it were momentarily petrified, by horrible spiritual +anguish. If the strain were not relieved by the final numbers of +"Aftermath," where the pain of the soul is abated, and where the poet, +scarred and shattered, but "free at last," snaps the chain of despair, +these poems would be positively intolerable. + +In the closeness of his analysis and in the accurate heaping up of exact +and pregnant observations, Lieut. Nichols comes closer than any other of +these English poets to the best of the French paladins, of whom I wrote +in _Three French Moralists_. One peculiarity which he shares with them +is his seriousness: there is no trace in him of the English cheerfulness +and levity. Most of our war-writers are incorrigible Mark Tapleys. But +Lieut. Nichols, even when he uses colloquial phrases--and he introduces +them with great effect--never smiles. He is most unlike the French, on +the other hand, in his general attitude towards the war. He has no +military enthusiasm, no aspiration after _gloire_. Indeed, the most +curious feature of his poetry is that its range is concentrated on the +few yards about the trench in which he stands. He seems to have no +national view of the purpose of the war, no enthusiasm for the cause, no +anger against the enemy. There is but a single mention of the Germans +from beginning to end; the poet does not seem to know of their +existence. His experiences, his agonies, his despair, are what a purely +natural phenomenon, such as the eruption of a volcano or the chaos of an +earthquake, might cause. We might read his poems over and over again +without forming the slightest idea of what all the distress was about, +or who was guilty, or what was being defended. This is a mark of great +artistic sincerity; but it also points to a certain moral narrowness. +Lieut. Robert Nichols' "endurances" are magnificently described, but we +are left in the dark regarding his "ardours." We are sure of one thing, +however, that none of us may guess what such a talent, in one still so +young, may have in store for us; and we may hope for broader views +expressed in no less burning accents. + +There could hardly be a more vivid contrast than exists between the +melancholy passion of Lieut. Nichols and the fantastic high spirits of +Captain Robert Graves. He again is evidently a very young man, who was +but yester-year a jolly boy at the Charterhouse. He has always meant to +be a poet; he is not one of those who have been driven into verse by the +strenuous emotion of the war. In some diverting prefatory lines to _Over +the Brazier_ he gives us a picture of the nursery-scene when a bright +green-covered book bewitched him by its "metre twisting like a chain of +daisies, with great big splendid words." He has still a wholesome hunger +for splendid words; he has kept more deliberately than most of his +compeers a poetical vocation steadily before him. He has his moments of +dejection when the first battle faces him:-- + + "Here's an end to my art! + I must die and I know it, + With battle-murder at my heart-- + Sad death, for a poet! + + "Oh, my songs never sung, + And my plays to darkness blown! + I am still so young, so young, + And life was my own." + +But this mood soon passes, and is merged in the humoristic and fantastic +elation characteristic of this buoyant writer, whose whim it is to meet +the tragedy not mournfully but boisterously. Where by most of the +soldier-bards the subjective manner is a little over-done, it is +impossible not to welcome so objective a writer as Captain Graves, from +whose observations of the battle of La Bassée I quote an episode:-- + +THE DEAD FOX HUNTER + + "We found the little captain at the head; + His men lay well aligned. + We touched his hand, stone-cold, and he was dead, + And they, all dead behind, + Had never reached their goal, but they died well; + They charged in line, and in the same line fell. + + "The well-known rosy colours of his face + Were almost lost in grey. + We saw that, dying and in hopeless case, + For others' sake that day + He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death + His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth. + + "For those who live uprightly and die true + Heaven has no bars or locks, + And serves all taste.... Or what's for him to do + Up there, but hunt the fox? + Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide + For one who rode straight and at hunting died. + + "So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came, + Why, it must find one now: + If any shirk and doubt they know the game, + There's one to teach them how: + And the whole host of Seraphim complete + Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet." + +I have a notion that this is a gallant poem which Englishmen will not +allow to be forgotten. The great quality of Captain Graves' verse at +present is its elated vivacity, which neither fire, nor pain, nor grief +can long subdue. Acutely sensitive to all these depressing elements, his +animal spirits lift him like an aeroplane, and he is above us in a +moment, soaring through clouds of nonsense under a sky of unruffled +gaiety. In our old literature, of which he is plainly a student, he has +found a neglected author who is wholly to his taste. This is Skelton, +Henry VIII's Rabelaisian laureate. Captain Graves imitates, with a great +deal of bravado, those breathless absurdities, _The Tunning of Elinore +Rummyng_ and _Colin Clout_. He likes rough metre, bad rhymes and squalid +images: we suspect him of an inclination to be rude to his immediate +predecessors. But his extreme modernness--"Life is a cliché--I would +find a gesture of my own"--is, in the case of so lively a songster, an +evidence of vitality. He promises a new volume, to be called _Fairies +and Fusiliers_, and it will be looked forward to with anticipation. + +All these poets seem to be drawn into relation to one another. Robert +Graves and Siegfried Sassoon are both Fusiliers, and they publish a +στιχομυθία "on Nonsense," just as Cowley and Crashaw did "on Hope" two +centuries and a half ago. Lieut. Sassoon's own volume is later than +those which we have hitherto examined, and bears a somewhat different +character. The gallantry of 1915 and the optimism of 1916 have passed +away, and in Lieut. Sassoon's poems their place is taken by a sense of +intolerable weariness and impatience: "How long, O Lord, how long?" The +name-piece of the volume, and perhaps its first in execution, is a +monologue by an ignorant and shrewd old huntsman, who looks back over +his life with philosophy and regret. Like Captain Graves, he is haunted +with the idea that there must be fox-hounds in Heaven. All Lieut. +Sassoon's poems about horses and hunting and country life generally +betray his tastes and habits. This particular poem hardly touches on the +war, but those which follow are absorbed by the ugliness, lassitude, and +horror of fighting. Lieut. Sassoon's verse has not yet secured the +quality of perfection; he is not sufficiently alive to the importance of +always hitting upon the best and only word. He is essentially a +satirist, and sometimes a very bold one, as in "The Hero," where the +death of a soldier is announced home in "gallant lies," so that his +mother brags to her neighbours of the courage of her dead son. At the +close of all this pious make-believe, the Colonel + + "thought how 'Jack,' cold-footed, useless swine, + Had panicked down the trench that night the mine + Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried + To get sent home; and how, at last, he died, + Blown to small bits"; + +or, again, as in "Blighters," where the sentimentality of London is +contrasted with the reality in Flanders: + + "The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin + And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks + Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din, + 'We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks! + + "I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls, + Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home!'-- + And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls + To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume." + +It is this note of bitter anger, miles away from the serenity of Rupert +Brooke, the lion-heart of Julian Grenfell, the mournful passion of +Robert Nichols, which differentiates Lieut. Sassoon from his fellows. +They accept the war, with gallantry or with resignation; he detests it +with wrathful impatience. He has much to learn as an artist, for his +diction is often hard, and he does not always remember that Horace, +"when he writ on vulgar subjects, yet writ not vulgarly." But he has +force, sincerity, and a line of his own in thought and fancy. A +considerable section of his poetry is occupied with studies of men he +has observed at the Front, a subaltern, a private of the Lancashires, +conscripts, the dross of a battle-field, the one-legged man ("Thank God, +they had to amputate!"), the sniper who goes crazy--savage, +disconcerting silhouettes drawn roughly against a lurid background. + +The bitterness of Lieut. Sassoon is not cynical, it is the rage of +disenchantment, the violence of a young man eager to pursue other aims, +who, finding the age out of joint, resents being called upon to help to +mend it. His temper is not altogether to be applauded, for such +sentiments must tend to relax the effort of the struggle, yet they can +hardly be reproved when conducted with so much honesty and courage. +Lieut. Sassoon, who, as we learn, has twice been severely wounded and +has been in the very furnace of the fighting, has reflected, more +perhaps than his fellow-singers, about the causes and conditions of the +war. He may not always have thought correctly, nor have recorded his +impressions with proper circumspection, but his honesty must be +respectfully acknowledged. + +I have now called attention to those soldier-writers of verse who, in my +judgment, expressed themselves with most originality during the war. +There is a temptation to continue the inquiry, and to expatiate on +others of only less merit and promise. Much could be said of Charles +Hamilton Sorley, who gave evidence of precocious literary talent, though +less, I think, in verse, since the unmistakable singing faculty is +absent in _Marlborough_ (Cambridge University Press, 1916), than in +prose, a form in which he already excelled. Sorley must have shown +military gifts as well as a fine courage, for when he was killed in +action in October 1915, although he was but twenty years of age, he had +been promoted captain. In the universal sorrow, few figures awaken more +regret, than his. Something, too, had I space, should be said about the +minstrels who have been less concerned with the delicacies of +workmanship than with stirring the pulses of their auditors. In this +kind of lyric "A Leaping Wind from England" will long keep fresh the +name of W.N. Hodgson, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. His +verses were collected in November 1916. The strange rough drum-taps of +Mr. Henry Lawson, published in Sydney at the close of 1915, and those of +Mr. Lawrence Rentoul, testify to Australian enthusiasm. Most of the +soldier-poets were quite youthful; an exception was R.E. Vernède, whose +_War Poems_ (W. Heinemann, 1917) show the vigour of moral experience. He +was killed in the attack on Harrincourt, in April 1917, having nearly +closed his forty-second year. To pursue the list would only be to make +my omissions more invidious. + +There can be no healthy criticism where the principle of selection is +neglected, and I regret that patriotism or indulgence has tempted so +many of those who have spoken of the war-poets of the day to plaster +them with indiscriminate praise. I have here mentioned a few, in whose +honour even a little excess of laudation may not be out of place. But +these are the exceptions, in a mass of standardised poetry made to +pattern, loosely versified, respectable in sentiment, uniformly +meditative, and entirely without individual character. The reviewers who +applaud all these ephemeral efforts with a like acclaim, and who say +that there are hundreds of poets now writing who equal if they do not +excel the great masters of the past, talk nonsense; they talk nonsense, +and they know it. They lavish their flatteries in order to widen the +circle of their audience. They are like the prophets of Samaria, who +declared good unto the King of Israel with one mouth; and we need a +Micaiah to clear the scene of all such flatulent Zedekiahs. It is not +true that the poets of the youngest generation are a myriad Shelleys and +Burnses and Bérangers rolled into one. But it is true that they carry on +the great tradition of poetry with enthusiasm, and a few of them with +high accomplishment. + +1917. + + + + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY[8] + + "J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or, + Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor, + Verdoyant à jamais, hier comme aujourd'hui, + Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit." + +HENRI DE RÉGNIER. + + +In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen +to those whose positive authority is universally recognised, and in +taking for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its +definitions or consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I +perform what you may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy +audacity. My subject is chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures +which you may well believe yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to +propound. Nevertheless, and in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite +you to join with me in some reflections on what is the probable course +of English poetry during, let us say, the next hundred years. If I +happen to be right, I hope some of the youngest persons present will +say, when I am long turned to dust, what an illuminating prophet I was. +If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will remember anything at all about +the matter. In any case we may possibly be rewarded this afternoon by +some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation of some pleasant +analogies. + +Our title takes for granted that English poetry will continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as +an art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which +is fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and +another, in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in +the history of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of +writing verse was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three +Scandinavian countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no +poetry, in our sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost +died out here in England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran +very low in France at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these +instances, whether ancient or modern, of the attempt to prove prose a +sufficing medium for all expression of human thought have hitherto +failed, and it is now almost certain that they will more and more +languidly be revived, and with less and less conviction. + +It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his _Epistle to the Reverend Divine_ +(1574) that "It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not +only permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing." +Poetry has occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and +you will remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his +philosophical Utopia, was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical +verse himself. So, to come down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry +out of the living language of his country, had been one of the most +skilful of prosodical proficients. Such instances may allay our alarm. +There cannot be any lasting force in arguments which remind us of the +pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. It needs more than the zeal of +a turncoat to drive Apollo out of Parnassus. + +There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of +it? There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious +water-colour painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It +is very fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, +the horse of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his +wings, against a sky so dark that it must symbolise the obscure +discourse of those who write in prose. You are left quite doubtful +whether he will strike the rocky terrace in the foreground with his +slender, silver hooves, or will swoop down into the valley below, or +will soar to heaven and out of sight. You are left by the painter in a +pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may break out anywhere, and of the +vivacious courser himself all that we can be sure of is that we are +certain to see him alighting before us when we least expect him. + +We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his +apparently aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical +spirit, and yet acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of +believing that verse will continue to be written in the English language +for a quite indefinite period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of +these difficulties at once. The principal danger, then, to the future of +poetry seems to me to rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. +Every school of verse is a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because +its leaders have become capable of new forms of attractive expression; +its crest is some writer, or several writers, of genius, who combine +skill and fire and luck at a moment of extreme opportuneness; and then +the wave breaks, because later writers cannot support the ecstasy, and +merely repeat formulas which have lost their attractiveness. Shirley +would have been a portent, if he had flourished in 1595 and had written +then as he did in 1645. Erasmus Darwin would be one of the miracles of +prosody if _The Loves of the Plants_ could be dated 1689 instead of +1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this rise and fall in +value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the trough of the +last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. _Cantate +Domino_ is the cry of youth, sing a _new_ song unto the Lord. + +But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray's +_Elegy_, and much of _Hamlet_, and some of Burns's songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are +like rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the +script of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who +wish to speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In +several of the literatures of modern Europe--those which began late, or +struggled long against great disadvantages--it is still possible to +produce pleasure by poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly +limpid language. But with us in England, I confess that it seems to me +certain that whatever we retain, we can never any more have patience to +listen to a new shepherd piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation +is likely to be more acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire +for novelty of expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which +is so fervently demanded from every new school of writers, will force +the poets of the future to sweep away all recognised impressions. The +consequence must be, I think--I confess so far as language is concerned +that I see no escape from this--that the natural uses of English and the +obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our national poetry, as +they are even now so generally being driven. + +No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. +The poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that "Qui saura penser de +lui-même et former de nobles idées, qu'il prenne, s'il pent, la manière +et le tour élevé des maîtres." These are words which should inspire +every new aspirant to the laurel. "S'il peut"; you see that Vauvenargues +puts it so, because he does not wish that we should think that such +victories as these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce +them. They are not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the +rubbed-out, conventionalised coinage of our language. + +In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has +recently been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular +poets, has never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am +debarred by what Keats called "giant ignorance" from expressing an +opinion on the subject, but I presume that in Welsh the resources of +language are far from being so seriously exhausted as we have seen that +they are in our own complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the +higher forms of poetic diction through five centuries has made simple +expression extremely difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in +Welsh, as in Gaelic and in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of +lyric, epic, and dramatic art untilled. We have seen, in the latter half +of the nineteenth century, Provençal poets capable of producing simple +and thrilling numbers which are out of the reach of their sophisticated +brethren who employ the worn locutions of the French language. + +In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not +any longer satisfy to write + + "The rose is red, the violet blue, + And both are sweet, and so are you." + +Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were +so still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is +quite impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will +seek to analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their _naïvetés_ lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school. + +We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that +Pegasus, with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue +to accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will +only be at the cost of much that we at present admire and enjoy that the +continuity of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly +present to you some characteristic passages of the best English poetry +of 1963, I doubt extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of +their merit. I am not sure that you would understand what the poet +intended to convey, any more than the Earl of Surrey would have +understood the satires of Donne, or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of +George Meredith. Young minds invariably display their vitality by +attacking the accepted forms of expression, and then they look about +for novelties, which they cultivate with what seems to their elders to +be extravagance. Before we attempt to form an idea, however shadowy, of +what poetry will be in the future, we must disabuse ourselves of the +delusion that it will be a repetition of what is now produced and +accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of philosophy to do away with +the embarrassing and painful, but after all perhaps healthful antagonism +between those who look forward and those who live in the past. The +earnestness expended on new work will always render young men incapable +of doing justice to what is a very little older than themselves; and the +piety with which the elderly regard what gave them full satisfaction in +their days of emotional freshness will always make it difficult for them +to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what they loved. + +If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in +our vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must +follow on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find +the modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing +symbolic subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are +still unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That +is to say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had +been said before him, and in his horror of the trite and the +superficial, he will achieve effect and attach interest _obscuris vera +involvens_--wrapping the truth in darkness. The "darkness" will be +relative, as his own contemporaries, being more instructed and +sophisticated than we are, will find those things transparent, or at +least translucent, which remain opaque enough to us. And, of course, as +epithets and adjectives that seem fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn +to him, he will have to exert his ingenuity to find parallel +expressions which would startle us by their oddity if we met with them +now. + +A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognised +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never +fail to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We +may instructively examine the history of literature with special +attention to this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. +It was fatal to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in +an obscurity to which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given +from the name of its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several +highly-gifted writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who +endeavoured to give freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I +need only remind you of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril +Tourneur, called _The Transform'd Metamorphosis_, and of the cryptic +rhymed dramas of Lord Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think +desperately perilous to a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable +Stéphane Mallarmé. Nothing, I feel, is more dangerous to the health of +poetry than the praise given by a group of irresponsible disciples to +verse which transfers commonplace thought to an exaggerated, violent, +and involved scheme of diction, and I confess that I should regard the +future of poetry in this country with much more apprehension than I do, +if I believed that the purely learned poet, the prosodical pedant, was +destined to become paramount amongst us. That would, indeed, threaten +the permanence of the art; and it is for this reason that I look with a +certain measure of alarm on the excess of verbiage about versification +which attends not merely criticism--for that matters little--but the +actual production and creation. I am confident, however, that the common +sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in favour of sanity +and lucidity. + +One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what +the French call "la vraie hauteur." This elevation of style, this +dignity, is foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the +rude air of modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe saw it +degenerate for a century and a half, into pomposity relieved by +flatness. It is apt to become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of +empty fine phrases. If we examine the serious poetry of the end of the +seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century--especially +in the other countries of Europe, for England was never without some dew +on the threshing-floor--if we examine it in France, for instance, +between Racine and André Chenier, we are obliged to recognise that it +was very rarely both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, +which we are beginning ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to +poetry the sense of a genuine stateliness of expression, which once more +gave it the requisite dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and +the noble sentiments of humanity. + +Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the +subjects with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. +Here we are confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of +history, we see that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed +by the incursions of a more and more powerful and wide embracing prose. +At the dawn of civilisation poetry had it all its own way. If +instruction was desired upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, +the bard produced it in a prosodical shape, combining with the dignity +of form the aid which the memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus +you conceive of a Hesiod before you think of a Homer, and the earliest +poetry was probably of a purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, +with its exact pedestrian method, took over more and more completely the +whole province of information, but it was not until the nineteenth +century that the last strongholds of the poetry of instruction were +stormed. I will, if you please, bring this home to you by an example +which may surprise you. + +The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But +it was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a +hundred years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable +passage in which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of +1800:-- + + "If the labours of men of science,--Wordsworth said,--should ever + create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our + condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the + Poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to + follow the steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general + indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation + into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest + discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be + as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be + employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be + familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated + by the followers of these respective sciences, thus familiarised + to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and + blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the + transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a + dear and genuine inmate of the household of man." + +It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same +spirit as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to +assure us of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of +one so sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. +The belief of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, +in some vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But +when we look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our +national poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany +or chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an +effort made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. +Perhaps the nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable +was attempted by Tennyson, particularly in those parts of _In Memoriam_ +where he dragged in analogies to geological discoveries and the +biological theories of his time. Well, these are just those parts of +Tennyson which are now most universally repudiated as lifeless and +jejune. + +Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would +"bind together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human +society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time." I +suppose that in composing those huge works, so full of scattered +beauties, but in their entirety so dry and solid, _The Excursion_ and +_The Prelude_, he was consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme +of a wide and all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts +of this kind will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in +whom the memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the +imagination, employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social +poetry the elements of which, prima facie, should be deeply attractive +to us all. But I do not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard +Kipling, brilliant as they are, are calculated to encourage the poets of +the future to pursue their lyric celebration of machinery and sociology +and the mysteries of natural religion. Already is it not that portion of +his work which we approach with most languor, in spite of its +originality and its outlook upon "the vast empire of human society"? And +lesser poets than he who seek for popularity by such violent means are +not, I think, rewarded by the distinguished loyalty of the best readers. +We are startled by their novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but +when, a few years later, we return to them, we are apt to observe with +distress how + + "their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw." + +If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater +prophets, my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy +of future poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid +social character, but that as civilisation more and more tightly lays +hold upon literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one +province after another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more +and more what Hazlitt calls "a mere effusion of natural sensibility." +Hazlitt used the phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and +not shrink from adopting it. In most public remarks about current and +coming literature in the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which +it is taken for granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers +of the imagination is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to +embrace the world, to take part in a universal scheme of pacification, +to immortalise imperial events, to be as public as possible. But surely +it is more and more clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for +such grandiose themes as these. Within the last year our minds have been +galvanised into collective sympathy by two great sensations of +catastrophe, each case wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can +take in the revolt of nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I +suppose we may consider the destruction of the Titanic and the loss of +Captain Scott's expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is +thought by journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common +consent, these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to +any really remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody +could equal in vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These +are matters in which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose +does not require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. +The impact of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and +forcible. + +My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming +poets will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should +define it as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which +are of collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the +intense cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical +observation of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the +future poet. I will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of +his principal preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery +piece of mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of +me alike. The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn +writers of the imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is +the only safeguard against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But +although the ivory tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although +the poets may be strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_ +there, it should not be the year-long habitation of any healthy +intelligence. + +I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an "effusion of +natural sensibility," will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be +tempted, in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to +draw farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap +his singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat +his readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our +successors must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not +merely sees nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I +am not concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; +the moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that +this unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on +the positive value of his verse. + +The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries--it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the +misanthropy of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the +rowdiness of Marlowe?--the higher the note of the lyre, the more +ridiculous is the attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds +the violence of Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with +a greater pride than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude +of the sacred bard, maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and +hollowed out and made haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will +have to be abandoned as a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it +is preserved by the poets of the future it will be peculiar to those +monasteries of song, those "little clans," of which I am now about to +speak as likely more and more to prevail. + +In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of +these bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is +perhaps instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de +Creteil, which was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was +founded in October 1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal +dissensions in January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance +of the public, in contemptuous disregard of established "literary +opinion," a sort of prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be +the active centre of energy for a new generation, and there were five +founders, each of whom was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in +verse. At Creteil there was a printing-press in a great park, so that +the members should be altogether independent of the outside world. The +poets were to cultivate the garden and keep house with the sale of the +produce. When not at work, there were recitations, discussions, +exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up with the latest vagaries +of the Cubists and Post-impressionists. + +This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one +among the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any +measure of talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in +vague and nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call +charlatans, the refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider +that it is interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a +sense correct when they announced that they were performing "a heroic +act," an act symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future +disdainfully protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the +dreadful impact of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you +wish to pursue the subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your +eye on this tendency to a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed +much evidence of it yet in England, but it is beginning to stir a good +deal in France and Italy. After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious +thing, like the practices of the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was +said, "Our House of the Holy Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should +have looked upon it, is yet doomed to remain untouched, imperturbable, +out of sight, and unrevealed to the whole godless world for ever." If I +am sure of anything, it is that the Poets of the Future will look upon +massive schemes of universal technical education, and such democratic +reforms as those which are now occupying the enthusiasm and energy of +Lord Haldane, as peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a +godless world. + +To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me possible that +sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical poetry +of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort +of obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other +phenomenon worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with +the various tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was +the mark of the sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and +craftily exhibited, but often, as in foreign examples which will easily +occur to your memory, rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a +slightly stale perfume, an irritating odour of last night's opopanax or +vervain. And this is the one point, almost I think the only point, in +which the rather absurd and certainly very noisy and hoydenish +manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, led by M. Marinetti and his crew +of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious attention. It is a plank in +their platform to banish eroticism, of the good kind and of the bad, +from the poetic practice of the future. I do not, to say the truth, find +much help for the inquiry we have taken up to-day, in the manifestoes of +these raucous young gentlemen, who, when they have succeeded in flinging +the ruins of the architecture of Venice into its small stinking canals, +will find themselves hard put to it to build anything beautiful in the +place of them. But in their reaction against "the eternal feminine," +they may, I think, very possibly be followed by the serious poets of the +future. + +Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry +in England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in +the direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is +known as pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to +listening audiences behind the footlights, but in the increased study of +life in its exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with +the tendency, of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world +itself, either into an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered +association of more or less independent figures united only in a +rebellious and contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the +inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well +happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped +social surfaces of life, the ignorance--really, the happy and hieratic +ignorance--of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be +saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and +penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and +permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I +think it not improbable that the poetry of the future may become more +and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series of acts of definite +creation, rather than as the result of observation, which will be left +to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant masters of our prose. + +As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for +mankind than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an +excessive observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate +to the violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general +exaggeration of the darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of +what was called the "sub-fusc" colours which art-critics of a century +ago judged essential to sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, +and particularly in the very latest Russian drama, this determination to +see blackness and blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of +existence as a Valley of the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully +frequent. In England we had a poet of considerable power, whose tragic +figure crossed me in my youth, in whose work there is not a single gleam +of hope or dignity for man;--I mean the unfortunate James Thomson, +author of _The City of Dreadful Night_. I cannot but believe that the +poetry of the future, being more deeply instructed, will insist less +emphatically upon human failure and less savagely upon the revolt of +man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an earnestness, a fullness +of tribute to the noble passion of life, an utterance simple and direct. +I believe that it will take as its theme the magnificence of the +spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not the grotesque and +squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat. + +It has been admirably said, in a charming essay, that "History may be +abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be purely formal; +but poetry must be full of human life." This consideration, I think, may +make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance of poetic +expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever changes may be +introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may occur in +religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification of +composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action +possible as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the +hopes and fears, of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic +imagination will be found to insist on expression in the mode of formal +art. It is quite possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of +the democratic instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such +as was presented in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank +verse lyrics in _The Princess_, by Browning in the more brilliant parts +of _One Word More_, by Swinburne in his fulminating _Sapphics_, may be +as little repeated as the analogous hardness of Dryden in _MacFlecknoe_ +or the lapidary splendour of Gray in his _Odes_. I should rather look, +at least in the immediate future, for a revival of the liquid ease of +Chaucer or the soft redundancies of _The Faerie Queene_. The remarkable +experiments of the Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon +the whole body of French verse, leads me to expect a continuous movement +in that direction. + +It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal--perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognised their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of +it in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, +which at once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or +imminent service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of +poetry is not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and +only partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will +consider it, all that the Symbolists have been saying is involved in +Bacon's phrase that "poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires +of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things." There +could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up with a +rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that which I +have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope that you +will not think that your time has been wasted while we have touched, +lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the probable +or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, or I, or +the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn poets, +we may be certain that there will + + "hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue" + +of ours can "digest." I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on +any expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest +our only sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable +arrival, ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon +as ever they bubble from the blow of his hoof. + +[Footnote 8: Address delivered before the English Association, May 30, +1913.] + + + + +THE AGONY OF THE VICTORIAN AGE + + +For a considerable time past everybody must have noticed, especially in +private conversation, a growing tendency to disparagement and even +ridicule of all men and things, and aspects of things, which can be +defined as "Victorian." Faded habits of mind are lightly dismissed as +typical of the Victorian Age, and old favourite poets, painters, and +musicians are treated with the same scorn as the glued chairs and glass +bowls of wax flowers of sixty years ago. The new generation are hardly +willing to distinguish what was good from what was bad in the time of +their grandmothers. With increasing audacity they repudiate the +Victorian Age as a _sæclum insipiens et infacetum_, and we meet +everywhere with the exact opposite of Montaigne's "Je les approuve tous +Tun après l'autre, quoi qu'ils disent." Our younger contemporaries are +slipping into the habit of approving of nothing from the moment that +they are told it is Victorian. + +This may almost be described as an intellectual and moral revolution. +Every such revolution means some liberation of the intellect from +bondage, and shows itself first of all in a temper of irreverence; the +formulas of the old faith are no longer treated with respect and +presently they are even ridiculed. It is useless to close our eyes to +the fact that a spirit of this kind is at work amongst us, undermining +the dignity and authority of objects and opinions and men that seemed +half a century ago to be more perennial than bronze. Successive orators +and writers have put the public in possession of arguments, and +especially have sparkled in pleasantries, which have sapped the very +foundations of the faith of 1850. The infection has attacked us all, and +there is probably no one who is not surprised, if he seriously reflects, +to realise that he once implicitly took his ideas of art from Ruskin and +of philosophy from Herbert Spencer. These great men are no longer +regarded by anybody with the old credulity; their theories and their +dogmas are mined, as were those of the early eighteenth century in +France by the Encyclopædists, by a select class of destructive critics, +in whose wake the whole public irregularly follows. The ordinary +unthinking man accepts the change with exhilaration, since in this +country the majority have always enjoyed seeing noses knocked off +statues. But if we are to rejoice in liberation from the bondage of the +Victorian Age we ought to know what those bonds were. + +The phenomena of the decadence of an age are never similar to those of +its rise. This is a fact which is commonly overlooked by the opponents +of a particular section of social and intellectual history. In the +initial stages of a "period" we look for audacity, fire, freshness, +passion. We look for men of strong character who will hew a channel +along which the torrent of new ideals and subversive sentiments can +rush. But this violence cannot be expected to last, and it would lead to +anarchy if it did. Slowly the impetus of the stream diminishes, the +river widens, and its waters reach a point where there seems to be no +further movement in their expanse. No age contains in itself the +elements of endless progress; it starts in fury, and little by little +the force of it declines. Its decline is patent--but not until long +afterwards--in a deadening of effort, in a hardening of style. Dryden +leads on to Pope, Pope points down to Erasmus Darwin, after whom the +world can but reject the whole classical system. The hungry sheep of a +new generation look up and are not fed, and this is the vision which +seems to face us in the last adventures of the schools of yesterday. + +But what is, or was, the Victorian Age? The world speaks glibly of it as +though it were a province of history no less exactly defined than the +career of a human being from birth to death; but in practice no one +seems in a hurry to mark out its frontiers. Indeed, to do so is an +intrepid act. If the attempt is to be made at all, then 1840, the year +of Queen Victoria's marriage with Prince Albert, may be suggested as the +starting-point, and 1890 (between the death-dates of Browning, Newman, +and Tennyson) as the year in which the Victorian Age is seen sinking +into the sands. Nothing could be vaguer, or more open to contention in +detail, than this delineation, but at all events it gives our +deliberations a frame. It excludes _Pickwick_, which is the typical +picture of English life under William IV., and _Sartor Resartus_, which +was the tossing of the bound giant in his sleep; but it includes the +two-volume Tennyson, "chiefly lyrical," the stir of the Corn Law +agitation, the Tractarian Crisis of 1841, and the _History of the French +Revolution and Past and Present_, when the giant opened his eyes and +fought with his chains. Darwin was slowly putting together the notes he +had made on the Beagle, and Hugh Miller was disturbing convention by his +explorations of the Old Red Sandstone. Most of all, the discussion of +permanent and transient elements in Christianity was taking a foremost +place in all strata of society, not merely in the form of the contest +around _Tract 90_, but in the divergent directions of Colenso, the +Simeon Evangelicals, and Maurice. + +The Victorian Age began in rancour and turmoil. This is an element which +we must not overlook, although it was in a measure superficial. A series +of storms, rattling and recurrent tempests of thunder and lightning, +swept over public opinion, which had been so calm under George IV. and +so dull under William IV. Nothing could exceed the discord of +vituperation, the Hebraism of Carlyle denouncing the Vaticanism of +Wiseman, "Free Kirk and other rubbish" pitted against "Comtism, +ghastliest of algebraic spectralities." This theological tension marks +the first twenty years and then slowly dies down, after the passion +expended over _Essays and Reviews_. It was in 1840 that we find +Macaulay, anxious to start a scheme of Whig reform and to cut a +respectable figure as Secretary of State for War, unable to get to +business because of the stumbling-block of religious controversy. +Everything in heaven and earth was turned into "a theological treatise," +and all that people cared about was "the nature of the sacraments, the +operation of holy orders, the visibility of the Church and baptismal +regeneration." The sitting member goes down to Edinburgh to talk to his +constituents about Corn Laws and Sugar Duties and the Eastern Question; +he is met by "a din" of such objections as "Yes, Mr. Macaulay, that is +all very well for a statesman, but what becomes of the headship of our +Lord Jesus Christ?" + +If the Victorian Age opened in a tempest of theology, it was only +natural that it should cultivate a withering disdain for those who had +attempted to reform society on a non-theological basis. In sharp +contradistinction to the indulgence of the Georgian period for +philosophic speculation, England's interest in which not even her long +continental wars had been able to quench, we find with the accession of +Victoria the credit of the French thinkers almost abruptly falling. +Voltaire, never very popular in England, becomes "as mischievous a +monkey as any of them"; the enthusiasm for Rousseau, which had reached +extravagant proportions, completely disappears, and he is merely the +slanderous sceptic, who, after soaking other people's waistcoats with +his tears, sent his own babies to the Foundling Hospital. The influence +of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was +first combated and then baldly denied. The premier journalist of the age +declared, with the satisfaction of a turkey-cock strutting round his +yard, that no trace of the lowest level of what could be called +popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt +himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a +French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the +Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious +taint. + +Notwithstanding, or perhaps we ought to say inevitably conducted by +these elements of passion and disdain, the infant Victorian Age passed +rapidly into the great political whirlpool of 1846, with its violent +concentration of enthusiasm on the social questions which affected the +welfare of the masses, with, in short, its tremendous upheaval of a +practical radicalism. From that time forth its development baffles +analysis. Whatever its present enemies may allege to its discredit, they +cannot pretend that it was languid or monotonous. No Age hitherto lived +out upon the world's surface has been so multiform or so busy; none +defies the art of the historian to such a bewildering degree. Its latest +critic does not exaggerate when he says that our fathers and our +grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of +information concerning it "that the industry of a Ranke would be +submerged by it and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it." +This is manifestly true, and it is evident that an encyclopædia would be +required to discuss all the divisions of so tremendous a subject. If we +look over too wide a horizon we lose our bearings altogether. We get a +hopelessly confused notion of the course of progress; we see +experiments, criticisms, failures, but who is to assure us what was the +tendency of evolution? + +Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians" has arrived at the very +moment when all readers are prepared to discuss the age he deals with, +and when public opinion is aware of the impatience which has been +"rising in the bosom of a man like smoke" under the pressure of the +insistent praise of famous men. The book has attracted a very remarkable +degree of notice; it has been talked about wherever people have met +together; and has received the compliment of being seriously displayed +before the University of Oxford by one of the most eminent of the +Victorian statesmen whom Oxford has produced. If we look into the causes +of this success, enjoyed by the earliest extended book of a writer +almost unknown, a book, too, which pretends to no novelty of matter or +mystery of investigation, we find them partly in the preparedness of the +public mind for something in the way of this exposure, but partly also +in the skill of the writer. Whatever else may be said of Mr. Lytton +Strachey, no one can deny that he is very adroit, or that he possesses +the art of arresting attention. + +It is part of this adroitness that he contrives to modify, and for a +long time even to conceal the fact that his purpose is to damage and +discredit the Victorian Age. He is so ceremonious in his approach, so +careful to avoid all brusqueness and coarseness, that his real aim may +be for awhile unobserved. He even professes to speak "dispassionately, +impartially, and without ulterior intentions." We may admit the want of +passion and perhaps the want of partiality, but we cannot avoid seeing +the ulterior intention, which is to undermine and belittle the +reputation of the great figures of the Victorian Age. When the +prodigious Signor Marinetti proposes to hurl the "leprous palaces" of +his native city into her "fetid canals," and to build in their place +warehouses and railway stations, he does not differ in essential +attitude from Mr. Lytton Strachey, delicately "laying bare the facts of +some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the +greater knowledge of history--in short, the superior equipment of the +English iconoclast. Each of them--and all the troop of opponents who +grumble and mutter between their extremes--each of them is roused by an +intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they +have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a +virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an exasperating monotony +of effect. + +Mr. Strachey has conducted his attack from the point of view of +biography. He realises the hopelessness of writing a history of the +Victorian Age; it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled +into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of +the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend +themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst +in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the +Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most of +them are buried. Mr. Strachey has some criticism of these monsters which +could hardly be bettered: + + "Those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate + the dead--who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of + material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, + their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design? They + are as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker, and bear the same + air of slow, funereal barbarism." + +It is impossible not to agree with this pungent criticism. Every candid +reader could point to a dozen Victorian biographies which deserve Mr. +Strachey's condemnation. For instance, instead of taking up any of the +specimens which he has chosen for illustration, we need only refer the +reader's memory to the appendix of "Impressions," by a series of elderly +friends, which closes the official _Life of Tennyson_, published in +1897. He will find there an expression of the purest Victorian optimism. +The great object being to foist on the public a false and superhuman +picture of the deceased, a set of illustrious contemporaries--who +themselves expected to be, when they died, transfigured in like +manner--form a bodyguard around the corpse of the poet and emit their +"tedious panegyric." In this case, more even than in any of the +instances which Mr. Strachey has taken, the contrast between the real +man and the funereal image is positively grotesque. + +Without question this contrast is not a little responsible for the +discredit into which the name of Tennyson has fallen. Lord Selborne +found nothing in Tennyson "inconsistent with the finest courtesy and the +gentlest heart." Dr. Jowett had preserved through forty years "an +ever-increasing wonder at the depth of his thought," and emphatically +stated that he "was above such feelings as a desire of praise, or fear +of blame." (Tennyson, who was thirsty for ceaseless laudation, and to +whom a hint of censure was like the bite of a mosquito!) Frederick Myers +ejaculated, "How august, how limitless a thing was Tennyson's own +spirit's upward flight!" The Duke of Argyll, again, during the space of +forty years, had found him "always reverent, hating all levity or +flippancy," and was struck by his possessing "the noblest humility I +have ever known." Lord Macaulay, who "had stood absolutely aloof," once +having been permitted to glance at the proof-sheets of _Guenevere_, was +"absolutely subdued" to "unfeigned and reverent admiration." The duke +was the glad emissary who was "the medium of introduction," and he +recognised in Macaulay's subjugation "a premonition" of Tennyson's +complete "conquest over the living world and over the generations that +are to come." + +Thus the priesthood circled round their idol, waving their censers and +shouting their hymns of praise, while their ample draperies effectively +hid from the public eye the object which was really in the centre of +their throng, namely, a gaunt, black, touzled man, rough in speech, +brooding like an old gipsy over his inch of clay pipe stuffed with shag, +and sucking in port wine with gusto--"so long as it is black and sweet +and strong, I care not!" Their fault lay, not in their praise, which was +much of it deserved, but in their deliberate attempt in the interests of +what was Nice and Proper--gods of the Victorian Age--to conceal what any +conventional person might think not quite becoming. There were to be no +shadows in the picture, no stains or rugosities on the smooth bust of +rosy wax. + +On the pretext, therefore, of supplying a brief and above all a +complimentary set of portraits, Mr. Strachey takes the biography of an +ecclesiastic, an educational authority, a woman of action, and a man of +adventure, and tells them over again in his own way. The four figures he +chooses are all contemporary, and yet, so implacably does time hurry us +along, all would be very old if they still survived. Three of them could +hardly survive, for Cardinal Manning and Dr. Arnold would be far over a +hundred, and Florence Nightingale in her ninety-ninth year; the fourth, +General Gordon, would be eighty-five. The motto of Mr. Strachey is "Put +not your trust in the intellectual princes of the Victorian Age," or, at +least, in what their biographers have reported of them; they were not +demi-gods in any sense, but eccentric and forceful figures working dimly +towards aims which they only understood in measure, and which very +often were not worth the energy which they expended on them. This +attitude alone would be enough to distinguish Mr. Strachey from the +purveyors of indiscriminate praise, and in adopting it he emphasises his +deliberate break with the age of which they were the envy and the +ornament. Given his 1918 frame of mind, no blame can attach to him for +adopting this gesture. At moments when the tradition of a people has +been violently challenged there have always ensued these abrupt acts of +what to the old school seems injustice. If Mr. Lytton Strachey is +reproached with lack of respect, he might reply: In the midst of a +revolution, who is called on to be respectful to the fallen monarch? +Extreme admiration for this or that particular leader, the principle of +Victorian hero-worship, is the very heresy, he might say, which I have +set out to refute. + +When St. John the Divine addressed his Apocalypse to the Angels of the +Seven Churches, he invented a system of criticism which is worthy of all +acceptation. He dwelt first upon the merits of each individual church; +not till he had exhausted them did he present the reverse of the coin. +In the same spirit, critics who, in the apostle's phrase, have +"something against" Mr. Lytton Strachey, will do well to begin by +acknowledging what is in his favour. In the first place, he writes +sensibly, rapidly, and lucidly--without false ornament of any kind. Some +of his pages might, with advantage, be pinned up opposite the +writing-tables of our current authors of detestable pseudo-Meredithian +and decayed Paterese. His narrative style is concise and brisk. His book +may undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with _Whiggism +in its Relations to Literature_, although it is less discursive and does +not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In +this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an +argument against his own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, +the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline +from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much more the result of +individual taste than of fashion? There seems to be no radical change in +the methods of style. The extravagant romanticism of rebellion against +the leaders of the Victorian Age finds at length an exponent, and behold +he writes as soberly as Lord Morley, or as Newman himself! + +The longest of these biographies is that of Cardinal Manning, and it is +the one with which Mr. Lytton Strachey has taken most pains. Briefer +than the briefest of the _English Men of Letters_ series of biographies, +it is yet conducted with so artful an economy as to give the impression, +to an uninstructed reader, that nothing essential about the career of +Manning has been omitted. To produce this impression gifts of a very +unusual order were required, since the writer, pressed on all sides by a +plethora of information, instead of being incommoded by it, had to seem +to be moving smoothly in an atmosphere of his own choosing, and to be +completely unembarrassed by his material. He must have the air of +saying, in Froude's famous impertinence, "This is all we know, and more +than all, yet nothing to what the angels know." In the face of a whole +literature of controversy and correspondence, after a storm of Purcell +and Hutton, Ward and Mozley and Liddon tearing at one another's throats, +Mr. Lytton Strachey steps delicately on to the stage and says, in a low +voice, "Come here and I will tell you all about a funny ecclesiastic who +had a Hat, and whose name was Henry Edward Manning. It will not take us +long, and ever afterwards, if you hear that name mentioned, you will +know everything about him which you need to remember." It is audacious, +and to many people will seem shocking, but it is very cleverly done. + +The study of Florence Nightingale is an even better example of Mr. +Strachey's method, since she is the one of his four subjects for whom he +betrays some partiality. "The Miss Nightingale of fact was not as facile +fancy painted her," and it has greatly entertained Mr. Strachey to chip +the Victorian varnish off and reveal the iron will beneath. His first +chapter puts it in one of his effective endings:-- + + "Her mother was still not quite resigned; surely Florence might at + least spend the summer in the country. At this, indeed, among her + intimates, Mrs. Nightingale almost wept. 'We are ducks,' she said + with tears in her eyes, 'who have hatched a wild swan.' But the + poor lady was wrong; it was not a swan that they had hatched, it + was an eagle." + +It is therefore as an eagle, black, rapacious, with hooked bill and +crooked talons, that he paints Miss Nightingale; and the Swan of +Scutari, the delicate Lady with the Lamp, fades into a fable. Mr. +Strachey glorifies the demon that possessed this pitiless, rushing +spirit of philanthropy. He gloats over its ravages; its irresistible +violence of purpose. It is an evident pleasure to him to be able to +detach so wild a figure from the tameness of the circumambient scene, +and all his enmity to the period comes out in the closing pages, in +which he describes how the fierce philanthropist lived so long that the +Victorian Age had its revenge upon her, and reduced her, a smiling, fat +old woman, to "compliance and complacency." It is a picture which will +give much offence, but it is certainly extremely striking, and Mr. +Strachey can hardly be accused of having done more than deepen the +shadows which previous biographers had almost entirely omitted. + +In this study, if the author is unusually indulgent to his subject, he +is relatively severer than usual to the surrounding figures. To some of +them, notably to Arthur Hugh Clough, he seems to be intolerably unjust. +On the other hand, to most of those public men who resisted the work of +Florence Nightingale it is difficult to show mercy. Mr. Strachey is so +contemptuous, almost so vindictive, in his attitude to Lord Panmure, +that the reader is tempted to take up the cudgels in defence of an +official so rudely flouted. But, on reflection, what is there that can +be said in palliation of Lord Panmure? He was the son of a man of whom +his own biographer has admitted that "he preserved late into the +[nineteenth] century the habits and passions--scandalous and +unconcealed--which had, except in his case, passed away. He was devoted +to his friends so long as they remained complaisant, and violent and +implacable to all who thwarted him.--His uncontrollable temper alienated +him from nearly all his family in his latter years. In private life he +was an immovable despot." + +This was the father of Fox Maule, second Baron Panmure, of whom Mr. +Strachey has so much to say. Evidently he was a Regency type, as the son +was a Victorian. Determined not to resemble his father, Fox Maule early +became a settled and industrious M.P., and in 1846 Lord John Russell +made him Secretary of War. He held the same post under Lord Palmerston +from 1855 to 1858. Nothing could dislodge him from office; not even the +famous despatch "Take care of Dawb" could stir him. In 1860 he became +eleventh Earl of Dalhousie. He died two years later, having enjoyed +every distinction, even that of President of the Royal Military Asylum. +He was "unco guid," as pious as his father had been profane, but he had +no social or political or intellectual merit of any kind which can at +this distance of time be discerned. Florence Nightingale called him the +Bison, and his life's energy seems to have been expended in trying, +often with success, to frustrate every single practical reform which +she suggested. To the objection that Mr. Strachey has depicted the +heroine as "an ill-tempered, importunate spinster, who drove a statesman +to his death," he might conceivably reply that if history, grown calm +with the passage of years, does so reveal her, it is rather absurd to go +on idealising her. Why not study the real Eagle in place of the fabulous +Swan? It is difficult to condemn Mr. Strachey along this line of +argument. + +The early Victorians liked what was definable and tangible; they were +"ponderous mechanists of style." Even in their suggestions of change +they preserved an impenetrable decorum of demeanour, a studied progress, +a deep consciousness of the guiding restraint of tradition upon +character. Their preoccupation with moral ideas tinged the whole of +their surroundings, their literature, their art, their outlook upon +life. That the works of Mr. Charles Dickens, so excruciatingly funny, +should have been produced and appreciated in the midst of this intense +epoch of exhortation seems a paradox, till we recollect how careful +Dickens is, when his laughter is loudest, never to tamper with "the deep +sense of moral evil." This apprehension of the rising immorality of the +world, against which the only rampart was the education of "a thorough +English gentleman, Christian, manly and enlightened" was dominant in no +spirit more than in that of Mr. Thomas Arnold, of whom Mr. Strachey +gives a somewhat deterrent portrait. It is deterrent, because we have +passed, in three-quarters of a century, completely out of the atmosphere +in which Dr. Arnold moved and breathed. We are not sure that Mr. +Strachey acted very wisely in selecting Dr. Arnold for one of his four +subjects, since the great schoolmaster was hardly a Victorian at all. +When he entered the Church George III. was on the throne; his +accomplishment at Rugby was started under George IV.; he died when the +Victorian Age was just beginning. He was a forerunner, but hardly a +contemporary. + +Although in his attitude to the great Rugby schoolmaster Mr. Strachey +shows more approbation than usual, this portrait has not given universal +satisfaction. It has rather surprisingly called forth an indignant +protest from Dr. Arnold's granddaughter. Yet such is the perversity of +the human mind that the mode in which Mrs. Humphry Ward "perstringes" +the biographer brings us round to that biographer's side. For Mrs. Ward +has positively the indiscretion, astounding in a writer of her learning +and experience, to demand the exclusion of irony from the legitimate +weapons of the literary combatant. This is to stoop to sharing one of +the meanest prejudices of the English commonplace mind, which has always +resented the use of that delicate and pointed weapon. Moreover, Mrs. +Ward does not merely adopt the plebeian attitude, but she delivers +herself bound hand and foot to the enemy by declaring the use of irony +to be "unintelligent." In support of this amazing statement she quotes +some wandering phrase of Sainte-Beuve. By the light of recent +revelations, whether Sainte-Beuve was ironical or not, he was certainly +perfidious. But, to waive that matter, does Mrs. Humphry Ward consider +that Swift and Lucian and Machiavelli were, as she puts it, "doomed to +failure" because they used irony as a weapon? Was Heine and is Anatole +France conspicuous for want of intelligence? And, after all, ought not +Mrs. Ward to remember that if she had a very serious grandfather, she +had a still more celebrated uncle, who wrote _Friendship's Garland_? + +While no one else will seriously blame Mr. Strachey for employing irony +in his investigation of character, the subject leads on to what may be +regarded as a definite fault in his method. A biographer should be +sympathetic; not blind, not indulgent, but _sympathetic_. He should be +able to enter into the feelings of his subjects, and be anxious to do +so. It is in sympathy, in imaginative insight, that Mr. Strachey fails. +His personages are like puppets observed from a great height by an +amiable but entirely superior intelligence. The peculiar aim of Mr. +Strachey, his desire to lower our general conception of the Victorian +Age, tempts him to exaggerate this tendency, and he succumbs to the +temptation. His description of Lord Acton at Rome in 1870--"he despised +Lord Acton almost as much as he disliked him"--is not ironic, it is +contemptuous. Arthur Hugh Clough presents no aspect to Mr. Strachey but +that of a timid and blundering packer-up of parcels; one might conceive +that the biographer had never contemplated the poet in any other +capacity than, with sealing-wax in his hand and string between his lips, +shuddering under the eye of Miss Nightingale. The occasional references +to Lord Wolseley suggest an unaccountable hurrying figure of pygmy size, +which Mr. Strachey can only just discern. This attitude of hovering +superiority is annoying. + +But it reaches a more dangerous importance when it affects spiritual +matters. The author interests himself, from his great height, in the +movements of his Victorian dwarfs, and notices that they are +particularly active, and prone to unusual oddity of movement, when they +are inspired by religious and moral passion. Their motions attract his +attention, and he describes them with gusto and often with wit. His +sketch of Rome before the Å’cumenical Council is an admirably studied +page. Miss Nightingale's ferocity when the War Office phalanx closed its +ranks is depicted in the highest of spirits; it is impossible not to be +riveted by the scene round Cardinal Manning's death-bed; but what did +those manifestations mean? To Mr. Strachey it is evident that the fun of +the whole thing is that they meant nothing at all; they were only part +of the Victorian absurdity. It is obvious that religious enthusiasm, as +a personal matter, means nothing to him. He investigates the feelings +of Newman or Keble as a naturalist might the contortions of an insect. +The ceremonies and rites of the Church are objects of subdued hilarity +to him, and in their presence, if he suppresses his laughter, it is +solely to prevent his missing any detail precious to his curiosity. When +the subject of Baptismal Regeneration agitates the whole pious world of +England Mr. Strachey seems to say, looking down with exhilaration on the +anthill beneath him, "The questions at issue are being taken very +seriously by a large number of persons. How Early Victorian of them!" +Mr. Strachey has yet to learn that questions of this kind are "taken +seriously" by serious people, and that their emotion is both genuine and +deep. He sees nothing but alcoholic eccentricity in the mysticism of +Gordon. His cynicism sometimes carries him beyond the confines of good +taste, as in the passage where he refers to the large and dirty ears of +the Roman cardinals. Still worse is the query as to what became of the +soul of Pope Pius IX. after his death. + +These are errors in discretion. A fault in art is the want of care which +the author takes in delineating his minor or subordinate figures. He +gives remarkable pains, for example, to his study of General Gordon, but +he is indifferent to accuracy in his sketches of the persons who came +into contact, and often into collision, with Gordon. In this he +resembles those French painters, such as Bastien Lepage, who focus their +eye on one portion of their canvas, and work that up to a high +perfection, while leaving the rest of the picture misty and vague. Even +in that case the subordinate figures, if subdued in fogginess, should +not be falsely drawn, but Mr. Strachey, intent upon the violent portrait +of Gordon, is willing to leave his Baring and Hartington and Wolseley +inexact as well as shadowy. The essay on General Gordon, indeed, is the +least successful of the four monographs. Dexterous as he is, Mr. +Strachey has not had the material to work upon which now exists to +elucidate his other and earlier subjects. But it is difficult to account +for his apparently not having read Mr. Bernard Holland's life of the +Duke of Devonshire, which throws much light, evidently unknown to Mr. +Strachey, on the Gordon relief expedition. He ought to know that Sir +Evelyn Baring urged the expedition, while Chamberlain was one of its +opponents. Mr. Strachey does not seem to have noticed how much the issue +was confused by conflicting opinions as to whether the route to be taken +should be by Suakin or up the Nile. + +No part of his book is more vigorous or picturesque than the chapter +dealing with the proclamation of Papal Infallibility. But here again one +is annoyed by the glibness with which Mr. Strachey smoothly asserts what +are only his conjectures. + +In his account of Manning's reception in Rome--and this is of central +importance in his picture of Manning's whole career--he exaggerates the +personal policy of Pio Nono, whom he represents as more independent of +the staff of the Curia than was possible. Rome has never acknowledged +the right of the individual, even though that individual be the Pope, to +an independent authority. Mr. Odo Russell was resident secretary in Rome +from 1858 to 1870, and his period of office was drawing to a close when +Manning arrived; he was shortly afterwards removed to become Assistant +Under Secretary of State at our Foreign Office. The author of _Eminent +Victorians_ is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better +than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging +diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes +that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by +no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced +when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for +stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the government, that the +Black Sea question was one on which Great Britain might be compelled to +go to war with or without allies. Lord Morley's _Life of Gladstone_ +(vol. ii., p. 354) is explicit on this interesting point. The +information which, by special permission of the Pope, Cardinal Manning +was able to give to him on all that was going on in the Council was, of +course, of great value to Odo Russell, but his views on other aspects of +the question were derived from quite different sources. + +In this respect he had the advantage of the Cardinal, both on account of +his diplomatic position and of his long and intimate knowledge both of +Vatican policy and of the forces which the Curia has at its command. On +the strength of those forces, and on the small amount of effective +support which British opposition to the Decree of Infallibility was +likely to receive from the Catholic Powers, he no doubt held strong +opinions. Some years later he did not conceal his conviction that Prince +Bismarck would be worsted in his conflict with Rome on the Education +Laws, and the event proved his forecast to be perfectly correct. This is +an example of the dangers which beset a too glib and superficial +treatment of political events which were conducted in secret, and with +every circumstance of mystery. + +Several of the characteristics which diversify Mr. Strachey's remarkable +volume are exemplified in the following quotation. It deals with the +funeral of Cardinal Manning:-- + + "The route of the procession was lined by vast crowds of working + people, whose imaginations, in some instinctive manner, had been + touched. Many who had hardly seen him declared that in Cardinal + Manning they had lost their best friend. Was it the magnetic vigour + of the dead man's spirit that moved them? Or was it his valiant + disregard of common custom and those conventional reserves and + poor punctilios, which are wont to hem about the great? Or was it + something untameable in his glances and in his gestures? Or was it, + perhaps, the mysterious glamour lingering about him of the antique + organisation of Rome? For whatever cause, the mind of the people + had been impressed; and yet, after all, the impression was more + acute than lasting. The Cardinal's memory is a dim thing to-day. + And he who descends into the crypt of that Cathedral which Manning + never lived to see, will observe, in the quiet niche with the + sepulchral monument, that the dust lies thick on the strange, the + incongruous, the almost impossible object which, with its + elaborations of dependent tassels, hangs down from the dim vault + like some forlorn and forgotten trophy, the Hat." + +Longinus tells us that "a just judgment of style is the final fruit of +long experience." In the measured utterances of Mr. Asquith we recognise +the speech of a man to whom all that is old and good is familiar, and in +whom the art of finished expression has become a habit. No more +elegantly balanced, no more delicately perceptive mind than his has +appeared of recent times in our midst, and there is something in the +equipoise of his own genius which points Mr. Asquith out as a judge +peculiarly well fitted to sit in judgment upon rival ages. In his +Romanes lecture there was but one thing to be regretted: the restricted +space which it offered for the full expansion of the theme. Mr. Asquith +excels in swift and rapid flights, but even for him the Victorian Age is +too broad a province to be explored within one hour. He endeavoured to +lighten his task by excluding theology and politics, and indeed but for +such self-denial he could scarcely have moved at all in so dense an air. +He was able, however, having thrown out so much formidable ballast, to +rise above his subject, and gazing at the Victorian Age, as it recedes, +he declared it to have been very good. The young men who despise and +attack that Age receive no support in any particular from Mr. Asquith. + +He dwells on the fecundity of the literature of the Victorian Age in its +middle period, and especially on the publications which adorned the +decade from 1850 to 1859. He calls those years, very justly, "marvellous +and almost unexampled" in their rich profusion. I may suggest that the +only rival to them in our history is the period from 1590 to 1600, which +saw the early plays of Shakespeare, the _Faerie Queene_, the _Arcadia_, +the _Ecclesiastical Polity_, _Tamburlaine_, _The Discovery of Guiana_, +and Bacon's _Essays_. If the works catalogued by Mr. Asquith do not +equal these in intensity, they excel them by the breadth of the ground +they cover, extending from Browning to Darwin and from Thackeray to +Ruskin. Moreover, the Oxford list might have included _Lavengro_ and +Newman's _Lectures_, and Herbert Spencer's _Social Statics_. The only +third decade worthy to be named with those of 1590 and 1850 is that +which opens in 1705, and is illuminated by the names of Pope, +Shaftesbury, Swift, Arbuthnot, Defoe, Steele, Addison, and Berkeley. It +is pleasant to compare these three magnificently flowering epochs, but +not profitable if we attempt to weigh one against the other. They are +comparable only in the splendour of their accomplishment. + +It is more difficult to fit science into our scheme of the Victorian Age +than to find places there for Art and Literature. Perhaps the reason of +this is that the latter were national in their character, whereas +scientific inquiry, throughout the nineteenth century, was carried on +upon international lines, or, at least, in a spirit unprecedentedly +non-provincial. The vast achievements of science, practical and +theoretical, were produced for the world, not for a race. Mr. Asquith +speaks with justice and eloquence of the appearance of Darwin's _Origin +of Species_ which he distinguishes as being "if not actually the most +important, certainly the most interesting event of the Age," and his +remarks on the fortune of that book are excellent. No one can +over-estimate the value of what we owe to Darwin. But perhaps a +Frenchman might speak in almost the same terms of Claude Bernard, whose +life and work ran parallel with Darwin's. If the _Origin of Species_ +made an epoch in 1859, the _Introduction à la médicine expérimental_ +made another in 1865. Both these books, as channels by which the +experimental labours of each investigator reached the prepared and +instructed public, exercised at once, and have continued ever since to +exercise, an enormous effect on thought as well as on knowledge. They +transformed the methods by which man approaches scientific +investigation, and while they instructed they stimulated a new ardour +for instruction. In each case the value of the discovery lay in the +value of the idea which led to the discovery, and, as some one has said +in the case of Claude Bernard, they combined for the first time the +operations of science and philosophy. The parallel between these two +contemporaries extends, in a measure, to their disciples and successors, +and seems to suggest that Mr. Asquith in his generous and difficult +estimate may have exaggerated the purely Victorian element in the +science of the age of Darwin. This only accentuates the difficulty, and +he may perhaps retort that there is an extreme danger in suggesting what +does and what does not form a part of so huge a system. + +Justifiably Mr. Asquith takes it for granted that the performance of the +central years of the Victorian Age was splendid. With those who deny +merit to the writers and artists of the last half century it is +difficult to reach a common ground for argument. What is to be the +criterion of taste if all the multiform exhibitions of it which passed +muster from 1840 to 1890 are now to be swept away with contumely? +Perhaps indeed it is only among those extravagant romanticists who are +trying to raise entirely new ideals, unrelated to any existing forms of +art and literature, that we find a denial of all merit to the Victorian +masters. Against this caricature of criticism, this Bolshevism, it would +be hopeless to contend. But there is a large and growing class of more +moderate thinkers who hold, in the first place, that the merit of the +leading Victorian writers has been persistently over-estimated, and that +since its culmination the Victorian spirit has not ceased to decay, +arriving at length at the state of timidity and repetition which +encourages what is ugly, narrow, and vulgar, and demands nothing better +than a swift dismissal to the dust-bin. + +Every stratum of society, particularly if it is at all sophisticated, +contains a body of barbarians who are usually silent from lack of +occasion to express themselves, but who are always ready to seize an +opportunity to suppress a movement of idealism. We accustom ourselves to +the idea that certain broad principles of taste are universally +accepted, and our respectable newspapers foster this benevolent delusion +by talking habitually "over the heads," as we say, of the majority of +their readers. They make "great music for a little clan," and nothing +can be more praiseworthy than their effort, but, as a matter of fact, +with or without the aid of the newspapers, the people who really care +for literature or art, or for strenuous mental exercise of any kind, are +relatively few. If we could procure a completely confidential statement +of the number of persons to whom the names of Charles Lamb and +Gainsborough have a distinct meaning, and still more of those who can +summon up an impression of the essays of the one and of the pictures of +the other, we should in all probability be painfully startled. Yet since +these names enjoy what we call a universal celebrity, what must be the +popular relation to figures much less prominent? + +The result of this tyranny of fame, for so it must appear to all those +who are inconvenienced by the expression of it, is to rouse a sullen +tendency to attack the figures of art and literature whenever there +arrives a chance of doing that successfully. Popular audiences can +always be depended upon to cheer the statement of "a plain man" that he +is not "clever" enough to understand Browning or Meredith. An assurance +that life is too short to be troubled with Henry James wakes the lower +middle class to ecstasy. An opportunity for such protests is provided by +our English lack of critical tradition, by our accepted habit of saying, +"I do hate" or "I must say I rather like" this or that without reference +to any species of authority. This seems to have grown with dangerous +rapidity of late years. It was not tolerated among the Victorians, who +carried admiration to the highest pitch. They marshalled it, they +defined it, they turned it from a virtue into a religion, and called it +Hero Worship. Even their abuse was a kind of admiration turned inside +out, as in Swinburne's diatribes against Carlyle, who himself fought +against the theory of Darwin, not philosophically, but as though it were +a personal insult to himself. Such violence of taste is now gone out of +fashion; every scribbler and dauber likes to believe himself on a level +with the best, and the positive criterion of value which sincere +admiration gave is lost to us. Hence the success of Mr. Lytton Strachey. + +But the decline of ardour does not explain the whole position, which we +have to face with firmness. Epochs come to an end, and before they have +their place finally awarded to them in history they are bound to endure +much vicissitude of fortune. No amount of sarcasm or of indignant +protest will avail to conceal the fact that we stand to-day at the +porch, that much more probably we have already penetrated far into the +vestibule, of a new age. What its character will be, or what its +principal products, it is absolutely impossible for us as yet to +conjecture. Meanwhile the Victorian Age recedes, and it loses size and +lustre as we get further and further away from it. When what was called +"Symbolism" began to act in urgent and direct reaction to the aims of +those still in authority, the old order received its notice to quit, but +that was at least five and twenty years ago, and the change is not +complete. Ages so multiform and redundant and full of blood as the +Victorian take a long time to die; they have their surprising recoveries +and their uncovenanted convalescences. But even they give up the ghost +at length, and are buried hastily with scant reverence. The time has +doubtless come when aged mourners must prepare themselves to attend the +obsequies of the Victorian Age with as much decency as they can muster. + +1918. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abbaye de Creteil, 303-4 +Acton, Lord, 328 +Addison, J., relation of, to Romanticists, 70-1; 68, 76, 82 +_Agnes de Castro_, by Catharine Trotter, 43-5 +Akenside, 74 +Allard-Méeus, J., 273 +_Alroy_, by B. Disraeli, 161 +American criticism, and Edgar Allan Poe, 104, 105 +Anne, Queen, 58 +_Annabel Lee_, by E.A. Poe, 103, 112 +Argyll, Duke of, 320 +Ariosto, 84, 85 +Arnauld, Angelique, 39 +Arnold, M., 3, 68, 71, 133, 267 +Arnold, Dr. T., Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 326-7 +Asquith, Mr., Romanes lecture of, 332-5 + +Bacon, 17 +Bagehot, W., 96 +Balfour, A.J., _re_ standards of taste, 4, 5, 10 +Ballenden, Sarah, 40 +Baring, M., poems of, 265, 273-5 +Barrie, Sir J., 100 +Barry, Mrs., 57 +Batsford, Lord Redesdale at, 217-8, 222, 224-8, 229 +Baudelaire, 106 +Bayle, 59 +Behn, Aphra, 39 +Bell, T., of Selborne, 182 +Berkeley, 98 +Betterton, 48, 57 +Birch, Rev. Dr., 61 +Blake, W., 5, 90 +Blessington, Lady, 131 +Boileau, 70, 77, 82 +Booth, 57 +Bottomley, G., 262 +Bridges, R., War poetry of, 161; 110 +de Brillac, Mlle., 44 +Brontë, Charlotte, dislike of Dewsbury, 142-3; + message of, arose from pain and resistance, 144; + her unhappiness, its causes, 145-6; + defiance the note of her writings, 146-50 +Brontë, Emily, 149 +Brontës, The Challenge of the, address delivered on, 141-50; + their connexion with Dewsbury, 141-2 +Brooke, Rupert, poems of, 268-70 +Browning, R., 9, 81, 132 +Brunetière, 7 +Bruxambille, 95 +Bryant, 107, 108 +Bulwer-Lytton, E., ambiguity of his position in literature, 117; + R. Lytton's biography, 118, 121; + Lord Lytton's biography, 117, 118-9, 120, 122, 129, 130, 131, 133, 137; + autobiography, 119-20; + story of matrimonial troubles, 121-9; + character, 129-30; + acquaintances and friends, 130-2; + relations with contemporary writers and poets, 132-4; + stormy life, 134; + unfavourable attitude of critics towards, 134-5; + popularity of his writings, 135-6; + versatility and merits, 136-7; 178 +Bulwer-Lytton, Mrs., opposition to Bulwer-Lytton's marriage, 124-7 +Burghclere, Lady, open letter to, on Lady D. Nevill, 181-96 +Burnet, George, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60 +Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, patron of the Trotters, 41, 52, 53 +Burnet, Mrs., 52, 53 +Burney, Dr., 33 +Burton, 96 +Byron, 76, 104, 108, 148, 161-2 + +Carlyle, 100 +Carlyle, Mrs., her opinion of Keats, 9 +Catullus, 84 +Charles II, 40, 41 +Chateaubriand, 74 +Chatterton, 87 +Cibber, Colley, 44 +Classic poetry, Romanticists' revolt against principles of, 70-90 +Clough, A.H., 325, 328 +Cockburn, Mr., 60, 61 +Coleridge, 104, 108, 274 +Collier, Jeremy, attack on stage immorality, 47 +Collins, 86, 110 +Colonisation, England's debt to Walter Raleigh, 24-5 +Congreve, Catherine Trotter's relations with, 43, 47, 48, 50; 57, 58 +_Coningsby_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 164, 165-6, 169, 170-2, 173 +_Contarini Fleming_, by B. Disraeli, 159-61, 162 +Corbett, N.M.F., poems of, 275 +Cowes in war time, 219-21 +Cowley, 82 +Cowper, 253 +Crabbe, G., Hardy compared with, 248 +Cranch, C.P., 105 +Cromer, Lord, essay on, 196-216; + intellectual and literary activity, 197-8; + as a speaker, 198-200; + interest in House of Lords Library, 200; + classical tastes, 200-203; + conversation, attitude to life and letters, 204-8; + correspondence and reflections, 208-10; + humour, 210-12; + verse, 212-15; + literary activities, 215-16 + +Dacier, Mme., 52 +_Dacre_, by Countess of Morley, 153, 156 +Dante, 225-6 +Dartmouth, George, Earl of, 40, 42 +D'Aubigné, 78 +Daudet, A., 252 +Daudet, E., 229-30 +Davies, W.H., 262 +De Vere, Mrs., 59 +Devey, Miss, "Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," by, 121 +Dewsbury, the Brontës' connexion with, 141-2 +Dickens, C, 100, 128, 131 +Disraeli, B., novels of, address, 153-78; + not taken seriously as an author, 153-4; + three periods of writing, 154-5; + contemporary fiction, 155-6; + _Vivian Grey_, 156-9; + _The Young Duke_, 157; + _Henrietta Temple_, 159; + _Contarini Fleming_, 159-60; + Byron's influence on, 161; + Voltaire's influence on, 162; + fascinated by Venice, 163; + _Venetia_, 163; + Parliamentary experience and literary results, 164; + _Coningsby_, 165-6; + _Sybil_, 167-8; + _Tancred_, 169-72; + Prime Minister, 172; + _Lothair_, 173-8; 131, 135 +Donne, J., 78, 111, 236, 244, 252 +Dorset, Charles, Earl of, 43 +Dowden, 34 +Doyle, Sir A.C., 103 +Dryden, 34, 49, 50, 70, 82, 274 +Du Bos, Abbé, 90 +Durham, Lord, 131 +Dyer, 70 + +Elizabeth, Queen, sympathy between Raleigh and, 18 +_Eloisa to Abelard_, by Pope, its appeal to Romanticists, 83-4 +Emerson, 107 +_Eminent Victorians_, by Lytton Strachey, review of, 318-32 +English Poetry, The Future of, 289-309; + instances of national lapses in poetic output, 290; + necessity of novelty of expression and difficulties arising, 291-2; + advantages of vernacular poetry, 293; + future poetry bound to dispense with obvious description and + reflection and to take on greater subtlety of expression, 294-7; + Wordsworth's speculations concerning nineteenth-century poetry, 298-9; + prospect of social poetry, 299-301; + "effusion of natural sensibility" more probable, 302-3; + French experiments, 303-4; + as to disappearance of erotic poetry, 305-6; + dramatic poetry and symbolism, 306-9 +_Essay on Criticism_, by Pope, Romanticists' attack upon, 71-4 +_Essay on Genius of Pope_, by J. Warton, 80-3 + +Farquhar, 48 +_Fatal Friendship_, by C. Trotter, 47-8 +Fawcett, Rev. J., 97 +Fenn, Mr., 60 +Fletcher, John, songs of, 35 +_For Annie_, by E.A. Poe, 112 +Ford, songs of, 35 +Forster, John, 131-2, 133 +France, Anatole, 7 + +Gaskell, Mrs., 141 +Gautier, T., 6, 10 +Genoa, Duke of, 133 +Georgian poetry, its pre-war characteristics, 261-2 +Gibbon, 98 +Gibson, W.W., 262 +Gilbert, Sir H., 25 +Gilpin, 87 +Godolphin, Henrietta, 58 +Goethe, 161 +de Goncourt, E., 252 +Gongora, 78 +Gordon, General, 15; + Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 329-30 +Gore, Mrs., 178 +de Gourmont, Rémy, his opinion of Sully-Prudhomme, 9, 10 +de Gournay, Mlle., 39 +Granville, 47 +Graves, R., poetry of, 280-1 +Gray, 89, 108 +Greene, 32 +Grenfell, J., poems of, 271-3 +Guiana, Raleigh's "gold mine" in, 20 + +Halifax, Lord, 50 +Handel, 80 +Harcourt, Mrs., 57 +Hardy, Thomas, lyrical poetry of, 233-58; + independence of his career as a poet, 233-4; + unity and consistence of his poetry, 234; + sympathy with Swinburne, 235; + historic development of lyrics, 236; + novel writing interfering with, 237-8; + place of poetry in his literary career, 238; + "Wessex Ballads" and "Poems of Past and Present," 238-40; + "The Dynasts" and "Times' Laughing Stocks," 240-2; + "Satires of Circumstance," 242-3; + "Moments of Vision," 243-4; + technical quality of his poetry, 244; + metrical forms, 245-6; + pessimistic conception of life, 247-8; + compared with Crabbe, 248; + consolation found by, 249-51; + compared with Wordsworth, 251; + human sympathy, 251; + range of subjects, 252-5; + speculations on immortality, 256; + "The Dynasts," 68, 257; + unchangeableness of his art, 257-8; + "Song of the Soldiers," 263 +Hawthorne, 107 +Hayley, 5 +Hazlitt, 301 +_Henrietta Temple_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 159 +Heywood, songs of, 35 +Higgons, Bevil, 43 +Hobbes, 98 +Hodgson, W.N., 284 +Homer, 12 +Hooker, 17 +Hope, H.T., 164 +Housman, A.E., 268 +Hugo, V., 6, 12, 111, 134 +Hume, 98 +Hunt, Leigh, 104 + +Inglis, Dr., 51, 58 +Ireland, Raleigh in, 23 + +James I, distrust and treatment of Raleigh, 19, 20, 21 +James II, 42 +Johnson, Dr., his opinion of the Wartons, 86, 98 +Jowett, Dr., 320 + +Keats, Mrs. Carlyle's opinion of, 9; 5, 90, 104, 105 +King, Peter, 53, 59 +Kipling, R., poetry of, 300 + +Landon, Letitia, 131 +Lansdowne, Lord, 191 +Lauderdale, Earl of, 42 +Lauderdale, Maitland, Duke of, 40, 41 +Lawson, H., poems of, 284 +Lee, 50 +Leibnitz, 42, 54, 55, 56, 59 +Lemaître, J., 7 +Lewis, "Monk," 162 +Locke, Catharine Trotter's defence of, 53-5; + death of, 55; 42 +Lockhart, 135 +Lodge, 32 +_Lothair_, by B. Disraeli, 173-8 +_Love at a Loss_, by Catharine Trotter, 51 +Lowell, 108 +Lucas, Lord, 274 +Lyly, John, 31 +Lytton, Bulwer-, _see_ Bulwer-Lytton. +Lytton, Lord, biography of Bulwer-Lytton, 117, 118-19, 120, 122, 129, + 130, 131, 133, 137 +Lytton, R., biography of Bulwer-Lytton, 118, 121 + +Macaulay, Lord, 320-1 +Macpherson, 86 +Malebranche, 52 +Malherbe, 70, 77 +Mallarmé, 77, 106 +Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, 85 +Manley, Mrs., 44, 45, 46, 61 +Manning, Cardinal, Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 323, 330-2 +Manoa, 19 +Mant, 73 +Marinetti, M., 305, 318 +Marini, 78 +Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, 57 +Marlborough, Duke of, Catharine Trotter's poem of welcome to, 58 +Marlowe, songs of, 34 +Marsh, E., 261 +Masham, Lady, 55, 56, 59 +Massinger, 35 +Melbourne, Lord, 131 +_Memories_, by Lord Redesdale, 216, 217, 219, 221 +Milton, influence upon eighteenth-century poetry, 79; 82, 110 +Mitford, Major Hon. C, 218 +Mockel, A., 112 +_Moments of Vision_, by T. Hardy, 243-4 +Monckton-Milnes, Sir R., 133 +Morris, 104 +Myers, F., 320 + +Nevill, Lady Dorothy, Open Letter to Lady Burghclere on, 181-96; + memoirs of, 181-2; + writer's friendship with, 152; + appearance and physical strength, 183-4; + characteristics, 184-5; + a spectator of life, 186-7; + attitude to the country, 187; + wit, conversation and correspondence, 187-92; + relation to literature and art, 192-4; + emotional nature, 194-6 +Nevill, Ralph, Memoirs of Lady D. Nevill by, 181-2 +Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, 39 +Nichols, R., poetry of, 276-80 +Nietzsche, 219-20 +Nightingale, Florence, Mr. Strachey's Life of, 324 +Norris, John, 52, 53 + +Obermann, 76 +_Observations on the Faerie Queene_, by T. Warton, 84-6 +_Ode on the Approach of Summer_, by T. Warton, 79 +_Odes_, by J. Warton, 69, 75, 80 +Otway, 50 + +Panmure, Lord, 325-6 +Paris, Gaston, 7, 8 +Parnell, 76 +Parr, Dr. S., 120 +Pater, W., 71 +Patmore, C., 237 +Peacock, 104 +Peele, 32 +Péguy, C., 268 +_Pelham_, by Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, the author of, 117-37; 135, 155 +Pepys, S., 27 +Perth, 4th Earl of, 40, 42 +_Philip van Artevelde_, by H. Taylor, 107 +Piers, Lady, 50, 51 +Piers, Sir G., 50 +Pix, Mrs. Mary, 45, 46, 61 +Poe, E.A., centenary of, address on, 103-13; + importance as a poet ignored, 103; + original want of recognition of, 104-5; + his reaction to unfriendly criticism, 105-6; + essential qualities of his genius, 106-7; + contemporary conception of poetry, 107-8; + his ideal of poetry, 108; + influences upon, 108-9; + early verses, poetic genius in, 109; + melodiousness of, 110-11; + symbolism of, 112-13 +_Poems and Ballads_, by A.C. Swinburne, Bulwer-Lytton's support of, 133-4 +_Poems of Past and Present_, by T. Hardy, 238-40 +Pope, Romanticists' revolt against classicism of, 70-90; 68 +Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, Queen of, 58 + +Rabelais, 90 +Radcliffe, Mrs., 85, 162 +Raleigh, North Carolina, foundation of, 25-6 +Raleigh, W., junr., 20 +Raleigh, Sir W., address delivered on Tercentenary celebration of, 15-27; + patriotism and hatred of Spain, 15-17, 21-2; + character, 18; + adventurous nature, 18-19; + James I and, 19-20; + his El Dorado dreams, 20; + fall and trial, 21; + savage aspects of, 23; + as a naval strategist, 23-4; + genius as coloniser, 24-5; + imprisonment and execution, 26-7 +Ramsay, Allan, 70 +Redesdale, Lord, last days of, 216-30; + literary career, 216-7; + vitality: pride in authorship and garden, 217-8; + death of son, 218; + "Memories," 219; + loneliness and problem of occupying his time, 219-22; + origin of last book, its theme, 222-4; + last days, 224-30 +René, 76 +Rentoul, L., poems of, 284 +Retté, A., 112 +Reynolds, 104 +Ritson, Joseph, attack upon T. Warton, 88-9 +Roanoke, Virginia, British settlement in, 25 +Roche, Lord and Lady, 23 +Romanticism, Two Pioneers of, Joseph and Thomas Warton, address on, 65-90 +Romantic movement, features of, 71-90 +Rossetti, D.G., 104, 136 +Rousseau, J.J., English Romanticists' relation to, 68, 68, 75 +Ruskin, 100 +Russell, Odo, 330 + +Sainte-Beuve, 6 +Sappho, 84 +Sassoon, S., poems of, 282-4 +_Satires of Circumstance_, by T. Hardy, 242-3 +Satow, Sir E., 223 +Scott, Sir W., 108, 128, 135 +Scudéry, M. de, 39 +Seaman, Sir G., war invective of, 264 +Selbourne, Lord, 320 +Selden, 98 +Senancour, 74 +_Sentimental Journey_, The, by L. Sterne, 96, 100 +Seventeenth century, English women writers of, 39 +Shakespeare, the Songs of, 31-5; + their dramatic value, 31-3; + lyrical qualities, 33-5; + comparison with contemporary lyricists, 35; 17, 82 +Shelley, 74, 104, 108, 162 +Shenstone, 70 +_Shepherd of the Ocean, The_, 15-27 +Shorter, C., 141 +Some Soldier Poets, 261-85; + outbreak of war poetry, 262-3; + mildness of British Hymns of Hate, 264-5; + military influence upon poetic feeling, 265-6; + tendency to dispense with form, 266; + common literary influences, 267-8; + Rupert Brooke, 268-70; + J. Grenfell, 271-3; + M. Baring, 273-5; + N.M.F. Corbett, 275; + E.W. Tennant, 275; + R. Nichols, 276-80; + R. Graves, 280-1; + S. Sassoon, 282-4; + C.H. Sorley, W.N. Hodgson, K. Lawson, L. Rentoul, R.E. Vernède, 284 +Sorley, C.H., poems of, 284 +Southey, 5, 104 +Spain, Anglo-Spanish rivalry in days of Walter Raleigh, 16-17, 21-3, 24 +Spenser, 17, 82, 84, 111 +Stephen, Sir Leslie, 106, 237 +Sterne, Laurence, Essay on the Charm of, 93-100; + birth and childhood, 93-4; + temperament, 94-5; + intellectual development, 95-6; + alternation of feeling about, 97; + English literature's debt to, 98; + his "indelicacy," 99; + irrelevancy, 99; + Shandean influences upon literature, 100 +Sterne, Mrs., 93 +Sterne, Roger, 93 +Stevenson, R.L., 100 +Strachey, Lytton, "Eminent Victorians" by, review of, 318-32 +Stukeley, Sir L., 21 +Sully-Prudhomme, fluctuations in taste as regards, 5-9 +Sumners, Montagu, 39 +Swinburne, A. C, Bulwer-Lytton and, 133-4; + Hardy's sympathy with, 235; 68, 81, 111 +Symbolism and poetry, 308-9 + +_Tales of Old Japan_, by Lord Redesdale, 216 +_Tancred_, by B. Disraeli, 153 +Taste, fluctuations in, 3-12; + regarding Wordsworth, 3-4; + Mr. Balfour's conclusions, 4-5, 10; + volte-face concerning Sully-Prudhomme, 5-10 +_Tea-Table Miscellany_, 70 +Temple, Mrs., 45 +Tennant, E.W., poetry of, 275 +Tennyson, Victorian opinion of, 320-1; 7, 12, 81, 106, 116, 132, 299 +Thackeray, 144 +_The Bamboo Garden_, by Lord Redesdale, 216 +_The Bells_, by E.A. Poe, 111 +_The Dynasts_, by T. Hardy, 240, 257 +_The Enthusiast_, by Joseph Warton, importance of, 69, 73 +_The Female Wits_, by Catharine Trotter, 45-6 +_The Raven_, by E.A. Poe, 108, 111 +_The Revolution in Sweden_, by Catharine Trotter, 57-8 +_The Unhappy Penitent_, by Catharine Trotter, 50-1 +_The Young Duke_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 157 +Thomson, James, 78, 307 +Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_, 68 +_Times' Laughing Stocks_, by T. Hardy, 240-2 +Tottel's Miscellany, 261 +_Tristram Shandy_, by L. Sterne, 94, 96, 98, 99, 100 +Trotter, Capt. D., R.N., 40 +Trotter, Catharine, 39-62; + precocity, 39, 42; + parentage, 40; + poverty, 41-2; + early verses, 43; + correspondence with celebrated people, 43; + _Agnes de Castro_, 43-5; + _The Female Wits_, 45-6; + _Fatal Friendship_, 47-9; + elegy on Dryden's death, 49-50; + _The Unhappy Penitent_, 50-1; + _Love at a Loss_, 51; + friendship with the Burnets, 52; + philosophical studies, 42, 52-3; + enthusiasm for Locke, 53, 55; + _The Revolution in Sweden_, 54, 57; + correspondence with Leibnitz, 55; + indignation at aspersions on feminine intellectuality, 56-7; + poem of welcome to Marlborough, 58; + attachment to G. Burnet, 59-60; + marriage with Mr. Cockburn, 60; + later life, 60-1 +Trotter, Mrs., poverty of, 41 +Tupper, 5 +Turkey Company, 40 + +_Ulalume_, by E.A. Poe, 103, 107, 109, 112 +Upchear, Henry, 31 + +_Veluvana_, by Lord Redesdale, theme of, 222-4, 226 +_Venetia_, by B. Disraeli, 163 +Venice, its fascination for Disraeli, 163 +Verbruggen, Mrs., 45 +Verlaine, Paul, 7 +Vernède, R.E., poems of, 284 +de Verville, B., 95, 95, 96 +Victorian Age, the Agony of, 313-37 +Virgil, 12 +_Vivian Grey_, by B. Disraeli, 155, 156, 157-9 +Voltaire, 3, 162 + +Waller, 82 +Warburton, Dr., 33, 81, 97 +Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, 144, 327 +Ward, Plumer, novels of, 155, 156, 178 +Warton, Joseph and Thomas; Two Pioneers of Romanticism, address + on, 65-90; + parentage and early habits, 66-7; + heralds of romantic movement, 67; + literary contemporaries and atmosphere, 68; + Joseph, the leading spirit, 68-9; + _The Enthusiast_, its romantic qualities, 69; + their revolt against principles of classic poetry, 70-4; + characteristic features of early Romanticism, 74-9; + Miltonic influence, 79-80; + _Essay on the Genius of Pope_, 80-4; + _Observations on the Faerie Queene_, 84-6; + Johnson's criticism of, 86-7; + Ritson's attack upon Thomas, 88; + defects of, 89-90 +Webster's _White Devil_, 34 +_Wessex Ballads_, by T. Hardy, 238-40 +Wheeler, R.D. (Lady Lytton), Miss Devey's Life of, 121; + story of marriage with Bulwer-Lytton, 121-9 +Whitehead, 74 +William III, 41 +Willis, N.P., 105 +Wilson, Harriette, 130-1 +Wolseley, Lord, 328 +Wooler, Miss, 141, 142, 143 +Wordsworth, Hardy compared with, 251; + speculations concerning future poetry, 298-9; 3, 4, 10, 74, 78, 90, + 104, 107, 108, 110, 253 +Wycherley, 44 + +Yeats, 70 +Young, 68, 69, 81 + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by +Edmund William Gosse + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 18649-0.txt or 18649-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/4/18649/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.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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Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/18649-0.zip b/18649-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1055668 --- /dev/null +++ b/18649-0.zip diff --git a/18649-8.txt b/18649-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c62e2ad --- /dev/null +++ b/18649-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10278 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by +Edmund William Gosse + +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: Some Diversions of a Man of Letters + +Author: Edmund William Gosse + +Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18649] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + + + + + +SOME DIVERSIONS +OF +A MAN OF LETTERS + + +BY +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + + +LONDON +WILLIAM HEINEMANN +1920 + + +_First published October 1919_ +_New Impressions November 1919; February 1920_ + + + +_OTHER WORKS BY MR. EDMUND GOSSE_ + + +_Northern Studies_. 1879. + +_Life of Gray_. 1882. + +_Seventeenth-Century Studies_. 1883. + +_Life of Congreve_. 1888. + +_A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature_. 1889. + +_Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S._ 1890. + +_Gossip in a Library_. 1891. + +_The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance_. 1892. + +_Questions at Issue_. 1893. + +_Critical Kit-Kats_. 1896. + +_A Short History of Modern English Literature_. 1897. + +_Life and Letters of John Donne_. 1899. + +_Hypolympia_. 1901. + +_Life of Jeremy Taylor_. 1904. + +_French Profiles_. 1904. + +_Life of Sir Thomas Browne_. 1905. + +_Father and Son_. 1907. + +_Life of Ibsen_. 1908. + +_Two Visits to Denmark_. 1911. + +_Collected Poems_. 1911. + +_Portraits and Sketches_. 1912. + +_Inter Arma_. 1916. + +_Three French Moralists_. 1918. + + + + +TO + +EVAN CHARTERIS + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +Preface: On Fluctuations of Taste 1 + +The Shepherd of the Ocean 13 + +The Songs of Shakespeare 29 + +Catharine Trotter, the Precursor of the Bluestockings 37 + +The Message of the Wartons 63 + +The Charm of Sterne 91 + +The Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe 101 + +The Author of "Pelham" 115 + +The Challenge of the Brontës 139 + +Disraeli's Novels 151 + +Three Experiments in Portraiture-- + I. Lady Dorothy Nevill 181 + II. Lord Cromer 196 + III. The Last Days of Lord Redesdale 216 + +The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy 231 + +Some Soldier Poets 259 + +The Future of English Poetry 287 + +The Agony of the Victorian Age 311 + +Index 338 + + + + +PREFACE: + +ON FLUCTUATIONS OF TASTE + + +When Voltaire sat down to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his +first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day +might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to +expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard +in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing +years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed by the recurrence of +them. In early youth we fight for the new forms of art, for the new +æsthetic shibboleths, and in that happy ardour of battle we have no time +or inclination to regret the demigods whom we dispossess. But the years +glide on, and, behold! one morning, we wake up to find our own +predilections treated with contempt, and the objects of our own idolatry +consigned to the waste-paper basket. Then the matter becomes serious, +and we must either go on struggling for a cause inevitably lost, or we +must give up the whole matter in indifference. This week I read, over +the signature of a very clever and very popular literary character of +our day, the remark that Wordsworth's was "a genteel mind of the third +rank." I put down the newspaper in which this airy dictum was printed, +and, for the first time, I was glad that poor Mr. Matthew Arnold was no +longer with us. But, of course, the evolutions of taste must go on, +whether they hurt the living and the dead, or no. + +Is there, then, no such thing as a permanent element of poetic beauty? +The curious fact is that leading critics in each successive generation +are united in believing that there is, and that the reigning favourite +conforms to it. The life of a reputation is like the life of a plant, +and seems, in these days, to be like the life of an annual. We watch the +seed, admiration for Wordsworth, planted about 1795, shoot obscurely +from the ground, and gradually clothe itself with leaves till about +1840; then it bursts into blossom of rapturous praise, and about 1870 is +hung with clusters of the fruit of "permanent" appreciation. In 1919, +little more than a century from its first evolution in obscurity, it +recedes again in the raggedness of obloquy, and cumbers the earth, as +dim old "genteel" Wordsworth, whom we are assured that nobody reads. But +why were "the best judges" scornful in 1800 and again in 1919 of what +gave the noblest and the most inspiriting pleasure to "the best judges" +in 1870? The execution of the verse has not altered, the conditions of +imagination seem the same, why then is the estimate always changing? Is +every form of poetic taste, is all trained enjoyment of poetry, merely a +graduated illusion which goes up and down like a wave of the sea and +carries "the best judges" with it? If not, who is right, and who is +wrong, and what is the use of dogmatising? Let us unite to quit all vain +ambition, and prefer the jangle of the music-halls, with its direct +"æsthetic thrill." + +So far as I know, the only philosopher who has dared to face this +problem is Mr. Balfour, in the brilliant second chapter of his +"Foundations of Belief." He has there asked, "Is there any fixed and +permanent element in beauty?" The result of his inquiry is +disconcerting; after much discussion he decides that there is not. Mr. +Balfour deals, in particular, with only two forms of art, Music and +Dress, but he tacitly includes the others with them. It is certain that +the result of his investigations is the singularly stultifying one that +we are not permitted to expect "permanent relations" in or behind the +feeling of poetic beauty, which may be indifferently awakened by Blake +to-day and by Hayley to-morrow. If the critic says that the verse of +Blake is beautiful and that of Hayley is not, he merely "expounds +case-made law." The result seems to be that no canons of taste exist; +that what are called "laws" of style are enacted only for those who make +them, and for those whom the makers can bully into accepting their +legislation, a new generation of lawbreakers being perfectly free to +repeal the code. Southey yesterday and Keats to-day; why not Southey +again to-morrow, or perhaps Tupper? Such is the cynical _cul-de-sac_ +into which the logic of a philosopher drives us. + +We have had in France an example of _volte-face_ in taste which I +confess has left me gasping. I imagine that if Mr. Balfour was able to +spare a moment from the consideration of fiscal reform, he must have +spent it in triumphing over the fate of M. Sully-Prudhomme. In the month +of September 1906 this poet closed, after a protracted agony, "that long +disease, his life." He had compelled respect by his courage in the face +of hopeless pain, and, one might suppose, some gratitude by the +abundance of his benefactions. His career was more than blameless, it +was singularly exemplary. Half-blind, half-paralysed, for a long time +very poor, pious without fanaticism, patient, laborious, devoted to his +friends, he seems to have been one of those extraordinary beings whose +fortitude in the face of affliction knows no abatement. It would be +ridiculous to quote any of these virtues as a reason for admiring the +poetry of Sully-Prudhomme. I mention them merely to show that there was +nothing in his personal temperament to arouse hatred or in his personal +conditions to excuse envy. Nothing to account for the, doubtless, +entirely sincere detestation which his poetry seemed to awaken in all +"the best minds" directly he was dead. + +As every one knows, from about 1870 to 1890, Sully-Prudhomme was, +without a rival, the favourite living poet of the French. Victor Hugo +was there, of course, until 1885--and posthumously until much later--but +he was a god, and the object of idolatry. All who loved human poetry, +the poetry of sweetness and light, took Sully-Prudhomme to their heart +of hearts. The _Stances et Poèmes_ of 1865 had perhaps the warmest +welcome that ever the work of a new poet had in France. Théophile +Gautier instantly pounced upon _Le Vase Brisé_ (since too-famous) and +introduced it to a thousand school-girls. Sainte-Beuve, though grown old +and languid, waked up to celebrate the psychology and the music of this +new poetry, so delicate, fresh and transparent. An unknown beauty of +extreme refinement seemed to have been created in it, a beauty made up +of lucidity, pathos and sobriety. Readers who are now approaching +seventy will not forget with what emotion they listened, for instance, +to that dialogue between the long-dead father and the newly-buried son, +which closes:-- + + "J' ai laissé ma soeur et ma mère + Et les beaux livres que j' ai lus; + Vous n'avez pas de bru, mon père, + On m'a blesse, je n'aime plus." + + "De tes aïeux compte le nombre, + Va baiser leurs fronts inconnus, + Et viens faire ton lit dans l'ombre + A côté des derniers venus. + + "Ne pleure pas, dors dans l'argile + En espérant le grand reveit." + "O père, qu'il est difficile + De ne plus penser au soleil!" + +This body of verse, to which was presently added fresh collections--_Les +Epreuves_ (1886), _Les Vaines Tendresses_ (1875), _Le Prisme_ +(1886),--was welcomed by the elder Sanhedrim, and still more +vociferously and unanimously by the younger priesthood of criticism. It +pleased the superfine amateurs of poetry, it was accepted with +enthusiasm by the thousands who enjoy without analysing their enjoyment. +In 1880, to have questioned that Sully-Prudhomme was a very noble poet +would have been like challenging Tennyson in 1870, or Cowley in 1660. +Jules Lemaître claimed that he was the greatest artist in symbols that +France had ever produced. Brunetière, so seldom moved by modern +literature, celebrated with ardour the author of _Les Vaines Tendresses_ +as having succeeded better than any other writer who had ever lived in +translating into perfect language the dawn and the twilight of emotion. +That Gaston Paris and M. Anatole France competed in lofty praise of the +lyrics of Sully-Prudhomme, is perhaps less remarkable than that Paul +Verlaine, whom all the younger schools still look upon as their apostle +and guide, declared, in reviewing _Les Ecuries d'Augias_, that the force +of style of Sully-Prudhomme was excelled only by the beauty of his +detail. It is needless to multiply examples of the unanimous praise +given by the divers schools of criticism to Sully-Prudhomme up to about +1890. His was, perhaps, the least contested literary glory of France. + +His death startlingly reminded us that this state of things had to be +entirely reversed. It is true that the peculiar talent of +Sully-Prudhomme, being almost exclusively lyrical, scarcely survived his +youth, and that he cumbered his moon of sands with two huge and clumsy +wrecks, _La Justice_ (1878) and _Le Bonheur_ (1898), round which the +feet of the fairies could hardly be expected to trip. One must be an +academician and hopelessly famous before one dares to inflict two +elephantine didactic epics on one's admirers. Unfortunately, too, the +poet undertook to teach the art of verse in his _Réflexions_ (1892) and +his _Testament Poétique_ (1901), brochures which greatly irritated the +young. It is probably wise for academicians, whether poets or the +reverse, to sit beside their nectar, and not to hurl bolts down into the +valley. But, behind these errors of judgment, there they remain--those +early volumes, which seemed to us all so full of exquisite little +masterpieces. Why is it that nobody, except a few elderly persons, any +longer delights in them? The notices which Sully-Prudhomme's death +awakened in the Paris Press were either stamped with the mark of old +contemporary affection, or else, when they were not abusive, were as +frigid as the tomb itself. "Ses tendresses sucrées, sirupeuses, sont +vaines en effet," said a critic of importance! Indeed, it would appear +so; and where are the laurels of yester-year? + +To those who were young when Sully-Prudhomme entered into his +immortality it seems impossible to realise that the glory has already +departed. Gaston Paris celebrated "the penetrating sincerity and the +exquisite expression of feeling" which distinguished Sully-Prudhomme +above all other poets. He was the bard of the inner life, sincere and +dignified, full of melancholy reverie. A great critic compared _La Vote +Lactic_ and _Les Stalactites_ with the far-off sound of bells heard down +some lovely valley in a golden afternoon. Yet the images and the +language were precise; Sully-Prudhomme was a mathematician, and if he +was reproached with anything like a fault, it was that his style was +slightly geometrical. It would be otiose to collect any more tributes to +his genius, as it appeared to all Frenchmen, cultivated or +semi-cultivated, about the year 1880. With an analysis of +Sully-Prudhomme's poetry I am not here concerned, but with the question +of why it is that such an authority as Rémy de Gourmont could, in 1907, +without awakening any protest among persons under fifty say that it was +a "sort of social crime" to impose such balderdash as the verse of +Sully-Prudhomme on the public. + +It is not needful to quote other living critics, who may think such +prolongation of their severities ungraceful. But a single contrast will +suffice. When, in 1881, Sully-Prudhomme was elected to the French +Academy, expert opinion throughout the Press was unanimous in admitting +that this was an honour deservedly given to the best lyric poet of the +age. In 1906, when a literary journal sent out this question, "Who is +the poet you love best?" and was answered by more than two hundred +writers of verse, the diversity of opinion was indeed excessive; such +poets as Sainte-Beuve, as Brizeux, as Rodenbach, received votes, all the +great masters received many. But Sully-Prudhomme, alone, received not +one vote. A new generation had arisen, and one of its leaders, with +cruel wit, transferred to the reputation of the author his own most +famous line:--"N'y touchez pas, il est brisé." + +It is necessary to recollect that we are not dealing with the phenomenon +of the inability of very astute literary people to recognise at once a +startling new sort of beauty. When Robert Browning lent the best poems +of Keats to Mrs. Carlyle, she read them and returned them with the +remark that "almost any young gentleman with a sweet tooth might be +expected to write such things." Mrs. Carlyle was a very clever woman, +but she was not quite "educated up to" Keats. The history of letters is +full of these grotesque limitations of taste, in the presence of great +art which has not yet been "classed." But we are here considering the +much stranger and indeed extremely disconcerting case of a product which +has been accepted, with acclamation, by the judges of one generation, +and is contemptuously hooted out of court by the next. It is not, on +this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics. +If Théophile Gautier was right in 1867, Rémy de Gourmont must have been +wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of +criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however +ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact +that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that +another whole generation is of the same mind as Rémy de Gourmont. + +Then it is that Mr. Balfour, like Galuppi with his "cold music," comes +in and tells us that this is precisely what we have to expect. All +beauty consists in the possession of certain relations, which being +withdrawn, beauty disappears from the object that seemed to possess it. +There is no permanent element in poetic excellence. We are not to demand +any settled opinion about poetry. So Mr. Balfour seems to creak it, and +we want the heart to scold. But is it quite so certain that there is no +fixed norm of beauty imaginable? Is it the fact that poetic pleasure +cannot "be supposed to last any longer than the transient reaction +between it" and the temporary prejudice of our senses? If this be true, +then are critics of all men most miserable. + +Yet, deeply dejected as it leaves me to know that very clever people +despise the "genteel third-rate mind" of Wordsworth, I am not quite +certain that I yield to Mr. Balfour's brilliant and paralysing logic. +That eminent philosopher seems to say "you find the poets, whom you +revered in your youth, treated with contempt in your old age. Well! It +is very sad, and perhaps it would annoy me too, if I were not a +philosopher. But it only shows how right I was to tell, you not to +expect permanent relations behind the feeling of beauty, since all is +illusion, and there is no such thing as a principle of taste, but only +a variation of fashion." + +Is it, however, quite so certain, after all, that there is no standard? +It must be admitted that there seems to be no fixed rule of taste, not +even a uniformity of practice or general tendency to agreement in +particular cases. But the whole study of the fine arts would lead to +despair if we allowed ourselves to accept this admission as implying +that no conceivable principle of taste exists. We may not be able to +produce it, like a yard-measure, and submit works of imagination to it, +once and for all, in the eyes of a consternated public. But when we +observe, as we must allow, that art is no better at one age than at +another, but only different; that it is subject to modification, but +certainly not to development; may we not safely accept this stationary +quality as a proof that there does exist, out of sight, unattained and +unattainable, a positive norm of poetic beauty? We cannot define it, but +in each generation all excellence must be the result of a relation to +it. It is the moon, heavily wrapt up in clouds, and impossible exactly +to locate, yet revealed by the light it throws on distant portions of +the sky. At all events, it appears to me that this is the only theory by +which we can justify a continued interest in literature when it is +attacked, now on one side, now on another, by the vicissitudes of +fashion. + +The essays which are here collected deal, for the most part, with +figures in the history of English literature which have suffered from +the changes of fortune and the instability of taste. In every case, +there has been something which is calculated to attract the sympathy and +interest of one who, like myself, has been closely concerned with two +distinct but not unrelated branches of his subject, the literary +character and the literary craft. More than fifty years have +passed--like a cloud, like a dream!--since I first saw my name printed +below a passage of critical opinion. How many reputations, within that +half-century, have not been exalted, how many have not been depressed! +We have seen Tennyson advanced beyond Virgil and Victor Hugo beyond +Homer. We have seen the latest freak of futurism preferred to _The Lotus +Eaters_, and the first _Légende des Siècles_ rejected as unreadable. In +face of this whirlwind of doctrine the public ceases to know whether it +is on its head or its feet--"its trembling tent all topsy-turvy wheels," +as an Elizabethan has it. To me it seems that security can only be found +in an incessant exploration of the by-ways of literary history and +analysis of the vagaries of literary character. To pursue this analysis +and this exploration without bewilderment and without prejudice is to +sum up the pleasures of a life devoted to books. + +_August 1919._ + + + + +THE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN[1] + + +Three hundred years have gone by to-day since Sir Walter Raleigh was +beheaded, in presence of a vast throng of spectators, on the scaffold of +Old Palace Yard in Westminster. General Gordon said that England is what +her adventurers have made her, and there is not in all English history a +more shining and violent specimen of the adventurous type than Raleigh. +I am desired to deliver a brief panegyric on this celebrated freebooter, +and I go behind the modern definition of the word "panegyric" (as a +pompous and ornamented piece of rhetoric) to its original significance, +which was, as I take it, the reminder, to a great assembly of persons, +of the reason why they have been brought together in the name of a man +long dead. Therefore I shall endeavour, in the short space of time +allotted to me, not so much to eulogise as to explain and to define what +Sir Walter Raleigh was and represents. + +I suggest, therefore, before we touch upon any of the details of his +career and character, that the central feature of Raleigh, as he appears +to us after three hundred years, is his unflinching determination to see +the name of England written across the forehead of the world. Others +before him had been patriots of the purest order, but Raleigh was the +first man who laid it down, as a formula, that "England shall by the +favour of God resist, repel and confound all whatsoever attempts +against her sacred kingdom." He had no political sense nor skill in +statecraft. For that we go to the Burghleys or the Cecils, crafty men of +experience and judgment. But he understood that England had enemies and +that those enemies must be humbled and confounded. He understood that +the road of England's greatness, which was more to him than all other +good things, lay across the sea. The time was ripe for the assertion of +English liberty, of English ascendancy, too; and the opportunity of the +moment lay in "those happy hands which the Holy Ghost hath guided," the +fortunate adventurers. Of these Raleigh was the most eminent as he was +also, in a sense, the most unfortunate. + +A heavy shadow lay all over the Western world, the shadow of a fierce +bird of prey hovering over its victim. Ever since Ferdinand expelled the +Moors out of Granada, Spain had been nursing insensate dreams of +universal empire. She was endeavouring to destroy the infant system of +European civilisation by every means of brutality and intrigue which the +activity of her arrogance could devise. The Kings of Spain, in their +ruthless ambition, encouraged their people in a dream of Spanish +world-dominion. Their bulletins had long "filled the earth with their +vainglorious vaunts, making great appearance of victories"; they had +spread their propaganda "in sundry languages in print," distributing +braggart pamphlets in which they boasted, for the benefit of neutrals, +of their successes against England, France, and Italy. They had "abused +and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of the Low Countries, and they +held that the force of arms which they brandished would weigh against +justice, humanity, and freedom in the servitude which they meant to +inflict upon Europe. It was to be _Spanien über alles_. + +But there was one particular nation against which the malignity of the +great enemy blazed most fiercely. The King of Spain blasphemously +regarded himself as the instrument of God, and there was one country +which more than the rest frustrated his pious designs. This was England, +and for that reason England was more bitterly hated than any other +enemy. The Spaniards did "more greedily thirst after English blood than +after the lives of any other people of Europe." The avowed purpose of +Castile was to destroy that maritime supremacy of England on which the +very existence of the English State depends. The significance of Sir +Walter Raleigh consists in the clairvoyance with which he perceived and +the energy with which he combated this monstrous assumption. Other noble +Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and +had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, +but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with +resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight full +upon him. The classic writing of the crisis is contained in the _Last +Fight of the Revenge at Sea_ of 1591, where the splendid defiance and +warning of the Preface are like trumpets blown to the four quarters of +the globe. Raleigh stands out as the man who above all others laboured, +as he said, "against the ambitious and bloody pretences of the +Spaniards, who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves +devoured." + +There is a blessing upon the meek of the earth, but I do not present +Raleigh to you as a humble-minded man. In that wonderful Elizabethan age +there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the +subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable +wisdom of Shakespeare. Raleigh had no part in any of these, and to +complain of that would be to grumble because a hollyhock is neither a +violet nor a rose. He had his enemies during his life and his detractors +ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He +was a typical man of that heroic age in that he possessed, even to +excess, all its tropic irregularity of ethics. He lived in a perpetual +alternation of thunderstorm and blazing sunshine. He admitted himself +that his "reason," by which he meant his judgment, "was exceeding weak," +and his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his +courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made +him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where +everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did +not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we +are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with +serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from +ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his +protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive +pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong +silent" type of soldier which the nineteenth century invented for +exclusive British consumption. + +In judging his character we must take into consideration not only the +times in which he lived, but the leaders of English policy with whom he +came into collision. He was not thirty years of age, and still at the +height of his vivacity, when he was taken into the close favour of Queen +Elizabeth. There can be no question that he found in the temper of the +monarch something to which his own nature intimately responded. The +Queen was an adventurer at heart, as he was, and she was an Englishman +of Englishmen. We are accustomed to laugh at the extravagance of the +homage which Raleigh paid to a woman old enough to be his mother, at the +bravado which made him fling his new plush cloak across a puddle for the +Queen to tread over gently, as Fuller tells us, "rewarding him +afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so +fair a footcloth," or at the story of the rhymes the couple cut on the +glass with their diamond rings. In all this, no doubt, there was the +fashion of the time, and on Raleigh's part there was ambition and the +desire to push his fortunes without scruple. But there was, you may be +sure, more than that; there was the instinctive sympathy between the two +who hated with the most unflagging and the most burning hate the wicked +aggression of Spain. We may be sure that Elizabeth never for a day +forgot that Pope Alexander VI. had generously bestowed the Western world +on the Crown of Spain. Raleigh spoke a language which might be +extravagant and which might be exasperating, which might, in fact, lead +to outrageous quarrels between his Cynthia and himself, but which, at +least, that Cynthia understood. + +But in 1602, when Raleigh was fifty years of age and had his splendours +behind him, there came another Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. James I. was +the type of the cautious man who only looks to the present, who hopes by +staving off a crisis till Tuesday that something fresh will "turn up" by +Wednesday. He was disposed, from the very first, to distrust and to +waylay the plans of Raleigh. We are told, and can well believe it, that +he was "diffident" of Sir Walter's designs. He was uncomfortable in the +presence of that breezy "man of desperate fortunes." A very excellent +example of the opposition of the two types is offered by the discussion +about the golden city of Manoa. Raleigh believed, and after all +disappointments continued to be sure, that in the heart of the swamps of +the Orinoco there existed a citadel of magnificent wealth, an emporium +of diamonds and gold, from which Spain was secretly drawing the riches +with which she proposed to overwhelm civilisation. He struggled for +nearly a quarter of a century to win this marvellous city for England. +James I. chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that +any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere in nature," as he craftily +said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May +1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the +seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no +golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams +were more real than reality; they existed in the future; he looked far +ahead, and our sympathies to-day, and our gratitude also, are all for +the noble and valorous knight who sailed out into the West searching for +an unknown El Dorado. + +It is not so easy to defend the character of our hero against those who, +like Hume, have objected to his methods in the prosecution of his +designs. To Hume, as to many others before and since, Raleigh seemed +"extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both." +The excellent historians of the eighteenth century could not make up +their minds whether he was a hero or an impostor. Did he believe in the +Guiana mine, or was he, through all those strenuous years, hoodwinking +the world? Had he any purpose, save to plunder the Spaniard? Perhaps his +own family doubted his sanity, for his son Walter, when he charged the +Spanish settlement at San Thomé, pointed to the house of the little +colony and shouted to his men: "Come on, this is the true mine, and none +but fools would look for any other!" Accusations of bad faith, of +factious behaviour, of disloyal intrigue, were brought up against Sir +Walter over and over again during the "day of his tempestuous life, +drawn on into an evening" of ignominy and blood. These charges were the +"inmost and soul-piercing wounds" of which he spoke, still "aching," +still "uncured." + +There is no need to recount to you the incidents of his life, but I may +remind you that after the failure of the latest expedition to South +America the Privy Council, under pressure from the Spanish Ambassador, +gave orders to Sir Lewis Stukeley to bring the body of Sir Walter +Raleigh speedily to London. This was the culmination of his fall, since, +three days after Raleigh landed at Plymouth, the King had assured Spain +that "not all those who have given security for Raleigh can save him +from the gallows." His examination followed, and the publication of the +_Apology for the Voyage to Guiana_. The trial dragged on, while James +I., in a manner almost inconceivable, allowed himself to be hurried and +bullied by the insolent tyrant Philip II. If the English King did not +make haste to execute Raleigh the Spaniards would fetch him away and +hang him in Madrid. In these conditions, and clutching at life as a man +clutches at roots and branches when he is sliding down a precipice, the +conduct of Raleigh has given cause to his critics to blaspheme. He +wriggled like an eel, he pretended to be sick, he pretended to be mad, +in order to protract his examination. He prevaricated about his mine, +about the French alliance, about the Spanish treaties, about his stores +and instruments. Did he believe, or did he not believe, in the Empire of +the Inca, in the Amazons or Republic of Women, in the gold lying hidden +in the hard white spar of El Dorado? We do not know, and his own latest +efforts at explanation only cloud our counsel. He was perhaps really a +little mad at last, his feverish brain half-crazed by the movement on +land and sea of the triumphant wealth of Spain. + +Let us never overlook that the master-passion of his whole career was +hatred of this tyrannous prosperity of England's most formidable rival. +He acted impulsively, and even unjustly; there was much in his methods +that a cool judgment must condemn; but he was fighting, with his back to +the wall, in order that the British race should not be crowded out of +existence by "the proud Iberian." He saw that if Spain were permitted to +extend her military and commercial supremacy unchecked, there would be +an end to civilisation. Democracy was a thing as yet undeveloped, but +the seeds of it were lying in the warm soil of English liberty, and +Raleigh perceived, more vehemently than any other living man, that the +complete victory of Spain would involve the shipwreck of England's hopes +of future prosperity. Nor was he exclusively interested in England, +though all his best hopes were ours. When he had been a lad at Oxford he +had broken away from his studies in 1569 to help the Protestant princes +as a gentleman volunteer in France, and he took part in the famous +battle of Jarnac. He is supposed to have fought in France for six years. +From early youth his mind was "bent on military glory," and always in +opposition to Spain. His escape from the bloody Vespers of Saint +Bartholomew had given him a deep distrust of the policy of Rome. The +Spaniard had "abused and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of +Flanders. Sir Walter Raleigh dreamed that by the combination in arms of +England, France, and the Low Countries, the Spaniards "might not only be +persuaded to live in peace, but all their swelling and overflowing +streams might be brought back into their natural channels and old +banks." + +Raleigh stood out, as he put it himself, against "the continuance of +this boundless ambition in mortal men." The rulers in Madrid, +transported by their own arrogance, had determined to impose their +religion, their culture, their form of government, on the world. It was +a question whether the vastly superior moral and intellectual energy of +England and France would not be crushed beneath the heel of Spain. +Raleigh was ready to sacrifice everything, to imperil his own soul, to +prevent that. He says you might as well "root out the Christian religion +altogether" as join "the rest of all Europe to Spain." In his zeal to +prevent "the continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men," he +lent himself to acts which we must not attempt to condone. There is no +use in trying to explain away the facts of his cruel and even savage +fanaticism in Ireland when he was governor of Munster. He was always apt +to be abruptly brutal to a man who crossed his path. But even his Irish +career offers aspects on which we may dwell with pure pleasure. Nothing +could be more romantic than those adventures, like the feats of a +paladin of the Faerie Queen, which he encountered in the great wood of +Lismore; while the story of how he carried off Lord and Lady Roche from +their breakfast-table in their own castle of Ballyinharsh, and how he +rode with them up ravines and round precipices in that mad flight from +their retainers, is as rousing as any scene ever imagined by Dumas +_père_. + +Raleigh called himself the Shepherd of the Ocean, and the name fits him +well, even though his flock were less like sheep than like a leash of +hunting leopards. His theory was that with a pack of small and active +pinnaces he could successfully hunt the lumbering Spanish galleons +without their being able to hit back. He was, in contradistinction to +many preceding English admirals, a cautious fighter at sea, and he says, +in a striking passage of the _History of the World_, written towards the +end of his career, "to clap ships together without any consideration +belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war." He must have taken the +keenest interest in the gigantic failure of the Felicissima Armada in +1588, but, tantalisingly enough, we have no record of his part in it. On +the other hand, the two finest of his prose pamphlets, the _Relation of +the Action in Cadiz Harbour_ and the incomparable _Report on the Fight +in the Revenge_, supply us with ample materials for forming an idea of +his value as a naval strategist. Raleigh's earliest biographer, Oldys +the antiquary, speaks of him as "raising a grove of laurels out of the +sea," and it is certainly upon that element that he reaches his highest +effect of prominence. It was at sea that he could give fullest scope to +his hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. He had to be at once a +gamekeeper and a poacher; he had to protect the legitimate interests of +English shipping against privateers and pirates, while he was persuaded +to be, or felt himself called upon to become, no little of a pirate +himself. He was a passionate advocate of the freedom of the seas, and +those who look upon Raleigh as a mere hot-brained enthusiast should read +his little book called _Observations on Trade and Commerce_, written in +the Tower, and see what sensible views he had about the causes of the +depression of trade. These sage opinions did not check him, or his +fleets of hunting-pinnaces, from lying in wait for the heavy wallowing +plate-ships, laden with Indian carpets and rubies and sandalwood and +ebony, which came swinging up to the equator from Ceylon or Malabar. The +"freedom of the seas" was for Raleigh's ship, the _Roebuck_; it was by +no means for the _Madre de Dios_. We find these moral inconsistencies in +the mind of the best of adventurers. + +A sketch of Raleigh's character would be imperfect indeed if it +contained no word concerning his genius as a coloniser. One of his main +determinations, early in life, was "to discover and conquer unknown +lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name." We celebrate in +Sir Walter Raleigh one of the most intelligent and imaginative of the +founders of our colonial empire. The English merchantmen before his time +had been satisfied with the determination to grasp the wealth of the New +World as it came home to Spain; it had not occurred to them to compete +with the great rival at the fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake +and Frobisher had been content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the +poet Wither said, "to check our ships from sailing where they please." +South America was already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was +still open to invasion. It was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey +Gilbert, who first thought of planting an English settlement in what is +now the United States, in 1578. But Gilbert had "no luck at sea," as +Queen Elizabeth observed, and it was Raleigh who, in 1584, took up the +scheme of colonisation. He did not drop it until the death of Elizabeth, +when, under the east wind of the new _régime_, the blossom of his +colonial enterprises flagged. + +The motion for the ceremony of to-day originated with the authorities of +an important American city, which proudly bears the name of our +adventurer. The earliest settlement in what are now the United States +was made at Roanoke, in Virginia, on a day which must always be +prominent in the annals of civilisation, August 17th, 1585. But this +colony lasted only ten months, and it was not until nearly two years +later that the fourth expedition which Raleigh sent out succeeded in +maintaining a perilous foothold in the new country. This was the little +trembling taper to which his own name was given, the twinkling spark +which is now the flourishing city of Raleigh in North Carolina. We may +well marvel at the pertinacity with which Sir Walter persisted, in the +face of innumerable difficulties, in sending out one colonising fleet +after another, although, contrary to common legend, he himself never set +foot in North America. It was fortunate that at this period of his +career he was wealthy, for the attempts to plant settlements in the vast +region which he named Virginia cost him more than £40,000. We note at +all turns of his fortune his extraordinary tenacity of purpose, which he +illustrated, as though by a motto, in the verses he addressed to a +comrade towards the end of his imprisonment in the Tower:-- + + "Change not! to change thy fortune 'tis too late; + Who with a manly faith resolves to die + May promise to himself a lasting State, + Though not so great, yet free from infamy." + +So we may think of him in his prime, as he stood on the Hoe of Plymouth +twenty years before, a gallant figure of a man, bedizened with precious +stones, velvets, and embroidered damasks, shouting his commands to his +captains in a strong Devonshire accent. We think of him resolutely +gazing westward always, with the light of the sea in his eyes. + +We come to the final scene which we are here to-day to commemorate. +Little honour to the rulers of England in 1618 redounds from it, and yet +we may feel that it completed and even redeemed from decay the character +of Raleigh. This tragedy, which was almost a murder, was needed to round +off the accomplishment of so strange and frantic a career of romantic +violence, and to stamp it with meaning. If Raleigh had been thrown from +his horse or had died of the ague in his bed, we should have been +depressed by the squalid circumstances, we should have been less +conscious than we are now of his unbroken magnanimity. His failures and +his excesses had made him unpopular throughout England, and he was both +proud and peevish in his recognition of the fact. He declared that he +was "nothing indebted" to the world, and again that, "the common people +are evil judges of honest things." But the thirteen years of his +imprisonment caused a reaction. People forgot how troublesome he had +been and only recollected his magnificence. They remembered nothing but +that he had spent his whole energy and fortune in resisting the +brutality and avarice of the Spaniard. + +Then came the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at Westminster, +and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of a paltry king. +It became known, or shrewdly guessed, that Spain had sent to James I. a +hectoring alternative that Raleigh must be executed in London or sent +alive for a like purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and +ignominious submission of the English Government to the insolence of +England's hereditary enemy. Raleigh seemed for the moment to have failed +completely, yet it was really like the act of Samson, who slew more men +at his death than in all his life. Samuel Pepys, who had some fine +intuitions at a time when the national _moral_ was very low, spoke of +Raleigh as being "given over, as a sacrifice," to our enemies. This has +been, in truth, the secret of his unfailing romantic popularity, and it +is the reason of the emotion which has called us together here three +hundred years after his death upon the scaffold. + +[Footnote 1: Address delivered at the Mansion House, October 29th, 1918, +on occasion of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh's death.] + + + + +THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE + + +Among the "co-supremes and stars of love" which form the constellated +glory of our greatest poet there is one small splendour which we are apt +to overlook in our general survey. But, if we isolate it from other +considerations, it is surely no small thing that Shakespeare created and +introduced into our literature the Dramatic Song. If with statistical +finger we turn the pages of all his plays, we shall discover, not +perhaps without surprise, that these contain not fewer than fifty +strains of lyrical measure. Some of the fifty, to be sure, are mere +star-dust, but others include some of the very jewels of our tongue. +They range in form from the sophisticated quatorzains of _The Two +Gentlemen of Verona_ (where, however, comes "Who is Silvia?") to the +reckless snatches of melody in _Hamlet_. But all have a character which +is Shakespearean, and this regardless of the question so often raised, +and so incapable of reply, as to whether some of the wilder ones are +Shakespeare's composition or no. Whoever originally may have written +such scraps as "They bore him bare-faced on the bier" and "Come o'er the +bourne, Bessy, to me," the spirit of Shakespeare now pervades and +possesses them. + +Our poet was a prodigious innovator in this as in so many other matters. +Of course, the idea and practice of musical interludes in plays was not +quite novel. In Shakespeare's early youth that remarkable artist in +language, John Lyly, had presented songs in several of his plays, and +these were notable for what his contemporary, Henry Upchear, called +"their labouring beauty." We may notice that Lyly's songs were not +printed till long after Shakespeare's death, but doubtless he had +listened to them. Peele and Greene had brilliant lyrical gifts, but they +did not exercise them in their dramas, nor did Lodge, whose novel of +Rosalynde (1590) contains the only two precedent songs which we could +willingly add to Shakespeare's juvenile repertory. But while I think it +would be rash to deny that the lyrics of Lodge and Lyly had their direct +influence on the style of Shakespeare, neither of those admirable +precursors conceived the possibility of making the Song an integral part +of the development of the drama. This was Shakespeare's invention, and +he applied it with a technical adroitness which had never been dreamed +of before and was never rivalled after. + +This was not apprehended by the early critics of our divine poet, and +has never yet, perhaps, received all the attention it deserves. We may +find ourselves bewildered if we glance at what the eighteenth-century +commentators said, for instance, about the songs in _Twelfth Night_. +They called the adorable rhapsodies of the Clown "absurd" and +"unintelligible"; "O Mistress mine" was in their ears "meaningless"; +"When that I was" appeared to them "degraded buffoonery." They did not +perceive the close and indispensable connection between the Clown's song +and the action of the piece, although the poet had been careful to point +out that it was a moral song "dulcet in contagion," and too good, except +for sarcasm, to be wasted on Sir Andrew and Sir Toby. The critics +neglected to note what the Duke says about "Come away, come away, +Death," and they prattled in their blindness as to whether this must not +really have been sung by Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant +dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of +the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of _Twelfth Night_ is burdened +with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and at each +change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string. +The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this +musical tension at its height. + +Rather different, and perhaps still more subtle, is the case of _A +Winter's Tale_, where the musical obsession is less prominent, and where +the songs are all delivered from the fantastic lips of Autolycus. Here +again the old critics were very wonderful. Dr. Burney puts "When +daffodils begin to peer" and "Lawn as white as driven snow" into one +bag, and flings it upon the dust-heap, as "two nonsensical songs" sung +by "a pickpocket." Dr. Warburton blushed to think that such "nonsense" +could be foisted on Shakespeare's text. Strange that those learned men +were unable to see, not merely that the rogue-songs are intensely human +and pointedly Shakespearean, but that they are an integral part of the +drama. They complete the revelation of the complex temperament of +Autolycus, with his passion for flowers and millinery, his hysterical +balancing between laughter and tears, his impish mendacity, his sudden +sentimentality, like the Clown's + + "Not a friend, not a friend greet + My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown!" + +It is in these subtle lyrical amalgams of humour and tenderness that the +firm hand of the creator of character reveals itself. + +But it is in _The Tempest_ that Shakespeare's supremacy as a writer of +songs is most brilliantly developed. Here are seven or eight lyrics, and +among them are some of the loveliest things that any man has written. +What was ever composed more liquid, more elastic, more delicately +fairy-like than Ariel's First Song? + + "Come unto these yellow sands, + And then take hands: + Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd,-- + The wild waves whist." + +That is, not "kissed the wild waves," as ingenious punctuators pretend, +but, parenthetically, "kissed one another,--the wild waves being silent +the while." Even fairies do not kiss waves, than which no embrace could +be conceived less rewarding. Has any one remarked the echo of Marlowe +here, from _Hero and Leander_, + + "when all is whist and still, + Save that the sea playing on yellow sand + Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land!" + +But Marlowe, with all his gifts, could never have written the lyrical +parts of _The Tempest_. This song is in emotional sympathy with +Ferdinand, and in the truest sense dramatic, not a piece of pretty verse +foisted in to add to the entertainment. + +Ariel's Second Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin +redbreast" in _The White Devil_, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it +tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls +it, is like a breath of the west wind over an æolian harp. Where, in any +language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's +Fourth Song,--"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative +genius of English poetry, recently delivered from Sycorax. If we glance +at Dry den's recension of _The Tempest_ we may be inclined to think that +the "wicked dam" soon won back her mastery. With all respect to Dryden, +what are we to think of his discretion in eking out Shakespeare's +insufficiencies with such staves as this:-- + + "Upon the floods we'll sing and play + And celebrate a halcyon day; + Great Nephew Aeolus make no noise, + Muzzle your roaring boys." + +and so forth? What had happened to the ear of England in seventy years? + +As a matter of fact the perfection of dramatic song scarcely survived +Shakespeare himself. The early Jacobeans, Heywood, Ford, and Dekker in +particular, broke out occasionally in delicate ditties. But most +playwrights, like Massinger, were persistently pedestrian. The only man +who came at all close to Shakespeare as a lyrist was John Fletcher, +whose "Lay a garland on my hearse" nobody could challenge if it were +found printed first in a Shakespeare quarto. The three great songs in +"Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's, +though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of +"Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be +the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their +sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection +gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately +procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be +certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was +by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure +of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of +Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent +portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of +Shakespeare, and perhaps of him alone. + + + + +CATHARINE TROTTER, + +THE PRECURSOR OF THE BLUESTOCKINGS + + +The practically complete absence of the Woman of Letters from our +tropical and profuse literature of the early and middle seventeenth +century has often been observed with wonder. While France had her +Madeleine de Scudéry and her Mlle. de Gournay and her Mère Angelique +Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into +philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they +read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to +write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with +every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional +woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose +genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers. +Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had left no +heritage to her sex. But there presently appeared a set of female +writers, who enlivened the last years of the century, but who were soon +eclipsed by the wits of the age of Anne, and who have been entirely +forgotten. It is to the most interesting of these "transient phantoms" +that I wish to draw attention. + +The extreme precocity of Catharine Trotter makes her seem to belong to +the age of Dryden, but she was in reality younger than Addison and most +of the other contemporaries of Pope. She was born on August 16th, 1679, +the younger daughter of a naval officer, Captain David Trotter, R.N.; +her mother's maiden name had been Sarah Ballenden, probably of the +well-known Catholic family of that ilk. She "had the honour of being +nearly related to the illustrious families of Maitland, Duke of +Lauderdale and Drummond, Earl of Perth." The Jacobite fourth Earl of +Perth seems to have been the patron of Captain Trotter, of whom he wrote +in 1684 that he was "an ornament to his country." Apparently the gallant +captain was attached to Trinity House, where his probity and integrity +earned him the epithet of "honest David," and where he attracted the +notice of George, first Lord Dartmouth, when that rising statesman was +appointed Master. Captain Trotter had served the Crown from his youth, +"with great gallantry and fidelity, both by land and sea," and had been +very successful in the Dutch wars. He had a brother who was a commander +in the Navy. We get an impression of high respectability in the outer, +but not outermost, circles of influential Scottish society. Doubtless +the infancy of Catharine was spent in conditions of dependent +prosperity. These conditions were not to last. When she was four years +old Lord Dartmouth started on the famous expedition to demolish Tangier, +and he took Captain Trotter with him as his commodore. In this affair, +as before, the captain distinguished himself by his ability, and instead +of returning to London after Tangier he was recommended to King Charles +II. as the proper person to convoy the fleet of the Turkey Company to +its destination. Apparently it was understood that this would be the +final reward of his services and that he was to "make his fortune" out +of the Turks. Unhappily, after convoying his charge safely to +Scanderoon, he fell sick of the plague that was raging there, and died, +in the course of January 1684, in company with all the other officers of +his ship. Every misfortune now ensued; the purser, who was thus left to +his own devices, helped himself to the money destined for the expenses +of the voyage, while, to crown all, the London goldsmith in whose hands +the captain had left his private fortune took this occasion to go +bankrupt. The King, in these melancholy circumstances, granted an +Admiralty pension to the widow, but when he died early in the following +year this was no longer paid, and the unfortunate ladies of the Trotter +family might well murmur:-- + + "One mischief brings another on his neck, + As mighty billows tumble in the seas." + +From the beginning of her fifth year, then, Catharine experienced the +precarious lot of those who depend for a livelihood on the charity of +more or less distant relatives. We dimly see a presentable mother +piteously gathering up such crumbs as fell from the tables of the +illustrious families with whom she was remotely connected. But the Duke +of Lauderdale himself was now dead, and the Earl of Perth had passed the +zenith of his power. No doubt in the seventeenth century the protection +of poor relations was carried on more systematically than it is to-day, +and certainly Mrs. Trotter contrived to live and to bring up her two +daughters genteelly. The first years were the worst; the accession of +William III. brought back to England and to favour Gilbert Burnet, who +became Bishop of Salisbury in 1688, when Catharine was nine years old. +Mrs. Trotter found a patron and perhaps an employer in the Bishop, and +when Queen Anne came to the throne her little pension was renewed. + +There is frequent reference to money in Catharine Trotter's writings, +and the lack of it was the rock upon which her gifts were finally +wrecked. With a competency she might have achieved a much more prominent +place in English literature than she could ever afford to reach. She +offers a curious instance of the depressing effect of poverty, and we +get the impression that she was never, during her long and virtuous +career, lifted above the carking anxiety which deadens the imagination. +As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order. +She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an +illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female +darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own +application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some +assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject +became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an +abstract" of that science "for her own use." Thus she prepared for her +future communion with Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small, +in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of +England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the +Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the +conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned +out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman, +her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the Anglican +faith when she was twenty-eight years of age.) + +She was in her tenth year when the unhappy reign of James II. came to a +close. Mrs. Trotter's connections were now in a poor plight. The new +Earl of Lauderdale was in great distress for money; Lord Dartmouth, +abandoned by the King in his flight, was thrown into the Tower, where he +died on October 25th, 1691, in which year the estates of the Earl of +Perth were sequestered and he himself hunted out of the country. Ruin +simultaneously fell on all the fine friends of our infant prodigy, and +we can but guess how it affected her. Yet there were plenty of other +Jacobites left in London, and Catharine's first public appearance shows +that she cultivated their friendship. She published in 1693 a copy of +verses addressed to Mr. Bevil Higgons on the occasion of his recovery +from the smallpox; she was then fourteen years of age. Higgons was a +young man of twenty-three, who had lately returned from the exiled court +in France, where he had distinguished himself by his agreeable manners, +and who had just made a name for himself by poems addressed to Dryden +and by a prologue to Congreve's _Old Batchelor_. He was afterwards to +become famous for a little while as a political historian. Catharine +Trotter's verses are bad, but she addresses Higgons as "lovely youth," +and claims his gratitude for her tribute in terms which are almost +boisterous. This poem was not only her introduction to the public, but, +through Bevil Higgons, was probably the channel of her acquaintance with +Congreve and Dryden. + +Throughout her life she was fond of writing letters to celebrated +people; she now certainly wrote to Congreve and doubtless to Dryden. A +freedom in correspondence ran in the family. Her poor mother is revealed +to us as always "renewing her application" to somebody or other. We next +find the youthful poet in relation with the Earl of Dorset, from whom +she must have concealed her Jacobite propensities. Dorset was the great +public patron of poetry under William III., and Catharine Trotter, aged +sixteen, having composed a tragedy, appealed to him for support. It was +very graciously granted, and _Agnes de Castro_, in five acts and in +blank verse, "written by a young lady," was produced at the Theatre +Royal in 1695, under the "protection" of Charles Earl of Dorset and +Middlesex, Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household. The event caused +a considerable commotion. No woman had written for the English stage +since the death of Mrs. Behn, and curiosity was much excited. Mrs. +Verbruggen, that enchanting actress, but in male attire, recited a +clever, ranting epilogue at the close of the performance, in which she +said:-- + + "'tis whispered here + Our Poetess is virtuous, young and fair," + +but the secret was an open one. Wycherley, who contributed verses, knew +all about it, and so did Mrs. Manley, while Powell and Colley Cibber +were among the actors. We may be sure that little Mistress Trotter's +surprising talents were the subjects of much discussion at Will's Coffee +House, and that the question of securing her for the rival theatre was +anxiously debated at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her success in Agnes de +Castro was the principal asset which Drury Lane had to set that season +against Congreve's splendid adventure with Love for Love. + +Agnes de Castro is an immature production, and shows a juvenile +insensibility to plagiarism, since the subject and treatment are +borrowed implicitly from a French novel by Mlle. de Brillac, published +in Paris and London a few years before.[2] The conception of court life +at Coimbra in the fourteenth century is that of this French lady, and is +innocent of Portuguese local colour. But, as the dramatic work of a girl +of sixteen, the play is rather extraordinary for nimble movement and +adroit theatrical arrangements. It is evident that Catharine Trotter was +well versed in the stage traditions of her own day, and we may wonder +how a highly respectable girl of sixteen found her opportunity. The +English playhouse under William III. was no place for a very young lady, +even if she wore a mask. There is a good deal of meritorious +character-drawing in Agnes de Castro. The conception of a benevolent and +tenderly forgiving Princess is well contrasted with the fierce purity of +Agnes and the infatuation of the Prince. Towards the close of the first +act there is a capital scene of exquisite confusion between this +generous and distracted trio. The opening of the third act, between +Elvira and her brother Alvaro, is not at all young-ladyish, and has some +strong turns of feeling. The end of the play, with the stabbing of the +Princess and the accusation of Agnes by Elvira, is puerile, but was +doubtless welcome to a sentimental audience. It is a bad play, but not +at all an unpromising one. + +Early in 1696 _Agnes de Castro_, still anonymous, was published as a +book, and for the next five or six years we find Catharine Trotter +habitually occupied in writing for the stage. Without question she did +so professionally, though in what way dramatists at the close of the +seventeenth century lived by their pens is difficult to conjecture. A +very rare play, _The Female Wits; or, the Triumvirate of Poets_, the +authorship of which has hitherto defied conjecture, was acted at Drury +Lane after Catharine Trotter had been tempted across to Lincoln's Inn +Fields, and is evidently inspired by the intense jealousy which +smouldered between the two great houses. The success of Miss Trotter +incited two older ladies to compete with her; these were Mrs. +Delariviere Manley, who was a discarded favourite of Barbara Villiers, +and fat Mrs. Mary Pix, the stage-struck consort of a tailor. These +rather ridiculous women professed themselves followers of Catharine, and +they produced plays of their own not without some success. With her they +formed the trio of Female Wits who were mocked in the lively but, on the +whole, rather disappointing play I have just mentioned, in the course of +which it is spitefully remarked of Calista--who is Miss Trotter--that +she has "made no small struggle in the world to get into print," and is +"now in such a state of wedlock to pen and ink that it will be very +difficult" for her "to get out of it." + +In acting _The Female Wits_ Mrs. Temple, who had played the Princess in +_Agnes de Castro_, took the part of Calista, and doubtless, in the +coarse fashion of those days, made up exactly like poor Catharine +Trotter, who was described as "a Lady who pretends to the learned +Languages, and assumes to herself the name of a Critic." This was a +character, however, which she would not have protested against with much +vigour, for she had now quite definitely taken up the position of a +reformer and a pioneer. She posed as the champion of women's +intellectual rights, and she was accepted as representing in active +literary work the movement which Mary Astell had recently foreshadowed +in her remarkable _Serious Proposal to Ladies_ of 1694. We turn again to +_The Female Wits_, and we find Marsilia (Mrs. Manley) describing Calista +to Mrs. Wellfed (Mrs. Fix) as "the vainest, proudest, senseless Thing! +She pretends to grammar! writes in mood and figure! does everything +methodically!" Yet when Calista appears on the stage, Mrs. Manley rushes +across to fling her arms around her and to murmur: "O charmingest Nymph +of all Apollo's Train, let me embrace thee!" Later on Calista says to +Mrs. Pix, the fat tailoress, "I cannot but remind you, Madam ... I read +Aristotle in his own language"; and of a certain tirade in a play of Ben +Jonson she insists: "I know it so well, as to have turn'd it into +Latin." Mrs. Pix admits her own ignorance of all these things; she "can +go no further than the eight parts of speech." This brings down upon her +an icy reproof from Calista: "Then I cannot but take the Freedom to say +... you impose upon the Town." We get the impression of a preciseness of +manner and purpose which must have given Catharine a certain air of +priggishness, not entirely unbecoming, perhaps, but very strange in that +loose theatre of William III. + +Accordingly, in her next appearance, we find her complaining to the +Princess (afterwards Queen Anne) that she has become "the mark of ill +Nature" through recommending herself "by what the other Sex think their +peculiar Prerogative"--that is, intellectual distinction. Catharine +Trotter was still only nineteen years of age when she produced her +tragedy of _Fatal Friendship_, the published copy of which (1698) is all +begarlanded with evidences of her high moral purpose in the shape of a +succession of "applausive copies" of verses. In these we are told that +she had "checked the rage of reigning vice that had debauched the +stage." This was an allusion to the great controversy then just raised +by Jeremy Collier in his famous _Short View of the Immorality and +Profaneness of the Stage_, in which all the dramatists of the day were +violently attacked for their indecency. Catharine Trotter has the +courage to side with Collier, and the tact to do so without quarrelling +with her male colleagues. She takes the side of the decent women. + + "You as your Sex's champion art come forth + To fight their quarrel and assert their worth," + +one of her admirers exclaims, and another adds:-- + + "You stand the first of stage-reformers too." + +The young poetess aimed at reconciling the stage with virtue and at +vindicating the right of woman to assume "the tragic laurel." + +This was the most brilliant moment in the public career of our +bluestocking. _Fatal Friendship_ enjoyed a success which Catharine +Trotter was not to taste again, and of all her plays it is the only one +which has ever been reprinted. It is very long and extremely +sentimental, and written in rather prosy blank verse. Contemporaries +said that it placed Miss Trotter in the forefront of British drama, in +company with Congreve and Granville "the polite," who had written a +_She-Gallants_, which was everything that Miss Trotter did not wish her +plays to be. _Fatal Friendship_ has an ingenious plot, in which the +question of money takes a prominence very unusual in tragedy. Almost +every character in the piece is in reduced circumstances. Felicia, +sister to Belgard (who is too poor to maintain her), is wooed by the +wealthy Roquelaure, although she is secretly married to Gramont, who is +also too poor to support a wife. Belgard, afraid that Gramont will make +love to Felicia (that is, to his own secret wife), persuades him--in +order that his best friend, Castalio, may be released from a debtor's +prison--bigamously to many Lamira, a wealthy widow. But Castalio is in +love with Lamira, and is driven to frenzy by Gramont's illegal marriage. +It all depends upon income in a manner comically untragical. The quarrel +between the friends in the fifth act is an effective piece of +stage-craft, but the action is spoiled by a ridiculous general butchery +at the close of all. However, the audience was charmed, and even "the +stubbornest could scarce deny their Tears." + +_Fatal Friendship_ was played at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, and no doubt +it was Congreve who brought Miss Trotter over from Drury Lane. His warm +friendship for her had unquestionably a great deal to do with her +success and with the jealousy of her rivals. A letter exists in which +the great dramatist acknowledges, in 1697, the congratulations of his +young admirer, and it breathes an eager cordiality. Congreve requested +Betterton to present him to Catharine Trotter, and his partiality for +her company is mentioned by several writers. The spiteful author of _The +Female Wits_ insinuates that Congreve made the looking-over of +Catharine's scenes "his pretence for daily visits." Another satirist, in +1698, describes Congreve sitting very gravely with his hat over his +eyes, "together with the two she-things called Poetesses which write for +his house," half-hidden from the public in a little side-box. Farquhar, +too, seeing the celebrated writer of _Fatal Friendship_ in the theatre +on the third night of the performance of his _Love and a Bottle_, had +"his passions wrought so high" by a sight of the beautiful author that +he wrote her a letter in which he called her "one of the fairest of the +sex, and the best judge." If Catharine Trotter, as the cynosure of +delicacy, at the age of nineteen, sat through _Love and a Bottle_ +without a blush, even _her_ standard of decency was not very exacting. +But in all this rough, coarse world of wit her reputation never suffered +a rebuff. + +Encouraged by so much public and private attention, our young dramatist +continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts +were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national +temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary +historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had +been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had sunk deeply +into the conscience of the people. There followed with alarming +abruptness a general public repulsion against the playhouses, and to +this, early in 1699, a roughly worded Royal Proclamation gave voice. +During the whole of that year the stage was almost in abeyance, and even +Congreve, with _The Way of the World_, was unable to woo his audience +back to Lincoln's Inn. During this time of depression Catharine Trotter +composed at least two tragedies, which she was unable to get performed, +while the retirement of Congreve in a paroxysm of annoyance must have +been a very serious disadvantage to her. + +On May 1st, 1700, Dryden died, and with him a dramatic age passed away. +What Miss Trotter's exact relations with the great poet had been is +uncertain; she not only celebrated his death in a long elegy, in which +she speaks on behalf of the Muses, but wrote another and more important +poem, in which she gives very sound advice to the poetical beginner, who +is to take Dryden as a model, and to be particularly careful to disdain +Settle, Durfey, and Blackmore, typical poetasters of the period. She +recommends social satire to the playwright:-- + + "Let the nice well-bred beau himself perceive + The most accomplished, useless thing alive; + Expose the bottle-sparks that range the town,-- + Shaming themselves with follies not their own,-- + But chief these foes to virgin innocence, + Who, while they make to honour vain pretence, + With all that's base and impious can dispense." + +Honour to those who aim high and execute boldly! + + "If Shakespeare's spirit, with transporting fire, + The animated scene throughout inspire; + If in the piercing wit of Vanbrugh drest, + Each sees his darling folly made a jest; + If Garth's and Dryden's genius, through each line, + In artful praise and well-turn'd satire shine,-- + To us ascribe the immortal sacred flame." + +In this dead period of the stage Catharine Trotter found a warm friend +and doubtless an efficient patron in a Lady Piers, of whom we should be +glad to know more. Sir George Piers, the husband of this lady, was an +officer of rank under the Duke of Marlborough, later to become useful to +Catharine Trotter. Meanwhile the latter returned to the Theatre Royal in +Drury Lane, where, in 1701, under the patronage of Lord Halifax--Pope's +"Bufo"--she produced her third tragedy, _The Unhappy Penitent_. The +dedication of this play to Halifax is a long and interesting essay on +the poetry of the age. The author passes Dryden, Otway, Congreve, and +Lee under examination, and finds technical blemishes in them all:-- + + "The inimitable Shakespeare seems alone secure on every side from + an attack. I speak not here of faults against the rules of poetry, + but against the natural Genius. He had all the images of nature + present to him, studied her thoroughly, and boldly copied all her + various features, for though he has chiefly exerted himself on the + more masculine passions, 'tis as the choice of his judgment, not + the restraint of his genius, and he has given us as a proof he + could be every way equally admirable." + +Lady Piers wrote the prologue to _The Unhappy Penitent_ in verses better +turned than might have been expected. She did not stint praise to her +young friend, whom she compares to the rising sun:-- + + "Like him, bright Maid, Thy great perfections shine + As awful, as resplendent, as divine!... + Minerva and Diana guard your soul!" + +_The Unhappy Penitent_ is not a pleasing performance: it is amorous and +violent, but yet dull. Catharine's theory was better than her practice. +Nevertheless, it seems to have been successful, for the author some time +afterwards, speaking of the town's former discouragement of her dramas, +remarks that "the taste is mended." Later in 1701 she brought out at +Drury Lane her only comedy, _Love at a Loss_, dedicated in most +enthusiastic terms to Lady Piers, to whom "I owe the greatest Blessing +of my Fate," the privilege of a share in her friendship. _Love at a +Loss_ was made up of the comic scenes introduced into an old tragedy +which the author had failed to get acted. This is not a fortunate method +of construction, and the town showed no favour to Love at a Loss. The +first and only public section of Catharine Trotter's career was now +over, and she withdrew, a wayworn veteran at the age of twenty-two, to +more elevated studies. + +When _Love at a Loss_ was published the author had already left town, +and after a visit to Lady Piers in Kent she now settled at Salisbury, at +the house of a physician, Dr. Inglis, who had married her only sister. +Her growing intimacy with the family of Bishop Burnet may have had +something to do with her determination to make this city her home. She +formed a very enthusiastic friendship with the Bishop's second lady, who +was an active theologian and a very intelligent woman. Our poetess was +fascinated by Mrs. Burnet. "I have not met," she writes in 1701, "such +perfection in any of our sex." She now visited in the best Wiltshire +society. When the famous singer, John Abell, was in Salisbury, he gave a +concert at the palace, and Catharine Trotter was so enchanted that she +rode out after him six miles to Tisbury to hear him sing again at Lord +Arundell of Wardour's house. She had a great appreciation of the +Bishop's "volatile activity." It is now that the name of Locke first +occurs in her correspondence, and we gather that she came into some +personal contact with him through a member of the Bishop's +family--George Burnet of Kemney, in Aberdeenshire--probably a cousin, +with whom she now cultivated an ardent intellectual friendship. He left +England on a mission which occupied him from the middle of 1701 until +1708, and this absence, as we may suspect, alone prevented their +acquaintance from ripening into a warmer feeling. The romance and +tragedy of Catharine Trotter's life gather, it is plain, around this +George Burnet, who was a man of brilliant accomplishments and +interested, like herself, in philosophical studies. + +These, it would appear, Catharine Trotter had never abandoned, but she +applied herself to them closely at Salisbury, where she made some +superior acquaintances. One of these was John Norris of Bemerton, whose +_Theory of an Ideal and Intelligible World_ had just made some +sensation. By the intermediary of George Burnet she came in touch with +some of the leading French writers of the moment, such as Malebranche +and Madame Dacier. There is a French poet, unnamed, who understands +English, but he is gone to Rome before he can be made to read _The Fatal +Friendship_. Meanwhile, Catharine Trotter's obsession with the ideas of +Locke was giving some anxiety to her friends. That philosopher had +published his famous _Essay on the Human Understanding_ in 1690, and it +had taken several years for the opposition to his views, and in +particular to his theological toleration, to take effect. But in 1697 +there were made a number of almost simultaneous attacks on Locke's +position. The circle at Salisbury was involved in them, for one of these +was written by Norris of Bemerton, and another is attributed to a member +of the Burnet family. Catharine Trotter, who had studied Locke's later +works with enthusiastic approval, was scandalised by the attacks, and +sat down to refute them. This must have been in 1701. + +Although the intellectual society of Salisbury was prominent in taking +the conservative view of Locke, our bluestocking could not refrain from +telling Mrs. Burnet what she had done, nor from showing her treatise to +that friend under vows of confidence. But Mrs. Burnet, who was impulsive +and generous, could not keep the secret; she spoke about it to the +Bishop, and then to Norris of Bemerton, and finally (in June 1702) to +Locke himself. Locke was at Oates, confined by his asthma; he was old +and suffering, but still full of benevolence and curiosity, and he was +graciously interested in his remarkable defender at Salisbury. As he +could not himself travel, he sent his adopted son to call on Catharine +Trotter, with a present of books; this was Peter King, still a young +man, but already M.P. for Beer Alston, and later to become Lord +Chancellor and the first Lord King of Ockham. George Burnet, writing +from Paris, had been very insistent that Catharine should not publish +her treatise, but she overruled his objections, and her _Defence of Mr. +Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding_ appeared anonymously in May +1702. People were wonderfully polite in those days, and Locke himself +wrote to his "protectress" a charming letter in which he told her that +her "_Defence_ was the greatest honour my Essay could have procured me." + +She sent her _Defence_ to Leibnitz, who criticised it at considerable +length:--[3] + + "J'ai lu livre de Mlle. Trotter. Dans la dedicace elle exhorte M. + Locke à donner des démonstrations de morale. Je crois qu'il aurait + eu de la peine à y reussir. L'art de démontrer n'est pas son fait. + Je tiens que nous nous appercevons sans raisonnement de ce qui est + juste et injuste, comme nous nous appercevons sans raison de + quelques theoremes de Geometrie; mais il est tousjours bon de venir + à la démonstration. Justice et injustice ne dependent seulement de + la nature humaine, mais de la nature de la substance intelligente + en général; et Mlle. Trotter remarque fort bien qu'elle vient de la + nature de Dieu et n'est point arbitraire. La nature de Dieu est + tousjours fondée en raison." + +Notwithstanding all this, the commentators of Locke appear, without +exception, to ignore the _Defence_, and it was probably never much read +outside the cultivated Salisbury circle. + +In this year, 1702, the health of Catharine Trotter began to give her +uneasiness, and it was for this reason that she left Salisbury for a +while. She was once more living in that city, however, from May 1703 to +March 1704, making a special study of geography. "My strength," she +writes to George Burnet, "is very much impaired, and God knows whether I +shall ever retrieve it." Her thoughts turned again to the stage, and in +the early months of 1703 she composed her fifth and last play, the +tragedy of _The Revolution in Sweden_; "but it will not be ready for +the stage," she says, "till next winter." Her interest in philosophy +did not flag. She was gratified by some communications, through Burnet, +with Leibnitz, and she would have liked to be the intermediary between +Locke and some philosophical "gentlemen" on the Continent, probably +Malebranche and Leibnitz, in a controversy. But this was hopeless, and +she writes (March 16th, 1704):-- + + "Mr. Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen + you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him, + for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only + employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend + the mind." + +Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained +his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end +approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was +least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into +discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine +Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest +object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was +rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at +Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke and to throw +suspicion on their influence. She read over and over again his +philosophical, educational, and religious treatises, and ever found them +more completely to her taste. If she had enjoyed the power to do so she +would have proclaimed the wisdom and majesty of Locke from every +housetop, and she envied Lady Masham her free and constant intercourse +with so beautiful a mind. Catharine Trotter watched, but from a +distance, the extinction of a life thus honoured, which came to a +peaceful end at Oates on October 28th, 1704. The following passage does +not appear--or I am much mistaken--to have attracted the attention of +Locke's biographers:-- + + "I was very sensibly touched with the news of Mr. Locke's death. + All the particulars I hear of it are that he retained his perfect + senses to the last, and spoke with the same composedness and + indifference on affairs as usual. His discourse was much on the + different views a dying man has of worldly things; and that nothing + gives him any satisfaction, but the reflection of what good he has + done in his life. Lady Masham went to his chamber to speak to him + on some, business; when he had answered in the same manner he was + accustomed to speak, he desired her to leave the room, and, + immediately after she was gone, turned about and died." + +She records that, after the death of Locke, Lady Masham communicated +with Leibnitz, and Catharine is very indignant because a doubt had been +suggested as to whether the writer's thoughts and expressions were her +own. This was calculated to infuriate Catharine Trotter, who outpours in +forcible terms her just indignation:-- + + "Women are as capable of penetrating into the grounds of things, + and reasoning justly, as men are, who certainly have no advantage + of us, but in their opportunities of knowledge. As Lady Masham is + allowed by everybody to have great natural endowments, she has + taken pains to improve them; and no doubt profited much by a long + intimate society with so extraordinary a man as Mr. Locke. So that + I see no reason to suspect a woman of her character would pretend + to write anything that was not entirely her own. I pray, be more + equitable to her sex than the generality of your's are, who, when + anything is written by a woman that they cannot deny their + approbation to, are sure to rob us of the glory of it by + concluding 'tis not her own." + +This is the real voice of Catharine Trotter, raised to defend her sex, +and conscious of the many intellectual indignities and disabilities +which they suffered. + +The first draft of _The Revolution in Sweden_ being now completed, she +sent it to Congreve, who was living very quietly in lodgings in Arundell +Street. He allowed some time to go by before, on November 2nd, 1703, he +acknowledged it. His criticism, which is extremely kind, is also +penetrating and full. "I think the design in general," he says, "very +great and noble; the conduct of it very artful, if not too full of +business which may run into length and obscurity." He warns her against +having too much noise of fighting on the stage in her second act, and +against offending probability in the third. The fourth act is confused, +and in the fifth there are too many harangues. Catharine Trotter has +asked him to be frank, and so he is, but his criticism is practical and +encouraging. This excellent letter deserves to be better known. + +To continue the history of Miss Trotter's fifth and last play, _The +Revolution in Sweden_ was at length brought out at the Queen's Theatre +in the Haymarket, towards the close of 1704. It had every advantage +which popular acting could give it, since the part of the hero, Count +Arwide, was played by Betterton; that of Constantia, the heroine, by +Mrs. Barry; Gustavus by Booth; and Christina by Mrs. Harcourt. In spite +of this galaxy of talent, the reception of the play was unfavourable. +The Duchess of Marlborough "and all her beauteous family" graced the +theatre on the first night, but the public was cold and inattentive. +Some passages of a particularly lofty moral tone provoked laughter. _The +Revolution in Sweden_, in fact, was shown to suffer from the +ineradicable faults which Congreve had gently but justly suggested. It +was very long, and very dull, and very wordy, and we could scarcely find +a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was +dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being +styled--by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of +Prussia--"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to +readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further +revision, she published _The Revolution in Sweden_, she dedicated it in +most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter, +Henrietta Godolphin. + +How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from +various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now +physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the +General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced, +Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be +supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke, +with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem +enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord +Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said +they were better than any other which had been written on the subject. +George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased +with her--"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped, +with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no +longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of £20 from Queen Anne +gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was +wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was +ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet +would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that he sent +her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une +Demoiselle fort spirituelle." + +Catharine Trotter now left London and Salisbury, and took up her abode +at Ockham Mills, close to Ripley, in Surrey, as companion to an invalid, +Mrs. De Vere. She probably chose this place on account of the Locke +connection and the friendship of Peter King, since there is now much in +her correspondence about Damaris, Lady Masham, and others in that circle +in which George Burnet himself was intimate. But great changes were +imminent. Although her correspondence at this time is copious it is not +always very intelligible, and it is very carelessly edited. Her constant +interchange of letters with George Burnet leaves the real position +between them on many points obscure. In 1704, when he thought that he +was dying in Berlin, he wrote to Catharine Trotter that he had left her +£100 in his will, and added: "Pray God I might live to give you much +more myself." He regrets that he had so easily "pulled himself from her +company," and suggests that if she had not left London to settle in +Salisbury he would have stayed in England. Years after they had parted +we find him begging her to continue writing to him "at least once a +week." She, on her part, tells him that he well knows that there is but +one person she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her +want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, +but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a +fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her +by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who +might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing +(Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with +extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, passionately +in love with a man whom she had just accepted as her future husband, +was expected, in 1705, to close her letter by describing herself as +"Sir, your very humble servant." + +If George Burnet hinted of "parties" in Hanover, Catharine Trotter on +her side could boast of Mr. Fenn, "a young clergyman of excellent +character," who now laid an ardent siege to her heart. Embarrassed by +these attentions, she took the bold step of placing the matter before +Mr. Cockburn, a still younger clergyman, of even more excellent +character. The letter in which she makes this ingenuous declaration as +to a father confessor is one of the tenderest examples extant of the +"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" form of correspondence. Mr. +Cockburn, one of the minor clergy of the Salisbury set, did speak for +himself, and George Burnet having at length announced his own projected +marriage with a lady of old acquaintance, Catharine Trotter hesitated no +longer but accepted the hand of Mr. Cockburn. They were married early in +1708. Thackeray could have created an amusing romance out of the +relations of these four people to one another, and in particular it +would have been very interesting to see what he would have made of the +character of George Burnet. + +Catharine Cockburn was now, after so eventful a life of emotional and +intellectual experience, still a young woman, not far past her +twenty-eighth birthday. She was to survive for more than forty-three +years, during which time she was to correspond much, to write +persistently, and to publish whenever opportunity offered. But I do not +propose to accompany her much further on her blameless career. All +through her married life, which was spent at various places far from +London, she existed almost like a plant in a Leyden jar. Constant +genteel poverty, making it difficult for her to buy books and impossible +to travel was supported by her with dignity and patience, but it dwarfed +her powers. Her later writings, on philosophy, on morality, on the +principles of the Christian religion, are so dull that merely to think +of them brings tears into one's eyes. She who had sparkled as a girl +with Congreve and exchanged polite amenities with Locke lived on to see +modern criticism begin with Samuel Johnson and the modern novel start +with Samuel Richardson, but without observing that any change had come +into the world of letters. Her husband, owing to his having fallen "into +a scruple about the oath of abjuration," lost his curacy and "was +reduced to great difficulties in the support of his family." +Nevertheless--a perfect gentleman at heart--he "always prayed for the +King and Royal family by name." Meanwhile, to uplift his spirits in this +dreadful condition, he is discovered engaged upon a treatise on the +Mosaic deluge, which he could persuade no publisher to print. He reminds +us of Dr. Primrose in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and, like him, Mr. +Cockburn probably had strong views on the Whistonian doctrine. + +So little mark did poor Mrs. Cockburn make on her younger contemporaries +that she disappeared forthwith from literary history. Her works, +especially her plays, have become so excessively rare as to be almost +unprocurable. The brief narrative of her life and her activities which I +have taken the liberty of presenting to-day would be hopelessly engulfed +in obscurity, and we should know as little of Catharine Trotter as we do +of Mary Pix, and Delariviere Manley, and many late seventeenth-century +authors more eminent than they, had it not been that in 1751, two years +after her death, all her papers were placed in the hands of an ingenious +clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Birch, who printed them for subscribers +in two thick and singularly unpleasing volumes. This private edition was +never reissued, and is now itself a rare book. It is the sort of book +that for two hundred and fifty years must fatally have been destroyed as +lumber whenever an old country mansion that contained it has been +cleared out. + +During all that time no one, so far as I can discover, has evinced the +smallest interest in Catharine Trotter. We gain an idea of the blackness +of her obscurity when we say that even Mr. Austin Dobson appears to have +never heard of her. The champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent +of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar, +she seems to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on +time. But I hope her thin little lady-like ghost, still hovering in a +phantom-like transparence round the recognised seats of learning, will +be a little comforted at last by the polite attention of a few of my +readers. + +[Footnote 2: Around the story of Agnes de Castro there gathered a whole +literature of fiction, which Mr. Montague Summers has investigated in +his _Works of Aphra Behn_, Vol. V. pp. 211-212.] + +[Footnote 3: Printed in Otto Klopp's _Correspondance de Leibnitz avec +l'Electrice Sophie_. Hanover, 1875.] + + + + +TWO PIONEERS OF ROMANTICISM: + +JOSEPH AND THOMAS WARTON[4] + + +The origins of the Romantic Movement in literature have been examined so +closely and so often that it might be supposed that the subject must be +by this time exhausted. But no subject of any importance in literature +is ever exhausted, because the products of literature grow or decay, +burgeon or wither, as the generations of men apply their ever-varying +organs of perception to them. I intend, with your permission, to present +to you a familiar phase of the literary life of the eighteenth century +from a fresh point of view, and in relation to two men whose surname +warrants a peculiar emphasis of respect in the mouth of a Warton +Lecturer. It is well, perhaps, to indicate exactly what it is which a +lecturer proposes to himself to achieve during the brief hour in which +you indulge him with your attention; it certainly makes his task the +easier if he does so. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to divine for +you, by scanty signs and indications, what it was in poetry, as it +existed up to the period of their childhood, which was stimulating to +the Wartons, and what they disapproved of in the verse which was +fashionable and popular among the best readers in their day. + +There is an advantage, which I think that our critics are apt to +neglect, in analysing the character and causes of poetic pleasure +experienced by any sincere and enthusiastic reader, at any epoch of +history. We are far too much in the habit of supposing that what +we--that is the most instructed and sensitive of us--admire now must +always have been admired by people of a like condition. This has been +one of the fallacies of Romantic criticism, and has led people as +illustrious as Keats into blaming the taste of foregoing generations as +if it were not only heretical, but despicable as well. Young men to-day +speak of those who fifty years ago expatiated in admiration of Tennyson +as though they were not merely stupid, but vulgar and almost wicked, +neglectful of the fact that it was by persons exactly analogous to +themselves that those portions of Tennyson were adored which the young +repudiate to-day. Not to expand too largely this question of the +oscillation of taste--which, however, demands more careful examination +than it has hitherto received--it is always important to discover what +was honestly admired at a given date by the most enthusiastic and +intelligent, in other words by the most poetic, students of poetry. But +to do this we must cultivate a little of that catholicity of heart which +perceives technical merit wherever it has been recognised at an earlier +date, and not merely where the current generation finds it. + +Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of an Oxford professor of poetry, +an old Jacobite of no observable merit beyond that of surrounding his +family with an atmosphere of the study of verse. The elder brother was +born in 1722, the younger in 1728. I must be forgiven if I dwell a +little tediously on dates, for our inquiry depends upon the use of them. +Without dates the whole point of that precedency of the Wartons, which I +desire to bring out, is lost. The brothers began very early to devote +themselves to the study of poetry, and in spite of the six years which +divided them, they appear to have meditated in unison. Their writings +bear a close resemblance to one another, and their merits and their +failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we +can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the +woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with +ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of +birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas +were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." They avoided, +with a certain disdain, the affectation of vague and conventional +reference to definite objects. + +Above all they read the poets who were out of fashion, and no doubt the +library of their father, the Professor of Poetry, was at their disposal +from a very early hour. The result of their studies was a remarkable +one, and the discovery was unquestionably first made by Joseph. He was, +so far as we can gather, the earliest person in the modern world of +Europe to observe what vain sacrifices had been made by the classicists, +and in particular by the English classicists, and as he walked +enthusiastically in the forest he formed a determination to reconquer +the realm of lost beauty. The moment that this instinct became a +purpose, we may say that the great Romantic Movement, such as it has +enlarged and dwindled down to our own day, took its start. The Wartons +were not men of creative genius, and their works, whether in prose or +verse, have not taken hold of the national memory. But the advance of a +great army is not announced by a charge of field-marshals. In the +present war, the advance of the enemy upon open cities has generally +been announced by two or three patrols on bicycles, who are the heralds +of the body. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the bicyclist-scouts who +prophesied of an advance which was nearly fifty years delayed. + +The general history of English literature in the eighteenth century +offers us little opportunity for realising what the environment could be +of two such lads as the Wartons, with their enthusiasm, their +independence, and their revolutionary instinct. But I will take the year +1750, which is the year of Rousseau's first _Discours_ and therefore the +definite starting-point of European Romanticism. You will perhaps find +it convenient to compare the situation of the Wartons with what is the +situation to-day of some very modern or revolutionary young poet. In +1750, then, Joseph was twenty-eight years of age and Thomas twenty-two. +Pope had died six years before, and this was equivalent to the death of +Swinburne in the experience of our young man of to-day. Addison's death +was as distant as is from us that of Matthew Arnold; and Thomson, who +had been dead two years, had left The _Castle of Indolence_ as an +equivalent to Mr. Hardy's _Dynasts_. All the leading writers of the age +of Anne--except Young, who hardly belonged to it--were dead, but the +Wartons were divided from them only as we are from those of the age of +Victoria. I have said that Pope was not more distant from them than +Swinburne is from us, but really a more just parallel is with Tennyson. +The Wartons, wandering in their woodlands, were confronted with a +problem such as would be involved, to a couple of youths to-day, in +considering the reputation of Tennyson and Browning. + +There remains no doubt in my mind, after a close examination of such +documents as remain to us, that Joseph Warton, whose attitude has +hitherto been strangely neglected, was in fact the active force in this +remarkable revolt against existing conventions in the world of +imaginative art. His six years of priority would naturally give him an +advantage over his now better-known and more celebrated brother. +Moreover, we have positive evidence of the firmness of his opinions at a +time when his brother Thomas was still a child. The preface to Joseph's +_Odes_ of 1746 remains as a dated document, a manifesto, which admits of +no question. But the most remarkable of his poems, "The Enthusiast," was +stated to have been written in 1740, when he was eighteen and his +brother only twelve years of age. It is, of course, possible that these +verses, which bear no sign of juvenile mentality, were touched up at a +later date. But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and +we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph, +that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a +fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary +importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it +would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much +discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had +"no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to +stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and +poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express himself with +creative charm. But this is not what constitutes his interest for us, +which is moreover obscured by the tameness of his Miltonic-Thomsonian +versification. What should arrest our attention is the fact that here, +for the first time, we find unwaveringly emphasised and repeated what +was entirely new in literature, the essence of romantic hysteria. "The +Enthusiast" is the earliest expression of full revolt against the +classical attitude which had been sovereign in all European literature +for nearly a century. So completely is this expressed by Joseph Warton +that it is extremely difficult to realise that he could not have come +under the fascination of Rousseau, whose apprenticeship to love and +idleness was now drawing to a close at Les Charmettes, and who was not +to write anything characteristic until ten years later. + +But these sentiments were in the air. Some of them had vaguely occurred +to Young, to Dyer, and to Shenstone, all of whom received from Joseph +Warton the ardent sympathy which a young man renders to his immediate +contemporaries. The Scotch resumption of ballad-poetry held the same +relation to the Wartons as the so-called Celtic Revival would to a young +poet to-day; the _Tea-Table Miscellany_ dates from 1724, and Allan +Ramsay was to the author of "The Enthusiast" what Mr. Yeats is to us. +But all these were glimmerings or flashes; they followed no system, they +were accompanied by no principles of selection or rejection. These we +find for the first time in Joseph Warton. He not merely repudiates the +old formulas and aspirations, but he defines new ones. What is very +interesting to observe in his attitude to the accepted laws of poetical +practice is his solicitude for the sensations of the individual. These +had been reduced to silence by the neo-classic school in its +determination to insist on broad Palladian effects of light and line. +The didactic and moral aim of the poets had broken the springs of +lyrical expression, and had replaced those bursts of enthusiasm, those +indiscretions, those rudenesses which are characteristic of a romantic +spirit in literature, by eloquence, by caution, by reticence and +vagueness. + +It is not necessary to indicate more than very briefly what the +principles of the classic poetry had been. The time had passed when +readers and writers in England gave much attention to the sources of the +popular poetry of their day. Malherbe had never been known here, and the +vigorous _Art poétique_ of Boileau, which had been eagerly studied at +the close of the seventeenth century, was forgotten. Even the Prefaces +of Dryden had ceased to be read, and the sources of authority were now +the prose of Addison and the verse of Pope. To very young readers these +stood in the same relation as the writings of the post-Tennysonian +critics stand now. To reject them, to question their authority, was +like eschewing the essays of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. In +particular, the _Essay on Criticism_ was still immensely admired and +read; it had crystallised around cultivated opinion very much as the +_Studies in the Renaissance_ did from 1875 onwards. It was the last +brilliant word on the aims and experiences of poetical art, and how +brilliant it was can be judged by the pleasure with which we read it +to-day, in spite of our total repudiation of every æsthetic dogma which +it conveys. It is immortal, like every supreme literary expression, and +it stands before us in the history of poetry as an enduring landmark. +This was the apparently impregnable fortress which the Wartons had the +temerity to bombard. + +Pope had said that Nature was the best guide to judgment, but what did +he mean by nature? He had meant the "rules," which he declared were +"Nature methodis'd" or, as we should say, systematised. The "rules" were +the maxims, rather than laws, expressed by Aristotle in a famous +treatise. The poet was to follow the Stagirite, "led"--as Pope says in +one of those rare lines in which he catches, in spite of himself, the +Romantic accent--"led by the light of the Mæonian Star." Aristotle +illustrated by Homer--that was to be the standard of all poetic +expression. But literature had wandered far from Homer, and we have to +think of what rules the _Essay on Criticism_ laid down. The poet was to +be cautious, "to avoid extremes": he must be conventional, never +"singular"; there was constant reference to "Wit," "Nature," and "The +Muse," and these were convertible terms. A single instance is luminous. +We have the positive authority of Warburton for saying that Pope +regarded as the finest effort of his skill and art as a poet the +insertion of the machinery of the Sylphs into the revised edition of +_The Rape of the Lock_ (1714). Now this insertion was ingenious, +brilliant, and in strict accordance with the practice of Vida and of +Boileau, both of whom it excelled. But the whole conception of it was as +unlike that of Romanticism as possible. + +In particular, the tendency of the classic school, in its later +development, had been towards the exclusion of all but didactic and +ethical considerations from treatment in verse. Pope had given great and +ever-increasing emphasis to the importance of making "morals" prominent +in poetry. All that he wrote after he retired to Twickenham, still a +young man, in 1718, was essentially an attempt to gather together "moral +wisdom" clothed in consummate language. He inculcated a moderation of +feeling, a broad and general study of mankind, an acceptance of the +benefits of civilisation, and a suppression of individuality. Even in so +violent and so personal a work as the _Dunciad_ he expends all the +resources of his genius to make his anger seem moral and his indignation +a public duty. This conception of the ethical responsibility of verse +was universal, and even so late as 1745, long after the composition of +Warton's "Enthusiast," we find Blacklock declaring, with general +acceptance, that "poetical genius depends entirely on the quickness of +moral feeling," and that not to "feel poetry" was the result of having +"the affections and internal senses depraved by vice." + +The most important innovation suggested by Joseph Warton was an +outspoken assertion that this was by no means the object or the proper +theme of poetry. His verses and those of his brother, the _Essay on +Pope_ of the elder, the critical and historical writings of the younger, +may be searched in vain for the slightest evidence of moral or didactic +sentiment. The instructive and ethical mannerisms of the later +classicists had produced some beautiful and more accomplished verse, +especially of a descriptive order, but its very essence had excluded +self-revelation. Dennis, at whom Pope taught the world to laugh, but +who was in several respects a better critic than either Addison or +himself, had come close to the truth sometimes, but was for ever edged +away from it by the intrusion of the moral consideration. Dennis feels +things æsthetically, but he blunders into ethical definition. The result +was that the range of poetry was narrowed to the sphere of didactic +reflection, a blunt description of scenery or objects being the only +relief, since + + "who could take offence + While pure description held the place of sense?" + +To have perceived the bankruptcy of the didactic poem is Joseph Warton's +most remarkable innovation. The lawlessness of the Romantic Movement, or +rather its instinct for insisting that genius is a law unto itself, is +first foreshadowed in "The Enthusiast," and when the history of the +school comes to be written there will be a piquancy in tracing an +antinomianism down from the blameless Wartons to the hedonist essays of, +Oscar Wilde and the frenzied anarchism of the Futurists. Not less +remarkable, or less characteristic, was the revolt against the quietism +of the classical school. "Avoid extremes," Pope had said, and +moderation, calmness, discretion, absence of excitement had been laid +down as capital injunctions. Joseph Warton's very title, "The +Enthusiast," was a challenge, for "enthusiasm" was a term of reproach. +He was himself a scandal to classical reserve. Mant, in the course of +some excellent lines addressed to Joseph Warton, remarks + + "Thou didst seek + Ecstatic vision by the haunted stream + Or grove of fairy: then thy nightly ear, + As from the wild notes of some airy harp, + Thrilled with strange music." + +The same excess of sensibility is still more clearly divulged in +Joseph's own earliest verses:-- + + "All beauteous Nature! by thy boundless charms + Oppress'd, O where shall I begin thy praise, + Where turn the ecstatic eye, _how ease my breast + That pants with wild astonishment and love_?" + +The Nature here addressed is a very different thing from the "Nature +methodis'd" of the _Essay on Criticism_. It is not to be distinguished +from the object of pantheistic worship long afterwards to be celebrated +in widely differing language, but with identical devotion, by Wordsworth +and Senancour, by Chateaubriand and Shelley. + +Closely connected with this attitude towards physical nature is the +determination to deepen the human interest in poetry, to concentrate +individuality in passion. At the moment when the Wartons put forth their +ideas, a change was taking place in English poetry, but not in the +direction of earnest emotion. The instrument of verse had reached an +extraordinary smoothness, and no instance of its capability could be +more interesting than the poetry of Shenstone, with his perfect +utterance of things essentially not worth saying. In the most important +writers of that very exhausted moment, technical skill seems the only +quality calling for remark, and when we have said all that sympathy can +say for Whitehead and Akenside, the truth remains that the one is vapid, +the other empty. The Wartons saw that more liberty of imagination was +wanted, and that the Muse was not born to skim the meadows, in short low +flights, like a wagtail. They used expressions which reveal their +ambition. The poet was to be "bold, without confine," and "imagination's +chartered libertine"; like a sort of Alastor, he was + + "in venturous bark to ride + Down turbulent Delight's tempestuous tide." + +These are aspirations somewhat absurdly expressed, but the aim of them +is undeniable and noteworthy. + +A passion for solitude always precedes the romantic obsession, and in +examining the claim of the Wartons to be pioneers, we naturally look for +this element. We find it abundantly in their early verses. When Thomas +was only seventeen--the precocity of the brothers was remarkable--he +wrote a "Pleasures of Melancholy," in which he expresses his wish to +retire to "solemn glooms, congenial to the soul." In the early odes of +his brother Joseph we find still more clearly indicated the intention to +withdraw from the world, in order to indulge the susceptibilities of the +spirit in solitary reflection. A curious air of foreshadowing the +theories of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an +effect which is faintly indicated, but in its phantom way unique in +English literature up to that date, 1740. There had been a tendency to +the sepulchral in the work of several writers, in particular in the +powerful and preposterous religious verse of Isaac Watts, but nothing +had been suggested in the pure Romantic style. + +In Joseph Warton, first, we meet with the individualist attitude to +nature; a slightly hysterical exaggeration of feeling which was to be +characteristic of romance; an intention of escaping from the vanity of +mankind by an adventure into the wilds; a purpose of recovering +primitive manners by withdrawing into primitive conditions; a passion +for what we now consider the drawing-master's theory of the +picturesque--the thatched cottage, the ruined castle with the moon +behind it, the unfettered rivulet, the wilderness of + + "the pine-topped precipice + Abrupt and shaggy." + +There was already the fallacy, to become so irresistibly attractive to +the next generation, that man in a state of civilisation was in a +decayed and fallen condition, and that to achieve happiness he must +wander back into a Golden Age. Pope, in verses which had profoundly +impressed two generations, had taken the opposite view, and had proved +to the satisfaction of theologian and free-thinker alike that + + "God and Nature link'd the general frame, + And bade Self-love and Social be the same." + +Joseph Warton would have nothing to say to Social Love. He designed, or +pretended to design, to emigrate to the backwoods of America, to live + + "With simple Indian swains, that I may hunt + The boar and tiger through savannahs wild, + Through fragrant deserts and through citron groves," + +indulging, without the slightest admixture of any active moral principle +in social life, all the ecstasies, all the ravishing emotions, of an +abandonment to excessive sensibility. The soul was to be, no longer the +"little bark attendant" that "pursues the triumph and partakes the gale" +in Pope's complacent _Fourth Epistle_, but an æolian harp hung in some +cave of a primeval forest for the winds to rave across in solitude. + + "Happy the first of men, ere yet confin'd + To smoky cities." + +Already the voice is that of Obermann, of René, of Byron. + +Another point in which the recommendations of the Wartons far outran the +mediocrity of their execution was their theory of description. To +comprehend the state of mind in which such pieces of stately verse as +Parnell's _Hermit_ or Addison's _Campaign_ could be regarded as +satisfactory in the setting of their descriptive ornament we must +realise the aim which those poets put before them. Nothing was to be +mentioned by its technical--or even by its exact name; no clear picture +was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite +or vivid. We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this +conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if +we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the +sudden advent of a heavy shower at a funeral in these terms-- + + "'Tis done, and nature's various charms decay; + See gloomy clouds obscure the cheerful day! + Now hung with pearls the dropping trees appear, + Their faded honours scatter'd on her bier," + +it was not because he had not the skill to come into closer touch with +reality, but that he did not wish to do so. It had been plainly laid +down by Malherbe and confirmed by Boileau that objects should be named +in general, not in precise terms. We are really, in studying the +descriptive parts of the Classicist poets, very close to the theories of +Mallarmé and the Symbolists which occupied us twenty years ago. The +object of the poet was not to present a vivid picture to the reader, but +to start in him a state of mind. + +We must recollect, in considering what may seem to us the sterility and +stiffness of the English poets from 1660 to 1740, that they were +addressing a public which, after the irregular violence and anarchical +fancy of the middle of the seventeenth century, had begun to yearn for +regularity, common sense, and a moderation in relative variety. The +simplest ideas should be chosen, and should depend for their poetical +effect, not upon a redundant and gorgeous ornament, but solely upon +elegance of language. There were certain references, certain channels of +imagery, which were purely symbolical, and these could be defended only +on the understanding that they produced on the mind of the reader, +instantly and without effort, the illustrative effect required. For +instance, with all these neo-classicists, the mythological allusions, +which seem vapid and ridiculous to us, were simplified metaphor and a +question of style. In short, it rested the jaded imagination of Europe, +after Gongora and Marini, Donne and D'Aubigné, to sink back on a poetry +which had taken a vow to remain scrupulous, elegant, and selected. + +But the imagination of England was now beginning to be impatient of +these bonds. It was getting tired of a rest-cure so prolonged. It asked +for more colour, more exuberance, more precise reproduction of visual +impressions. Thomson had summed up and had carried to greater lengths +the instinct for scenery which had never entirely died out in England, +except for a few years after the Restoration. It was left to Joseph +Warton, however, to rebel against the whole mode in which the cabbage of +landscape was shredded into the classical _pot-au-feu_. He proposes +that, in place of the mention of "Idalia's groves," when Windsor Forest +is intended, and of milk-white bulls sacrificed to Phoebus at +Twickenham, the poets should boldly mention in their verses English +"places remarkably romantic, the supposed habitation of druids, bards, +and wizards," and he vigorously recommends Theocritus as a model far +superior to Pope because of the greater exactitude of his references to +objects, and because of his more realistic appeal to the imagination. +Description, Warton says, should be uncommon, exact, not symbolic and +allusive, but referring to objects clearly, by their real names. He very +pertinently points out that Pope, in a set piece of extraordinary +cleverness--which was to be read, more than half a century later, even +by Wordsworth, with pleasure--confines himself to rural beauty in +general, and declines to call up before us the peculiar beauties which +characterise the Forest of Windsor. + +A specimen of Joseph Warton's descriptive poetry may here be given, not +for its great inherent excellence, but because it shows his resistance +to the obstinate classic mannerism:-- + + "Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell, + To thy unknown sequestered cell, + Where woodbines cluster round the door, + Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor, + And on whose top an hawthorn blows, + Amid whose thickly-woven boughs + Some nightingale still builds her nest, + Each evening warbling thee to rest; + Then lay me by the haunted stream, + Rapt in some wild poetic dream, + In converse while methinks I rove + With Spenser through a fairy grove." + +To show how identical were the methods of the two brothers we may +compare the foregoing lines with the following from Thomas Warton's "Ode +on the Approach of Summer" (published when he was twenty-five, and +possibly written much earlier):-- + + "His wattled cotes the shepherd plaits; + Beneath her elm the milkmaid chats; + The woodman, speeding home, awhile + Rests him at a shady stile; + Nor wants there fragrance to dispense + Refreshment o'er my soothèd sense; + Nor tangled woodbine's balmy bloom, + Nor grass besprent to breathe perfume, + Nor lurking wild-thyme's spicy sweet + To bathe in dew my roving feet; + Nor wants there note of Philomel, + Nor sound of distant-tinkling bell, + Nor lowings faint of herds remote, + Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot; + Rustle the breezes lightly borne + O'er deep embattled ears of corn; + Round ancient elms, with humming noise, + Full loud the chafer-swarms rejoice." + +The youthful poet is in full revolt against the law which forbade his +elders to mention objects by their plain names. Here we notice at once, +as we do in similar early effusions of both the Wartons, the direct +influence of Milton's lyrics. To examine the effect of the rediscovery +of Milton upon the poets of the middle of the eighteenth century would +lead us too far from the special subject of our inquiry to-day. But it +must be pointed out that _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ had been +entirely neglected, and practically unknown, until a date long after the +rehabilitation of _Paradise Lost_. The date at which Handel set them to +music, 1740, is that of the revived or discovered popularity of these +two odes, which then began to be fashionable, at all events among the +younger poets. They formed a bridge, which linked the new writers with +the early seventeenth century across the Augustan Age, and their +versification as well as their method of description were as much +resisted by the traditional Classicists as they were attractive, and +directly preferred above those of Pope, by the innovators. Joseph +Warton, who attributed many of the faults of modern lyrical writing to +the example of Petrarch, sets Milton vehemently over against him, and +entreats the poets "to accustom themselves to contemplate fully every +object before they attempt to describe it." They were above all to avoid +nauseous repetition of commonplaces, and what Warton excellently calls +"hereditary images." + +We must not, however, confine ourselves to a consideration of "The +Enthusiast" of 1740 and the preface to the _Odes_ of 1746. Certain of +the expressions, indeed, already quoted, are taken from the two very +important critical works which the brothers published while they were +still quite young. We must now turn particularly to Joseph Warton's +_Essay on the Genius of Pope_ of 1756, and to Thomas Warton's +_Observations on the Faerie Queene_ of 1754. Of these the former is the +more important and the more readable. Joseph's _Essay on Pope_ is an +extraordinary production for the time at which it was produced. Let me +suggest that we make a great mistake in treating the works of old +writers as if they had been always written by old men. I am trying to +present the Wartons to you as I see them, and that is as enthusiastic +youths, flushed with a kind of intellectual felicity, and dreaming how +poetry shall be produced as musicians make airs, by inspiration, not by +rote. Remember that when they took their walks in the forest at +Hackwood, the whole world of culture held that true genius had expired +with Pope, and this view was oracularly supported by Warburton and +such-like pundits. I have already pointed out to you that Pope was +divided from them not more than Swinburne is divided from us. Conceive +two very young men to-day putting their heads together to devise a +scheme of poetry which should entirely supersede that, not of Swinburne +only, but of Tennyson and Browning also, and you have the original +attitude of the Wartons. + +It is difficult for us to realise what was the nature of the spell which +Pope threw over the literary conscience of the eighteenth century. Forty +years after the revolt of the Wartons, Pope was still looked upon by the +average critic as "the most distinguished and the most interesting Poet +of the nation." Joseph Warton was styled "the Winton Pedant" for +suggesting that Pope paid too dearly for his lucidity and lightness, and +for desiring to break up with odes and sonnets the oratorical mould +which gave a monotony of form to early eighteenth-century verse. His +_Essay on Pope_, though written with such studied moderation that we +may, in a hasty reading, regard it almost as a eulogy, was so shocking +to the prejudices of the hour that it was received with universal +disfavour, and twenty-six years passed before the author had the moral +courage to pursue it to a conclusion. He dedicated it to Young, who, +alone of the Augustans, had admitted that charm in a melancholy +solitude, that beauty of funereal and mysterious effects, which was to +be one of the leading characteristics of the Romantic School, and who +dimly perceived the sublime and the pathetic to be "the two chief nerves +of all genuine poetry." + +Warton's _Essay on the Genius of Pope_ is not well arranged, and, in +spite of eloquent passages, as literature it does not offer much +attraction to the reader of the present day. But its thesis is one which +is very interesting to us, and was of startling novelty when it was +advanced. In the author's own words it was to prove that "a clear head +and acute understanding are not sufficient, alone, to make a poet." The +custom of critics had been to say that, when supported by a profound +moral sense, they were sufficient, and Pope was pointed to as the +overwhelming exemplar of the truth of this statement. Pope had taken +this position himself and, as life advanced, the well of pure poetry in +him had dried up more and more completely, until it had turned into a +sort of fountain of bright, dry sand, of which the _Epilogue to the +Satires_, written in 1738, when Joseph Warton was sixteen years of age, +may be taken as the extreme instance. The young author of the _Essay_ +made the earliest attempt which any one made to put Pope in his right +place, that is to say, not to deny him genius or to deprecate the +extreme pleasure readers found in his writings, but to insist that, by +the very nature of his gifts, his was genius of a lower rank than that +of the supreme poets, with whom he was commonly paralleled when he was +not preferred to them all. + +Warton admitted but three supreme English poets--Spenser, Shakespeare, +Milton--and he vehemently insisted that moral, didactic and panegyrical +poetry could never rise above the second class in importance. To assert +this was not merely to offend against the undoubted supremacy of Pope, +but it was to flout the claims of all those others to whom the age gave +allegiance. Joseph Warton does not shrink from doing this, and he gives +reason for abating the claims of all the classic favourites--Cowley, +Waller, Dryden, Addison. When it was advanced against him that he showed +arrogance in placing his opinion against that of a multitude of highly +trained judges, he replied that a real "relish and enjoyment of poetry" +is a rare quality, and "a creative and glowing imagination" possessed by +few. When the _dicta_ of Boileau were quoted against him, he repudiated +their authority with scarcely less vivacity than Keats was to display +half a century later. + +Joseph Warton's _Essay_ wanders about, and we may acknowledge ourselves +more interested in the mental attitude which it displays than in the +detail of its criticism. The author insists, with much force, on the +value of a grandiose melancholy and a romantic horror in creating a +poetical impression, and he allows himself to deplore that Pope was so +ready to forget that "wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but +nature and passion are eternal." We need not then be surprised when +Joseph Warton boldly protests that no other part of the writings of Pope +approaches _Eloisa to Abelard_ in the quality of being "truly poetical." +He was perhaps led to some indulgence by the fact that this is the one +composition in which Pope appears to be indebted to Milton's lyrics, but +there was much more than that. So far as I am aware, _Eloisa to Abelard_ +had never taken a high place with Pope's extreme admirers, doubtless +because of its obsession with horror and passion. But when we read how + + "o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, + Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves, + Black melancholy sits, and round her throws + A death-like silence and a dead repose," + +and still more when we reflect on the perpetual and powerful appeals +which the poem makes to emotion unbridled by moral scruple, we have no +difficulty in perceiving why _Eloisa to Abelard_ exercised so powerful +an attraction on Joseph Warton. The absence of ethical reservation, the +licence, in short, was highly attractive to him, and he rejoiced in +finding Pope, even so slightly, even so briefly, faithless to his +formula. It is worth while to note that Joseph Warton's sympathy with +the sentimental malady of the soul which lies at the core of Romanticism +permitted him to be, perhaps, the first man since the Renaissance who +recognised with pleasure the tumult of the _Atys_ of Catullus and the +febrile sensibility of Sappho. + +Both brothers urged that more liberty of imagination was what English +poetry needed; that the lark had been shut up long enough in a gilded +cage. We have a glimpse of Thomas Warton introducing the study of the +great Italian classics into Oxford at a very early age, and we see him +crowned with laurel in the common-room of Trinity College at the age of +nineteen. This was in the year before the death of Thomson. No doubt he +was already preparing his _Observations on the Faerie Queene_, which +came out a little later. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford before he +was thirty. Both the brothers took great pleasure in the study of +Spenser, and they both desired that the supernatural "machinery" of +Ariosto, in common with the romance of _The Faerie Queene_, should be +combined with a description of nature as untrimmed and unshackled as +possible. Thomas Warton, in his remarkable Oxford poem, "The Painted +Window," describes himself as + + "A faithless truant to the classic page, + Long have I loved to catch the simple chime + Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rhyme," + +and again he says:-- + + "I soothed my sorrows with the dulcet lore + Which Fancy fabled in her elfin age," + +that is to say when Spenser was writing "upon Mulla's shore." + +After all this, the Observations on the Faerie Queene of 1754 is rather +disappointing. Thomas was probably much more learned as a historian of +literature than Joseph, but he is not so interesting a critic. Still, he +followed exactly the same lines, with the addition of a wider knowledge. +His reading is seen to be already immense, but he is tempted to make too +tiresome a display of it. Nevertheless, he is as thorough as his brother +in his insistence upon qualities which we have now learned to call +Romantic, and he praises all sorts of old books which no one then spoke +of with respect. He warmly recommends the _Morte d'Arthur_, which had +probably not found a single admirer since 1634. When he mentions Ben +Jonson, it is characteristic that it is to quote the line about "the +charmed boats and the enchanted wharves," which sounds like a foretaste +of Keats's "magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas." The +public of Warton's day had relegated all tales about knights, dragons, +and enchanters to the nursery, and Thomas Warton shows courage in +insisting that they are excellent subjects for serious and adult +literature. He certainly would have thoroughly enjoyed the romances of +Mrs. Radcliffe, whom a later generation was to welcome as "the mighty +magician bred and nourished by the Muses in their sacred solitary +caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition," and he despised +the neo-classic make-believe of grottoes. He says, with firmness, that +epic poetry--and he is thinking of Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser--would +never have been written if the critical judgments current in 1754 had +been in vogue. + +Thomas Warton closely studied the influence of Ariosto on Spenser, and +no other part of the _Observations_ is so valuable as the pages in which +those two poets are contrasted. He remarked the polish of the former +poet with approval, and he did not shrink from what is violently +fantastic in the plot of the _Orlando Furioso_. On that point he says, +"The present age is too fond of manner'd poetry to relish fiction and +fable," but perhaps he did not observe that although there is no +chivalry in _The Schoolmistress_, that accomplished piece was the +indirect outcome of the Italian mock-heroic epics. The Classicists had +fought for lucidity and common sense, whereas to be tenebrous and vague +was a merit with the precursors of Romanticism, or at least, without +unfairness, we may say that they asserted the power of imagination to +make what was mysterious, and even fabulous, true to the fancy. This +tendency, which we first perceive in the Wartons, rapidly developed, and +it led to the blind enthusiasm with which the vapourings of Macpherson +were presently received. The earliest specimens of _Ossian_ were +revealed to a too-credulous public in 1760, but I find no evidence of +any welcome which they received from either Joseph or Thomas. The +brothers personally preferred a livelier and more dramatic presentation, +and when Dr. Johnson laughed at Collins because "he loved fairies, +genii, giants, and monsters," the laugh was really at the expense of his +school-fellow Joseph Warton, to whom Collins seems to have owed his +boyish inspiration, although he was by a few months the senior. + +Johnson was a resolute opponent of the principles of the Wartons, though +he held Thomas, at least, in great personal regard. He objected to the +brothers that they "affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of +revival," and his boutade about their own poetry is well known:-- + + "Phrase that time hath flung away, + Uncouth words in disarray, + Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, + Ode and elegy and sonnet." + +This conservatism was not peculiar to Johnson; there was a general +tendency to resist the reintroduction into language and literature of +words and forms which had been allowed to disappear. A generation later, +a careful and thoughtful grammarian like Gilpin was in danger of being +dismissed as "a cockscomb" because he tried to enlarge our national +vocabulary. The Wartons were accused of searching old libraries for +glossaries of disused terms in order to display them in their own +writings. This was not quite an idle charge; it is to be noted as one of +the symptoms of active Romanticism that it is always dissatisfied with +the diction commonly in use, and desires to dazzle and mystify by +embroidering its texture with archaic and far-fetched words. Chatterton, +who was not yet born when the Wartons formed and expressed their ideas, +was to carry this instinct to a preposterous extreme in his Rowley +forgeries, where he tries to obtain a mediæval colouring by transferring +words out of an imperfect Anglo-Saxon lexicon, often without discerning +the actual meaning of those words. + +Both the Wartons continued, in successive disquisitions, to repeat their +definition of poetry, but it cannot be said that either of them +advanced. So far as Joseph is concerned, he seems early to have +succumbed to the pressure of the age and of his surroundings. In 1766 he +became head master of Winchester, and settled down after curious +escapades which had nothing poetical about them. In the head master of a +great public school, reiterated murmurs against bondage to the Classical +Greeks and Romans would have been unbecoming, and Joseph Warton was a +man of the world. Perhaps in the solitude of his study he murmured, as +disenchanted enthusiasts often murmur, "Say, are the days of blest +delusion fled?" Yet traces of the old fire were occasionally manifest; +still each brother woke up at intervals to censure the criticism of +those who did not see that imagination must be paramount in poetry, and +who made the mistake of putting "discernment" in the place of +"enthusiasm." I hardly know why it gives me great pleasure to learn that +"the manner in which the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton read the Communion +Service was remarkably awful," but it must be as an evidence that he +carried a "Gothick" manner into daily life. + +The spirit of pedantry, so amicably mocked by the Wartons, took its +revenge upon Thomas in the form of a barren demon named Joseph Ritson, +who addressed to him in 1782 what he aptly called _A Familiar Letter_. +There is hardly a more ferocious pamphlet in the whole history of +literature. Ritson, who had the virulence of a hornet and the same +insect's inability to produce honey of his own, was considered by the +reactionaries to have "punched Tom Warton's historick body full of +deadly holes." But his strictures were not really important. In +marshalling some thousands of facts, Warton had made perhaps a couple of +dozen mistakes, and Ritson advances these with a reiteration and a +violence worthy of a maniac. Moreover, and this is the fate of angry +pedants, he himself is often found to be as dustily incorrect as Warton +when examined by modern lights. Ritson, who accuses Warton of "never +having consulted or even seen" the books he quotes from, and of +intentionally swindling the public, was in private life a vegetarian who +is said to have turned his orphan nephew on to the streets because he +caught him eating a mutton-chop. Ritson flung his arrows far and wide, +for he called Dr. Samuel Johnson himself "that great luminary, or rather +dark lantern of literature." + +If we turn over Ritson's distasteful pages, it is only to obtain from +them further proof of the perception of Warton's Romanticism by an +adversary whom hatred made perspicacious. Ritson abuses the _History of +English Poetry_ for presuming to have "rescued from oblivion irregular +beauties" of which no one desired to be reminded. He charges Warton with +recommending the poetry of "our Pagan fathers" because it is untouched +by Christianity, and of saying that "religion and poetry are +incompatible." He accuses him of "constantly busying himself with +passages which he does not understand, because they appeal to his ear +or his fancy." "Old poetry," Ritson says to Warton, "is the same thing +to you, sense or nonsense." He dwells on Warton's marked attraction to +whatever is prodigious and impossible. The manner in which these +accusations are made is insolent and detestable; but Ritson had +penetration, and without knowing what he reached, in some of these +diatribes he pierced to the heart of the Romanticist fallacy. + +It is needful that I should bring these observations to a close. I hope +I have made good my claim that it was the Wartons who introduced into +the discussion of English poetry the principle of Romanticism. To use a +metaphor of which both of them would have approved, that principle was +to them like the mystical bowl of ichor, the _ampolla_, which Astolpho +was expected to bring down from heaven in the _Orlando Furioso_. If I +have given you an exaggerated idea of the extent to which they foresaw +the momentous change in English literature, I am to blame. No doubt by +extracting a great number of slight and minute remarks, and by putting +them together, the critic may produce an effect which is too emphatic. +But you will be on your guard against such misdirection. It is enough +for me if you will admit the priority of the intuition of the brothers, +and I do not think that it can be contested. + +Thomas Warton said, "I have rejected the ideas of men who are the most +distinguished ornaments" of the history of English poetry, and he +appealed against a "mechanical" attitude towards the art of poetry. The +brothers did more in rebelling against the Classic formulas than in +starting new poetic methods. There was an absence in them of "the pomps +and prodigality" of genius of which Gray spoke in a noble stanza. They +began with enthusiasm, but they had no native richness of expression, no +store of energy. It needed a nature as unfettered as Blake's, as wide +as Wordsworth's, as opulent as Keats's, to push the Romantic attack on +to victory. The instinct for ecstasy, ravishment, the caprices and +vagaries of emotion, was there; there was present in both brothers, +while they were still young, an extreme sensibility. The instinct was +present in them, but the sacred fire died out in the vacuum of their +social experience, and neither Warton had the energy to build up a style +in prose or verse. They struggled for a little while, and then they +succumbed to the worn verbiage of their age, from which it is sometimes +no light task to disengage their thought. In their later days they made +some sad defections, and I can never forgive Thomas Warton for arriving +at Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_ and failing to observe its beauties. We +are told that as Camden Professor he "suffered the rostrum to grow +cold," and he was an ineffective poet laureate. His brother Joseph felt +the necessity or the craving for lyrical expression, without attaining +more than a muffled and a second-rate effect. + +All this has to be sadly admitted. But the fact remains that between +1740 and 1750, while even the voice of Rousseau had not begun to make +itself heard in Europe, the Wartons had discovered the fallacy of the +poetic theories admitted in their day, and had formed some faint +conception of a mode of escape from them. The Abbé Du Bos had laid down +in his celebrated _Réflexions_ (1719) that the poet's art consists of +making a general moral representation of incidents and scenes, and +embellishing it with elegant images. This had been accepted and acted +upon by Pope and by all his followers. To have been the first to +perceive the inadequacy and the falsity of a law which excluded all +imagination, all enthusiasm, and all mystery, is to demand respectful +attention from the historian of Romanticism, and this attention is due +to Joseph and Thomas Warton. + +[Footnote 4: Delivered, as the Warton Lecture, before the British +Academy, October 27th, 1915.] + + + + +THE CHARM OF STERNE[5] + + +It is exactly two hundred years to-night since there was born, at +Clonmel, in Ireland, a son to a subaltern in an English regiment just +home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, +"was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with +many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world +with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of +perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, +daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been +the widow of a soldier before she married Roger Sterne. In the +extraordinary fashion of the army of those days, the regiment was +hurried from place to place--as was that of the father of the infant +Borrow a century later--and with it hastened the unhappy Mrs. Sterne, +for ever bearing and for ever losing children, "most rueful journeys," +marked by a long succession of little tombstones left behind. Finally, +at Gibraltar, the weary father, pugnacious to the last, picked a quarrel +about a goose and was pinked through the body, surviving in a thoroughly +damaged condition, to die, poor exhausted pilgrim of Bellona, in +barracks in Jamaica. + +It would be difficult to imagine a childhood better calculated than this +to encourage pathos in a humorist and fun in a sentimentalist. His +account, in his brief autobiography, of the appearance and +disappearance of his hapless brothers and sisters is a proof of how +early life appealed to Laurence Sterne in the dappled colours of an +April day. We read there of how at Wicklow "we lost poor Joram, a pretty +boy"; how "Anne, that pretty blossom, fell in the barracks of Dublin"; +how little Devijehar was "left behind" in Carrickfergus. We know not +whether to sob or to giggle, so tragic is the rapid catalogue of dying +babies, so ridiculous are their names and fates. Here, then, I think, we +have revealed to us the prime characteristic of Sterne, from which all +his other characteristics branch away, for evil or for good. As no other +writer since Shakespeare, and in a different and perhaps more intimate +way than even Shakespeare, he possessed the key of those tears that +succeed the hysteria of laughter, and of that laughter which succeeds +the passion of tears. From early childhood, and all through youth and +manhood, he had been collecting observations upon human nature in these +rapidly alternating moods. + +He observed it in its frailty, but being exquisitely frail himself, he +was no satirist. A breath of real satire would blow down the whole +delicate fabric of _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_. +Sterne pokes fun at people and things; he banters the extravagance of +private humour; but it is always with a consciousness that he is himself +more extravagant than any one. If we compare him for a moment with +Richardson, who buttonholes the reader in a sermon; or with Smollett, +who snarls and bites like an angry beast; we feel at once that Sterne +could not breathe in the stuffiness of the one or in the tempest of the +other. Sympathy is the breath of his nostrils, and he cannot exist +except in a tender, merry relation with his readers. His own ideal, +surely, is that which he attributed to the fantastic and gentle Yorick, +who never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of old and +young. "Labour stood still as he passed; the bucket hung suspended in +the middle of the well; the spinning-wheel forgot its round, even +chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got +out of sight." Like Yorick, Sterne loved a jest in his heart. + +There are, it seems to me, two distinct strains in the intellectual +development of Sterne, and I should like to dwell upon them for a +moment, because I think a lack of recognition of them has been apt to +darken critical counsel in the consideration of his writings. You will +remember that he was forty-six years of age before he took up the +business of literature seriously. Until that time he had been a country +parson in Yorkshire, carrying his body, that "cadaverous bale of goods," +from Sutton to Stillington, and from Stillington to Skelton. He had +spent his life in riding, shooting, preaching, joking, and philandering +in company, and after a fashion, most truly reprehensible from a +clerical point of view, yet admirably fitted to prepare such an artist +for his destined labours as a painter of the oddities of average +Englishmen. But by the side of this indolent search after the enjoyment +of the hour, Sterne cultivated a formidable species of literature in +which he had so few competitors that, in after years, his indolence +prompted him to plagiarise freely from sources which, surely, no human +being would discover. He steeped himself in the cumbrous learning of +those writers of the Renaissance in whom congested Latin is found +tottering into colloquial French. He studied Rabelais perhaps more +deeply than any other Englishman of his time, and certainly Beroalde de +Verville, Bruscambille, and other absurdities of the sixteenth century +were familiar to him and to him alone in England. + +Hence, when Sterne began to write, there were two streams flowing in his +brain, and these were, like everything else about him, inconsistent with +one another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with +the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the +annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and +there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained +readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is +the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the +real merits of Sterne. When so acute a writer as Bagehot condemns much +of _Tristram Shandy_ as "a sort of antediluvian fun, in which uncouth +saurian jokes play idly in an unintelligible world," he hits the nail on +the head of why so many readers nowadays turn with impatience from that +work. But they should persevere, for Sterne himself saw his error, and +gradually dropped the "uncouth saurian jokes" which he had filched out +of Burton and Beroalde, relying more and more exclusively on his own +rich store of observations taken directly from human nature. In the +adorable seventh volume of _Tristram_, and in _The Sentimental Journey_, +there is nothing left of Rabelais except a certain rambling artifice of +style. + +The death of Sterne, at the age of fifty-four, is one of those events +which must be continually regretted, because to the very end of his life +he was growing in ease and ripeness, was discovering more perfect modes +of self-expression, and was purging himself of his compromising +intellectual frailties. It is true that from the very first his +excellences were patent. The portrait of my Uncle Toby, which Hazlitt +truly said is "one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature," +occurs, or rather begins, in the second volume of _Tristram Shandy_. But +the marvellous portraits which the early sections of that work contain +are to some extent obscured, or diluted, by the author's determination +to gain piquancy by applying old methods to new subjects. Frankly, much +as I love Sterne, I find Kunastrockius and Lithopaedus a bore. I suspect +they have driven more than one modern reader away from the enjoyment of +_Tristram Shandy_. + +Towards the end of the eighteenth century a leading Dissenting minister, +the Rev. Joseph Fawcett, said in answer to a question: "Do I _like_ +Sterne? Yes, to be sure I should deserve to be hanged if I didn't!" That +was the attitude of thoughtful and scrupulous people of cultivation more +than one hundred years ago. But it was their attitude only on some +occasions. There is no record of the fact, but I am ready to believe +that Mr. Fawcett may, with equal sincerity, have said that Sterne was a +godless wretch. We know that Bishop Warburton presented him with a purse +of gold, in rapturous appreciation of his talents, and then in a +different mood described him as "an irrevocable scoundrel." No one else +has ever flourished in literature who has combined such alternating +powers of attraction and repulsion. We like Sterne extremely at one +moment, and we dislike him no less violently at another. He is attar of +roses to-day and asafoetida to-morrow, and it is not by any means easy +to define the elements which draw us towards him and away from him. Like +Yorick, he had "a wild way of talking," and he wrote impetuously and +impudently "in the naked temper which a merry heart discovered." As he +"seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without +much ceremony, he had but too many temptations in life of scattering his +wit and his humour, his gibes and his jests, about him." + +So that even if he had been merely Yorick, Sterne would have had +manifold opportunities of giving offence and causing scandal. But lie +was not only a humorist with "a thousand little sceptical notions to +defend," but he was a sentimentalist as well. Those two characteristics +he was constantly mingling, or trying to mingle, since sentimentality +and humour are in reality like oil and wine. He would exasperate his +readers by throwing his wig in their faces at the moment when they were +weeping, or put them out of countenance by ending a farcical story on a +melancholy note. A great majority of Englishmen like to be quite sure of +the tone of what they read; they wish an author to be straightforward; +they dread irony and they loathe impishness. Now Sterne is the most +impish of all imaginative writers. He is what our grandmothers, in +describing the vagaries of the nursery, used to call "a limb of Satan." +Tristram Shandy, in his light-hearted way, declared that "there's not so +much difference between good and evil as the world is apt to imagine." +No doubt that is so, but the world does not like its preachers to play +fast and loose with moral definitions. + +The famous sensibility of Sterne was a reaction against the seriousness, +the ponderosity, of previous prose literature in England. We talk of the +heaviness of the eighteenth century, but the periods of even such +masters of solid rhetoric as Johnson and Gibbon are light as thistledown +in comparison with the academic prose of the seventeenth century. Before +the eighteenth century is called lumbering, let us set a page of Hume +against a page of Hobbes, or a passage out of Berkeley by a passage out +of Selden. Common justice is seldom done to the steady clarification of +English prose between 1660 and 1750, but it was kept within formal lines +until the sensitive recklessness of Sterne broke up the mould, and gave +it the flying forms of a cloud or a wave. He owed this beautiful +inspiration to what Nietzsche calls his "squirrel-soul," which leaped +from bough to bough, and responded without a trace of conventional +restraint to every gust of emotion. Well might Goethe be inspired to +declare that Sterne was the most emancipated spirit of his century. + +His very emancipation gives us the reason why Sterne's admirers nowadays +are often divided in their allegiance to him. A frequent part of his +humour deals very flippantly with subjects that are what we have been +taught to consider indelicate or objectionable. It is worse than useless +to try to explain this foible of his away, because he was aware of it +and did it on purpose. He said that "nothing but the more gross and +carnal parts of a composition will go down." His indecency was objected +to in his own age, but not with any excluding severity. And I would like +to call your attention to the curious conventionality of our views on +this subject. Human nature does not change, but it changes its modes of +expression. In the eighteenth century very grave people, even bishops, +allowed themselves, in their relaxed moments, great licence in jesting. +Yet they would have been scandalised by the tragic treatment of sex by +our more audacious novelists of to-day. We are still interested in these +matters, but we have agreed not to joke about them. I read the other day +a dictum of one of those young gentlemen who act as our moral policemen: +he prophesied that a jest on a sexual subject would, in twenty years, be +not merely reprehensible, as it is now, but unintelligible. Very proper, +no doubt, only do not let us call this morality, it is only a change of +habits. + +Sterne is not suited to readers who are disheartened at irrelevancy. It +is part of his charm, and it is at the same time his most whimsical +habit, never to proceed with his story when you expect him to do so, and +to be reminded by his own divagations of delightful side-issues which +lead you, entranced, whither you had no intention of going. He did not +merely not shun occasions of being irrelevant, but he sought them out +and eagerly cultivated them. Remember that a whole chapter of _Tristram_ +is devoted to the _attitude_ of Corporal Trim as he prepared himself to +read the Sermon. Sterne kept a stable of prancing, plump little +hobby-horses, and he trotted them out upon every occasion. But this is +what makes his books the best conversational writing in the English +language. He writes for all the world exactly as though he were talking +at his ease, and we listen enchanted to the careless, frolicking, idle, +penetrating speaker who builds up for us so nonchalantly, with +persistent but unobtrusive touch upon touch, the immortal figures of Mr. +Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Yorick, the Widow Wadman, and so many more. + +This, I am inclined to think, in drawing this brief sketch to an end, is +Sterne's main interest for ourselves. He broke up the rhetorical manner +of composition, or, rather, he produced an alternative manner which was +gradually accepted and is in partial favour still. I would ask you to +read for yourselves the scene of the ass who blocked the way for +Tristram at Lyons, and to consider how completely new that method of +describing, of facing a literary problem, was in 1765. I speak here to +an audience of experts, to a company of authors who are accustomed to a +close consideration of the workmanship of their _métier_. I ask them +where, at all events in English, anything like that scene had been found +before the days of Sterne. Since those days we have never been without +it. + +To trace the Shandean influence down English literature for the last +century and a half would take me much too long for your patience. In +Dickens, in Carlyle, even in Ruskin, the Shandean element is often +present and not rarely predominant. None of those great men would have +expressed himself exactly as he does but for Laurence Sterne. And coming +down to our own time, I see the influence of Sterne everywhere. The +pathos of Sir James Barrie is intimately related to that of the creator +of Uncle Toby and Maria of Moulines, while I am not sure that of all the +books which Stevenson read it was not the _Sentimental Journey_ which +made the deepest impression upon him. + +[Footnote 5: Address delivered to the Authors' Club, November 24th, +1913] + + + + +THE CENTENARY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE + + +In the announcements of the approaching celebration of the centenary of +Poe in this country, the fact of his having been a poet was concealed. +Perhaps his admirers hoped that it might be overlooked, as without +importance, or condoned as the result of bad habits. At all events, the +statement that the revels on that occasion would be conducted by Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle was quite enough to prove that it was the prose +writer of "The Black Cat" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and not +the verso writer of "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee" who would be the centre +of attention. On that side of Poe's genius, therefore, although it is +illustrated by such masterpieces of sullen beauty as "The Fall of the +House of Usher" and such triumphs of fantastic ingenuity as "The Gold +Bug," I feel it needless to dwell here, the more as I think the +importance of these tales very slight by the side of that of the best +poems. Edgar Poe was, in my opinion, one of the most significant poetic +artists of a century rich in poetic artists, and I hold it to be for +this reason, and not because he wrote thrilling "detective" stories, +that he deserves persistent commemoration. + +The dominance of Poe as an important poetic factor of the nineteenth +century has not been easily or universally admitted, and it is only +natural to examine both the phenomena and the causes of the objections +so persistently brought against it. In the first instance, if the fame +of Browning and Tennyson advanced slowly, it advanced firmly, and it +was encouraged from the beginning by the experts, by the cultivated +minority. Poe, on the other hand, was challenged, and his credentials +were grudgingly inspected, by those who represented the finest culture +of his own country, and the carpings of New England criticism are not +quite silent yet. When he died, in 1849, the tribunal of American +letters sat at Cambridge, in the neighbourhood of Boston, and it was +ill-prepared to believe that anything poetical could deserve salvation +if it proceeded from a place outside the magic circle. Edgar Poe, the +son of Irish strolling players, called "The Virginia Comedians," settled +in the South and was educated in England. By an odd coincidence, it now +appears that he actually was a native, as it were by accident, of Boston +itself. In the words of the Psalmist, "Lo! there was he born!" This +Gentile poet, such was the then state of American literature, could not +arrive on earth elsewhere than in the Jerusalem of Massachusetts. But +that concession was not known to the high priests, the Lowells, the +Holmeses, the Nortons, to whom Poe seemed a piratical intruder from +Javan or Gadire. + +Nothing is so discouraging to a young poet of originality as to find +himself isolated. Everything new is regarded with suspicion and dislike +by the general world of readers, and usually by the leaders of criticism +as well. Yet the daring prophet feels supported if he has but his Aaron +and his Hur. In the generation that immediately preceded Poe, Wordsworth +and Coleridge had been derided, but they had enjoyed the emphatic +approbation of one another and of Southey. Shelley had been a pariah of +letters, yet he was cordially believed in by Byron and by Peacock. Even +Keats could shrink from the mud-storms of the Scotch reviewers behind +the confident zeal of Leigh Hunt and Reynolds. At a still later moment +Rossetti and Morris would shelter themselves securely, and even +serenely, from the obloquy of criticism, within a slender peel-tower of +the praise of friends. In all these cases there could be set against the +stupidity of the world at large the comfortable cleverness of a few +strong persons of taste, founded, as all good taste must be, upon +principles. The poet could pride himself on his eclecticism, on his +recognition within, as Keats said, "a little clan." But Poe's misfortune +was to have no clan of his own, and to be rejected by precisely those +persons who represented, and on the whole justly represented, good taste +in America. + +His behaviour in this predicament was what might have been expected from +a man whose genius was more considerable than his judgment or his +manners. He tried, at first, to conciliate the New England authorities, +and he flattered not merely the greater planets but some of the very +little stars. He danced, a plaintive Salome, before Christopher P. +Cranch and Nathaniel P. Willis. When he found that his blandishments +were of no avail, he turned savage, and tried to prove that he did not +care, by being rude to Bryant and Longfellow. He called the whole solemn +Sanhedrim a college of Frog-pondian professors. Thus, of course, he +closed upon himself the doors of mercy, since the central aim and object +of the excellent men who at that time ruled American literature was to +prove that, in what this impertinent young man from Virginia called the +Frog Pond, the United States possessed its Athens and its Weimar, its +home of impeccable distinction. Indeed, but for the recognition of +Europe, which began to flow in richly just as Poe ceased to be able to +enjoy it, the prestige of this remarkable poet might have been +successfully annihilated. + +Nor was it only the synod of Boston wits who issued the edict that he +should be ignored, but in England also many good judges of literature, +especially those who belonged to the intellectual rather than the +artistic class, could not away with him. I recollect hearing Leslie +Stephen say, now nearly thirty years ago, that to employ strong terms of +praise for Poe was "simply preposterous." And one whom I admire so +implicitly that I will not mention his name in a context which is not +favourable to his judgment, wrote (in his haste) of Poe's "singularly +valueless verses." + +This opposition, modified, it is true, by the very different attitude +adopted by Tennyson and most subsequent English poets, as well as by +Baudelaire, Mallarmé and the whole younger school in France, was +obstinately preserved, and has not wholly subsided. It would be a +tactical mistake for those who wish to insist on Poe's supremacy in his +own line to ignore the serious resistance which has been made to it. In +the canonisation-trial of this whimsical saint, the Devil's advocates, +it may be confessed, are many, and their objections are imposing. It is +possible that local pique and a horror of certain crude surroundings may +have had something to do with the original want of recognition in New +England, but such sources of prejudice would be ephemeral. There +remained, and has continued to remain, in the very essence of Poe's +poetry, something which a great many sincere and penetrating lovers of +verse cannot endure to admit as a dominant characteristic of the art. + +To recognise the nature of this quality is to take the first step +towards discovering the actual essence of Poe's genius. His detractors +have said that his verses are "singularly valueless." It is therefore +necessary to define what it is they mean by "value." If they mean an +inculcation, in beautiful forms, of moral truth; if they mean a +succession of ideas, clothed in exalted and yet definite language; if +they are thinking of what stirs the heart in reading parts of _Hamlet_ +and _Comus_, of what keeps the pulse vibrating after the "Ode to Duty" +has been recited; then the verses of Poe are indeed without value. A +poet less gnomic than Poe, one from whom less, as they say in the +suburbs, "can be learned," is scarcely to be found in the whole range of +literature. His lack of curiosity about moral ideas is so complete that +evil moves him no more than good. There have been writers of eccentric +or perverse morality who have been so much irritated by the preaching of +virtue that they have lent their genius to the recommendation of vice. +This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is +vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as +innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers +than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is +hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any +ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains +of valuable thoughts" must go elsewhere. + +In 1840 they might, in New England, go to Bryant, to Emerson, to +Hawthorne; and it is more than excusable that those who were +endeavouring to refine the very crude community in the midst of which +they were anxiously holding up the agate lamp of Psyche, should see +nothing to applaud in the vague and shadowy rhapsodies then being issued +by a dissipated hack in Philadelphia. What the New England critics +wanted, patriotically as well as personally, was as little like +"Ulalume" as can possibly be conceived. They defined what poetry should +be--there was about that time a mania for defining poetry--and what +their definition was may be seen no less plainly in the American _Fable +for Critics_ than in the preface to the English _Philip van Artevelde_. +It was to be picturesque, intellectual, pleasing; it was to deal, above +all, with moral "truths"; it was to avoid vagueness and to give no +uncertain sound; it was to regard "passion" with alarm, as the siren +which was bound sooner or later to fling a bard upon the rocks. It is +not necessary to treat this conception of poetry with scorn, nor to +reject principles of precise thought and clear, sober language, which +had been illustrated by Wordsworth in the present and by Gray in the +past. The ardent young critics of our own age, having thrown off all +respect for the traditions of literature, speak and write as if to them, +and them alone, had been divinely revealed the secrets of taste. They do +not give themselves time to realise that in Apollo's house there are +many mansions. + +It is sufficient for us to note here that the discomfort of Poe's +position resided in the fact that he was not admitted into so much as +the forecourt of the particular mansion inhabited by Bryant and Lowell. +There is a phrase in one of his own rather vague and "valueless" essays +(for Poe was a poor critic) which, as it were accidentally, describes +his ideal in poetry, although it is not his own verse of which he is +speaking. He described--in 1845, when his ripe genius had just brought +forth "The Raven"--the poetic faculty as producing "a sense of dreamy, +wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight." This +shadowy but absorbing and mastering pleasure impregnated his own best +writings to such a degree that it gives us the measure of his unlikeness +to his contemporaries, and states the claim of his individuality. +Without precisely knowing it or perceiving his revolution, in an age of +intelligent, tame, lucid and cautiously-defined poetry, Edgar Poe +expressed the emotions which surged within him in numbers that were, +even to excess, "dreamy, wild, indefinite and indefinable." + +His early verses are remarkably exempt from the influences which we +might expect to find impressed on them. He imitated, as every man of +genuine originality imitates while he learns his trade, but his models +were not, as might have been anticipated, Coleridge and Shelley; they +were Byron and Scott. In the poetry of Byron and Scott, Poe found +nothing to transfer to his own nature, and the early imitations, +therefore, left no trace on him. Brief as is the volume of his poems, +half of it might be discarded without much regret. Scattered among his +Byron and Scott imitations, however, we find a few pieces which reveal +to us that, while he was still almost a child, the true direction of his +genius was occasionally revealed to him. The lyric "To Helen," which is +said to have been composed in his fourteenth year, is steeped in the +peculiar purity, richness and vagueness which were to characterise his +mature poems:-- + + "On desperate seas long wont to roam, + Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, + Thy Naiad airs have brought me home + To the glory that was Greece, + And the grandeur that was Rome." + +This was not published, however, until the author was two-and-twenty, +and it may have been touched up. Here is a fragment of a suppressed +poem, "Visit of the Dead," which Poe certainly printed in his eighteenth +year:-- + + "The breeze, the breath of God, is still, + And the mist upon the hill, + Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, + Is a symbol and a token; + How it hangs upon the trees, + A mystery of mysteries!" + +This is not so perfect, but it is even more than "To Helen" symptomatic +of Poe's peculiar relation to the poetic faculty as fostering a state of +indefinite and indeed indefinable delight. And from these faint +breathings how direct is the advance to such incomparable specimens of +symbolic fancy as "The City in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and finally +"Ulalume"! + +The determination to celebrate, in a minor key, indefinite and +melancholy symbols of fancy, is a snare than which none more dangerous +can be placed in the path of a feeble foot. But Poe was not feeble, and +he was protected, and permanent value was secured for his poetry, by the +possession of one or two signal gifts to which attention must now be +paid. He cultivated the indefinite, but, happily for us, in language so +definite and pure that when he succeeds it is with a cool fulness, an +absence of all fretting and hissing sound, such as can rarely be +paralleled in English literature. The finest things in Milton's 1645 +volume, Wordsworth at his very best, Tennyson occasionally, Collins in +some of his shorter odes, have reached that perfection of syllabic +sweetness, that clear sound of a wave breaking on the twilight sands, +which Poe contrives to render, without an effort, again and again:-- + + "By a route obscure and lonely, + Haunted by ill angels only, + Where an Eidolon,[6] nam'd Night, + On a black throne reigns upright, + I have reached these lands but newly + From an ultimate dim Thule, + From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime. + Out of space, out of time." + +The present moment is one in which the reaction against plastic beauty +in poetry has reached such a height that it is almost vain to appeal +against it. There is scarcely a single English poet of consequence in +the younger school who does not treat the strings of his lyre as though +he were preluding with a slate-pencil upon a slate. That this is done +purposely, and in accordance with mysterious harmonic laws entirely +beyond the comprehension of ordinary ears, makes the matter worse. There +is no heresiarch so dangerous as the priest of holy and self-abnegating +life, and it is to a poet no less learned than Mr. Robert Bridges, that +the twentieth century seems to owe the existing rage for cacophony. He +holds something of the same place in relation to Swinburne and Poe, that +Donne did to Spenser three hundred years ago. In this condition of +things it may seem useless to found any claim for Poe on the ground of +the exquisite mellifluousness of his versification. We may hope, +however, some day to regain the use of our ears, and to discover once +more that music and metre are utterly distinct arts. When that +re-discovery has been made, Poe will resume his position as one of the +most uniformly melodious of all those who have used the English +language. + +Critics who have admitted the extraordinary perfection of his prosody +have occasionally objected that in the most popular examples of it, "The +Raven" and "The Bells," he obtains his effect by a trick. It might be +objected, with equal force, that Victor Hugo in "Les Djinns" and even +Tennyson in "The Lotus Eaters" made use of "tricks." On the other hand, +if the charge be deserved, it seems odd that in the course of nearly +seventy years no other juggler or conjurer has contrived to repeat the +wonderful experiment. In each poem there are what must be judged +definite errors against taste in detail--Poe's taste was never very +sure--but the skill of the long voluptuous lamentation, broken at equal +intervals by the croak of the raven, and that of the verbal translation, +as if into four tones or languages, of the tintinabulation of the bells, +is so extraordinary, so original, and so closely in keeping with the +personal genius of the writer, that it is surely affectation to deny its +value. + +It is not, however, in "The Bells" or in "The Raven," marvellous as are +these _tours de force_, that we see the essential greatness of Poe +revealed. The best of his poems are those in which he deals less +boisterously with the sentiment of mystery. During the latest months of +his unhappy life, he composed three lyrics which, from a technical +point of view, must be regarded not only as the most interesting, which +he wrote, but as those which have had the most permanent effect upon +subsequent literature, not in England merely, but in France. These are +"Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," "For Annie." One of Poe's greatest inventions +was the liquidation of stanzaic form, by which he was able to mould it +to the movements of emotion without losing its essential structure. Many +poets had done this with the line; it was left for Poe to do it with the +stanza. In the three latest lyrics this stanzaic legerdemain is +practised with an enchanting lightness, an ecstasy of sinuous and +elastic grace. Perhaps, had it been subjected to the poet's latest +revision, "For Annie" would have been the most wonderful of all in the +sensitive response of its metre to the delicate fluctuations of +sentiment. + +We may, then, briefly summarise that Poe's first claim to commemoration +is that he was the pioneer in restoring to the art of poetry a faculty +which it had almost lost in its attempt to compete with science and +philosophy. It had become the aim of the poets to state facts; it was +given to Poe to perceive that no less splendid a future lay before those +who only hinted feelings. He was the earliest modern poet who +substituted the symbol for the exact description of an object or an +event. That "expression directe," about which the French have been +debating for the last quarter of a century, and over which M. Adolphe +Retté and M. Albert Mockel periodically dispute like Fathers of the +Church, was perceived and was deliberately repudiated by Poe eighty +years ago. He was deeply impregnated with the sense that the harmony of +imagination is not destroyed, but developed, by drawing over a subject +veil after veil of suggestion. His native temperament aided him in his +research after the symbol. He was naturally a cultivator of terror, one +who loved to people the world with strange and indefinable powers. His +dreams were innocent and agitating, occupied with supernatural terrors, +weighed upon by the imminence of shadowy presentments. He trembled at he +knew not what; in this he was related to the earliest poets of the +world, and in his perpetual recurrence to symbol he recalls the action +of their alarms. + +The cardinal importance, then, of Poe as a poet is that he restored to +poetry a primitive faculty of which civilisation seemed successfully to +have deprived her. He rejected the doctrinal expression of positive +things, and he insisted upon mystery and symbol. He endeavoured to +clothe unfathomable thoughts and shadowy images in melody that was like +the wind wandering over the strings of an æolian harp. In other words, +he was the pioneer of a school which has spread its influence to the +confines of the civilised world, and is now revolutionising literature. +He was the discoverer and the founder of Symbolism. + +1909. + +[Footnote 6: A shocking false quantity; but how little that would matter +to Poe] + + + + +THE AUTHOR OF "PELHAM" + + +One hundred and twenty years have nearly passed since the birth of +Bulwer-Lytton, and he continues to be suspended in a dim and ambiguous +position in the history of our literature. He combined extraordinary +qualities with fatal defects. He aimed at the highest eminence, and +failed to reach it, but he was like an explorer, who is diverted from +the main ascent of a mountain, and yet annexes an important table-land +elsewhere. Bulwer-Lytton never secured the ungrudging praise of the best +judges, but he attained great popularity, and has even now not wholly +lost it. He is never quoted as one of our great writers, and yet he +holds a place of his own from which it is improbable that he will ever +be dislodged. Although he stood out prominently among his fellows, and +although his career was tinged with scandal and even with romance, very +little has been known about him. Curiosity has been foiled by the +discretion of one party and the malignity of another. The public has not +been in a position to know the truth, nor to possess the real portrait +of a politician and a man of letters who has been presented as an angel +and as a gargoyle, but never as a human being. Forty years after his +death the candour and the skill of his grandson reveal him to us at last +in a memoir of unusual excellence. + +In no case would Lord Lytton's task have been an easy one, but it must +have been made peculiarly difficult by the work of those who had +preceded him. Of these, the only one who deserves serious attention is +Robert Lytton, who published certain fragments in 1883. That the son +wished to support the memory of his father is unquestionable. But it is +difficult to believe that he intended his contribution to be more than +an aid to some future biographer's labour. He scattered his material +about him in rough heaps. Apart from the "Literary Remains," which +destroyed the continuity of even such brief biography as he gave, Robert +Lytton introduced a number of chapters which are more or less of the +nature of essays, and are often quite foreign to his theme. Moreover, he +dedicated several chapters to literary criticism of his father's works. +It is, in fact, obvious to any one who examines the two volumes of 1883 +which Robert Lytton contrived to fill, that he was careful to contribute +as little as he possibly could to the story which he had started out to +relate. Although there is much that is interesting in the memoirs of +1883, the reader is continually losing the thread of the narrative. The +reason is, no doubt, that Robert Lytton stood too close to his parents, +had seen too much of their disputes, was too much torn by the agonies of +his own stormy youth, and was too sensitively conscious of the scandal, +to tell the story at all. We have the impression that, in order to +forestall any other biography, he pretended himself to write a book +which he was subtle enough to make unintelligible. + +This baffling discretion, this feverish race from hiding-place to +hiding-place, has not only not been repeated by Lord Lytton in the new +_Life_, but the example of his father seems to have positively +emphasised his own determination to be straightforward and lucid. I know +no modern biography in which the writer has kept more rigidly to the +business of his narrative, or has less successfully been decoyed aside +by the sirens of family vanity. It must have been a great difficulty to +the biographer to find his pathway cumbered by the volumes of 1883, set +by his father as a plausible man-trap for future intruders. Lord +Lytton, however, is the one person who is not an intruder, and he was +the only possessor of the key which his father had so diplomatically +hidden. His task, however, was further complicated by the circumstance +that Bulwer-Lytton himself left in MS. an autobiography, dealing very +fully with his own career and character up to the age of twenty-two. The +redundancy of all the Lyttons is amazing. Bulwer-Lytton would not have +been himself if he had not overflowed into reflections which swelled his +valuable account of his childhood into monstrous proportions. Lord +Lytton, who has a pretty humour, tells an anecdote which will be read +with pleasure:-- + + "An old woman, who had once been one of Bulwer-Lytton's trusted + domestic servants, is still living in a cottage at Knebworth. One + day she was talking to me about my grandfather, and inadvertently + used an expression which summed him up more perfectly than any + elaborate description could have done. She was describing his house + at Copped Hall, where she had been employed as caretaker, and + added: 'In one of his attacks of _fluency_, I nursed him there for + many weeks.' 'Pleurisy,' I believe, was what she meant." + +The bacillus of "_fluency_" interpenetrates the Autobiography, the +letters, the documents of every kind, and at any moment this disease +will darken Bulwer-Lytton's brightest hours. But curtailed by his +grandson, and with its floral and heraldic ornaments well pared away, +the Autobiography is a document of considerable value. It is written +with deliberate candour, and recalls the manner of Cobbett, a writer +with whom we should not expect to find Bulwer-Lytton in sympathy. It is +probable that the author of it never saw himself nor those who +surrounded him in precisely their true relation. There was something +radically twisted in his image of life, which always seems to have +passed through a refracting surface on its way to his vision. No doubt +this is more or less true of all experience; no power has given us the +gift "to see ourselves as others see us." But in the case of +Bulwer-Lytton this refractive habit of his imagination produced a +greater swerving aside from positive truth than is usual. The result is +that an air of the fabulous, of the incredible, is given to his +narratives, and often most unfairly. + +A close examination, in fact, of the Autobiography results in confirming +the historic truth of it. What is surprising is not, when we come to +consider them, the incidents themselves, but Bulwer-Lytton's odd way of +narrating them. Lord Lytton, without any comment, provides us with +curious material for the verification of his grandfather's narrative. He +prints, here and there, letters from entirely prosaic persons which +tally, often to a surprising degree, with the extravagant statements of +Bulwer-Lytton. To quote a single instance, of a very remarkable +character, Bulwer-Lytton describes the effect his scholarship produced, +at the age of seventeen, upon sober, elderly people, who were dazzled +with his accomplishments and regarded him as a youthful prodigy. It is +the sort of confession, rather full-blooded and lyrical, which we might +easily set down to that phenomenon of refraction. But Lord Lytton prints +a letter from Dr. Samuel Parr (whom, by the way, he calls "a man of +sixty-four," but Parr, born in 1747, was seventy-four in 1821), which +confirms the autobiographer's account in every particular. The aged Whig +churchman, who boasted a wider knowledge of Greek literature than any +other scholar of his day, and whose peremptory temper was matter of +legend, could write to this Tory boy a long letter of enthusiastic +criticism, and while assuring Bulwer-Lytton that he kept "all the +letters with which you have honoured me," could add: "I am proud of +such a correspondent; and, if we lived nearer to each other, I should +expect to be very happy indeed in such a friend." Letters of this kind, +judiciously printed by Lord Lytton in his notes, serve to call us back +from the nebulous witchcraft in which Bulwer-Lytton was so fond of +wrapping up the truth, and to remind us that, in spite of the +necromancer, the truth is there. + +From the point where the fragment of autobiography closes, although for +some time much the same material is used and some of the same letters +are quoted, as were quoted and used by Robert Lytton, the presentation +of these is so different that the whole effect is practically one of +novelty. But with the year 1826, when Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at the age +of three-and-twenty, became engaged to Rosina Doyle Wheeler, all is +positively new. The story of the marriage, separation, and subsequent +relations has never before been presented to the world with any approach +to accuracy or fulness. No biographical notices of Bulwer-Lytton even +touch on this subject, which has been hitherto abandoned to the gossip +of irresponsible contemporaries. It is true that a Miss Devey composed a +"Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," in which the tale was told. This work was +immediately suppressed, and is inaccessible to the public; but the only +person who is known to be familiar with its contents reports that it +"contains fragments of the narrative, obviously biassed, wholly +inaccurate, and evidently misleading." So far as the general public is +concerned, Lord Lytton's impartial history of the relations between his +grandfather and his grandmother is doubtless that portion of his book +which will be regarded as the most important. I may, therefore, dwell +briefly upon his treatment of it. + +The biographer, in dealing with a subject of this incalculable +difficulty, could but lay himself open to the censure of those who +dislike the revelation of the truth on any disagreeable subject. This +lion, however, stood in the middle of his path, and he had either to +wrestle with it or to turn back. Lord Lytton says in his preface that it +was necessary to tell all or nothing of the matrimonial adventures of +his grandparents, but, in reality, this was not quite the alternative, +which was to tell the truth or to withdraw from the task of writing a +Life of Bulwer-Lytton. The marriage and its results were so predominant +in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour +of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear +reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the +Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord +Lytton shall give his own apology:-- + + "As it was impossible to give a true picture of my grandfather + without referring to events which overshadowed his whole life, and + which were already partially known to the public, I decided to tell + the whole story as fully and as accurately as possible, in the firm + belief that the truth can damage neither the dead nor the living. + The steps which led to the final separation between my + grandparents, and the forces which brought about so disastrous a + conclusion of a marriage of love, apart from their biographical + interest, afford a study of human nature of the utmost value; and + so great are the moral lessons which this story contains, that I + venture to hope that the public may find in much that is tragic and + pitiful much also that is redeeming, and that the ultimate verdict + of posterity may be that these two unfortunate people did not + suffer entirely in vain." + +His story, therefore, is not written with any partiality, and it seems +to be as full and as truthful as the ample materials at the author's +disposal permitted. The reader will conjecture that Lord Lytton could +have given many more details, but apart from the fact that they would +often have been wholly unfit for publication, it is difficult to see +that they would in any degree have altered the balance of the story, or +modified our judgment, which is quite sufficiently enlightened by the +copious letters on both sides which are now for the first time printed. + +Voltaire has remarked of love that it is "de toutes les passions la plus +forte, parce qu'elle attaque, à la fois, la tête, le coeur, le corps." +It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have +been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is true in +measure of every strong juvenile attachment: but it is rarely indeed so +copiously or so fatally true as it was in his case. His existence was +overwhelmed by this event; it was turned topsy-turvey, and it never +regained its equilibrium. In this adventure all was exaggerated; there +was excess of desire, excess of gratification, an intense weariness, a +consuming hatred. + +On the first evening when the lovers met, in April 1826, an observer, +watching them as they talked, reflected that Bulwer's "bearing had that +aristocratic something bordering on _hauteur_" which reminded the +onlooker "of the passage, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou!'" The same +observer, dazzled, like the rest of the world, by the loveliness of Miss +Wheeler, judged that it would be best "to regard her as we do some +beautiful caged wild creature of the woods--at a safe and secure +distance." It would have preserved a chance of happiness for +Bulwer-Lytton to possess something of this stranger's clairvoyance. It +was not strange perhaps, but unfortunate, that he did not notice--or +rather that he was not repelled by, for he did notice--the absence of +moral delicacy in the beautiful creature, the radiant and seductive +Lamia, who responded so instantly to his emotion. He, the most +fastidious of men, was not offended by the vivacity of a young lady who +called attention to the vulgarity of her father's worsted stockings and +had none but words of abuse for her mother. These things, indeed, +disconcerted the young aristocrat, but he put them down to a lack of +training; he persuaded himself that these were superficial blemishes and +could be remedied; and he resigned his senses to the intoxication of +Rosina's beauty. + +At first--and indeed to the last--she stimulated his energy and his +intellect. His love and his hatred alike spurred him to action. In +August 1826, in spite of the violent opposition of his mother, he and +Rosina were betrothed. By October Mrs. Bulwer had so far prevailed that +the engagement was broken off, and Edward tossed in a whirlpool of +anger, love, and despair. It took the form of such an attack of +"fluency" as was never seen before or after. Up to that time he had been +an elegant although feverish idler. Now he plunged into a strenuous life +of public and private engagements. He prepared to enter the House of +Commons; he finished _Falkland_, his first novel; he started the +composition of _Pelham_ and of another "light prose work," which may +have disappeared; he achieved a long narrative in verse, _O'Neill, or +the Rebel_; and he involved himself in literary projects without bound +and without end. The aim of all this energy was money. It is true that +he had broken off his betrothal; but it was at first only a pretence at +estrangement, to hoodwink his mother. He was convinced that he could not +live without possessing Rosina, and as his mother held the strings of +the common purse, he would earn his own income and support a wife. + +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, who had a Roman firmness, was absolutely determined +that her son should not marry "a penniless girl whose education had been +so flagrantly neglected, who was vain and flighty, with a mocking humour +and a conspicuous lack of principle." At this point the story becomes +exceedingly interesting. A Balzac would strip it of its romantic +trappings, and would penetrate into its physiology. Out of Rosina's +sight, and diverted by the excess of his literary labours, Edward's +infatuation began to decline. His mother, whose power of character would +have been really formidable if it had been enforced by sympathy or even +by tact, relaxed her opposition; and instantly her son, himself, no +longer attacked, became calmer and more clear-sighted. Rosina's faults +were patent to his memory; the magic of her beauty less invincible. +Within a month all was changed again. Rosina fretted herself into what +she contrived to have reported to Bulwer-Lytton as an illness. She +begged for an interview, and he went with reluctance to bid her farewell +for ever. It was Bulwer-Lytton's habit to take with him a masterpiece of +literature upon every journey. It seems unfortunate that on this +occasion _The Tempest_ was not his companion, for it might have warned +him, as Prospero warned Ferdinand, against the fever in the blood:-- + + "No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall + To make this contract grow; but barren hate, + Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall bestrew + The union of your bed, with weeds so loathly + That you shall hate it, both." + +When his short interview, which was to have been a final one, was over, +that had happened which made a speedy marriage necessary, whatever the +consequences might be. + +The new conditions were clearly stated to old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, but +that formidable lady belonged to an earlier generation, and saw no +reason for Quixotic behaviour. Her conscience had been trained in the +eighteenth century, and all her blame was for Rosina Wheeler. Torn +between his duty and his filial affection, Bulwer-Lytton now passed +through a period of moral agony. He wrote to his mother: "I am far too +wretched, and have had too severe a contest with myself, not to look to +the future rather with despondency than pleasure, and the view you take +of the matter is quite enough to embitter my peace of mind." Miss +Wheeler, not unnaturally stung to anger, used disrespectful expressions +regarding Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, and these bickerings filled the lover and +son with indignation. His life, between these ladies, grew to be hardly +worth living, and in the midst of one such crisis this brilliant young +dandy of four-and-twenty wrote:--"I feel more broken-hearted, +despondent, and sated than any old valetudinarian who has seen all his +old hopes and friends drop off one by one, and finds himself left for +the rest of his existence to the solitary possession of gloom and gout." +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton fought fiercely to the last, and Edward determined to +close the matter; on August 29th, 1827, he married Rosina. + +At first, in spite of, and even because of, the wild hostility of his +mother, the marriage seemed successful. The rage of the mother drove the +husband to the wife. Lord Lytton has noted that in later years all that +his grandfather and his grandmother said about one another was +unconsciously biassed by their memory of later complications. Neither +Bulwer-Lytton nor Rosina could give an accurate history of their +relations at the beginning, because the mind of each was prejudiced by +their knowledge of the end. Each sought to justify the hatred which both +had lived to feel, by representing the other as hateful from the first. +But the letters survive, and the recollections of friends, to prove that +this was entirely untrue. It must be admitted that their union was never +based upon esteem, but wholly upon passion, and that from the first they +lacked that coherency of relation, in moral respects, which was needed +to fix their affections. But those who have dimly heard how bitterly +these two unfortunate people hated one another in later life will be +astonished to learn that they spent the two first years together like +infatuated turtle-doves. + +Their existence was romantic and absurd. Cut off from all support by the +implacable anger of old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, they depended on a combined +income of £380 a year and whatever the husband could make to increase +it. Accordingly they took a huge country house, Woodcot in Oxon, and +lived at the rate of several thousands a year. There they basked in an +affluent splendour of bad taste which reminds us of nothing in the world +so much as of those portions of _The Lady Flabella_ which Mrs. +Wititterly was presently to find so soft and so voluptuous. The +following extract from one of Rosina's lively letters-and she was a very +sprightly correspondent--gives an example of her style, of her husband's +Pelhamish extravagance, and of the gaudy recklessness of their manner of +life. They had now been married nearly two years:-- + + "How do you think my audacious husband has spent his time since he + has been in town? Why, he must needs send me down what he termed a + little Christmas box, which was a huge box from Howel and James's, + containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours + not made up, four Gros des Indes, two merino ones, four satin ones, + an amber, a black, a white and a blue, eight pocket handkerchiefs + that look as if they had been spun out of lilies and air and + _brodée_ by the fairies, they are so exquisitely fine and so + beautifully worked. Four pieces (16 yards in each) of beautiful + white blonde, two broad pieces and two less broad, a beautiful and + very large blue real cashmere shawl, a Chantilly veil that would + reach from this to Dublin, and six French long pellerines very + richly embroidered on the finest India muslin, three dozen pair of + white silk stockings, one dozen of black, a most beautiful black + satin cloak with very pretty odd sort of capes and trimmed round + and up the sides with a very broad band of a new kind of figured + plush--I forget what they call it (it came from Paris), and a hat + of the same--such a hat as can only be made in the Rue Vivienne. + You would think that this 'little Christmas box' would have been + enough to have lasted for some time. However, he thought + differently, for on New Year's morning before I was out of bed, + there came a parcel by the mail, which on opening proved to be a + large red Morocco case containing a bright gold chain, a yard and a + half long, with the most beautiful and curious cross to it that I + ever saw--the chain is as thick as my dead gold necklace, and you + may guess what sort of a thing it is when I tell you that I took it + to a jeweller here to have it weighed, and it weighed a pound all + but an ounce. The man said it never was made for less than fifty + guineas, but that he should think it had cost more." + +Rosina, who has only £80 a year of her own, will not be outdone, and +cannot "resist ordering" Edward "a gold toilette, which he has long +wished for.... Round the rim of the basin and the handle of the ewer I +have ordered a wreath of _narcissus_ in dead gold, which, for Mr. +Pelham, you'll own, is not a bad idea." + +It would be expected that all this crazy display would lead the young +couple rapidly and deeply into debt. That it did not do so is the most +curious phase of the story. Bulwer-Lytton immediately, and apparently +without the slightest difficulty, developed a literary industry the +sober record of which approaches the fabulous. Walter Scott alone may be +held to have equalled it. The giants of popular fiction did, indeed, +enjoy larger single successes than Bulwer-Lytton did, but none of them, +not Dickens himself, was so uniformly successful. Everything he wrote +sold as though it were bread displayed to a hungry crowd. Even his +poetry, so laboriously and lifelessly second-hand, always sold. He did +not know what failure was; he made money by _Devereux_; even _The New +Timon_ went into many editions. To earn what was required, however--and +in these early years he seems to have made £3000 his minimum of needful +return--to live in the insane style which his wife and he demanded, an +enormous nervous strain was required. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's temper had +always been warm and eager; it now grew irritable to the highest degree. +His mother continued to exasperate him; his wife suddenly failed to +please him; his health waned; and he became the most miserable of men; +yet without ceasing for a moment to be the most indefatigable of +authors. The reader will follow the evolution of the tragedy, which is +of poignant interest, in Lord Lytton's pages. The whole story is one of +the most extraordinary in the history of literature. + +It has been a feature of Bulwer-Lytton's curious posthumous fortune that +he has seemed solitary in his intellectual if not in his political and +social action. We think of him as one of those morose and lonely bees +that are too busy gathering pollen to join the senate of the hive, and +are dwellers in the holes of the rocks. It is quite true that, with a +painful craving for affection, he had not the genius of friendship. The +general impression given by his biography is one of isolation; in "the +sea of life" he was one of those who are most hopelessly "enisled." +Nothing is sadder than this severance of a delicate and sensitive +temperament from those who surround it closely and to whom it stretches +out its arms in vain. But a careful reading of these interesting volumes +leaves us in no doubt of the cause of this loneliness. Bulwer-Lytton, +with all his ardour and his generosity, was devoid of the gift of +sympathy. In characters of a simpler mould a natural kindliness may take +the place of comprehension. But Bulwer-Lytton had a lively and protean +fancy which perpetually deceived him. In human relations he was always +moving, but always on the wrong track. + +The letters to his mother, to his wife, to his son, exemplify this +unfortunate tendency. They are eloquent, they are even too eloquent, for +Bulwer-Lytton intoxicated himself with his own verbosity; they are meant +to be kind, they are meant to be just, they are meant to be wise and +dignified and tender; but we see, in Lord Lytton's impartial narrative, +that they scarcely ever failed to exasperate the receiver. His dealings +with his son, of whom he was exquisitely proud and sensitively fond, are +of the saddest character, because of the father's want of comprehension, +haste of speech and intolerance of temper. The very fact that a son, a +wife, or a mother could with impunity be addressed in terms of +exaggerated sensibility, because there could be no appeal, was a snare +to the too-ready pen of Bulwer-Lytton, which, poured out its oceans of +ink without reflection and without apprehension. If violent offence were +given, the post went out again later in the day, and equally violent +self-humiliation would restore the emotional balance. But what could not +be restored was the sense of confidence and domestic security. + +In his contact with other literary men of his own age more restraint was +necessary, and we learn from Lord Lytton's pages of valuable and +prolonged acquaintanceships which were sometimes almost friendships. His +company was much sought after, and occasionally by very odd persons. +Lord Lytton prints a series of most diverting letters from the notorious +Harriette Wilson, who, in spite of the terror into which her "Memoirs" +had thrown society, desired to add the author of _Pelham_ to the aviary +of her conquests. But the snare was set in vain before the eyes of so +shrewd a bird as Bulwer-Lytton; he declined to see the lady, but he kept +her amazing letters. This was in 1829, when the novelist seems to have +had no literary or political associates. But by 1831, we find him +editing the _New Monthly Magazine_, and attaching himself to Lord +Melbourne and Lord Durham on the one hand and to Disraeli and Dickens on +the other. When to these we have added Lady Blessington and Letitia +Landon, we have mentioned all those public persons with whom +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have been on terms of intimacy during his early +manhood. All through these years he was an incessant diner-out and +party-goer, and the object of marvellous adulation, but he passed +through all this social parade as though it had been a necessary portion +of the exterior etiquette of life. Why he fatigued himself by these +formal exercises, in which he seems to have found no pleasure, it is +impossible to conceive, but a sense of the necessity of parade was +strangely native to him. + +He had, however, one close and constant friend. John Forster was by far +the most intimate of all his associates throughout his career. +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have met him first about 1834, when he was +twenty-eight and Forster only twenty-two. In spite of this disparity in +age, the younger man almost at once took a tone of authority such as the +elder seldom permitted in an acquaintance. Forster had all the gifts +which make a friend valuable. He was rich in sympathy and resource, his +temper was reasonable, he comprehended a situation, he knew how to hold +his own in argument and yet yield with grace. Lord Lytton prints a very +interesting character-sketch of Forster, which he has found among his +grandfather's MSS. It is a tribute which does equal credit to him who +makes it and to him of whom it is made:-- + + "John Forster.... A most sterling man, with an intellect at once + massive and delicate. Few, indeed, have his strong practical sense + and sound judgment; fewer still unite with such qualities his + exquisite appreciation of latent beauties in literary art. Hence, + in ordinary life, there is no safer adviser about literary work, + especially poetry; no more refined critic. A large heart naturally + accompanies so masculine an understanding. He has the rare capacity + for affection which embraces many friendships without loss of depth + or warmth in one. Most of my literary contemporaries are his + intimate companions, and their jealousies of each other do not + diminish their trust in him. More than any living critic, he has + served to establish reputations. Tennyson and Browning owed him + much in their literary career. Me, I think, he served in that way + less than any of his other friends. But, indeed, I know of no + critic to whom I have been much indebted for any position I hold in + literature. In more private matters I am greatly indebted to his + counsels. His reading is extensive. What faults he has lie on the + surface. He is sometimes bluff to rudeness. But all such faults of + manner (and they are his only ones) are but trifling inequalities + in a nature solid and valuable as a block of gold." + +This was written with full experience, as the names of Tennyson and +Browning will remind us, for Bulwer-Lytton was slow to admit the value +of these younger talents. His relations with Tennyson have always been +known to be unfortunate; as they are revealed in Lord Lytton's biography +they approach the incredible. He met Browning at Covent Garden Theatre +during the Macready "revival" of the poetic stage, but it was not until +after the publication of _Men and Women_ that he became conscious of +Browning's claim, which he then very grudgingly admitted. He was +grateful to Browning for his kindness to Robert Lytton in Italy, but he +never understood his genius or his character. + +What, however, we read with no less pleasure than surprise are the +evidences of Bulwer-Lytton's interest in certain authors of a later +generation, of whom the general public has never suspected him to have +been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867 +between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew +Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds +it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure +those of his immediate contemporaries. The _Essays in Criticism_ and +_The Study of Celtic Literature_ called forth from the author of _My +Novel_ and _The Caxtons_ such eulogy as had never been spared for the +writings of Thackeray or Carlyle. Matthew Arnold appeared to +Bulwer-Lytton to have "brought together all that is most modern in +sentiment, with all that is most scholastic in thought and language." +Arnold was a guest at Knebworth, and brought the Duke of Genoa with him. +He liked Bulwer-Lytton, and their relations became very cordial and +lasted for some years; Arnold has given an amusing, but very +sympathetic, account of the dignified hospitalities of Knebworth. + +No revelation in Lord Lytton's volumes is, however, more pleasing or +more unexpected than his grandfather's correspondence with Swinburne. It +is thought that he heard of him through Monckton Milnes; at all events, +he was an early reader of _Atalanta in Calydon_. When, in 1866, all the +furies of the Press fell shrieking on _Poems and Ballads_, Bulwer-Lytton +took a very generous step. He wrote to Swinburne, expressing his +sympathy and begging him to be calm. The young poet was extremely +touched, and took occasion to beg the elder writer for his advice, the +publisher having, without consulting him, withdrawn his volume from +sale. Bulwer-Lytton's reply was a most cordial invitation to stay with +him at Knebworth and talk the matter over. Swinburne gratefully +accepted, and John Forster was asked to meet him. It was Bulwer-Lytton, +it appears, who found another publisher for the outraged volume, and +helped Swinburne out of the scrape. He was always kindness itself if an +appeal was made to his protection, and to his sense of justice. However, +pleasant as the visit to Knebworth was, there is no evidence that it was +repeated. Bulwer-Lytton considered Swinburne's opinions preposterous, +and indeed if he told Swinburne, as in 1869 he told his son Robert, that +Victor Hugo was "but an epileptic dwarf in a state of galvanism," there +must have been wigs on the green at Knebworth. + +The student of the biography, if he is already familiar with the more +characteristic works of Bulwer-Lytton, will find himself for the first +time provided with a key to much that has puzzled him in the nature of +that author. The story itself, apart from the tragic matrimonial trouble +which runs through it like a blood-red cord, is of unusual interest. It +is a story of strife, without repose, without enjoyment, but with a good +deal of splendour and satisfaction. Almost to the end Bulwer-Lytton was +engaged in struggle. As an ambitious social being he was fighting the +world; as an author he was battling with his critics; as a statesman he +was always in the wild storm of party politics. As a private individual +he was all the time keeping his head up against the tide of social +scandal which attacked him when he least expected it, and often +threatened to drown him altogether. This turmoil contrasts with the calm +of the evening years, after the peerage had been won, the ambition +satisfied, the literary reputation secured. + +Few writers have encountered, in their own time and after their death, +so much adverse criticism, and yet have partly survived it. It is hardly +realised, even perhaps by Lord Lytton, how unwilling the reviewers were +to give credit to his grandfather. He never found favour in their eyes, +and it was a matter of constant resentment with him that they did him, +as he thought, injustice. The evidence of his wounded feelings is +constant in his letters. The Quarterly Review never mentioned him +without contempt until 1865, when the publication of his works, in +forty-three volumes, forced it to consider this indefatigable and +popular writer with a measure of respect. Sir Walter Scott, with his +universal geniality, read _Pelham_ in 1828 and "found it very +interesting: the light is easy and gentlemanlike, the dark very grand +and sombrous." He asked who was the author, and he tried to interest his +son-in-law in the novel. But Lockhart was implacable: "_Pelham_," he +replied, "is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I +have not read the book, from disliking the author." Lockhart, however, +did read _Devereux_, and three years afterwards, when reviewing some +other novel, he said of the historical characters in that romance: "It +seems hard to disquiet so many bright spirits for the sole purpose of +showing that they _could_ be dull." That was the attitude of the higher +criticism to Bulwer-Lytton from, let us say, 1830 to 1860; he was "a +horrid puppy" and he was also "dull." + +But this was far from being the opinion of the reading public. We have +seen that he never failed, and sometimes he soared into the very +empyrean of popularity. In 1834, when he published _The Last Days of +Pompeii_, again in 1837 when he published _Ernest Maltravers_, the +ecstasy of his adorers discovered their favourite in a moment under the +mask of anonymity which he chose to assume. This was just before the +outburst of the great school of Victorian novelists; Bulwer had as yet +practically no one but Disraeli to compete with. These two, the author +of _Pelham_ and the author of _Vivian Grey_, raced neck and neck at the +head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them +forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted +personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm" +was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest +and most powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so +shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until +Bulwer-Lytton adopted his _Caxtons_ manner in the middle of the century. +As always in Byronic periods, the portrait of the author himself was +searched for among his most fatal conceptions. To the young library +subscriber the stoical, solitary figure of Mordaunt, in _The Disowned_, +was exactly what was wanted as a representation of the mysterious +novelist himself. Pelham was the apotheosis of the man of fashion, and +it is amusing to read how, when the Bulwer-Lyttons travelled, they were +gazed at in reverence as the Pelham and the Pelhamess. + +It would be difficult to improve upon the language used so early as 1832 +by one of the very few critics who attempted to do justice to +Bulwer-Lytton's merits. The _Edinburgh Review_ found in him "a style +vigorous and pliable, sometimes strangely incorrect, but often rising +into a touching eloquence." Ten years later such was the private opinion +of D.G. Rossetti, who was "inspired by reading _Rienzi_ and _Ernest +Maltravers_, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at +Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more +justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one +thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we +must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his +own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful +ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of +Continental history, he made realistic and humorous studies of +middle-class life, he engaged in vehement controversy on topics of the +hour, he prophesied of the order of the future, he wrote comedies and +tragedies, epics and epistles, satires and lyrics. His canvasses were +myriad and he crowded every one of them with figures. At his most +Byronic moment he flung his dark cloak aside, and danced in motley +through _Paul Clifford_, with its outrageous caricature of George IV. +and his Ministers as a gang of Hounslow highwaymen. Perhaps his best +claim to regard is the insatiability of his human curiosity, evinced in +the almost infinite variety of his compositions. + +The singular being who wrote so large a library of works and whose +actual features have so carefully been concealed from the public, will +be known at last. The piety of his grandson has presented him to us with +no reservations and no false lights. Here he stands, this half-fabulous +being, not sheathed in sham armour and padding the stage in buskins, but +a real personality at length, "with all his weaknesses and faults, his +prejudices, affectations, vanities, susceptibilities, and +eccentricities, and also with all his great qualities of industry, +courage, kindness of heart; sound judgment, patience, and perseverance." +Lord Lytton has carried through to the close a biographical enterprise +of unusual difficulty, and he deserves the thanks of all students of +English literature. + + + + +THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRONTËS[7] + + +Although I possess in no degree the advantage which so many of the +members of your society enjoy in being personally connected with the +scenes and even, perhaps, with the characters associated with the Brontë +family, I cannot begin my little address to you to-day without some +invocation of the genius of the place. We meet at Dewsbury because the +immortal sisters were identified with Dewsbury. Is it then not +imperative that for whatever picture of them I may endeavour to present +before you this afternoon, Dewsbury should form the background? +Unfortunately, however, although in the hands of a skilful painter the +figures of the ladies may glow forth, I fear that in the matter of +taking Dewsbury as the background some vagueness and some darkness are +inevitable. In the biographies of Mrs. Gaskell and of Mr. Clement +Shorter, as well as in the proceedings of your society, I have searched +for evidences of the place Dewsbury took in the lives of the Brontës. +What I find--I expect you to tell me that it is not exhaustive--is this. +Their father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, was curate here from 1809 to +1811. In 1836, when Charlotte was twenty, Miss Wooler transferred her +school from Roe Head to Heald's House at the top of Dewsbury Moor. In +this school, where Charlotte had been a pupil since 1831, she was now a +governess, and a governess she remained until early in 1838. In April of +that year Miss Wooler was taken ill and Charlotte was for a little while +in charge. Then there was an explosion of temper, of some kind, and +Charlotte went back to Haworth. + +That, then, in the main, is the limit of what the scrupulous Muse of +history vouchsafes to tell us about Charlotte Brontë's relation to +Dewsbury. But it also supplies us with one or two phrases which I cannot +bring myself to spare you. In January 1838, Charlotte reviews her +experience at Dewsbury Moor; "I feel," she says, "in nothing better, +nothing humbler nor purer." Again, in 1841, after there had passed time +enough to mellow her exacerbations, she continues to express herself +with vigour. Miss Wooler is making overtures to Charlotte and Emily to +take over the school at Heald's House; perhaps a place might be found +for Anne as well. Miss Wooler, one of the kindest of women, is most +thoughtful, most conciliatory. Charlotte will have none of the idea; she +puts it roughly from her. Of Dewsbury she has nothing to say but that +"it is a poisoned place for me." This is all we know of Charlotte's +relation to Dewsbury, yet nothing, you will tell me, in Froude's phrase, +to what the angels know. Well, I must be frank with you and say that I +am afraid the angels have been inclined to record exceedingly little of +Charlotte Brontë's residence in your inoffensive neighbourhood. I have +to paint a background to my picture, and I find none but the gloomiest +colours. They have to be what the art-critics of the eighteenth century +called "sub-fusc." But it is not the fault of Dewsbury, it is the fault, +or the misfortune, of our remarkable little genius. She was here, in +this wholesome and hospitable vicinity, for several months, during which +time "she felt in nothing better, neither humbler nor purer," and +looking back upon it, she had to admit that it was "a poisoned place" +to her. + +I cannot help fancying that you will agree with me, that on such an +occasion as the present, and especially when dealing with a group of +writers about whom so much as has been said as about the Brontës, it is +wise not to cover too wide a ground, but to take, and keep to, one +aspect of the subject. Our little excursion into the history seems to +have given us, under the heading "Dewsbury," a rather grim text, from +which, nevertheless, we may perhaps extract some final consolation. Let +me say at the outset that for the grimness, for the harshness, Dewsbury +is not at all to blame. I fancy that if, in the years from 1836 to 1838, +the Brontë girls had been visitors to Kubla Khan, and had been fed on +honey by his myrmidons at Xanadu, that pleasure-dome would yet have been +"poisoned" to them. It was not poverty, and cold, and the disagreeable +position of a governess, it was not the rough landscape of your moors, +nor its lack of southern amenity which made Charlotte wretched here. It +was not in good Miss Wooler, nor in the pupils, nor in the visitors at +Heald's House that the mischief lay, it was in the closed and patient +crater of Charlotte's own bosom. And I am almost persuaded that, if you +had lived in Dewsbury sixty-five years ago, you would have heard on very +quiet days a faint subterranean sound which you would never have been +able to guess was really the passion, furiously panting, shut up in the +heart of a small, pale governess in Heald's House schoolroom. + +If you accuse me of fatalism, I am helpless in your hands, for I confess +I do not see how it could be otherwise, and do scarcely wish that it +could have been. Let us not be too sentimental in this matter. Figures +in literature are notable and valuable to us for what they give us. The +more personal and intense and definite that is, the greater the gift, +the more strenuous the toil and the more severe the initiation which +lead to its expression. The Brontës had a certain thing to learn to +give; what that was we shall presently try to note. But whatever we find +it to be, we start with allowing that it was extremely and boldly +original. It was not to be mastered by lying upon padded sofas and +toying with a little Berlin wool-work. It involved pain, resistance, a +stern revision of things hitherto taken for granted. The secrets which +they designed to wring from nature and from life were not likely to be +revealed to the self-indulgent and the dilettante. The sisters had a +message from the sphere of indignation and revolt. In order that they +should learn it as well as teach it, it was necessary that they should +arrive on the scene at an evil hour for their own happiness. _Jane Eyre_ +and _Shirley_ and _Villette_ could not have been written unless, for +long years, the world had been "a poisoned place" for Charlotte Brontë. + +It has been excellently said by Mrs. Humphry Ward that in many respects, +and to the very last, the Brontës challenge no less than they attract +us. This is an aspect which, in the midst of rapturous modern +heroine-worship, we are apt to forget. Thackeray, who respected the +genius of the family, and was immensely kind to the author of _Jane +Eyre_, never really felt comfortable in her company. We know how he +stole out of his own front-door, and slipped away into the night to +escape her. "A very austere little person," he called her, and we may +put what emphasis on the austerity we will. I feel sure that any +maladroit "white-washing of Charlotte" will tend, sooner or later, +good-natured though it may be, in a failure to comprehend what she +really was, in what her merit consisted, what the element in her was +that, for instance, calls us here together nearly half a century after +she completed her work and passed away. Young persons of genius very +commonly write depressing books; since, the more vivid an unripe +creature's impression of life is, the more acute is its distress. It is +only extremely stupid Sunday-school children who shout in chorus, "We +are so happy, happy, happy!" Genius thrown naked, with exposed nerves, +on a hard indifferent world, is never "happy" at first. Earth is a +"poisoned place" to it, until it has won its way and woven its garments +and discovered its food. + +But in the case of Charlotte Brontë, unhappiness was more than juvenile +fretfulness. All her career was a revolt against conventionality, +against isolation, against irresistible natural forces, such as climate +and ill-health and physical insignificance. Would this insubmissive +spirit have passed out of her writings, as it passed, for instance, out +of those of George Sand? I am not sure, for we see it as strongly, +though more gracefully and skilfully expressed, in _Villette_ as in the +early letters which her biographers have printed. Her hatred of what was +commonplace and narrow and obvious flung her against a wall of +prejudice, which she could not break down. She could only point to it by +her exhausting efforts; she could only invite the generation which +succeeded her to bring their pickaxes to bear upon it. Hence, to the +very last, she seems, more than any other figure in our literature, to +be forever ruffled in temper, for ever angry and wounded and indignant, +rejecting consolation, crouched like a sick animal in the cavern of her +own quenchless pride. This is not an amiable attitude, nor is it +historically true that this was Charlotte Brontë's constant aspect. But +I will venture to say that her amiabilities, her yielding moods, are +really the unessential parts of her disposition, and that a certain +admirable ferocity is the notable feature of her intellectual character. + +Her great heart was always bleeding. Here at Dewsbury, in the years we +are contemplating, the hemorrhage was of the most doleful kind, for it +was concealed, suppressed, it was an inward flow. When once she became +an author the pain of her soul was relieved. She said, in 1850, looking +back on the publication of the hapless first volume of poems, "The mere +effort to succeed gave a wonderful zest to existence." Then, a little +later, when no one had paid the slightest attention to the slender trio +of maiden voices, "Something like the chill of despair began to invade +their hearts." With a less powerful inspiration, they must have ceased +to make the effort; they must have succumbed in a melancholy oblivion. +But they were saved by the instinct of a mission. It was not their +private grief which primarily stirred them. What urged them on was the +dim consciousness that they gave voice to a dumb sense of the suffering +of all the world. They had to go on working; they had to pursue their +course, though it might seem sinister or fatal; their business was to +move mankind, not to indulge or please it. They "must be honest; they +must not varnish, soften, or conceal." + +What Charlotte Brontë was learning to do in her grim and, let us admit +it, her unlovely probation on Dewsbury Moor, was to introduce a fresh +aspect of the relations of literature to life. Every great writer has a +new note; hers was--defiance. All the aspects in which life presented +itself to her were distressing, not so much in themselves as in herself. +She rebelled against the outrages of poverty, and she drank to its dregs +the cup of straitened circumstances. She was proud, as proud as Lucifer, +and she was forced into positions which suppleness and cheerfulness +might have made tolerable, if not agreeable. She wrung from these +positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of +this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by +universal report, were generous, genial, and unassuming. To Charlotte +Brontë these kindly, if somewhat commonplace folk, grew to seem what a +Turkish pasha seems to the inhabitants of a Macedonian village. It was +not merely the surroundings of her life--it was life itself, in its +general mundane arrangements, which was intolerable to her. She fretted +in it, she beat her wings against its bars, and she would have done the +same if those bars had been of gold, and if the fruits of paradise had +been pushed to her between them. This, I think, is why the expression of +her anger seems too often disproportionate, and why her irony is so apt +to be preposterous. She was born to resist being caged in any form. Her +defiance was universal, and often it was almost indiscriminate. + +Do not let us presume to blame this insubmission. Still less let us +commit the folly of minimising it. A good cheerful little Charlotte +Brontë, who thought the best of everybody, who gaily took her place +without a grudging sigh, whose first aim was to make those about her +happy and to minister to their illusions, would have been a much more +welcome inmate of Miss Wooler's household than the cantankerous +governess whom nobody could please, whose susceptibilities were always +on edge, whose lonely arrogance made her feared by all but one or two +who timidly persisted in loving her. But such a paragon of the obvious +virtues would have passed as the birds pass and as the flowers. She +would have left no mark behind. She would never have enriched the +literature of England by one of its master-evidences of the force of +human will. She would never have stirred hundreds of thousands of +consciences to a wholesome questioning of fate and their own souls. + +Let us endeavour to pursue the inquiry a few steps further. It is +impossible to separate the ethical conditions of an author's mind from +the work that he produces. The flower requires the soil; it betrays in +its colour and its perfume the environment of its root. The moral +constitution of the writer is reflected in the influence of the written +page. This is the incessant contention; on one hand the independence of +art asserts itself; on the other, it is impossible to escape from the +implicit influence of conduct upon art. There have been few writers of +any age in whom this battle raged more fiercely than it did in Charlotte +Brontë. Her books, and those of her sisters, seem anodyne enough to-day; +to readers of a sensitive species they seemed, when they were published, +as dangerous as _Werther_ had been, as seductive as the _Nouvelle +Heloïse_. The reason of this was, in the main, the spirit of revolt +which inspired them. There was something harsh and glaring in their +landscape; there was that touch of Salvator Rosa which one of their +earliest critics observed in them. But more essential was the +stubbornness, the unflinching determination to revise all accepted +formulas of conduct, to do this or that, not because it was usual to do +it, but because it was rational, and in harmony with human nature. + +Into an age which had become almost exclusively utilitarian, and in +which the exercise of the imagination, in its real forms, was sedulously +discountenanced, Charlotte Brontë introduced passion in the sphere of +prose fiction, as Byron had introduced it in the sphere of verse thirty +years earlier. It was an inestimable gift; it had to come to us, from +Charlotte Brontë or another, to save our literature from a decline into +triviality and pretension. But she suffered, as Byron had suffered, in +the direct ratio of her originality. If a writer employs passion in an +age which has ceased to recognise it as one of the necessities of +literary vitality he is safe to be accused of perverting his readers. +Balzac says, "When nothing else can be charged against an author, the +reproach of immorality is thrown at his head." When we study the record +of the grim life of the sisters at Haworth, like that of three young +soldiers round a camp-fire with the unseen enemy prowling in the +darkness just out of their sight--when we think of the strenuous vigil, +the intractable and indomitable persistence, the splendour of the +artistic result--we may console ourselves in our anger at the insults +they endured, by reflecting how little they cared. And their noble +indifference to opinion further endears them to us. We may repeat of +them all what Charlotte in a letter once said of Emily, "A certain +harshness in her powerful and peculiar character only makes me cling to +her more." + +This insubmissiveness, which was the unconscious armour given to protect +her against the inevitable attacks of fortune, while, on the other hand, +it was the very sign-manual of Charlotte's genius, was, on the other, a +drawback from which she did not live long enough to emancipate her +nature. It is responsible for her lack of interest in what is delicate +and complex; it excused to herself a narrowness of vision which we are +sometimes tempted to find quite distressing. It is probably the cause of +a fault that never quits her for long, a tendency to make her characters +express themselves with a lyrical extravagance which sometimes comes +close to the confines of rodomontade. Charlotte Brontë never arrives at +that mastery of her material which permits the writer to stand apart +from his work, and sway the reader with successive tides of emotion +while remaining perfectly calm himself. Nor is she one of those whose +visible emotion is nevertheless fugitive, like an odour, and evaporates, +leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. On +the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her +sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with +serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager +spirit, immortal in its active force, seems to throb beside it. + +The aspect of Charlotte Brontë which I have tried to indicate to you +to-day, and which I have sketched thus hastily and slightly against the +background of her almost voiceless residence in Dewsbury, is far from +being a complete or unique one. I offer it to you only as a single facet +of her wonderful temperament, of the rich spectacle of her talent. I +have ventured to propose it, because, in the multiplication of honours +and attentions, the tendency to deify the human, to remove those +phenomena of irregularity which are the evidence of mortal strength, +grows irresistible, and we find ourselves, unconsciously, substituting a +waxen bust, with azure eyes and golden hair, for the homely features +which (if we could but admit it) so infinitely better match the honest +stories. Let us not busy ourselves to make excuse for our austere little +genius of the moors. Let us be content to take her exactly as she was, +with her rebellion and her narrowness, her angers and her urgencies, +perceiving that she had to be this sorrowful offspring of a poisoned +world in order to clear the wells of feeling for others, and to win from +emancipated generations of free souls the gratitude which is due to a +precursor. + +[Footnote 7: Address delivered before the Brontë Society in the Town +Hall of Dewsbury, March 28th, 1903.] + + + + +THE NOVELS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI + + +It is not easy for a man whose sovereign ambition is seen to be leading +him with great success in a particular direction to obtain due credit +for what he accomplishes with less manifest success in another. There is +no doubt that Disraeli as an author has, at all events until very +lately, suffered from the splendour of his fame as a politician. But he +was an author long before he became a statesman, and it certainly is a +little curious that even in his youth, although he was always +commercially successful with his books, they were never, as we say, +"taken seriously" by the critics. His earliest novels were largely +bought, and produced a wide sensation, but they were barely accepted as +contributions to literature. If we look back to the current criticism of +those times, we find such a book as _Dacre_, a romance by the Countess +of Morley, which is now absolutely forgotten, treated with a dignity and +a consideration never accorded to _The Young Duke_ or to _Henrietta +Temple_. Even Disraeli's satiric squibs, in the manner of Lucian and +Swift, which seem to us among the most durable ornaments of light +literature in the days of William IV., were read and were laughed at, +but were not critically appraised. + +So, too, at the middle period of Disraeli's literary life, such books as +_Coningsby_ and _Tancred_ were looked upon as amusing commentaries on +the progress of a strenuous politician, not by any means, or by any +responsible person, as possible minor classics of our language. And at +his third period, the ruling criticism of the hour was aghast at faults +which now entertain us, and was blind to sterling merits which we are +now ready to acknowledge. Shortly after his death, perhaps his most +brilliant apologist was fain to admit that if Disraeli had been +undistinguished as a speaker, his novels would have been "as the flowers +of the field, charming for the day which was passing over them, and then +forgotten." It is only since the beginning of the present century that a +conviction has been gaining ground that some of these books were in +themselves durable, not because they were the work of a man who became +Prime Minister of England and made his sovereign Empress of India, but +as much or as little as if they had been composed by a recluse in a +hermitage. This impression has now become so general with enlightened +critics that the danger seems to be that we should underrate certain +excesses of rhetoric and the Corinthian mode the errors of which used to +be over-emphasised, but should not, in a comparative survey of Victorian +literature, be neglected as serious drawbacks to our perfect enjoyment +of the high-spirited, eloquent, and ardent writings of Benjamin +Disraeli. It is in this spirit of moderation that I now attempt a rapid +sketch of his value as an English author. + + +I + +There is, perhaps, no second example of a writer whose work is divided, +as is that of Disraeli, into three totally distinct periods. Other +authors, as for example, the poet Crabbe, and in a less marked degree +Rogers, have abandoned the practice of writing for a considerable number +of years, and then have resumed it. But the case of Disraeli seems to be +unique as that of a man who pursued the writing, of books with great +ardour during three brief and independent spaces of time. We have his +first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with _Vivian Grey_ +(1826) and closed with _Venetia_ (1837). We have a second epoch, opening +with _Coningsby_ (1844) and ending with _Tancred_ (1847), during which +time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels +which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. +Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, +but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted +for. It will, therefore, be convenient to treat them successively. + +As oblivion scatters its poppy over the prose fiction of the reigns of +George IV. and William IV., it becomes in creasingly dangerous that +criticism should take the early "fashionable" novels of Disraeli as +solitary representations of literary satire or observation. It is true +that to readers of to-day this class of romance is exclusively +suggestive of _Vivian Grey_ and its fellows, with perhaps the _Pelham_ +of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of +these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary +in their treatment of society. In the course of _The Young Duke_, +written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances +"written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had +only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as +it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of _Tremaine_ +(1825) and _De Vere_ (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English +gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough. +But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold +the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they +lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the +age. + +The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing +years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were +welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books +as _Granby_ and _Dacre_. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli +belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned. +They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge +flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in +general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a +sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded +innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who +think of _Vivian Grey_ as a work of amazing novelty, to the fact that +the _genre_ it represents to us was one which had been lifted into high +credit the year before by the consecrated success of _Tremaine_, and was +at that moment cultivated by a multitude of minor novelists. + +There was, however, a distinction, and it lay in the greater fund of +animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. _Vivian Grey_ was +absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the +opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent +young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid +for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to +be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." _Vivian +Grey_ is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli +himself called it "a hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he +had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing +lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has +exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the +impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has +always been a tendency to exalt _Vivian Grey_ at the expense of _The +Young Duke_ (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the +former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in +this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be +supposed. In _The Young Duke_ the manner is not so burlesque, but there +is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and +fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to +our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the +existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron +Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche? +The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is +particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always +hovering between sublimity and a giggle. + +But here is an example, from _Vivian Grey_, of Disraeli's earliest +manner:-- + + "After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice, + and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke + of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured + views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes, + his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in + his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of + human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which + now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon + his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet! + my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been + imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!' + + "She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head + still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her + off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive + her. But when he tried to lay her a moment on the bank, she clung + to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He + leant over her; he did not attempt to disengage her arms; and, by + degrees, by very slow degrees, her grasp loosened. At last her arms + gave way and fell by her side, and her eyes partly opened. + + "'Thank God! Violet, my own, my beloved, say you are better!' + + "She answered not, evidently she did not know him, evidently she + did not see him. A film was on her sight, and her eye was glassy. + He rushed to the water-side, and in a moment he had sprinkled her + temples, now covered with a cold dew. Her pulse beat not, her + circulation seemed suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he + covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the + bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No + one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he + shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no + answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not + leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were + still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her + hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the + warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he + prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting + like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the + screech of an owl! + + "Once more at the river-side, once more bending over her with + starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the + soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have + given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her + position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was + a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite + cold, her limbs stiffened. He gazed, and gazed, and gazed. He bent + over her with stupor rather than grief stamped on his features. It + was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind, very + slowly that the horrible truth seized upon his soul. He gave a loud + shriek, and fell on the lifeless body of VIOLET FANE!" + +A line in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of _Alarcos_ pathetically +admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli +was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased +should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his +writings. _Henrietta Temple_ is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell +a great consecutive story of passion, and no doubt there have been those +who have palpitated over the love-at-first-sight of Ferdinand Armine and +Henrietta Temple. But Disraeli's serious vein is here over-luscious; the +love-passages are too emphatic and too sweet. An early critic spoke of +this _dulcia vitia_ of style which we meet with even in _Contarini +Fleming_ as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His +attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often +deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine +against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn +who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or +murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy +nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry +us over such marshlands of cold style. + +Of these imperfections, fewer are to be found in _Venetia_ and fewest in +_Contarini Fleming_. This beautiful romance is by far the best of +Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can +be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is +thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any direct sense an +autobiography, and yet the mental and moral experiences of the author +animate every chapter of it. This novel is written with far more ease +and grace than any previous book of the author's, and Contarini gives a +reason which explains the improvement in his creator's manner when he +remarks: "I wrote with greater facility than before, because my +experience of life was so much increased that I had no difficulty in +making my characters think and act." _Contarini Fleming_ belongs to +1831, when its writer, at the comparatively ripe age of twenty-seven, +had already seen a vast deal of man and of the world of Europe. + +We are not to believe the preposterous account that Contarini-Disraeli +gives of his methods of composition:-- + + "My thoughts, my passion, the rush of my invention, were too quick + for my pen. Page followed page; as a sheet was finished I threw it + on the floor; I was amazed at the rapid and prolific production, + yet I could not stop to wonder. In half a dozen hours I sank back + exhausted, with an aching frame. I rang the bell, ordered some + refreshment, and walked about the room. The wine invigorated me and + warmed up my sinking fancy, which, however, required little fuel. I + set to it again, and it was midnight before I retired to bed." + +At this rate we may easily compute that the longest of his novels would +be finished in a week. _Contarini Fleming_ seems to have occupied him +the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him, +exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes, +flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a +matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts of +composition. + +It is to be noted that the whole tone of _Contarini Fleming_ is +intensely literary. The appeal to the intellectual, to the fastidious +reader is incessant. This is an attitude always rare in English fiction, +but at that epoch almost unknown, and its presence in the writings of +Disraeli gives them a cachet. Under all the preposterous conversation, +all the unruly turmoil of description, there runs a strong thread of +entirely sober, political, and philosophical ambition. Disraeli striving +with all his might to be a great poet, of the class of Byron and Goethe, +a poet who is also a great mover and master of men--this is what is +manifest to us throughout _Contarini Fleming_. It is almost pathetically +manifest, because Disraeli--whatever else he grew to be--never became a +poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over +the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never +persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a +poet. + +A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial +one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his +serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the +mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in +verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain +buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome, +in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had +been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he +had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding +admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who +complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna +insupportable and the _naïveté_ of Christiana mawkish. There are pages +in _Alroy_ that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how +much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been +conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous gravity +of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his +earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired, +especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift. + +But in _Contarini Fleming_ we detect a new flavour, and it is a very +fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with +the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of +reading _Zadig_ and _Candide_ was the completion of the style of +Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth" +which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic _contes_ +of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does +not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a +tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de +Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the +old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the +startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those +which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in +Parliament. + +In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of _Contarini +Fleming_ cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and +Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is +a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with +Alcesté Contarini is plainly borrowed from _Epiphsychidion_. Disraeli +does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his +voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is +bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through +it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the +extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as _Contarini +Fleming_ are borrowed from no exotic source. + +It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice exercises +over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to +indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's _Life +and Letters_ and the completion of Rogers' _Italy_ with Turner's +paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic +interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city." +Whenever Disraeli reaches Venice his style improves, and if he mourns +over her decay, his spirits rise when he has to describe her +enchantments by moonlight. He reserves his most delicate effects for +Greece and Venice:-- + + "A Grecian sunset! The sky is like the neck of a dove! the rocks + and waters are bathed with a violet light. Each moment it changes; + each moment it shifts into more graceful and more gleaming shadows. + And the thin white moon is above all; the thin white moon, followed + by a single star, like a lady by a page." + +There are many passages as sumptuous as this in _Venetia_, the romance +about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in +publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia +is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron +(Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the +indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which +the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord +Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and refined spirits that have +adorned these our latter days" is highly characteristic of Disraeli. The +reception of Lord Cadurcis in the House of Peers and the subsequent riot +in Palace Yard mark, perhaps, the highest point in direct narrative +power which the novelist had yet reached; but _Venetia_ was not liked, +and Disraeli withdrew from literature into public life. + + +II + +When Disraeli resumed the art of the novelist, he was no longer talking +of what lay outside his experience when he touched on politics. In 1837 +he had entered the House at last, as Member for Maidstone, and although +his enemies roared him down on the first occasion of his rising to +speak, he soon learned how to impose his voice on Parliament. In 1839 +his declaration that "the rights of labour are as sacred as the rights +of property" made him famous, and in 1841 he was one of Sir Robert +Peel's Conservative army in the House. Then followed the formation of +the Young England Party, with Disraeli as one of its leaders; these men +broke away from Peel, and held that the Tory Party required stringent +reform from within. It was in 1843 that Henry Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, +urged, at a meeting of the Young Englanders, the expediency of +Disraeli's "treating in a literary form those views and subjects which +were the matter of their frequent conversations." Disraeli instantly +returned to literary composition, and produced in quick succession the +four books which form the second section of his work as an author; these +are _Coningsby_, _Sybil_, _Tancred_, and the _Life of Lord George +Bentinck_. + +In this group of books we observe, in the first place, a great advance +in vitality and credibility over the novels of the earlier period. +Disraeli is now describing what he knows, no longer what he hopes in +process of time to know. He writes from within, no longer from without +the world of political action. These three novels and a biography are +curiously like one another in form, and all equally make a claim to be +considered not mere works of entertainment, but serious contributions to +political philosophy. The assumption is borne out by the character of +the books, each of which had a definite aim and purpose. _Coningsby_ +was designed to make room for new talent in the Tory Party by an +unflinching attack on the "mediocrities." In _Sybil_ the heartless abuse +of capital and the vices of class distinction are exposed. _Tancred_ is +a vision of better things to follow upon the reforms already indicated. +In _Lord George Bentinck_, under the guise of a record of the struggle +between Protection and Free Trade, we have a manual of personal conduct +as applied to practical politics. + +In all these works narrative pure and simple inclines to take a +secondary place. It does so least in _Coningsby_ which, as a story, is +the most attractive book of Disraeli's middle period, and one of the +most brilliant studies of political character ever published. The tale +is interspersed with historical essays, which impede its progress but +add to its weight and value. Where, however, the author throws himself +into his narrative, the advance he has made in power, and particularly +in truth of presentment, is very remarkable. In the early group of his +novels he had felt a great difficulty in transcribing conversations so +as to produce a natural and easy effect. He no longer, in _Coningsby_, +is confronted by this artificiality. His dialogues are now generally +remarkable for their ease and nature. The speeches of Rigby (who +represents John Wilson Croker), of Lord Monmouth (who stands for Lord +Hertford), of the Young Englanders themselves, of the laughable chorus +of Taper and Tadpole, who never "despaired of the Commonwealth," are +often extremely amusing. In _Coningsby_ we have risen out of the +rose-coloured mist of unreality which hung over books like _The Young +Duke_ and _Henrietta Temple_. The agitated gentleman whose peerage hangs +in the balance, and who on hearing that the Duke of Wellington is with +the King breathes out in a sigh of relief "Then there _is_ a +Providence," is a type of the subsidiary figure which Disraeli had now +learned to introduce with infinite lightness of irony. + +Disraeli had a passion for early youth, and in almost all his books he +dwells lovingly upon its characteristics. It is particularly in +_Contarini Fleming_ and in _Coningsby_--that is to say, in the best +novels of his first and of his second period--that he lingers over the +picture of schoolboy life with tenderness and sympathy. We have only to +compare them, however, to see how great an advance he had made in ten +years in his power of depicting such scenes. The childish dreams of +Contarini are unchecked romance, and though the friendship with Musæus +is drawn with delicacy and insight, and though that is an extremely +pretty scene where Christiana soothes the pride of Contarini, yet a +manliness and a reality are missing which we find in the wonderful Eton +scenes of _Coningsby_. + +Disraeli's comprehension of the feelings of half-grown ambitious boys of +good family was extraordinary, and when we consider that he had never +been to a public school, his picture of the life and conversation at +Eton is remarkable for its fidelity to nature. The relation of the elder +schoolboys to one another--a theme to which he was fond of recurring--is +treated in a very adroit and natural spirit, not without a certain +Dorian beauty. This preoccupation with the sentiments and passions of +schoolboys was rather crudely found fault with at the time. We need have +no difficulty in comprehending the pleasure he felt in watching the +expansion of those youthful minds from whom he hoped for all that was to +make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at +Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed, +and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour--an act +of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of--is +justified by the dignified success of a very dangerous experiment. + +The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest +good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the +most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the +caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's +poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as +Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he +was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just +scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might +want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who "might have +acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so +many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely +have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all +the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale +stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the +forest, over the celebrated dish of "still-hissing bacon and eggs that +looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur, +and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli +himself. + +When we pass from _Coningsby_ to _Sybil_ we find the purely narrative +interest considerably reduced in the pursuit of a scheme of political +philosophy. This is of all Disraeli's novels the one which most +resembles a pamphlet on a serious topic. For this reason it has never +been a favourite among his works, and his lighter readers have passed it +over with a glance. _Sybil_, however, is best not read at all if it is +not carefully studied. In the course of _Coningsby_, that young hero had +found his way to Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world, +"poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and +feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in +our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the +portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But +it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the +working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract +his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious +and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear +witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied +Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that +he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he +was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers. + +All this is reflected on the surface of _Sybil_, and, notwithstanding +curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and +true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted +than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard, +the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his +daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell +you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant +answer, "You _are_ a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You +are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town." +This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations +among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave _Sybil_ no +chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the +depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to +produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories, +which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier +simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given +fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of +Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not +blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures +of human suffering in _Sybil_. + +Then followed _Tancred_, which, as it has always been reported, +continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary +offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties +which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he +became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began +to despair of discovering any cure for it. In _Tancred_ he laid aside in +great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book +is steeped in the colours of poetry--of poetry, that is to say, as the +florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens--as all his books love to +open--with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is +commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type +of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a +flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative. +Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely +picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream. + +The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in +_Coningsby_, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central +theme of the story in _Tancred_. This novel is inspired by an outspoken +and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its +future. In the presence of the mighty monuments of Jerusalem, Disraeli +forgets that he is a Christian and an ambitious member of the English +Parliament. His only solicitude is to recover his privileges as a Jew, +and to recollect that he stands in the majestic cradle of his race. He +becomes interpenetrated with solemn mysticism; a wind of faith blows in +his hair. He cries, "God never spoke except to an Arab," and we are +therefore not surprised to find an actual Divine message presently +pronounced in Tancred's ears as he stands on the summit of Mount Sinai. +This is, perhaps, the boldest flight of imagination which occurs in the +writings of Disraeli. Tancred endeavours to counteract the purely +Hebraic influences of Palestine by making a journey of homage to +Astarte, a mysterious and beautiful Pagan queen--an "Aryan," as he loves +to put it--who reigns in the mountains of Syria. But even she does not +encourage him to put his trust in the progress of Western Europe. + +_Tancred_ is written in Disraeli's best middle style, full, sonorous, +daring, and rarely swelling into bombast. It would even be too uniformly +grave if the fantastic character of Facredeen did not relieve the +solemnity of the discourse with his amusing tirades. Like that of all +Disraeli's novels, the close of this one is dim and unsatisfactory. If +there is anything that the patient reader wants to know it is how the +Duke and Duchess of Bellemont behaved to the Lady of Bethany when they +arrived at Jerusalem and found their son in the kiosk under her +palm-tree. But this is curiosity of a class which Disraeli is not +unwilling to awaken, but which he never cares to satisfy. He places the +problems in a heap before us, and he leaves us to untie the knots. It is +a highly characteristic trait of his mind as a writer that he is for +ever preoccupied with the beginnings of things, and as little as +possible with their endings. + +It is not, however, from _Tancred_ but from _Coningsby_, that we take +our example of Disraeli's second manner:-- + + "Even to catch Lord Monmouth's glance was not an easy affair; he + was much occupied on one side by the great lady, on the other were + several gentlemen who occasionally joined in the conversation. But + something must be done. + + "There ran through Coningsby's character, as we have before + mentioned, a vein of simplicity which was not its least charm. It + resulted, no doubt, in a great degree from the earnestness of his + nature. There never was a boy so totally devoid of affectation, + which was remarkable, for he had a brilliant imagination, a quality + that, from its fantasies, and the vague and indefinite desires it + engenders, generally makes those whose characters are not formed, + affected. The Duchess, who was a fine judge of character, and who + greatly regarded Coningsby, often mentioned this trait as one + which, combined with his great abilities and acquirements so + unusual at his age, rendered him very interesting. In the present + instance it happened that, while Coningsby was watching his + grandfather, he observed a gentleman advance, make his bow, say and + receive a few words and retire. This little incident, however, made + a momentary diversion in the immediate circle of Lord Monmouth, and + before they could all resume their former talk and fall into their + previous positions, an impulse sent forth Coningsby, who walked up + to Lord Monmouth, and standing before him, said, + + "'How do you do, grandpapa?' + + "Lord Monmouth beheld his grandson. His comprehensive and + penetrating glance took in every point with a flash. There stood + before him one of the handsomest youths he had ever seen, with a + mien as graceful as his countenance was captivating; and his whole + air breathing that freshness and ingenuousness which none so much + appreciates as the used man of the world. And this was his child; + the only one of his blood to whom he had been kind. It would be an + exaggeration to say that Lord Monmouth's heart was touched; but his + good-nature effervesced, and his fine taste was deeply gratified. + He perceived in an instant such a relation might be a valuable + adherent; an irresistible candidate for future elections: a + brilliant tool to work out the Dukedom. All these impressions and + ideas, and many more, passed through the quick brain of Lord + Monmouth ere the sound of Coningsby's words had seemed to cease, + and long before the surrounding guests had recovered from the + surprise which they had occasioned them, and which did not + diminish, when Lord Monmouth, advancing, placed his arms round + Coningsby with a dignity of affection that would have become Louis + XIV., and then, in the high manner of the old Court, kissed him on + each cheek. + + "'Welcome to your home,' said Lord Monmouth. 'You have grown a + great deal.' + + "Then Lord Monmouth led the agitated Coningsby to the great lady, + who was a Princess and an Ambassadress, and then, placing his arm + gracefully in that of his grandson, he led him across the room, and + presented him in due form to some royal blood that was his guest, + in the shape of a Russian Grand Duke. His Imperial Highness + received our hero as graciously as the grandson of Lord Monmouth + might expect; but no greeting can be imagined warmer than the one + he received from the lady with whom the Grand Duke was conversing. + She was a dame whose beauty was mature, but still radiant. Her + figure was superb; her dark hair crowned with a tiara of curious + workmanship. Her rounded arm was covered with costly bracelets, but + not a jewel on her finely-formed bust, and the least possible rouge + on her still oval cheek. Madame Colonna retained her charms." + + +III + +Nearly a quarter of a century passed, during which Disraeli slowly rose +to the highest honours in the State. Lord Derby died, and the novelist, +already Leader of the House of Commons, found himself called to be Prime +Minister of England. His first administration, however, was brief, and +in the last days of 1868 he resigned in favour of Mr. Gladstone. The +Liberals were in for five years, and Disraeli, in opposition, found a +sort of tableland stretch in front of him after so much arduous +climbing. It was at this moment, shortly after the resignation of the +Tory Minister, that the publisher of a magazine approached him with the +request that he would write a novel to appear in its pages. He was +offered, it is said, a sum of money far in excess of what any one, at +that time, had ever received for "serial rights." Disraeli refused the +offer, but it may have drawn his thoughts back to literature, and in the +course of 1869, after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was +completed, he found time to write what is unquestionably the greatest of +his literary works--the superb ironic romance of _Lothair_. + +Eminent as he was and eminently successful, Disraeli was far, in 1870, +from having conquered public opinion in England. The reception of his +new novel was noisy, and enjoyed to the full the clamours of +advertisement, but it was not favourable. The critics laughed it to +scorn, and called it a farce and a failure. The _Quarterly Review_, in +the course of a savage diatribe, declared that it was "as dull as +ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it +as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the +criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as +Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to +kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit +that if the stormy Parliamentarian life Disraeli had led so long had +given him immense personal advantages, it had also developed some +defects. It had taught him boundless independence and courage, it had +given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his +satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had +encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the +bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of _Coningsby_ and +of _Tancred_ he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But +_Lothair_, even in its corrected form--and the first edition is a +miracle of laxity--is curiously incorrect. It reads as though it were +taken down from the flowing speech of a fine orator, not as though it +were painfully composed in a study; it contains surprising ellipses, +strange freaks of grammar. There was all this, and more, to encourage +the critics, whom Disraeli had gone out of his way to affront in a +violent epigram, to attack _Lothair_ with contempt and resentment. + +The critics took irony for timidity; they thought that the sardonic +novelist was the dupe of the splendours which he invented and gloated +over. But if one thing is more evident than another to-day it is that +this gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl +and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an +immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in +another sense, the keynote of _Lothair_ is "mockery blended with Ionian +splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been +more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise +that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life, +and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous, +but he let himself go in _Lothair_; all is like the dream of a Lorenzo +dei Medicis or an Aurungzebe. Nothing is done by halves. Muriel Towers +was set on "the largest natural lake that inland England boasts"--some +lake far larger than Windermere and entirely unsuspected by geographers. +This piece of water is studded with "green islands," which is natural. +But the author cannot stay his hand: this largest of the English lakes +is also alive with "golden gondolas," which are rarer objects. In one of +the odd little flashes of self-criticism which illuminate the book +Lothair says of a certain northern garden, with its fanes and its +fountains, its glittering statues and its Babylonian terraces, that +there are "perhaps too many temples." + +There are perhaps too many temples in the landscape of _Lothair_, but +they were put in on purpose. The splendour is part of the satire. When +the hero has ordered an architect to make some plans for a building, the +door opens and servants enter bearing "a large and magnificent portfolio +of morocco, made of prelatial purple with broad bands of gold and +alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet." It is the sort of +portfolio that Belshazzar might have used, but no English master-builder +since time began ever launched forth into such splendour. This is +characteristic of Disraeli and of his book; it pleased him to wrap all +his fancies in jewelled cloth of gold. He chose that the world should +consist of nothing but Tudor palaces in colossal parks, and that time +should be no other than a perpetual Holy Week of golden ceremonial. He +knew his public, and that it adored these follies. He spoke to them in +the language that they loved, but in a tone of the most seraphical +disdain and irony. + +What marks the whole of Disraeli's writings more than any other quality +is the buoyant and radiant temperament of their author. In _Lothair_ he +is like an inspired and enfranchised boy, set free from all the trammels +of reality, and yet bringing to the service of his theme the results of +an extraordinary inherited experience. If the picture is not real, we +may take courage to say that it is far better than reality--more rich, +more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly +written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and +when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a +mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is +seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of _Lothair_, and have become +part of our habitual speech--the phrase about eating "a little fruit on +a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the +gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that +Disraeli is one of those who have felt most vividly and expressed most +gaily the peculiar physical beauty of London. He saw the Park as the +true Londoner sees it--when "the chestnuts are in silver bloom, and the +pink may has flushed the thorns, and banks of sloping turf are radiant +with plots of gorgeous flowers; when the water glitters in the sun, and +the air is fragrant with that spell which only can be found in +metropolitan mignonette." He describes as no one else has ever done with +equal mastery a stately and successful house-party in a great country +mansion. He had developed, when he composed _Lothair_, a fuller sense of +beauty than he had ever possessed before, but it revelled in forms that +were partly artificial and partly fabulous. An example of these forms +may now be welcome:-- + + "Mr. Giles took an early easy opportunity of apprising Lady + Farringford that she had nearly met Cardinal Grandison at dinner, + and that his Eminence would certainly pay his respects to Mrs. + Putney Giles in the evening. As Lady Farringford was at present a + high ritualist, and had even been talked of as 'going to Rome,' + this intelligence was stunning, and it was observed that her + Ladyship was unusually subdued during the whole of the second + course. + + "On the right of Lothair sate the wife of a Vice-Chancellor, a + quiet and pleasing lady, to whom Lothair, with natural good + breeding, paid snatches of happy attention, when he could for a + moment with propriety withdraw himself from the blaze of + Apollonia's coruscating conversation. Then there was a rather + fierce-looking Red Ribbon, medalled as well as be-starred, and the + Red Ribbon's wife, with a blushing daughter, in spite of her + parentage not yet accustomed to stand fire. A partner and his + unusually numerous family had the pleasure also of seeing Lothair + for the first time, and there were no less than four M.P.'s, one of + whom was even in office. + + "Apollonia was stating to Lothair, with brilliant perspicuity, the + reasons which quite induced her to believe that the Gulf Stream had + changed its course, and the political and social consequences that + might accrue. + + "'The religious sentiment of the Southern races must be wonderfully + affected by a more rigorous climate,' said Apollonia. 'I cannot + doubt,' she continued, 'that a series of severe winters at Rome + might put an end to Romanism. + + "'But is there any fear that a reciprocal influence might be + exercised on the Northern nations?' inquired Lothair. 'Would there + be any apprehension of our Protestantism becoming proportionately + relaxed?' + + "'Of course not,' said Apollonia. 'Truth cannot be affected by + climate. Truth is truth alike in Palestine and Scandinavia.' + + "'I wonder what the Cardinal would think of this,' said Lothair, + 'who, you tell me, is coming to you this evening.' + + "'Yes, I am most interested to see him, though he is the most + puissant of our foes. Of course he would take refuge in sophistry; + and science, you know, they deny.' + + "'Cardinal Grandison is giving some lectures on science,' said the + Vice-Chancellor's lady, quietly. + + "'It is remorse,' said Apollonia. 'Their clever men can never + forget that unfortunate affair of Galileo, and think they can + divert the indignation of the nineteenth century by mock zeal about + red sandstone or the origin of species.' + + "'And are you afraid of the Gulf Stream?' inquired Lothair of his + calmer neighbour. + + "'I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor + and I went down to a place we have near town on Saturday, where + there is a very nice piece of water; indeed, some people call it a + lake; it was quite frozen, and my boys wanted to skate, but that I + would not permit.' + + "'You believe in the Gulf Stream to that extent,' said Lothair; 'no + skating.' + + "The Cardinal came early; the ladies had not long left the + dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even + Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the + inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence with + Caprera. + + "Nothing could exceed the simple suavity with which the Cardinal + appeared, approached, and greeted them. He thanked Apollonia for + her permission to pay his respects to her, which he had long + wished to do; and then they were all presented, and he said exactly + the right thing to every one." + +Disraeli began his career, as I have pointed out in the earlier part of +this essay, as a purveyor of entertainment to the public in a popular +and not very dignified kind. He contended with the crowd of fashionable +novelists whose books consoled the leisure of Mrs. Wititterly as she +reclined on the drawing-room sofa. He found rivals in Bulwer and Mrs. +Gore, and a master in Plumer Ward. His brilliant stories sold, but at +first they won him little advantage. Slowly, by dint of his inherent +force of genius, his books have not merely survived their innumerable +fellows, but they have come to represent to us the form and character of +a whole school; nay, more, they have come to take the place in our +memories of a school which, but for them, would have utterly passed away +and been forgotten. Disraeli, accordingly, is unique, not merely because +his are the only fashionable novels of the pre-Victorian era which any +one ever reads nowadays, but because in his person that ineffable manner +of the "thirties" reaches an isolated sublimity and finds a permanent +place in literature. But if we take a still wider view of the literary +career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the +interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence +their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do +what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and +Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite +resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices +of convention, and trod English society beneath his foot in the +triumphant irony of success. It is the living Disraeli who is always +more salient than the most fascinating of his printed pages. + + + + +THREE EXPERIMENTS IN PORTRAITURE + + +I + +LADY DOROTHY NEVILL + +AN OPEN LETTER + + Dear Lady Burghclere, + + When we met for the first time after the death of our friend, you + desired me to produce what you were kind enough to call "one of my + portraits." But the art of the portrait-writer is capricious, and + at that time I felt wholly disinclined for the adventure. I excused + myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her + reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected, + though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the + evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy were insuperable. + I partly think so still, but your command has lingered in my memory + all these months, and I have determined to attempt to obey you, + although what I send you can be no "portrait," but a few leaves + torn out of a painter-writer's sketch-book. + + The existence of the three published volumes does, after all, not + preclude a more intimate study, because they are confessedly + exterior. They represent what she saw and heard, not what others + perceived in her. In the first place, they are very much better + written than she would have written them herself. I must dwell + presently on the curious fact that, with all her wit, she + possessed no power of sustained literary expression. Her Memoirs + were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised + writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public. + On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all + the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has + been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better + part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he + extracted these old anecdotes of my early years." This is as + bravely characteristic of her modesty as it is of her candour, but + I think it shows that there is still room for some record of the + more intimate features of her charming and elusive character. I + take up my pencil, but with little hope of success, since no more + formidable task could be set me. I will at least try to be, as she + would have scorned me for not being, sincere. + + My friendship with Lady Dorothy Nevill occupied more than a quarter + of a century. I met her first in the house of Sir Redvers and Lady + Audrey Buller in the winter of 1887, soon after their return from + Ireland. She had done me the great honour of desiring that I should + be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the + zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in + years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked + together on that first occasion for hours, and it seems to me that + I was lifted, without preliminaries, into her intimacy. From that + afternoon, until I drank tea with her for the last time, ten days + before her death, the precious link was never loosened. + + In 1887, her great social popularity had not begun. She was, I now + know, already near sixty, but it never occurred to me to consider + her age. She possessed a curious static quality, a perennial + youthfulness. Every one must have observed how like Watts' picture + of her at twenty she still was at eighty-six. This was not + preserved by any arts or fictile graces. She rather affected, + prematurely, the dress and appearance of an elderly woman. I + remember her as always the same, very small and neat, very pretty + with her chiselled nose, the fair oval of her features, the + slightly ironic, slightly meditative smile, the fascinating colour + of the steady eyes, beautifully set in the head, with the eyebrows + rather lifted as in a perpetual amusement of curiosity. Her head, + slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little + sideways, like a bird's that contemplates a hemp-seed. She had no + quick movements, no gestures; she held herself very still. It + always appeared to me that, in face of her indomitable energy and + love of observation, this was an unconscious economy of force. It + gave her a very peculiar aspect; I remember once frivolously saying + to her that she looked as though she were going to "pounce" at me; + but she never pounced. When she had to move, she rose energetically + and moved with determination, but she never wasted a movement. Her + physical strength--and she such a tiny creature--seemed to be + wonderful. She was seldom unwell, although, like most very healthy + people, she bewailed herself with exaggerated lamentations whenever + anything was the matter with her. But even on these occasions she + defied what she called "coddling." Once I found her suffering from + a cold, on a very chilly day, without a fire, and I expostulated. + She replied, with a sort of incongruity very characteristic of her, + "Oh! none of your hot bottles for me!" In her last hours of + consciousness she battled with the doctor's insistence that she + must have a fire in her bedroom, and her children had to conceal + the flame behind screens because she threatened to get out of bed + and put it out. Her marvellous physical force has to be insisted + on, for it was the very basis of her character. + + Her humorous petulance, her little sharp changes of voice, the + malice of her downcast eyes, the calmness of her demure and easy + smile--how is any impression to be given of things so fugitive? + Her life, which had not been without its troubles and anxieties, + became one of prolonged and intense enjoyment. I think that this + was the main reason of the delight which her company gave to almost + every one. She was like a household blaze upon a rainy day, one + stretched out one's hands to be warmed. She guarded herself against + the charge of being amiable. "It would be horrid to be amiable," + she used to say, and, indeed, there was always a touch of sharpness + about her. She was amused once because I told her she was like an + acidulated drop, half sweet and half sour. "Oh! any stupid woman + can be sweet," she said, "it's often another name for imbecile." + + She had curious little prejudices and antipathies. I never fathomed + the reason of her fantastic horror of the feasts of the Church, + particularly of Christmas. She always became curiously agitated as + the month of December waned. In her notes she inveighed, in quaint + alarm, against the impending "Christmas pains and penalties." I + think she disliked the disturbance of social arrangements which + these festivals entailed. But there was more than that. She was + certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century + sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly + said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after any project, + even of the most frivolous kind. The idea was that one should be + polite all round, in case of any contingency. When she was in the + Riviera, she was much interested to hear that the Prince of Monaco + had built and endowed a handsome church at Monte Carlo. "Very + clever of him," she said, "for you never can tell." + + Lady Dorothy's entire absence of affectation was eminently + attractive. She would be mistress of herself, though China fell. + Her strange little activities, her needlework, her paperwork, her + collections, were the wonder of everybody, but she did not require + approval; she adopted them, in the light of day, for her own + amusement. She never pushed her peculiarities on the notice of + visitors, but, at the same time, if discovered in the act of some + incredible industry, she went on with it calmly. When she was in + Heidelberg in 1892 and successive years, what interested her was + the oddity of the students' life; she expatiated to me on their + beer and their sabre-cuts. Whenever I went abroad of late years, I + was exhorted to send her picture post-cards from out-of-the-way + places, and "Remember that I like vulgar ones best," she added + imperturbably. The story is perhaps known to you of how, in a + circle of superfine ladies, the conversation turned to food, and + the company outdid one another in protestations of delicacy. This + one could only touch a little fruit, and that one was practically + confined to a cup of tea. Lady Dorothy, who had remained silent and + detached, was appealed to as to her opinion. In a sort of loud + cackling--a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted--she replied, + "Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of + the _précieuses_. She had a wholesome respect for food, quite + orthodox and old-fashioned, although I think she ate rather + markedly little. But she liked that little good. She wrote to me + once from Cannes, "This is not an intellectual place, but then the + body rejoices in the cooking, and thanks God for that." She liked + to experiment in foods, and her guests sometimes underwent strange + surprises. One day she persuaded old Lord Wharncliffe, who was a + great friend of hers, to send her a basket of guinea-pig, and she + entertained a very distinguished company on a fricassee of this + unusual game. She refused to say what the dish was until every one + had heartily partaken, and then Mr. George Russell turned suddenly + pale and fled from the room. "Nothing but fancy," remarked the + hostess, composedly. When several years ago there was a proposal + that we should feed upon horse-flesh, and a purveyor of that dainty + opened a shop in Mayfair, Lady Dorothy was one of the first of his + customers. She sallied forth in person, followed by a footman with + a basket, and bought a joint in the presence of a jeering populace. + + She had complete courage and absolute tolerance. Sometimes she + pretended to be timid or fanatical, but that was only her fun. Her + toleration and courage would have given her a foremost place among + philanthropists or social reformers, if her tendencies had been + humanitarian. She might have been another Elizabeth Fry, another + Florence Nightingale. But she had no impulse whatever towards + active benevolence, nor any interest in masses of men and women. + And, above all, she was not an actor, but a spectator in life, and + she evaded, often with droll agility, all the efforts which people + made to drag her into propagandas of various kinds. She listened to + what they had to say, and she begged for the particulars of + specially awful examples of the abuses they set out to remedy. She + was all sympathy and interest, and the propagandist started with + this glittering ally in tow; but he turned, and where was she? She + had slipped off, and was in contemplation of some other scheme of + experience. + + She described her life to me, in 1901, as a "treadmill of + friendship, perpetually on the go"; and later she wrote: "I am + hampered by perpetual outbursts of hospitality in every shape." + Life was a spectacle to her, and society a congeries of little + _guignols_, at all of which she would fain be seated, in a front + stall. If she complained that hospitality "hampered" her, it was + not that it interfered with any occupation or duty, but simply that + she could not eat luncheon at three different houses at once. I + remember being greatly amused when I congratulated her on having + enjoyed some eminent public funeral, by her replying, grudgingly: + "Yes--but I lost another most interesting ceremony through its + being at the same hour." She grumbled: "People are tugging me to + go and see things," not from any shyness of the hermit or + reluctance to leave her home, but simply because she would gladly + have yielded to them all. "Such a nuisance one can't be in two + places at once, like a bird!" she remarked to me. + + In this relation, her attitude to country life was droll. After + long indulgence in her amazing social energy in London, she would + suddenly become tired. The phenomenon never ceased to surprise her; + she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this + must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to + Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the + soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss + of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the + future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short + while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, D.N.," would show the + dawn of a return to nature. Then _boutades_ of increasing vehemence + would mark the rising impatience. Sept 12: "How dreadful it is that + the country is so full of ladies." Sept. 15: "I am surrounded by + tall women and short women, all very tiresome." Sept. 20: "So dull + here, except for one pleasant episode of a drunken housemaid." + Sept. 23: "Oh! I am so longing for the flesh-pots of dear dirty old + London"; and then one knew that her return to Charles Street would + not be long delayed. She was very fond indeed of country life, for + a short time, and she was interested in gardens, but she really + preferred streets. "Eridge is such a paradise--especially the + quadrupeds," she once wrote to me from a house in which she found + peculiar happiness. But she liked bipeds best. + + However one may postpone the question, sooner or later it is + necessary to consider the quality of Lady Dorothy Nevill's wit, + since all things converge in her to that. But her wit is so + difficult to define that it is not surprising that one avoids, as + long as possible, coming actually to grips with it. We may lay the + foundation of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound + of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality of speech. + The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly + intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of + such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who + enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with + annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did + not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of + solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right + and sane; it was exhilarating to a high degree; it was lighted up + by merriment, and piquancy, and salt; but it was the result of a + kind of magic which needed the wand of the magician; it could not + be reproduced by an imitator. It is very unfortunate, but the fact + has to be faced. When we tell our grandchildren that Lady Dorothy + Nevill was the finest female wit of her age, they will ask us for + examples of her talent, and we shall have very few to give. + + She liked to discuss people better than books or politics or + principles, although she never shrank from these. But it was what + she said about human beings that kept her interlocutors hanging on + her lips. She made extraordinarily searching strictures on persons, + without malice, but without nonsense of any kind. Her own + favourites were treated with reserve in this respect: it was as + though they were put in a pen by themselves, not to be criticised + so long as they remained in favour; and she was not capricious, + was, on the contrary, conspicuously loyal. But they always had the + impression that it was only by special licence that they escaped + the criticism that every one else was subjected to. Lady Dorothy + Nevill was a stringent observer, and no respecter of persons. She + carried a bow, and shot at folly as it flew. But I particularly + wish to insist on the fact that her arrows, though they were + feathered, were not poisoned. + + Light was thrown on the nature of Lady Dorothy's wit by her + correspondence. She could in no accepted sense be called a good + letter-writer, although every now and then brilliantly amusing + phrases occurred in her letters. I doubt whether she ever wrote one + complete epistle; her correspondence consisted of tumultuous, + reckless, sometimes extremely confused and incorrect notes, which, + however, repeated--for those who knew how to interpret her + language--the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with + her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary + value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, + and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was + generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what + stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She once wrote to me: "I + should like to tell you all about it, but alas! old Horace + Walpole's talent has not descended on me." Unfortunately, that was + true; so far as literary expression and the construction of + sentences went, it had not. Her correspondence could never be given + to the world, because it would need to be so much revised and + expanded and smoothed out that it would no longer be hers at all. + + Nevertheless, her reckless notes were always delightful to receive, + because they gave the person to whom they were addressed a + reflection of the writer's mood at the moment. They were ardent and + personal, in their torrent of broken sentences, initials, mis-spelt + names and nouns that had dropped their verbs. They were not so good + as her talk, but they were like enough to it to be highly + stimulating and entertaining; and in the course of them phrases + would be struck out, like sparks from flint, which were nearly as + good, and of the very same quality, as the things she used to say. + She wrote her letters on a fantastic variety of strangely coloured + paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey, + paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or frilled like + a lace handkerchief, or embossed with forget-me-nots like a child's + valentine. She had tricks of time-saving; always put "I" for "one," + and "x" for "cross," a word which she, who was never cross, loved + to use. "I did not care for any of the guests; we seemed to live in + a storm of x questions and crooked answers," she would write, or "I + am afraid my last letter was rather x." + + Lady Dorothy, as a letter-writer, had no superstitious reverence + for the parts of speech. Like M. Bergeret, she "se moquait de + l'orthographie comme une chose méprisable." The spelling in her + tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the + seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of + her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected + her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering + denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns + and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to + 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most + of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to + him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.," + she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from + "Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she + had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to + recognise the author of _English Monastic Life_. She would laugh + herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her + about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be + a bright specimen--like you!" When she made arrangements to come to + see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always + wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle. + + One curious observation which the recipient of hundreds of her + notes is bound to make, is the remarkable contrast between the + general tone of them and the real disposition of their writer. Lady + Dorothy Nevill in person was placid, indulgent, and calm; she never + raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her + individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the + amused and attentive spectator in the theatre of life. But in her + letters she pretended to be, or supposed herself called upon to + seem, passionate and distracted. They are all twinkling with + humorous or petulant exaggeration. She happens to forget an + engagement, which was of no sort of importance, and this is how she + apologises:-- + + "To think that every hour since you said you would come I have + repeated to myself--Gosse at 5, Gosse at 5, and then after all to + go meandering off and leaving you to cuss and swear on the + doorstep, and you will never come again now, really. No punishment + here or hereafter will be too much for me. Lead me to the Red Hill + Asylum, and leave me there." + + This was written nearly twenty years ago, and she was not less + vivacious until the end. Lord Lansdowne tells me of an anonymous + letter which he once received, to which she afterwards pleaded + guilty. A cow used to be kept at the back of Lansdowne House, and + the animal, no doubt feeling lonely, was in the habit of lowing at + all sorts of hours. The letter, which was supposed to voice the + complaint of the neighbours in Charles Street, was couched in the + broadest Wiltshire dialect, and ended with the postscript: "Dang + 'un, there 'ee goes again!" As a matter of fact, her letters, about + which she had no species of vanity or self-consciousness, were to + her merely instruments of friendship. There was an odd mingling of + affection and stiffness in them. She marshalled her acquaintances + with them, and almost invariably they were concerned with + arrangements for meeting or explanations of absence. In my own + experience, I must add that she made an exception when her friends + were abroad, when she took considerable pains to tell them the + gossip, often in surprising terms. I was once regaled with her + experiences as the neighbour of a famous African magnate, and with + the remark, "Mrs. ----," a London fine lady of repute, "has been + here, and has scraped the whole inside out of Mr. ----, and gone + her way rejoicing." Nor did she spare the correspondent himself:-- + + "Old Dr. ---- has been here, and tells me he admires you very much; + but I believe he has lost his memory, and he never had good taste + at any time." + + This was not a tribute which self-esteem could hug to its bosom. Of + a very notorious individual she wrote to me:-- + + "I thought I should never be introduced to him, and I had to wait + 100 years, but everything is possible in the best of worlds, and he + was very satisfactory at last." Satisfactory! No word could be more + characteristic on the pen of Lady Dorothy. To be "satisfactory," + whether you were the President of the French Republic or Lord + Wolseley or the Human Elephant (a pathetic freak in whom she took a + great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her + unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by + Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he + did his job thoroughly. The only entirely unsatisfactory people + were those who were insipid, conventional, and empty. "The first + principle of society should be to extinguish the bores," she once + said. I remember going with her to the Zoo in 1898, and being + struck with a remark which she made, not because it was important, + but because it was characteristic. We were looking at the wolves + which she liked; and then, close by, she noticed some kind of + Indian cow. "What a bore for the wolves to have to live opposite a + cow!" and then, as if talking to herself, "I do hate a ruminant!" + + Her relations to literature, art, and science were spectacular + also. She was a sympathetic and friendly onlooker, always on the + side of those things against the Philistines, but not affecting + special knowledge herself. She was something of a virtuoso. She + once said, "I have a passion for reading, but on subjects which + nobody else will touch," and this indicated the independence of her + mind. She read to please herself, and to satisfy her thirst for + experience. When our friendship began, Zola was in the act of + producing the tremendous series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. It + was one of our early themes of conversation. Zola was then an + object of shuddering horror to the ordinary English reader. Lady + Dorothy had already read _L'Assommoir_, and had not shrunk from it; + so I ventured to tell her of _La Terre_, which was just appearing. + She wrote to me about it: "I have been reading Zola. He takes the + varnish off rural life, I must say. Oh! these horrid demons of + Frenchmen know how to write. Even the most disgusting things they + know how to describe poetically. I wish Zola could describe + Haslemere with all the shops shut, rain falling, and most of the + inhabitants in their cups." She told me later--for we followed our + Zola to _Lourdes_ and _Paris_--that some young Oxford prig saw _La + Bête Humaine_ lying on the table at Charles Street, and remarked + that Lady Dorothy could surely not be aware that that was "no book + for a lady." She said, "I told him it was just the book for me!" + + She read Disraeli's novels over again, from time to time, with a + renewal of sentiment. "I am dedicating my leisure hours to + _Endymion_. What a charm after the beef and mutton of ordinary + novels!" She gradually developed a cult for Swinburne, whom she had + once scorned; in her repentance after his death, she wrote: "I + never hear enough about that genius Swinburne! My heart warms when + I think of him and read his poems." I think she was very much + annoyed that he had never been a visitor at Charles Street. When + Verlaine was in England, to deliver a lecture, in 1894, Lady + Dorothy was insistent that, as I was seeing him frequently, I + should bring the author of _Parallelement_ to visit her. She + said--I think under some illusion--"Verlaine is one of my pet + poets, though," she added, "not of this world." I was obliged to + tell her that neither Verlaine's clothes, nor his person, nor his + habits, admitted of his being presented in Mayfair, and that, + indeed, it was difficult to find a little French eating-house in + Soho where he could be at home. She then said: "Why can't you take + me to see him in this eating-house?" I had to explain that of the + alternatives that was really the least possible. She was not + pleased. + + Nor am I pleased with this attempt of mine to draw the features of + our wonderful fairy friend. However I may sharpen the pencil, the + line it makes is still too heavy. I feel that these anecdotes seem + to belie her exquisite refinement, the rapidity and delicacy of her + mental movement. To tell them is like stroking the wings of a moth. + Above all, it is a matter of despair to attempt to define her + emotional nature. Lady Dorothy Nevill was possessed neither of + gravity nor of pathos; she was totally devoid of sentimentality. + This made it easy for a superficial observer to refuse to believe + that the author of so many pungent observations and such apparently + volatile cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in + company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, + and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was + shown, with great fidelity, to those whom she really honoured with + her favour. I do not know whether it would be strictly correct to + say that she had the genius of friendship, because that supposes a + certain initiative and action which were foreign to Lady Dorothy's + habits. But she possessed, to a high degree, the genius of + comradeship. She held the reins very tightly, and she let no one + escape whom she wished to retain. She took immense pains to + preserve her friendships, and indeed became, dear creature, a + little bit tyrannical at last. Her notes grew to be excessively + emphatic. She would begin a letter quite cheerfully with "Oh, you + demon!" or complain of "total and terrible neglect of an old + friend; I could fill this sheet of paper with an account of your + misdeeds!" She was ingenious in reproach: "I cannot afford to waste + penny after penny, and no assets forthcoming," or "I have only two + correspondents, and one of them is a traitor; I therefore cease to + write to you for ever!" This might sound formidable, but it was + only one of the constant surprises of her humour, and would be + followed next day by the most placable of notelets. + + Her curiosity with regard to life spread to her benevolences, which + often took somewhat the form of voyages of discovery. Among these + her weekly excursion to the London Hospital, in all weathers and in + every kind of cheap conveyance, was prominent. I have to confess + that I preferred that a visit to her should not be immediately + prefaced by one of these adventures among the "pore dear things" at + the hospital, because that was sure to mean the recital of some + gruesome operation she had heard of, or the details of some almost + equally gruesome cure. She enjoyed the whole experience in a way + which is blank to the professional humanitarian, but I suspect the + "pore dear things" appreciated her listening smile and sympathetic + worldliness much more than they would have done the admonitions of + a more conscious philanthropist. + + And, indeed, in retrospect, it is her kindliness that shines forth. + She followed all that her friends did, everything that happened to + those who were close to them. She liked always to receive the + tribute of what she called my "literary efforts," and was + ruthlessly sharp in observing announcements of them: "Publishing + again, and of course no copy for poor old me," when not a volume + had yet left the binders. She took up absurd little phrases with + delightful _camaraderie_; I have forgotten why at one time she + took to signing herself "Your Koh-i-Noor," and wrote: "If I can + hope to be the Koh-i-Noor of Mrs. Gosse's party, I shall be sure to + come on Monday." One might go on indefinitely reviving these + memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close + on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She + had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the + tone of her persiflage rather excessive; a few hours later came a + second note, which began: "You have made my life happier for me + these last years--you, and Lady Airlie, and dearest Winifred." From + her who never gave way to sentimentality in any form, and who + prided herself on being as rigid as a nut-cracker, this was worth + all the protestations of some more ebullient being. And there, dear + Lady Burghclere, I must leave this poor sketch for such approval as + you can bring yourself to give it. + + Very faithfully yours, + EDMUND GOSSE. + _January 1914._ + + +II + +LORD CROMER AS A MAN OF LETTERS + +In the obituary notices which attended the death of Lord Cromer, it was +necessary and proper that almost the whole space at the command of the +writers should be taken up by a sketch of his magnificent work as an +administrator, or, as the cant phrase goes, "an empire-builder." For +thirty years, during which time he advanced to be one of the most +powerful and efficient of proconsuls, he held a place in the political +world which arrested the popular imagination, and must continue to +outweigh all other aspects of his character. Of this side of Lord +Cromer's splendid career I am not competent to say a word. But there +was another facet of it, one more private and individual, which became +prominent after his retirement, I mean his intellectual and literary +activity, which I had the privilege of observing. It would be a pity, +perhaps, to let this be wholly submerged, and I propose to give, from my +own recollection, some features of it. Lord Cromer was the author of six +or seven published volumes, but these are before the public, and it is +needless to speak much about them. What may be found more interesting +are a few impressions of his attitude towards books and towards ideas. + +On the first occasion on which I met him, he was characteristic. It was +some fifteen years ago, at the time when the brilliant young politicians +who called themselves (or were rather ineptly called) the Hooligans had +the graceful habit of asking some of their elders to dine with them in a +private room of the House of Commons. At one of these little dinners the +only guests were Lord Cromer and myself. I had never seen him before, +and I regarded him with some awe and apprehension, but no words had +passed between us, when the division-bell rang, and our youthful hosts +darted from the room. + +The moment we were left alone, Lord Cromer looked across the deserted +tablecloth and said quietly, as though he were asking me to pass the +salt, "Where is Bipontium?" I was driven by sheer fright into an +exercise of intelligence, and answered at once, "I should think it must +be the Latin for Zweibrücken. Why?" "Oh! I saw this afternoon that my +edition of Diodorus Siculus was printed _ex typographia societatis +Bipontinæ_, and I couldn't imagine for the life of me what 'Bipontium' +was. No doubt you're quite right." Nothing could be more characteristic +of Lord Cromer's habit of mind than this sudden revulsion of ideas. His +active brain needed no preparation to turn from subject to subject, but +seemed to be always ready, at a moment's notice, to take up a fresh +line of thought with ardour. What it could not endure was to be left +stranded with no theme on which to expatiate. In succeeding years, when +it was often my daily enjoyment to listen to Lord Cromer's desultory +conversation, as it leaped from subject to subject, I often thought of +the alarming way in which "Bipontium" had pounced upon me at the +dinner-table in the House of Commons. + +Some years passed before I had the privilege of renewing my experience +of that evening. It was not until after his retirement from Egypt in the +autumn of 1907 that I saw him again, and not then for some months. He +returned, it will be remembered, in broken health. He used to say that +when King Edward VII. wrote out to Cairo, strongly pressing him to stay, +he had replied, in the words of Herodotus, "I am too old, oh King, and +too inactive; so bid thou one of the younger men here to do these +things." He very soon, however, recovered elasticity of mind and body +when the load of office was removed from his shoulders, and "inactive" +was the last epithet which could ever be applied to Lord Cromer. He +began to attend the House of Lords, but, like a wise man, he was in no +hurry to speak there till he had grown accustomed to the tone of the +place. His earliest utterance (I may note the date, February 6th, 1908) +we listened to with equal respect and curiosity; this was a new element +from which much enjoyment might be expected. + +This maiden speech was not long, but it produced a very happy +impression. The subject was the Anglo-Russian Convention, of which the +orator cordially approved, and I recall that a certain sensation was +caused by Lord Cromer's dwelling on the dangers of the Pan-Islamite +intrigues in Egypt. This is the sort of thing that the House of Lords +enjoys--a man of special knowledge speaking, almost confidentially, of +matters within his professional competency. During that year and the +next Lord Cromer spoke with increasing frequency. There were great +differences of opinion with regard to his efficiency in Parliament. I +may acknowledge that I was not an unmeasured admirer of his oratory. +When he rose from his seat on the Cross-bench, and advanced towards the +table, with a fine gesture of his leonine head, sympathy was always +mingled with respect. His independence and his honesty were patent, and +his slight air of authority satisfactory. His public voice was not +unpleasing, but when he was tired it became a little veiled, and he had +the sad trick of dropping it at the end of his sentences. I confess that +I sometimes found it difficult to follow what he was saying, and I do +not think that he understood how to fill a large space with his voice. +He spoke as a man accustomed to wind up the debates of a council sitting +round a table, rather than as a senator addressing the benches of +Parliament. + +He was interested in the art of eloquence, and fond of criticising in +private the methods of other speakers. He had a poor opinion of much +studied oratory, and used to declare that no one had ever convinced him +by merely felicitous diction. Perhaps he did not sufficiently realise +that his own strength of purpose offered rather a granitic surface to +persuasion. But no doubt he was right in saying that, coming as he did +from the florid East, he found English eloquence more plain and +businesslike than he left it. He used to declare that he never spoke +impromptu if he could possibly help doing so, and he made great fun of +the statesmen who say, "Little did I think when I came down to this +House to-day that I should be called upon to speak," and then pour out +by heart a Corinthian discourse. Lord Cromer always openly and frankly +prepared his speeches, and I have seen him entranced in the process. As +he always had a classical reference for everything he did, he was in the +habit of mentioning that Demosthenes also was unwilling to "put his +faculty at the mercy of Fortune." + +He became an habitual attendant at the House of Lords, and, while it was +sitting, he usually appeared in the Library about an hour before the +House met. He took a very lively interest in what was going on, +examining new books, and making a thousand suggestions. If the Lords' +Library contains to-day one of the most complete collections of Latin +and Greek literature in the country, this is largely due to the zeal of +Lord Cromer, who was always egging me on to the purchase of fresh +rarities. He was indefatigable in kindness, sending me booksellers' +catalogues in which curious texts were recorded, and scouring even Paris +and Leipzig in our behalf. When I entered into this sport so heartily as +to provide the Greek and Latin Fathers also for their Lordships, Lord +Cromer became unsympathetic. He had no interest whatever in Origen or +Tertullian, and I think it rather annoyed him to recall that several of +these oracles of the early Church had written in Greek. Nothing in +history or philosophy or poetry which the ancient world had handed down +to us came amiss to Lord Cromer, but I think he considered it rather +impertinent of the Fathers to have presumed to use the language of +Attica. He had not an ecclesiastical mind. + +Lord Cromer's familiar preoccupation with the classics was a point in +his mental habits which deserves particular attention. I have always +supposed that he inherited it from his mother, the Hon. Mrs. Baring, who +was a Windham. She was a woman of learning; and she is said to have +discomfited Sir William Harcourt at a dinner-table by quoting Lucan in +direct disproof of a statement about the Druids which he had been rash +enough to advance. She sang the odes of Anacreon to her son in his +infancy, and we may conjecture that she sowed in his bosom the seeds of +his love of antiquity. Lord Cromer made no pretension to be what is +called an "exact" scholar, but I think it is a mistake to say, as has +been alleged, that he did not take up the study of Latin and Greek until +middle life. It is true that he enjoyed no species of university +training, but passed from Woolwich straight into the diplomatic service. +In 1861, at the age of twenty, he was appointed A.D.C. to Sir Henry +Storks in the Ionian Islands, and I believe that one of the first things +he did was to look about for an instructor in ancient Greek. He found +one in a certain Levantine in Corfu, whose name was Romano, and their +studies opened with the odes of Anacreon. Whether this was a +coincidence, or a compliment to Mrs. Baring, I do not know. This is a +rather different account from what Lord Cromer gave in the preface to +his _Paraphrases_, but I report it on his own later authority. + +If his scholarship was not professorial, it was at least founded upon a +genuine and enduring love of the ancient world. I suppose that for fifty +years, after the episode in Corfu, however busy he was, however immersed +in Imperial policy, he rarely spent a day without some communing with +antiquity. He read Latin, and still more Greek, not in the spirit of a +pedant or a pedagogue, but genuinely for pleasure and refreshment. He +had no vanity about it, and if he had any doubt as to the meaning of a +passage he would "consult the crib," as he used to say. We may +conjecture further that he did not allow his curiosity to be balked by +the barrier of a hopelessly obscure passage, but leaped over it, and +went on. He always came back to Homer, whom he loved more than any other +writer of the world, and particularly to the _Iliad_, which I think he +knew nearly by heart. But he did not, as some pundits consider dignified +and necessary, confine himself to the reading of the principal classics +in order to preserve a pure taste. On the contrary, Lord Cromer, +especially towards the close of his life, pushed up into all the byways +of the Silver Age. As he invariably talked about the books he happened +to be reading, it was easy to trace his footsteps. Eight or nine years +ago he had a sudden passion for Empedocles, whose fragments he had found +collected and translated by Mr. Leonard, an American. Lord Cromer used +to march into the Library, and greet me by calling out, "Do you know? +Empedocles says" something or other, probably some parallelism with a +modern phrase, the detection of which always particularly amused Lord +Cromer. + +In 1908 he took a fancy to Theognis, whose works I procured for him at +the House of Lords, since he happened not to possess that writer at 36 +Wimpole Street. He would settle himself in an armchair in the +smoking-room, his eyes close to the book, and plunge into those dark +waters of the gnomic elegist. He loved maxims and the expression of +principles, and above all, as I have said, the discovery of identities +of thought between the modern and the ancient world. He was delighted +when he found in Theognis the proverb about having an ox on the tongue. +I suppose this was quite well known to the learned, but the charm of the +matter for Lord Cromer was that he was not deterred by any fear of +academic criticism, and found out these things for himself. He read +Theognis as other people read Rudyard Kipling, for stimulus and +pleasure. He swept merely "scholarly" questions aside. He read his +_Iliad_ like a love-letter, but he was bored to death by discussions +about the authorship of the Homeric epics. + +In one matter, the serene good sense which was so prominently +characteristic of Lord Cromer tinged his attitude towards the classics. +He was not at all like Thomas Love Peacock, who entreated his friends to +desist from mentioning anything that had happened in the world for the +last 2,000 years. On the contrary, Lord Cromer was always bent on +binding the old and the new together. It was very noticeable in his +conversation that he was fond of setting classic instances side by side +with modern ones. If books dealt with this parallelism, they exercised a +charm over Lord Cramer's imagination which may sometimes have led him a +little astray about their positive value. I recall a moment when he was +completely under the sway of M. Ferrero's _Greatness and Decline of +Rome_, largely because of the pertinacity with which the Italian +historian compares Roman institutions with modern social arrangements. +It was interesting to the great retired proconsul to discover that +Augustus "considered that in the majority of cases subject peoples had +to be governed through their own national institutions." It is scarcely +necessary to point out that these analogies form the basis of what is, +perhaps, Lord Cromer's most important late essay, his _Ancient and +Modern Imperialism_. + +In a practical administration of India and Egypt, those oceans of +unplumbed antiquity, the ordinary British official has neither time nor +taste to do more than skim the surface of momentary experience. But Lord +Cromer had always been acutely aware of the mystery of the East, and +always looked back into the past with deep curiosity. Sometimes the +modern life in Egypt, exciting as it was, almost seemed to him a +phantasmagoria dancing across the real world of Rameses. This tendency +of thought coloured one branch of his reading; he could not bear to miss +a book which threw any light on the social and political manners of +antiquity. Works like Fowler's _Social Life at Rome_ or Marquardt's _Le +Culte chez les Romains_ thrilled him with excitement and animated his +conversation for days. He wanted, above all things, to realise how the +ancients lived and what, feelings actuated their behaviour. On one +occasion, in a fit of gaiety, I ventured to tell him that he reminded me +of Mrs. Blimber (in _Dombey and Son_), who could have died contented had +she visited Cicero in his retirement at beautiful Tusculum. "Well!" +replied Lord Cromer, laughing, "and a very delightful visit that would +be." + +In the admirable appreciation contributed to the _Times_ by "C." (our +other proconsular "C."!) it was remarked that the "quality of mental +balance is visible in all that Lord Cromer wrote, whether, in his +official despatches, his published books, or his private +correspondence." It was audible, too, in his delightful conversation, +which was vivid, active, and yet never oppressive. He spoke with the +firm accent of one accustomed to govern, but never dictatorially. His +voice was a very agreeable one, supple and various in its tones, neither +loud nor low. Although he had formed the life-long habit of expressing +his opinions with directness, he never imposed them unfairly, or took +advantage of his authority. On the contrary, there was something +extremely winning in his eagerness to hear the reply of his +interlocutor. "Well, there's a great deal in that," he would graciously +and cordially say, and proceed to give the opposing statement what +benefit he thought it deserved. He could be very trenchant, but I do not +think that any one whom he had advanced to the privilege of his +confidence can remember that he was so to a friend. + +The attitude of Lord Cromer to life and letters--I speak, of course, +only of what I saw in the years of his retirement from office--was not +exactly representative of our own or even of the last century. He would +have been at home in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, +before the French Revolution. I judge him to have been born with an +inflexible and commanding character, which in the person of many men +exposed to such dangerous successes as he enjoyed might have degenerated +into tyranny. On Lord Cromer, on the other hand, time produced a +humanising and mellowing effect. It may very well prove that he has +stamped his mark on the East of the twentieth century, as Turgot did his +on the West of the nineteenth century; but without straying into the +perilous fields of prophecy we are safe in recording the impression that +Lord Cromer was not altogether a man of to-day; he looked forward and he +looked backward. Probably the nearest counterpart to his manner of mind +and conversation may be found in the circle of whom we read in the +_Diary_ of Fanny Burney. We can conceive Lord Cromer leaning against the +Committee Box in earnest conversation with Mr. Windham and Mr. Burke at +Warren Hastings' trial. We can restore the half-disdainful gesture with +which he would drop an epigram ("from the Greek") into the Bath Easton +Vase. His politeness and precision, his classical quotations, his +humour, his predilections in literature and art, were those of the inner +circle of Whigs nearly a century and a half ago, and I imagine that +their talk was very much like his. + +He was fond of repeating Bagehot's description of the Whigs, and it +seems to me to apply so exactly to himself that I will quote part of +it:-- + + "Perhaps as long as there has been a political history in this + country there have been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute + firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little prone to + enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and + speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of + the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong conviction + that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief that + the present would, can, and should be quietly improved." + +In a full analysis of Lord Cromer's character, I think that every clause +of this description might be expanded with illustrations. In the +intellectual domain, Bagehot's words, "little prone to enthusiastic +sentiment," seem made to fit Lord Cromer's detachment from all the +tendencies of romanticism. His literary tastes were highly developed +and eagerly indulged, but they were all in their essence +pre-Revolutionary. Those who are familiar with a book once famous, the +_Diary of a Lover of Literature_ of Thomas Green, written down to the +very end of the eighteenth century, have in their hands a volume in +which the very accents of Lord Cromer may seem to be heard. Isaac +d'Israeli said that Green had humbled all modern authors in the dust; +Lord Cromer had a short way with many of the writers most fashionable at +this moment. When he was most occupied with the resuscitations of +ancient manners, of which I have already spoken, I found to my surprise +that he had never read _Marius the Epicurean_. I recommended it to him, +and with his usual instant response to suggestion, he got it at once and +began reading it. But I could not persuade him to share my enthusiasm, +and, what was not like him, he did not read _Marius_ to the end. The +richness and complication of Pater's style annoyed him. He liked prose +to be clear and stately; he liked it, in English, to be Addisonian. Even +Gibbon-though he read _The Decline and Fall_ over again, very carefully, +so late as 1913--was not entirely to his taste. He enjoyed the limpidity +and the irony, but the sustained roll of Gibbon's antitheses vexed him a +little. He liked prose to be quite simple. + +In many ways, Lord Cromer, during those long and desultory conversations +about literature which will be so perennial a delight to look back upon, +betrayed his constitutional detestation of the Romantic attitude. He +believed himself to be perfectly catholic in his tastes, and resented +the charge of prejudice. But he was, in fact, irritated by the excesses +and obscurities of much that is fashionable to-day in the world of +letters, and he refused his tribute of incense to several popular idols. +He thought that, during the course of the nineteenth century, German +influences had seriously perturbed the balance of taste in Europe. I do +not know that Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or +that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was +very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always +found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical +order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as +he should not be drawn to the pathetic figure of Pascal, but he was +puzzled by him. He described him as "manifestly a man full of contrasts, +difficult to understand, and as many-sided as Odysseus." On another +occasion, losing patience with Pascal, he called him "a half-lunatic man +of genius." Fénélon annoyed him still more; the spiritual experiences of +the Archbishop of Cambrai he found "almost incomprehensible." His +surprising, but after all perfectly consistent, comment on both Fénélon +and Pascal was, "How much more easy Buffon is to understand!" + +He recommended all young men who intend to take a part in politics +carefully to study pre-Revolutionary history, and one of his objections +to the romantic literature of Rousseau downwards was that it did not +help such study. It was too individualistic in its direction. It tended, +moreover, Lord Cromer thought, to disturb the balance of judgment, that +"level-headedness" which he valued so highly, and had exercised with +such magnificent authority. He disliked the idea that genius involved a +lack of sanity, or, in other words, of self-command. He regretted that +Dryden had given general currency to this idea by his famous lines in +_Absalom and Achitophel_:-- + + "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, + And thin partitions do their bounds divide;" + +but Lord Cromer was himself, perhaps, too ready to account by insanity +for every odd or confused expression in literature. He had nothing to +say about Mazzini, whom he swept aside impatiently, except that he "was +a semi-lunatic," and I have heard him declare of Chatterton and +Verlaine--a strange couple--that they were a pair of madmen. He objected +violently to Baudelaire, but I think he knew very little about that +poet's works. + +If I mention these things, it is because they seem to be necessary to +give human character to any sketch of the mind of Lord Cromer. He +himself hated mere eulogy, which he said had ruined most of the +biographies of the world. The official lives of Disraeli and Gladstone +did not escape a measure of his blame in this respect, and it will be +recalled that resentment against what he thought a shadowless portrait +led to his own very vivacious paper on Disraeli, which he afterwards +issued as a pamphlet. He was an avid reader of memoirs, and of political +memoirs in particular, but he almost always passed upon them the same +criticism--that they were too _public_. "I don't want Mr. ----," he +would say, "to tell me what I can learn for myself by turning up the +file of the _Morning Post_. I want him to tell me what I can't find out +elsewhere. And he need not be so very much afraid of hinting that his +hero had faults, for if he had not had defects we should never have +heard of his qualities. We are none of us perfect, and we don't want a +priggish biographer to pretend that we are." He was speaking here mainly +of political matters; but Lord Cromer's training and experience had a +strong bearing on his literary tastes. With him politics reacted on +literature, although he liked to fancy that he kept them wholly apart. + +No doubt a selection from his correspondence will one day be given to +the world, for he was a vivid, copious, and daring letter-writer. I +suppose that he wrote to each of his friends mainly on the subject which +absorbed that friend most, and as his own range of sympathies and +interests was very wide, it is probable that his letters will prove +excellent general reading. As in so many other of the departments of +life, Lord Cromer did not think letter-writing a matter to be lightly +regarded or approached without responsibility. He said:-- + + "There are two habits which I have contracted, and which I have + endeavoured to pass on to my children, as I have found them useful. + One is to shut the door after me when I leave the room, and the + other is always to affix the day of the month and the year to every + document, however unimportant, that I sign. I have received numbers + of letters, not only from women, one of whose numerous privileges + it is to be vague, but also from men in high official positions, + dated with the day of the week only. When the document is + important, such a proceeding is a fraud on posterity." + +He often, both in conversation and in letters, took up one of his +favourite classic tags, and wove a shrewd modern reflection round it. +For instance, a couple of years before the war, a phrase of Aristotle +recommending a ruthless egotism in the conduct of war, led him to say:-- + + "I think that at times almost every modern nation has acted on this + principle, though they gloss it over with fine words. Its principal + exponents of late have unquestionably been the Hohenzollerns." + +And, in connection with the axiom of Thucydides that war educates +through violence, he wrote, about the same time:-- + + "The Germans, who, in spite of their culture, preserve a strain of + barbarism in their characters, are the modern representatives of + this view. There is just this amount of truth in it--that at the + cost of undue and appalling sacrifices, war brings out certain + fine qualities in individuals, and sometimes in nations." + +This may, surely, be taken as a direct prophecy of the magnificent +effort of France. Lord Cromer's reflections, thrown off in the warmth of +personal contact, often had a pregnant directness. For instance, how +good this is:-- + + "The prejudice against the Boeotians was probably in a large + measure due to the fact that, as the late Lord Salisbury might have + said, they 'put their money on the wrong horse' during the Persian + war. So also, it may be observed, did the oracle at Delphi." + +Lord Cromer's public speeches and published writings scarcely give a +hint of his humour, which was lambent and sometimes almost boyish. He +loved to be amused, and he repaid his entertainer by being amusing. I +suppose that after his return from Cairo he allowed this feature of his +character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked +upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was +not the man, we may be sure, to be funny with a Young Turk, or to crack +needless jokes with a recalcitrant Khedive. But retirement softened him, +and the real nature of Lord Cromer, with its elements of geniality and +sportiveness, came into full play. + +Eight years ago, I regret to admit, Mr. Lloyd George was not the +universal favourite in the House of Lords that he has since become. Lord +Cromer was one of those who were not entirely reconciled to the +financial projects of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. He compared +the Chancellor with Pescennius Niger, + + "who aspired to be Emperor after the death of Pertinax, and was + already Governor of Syria. On being asked by the inhabitants of + that province to diminish the land tax, he replied that, so far as + he was concerned, not only would he effect no diminution, but he + regretted that he could not tax the air which they breathed." + +The strained relations between Mr. Lloyd George and the House of Lords +inspired Lord Cromer with a really delightful parallel from Dryden's +_Absalom and Achitophel_ (which, by the way, was one of his favourite +poems):-- + + "Thus, worn or weakened, well or ill content, + Submit they must to DAVID'S government; + Impoverished and deprived of all command, + Their taxes doubled as they lost their land; + And--what was harder yet to flesh and blood, + Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood." + +When he pointed this out to me, I entreated him to introduce it into a +speech on the Budget. But he said that he was not sure of his audience, +and then it was most painful to an orator to make a literary reference +which was not taken up. Once at Sheffield, when he was urging the +necessity of a strong Navy upon a large public meeting, he quoted +Swinburne's splendid lines:-- + + "All our past comes wailing in the wind, + And all our future thunders on the sea," + +without producing any effect at all. But the House of Lords is not an +illiterate audience, and I recollect that on one occasion, when Lord +Cromer himself was speaking on preferential treatment for the Colonies, +and quoted Prior:-- + + "Euphemia (that is Preference) serves to grace my measure, + But Chloe (that is Protection) is my real flame," + +the Peers received the couplet with hilarious appreciation. + +He was very entertaining about the oddities of his life in the East, and +his stories were numberless. One was of a petition which he once +received from a young Egyptian with a grievance, which opened with these +words:-- + + "O Hell! Lordship's face grow red when he hear quite ghastly + behaviour of Public Works Department towards our humble servant." + +He used to repeat these things with an inimitable chuckle of enjoyment. + +We have been told that he who blows through bronze may breathe through +silver. The severe preoccupations of Lord Cromer's public life did not +prevent him from sedulously cultivating the art of verse. In 1903, +before his retirement from Egypt, he published a volume of _Paraphrases +and Translations from the Greek_, in the preparation or selection of +which I believe that he enjoyed the advice of Mr. Mackail. It was rather +unlucky that, with a view to propitiate the angry critics, Lord Cromer +prefixed to this little book a preface needlessly modest. He had no +cause to apologise so deeply for exercises which were both elegant and +learned. It is a curious fact that, in this collection of paraphrases, +the translator did not touch the Attic authors whom he knew so well--he +used to copy out pages of Æschylus and Sophocles in his loose Greek +script, with notes of his own--but dealt entirely with lyric and +epigrammatic poets of the Alexandrian age. Perhaps it seemed to him less +daring to touch them than to affront Æschylus. He was not quite sure +about these verses of his; he liked them, and then he was afraid that +they were unworthy of the original. Out in Cairo it was so difficult, he +said, to get a critical opinion. + +Among his unpublished translations there is one, from a fragment of +Euripides, which should not be lost, if only because Lord Cromer himself +liked it better than any other of his versions. It runs:-- + + "I learn what may be taught; + I seek what may be sought; + My other wants I dare + To ask from Heaven in prayer." + +Of his satirical _vers-de-société_, which it amused him to distribute in +private, he never, I believe, gave any to the world, but they deserve +preservation. Some serious reflections on the advantages of the British +occupation of Egypt close with the quotation:-- + + "Let them suffice for Britain's need-- + No nobler prize was ever won-- + The blessings of a people freed, + The consciousness of duty done." + +These were, in a high degree, the rewards of Lord Cromer himself. + +After his settlement in London, Mr. T.E. Page sent him a book, called +_Between Whiles_, of English verse translated into Latin and Greek. Lord +Cromer was delighted with this, and the desire to write in metre +returned to him. He used to send his friends, in letters, little +triolets and epigrams, generally in English, but sometimes in Greek. But +he was more ambitious than this. So lately as February 1911, during the +course of one of our long conversations upon literature, he asked me to +suggest a task of translation on which he could engage. It was just the +moment when he was particularly busy with Constitutional Free Trade and +Woman Suffrage and other public topics, but that made no difference. It +had always seemed to me that he had been most happy in his versions of +the Bucolic poets, and so I urged him to continue his translations by +attempting the _Europa_ of Moschus. He looked at it, and pronounced it +unattractive. I was therefore not a little surprised to receive a +letter, on March 25th, in which he said:-- + + "Not sleeping very well last night, I composed in my head these few + lines merely as a specimen to begin _Europa_:-- + + "When dawn is nigh, at the third watch of night, + What time, more sweet than honey of the bee, + Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, + To lift the veil which hides futurity, + Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar + The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes + Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, + And she, Europa, was the victor's prize." + + "They are, of course, only a first attempt, and I do not think much + of them myself. But do you think the sort of style and metre + suitable?" + +He went steadily on till he completed the poem, and on April 27th I +received a packet endorsed "Patched-up Moschus returned herewith." So +far as I know, this version of the _Europa_, conducted with great spirit +in his seventieth year, has never been published. It is the longest and +most ambitious of all his poetical experiments. + +Lord Cromer was fond of saying that he considered the main beauty of +Greek poetry to reside in its simplicity. In all his verses he aimed at +limpidity and ease. He praised the Greek poets for not rhapsodising +about the beauties of nature, and this was very characteristic of his +own eighteenth-century habit of mind. His general attitude to poetry, +which he read incessantly and in four languages, was a little difficult +to define. He was ready to give lists of his life-long prime favourites, +and, as was very natural, these differed from time to time. But one list +of the books he had "read more frequently than any other" consisted of +the _Iliad_, the Book of Job, _Tristram Shandy_, and _Pickwick_, to +which he added _Lycidas_ and the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It would +require a good deal of ingenuity to bring these six masterpieces into +line. He was consistent in declaring that the 28th chapter of Job was +"the finest bit of poetry ever written." + +He was violently carried away in 1912 by reading Mr. Livingstone's book +on _The Greek Genius_. It made him a little regret the pains he had +expended on the Hymns of Callimachus and the Bucolics of Theocritus, +and he thought that perhaps he ought to have confined himself to the +severer and earlier classics. But surely he had followed his instinct, +and it would have been a pity if he had narrowed his range. It was the +modernness of the Alexandrian authors, and perhaps their Egyptian +flavour, which had justly attracted him. He did not care very much for +an antiquity which he could not revivify for his own vision. I urged him +to read a book which had fascinated me, _The Religion of Numa_, by a +learned American, the late Mr. Jesse Carter. Lord Cromer read it with +respect, but he admitted that those earliest Roman ages were too remote +and cold for him. + +Lord Cromer was very much annoyed with Napoleon for having laid it down +that _après soixante ans, un homme ne vaut rien_. The rash dictum had +certainly no application to himself. It is true that, under the strain +of the long tropical years, his bodily health declined as he approached +the age of sixty. But his mental activity, his marvellous receptivity, +were not merely maintained, but seemed steadily to advance. He continued +to be consumed by that lust for knowledge, _libido sciendi_, which he +admired in the ancient Greeks. When the physicians forbade him, four +years ago, to expend his failing strength any longer on political and +social propaganda, instead of retiring, as most men of his age would +have done, to dream in the recesses of his library, he plunged with +renewed ardour into the one occupation still permitted to him: +literature. The accident of his publishing a criticism which excited +wide popular attention led to his becoming, when past his seventieth +birthday, a "regular reviewer" for the _Spectator_, where the very +frequent papers signed "C." became a prominent feature. Those articles +were, perhaps, most remarkable for the light they threw on the writer's +own temperament, on his insatiable desire for knowledge. Lord Cromer's +curiosity in all intellectual directions was, to the last, like that of +a young man beginning his mental career; and when he adopted the +position, so uncommon in a man of his experience and authority, of a +reviewer of current books, it was because he wished to share with others +the excitement he himself enjoyed in the tapping of fresh sources of +information. + + +III + +THE LAST DAYS OF LORD REDESDALE + +The publication of Lord Redesdale's _Memories_--which was one of the +most successful autobiographies of recent times--familiarised thousands +of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but, +when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his taste +and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his +earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one. He +took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become a +classic--_Tales of Old Japan_. He did not immediately pursue this +success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which +distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out _The +Bamboo Garden_, and from that time--until, in his eightieth year, he +died in full intellectual energy--he constantly devoted himself to the +art of writing. His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was +impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and +that zeal suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his +life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He +retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain +stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself was always acutely +conscious. + +This did not interfere with the direct and sincere appeal made to +general attention by the 1915 _Memories_, a book so full of geniality +and variety, so independent in its judgments and so winning in its +ingenuousness, that its wider popularity could be the object of no +surprise. But, to those who knew Lord Redesdale intimately, it must +always appear that his autobiography fails to explain him from what we +may call the subjective point of view. It tells us of his adventures and +his friendships, of the strange lands he visited and of the unexpected +confidences he received, but it does not reveal very distinctly the +character of the writer. There is far more of his intellectual +constitution, of his personal tastes and mental habits, in the volume of +essays of 1912, called _A Tragedy in Stone_, but even here much is left +unsaid and even unsuggested. + +Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Lord Redesdale was the redundant +vitality of his character. His nature swarmed with life, like a drop of +pond-water under a microscope. There cannot be found room in any one +nature for all the qualities, and what he lacked in some degree was +concentration. But very few men who have lived in our complicated age +have done well in so many directions as he, or, aiming widely, have +failed in so few. He shrank from no labour and hesitated before no +difficulty, but pushed on with an extraordinary energy along many +various lines of activity. But the two lines in which he most desired +and most determined to excel, gardening and authorship, are scarcely to +be discerned, except below the surface, in his _Memories_. Next to his +books, what he regarded with most satisfaction was his wonderful garden +at Batsford, and of this there is scarcely a word of record in the +autobiography. He had always intended to celebrate this garden, and when +he was preparing to return to Batsford in 1915 he wrote to me that he +was going to write an _Apologia pro Horto meo_, as long before he had +composed one _pro Banibusis meis_. A book which should combine with the +freest fancies of his intellect a picture of the exotic groves of +Batsford was what was required to round off Lord Redesdale's literary +adventures. It will be seen that he very nearly succeeded in thus +setting the top-stone on his literary edifice. + +One reason, perhaps, why Batsford, which was ever present to his +thoughts, is so very slightly and vaguely mentioned in Lord Redesdale's +_Memories_, may be the fact that from 1910 onwards he was not living in +it himself, and that it was irksome to him to magnify in print +horticultural beauties which were for the time being in the possession +of others. The outbreak of the war, in which all his five sons were +instantly engaged, was the earliest of a series of changes which +completely altered the surface of Lord Redesdale's life. Batsford came +once more into his personal occupation, and at the same time it became +convenient to give up his London house in Kensington Court. Many things +combined to transform his life in the early summer of 1915. His eldest +son, Major the Hon. Clement Mitford, after brilliantly distinguishing +himself in battle, was received by the King and decorated, to the +rapturous exultation of his father. Major Mitford returned to the French +front, only to fall on May 13th, 1915. + +At this time I was seeing Lord Redesdale very frequently, and I could +not but be struck by the effect of this blow upon his temperament. After +the first shock of sorrow, I observed in him the determination not to +allow himself to be crushed. His dominant vitality asserted itself +almost with violence, and he seemed to clench his tooth in defiance of +the assault on his individuality. It required on the part of so old a +man no little fortitude, for it is easier to bear a great and heroic +bereavement than to resist the wearing vexation of seeing one's system +of daily occupation crumbling away. Lord Redesdale was pleased to be +going again to Batsford, which had supplied him in years past with so +much sumptuous and varied entertainment, but it was a matter of alarm +with him to give up all, or almost all, the various ties with London +which had meant so much to his vividly social nature. + +Meanwhile, during the early months of 1915 in London, he had plenty of +employment in finishing and revising his _Memories_, which it had taken +him two years to write. This was an occupation which bridged over the +horrid chasm between his old active life in London, with its thousand +interests, and the uncertain and partly dreaded prospect of exile in the +bamboo-gardens of a remote corner of Gloucestershire, where he foresaw +that deafness must needs exclude him from the old activities of local +life. + +He finished revising the manuscript of his _Memories_ in July, and then +went down, while the actual transference of his home was taking place, +to the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, Cowes, where he had been accustomed +to spend some of the most enjoyable hours of his life. But this scene, +habitually thronged with people, and palpitating with gaiety, in the +midst of which Lord Redesdale found himself so singularly at home, was +now, more than perhaps any other haunt of the English sportsman, in +complete eclipse. The weather was lovely, but there were no yachts, no +old chums, no charming ladies. "It is very dull," he wrote; "the sole +inhabitant of the Club besides myself was Lord Falkland, and now he is +gone." In these conditions Lord Redesdale became suddenly conscious that +the activity of the last two or three years was over, that the aspect of +his world had changed, and that he was in danger of losing that hold +upon life to which he so resolutely clung. In conditions of this kind he +always turned to seek for something mentally "craggy," as Byron said, +and at Cowes he wonderfully found the writings of Nietzsche. The result +is described in a remarkable letter to myself (July 28th, 1915), which +I quote because it marks the earliest stage in the composition of his +last unfinished book:-- + + "I have been trying to occupy myself with Nietzsche, on the theory + that there must be something great about a man who exercised the + immense influence that he did. But I confess I am no convert to any + of his various moods. Here and there I find gems of thought, but + one has to wade through a morass of blue mud to get at them. Here + is a capital saying of his which may be new to you--in a letter to + his friend Rohde he writes: 'Eternally we need midwives in order to + be delivered of our thoughts,' We cannot work in solitude. 'Woe to + us who lack the sunlight of a friend's presence.' + + "How true that is! When I come down here, I think that with so much + time on my hands I shall be able to get through a pile of work. Not + a bit of it! I find it difficult even to write a note. To me it is + an imperative necessity to have the sympathetic counsel of a + friend." + +The letter continued with an impassioned appeal to his correspondent to +find some definite intellectual work for him to undertake. "You make me +dare, and that is much towards winning a game. You must sharpen my wits, +which are blunt enough just now." In short, it was a cry from the island +of boredom to come over the water and administer first-aid. + +Accordingly, I started for Cowes, and was welcomed at the pier with all +my host's habitual and vivacious hospitality. Scarcely were we seated in +our wicker-chairs in face of the Solent, not twinkling as usual with +pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than +he began the attack. "What am I to do with myself?" was the instant +question; "what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of +leisure?" To which the obvious reply was: "First of all, you must +exhibit to me the famous attractions of Cowes!" "There are none," he +replied in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit, +which extended over several radiant days of a perfect August, was +diversified with walks and excursions by land and water, in which my +companion was as active and as ardent as though he had been nineteen +instead of seventy-nine. In a suit picturesquely marine, with his +beautiful silver hair escaping from a jaunty yachting cap, he was the +last expression of vivacity and gaiety. + +The question of his intellectual occupation in the future came, however, +incessantly to the front; and our long talks in the strange and uncanny +solitude of the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle always came to this: What +task was he to take up next? His large autobiography was now coming back +to him from the printers in packets of proof, with which he was closeted +night and morning; and I suggested that while this was going on there +was no need for him to think about future enterprises. To tell the +truth, I had regarded the _Memories_ as likely to be the final labour of +Lord Redesdale's busy life. It seemed to me that at his advanced age he +might now well withdraw into dignified repose. I even hinted so much in +terms as delicate as I could make them, but the suggestion was not well +received. I became conscious that there was nothing he was so little +prepared to welcome as "repose"; that, in fact, the terror which +possessed him was precisely the dread of having to withdraw from the +stage of life. His deafness, which now began to be excessive, closed to +his eager spirit so many of the avenues of experience, that he was more +than ever anxious to keep clear those that remained to him, and of +these, literary expression came to be almost the only one left. In the +absence of a definite task his path in this direction led through +darkness. + +But it was not until after several suggestions and many conversations +that light was found. The friend so pressingly appealed to returned to +London, where he was stern in rejecting several projects, hotly flung at +his head and then coldly abandoned. A study of the Empress Maria +Theresa, suggested by a feverish perusal of Pechler, was the latest and +least attractive of these. Lord Redesdale then frankly demanded that a +subject should be found for him. "You have brought this upon yourself," +he said, "by encouraging me to write." What might prove the scheme of a +very pleasant book then occurred to me, and I suggested to the fiery and +impatient author, who had by this time retired for good to Batsford, +that he should compose a volume of essays dealing with things in +general, but bound together by a constantly repeated reference to his +wild garden of bamboos and the Buddha in his secret grove. The author +was to suppose himself seated with a friend on the terrace at the top of +the garden, and to let the idea of the bamboo run through the whole +tissue of reflections and reminiscences like an emerald thread. Lord +Redesdale was enchanted, and the idea took fire at once. He replied:-- + + "You are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones! I + shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now proceeding to + my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try to make a picture of + the VELUVANA, the bamboo-garden which was the first Vikara or + monastery of Buddha and his disciples. There I will sit, and, + looking on the great statue of Buddha in meditation, I shall begin + to arrange all sorts of wild imaginings which may come into my + crazy brain." + +In this way was started the book, of which, alas! only such fragments +were composed as form the earlier part of the volume published after his +death. It is, however, right to point out that for the too-brief +remainder of his life Lord Redesdale was eagerly set on the scheme of +which a hint has just been given. The _Veluvana_ was to be the crowning +production of his literary life, and it was to sum up the wisdom of the +East and the gaiety of the West. He spoke of it incessantly, in letters +and conversation. "That will do to go into _Veluvana_," was his cry when +he met with anything rare or strange. For instance, on September 15th, +1915, he wrote to me:-- + + "To-day, all of a sudden I was struck by the idea that plants, + having many human qualities, may also in some degree have human + motives--that they are not altogether mere automata--and as I + thought, I began to imagine that I could detect something + resembling purpose in the movements of certain plants. I have + jotted down a few notes, and you will see when I expand them that + at any rate the idea calls attention to the movements themselves, + some of which seem never to have been noticed at all, or certainly + at best very inadequately. You will see that this brings in the + bamboo-garden and Buddha, and so keeps to the scheme of + _Veluvana_." + +The monasteries of twelfth-century Japanese Buddhism, which he had +visited long before in the neighbourhood of Kioto, now recurred to his +memory, and he proposed to describe in what a monk of Hiyeisan differed +from an Indian Buddhist monk. This was a theme of extraordinary +interest, and wholly germane to his purpose. It drove him back to his +Japanese books, and to his friend Sir Ernest Satow's famous dictionary. +He wrote to me:-- + + "No praise can be too high for the work which Satow did in the + early days of our intercourse with Japan. He was a valuable asset + to England, and to Sir Harry Parkes, who, with all his energy and + force of character, would never have succeeded as he did without + Satow. Aston was another very strong man." + +These reveries were strictly in accordance with the spirit of +_Veluvana_, but unfortunately what Lord Redesdale wrote in this +direction proved to be too slight for publication. He met with some +expressions of extremely modern Japanese opinion which annoyed him, and +to which he was tempted to give more attention than they deserve. It +began to be obvious that the enterprise was one for which great +concentration of effort, and a certain serenity of purpose which was not +to be secured at will, were imperatively needed. In leaving London, he +was not content, and no one could have wished him to be willing, to +break abruptly all the cords of his past life. He was still a Trustee of +the National Gallery, still chairman of the Marlborough Club, still +occupied with the administration of the Wallace Collection, and he did +not abate his interest in these directions. They made it necessary that +he should come up to town every other week. This made up in some measure +for the inevitable disappointment of finding that in Gloucestershire his +deafness now completely cut him off from all the neighbourly duties +which had in earlier years diversified and entertained his country life. +He had been a great figure among the squires and farmers of the +Cotswolds, but all this was now at an end, paralysed by the hopeless +decay of his hearing. It grieved him, too, that he was unable to do any +useful war-work in the county, and he was forced to depend upon his pen +and his flying visits to London for refreshment. He was a remarkably +good letter-writer, and he now demanded almost pathetically to be fed +with the apples of correspondence. He wrote (November 26th, 1915):-- + + "Your letters are a consolation for being deprived of taking a part + any longer in the doings of the great world. The Country + Mouse--even if the creature were able to scuttle back into the + cellars of the great--would still be out of all communion with the + mighty, owing to physical infirmity. And now comes the kind Town + Mouse and tells him all that he most cares to know." + +He had books and his garden to enjoy, and he made the most of both. "I +hate the autumn," he said, "for it means the death of the year, but I +try to make the death of the garden as beautiful as possible." Among his +plants, and up and down the high places of his bamboo-feathered +rockeries, where little cascades fell with a music which he could no +longer hear into small dark pools full of many-coloured water-lilies, +his activity was like that of a boy. He had the appearance, the tastes, +the instincts of vigorous manhood prolonged far beyond the usual limit +of such gifts, and yet all were marred and rendered bankrupt for him by +the one intolerable defect, the deafness which had by this time become +almost impenetrable to sound. + +Yet it seemed as though this disability actually quickened his mental +force. With the arrival of his eightieth year, his activity and +curiosity of intellect were certainly rather increased than abated. He +wrote to me from Batsford (December 28th, 1915):-- + + "I have been busy for the last two months making a close study of + Dante. I have read all the _Inferno_ and half of the _Purgatorio_. + It is hard work, but the 'readings' of my old schoolfellow, W.W. + Vernon, are an incalculable help, and now within the last week or + two has appeared Hoare's Italian Dictionary, published by the + Cambridge University Press. A much-needed book, for the previous + dictionaries were practically useless except for courier's work. + How splendid Dante is! But how sickening are the Commentators, + Benvenuto da Imola, Schartazzini and the rest of them! They won't + let the poet say that the sun shone or the night was dark without + seeing some hidden and mystic meaning in it. They always seem to + _chercher midi à quatorze heures_, and irritate me beyond measure. + There is invention enough in Dante without all their embroidery. + But this grubbing and grouting seems to be infectious among Dante + scholars--they all catch the disease." + +He flung himself into these Italian studies with all his accustomed +ardour. He corresponded with the eminent veteran of Dante scholarship, +the Honourable W.W. Vernon, whom he mentions in the passage just quoted, +and Mr. Vernon's letters gave him great delight. He wrote to me again:-- + + "This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course, I knew + the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before attempted to read + him. The difficulty scared me." + +Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away +for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the _Purgatorio_ without +flagging, but he broke down early in the _Paradiso_. He had no sympathy +whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored +by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took +advantage of this to recall his attention to _Veluvana_, for which it +was no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any +material out of Dante. + +An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during +the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian +chapters of his _Memories_, but it was another distraction. It took his +thoughts away from _Veluvana_, although he protested to me that he +could prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his +fancies for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for +he wrote (March 17th, 1916):-- + + "You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my + troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking part + in society, the Three R's alone remain to me, and, indeed, of those + only two--for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton education in days + when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of the intellectual + panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add, subtract, nor divide! I + am a gluttonous reader, and only write from time to time." + +He was really composing more actively than he himself realised. About +this time he wrote:-- + + "Just now I am busy trying to whitewash Lord Hertford--not the + Marquess of Steyne, that would be impossible--but the unhappy + hypochondriac recluse of the Rue Lafitte, who I believe has been + most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in + Paris--all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even + hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look + upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to + be told that he had many admirable points." + +At the beginning of last year the aspect of Lord Redesdale was very +remarkable. He had settled down into his life at Batsford, diversified +by the frequent dashes to London. His years seemed to sit upon him more +lightly than ever. His azure eyes, his curled white head thrown back, +the almost jaunty carriage of his well-kept figure, were the external +symbols of an inner man perpetually fresh, ready for adventure and +delighted with the pageant of existence. He found no fault at all with +life, save that it must leave him, and he had squared his shoulders not +to give way to weakness. Perhaps the only sign of weakness was just that +visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character +had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which +Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless +of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His +curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in +spite of his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was +his memory of passing events. In the petulance of his optimism he was +like a lad. + +There was no change in the early part of last year, although it was +manifest that the incessant journeying between Batsford and London +exhausted him. The garden occupied him more and more, and he was +distracted by the great storm of the end of March, which blew down and +destroyed at the head of the bridge the wonderful group of cypresses, +which he called "the pride of my old age." But, after a gesture of +despair, he set himself energetically to repair the damage. He was in +his usual buoyant health when the very hot spell in May tempted him out +on May 18th, with his agent, Mr. Kennedy, to fish at Swinbrook, a +beautiful village on his Oxfordshire property, of which he was +particularly fond. He was not successful, and in a splenetic mood he +flung himself at full length upon a bank of wet grass. He was not +allowed to remain there long, but the mischief was done, and in a few +hours he was suffering from a bad cold. Even now, the result might not +have been serious had it not been that in a few days' time he was due to +fulfil certain engagements in town. Nothing vexed Lord Redesdale more +than not to keep a pledge. In all such matters he prided himself on +being punctual and trustworthy, and he refused to change his plans by +staying at home. + +Accordingly, on May 23rd he came to London to transact some business, +and to take the chair next day at a meeting of the Royal Society of +Literature, of which he was a vice-president. This meeting took place in +the afternoon, and he addressed a crowded assembly, which greeted him +with great warmth. Those who were present, and saw his bright eyes and +heard his ringing voice, could have no suspicion that they would see him +again no more. His intimate friends alone perceived that he was making a +superlative effort. There followed a very bad night, and he went down to +Batsford next day, going straight to his bed, from which he never rose +again. His condition, at first, gave rise to little alarm. The disease, +which proved to be catarrhal jaundice, took its course; but for a long +time his spirit and his unconsciousness of danger sustained him and +filled those around him with hope. There was no disturbance of mind to +the very last. In a shaky hand, with his stylograph, he continued to +correspond with certain friends, about politics, and books, and even +about Veluvana. In the beginning of August there seemed to be symptoms +of improvement, but these were soon followed by a sudden and final +relapse. Even after this, Lord Redesdale's interest and curiosity were +sustained. In his very last letter to myself, painfully scrawled only +one week before his death, he wrote:-- + + "Have you seen Ernest Daudet's book just published, _Les auteurs de + la guerre de_ 1914? Bismarck is the subject of the first volume; + the second will deal with the Kaiser and the Emperor Joseph; and + the third with _leurs complices_. I know E.D., he is a brother of + Alphonse, and is a competent historian. His book is most + illuminating. Of course there are exaggerations, but he is always + well _documenté_, and there is much in his work that is new. I + don't admire his style. The abuse of the historic present is bad + enough, but what can be said in favour of the historic future with + which we meet at every step? It sets my teeth on edge." + +But he grew physically weaker, and seven days later he passed into an +unconscious state, dying peacefully at noon on August 17th, 1916. He was +saved, as he had wished to be, from all consciousness of decrepitude. + + + + +THE LYRICAL POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY + + +When, about Christmas time in 1898, Mr. Hardy's admirers, who were +expecting from him a new novel, received instead a thick volume of +verse, there was mingled with their sympathy and respect a little +disappointment and a great failure in apprehension. Those who were not +rude enough to suggest that a cobbler should stick to his last, reminded +one another that many novelists had sought relaxation by trifling with +the Muses. Thackeray had published _Ballads_, and George Eliot had +expatiated in a _Legend of Jubal_. No one thought the worse of +_Coningsby_ because its author had produced a _Revolutionary Epic_. It +took some time for even intelligent criticism to see that the new +_Wessex Poems_ did not fall into this accidental category, and still, +after twenty years, there survives a tendency to take the verse of Mr. +Hardy, abundant and solid as it has become, as a mere subsidiary and +ornamental appendage to his novels. It is still necessary to insist on +the complete independence of his career as a poet, and to point out that +if he had never published a page of prose he would deserve to rank high +among the writers of his country on the score of the eight volumes of +his verse. It is as a lyrical poet, and solely as a lyrical poet, that I +propose to speak of him to-day. + +It has been thought extraordinary that Cowper was over fifty when he +published his first secular verses, but Mr. Hardy was approaching his +sixtieth year when he sent _Wessex Poems_ to the press. Such +self-restraint--"none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with +more unwearied spirit none shall"--has always fascinated the genuine +artist, but few have practised it with so much tenacity. When the work +of Mr. Hardy is completed, nothing, it is probable, will more strike +posterity than its unity, its consistency. He has given proof, as scarce +any other modern writer has done, of tireless constancy of resolve. His +novels formed an unbroken series from the _Desperate Remedies_ of 1871 +to _The Well-Beloved_ of 1897. In the fulness of his success, and +unseduced by all temptation, he closed that chapter of his career, and +has kept it closed. Since 1898 he has been, persistently and +periodically, a poet and nothing else. That he determined, for reasons +best left to his own judgment, to defer the exhibition of his verse +until he had completed his work in prose, ought not to prejudice +criticism in its analysis of the lyrics and the colossal dramatic +panorama. Mr. Hardy, exclusively as a poet, demands our undivided +attention. + +It is legitimate to speculate on other probable causes of Mr. Hardy's +delay. From such information as lies scattered before us, we gather that +it was from 1865 to 1867 that he originally took poetry to be his +vocation. The dated pieces in the volume of 1898 help us to form an idea +of the original character of his utterance. On the whole it was very +much what it remains in the pieces composed after a lapse of half a +century. Already, as a very young man, Mr. Hardy possessed his +extraordinary insight into the movements of human character, and his +eloquence in translating what he had observed of the tragedy and pain of +rustic lives. No one, for sixty years, had taken so closely to heart the +admonitions of Wordsworth in his famous Preface to the 1800 edition of +_Lyrical Ballads_ to seek for inspiration in that condition where "the +passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful forms of nature." +But it may well be doubted whether Mr. Hardy's poems would have been +received in the mid-Victorian age with favour, or even have been +comprehended. Fifty years ahead of his time, he was asking in 1866 for +novelty of ideas, and he must have been conscious that his questioning +would seem inopportune. He needed a different atmosphere, and he left +the task of revolt to another, and, at first sight, a very unrelated +force, that of the _Poems and Ballads_ of the same year. But Swinburne +succeeded in his revolution, and although he approached the art from an +opposite direction, he prepared the way for an ultimate appreciation of +Mr. Hardy. + +We should therefore regard the latter, in spite of his silence of forty +years, as a poet who laboured, like Swinburne, at a revolution against +the optimism and superficial sweetness of his age. Swinburne, it is +true, tended to accentuate the poetic side of poetry, while Mr. Hardy +drew verse, in some verbal respects, nearer to prose. This does not +affect their common attitude, and the sympathy of these great artists +for one another's work has already been revealed, and will be still more +clearly exposed. But they were unknown to each other in 1866, when to +both of them the cheap philosophy of the moment, the glittering +femininity of the "jewelled line," the intense respect for Mrs. Grundy +in her Sunday satin, appeared trumpery, hateful, and to be trampled +upon. We find in Mr. Hardy's earliest verse no echo of the passionate +belief in personal immortality which was professed by Ruskin and +Browning. He opposed the Victorian theory of human "progress"; the +Tennysonian beatific Vision seemed to him ridiculous. He rejected the +idea of the sympathy and goodness of Nature, and was in revolt against +the self-centredness of the Romantics. We may conjecture that he +combined a great reverence for _The Book of Job_ with a considerable +contempt for _In Memoriam_. + +This was not a mere rebellious fancy which passed off; it was something +inherent that remained, and gives to-day their peculiar character to Mr. +Hardy's latest lyrics. But before we examine the features of this +personal mode of interpreting poetry to the world, we may collect what +little light we can on the historic development of it. In the pieces +dated between 1865 and 1867 we find the germ of almost everything which +has since characterised the poet. In "Amabel" the ruinous passage of +years, which has continued to be an obsession with Mr. Hardy, is already +crudely dealt with. The habit of taking poetical negatives of small +scenes--"your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, and a pond edged +with grayish leaves" ("Neutral Times")--which had not existed in English +verse since the days of Crabbe, reappears. There is marked already a +sense of terror and resentment against the blind motions of chance--In +"Hap" the author would positively welcome a certainty of divine hatred +as a relief from the strain of depending upon "crass casualty." Here and +there in these earliest pieces an extreme difficulty of utterance is +remarkable in the face of the ease which the poet attained afterwards in +the expression of his most strange images and fantastic revelations. We +read in "At a Bridal":-- + + "Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree, + And each thus found apart, of false desire + A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire + As had fired ours could ever have mingled we!" + +This, although perfectly reducible, takes time to think out, and at a +hasty glance seems muffled up in obscurity beyond the darkness of Donne; +moreover, it is scarcely worthy in form of the virtuoso which Mr. Hardy +was presently to become. Perhaps of the poems certainly attributable to +this earliest period, the little cycle of sonnets called "She to Him" +gives clearest promise of what was coming. The sentiment is that of +Ronsard's famous "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la +chandelle," but turned round, as Mr. Hardy loves to do, from the man to +the woman, and embroidered with ingenuities, such as where the latter +says that as her temperament dies down the habit of loving will remain, +and she be + + "Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, + True to the wind that kissed ere canker came," + +which attest a complexity of mind that Ronsard's society knew nothing +of. + +On the whole, we may perhaps be safe in conjecturing that whatever the +cause, the definite dedication to verse was now postponed. Meanwhile, +the writing of novels had become the business of Mr. Hardy's life, and +ten years go by before we trace a poet in that life again. But it is +interesting to find that when the great success of _Far from the Madding +Crowd_ had introduced him to a circle of the best readers, there +followed an effect which again disturbed his ambition for the moment. +Mr. Hardy was once more tempted to change the form of his work. He +wished "to get back to verse," but was dissuaded by Leslie Stephen, who +induced him to start writing _The Return of the Native_ instead. On +March 29th, 1875, Coventry Patmore, then a complete stranger, wrote to +express his regret that "such almost unequalled beauty and power as +appeared in the novels should not have assured themselves the +immortality which would have been conferred upon them by the form of +verse." This was just at the moment when we find Mr. Hardy's +conversations with "long Leslie Stephen in the velveteen coat" +obstinately turning upon "theologies decayed and defunct, the origin of +things, the constitution of matter, and the unreality of time." To this +period belongs also the earliest conception of _The Dynasts_, an old +note-book containing, under the date June 20th, 1875, the suggestion +that the author should attempt "An Iliad of Europe from 1789 to 1815." + +To this time also seems to belong the execution of what has proved the +most attractive section of Mr. Hardy's poetry, the narratives, or short +Wessex ballads. The method in which these came into the world is very +curious. Many of these stories were jotted down to the extent of a +stanza or two when the subject first occurred to the author. For +instance, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," first published by Lionel +Johnson in 1894, had been begun as early as 1867, and was finished ten +years later. The long ballad of "Leipzig" and the savage "San +Sebastian," both highly characteristic, were also conceived and a few +lines of each noted down long before their completion. "Valenciennes," +however, belongs to 1878, and the "Dance at the Phoenix," of which the +stanza beginning "'Twas Christmas" alone had been written years before, +seems to have been finished about the same time. What evidence is before +us goes to prove that in the 'seventies Mr. Hardy became a complete +master of the art of verse, and that his poetic style was by this time +fixed. He still kept poetry out of public sight, but he wrote during the +next twenty years, as though in a backwater off the stream of his +novels, the poems which form the greater part of the volume of 1898. If +no other collection of his lyrical verse existed, we should miss a +multitude of fine things, but our general conception of his genius would +be little modified. + +We should judge carelessly, however, if we treated the subsequent +volumes as mere repetitions of the original _Wessex Poems_. They present +interesting differences, which I may rapidly note before I touch on the +features which characterise the whole body of Mr. Hardy's verse. _Poems +of the Past and Present_, which came out in the first days of 1902, +could not but be in a certain measure disappointing, in so far as it +paralleled its three years' product with that of the thirty years of +_Wessex Poems_. Old pieces were published in it, and it was obvious that +in 1898 Mr. Hardy might be expected to have chosen from what used to be +called his "portfolio" those specimens which he thought to be most +attractive. But on further inspection this did not prove to be quite the +case. After pondering for twelve years on the era of Napoleon, his +preoccupation began in 1887 to drive him into song:-- + + "Must I pipe a palinody, + Or be silent thereupon?" + +He decides that silence has become impossible:-- + + "Nay; I'll sing 'The Bridge of Lodi'-- + That long-loved, romantic thing, + Though none show by smile or nod, he + Guesses why and what I sing!" + +Here is the germ of _The Dynasts_. But in the meantime the crisis of the +Boer War had cut across the poet's dream of Europe a hundred years ago, +and a group of records of the Dorsetshire elements of the British army +at the close of 1899 showed in Mr. Hardy's poetry what had not been +suspected there--a military talent of a most remarkable kind. Another +set of pieces composed in Rome were not so interesting; Mr. Hardy always +seems a little languid when he leaves the confines of his native Wessex. +Another section of _Poems of the Past and Present_ is severely, almost +didactically, metaphysical, and expands in varied language the daring +thought, so constantly present in Mr. Hardy's reverie, that God Himself +has forgotten the existence of earth, this "tiny sphere," this "tainted +ball," "so poor a thing," and has left all human life to be the +plaything of blind chance. This sad conviction is hardly ruffled by "The +Darkling Thrush," which goes as far towards optimism as Mr. Hardy can +let himself be drawn, or by such reflections as those in "On a Fine +Morning":-- + + "Whence comes Solace? Not from seeing + What is doing, suffering, being; + Not from noting Life's conditions, + Not from heeding Time's monitions; + But in cleaving to the Dream, + And in gazing on the gleam + Whereby gray things golden seem." + +Eight years more passed, years marked by the stupendous effort of _The +Dynasts_, before Mr. Hardy put forth another collection of lyrical +poems. _Time's Laughingstocks_ confirmed, and more than confirmed, the +high promise of _Wessex Poems_. The author, in one of his modest +prefaces, where he seems to whisper while we bend forward in our anxiety +not to miss one thrifty sentence, expresses the hope that _Time's +Laughingstocks_ will, as a whole, take the "reader forward, even if not +far, rather than backward." + +The book, indeed, does not take us "far" forward, simply because the +writer's style and scope were definitely exposed to us already, and yet +it does take us "forward," because the hand of the master is +conspicuously firmer and his touch more daring. The _Laughingstocks_ +themselves are fifteen in number, tragical stories of division and +isolation, of failures in passion, of the treason of physical decay. No +landscape of Mr. Hardy's had been more vivid than the night-pictures in +"The Revisitation," where the old soldier in barracks creeps out on to +the gaunt down, and meets (by one of Mr. Hardy's coincidences) his +ancient mistress, and no picture more terrible than the revelation of +each to the other in a blaze of sunrise. What a document for the future +is "Reminiscences of a Dancing Man"? If only Shakespeare could have left +us such a song of the London in 1585! But the power of the poet +culminates in the pathos of "The Tramp Woman"--perhaps the greatest of +all Mr. Hardy's lyrical poems--and in the horror of "A Sunday Morning's +Tragedy." + +It is noticeable that _Time's Laughingstocks_ is, in some respects, a +more daring collection than its predecessors. We find the poet here +entirely emancipated from convention, and guided both in religion and +morals exclusively by the inner light of his reflection. His energy now +interacts on his clairvoyance with a completeness which he had never +quite displayed before, and it is here that we find Mr. Hardy's +utterance peculiarly a quintessence of himself. Especially in the +narrative pieces--which are often Wessex novels distilled into a +wine-glass, such as "Rose-Ann," and "The Vampirine Fair"--he allows no +considerations of what the reader may think "nice" or "pleasant" to +shackle his sincerity or his determination; and it is therefore to +_Time's Laughingstocks_ that the reader who wishes to become intimately +acquainted with Mr. Hardy as a moralist most frequently recurs. We +notice here more than elsewhere in his poems Mr. Hardy's sympathy with +the local music of Wessex, and especially with its expression by the +village choir, which he uses as a spiritual symbol. Quite a large +section of _Time's Laughingstocks_ takes us to the old-fashioned gallery +of some church, where the minstrels are bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount +Ephraim," or to a later scene where the ghosts, in whose melancholy +apparition Mr. Hardy takes such pleasure, chant their goblin melodies +and strum "the viols of the dead" in the moonlit churchyard. The very +essence of Mr. Hardy's reverie at this moment of his career is to be +found, for instance, in "The Dead Quire," where the ancient +phantom-minstrels revenge themselves on their gross grandsons outside +the alehouse. + +Almost immediately after the outbreak of the present war Mr. Hardy +presented to a somewhat distraught and inattentive public another +collection of his poems. It cannot be said that _Satires of +Circumstance_ is the most satisfactory of those volumes; it is, perhaps, +that which we could with the least discomposure persuade ourselves to +overlook. Such a statement refers more to the high quality of other +pages than to any positive decay of power or finish here. There is no +less adroitness of touch and penetration of view in this book than +elsewhere, and the poet awakens once more our admiration by his skill in +giving poetic value to minute conditions of life which have escaped less +careful observers. But in _Satires of Circumstance_ the ugliness of +experience is more accentuated than it is elsewhere, and is flung in our +face with less compunction. The pieces which give name to the volume are +only fifteen in number, but the spirit which inspires them is very +frequently repeated in other parts of the collection. That spirit is one +of mocking sarcasm, and it acts in every case by presenting a +beautifully draped figure of illusion, from which the poet, like a +sardonic showman, twitches away the robe that he may display a skeleton +beneath it. We can with little danger assume, as we read the _Satires of +Circumstance_, hard and cruel shafts of searchlight as they seem, that +Mr. Hardy was passing through a mental crisis when he wrote them. This +seems to be the _Troilus and Cressida_ of his life's work, the book in +which he is revealed most distracted by conjecture and most overwhelmed +by the miscarriage of everything. The wells of human hope have been +poisoned for him by some condition of which we know nothing, and even +the picturesque features of Dorsetshire landscape, that have always +before dispersed his melancholy, fail to win his attention:-- + + "Bright yellowhammers + Made mirthful clamours, + And billed long straws with a bustling air, + And bearing their load, + Flew up the road + That he followed alone, without interest there." + +The strongest of the poems of disillusion which are the outcome of this +mood, is "The Newcomer's Wife," with the terrible abruptness of its last +stanza. It is not for criticism to find fault with the theme of a work +of art, but only to comment upon its execution. Of the merit of these +monotonously sinister _Satires of Circumstance_ there can be no +question; whether the poet's indulgence in the mood which gave birth to +them does not tend to lower our moral temperature and to lessen the +rebound of our energy, is another matter. At all events, every one must +welcome a postscript in which a blast on the bugle of war seemed to have +wakened the poet from his dark brooding to the sense of a new chapter in +history. + +In the fourth year of the war the veteran poet published _Moments of +Vision_. These show a remarkable recovery of spirit, and an ingenuity +never before excelled. With the passage of years Mr. Hardy, observing +everything in the little world of Wessex, and forgetting nothing, has +become almost preternaturally wise, and, if it may be said so, +"knowing," with a sort of magic, like that of a wizard. He has learned +to track the windings of the human heart with the familiarity of a +gamekeeper who finds plenty of vermin in the woods, and who nails what +he finds, be it stoat or squirrel, to the barn-door of his poetry. But +there is also in these last-fruits of Mr. Hardy's mossed tree much that +is wholly detached from the bitterness of satire, much that simply +records, with an infinite delicacy of pathos, little incidents of the +personal life of long ago, bestowing the immortality of art on these +fugitive fancies in the spirit of the Japanese sculptor when he chisels +the melting of a cloud or the flight of an insect on his sword hilt:-- + + "I idly cut a parsley stalk + And blew therein towards the moon; + I had not thought what ghosts would walk + With shivering footsteps to my tune. + + "I went and knelt, and scooped my hand + As if to drink, into the brook, + And a faint figure seemed to stand + Above me, with the bye-gone look. + + "I lipped rough rhymes of chance not choice, + I thought not what my words might be; + There came into my ear a voice + That turned a tenderer verse for me." + +We have now in brief historic survey marshalled before us the various +volumes in which Mr. Hardy's lyrical poetry was originally collected. +Before we examine its general character more closely, it may be well to +call attention to its technical quality, which was singularly +misunderstood at first, and which has never, we believe, been boldly +faced. In 1898, and later, when a melodious _falsetto_ was much in +fashion amongst us, the reviewers found great fault with Mr. Hardy's +prosody; they judged him as a versifier to be rude and incorrect. As +regards the single line, it may be confessed that Mr. Hardy, in his +anxiety to present his thought in an undiluted form, is not infrequently +clogged and hard. Such a line as + + "Fused from its separateness by ecstasy" + +hisses at us like a snake, and crawls like a wounded one. Mr. Hardy is +apt to clog his lines with consonants, and he seems indifferent to the +stiffness which is the consequence of this neglect. Ben Jonson said that +"Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; perhaps we may go +so far as to say that Mr. Hardy, for his indifference to a mellifluous +run lays himself open to a mild rebuke. He is negligent of that eternal +ornament of English verse, audible intricacy, probably because of +Swinburne's abuse of it. But most of what is called his harshness should +rather be called bareness, and is the result of a revolt, conscious or +unconscious, against Keats' prescription of "loading the rifts with +ore." + +In saying this, all has been said that an enemy could in justice say in +blame of his metrical peculiarities. Unquestionably he does +occasionally, like Robert Browning, err in the direction of cacophony. +But when we turn to the broader part of prosody, we must perceive that +Mr. Hardy is not only a very ingenious, but a very correct and admirable +metricist. His stanzaic invention is abundant; no other Victorian poet, +not even Swinburne, has employed so many forms, mostly of his own +invention, and employed them so appropriately, that is to say, in so +close harmony with the subject or story enshrined in them. To take an +example from his pure lyrics of reflection first, from "The +Bullfinches":-- + + "Brother Bulleys, let us sing + From the dawn till evening! + For we know not that we go not + When the day's pale visions fold + Unto those who sang of old," + +in the exquisite fineness and sadness of the stanza we seem to hear the +very voices of the birds warbling faintly in the sunset. Again, the +hurried, timid irresolution of a lover always too late is marvellously +rendered in the form of "Lizbie Browne":-- + + "And Lizbie Browne, + Who else had hair + Bay-red as yours, + Or flesh so fair + Bred out of doors, + Sweet Lizbie Browne?" + +On the other hand, the fierceness of "I said to Love" is interpreted in +a stanza that suits the mood of denunciation, while "Tess's Lament" +wails in a metre which seems to rock like an ageing woman seated alone +before the fire, with an infinite haunting sadness. + +It is, however, in the narrative pieces, the little _Wessex Tales_, +that Mr. Hardy's metrical imagination is most triumphant. No two of +these are identical in form, and for each he selects, or more often +invents, a wholly appropriate stanza. He makes many experiments, one of +the strangest being the introduction of rhymeless lines at regular +intervals. Of this, "Cicely" is an example which repays attention:-- + + "And still sadly onward I followed, + That Highway the Icen + Which trails its pale riband down Wessex + O'er lynchet and lea. + + "Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, + Where legions had wayfared, + And where the slow river up-glasses + Its green canopy"; + +and one still more remarkable is the enchanting "Friends Beyond," to +which we shall presently recur. The drawling voice of a weary old +campaigner is wonderfully rendered in the stanza of "Valenciennes":-- + + "Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls + Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. + Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls + As we did Valencieën!" + +whereas for long Napoleonic stories like "Leipzig" and "The Peasant's +Confession," a ballad-measure which contemporaries such as Southey or +Campbell might have used is artfully chosen. In striking contrast we +have the elaborate verse-form of "The Souls of the Slain," in which the +throbbing stanza seems to dilate and withdraw like the very cloud of +moth-like phantoms which it describes. It is difficult to follow out +this theme without more frequent quotation than I have space, for here, +but the reader who pursues it carefully will not repeat the rumour that +Mr. Hardy is a careless or "incorrect" metricist. He is, on the +contrary, a metrical artist of great accomplishment. + +The conception of life revealed in his verses by this careful artist is +one which displays very exactly the bent of his temperament. During the +whole of his long career Mr. Hardy has not budged an inch from his +original line of direction. He holds that, abandoned by God, treated +with scorn by Nature, man lies helpless at the mercy of "those purblind +Doomsters," accident, chance, and time, from whom he has had to endure +injury and insult from the cradle to the grave. This is stating the +Hardy doctrine in its extreme form, but it is not stating it too +strongly. This has been called his "pessimism," a phrase to which some +admirers, unwilling to give things their true name, have objected. But, +of course, Mr. Hardy is a pessimist, just as Browning is an optimist, +just as white is not black, and day is not night. Our juggling with +words in paradox is too often apt to disguise a want of decision in +thought. Let us admit that Mr. Hardy's conception of the fatal forces +which beleaguer human life is a "pessimistic" one, or else words have no +meaning. + +Yet it is needful to define in what this pessimism consists. It is not +the egotism of Byron or the morbid melancholy of Chateaubriand. It is +directed towards an observation of others, not towards an analysis of +self, and this gives it more philosophical importance, because although +romantic peevishness is very common among modern poets, and although +ennui inspires a multitude of sonnets, a deliberate and imaginative +study of useless suffering in the world around us is rare indeed among +the poets. It is particularly to be noted that Mr. Hardy, although one +of the most profoundly tragic of all modern writers, is neither +effeminate nor sickly. His melancholy could never have dictated the +third stanza of Shelley's "Lines written in Dejection in the Bay of +Naples." His pessimism is involuntary, forced from him by his experience +and his constitution, and no analysis could give a better definition of +what divides him from the petulant despair of a poet like Leopardi than +the lines "To Life":-- + + "O life, with the sad scared face, + I weary of seeing thee, + And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, + And thy too-forced pleasantry! + + "I know what thou would'st tell + Of Death, Time, Destiny-- + I have known it long, and know, too, well + What it all means for me. + + "But canst thou not array + Thyself in rare disguise, + And feign like truth, for one mad day, + That Earth is Paradise? + + "I'll tune me to the mood, + And mumm with thee till eve, + And maybe what as interlude + I feign, I shall believe!" + +But the mumming goes no deeper than it does in the exquisite poem of +"The Darkling Thrush," where the carolings of an aged bird, on a frosty +evening, are so ecstatic that they waken a vague hope in the listener's +mind that the thrush may possibly know of "some blessed hope" of which +the poet is "unaware." This is as far as Mr. Hardy ever gets on the +blest Victorian pathway of satisfaction. + +There are certain aspects in which it is not unnatural to see a parallel +between Mr. Hardy and George Crabbe. Each is the spokesman of a +district, each has a passion for the study of mankind, each has gained +by long years of observation a profound knowledge of local human +character, and each has plucked on the open moor, and wears in his coat, +the hueless flower of disillusion. But there is a great distinction in +the aim of the two poets. Crabbe, as he describes himself in _The Parish +Register_, was "the true physician" who "walks the foulest ward." He was +utilitarian in his morality; he exposed the pathos of tragedy by +dwelling on the faults which led to it, forgetful of the fatality which +in more consistent moments he acknowledged. Crabbe was realistic with a +moral design, even in the _Tales of the Hall_, where he made a gallant +effort at last to arrive at a detachment of spirit. No such effort is +needed by Mr. Hardy, who has none of the instinct of a preacher, and who +considers moral improvement outside his responsibility. He admits, with +his great French contemporary, that + + "Tout désir est menteur, toute joie éphémère, + Toute liqueur au fond de la coupe est amère," + +but he is bent on discovering the cause of this devastation, and not +disposed to waste time over its consequences. At the end he produces a +panacea which neither Crabbe nor Byron dreamed of--resignation. + +But the poet has not reached the end of his disillusion. He thinks to +secure repose on the breast of Nature, the _alma mater_, to whom Goethe +and Wordsworth and Browning each in his own way turned, and were +rewarded by consolation and refreshment. We should be prepared to find +Mr. Hardy, with his remarkable aptitude for the perception of natural +forms, easily consoled by the influences of landscape and the inanimate +world. His range of vision is wide and extremely exact; he has the gift +of reproducing before us scenes of various character with a vividness +which is sometimes startling. But Mr. Hardy's disdain of sentimentality, +and his vigorous analysis of the facts of life, render him insensible +not indeed to the mystery nor to the beauty, but to the imagined +sympathy, of Nature. He has no more confidence in the visible earth than +in the invisible heavens, and neither here nor there is he able to +persuade himself to discover a counsellor or a friend. In this +connection, we do well to follow the poet's train of thought in the +lyric called "In a Wood," where he enters a copse dreaming that, in that +realm of "sylvan peace," Nature would offer "a soft release from man's +unrest." He immediately observes that the pine and the beech are +struggling for existence, and trying to blight each other with dripping +poison. He sees the ivy eager to strangle the elm, and the hawthorns +choking the hollies. Even the poplars sulk and turn black under the +shadow of a rival. In the end, filled with horror at all these crimes of +Nature, the poet flees from the copse as from an accursed place, and he +determines that life offers him no consolation except the company of +those human beings who are as beleaguered as himself:-- + + "Since, then, no grace I find + Taught me of trees, + Turn I back to my kind + Worthy as these. + There at least smiles abound, + There discourse trills around, + There, now and then, are found, + Life-loyalties." + +It is absurd, he decides, to love Nature, which has either no response +to give, or answers in irony. Let us even avoid, as much as we can, deep +concentration of thought upon the mysteries of Nature, lest we become +demoralised by contemplating her negligence, her blindness, her +implacability. We find here a violent reaction against the poetry of +egotistic optimism which had ruled the romantic school in England for +more than a hundred years, and we recognise a branch of Mr. Hardy's +originality. He has lifted the veil of Isis, and he finds beneath it, +not a benevolent mother of men, but the tomb of an illusion. One short +lyric, "Yell'ham-Wood's Story," puts this, again with a sylvan setting, +in its unflinching crudity:-- + + "Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan, + And Clyffe-hill Clump says 'Yea!' + But Yell'ham says a thing of its own: + It's not, 'Gray, gray, + Is Life alway!' + That Yell'ham says, + Nor that Life is for ends unknown. + + "It says that Life would signify + A thwarted purposing: + That we come to live, and are called to die. + Yes, that's the thing + In fall, in spring, + That Yell'ham says:-- + Life offers--to deny!'" + +It is therefore almost exclusively to the obscure history of those who +suffer and stumble around him, victims of the universal disillusion, men +and women "come to live but called to die," that Mr. Hardy dedicates his +poetic function. "Lizbie Browne" appeals to us as a typical instance of +his rustic pathos, his direct and poignant tenderness, and if we compare +it with such poems of Wordsworth's as "Lucy Gray" or "Alice Fell" we see +that he starts by standing much closer to the level of the subject than +his great predecessor does. Wordsworth is the benevolent philosopher +sitting in a post-chaise or crossing the "wide moor" in meditation. Mr. +Hardy is the familiar neighbour, the shy mourner at the grave; his +relation is a more intimate one: he is patient, humble, un-upbraiding. +Sometimes, as in the remarkable colloquy called "The Ruined Maid," his +sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the +system of Victorian morality. Mr. Hardy, indeed, is not concerned with +sentimental morals, but with the primitive instincts of the soul, +applauding them, or at least recording them with complacency, even when +they outrage ethical tradition, as they do in the lyric narrative called +"A Wife and Another." The stanzas "To an Unborn Pauper Child" sum up +what is sinister and what is genial in Mr. Hardy's attitude to the +unambitious forms of life which he loves to contemplate. + +His temperature is not always so low as it is in the class of poems to +which we have just referred, but his ultimate view is never more +sanguine. He is pleased sometimes to act as the fiddler at a dance, +surveying the hot-blooded couples, and urging them on by the lilt of +his instrument, but he is always perfectly aware that they will have "to +pay high for their prancing" at the end of all. No instance of this is +more remarkable than the poem called "Julie-Jane," a perfect example of +Mr. Hardy's metrical ingenuity and skill, which begins thus:-- + + "Sing; how 'a would sing! + How 'a would raise the tune + When we rode in the waggon from harvesting + By the light o' the moon! + + "Dance; how 'a would dance! + If a fiddlestring did but sound + She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance, + And go round and round. + + "Laugh; how 'a would laugh! + Her peony lips would part + As if none such a place for a lover to quaff + At the deeps of a heart," + +and which then turns to the most plaintive and the most irreparable +tragedy, woven, as a black design on to a background of gold, upon this +basis of temperamental joyousness. + +Alphonse Daudet once said that the great gift of Edmond de Goncourt was +to, "_rendre l'irrendable_." This is much more true of Mr. Hardy than it +was of Goncourt, and more true than it is of any other English poet +except Donne. There is absolutely no observation too minute, no flutter +of reminiscence too faint, for Mr. Hardy to adopt as the subject of a +metaphysical lyric, and his skill in this direction has grown upon him; +it is nowhere so remarkable as in his latest volume, aptly termed +_Moments of Vision_. Everything in village life is grist to his mill; he +seems to make no selection, and his field is modest to humility and yet +practically boundless. We have a poem on the attitude of two people with +nothing to do and no book to read, waiting in the parlour of an hotel +for the rain to stop, a recollection after more than forty years. That +the poet once dropped a pencil into the cranny of an old church where he +was sketching inspires an elaborate lyric. The disappearance of a rotted +summer-house, the look of a row of silver drops of fog condensed on the +bar of a gate, the effect of candlelight years and years ago on a +woman's neck and hair, the vision of a giant at a fair, led by a dwarf +with a red string--such are amongst the subjects which awaken in Mr. +Hardy thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears, and call for +interpretation in verse. The skeleton of a lady's sunshade, picked up on +Swanage Cliffs, the pages of a fly-blown Testament lying in a railway +waiting-room, a journeying boy in a third-class carriage, with his +ticket stuck in the band of his hat--such are among the themes which +awake in Mr. Hardy's imagination reveries which are always wholly +serious and usually deeply tragic. + +Mr. Hardy's notation of human touches hitherto excluded from the realm +of poetry is one of the most notable features of his originality. It +marked his work from the beginning, as in the early ballad of "The +Widow," where the sudden damping of the wooer's amatory ardour in +consequence of his jealousy of the child is rendered with extraordinary +refinement. The difficulty of course is to know when to stop. There is +always a danger that a poet, in his search after the infinitely +ingenious, may lapse into _amphigory_, into sheer absurdity and +triviality, which Cowper, in spite of his elegant lightness, does not +always escape. Wordsworth, more serious in his intent, fell headlong in +parts of _Peter Bell_, and in such ballads as "Betty Foy." Mr. Hardy, +whatever the poverty of his incident, commonly redeems it by the oddity +of his observation; as in "The Pedigree":-- + + "I bent in the deep of night + Over a pedigree the chronicler gave + As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, + The uncurtained panes of my window-square + Let in the watery light + Of the moon in its old age: + And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past + Where mute and cold it globed + Like a dying dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave." + +Mr. Hardy's love of strange experiences, and of adventures founded on a +balance of conscience and instinct, is constantly exemplified in those +ballads and verse-anecdotes which form the section of his poetry most +appreciated by the general public. Among these, extraordinarily +representative of the poet's habit of mind, is "My Cicely," a tale of +the eighteenth century, where a man impetuously rides from London +through Wessex to be present at the funeral of the wrong woman; as he +returns, by a coincidence, he meets the right woman, whom he used to +love, and is horrified at "her liquor-fired face, her thick accents." He +determines that by an effort of will the dead woman (whom he never saw) +shall remain, what she seemed during his wild ride, "_my_ Cicely," and +the living woman be expunged from memory. A similar deliberate electing +that the dream shall hold the place of the fact is the motive of "The +Well-Beloved." The ghastly humour of "The Curate's Kindness" is a sort +of reverse action of the same mental subtlety. Misunderstanding takes a +very prominent place in Mr. Hardy's irony of circumstance; as, almost +too painfully, in "The Rash Bride," a hideous tale of suicide following +on the duplicity of a tender and innocent widow. + +The grandmother of Mr. Hardy was born in 1772, and survived until 1857. +From her lips he heard many an obscure old legend of the life of Wessex +in the eighteenth century. Was it she who told him the terrible Exmoor +story of "The Sacrilege;" the early tale of "The Two Men," which might +be the skeleton-scenario for a whole elaborate novel; or that +incomparable comedy in verse, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," with its +splendid human touch at the very end? We suspect that it was; and +perhaps at the same source he acquired his dangerous insight into the +female heart, whether exquisitely feeble as in "The Home-coming" with +its delicate and ironic surprise, or treacherous, as in the desolating +ballad of "Rose-Ann." No one, in prose or verse, has expatiated more +poignantly than Mr. Hardy on what our forefathers used to call "cases of +conscience." He seems to have shared the experiences of souls to whom +life was "a wood before your doors, and a labyrinth within the wood, and +locks and bars to every door within that labyrinth," as Jeremy Taylor +describes that of the anxious penitents who came to him to confession. +The probably very early story of "The Casterbridge Captains" is a +delicate study in compunction, and a still more important example is +"The Alarm," where the balance of conscience and instinct gives to what +in coarser hands might seem the most trivial of actions a momentous +character of tragedy. + +This is one of Mr. Hardy's studies in military history, where he is +almost always singularly happy. His portraits of the non-commissioned +officer of the old service are as excellent in verse as they are in the +prose of _The Trumpet-Major_ or _The Melancholy Hussar_. The reader of +the novels will not have to be reminded that "Valenciennes" and the +other ballads have their prose-parallel in Simon Burden's reminiscences +of Minden. Mr. Hardy, with a great curiosity about the science of war +and a close acquaintance with the mind of the common soldier, has +pondered on the philosophy of fighting. "The Man he Killed," written in +1902, expresses the wonder of the rifleman who is called upon to shoot +his brother-in-arms, although + + "Had he and I but met, + By some old ancient inn, + We should have set us down to wet + Right many a nipperkin." + +In this connection the _Poems of War and Patriotism_, which form an +important part of the volume of 1918, should be carefully examined by +those who meditate on the tremendous problems of the moment. + +A poet so profoundly absorbed in the study of life could not fail to +speculate on the probabilities of immortality. Here Mr. Hardy presents +to us his habitual serenity in negation. He sees the beautiful human +body "lined by tool of time," and he asks what becomes of it when its +dissolution is complete. He sees no evidence of a conscious state after +death, of what would have to be, in the case of aged or exhausted +persons, a revival of spiritual force, and on the whole he is +disinclined to cling to the faith in a future life. He holds that the +immortality of a dead man resides in the memory of the living, his +"finer part shining within ever-faithful hearts of those bereft." He +pursues this theme in a large number of his most serious and affecting +lyrics, most gravely perhaps in "The To-be-Forgotten" and in "The +Superseded." This sense of the forlorn condition of the dead, surviving +only in the dwindling memory of the living, inspires what has some +claims to be considered the loveliest of all Mr. Hardy's poems, "Friends +Beyond," which in its tenderness, its humour, and its pathos contains in +a few pages every characteristic of his genius. + +His speculation perceives the dead as a crowd of slowly vanishing +phantoms, clustering in their ineffectual longing round the footsteps of +those through whom alone they continue to exist. This conception has +inspired Mr. Hardy with several wonderful visions, among which the +spectacle of "The Souls of the Slain" in the Boer War, alighting, like +vast flights of moths, over Portland Bill at night, is the most +remarkable. It has the sublimity and much of the character of some +apocalyptic design by Blake. The volume of 1902 contains a whole group +of phantasmal pieces of this kind, where there is frequent mention of +spectres, who address the poet in the accents of nature, as in the +unrhymed ode called "The Mother Mourns." The obsession of old age, with +its physical decay ("I look into my glass"), the inevitable division +which leads to that isolation which the poet regards as the greatest of +adversities ("The Impercipient"), the tragedies of moral indecision, the +contrast between the tangible earth and the bodyless ghosts, and endless +repetition of the cry, "Why find we us here?" and of the question "Has +some Vast Imbecility framed us in jest, and left us now to +hazardry?"--all start from the overwhelming love of physical life and +acquaintance with its possibilities, which Mr. Hardy possesses to an +inordinate degree. + +It would be ridiculous at the close of an essay to attempt any +discussion of the huge dramatic panorama which many believe to be Mr. +Hardy's most weighty contribution to English literature. The spacious +theatre of _The Dynasts_ with its comprehensive and yet concise +realisations of vast passages of human history, is a work which calls +for a commentary as lengthy as itself, and yet needs no commentary at +all. No work of the imagination is more its own interpreter than this +sublime historic peep-show, this rolling vision of the Napoleonic +chronicle drawn on the broadest lines, and yet in detail made up of +intensely concentrated and vivid glimpses of reality. But the subject of +my present study, the lyrical poetry of Mr. Hardy, is not largely +illustrated in _The Dynasts_, except by the choral interludes of the +phantom intelligences, which have great lyrical value, and by three or +four admirable songs. + +When we resume the effect which the poetry of Mr. Hardy makes upon the +careful reader, we note, as I have indicated already, a sense of unity +of direction throughout. Mr. Hardy has expressed himself in a thousand +ways, but has never altered his vision. From 1867 to 1917, through half +a century of imaginative creation, he has not modified the large +outlines of his art in the smallest degree. To early readers of his +poems, before the full meaning of them became evident, his voice sounded +inharmonious, because it did not fit in with the exquisite melodies of +the later Victorian age. But Mr. Hardy, with characteristic pertinacity, +did not attempt to alter his utterance in the least, and now we can all +perceive, if we take the trouble to do so, that what seemed harsh in his +poetry was his peculiar and personal mode of interpreting his thoughts +to the world. + +As in his novels so in his poems, Mr. Hardy has chosen to remain local, +to be the interpreter for present and future times of one rich and +neglected province of the British realm. From his standpoint there he +contemplates the wide aspect of life, but it seems huge and misty to +him, and he broods over the tiny incidents of Wessex idiosyncracy. His +irony is audacious and even sardonic, and few poets have been less +solicitous to please their weaker brethren. But no poet of modern times +has been more careful to avoid the abstract and to touch upon the real. + + + + +SOME SOLDIER POETS + + +The two years which preceded the outbreak of the war were marked in this +country by a revival of public interest in the art of poetry. To this +movement coherence was given and organisation introduced by Mr. Edward +Marsh's now-famous volume entitled _Georgian Poetry_. The effect of this +collection--for it is hardly correct to call it an anthology--of the +best poems written by the youngest poets since 1911 was two-fold; it +acquainted readers with work few had "the leisure or the zeal to +investigate," and it brought the writers themselves together in a +corporate and selected relation. I do not recollect that this had been +done--except prematurely and partially by _The Germ_ of 1850--since the +_England's Parnassus_ and _England's Helicon_ of 1600. In point of fact +the only real precursor of Mr. Marsh's venture in our whole literature +is the _Songs and Sonnettes_ of 1557, commonly known as _Tottel's +Miscellany_. Tottel brought together, for the first time, the lyrics of +Wyatt, Surrey, Churchyard, Vaux, and Bryan, exactly as Mr. Marsh called +public attention to Rupert Brooke, James Elroy Flecker and the rest of +the Georgians, and he thereby fixed the names of those poets, as Mr. +Marsh has fixed those of our youngest fledglings, on the roll of English +literature. + +The general tone of the latest poetry, up to the moment of the outbreak +of hostilities, was pensive, instinct with natural piety, given somewhat +in excess to description of landscape, tender in feeling, essentially +unaggressive except towards the clergy and towards other versifiers of +an earlier generation. There was absolutely not a trace in any one of +the young poets of that arrogance and vociferous defiance which marked +German verse during the same years. These English shepherds might hit at +their elders with their staves, but they had turned their swords into +pruning-hooks and had no scabbards to rattle. This is a point which +might have attracted notice, if we had not all been too drowsy in the +lap of our imperial prosperity to observe the signs of the times in +Berlin. Why did no one call our attention to the beating of the big drum +which was going on so briskly on the Teutonic Parnassus? At all events, +there was no echo of such a noise in the "chambers of imagery" which +contained Mr. Gordon Bottomley, or in Mr. W.H. Davies' wandering "songs +of joy," or on "the great hills and solemn chanting seas" where Mr. John +Drinkwater waited for the advent of beauty. And the guns of August 1914 +found Mr. W.W. Gibson encompassed by "one dim, blue infinity of starry +peace." There is a sort of German _Georgian Poetry_ in existence; in +time to come a comparison of its pages with those of Mr. Marsh may throw +a side-light on the question, Who prepared the War? + +The youngest poets were more completely taken by surprise in August 1914 +than their elders. The earliest expressions of lyric military feeling +came from veteran voices. It was only proper that the earliest of all +should be the Poet Laureate's address to England, ending with the +prophecy:-- + + "Much suffering shall cleanse thee! + But thou through the flood + Shalt win to Salvation, + To Beauty through blood." + +As sensation, however, followed sensation in those first terrific and +bewildering weeks, much was happening that called forth with the utmost +exuberance the primal emotions of mankind; there was full occasion for + + "exultations, agonies, + And love, and man's unconquerable mind." + +By September a full chorus was vocal, led by our national veteran, Mr. +Thomas Hardy, with his _Song of the Soldiers_:-- + + "What of the faith and fire within us, + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, + To hazards whence no tears can win us; + What of the faith and fire within us, + Men who march away?" + +Already, before the close of the autumn of 1914, four or five +anthologies of war-poems were in the press, and the desire of the +general public to be fed with patriotic and emotional verse was +manifested in unmistakable ways. We had been accustomed for some time +past to the issue of a multitude of little pamphlets of verse, often +very carefully written, and these the critics had treated with an +indulgence which would have whitened the hair of the stern reviewers of +forty years ago. The youthful poets, almost a trade-union in themselves, +protected one another by their sedulous generosity. It was very unusual +to see anything criticised, much less "slated"; the balms of praise were +poured over every rising head, and immortalities were predicted by the +dozen. Yet, as a rule, the sale of these little poetic pamphlets had +been small, and they had been read only by those who had a definite +object in doing so. + +The immediate success of the anthologies, however, proved that the war +had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse, an attention +anxious to be stirred or soothed by the assiduous company of poets who +had been ripening their talents in a little clan. These had now an +eager world ready to listen to them. The result was surprising; we may +even, without exaggeration, call it unparalleled. There had never +before, in the world's history, been an epoch which had tolerated and +even welcomed such a flood of verse as was poured forth over Great +Britain during the first three years of the war. Those years saw the +publication, as I am credibly informed, of more than five hundred +volumes of new and original poetry. It would be the silliest +complaisance to pretend that all of this, or much of it, or any but a +very little of it, has been of permanent value. Much of it was windy and +superficial, striving in wild vague terms to express great agitations +which were obscurely felt by the poet. There was too much of the bathos +of rhetoric, especially at first; too much addressing the German as +"thou fell, bloody brute," and the like, which broke no bones and took +no trenches. + +When once it was understood that, as a cancelled line in Tennyson's +_Maud_ has it, + + "The long, long canker of peace was over and done," + +the sentiments of indignation and horror made themselves felt with +considerable vivacity. In this direction, however, none of the youngest +poets approached Sir Owen Seaman in the vigour of their invective. Most +of them seemed to be overpowered by the political situation, and few +could free themselves from their inured pacific habit of speech. Even +when they wrote of Belgium, the Muse seemed rather to weep than to +curse. Looking back to the winter of 1914, it is almost pathetic to +observe how difficult it was for our easy-going British bards to hate +the Germans. There was a good deal of ineffective violence, and +considerable misuse of technical terms, caused, in many cases, by a too +hasty reference to newspaper reports of gallantry under danger, in the +course of which the more or less obscure verbiage of military science +was picturesquely and inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious +reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he +cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a +family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from +another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British +prejudice, and to a horrible confidence in England's power of "muddling +through," which look rather ghastly in the light of subsequent +struggles. + +There was, however, a new spirit presently apparent, and a much +healthier one. The bards became soldiers, and in crossing over to France +and Flanders, each had packed his flute in his kit. They began to send +home verses in which they translated into music their actual experiences +and their authentic emotions. We found ourselves listening to young men +who had something new, and what was better, something noble to say to +us, and we returned to the national spirit which inspired the Chansons +de Geste in the eleventh century. To the spirit--but not in the least to +the form, since it is curious that the war-poetry of 1914-17 was, even +in the most skilful hands, poetry on a small scale. The two greatest of +the primal species of verse, the Epic and the Ode, were entirely +neglected, except, as will later be observed, in one notable instance by +Major Maurice Baring. As a rule, the poets constrained themselves to +observe the discipline of a rather confined lyrical analysis in forms of +the simplest character. Although particular examples showed a rare +felicity of touch, and although the sincerity of the reflection in many +cases hit upon very happy forms of expression, it is impossible to +overlook the general monotony. There used to be a story that the +Japanese Government sent a committee of its best art-critics to study +the relative merits of the modern European painters, and that they +returned with the bewildered statement that they could make no report, +because all European pictures were exactly alike. A student from +Patagonia might conceivably argue that he could discover no difference +whatever between our various poets of the war. + +This would be unjust, but it is perhaps not unfair to suggest that the +determined resistance to all restraint, which has marked the latest +school, is not really favourable to individuality. There has been a very +general, almost a universal tendency to throw off the shackles of poetic +form. It has been supposed that by abandoning the normal restraints, or +artificialities, of metre and rhyme, a greater directness and fidelity +would be secured. Of course, if an intensified journalistic impression +is all that is desired, "prose cut up into lengths" is the readiest +by-way to effect. But if the poets desire--and they all do desire--to +speak to ages yet unborn, they should not forget that all the experience +of history goes to prove discipline not unfavourable to poetic +sincerity, while, on the other hand, the absence of all restraint is +fatal to it. Inspiration does not willingly attend upon flagging metre +and discordant rhyme, and never in the whole choral progress from Pindar +down to Swinburne has a great master been found who did not exult in the +stubbornness of "dancing words and speaking strings," or who did not +find his joy in reducing them to harmony. The artist who avoids all +difficulties may be pleased with the rapidity of his effect, but he will +have the vexation of finding his success an ephemeral one. The old +advice to the poet, in preparing the rich chariot of the Muse, still +holds good:-- + + "Let the postillion, Nature, mount, but let + The coachman, Art, be set." + +Too many of our recent rebellious bards fancy that the coach will drive +itself, if only the post-boy sticks his heels hard into Pegasus. + +It is not, however, the object of this essay to review all the poetry +which was written about the war, nor even that part of it which owed its +existence to the strong feeling of non-combatants at home. I propose to +fix our attention on what was written by the young soldiers themselves +in their beautiful gallantry, verse which comes to us hallowed by the +glorious effort of battle, and in too many poignant cases by the +ultimate sacrifice of life itself. The poet achieves his highest meed of +contemporary glory, if + + "some brave young man's untimely fate + In words worth, dying for he celebrate," + +and when he is himself a young man striving for the same deathless +honour on the same field of blood it is difficult to conceive of +circumstances more poignant than those which surround his effort. On +many of these poets a death of the highest nobility set the seal of +eternal life. They were simple and passionate, radiant and calm, they +fought for their country, and they have entered into glory. This alone +might be enough to say in their praise, but star differeth from star in +brightness, and from the constellation I propose to select half a dozen +of the clearest luminaries. What is said in honest praise of these may +be said, with due modification, of many others who miss merely the +polish of their accomplishment. It is perhaps worth noticing, in +passing, that most of the poets are men of university training, and that +certain literary strains are common to the rank and file of them. The +influence of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and Rossetti is almost +entirely absent. The only one of the great Victorians whom they seem to +have read is Matthew Arnold, but it is impossible to help observing that +the _Shropshire Lad_ of Mr. A.E. Housman was in the tunic-pocket of +every one of them. Among the English poets of the past, it is mainly the +so-called "metaphysical" writers in the seventeenth century whom they +studied; Donne seems to have been a favourite with them all, and Vaughan +and Treherne were not far behind. + +The spontaneous instinct of readers has taken the name of Rupert Brooke +to illustrate the poetic spirit of the great war in a superlative +degree. His posthumous volume, brought out in May 1915, a few weeks +after his death, has enjoyed a success which is greater, perhaps, than +that of all the other poems of the war put together. He has become a +sort of symbol, even a sort of fetish, and he is to English sentiment +what Charles Péguy is to France, an oriflamme of the chivalry of his +country. It is curious, in this connection, that neither Péguy nor +Brooke had the opportunity of fighting much in the cause; they fell, as +it seemed for the moment, obscurely. Rupert Brooke was a pawn in the +dark and dolorous flight from Antwerp. He died in the Ægean, between +Egypt and Gallipoli, having never seen a Turkish enemy. So Péguy faded +out of sight on the very opening day of the battle of the Marne, yet +each of these young men was immediately perceived to have embodied the +gallantry of his country. The extraordinary popularity of Rupert Brooke +is due to the excellence of his verse, to the tact with which it was +presented to the public, but also to a vague perception of his +representative nature. He was the finest specimen of a certain type +produced at the universities, and then sacrificed to our national +necessity. + +It is needless to describe the verses of Rupert Brooke, which have +attained a circulation which any poet might envy. They are comprised in +two slender volumes, that above mentioned, and one of 1911, published +while he was still at Cambridge. He was born in 1887, and when he died +off Skyros, in circumstances of the most romantic pathos, he had not +completed his twenty-eighth year. He was, unlike the majority of his +contemporaries, a meticulous and reserved writer, little inclined to be +pleased with his work, and cautious to avoid the snare of improvisation. +Hence, though he lived to be older than did Keats or Fergusson, he left +a very slender garland of verse behind him, in which there is scarcely a +petal which is not of some permanent value. For instance, in the volume +of 1911 we found not a few pieces which then seemed crude in taste and +petulant in temper; but even these now illustrate a most interesting +character of which time has rounded the angles, and we would not have +otherwise what illustrates so luminously--and so divertingly--that +precious object, the mind of Rupert Brooke. + +Yet there is a danger that this mind and character may be +misinterpreted, even by those who contemplate the poet's memory with +idolatry. There is some evidence of a Rupert Brooke legend in the +process of formation, which deserves to be guarded against not less +jealously than the R.L. Stevenson legend of a few years ago. We know +that for some people gold and lilies are not properly honoured until +they are gilded and painted. Rupert Brooke was far from being either a +plaster saint or a vivid public witness. He was neither a trumpet nor a +torch. He lives in the memory of those who knew him as a smiling and +attentive spectator, eager to watch every flourish of the pageantry of +life. Existence was a wonderful harmony to Rupert Brooke, who was +determined to lose no tone of it by making too much noise himself. In +company he was not a great talker, but loved to listen, with sparkling +deference, to people less gifted than himself if only they had +experience to impart. He lived in a fascinated state, bewitched with +wonder and appreciation. His very fine appearance, which seemed to glow +with dormant vitality, his beautiful manners, the quickness of his +intelligence, his humour, were combined under the spell of a curious +magnetism, difficult to analyse. When he entered a room, he seemed to +bring sunshine with him, although he was usually rather silent, and +pointedly immobile. I do not think it would be easy to recollect any +utterance of his which was very remarkable, but all he said and did +added to the harmonious, ardent, and simple effect. + +There is very little of the poetry of Rupert Brooke which can be +definitely identified with the war. The last six months of his life, +spent in conditions for which nothing in his previous existence in +Cambridge or Berlin, in Grantchester or Tahiti, had in the least +prepared him, were devoted--for we must not say wasted--to breaking up +the _cliché_ of civilised habits. But of this harassed time there remain +to us the five immortal Sonnets, which form the crown of Rupert Brooke's +verse, and his principal legacy to English literature. Our record would +be imperfect without the citation of one, perhaps the least hackneyed of +these:-- + + "Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! + There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, + But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. + These laid the world away; poured out the red + Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be + Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, + That men call age; and those who would have been, + Their sons, they gave, their immortality. + + "Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, + Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain. + Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, + And paid his subjects with a royal wage; + And Nobleness walks in our ways again; + And we have come into our heritage." + +If the fortune of his country had not disturbed his plans, it is more +than probable that Rupert Brooke would have become an enlightened and +enthusiastic professor. Of the poet who detains us next it may be said +that there was hardly any walk of life, except precisely this, which he +could not have adorned. Julian Grenfell, who was a poet almost by +accident, resembled the most enlightened of the young Italian noblemen +of the Renaissance, who gave themselves with violence to a surfeit of +knowledge and a riot of action. He was a humanist of the type of the +fifteenth century, soldier, scholar, and man of pleasure, such as we +read of in Vespasiano's famous book. Everything he did was done in the +service of St. Epicurus, it was done to _darsi buon tempo_, as the +Tuscans used to say. But this was only the superficial direction taken +by his energy; if he was imperious in his pleasures, he was earnest in +his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of +the physical, intellectual, and emotional faculties at his disposal. +Julian Grenfell was a master of the body and of the mind, an unrivalled +boxer, a pertinacious hunter, skilled in swimming and polo, a splendid +shot, a swift runner, and an unwearying student. That an athlete so +accomplished should have had time left for intellectual endowments is +amazing, but his natural pugnacity led him to fight lexicons as he +fought the wild boar, and with as complete success. + +The record of the brief and shining life of Julian Grenfell has been +told in an anonymous record of family life which is destined to +reverberate far beyond the discreet circle of friends to which it is +provisionally addressed. It is a document of extraordinary candour, +tact, and fidelity, and it is difficult to say whether humour or courage +is the quality which illuminates it most. It will be referred to by +future historians of our race as the most vivid record which has been +preserved of the red-blooded activity of a spirited patrician family at +the opening of the twentieth century. It is partly through his place at +the centre of this record that, as one of the most gifted of his elder +friends has said, the name of Julian Grenfell will be linked "with all +that is swift and chivalrous, lovely and courageous," but it is also +through his rare and careless verses. + +Julian Grenfell, who was born to excel with an enviable ease, was not a +poet by determination. In a family where everything has been preserved, +no verses of his that are not the merest boyish exercises are known to +exist previous to the war. He was born in 1888, and he became a +professional soldier in India in 1911. He was on his way home from South +Africa when hostilities broke out, and he was already fighting in +Flanders in October 1914. After a very brilliant campaign, in the course +of which he won the D.S.O. and was twice mentioned in despatches, he was +shot in the head near Ypres and died of his wounds at Boulogne on May +26th, 1915. During these months in France, by the testimony of all who +saw him and of all to whom he wrote, his character received its final +touch of ripeness. Among his other attainments he abruptly discovered +the gift of noble gnomic verse. On receiving news of the death of Rupert +Brooke, and a month before his own death, Julian Grenfell wrote the +verses called "Into Battle," which contain the unforgettable stanzas:-- + + "The fighting man shall from the sun + Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; + Speed with the light-foot winds to run, + And with the trees to newer birth.... + + "The woodland trees that stand together, + They stand to him each one a friend; + They gently speak in the windy weather; + They guide to valley and ridge's end. + + "The kestrel hovering by day, + And the little owls that call by night, + Bid him be swift and keen as they, + As keen of ear, as swift of sight. + + "The blackbird sings to him 'Brother, brother, + If this be the last song you shall sing, + Sing well, for you may not sing another, + Brother, sing.'" + +The whole of this poem is memorable, down to its final prophetic +quatrain:-- + + "The thundering line of battle stands, + And in the air Death moans and sings; + But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, + And Night shall fold him in soft wings." + +"Could any other man in the British Army have knocked out a heavy-weight +champion one week and written that poem the next?" a brother officer +asked. "Into Battle" remains, and will probably continue to remain, the +clearest lyrical expression of the fighting spirit of England in which +the war has found words. It is a poem for soldiers, and it gives noble +form to their most splendid aspirations. Julian Grenfell wrote, as he +boxed and rode, as he fought in the mud of Flanders, as the ideal +sporting Englishman of our old, heroic type. + +The ancient mystery of verse is so deeply based on tradition that it is +not surprising that all the strange contrivances of twentieth-century +warfare have been found too crabbed for our poets to use. When great +Marlborough, as Addison puts it, "examin'd all the dreadful scenes of +war" at Blenheim, he was really in closer touch with Marathon than with +the tanks and gas of Ypres. But there is one military implement so +beautiful in itself, and so magical in the nature of its service, that +it is bound to conquer a place in poetry. The air-machine, to quote _The +Campaign_ once more, "rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." But +the poets are still shy of it. In French it has, as yet, inspired but +one good poem, the "Plus haut toujours!" of Jean Allard-Méeus, a hymn of +real aerial majesty. In English Major Maurice Baring's ode "In Memoriam: +A.H." is equally unique, and, in its complete diversity from +Allard-Méeus' rhapsody, suggests that the aeroplane has a wide field +before it in the realms of imaginative writing. Major Baring's subject +is the death of Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas, who was killed on November +3rd, 1916. This distinguished young statesman and soldier had just been +promoted, after a career of prolonged gallantry in the air, and would +have flown no more, if he had returned in safety to our front on that +fatal day. + +Major Baring has long been known as an excellent composer of sonnets and +other short pieces. But "In Memoriam: A.H." lifts him to a position +among our living poets to which he had hardly a pretension. In a long +irregular threnody or funeral ode, the great technical difficulty is to +support lyrical emotion throughout. No form of verse is more liable to +lapses of dignity, to dull and flagging passages. Even Dryden in _Anne +Killigrew_, even Coleridge in the _Departing Year_, have not been able +to avoid those languors. Many poets attempt to escape them by a use of +swollen and pompous language. I will not say that Major Baring has been +universally successful, where the success of the great masters is only +relative, but he has produced a poem of great beauty and originality, +which interprets an emotion and illustrates an incident the poignancy of +which could scarcely be exaggerated. I have no hesitation in asserting +that "A.H." is one of the few durable contributions to the literature of +the present war. + +It is difficult to quote effectively from a poem which is constructed +with great care on a complicated plan, but a fragment of Major Baring's +elegy may lead readers to the original:-- + + "God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift + And maimed you with a bullet long ago, + And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift, + And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow, + Gave back your youth to you, + And packed in moments rare and few + Achievements manifold + And happiness untold, + And bade you spring to Death as to a bride, + In manhood's ripeness, power and pride, + And on your sandals the strong wings of youth." + +There is no rhetoric here, no empty piling up of fine words; it is a +closely followed study in poetical biography. + +The water has its marvels like the air, but they also have hardly yet +secured the attention of the poets. In _A Naval Motley_, by Lieut. +N.M.F. Corbett, published in June 1916, we encounter the submarine:-- + + "Not yours to know delight + In the keen hard-fought fight, + The shock of battle and the battle's thunder; + But suddenly to feel + Deep, deep beneath the keel + The vital blow that rives the ship asunder!" + +A section of the new war-poetry which is particularly pathetic is that +which is inspired by the nostalgia of home, by the longing in the midst +of the guns and the dust and the lice for the silent woodlands and cool +waters of England. When this is combined with the sense of extreme +youth, and of a certain brave and beautiful innocence, the poignancy of +it is almost more than can be borne. The judgment is hampered, and one +doubts whether one's critical feeling can be trusted. This particular +species of emotion is awakened by no volume more than by the slender +_Worple Flit_ of E. Wyndham Tennant, who died on the Somme in September +1916. He was only nineteen when he fell, at an age when, on the one +hand, more precocious verse than his has been written, and when yet, on +the other, some of the greatest poets had not achieved a mastery of +words equal to that already possessed by this young Wykehamist. The +voice is faltering, and there is a want of sureness in the touch; the +metrical hammer does not always tap the centre of the nail's head. But +what pathos in the sentiment, what tenderness in the devotion to beauty! +Tennant had, we may suppose, read Flecker before he wrote "How shall I +tell you of the roads that stretch away?"; or was it merely the family +likeness in the generation? But I know not what but his own genius can +have inspired the "Home Thoughts in Laventie," a poem about a little +garden left unravished among the rubble of the wrecked village, a poem +which ends thus:-- + + "I saw green banks of daffodil, + Slim poplars in the breeze, + Great tan-brown hares in gusty March + A-courting on the leas. + And meadows, with their glittering streams--and silver-scurrying dace-- + Home, what a perfect place." + +Among these boy-poets, so cruelly and prematurely snatched from the +paternal earth, Tennant suggests to us the possibility that a talent of +very high order was quenched by death, because in few of them do we find +so much evidence of that "perception and awe of Beauty" which Plotinus +held to be the upward path to God. + +In June 1917 there was published a slender volume which is in several +ways the most puzzling and the most interesting of all that lie upon my +table to-day. This is the _Ardours and Endurances_ of Lieut. Robert +Nichols. I knew nothing of the author save what I learned from his +writings, that he is very young, that he went out from Oxford early in +the war, that he was fighting in Flanders before the end of 1914, that +he was wounded, perhaps at Loos, in 1915, and that he was long in +hospital. I felt the hope, which later information has confirmed, that +he was still alive and on the road to recovery. Before _Ardours and +Endurances_ reached me, I had met with _Invocation_, a smaller volume +published by Lieut. Nichols in December 1915. There has rarely been a +more radical change in the character of an artist than is displayed by a +comparison of these two collections. _Invocation_, in which the war +takes a small and unconvincing place, is creditable, though rather +uncertain, in workmanship, and displays a tendency towards experiment in +rich fancy and vague ornament. In _Ardours and Endurances_ the same +accents are scarcely to be detected; the pleasant boy has grown into a +warworn man; while the mastery over the material of poetic art has +become so remarkable as to make the epithet "promising" otiose. There is +no "promise" here; there is high performance. + +Alone among the poets before me, Lieut. Nichols has set down a reasoned +sequence of war impressions. The opening Third of his book, and by far +its most interesting section, consists of a cycle of pieces in which the +personal experience of fighting is minutely reported, stage by stage. We +have "The Summons," the reluctant but unhesitating answer to the call in +England, the break-up of plans; then the farewell to home, "the place of +comfort." "The Approach," in three successive lyrics, describes the +arrival at the Front. "Battle," in eleven sections, reproduces the +mental and physical phenomena of the attack. "The Dead," in four +instalments, tells the tale of grief. "The Aftermath," with +extraordinary skill, records in eight stages the gradual recovery of +nerve-power after the shattering emotions of the right. The first +section of "Battle," as being shorter than the rest, may be quoted in +full as an example of Lieut. Nichols's method:-- + + "It is mid-day: the deep trench glares-- + A buzz and blaze of flies-- + The hot wind puffs the giddy airs, + The great sun rakes the skies, + + "No sound in all the stagnant trench + Where forty standing men + Endure the sweat and grit and stench, + Like cattle in a pen. + + "Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs + Or twangs the whining wire; + Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs + As in hell's forging fire. + + "From out a high cool cloud descends + An aeroplane's far moan; + The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends, + The black speck travels on. + + "And sweating, dizzied, isolate + In the hot trench beneath, + We bide the next shrewd move of fate + Be it of life or death." + +This is painfully vivid, but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what +follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from +the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the +hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken +melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section of +_Ardours and Endurances_:-- + + "In a far field, away from England, lies + A Boy I friended with a care like love; + All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries, + The melancholy clouds drive on above. + + "There, separate from him by a little span, + Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free, + Two Grenfells, lie, and my Boy is made man, + One with these elder knights of chivalry." + +It is difficult to qualify, it seems almost indelicate to intrude upon, +such passionate grief. These poems form a revelation of the agony of a +spirit of superabundant refinement and native sensuousness suddenly +stunned, and as it were momentarily petrified, by horrible spiritual +anguish. If the strain were not relieved by the final numbers of +"Aftermath," where the pain of the soul is abated, and where the poet, +scarred and shattered, but "free at last," snaps the chain of despair, +these poems would be positively intolerable. + +In the closeness of his analysis and in the accurate heaping up of exact +and pregnant observations, Lieut. Nichols comes closer than any other of +these English poets to the best of the French paladins, of whom I wrote +in _Three French Moralists_. One peculiarity which he shares with them +is his seriousness: there is no trace in him of the English cheerfulness +and levity. Most of our war-writers are incorrigible Mark Tapleys. But +Lieut. Nichols, even when he uses colloquial phrases--and he introduces +them with great effect--never smiles. He is most unlike the French, on +the other hand, in his general attitude towards the war. He has no +military enthusiasm, no aspiration after _gloire_. Indeed, the most +curious feature of his poetry is that its range is concentrated on the +few yards about the trench in which he stands. He seems to have no +national view of the purpose of the war, no enthusiasm for the cause, no +anger against the enemy. There is but a single mention of the Germans +from beginning to end; the poet does not seem to know of their +existence. His experiences, his agonies, his despair, are what a purely +natural phenomenon, such as the eruption of a volcano or the chaos of an +earthquake, might cause. We might read his poems over and over again +without forming the slightest idea of what all the distress was about, +or who was guilty, or what was being defended. This is a mark of great +artistic sincerity; but it also points to a certain moral narrowness. +Lieut. Robert Nichols' "endurances" are magnificently described, but we +are left in the dark regarding his "ardours." We are sure of one thing, +however, that none of us may guess what such a talent, in one still so +young, may have in store for us; and we may hope for broader views +expressed in no less burning accents. + +There could hardly be a more vivid contrast than exists between the +melancholy passion of Lieut. Nichols and the fantastic high spirits of +Captain Robert Graves. He again is evidently a very young man, who was +but yester-year a jolly boy at the Charterhouse. He has always meant to +be a poet; he is not one of those who have been driven into verse by the +strenuous emotion of the war. In some diverting prefatory lines to _Over +the Brazier_ he gives us a picture of the nursery-scene when a bright +green-covered book bewitched him by its "metre twisting like a chain of +daisies, with great big splendid words." He has still a wholesome hunger +for splendid words; he has kept more deliberately than most of his +compeers a poetical vocation steadily before him. He has his moments of +dejection when the first battle faces him:-- + + "Here's an end to my art! + I must die and I know it, + With battle-murder at my heart-- + Sad death, for a poet! + + "Oh, my songs never sung, + And my plays to darkness blown! + I am still so young, so young, + And life was my own." + +But this mood soon passes, and is merged in the humoristic and fantastic +elation characteristic of this buoyant writer, whose whim it is to meet +the tragedy not mournfully but boisterously. Where by most of the +soldier-bards the subjective manner is a little over-done, it is +impossible not to welcome so objective a writer as Captain Graves, from +whose observations of the battle of La Bassée I quote an episode:-- + +THE DEAD FOX HUNTER + + "We found the little captain at the head; + His men lay well aligned. + We touched his hand, stone-cold, and he was dead, + And they, all dead behind, + Had never reached their goal, but they died well; + They charged in line, and in the same line fell. + + "The well-known rosy colours of his face + Were almost lost in grey. + We saw that, dying and in hopeless case, + For others' sake that day + He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death + His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth. + + "For those who live uprightly and die true + Heaven has no bars or locks, + And serves all taste.... Or what's for him to do + Up there, but hunt the fox? + Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide + For one who rode straight and at hunting died. + + "So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came, + Why, it must find one now: + If any shirk and doubt they know the game, + There's one to teach them how: + And the whole host of Seraphim complete + Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet." + +I have a notion that this is a gallant poem which Englishmen will not +allow to be forgotten. The great quality of Captain Graves' verse at +present is its elated vivacity, which neither fire, nor pain, nor grief +can long subdue. Acutely sensitive to all these depressing elements, his +animal spirits lift him like an aeroplane, and he is above us in a +moment, soaring through clouds of nonsense under a sky of unruffled +gaiety. In our old literature, of which he is plainly a student, he has +found a neglected author who is wholly to his taste. This is Skelton, +Henry VIII's Rabelaisian laureate. Captain Graves imitates, with a great +deal of bravado, those breathless absurdities, _The Tunning of Elinore +Rummyng_ and _Colin Clout_. He likes rough metre, bad rhymes and squalid +images: we suspect him of an inclination to be rude to his immediate +predecessors. But his extreme modernness--"Life is a cliché--I would +find a gesture of my own"--is, in the case of so lively a songster, an +evidence of vitality. He promises a new volume, to be called _Fairies +and Fusiliers_, and it will be looked forward to with anticipation. + +All these poets seem to be drawn into relation to one another. Robert +Graves and Siegfried Sassoon are both Fusiliers, and they publish a +[Greek: stichomythia] "on Nonsense," just as Cowley and Crashaw did "on +Hope" two centuries and a half ago. Lieut. Sassoon's own volume is later +than those which we have hitherto examined, and bears a somewhat +different character. The gallantry of 1915 and the optimism of 1916 have +passed away, and in Lieut. Sassoon's poems their place is taken by a +sense of intolerable weariness and impatience: "How long, O Lord, how +long?" The name-piece of the volume, and perhaps its first in execution, +is a monologue by an ignorant and shrewd old huntsman, who looks back +over his life with philosophy and regret. Like Captain Graves, he is +haunted with the idea that there must be fox-hounds in Heaven. All +Lieut. Sassoon's poems about horses and hunting and country life +generally betray his tastes and habits. This particular poem hardly +touches on the war, but those which follow are absorbed by the ugliness, +lassitude, and horror of fighting. Lieut. Sassoon's verse has not yet +secured the quality of perfection; he is not sufficiently alive to the +importance of always hitting upon the best and only word. He is +essentially a satirist, and sometimes a very bold one, as in "The Hero," +where the death of a soldier is announced home in "gallant lies," so +that his mother brags to her neighbours of the courage of her dead son. +At the close of all this pious make-believe, the Colonel + + "thought how 'Jack,' cold-footed, useless swine, + Had panicked down the trench that night the mine + Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried + To get sent home; and how, at last, he died, + Blown to small bits"; + +or, again, as in "Blighters," where the sentimentality of London is +contrasted with the reality in Flanders: + + "The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin + And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks + Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din, + 'We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks! + + "I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls, + Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home!'-- + And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls + To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume." + +It is this note of bitter anger, miles away from the serenity of Rupert +Brooke, the lion-heart of Julian Grenfell, the mournful passion of +Robert Nichols, which differentiates Lieut. Sassoon from his fellows. +They accept the war, with gallantry or with resignation; he detests it +with wrathful impatience. He has much to learn as an artist, for his +diction is often hard, and he does not always remember that Horace, +"when he writ on vulgar subjects, yet writ not vulgarly." But he has +force, sincerity, and a line of his own in thought and fancy. A +considerable section of his poetry is occupied with studies of men he +has observed at the Front, a subaltern, a private of the Lancashires, +conscripts, the dross of a battle-field, the one-legged man ("Thank God, +they had to amputate!"), the sniper who goes crazy--savage, +disconcerting silhouettes drawn roughly against a lurid background. + +The bitterness of Lieut. Sassoon is not cynical, it is the rage of +disenchantment, the violence of a young man eager to pursue other aims, +who, finding the age out of joint, resents being called upon to help to +mend it. His temper is not altogether to be applauded, for such +sentiments must tend to relax the effort of the struggle, yet they can +hardly be reproved when conducted with so much honesty and courage. +Lieut. Sassoon, who, as we learn, has twice been severely wounded and +has been in the very furnace of the fighting, has reflected, more +perhaps than his fellow-singers, about the causes and conditions of the +war. He may not always have thought correctly, nor have recorded his +impressions with proper circumspection, but his honesty must be +respectfully acknowledged. + +I have now called attention to those soldier-writers of verse who, in my +judgment, expressed themselves with most originality during the war. +There is a temptation to continue the inquiry, and to expatiate on +others of only less merit and promise. Much could be said of Charles +Hamilton Sorley, who gave evidence of precocious literary talent, though +less, I think, in verse, since the unmistakable singing faculty is +absent in _Marlborough_ (Cambridge University Press, 1916), than in +prose, a form in which he already excelled. Sorley must have shown +military gifts as well as a fine courage, for when he was killed in +action in October 1915, although he was but twenty years of age, he had +been promoted captain. In the universal sorrow, few figures awaken more +regret, than his. Something, too, had I space, should be said about the +minstrels who have been less concerned with the delicacies of +workmanship than with stirring the pulses of their auditors. In this +kind of lyric "A Leaping Wind from England" will long keep fresh the +name of W.N. Hodgson, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. His +verses were collected in November 1916. The strange rough drum-taps of +Mr. Henry Lawson, published in Sydney at the close of 1915, and those of +Mr. Lawrence Rentoul, testify to Australian enthusiasm. Most of the +soldier-poets were quite youthful; an exception was R.E. Vernède, whose +_War Poems_ (W. Heinemann, 1917) show the vigour of moral experience. He +was killed in the attack on Harrincourt, in April 1917, having nearly +closed his forty-second year. To pursue the list would only be to make +my omissions more invidious. + +There can be no healthy criticism where the principle of selection is +neglected, and I regret that patriotism or indulgence has tempted so +many of those who have spoken of the war-poets of the day to plaster +them with indiscriminate praise. I have here mentioned a few, in whose +honour even a little excess of laudation may not be out of place. But +these are the exceptions, in a mass of standardised poetry made to +pattern, loosely versified, respectable in sentiment, uniformly +meditative, and entirely without individual character. The reviewers who +applaud all these ephemeral efforts with a like acclaim, and who say +that there are hundreds of poets now writing who equal if they do not +excel the great masters of the past, talk nonsense; they talk nonsense, +and they know it. They lavish their flatteries in order to widen the +circle of their audience. They are like the prophets of Samaria, who +declared good unto the King of Israel with one mouth; and we need a +Micaiah to clear the scene of all such flatulent Zedekiahs. It is not +true that the poets of the youngest generation are a myriad Shelleys and +Burnses and Bérangers rolled into one. But it is true that they carry on +the great tradition of poetry with enthusiasm, and a few of them with +high accomplishment. + +1917. + + + + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY[8] + + "J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or, + Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor, + Verdoyant à jamais, hier comme aujourd'hui, + Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit." + +HENRI DE RÉGNIER. + + +In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen +to those whose positive authority is universally recognised, and in +taking for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its +definitions or consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I +perform what you may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy +audacity. My subject is chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures +which you may well believe yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to +propound. Nevertheless, and in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite +you to join with me in some reflections on what is the probable course +of English poetry during, let us say, the next hundred years. If I +happen to be right, I hope some of the youngest persons present will +say, when I am long turned to dust, what an illuminating prophet I was. +If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will remember anything at all about +the matter. In any case we may possibly be rewarded this afternoon by +some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation of some pleasant +analogies. + +Our title takes for granted that English poetry will continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as +an art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which +is fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and +another, in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in +the history of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of +writing verse was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three +Scandinavian countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no +poetry, in our sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost +died out here in England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran +very low in France at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these +instances, whether ancient or modern, of the attempt to prove prose a +sufficing medium for all expression of human thought have hitherto +failed, and it is now almost certain that they will more and more +languidly be revived, and with less and less conviction. + +It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his _Epistle to the Reverend Divine_ +(1574) that "It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not +only permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing." +Poetry has occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and +you will remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his +philosophical Utopia, was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical +verse himself. So, to come down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry +out of the living language of his country, had been one of the most +skilful of prosodical proficients. Such instances may allay our alarm. +There cannot be any lasting force in arguments which remind us of the +pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. It needs more than the zeal of +a turncoat to drive Apollo out of Parnassus. + +There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of +it? There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious +water-colour painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It +is very fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, +the horse of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his +wings, against a sky so dark that it must symbolise the obscure +discourse of those who write in prose. You are left quite doubtful +whether he will strike the rocky terrace in the foreground with his +slender, silver hooves, or will swoop down into the valley below, or +will soar to heaven and out of sight. You are left by the painter in a +pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may break out anywhere, and of the +vivacious courser himself all that we can be sure of is that we are +certain to see him alighting before us when we least expect him. + +We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his +apparently aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical +spirit, and yet acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of +believing that verse will continue to be written in the English language +for a quite indefinite period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of +these difficulties at once. The principal danger, then, to the future of +poetry seems to me to rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. +Every school of verse is a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because +its leaders have become capable of new forms of attractive expression; +its crest is some writer, or several writers, of genius, who combine +skill and fire and luck at a moment of extreme opportuneness; and then +the wave breaks, because later writers cannot support the ecstasy, and +merely repeat formulas which have lost their attractiveness. Shirley +would have been a portent, if he had flourished in 1595 and had written +then as he did in 1645. Erasmus Darwin would be one of the miracles of +prosody if _The Loves of the Plants_ could be dated 1689 instead of +1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this rise and fall in +value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the trough of the +last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. _Cantate +Domino_ is the cry of youth, sing a _new_ song unto the Lord. + +But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray's +_Elegy_, and much of _Hamlet_, and some of Burns's songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are +like rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the +script of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who +wish to speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In +several of the literatures of modern Europe--those which began late, or +struggled long against great disadvantages--it is still possible to +produce pleasure by poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly +limpid language. But with us in England, I confess that it seems to me +certain that whatever we retain, we can never any more have patience to +listen to a new shepherd piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation +is likely to be more acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire +for novelty of expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which +is so fervently demanded from every new school of writers, will force +the poets of the future to sweep away all recognised impressions. The +consequence must be, I think--I confess so far as language is concerned +that I see no escape from this--that the natural uses of English and the +obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our national poetry, as +they are even now so generally being driven. + +No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. +The poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that "Qui saura penser de +lui-même et former de nobles idées, qu'il prenne, s'il pent, la manière +et le tour élevé des maîtres." These are words which should inspire +every new aspirant to the laurel. "S'il peut"; you see that Vauvenargues +puts it so, because he does not wish that we should think that such +victories as these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce +them. They are not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the +rubbed-out, conventionalised coinage of our language. + +In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has +recently been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular +poets, has never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am +debarred by what Keats called "giant ignorance" from expressing an +opinion on the subject, but I presume that in Welsh the resources of +language are far from being so seriously exhausted as we have seen that +they are in our own complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the +higher forms of poetic diction through five centuries has made simple +expression extremely difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in +Welsh, as in Gaelic and in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of +lyric, epic, and dramatic art untilled. We have seen, in the latter half +of the nineteenth century, Provençal poets capable of producing simple +and thrilling numbers which are out of the reach of their sophisticated +brethren who employ the worn locutions of the French language. + +In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not +any longer satisfy to write + + "The rose is red, the violet blue, + And both are sweet, and so are you." + +Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were +so still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is +quite impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will +seek to analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their _naïvetés_ lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school. + +We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that +Pegasus, with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue +to accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will +only be at the cost of much that we at present admire and enjoy that the +continuity of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly +present to you some characteristic passages of the best English poetry +of 1963, I doubt extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of +their merit. I am not sure that you would understand what the poet +intended to convey, any more than the Earl of Surrey would have +understood the satires of Donne, or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of +George Meredith. Young minds invariably display their vitality by +attacking the accepted forms of expression, and then they look about +for novelties, which they cultivate with what seems to their elders to +be extravagance. Before we attempt to form an idea, however shadowy, of +what poetry will be in the future, we must disabuse ourselves of the +delusion that it will be a repetition of what is now produced and +accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of philosophy to do away with +the embarrassing and painful, but after all perhaps healthful antagonism +between those who look forward and those who live in the past. The +earnestness expended on new work will always render young men incapable +of doing justice to what is a very little older than themselves; and the +piety with which the elderly regard what gave them full satisfaction in +their days of emotional freshness will always make it difficult for them +to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what they loved. + +If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in +our vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must +follow on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find +the modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing +symbolic subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are +still unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That +is to say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had +been said before him, and in his horror of the trite and the +superficial, he will achieve effect and attach interest _obscuris vera +involvens_--wrapping the truth in darkness. The "darkness" will be +relative, as his own contemporaries, being more instructed and +sophisticated than we are, will find those things transparent, or at +least translucent, which remain opaque enough to us. And, of course, as +epithets and adjectives that seem fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn +to him, he will have to exert his ingenuity to find parallel +expressions which would startle us by their oddity if we met with them +now. + +A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognised +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never +fail to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We +may instructively examine the history of literature with special +attention to this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. +It was fatal to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in +an obscurity to which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given +from the name of its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several +highly-gifted writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who +endeavoured to give freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I +need only remind you of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril +Tourneur, called _The Transform'd Metamorphosis_, and of the cryptic +rhymed dramas of Lord Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think +desperately perilous to a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable +Stéphane Mallarmé. Nothing, I feel, is more dangerous to the health of +poetry than the praise given by a group of irresponsible disciples to +verse which transfers commonplace thought to an exaggerated, violent, +and involved scheme of diction, and I confess that I should regard the +future of poetry in this country with much more apprehension than I do, +if I believed that the purely learned poet, the prosodical pedant, was +destined to become paramount amongst us. That would, indeed, threaten +the permanence of the art; and it is for this reason that I look with a +certain measure of alarm on the excess of verbiage about versification +which attends not merely criticism--for that matters little--but the +actual production and creation. I am confident, however, that the common +sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in favour of sanity +and lucidity. + +One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what +the French call "la vraie hauteur." This elevation of style, this +dignity, is foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the +rude air of modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe saw it +degenerate for a century and a half, into pomposity relieved by +flatness. It is apt to become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of +empty fine phrases. If we examine the serious poetry of the end of the +seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century--especially +in the other countries of Europe, for England was never without some dew +on the threshing-floor--if we examine it in France, for instance, +between Racine and André Chenier, we are obliged to recognise that it +was very rarely both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, +which we are beginning ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to +poetry the sense of a genuine stateliness of expression, which once more +gave it the requisite dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and +the noble sentiments of humanity. + +Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the +subjects with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. +Here we are confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of +history, we see that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed +by the incursions of a more and more powerful and wide embracing prose. +At the dawn of civilisation poetry had it all its own way. If +instruction was desired upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, +the bard produced it in a prosodical shape, combining with the dignity +of form the aid which the memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus +you conceive of a Hesiod before you think of a Homer, and the earliest +poetry was probably of a purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, +with its exact pedestrian method, took over more and more completely the +whole province of information, but it was not until the nineteenth +century that the last strongholds of the poetry of instruction were +stormed. I will, if you please, bring this home to you by an example +which may surprise you. + +The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But +it was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a +hundred years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable +passage in which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of +1800:-- + + "If the labours of men of science,--Wordsworth said,--should ever + create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our + condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the + Poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to + follow the steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general + indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation + into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest + discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be + as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be + employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be + familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated + by the followers of these respective sciences, thus familiarised + to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and + blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the + transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a + dear and genuine inmate of the household of man." + +It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same +spirit as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to +assure us of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of +one so sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. +The belief of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, +in some vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But +when we look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our +national poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany +or chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an +effort made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. +Perhaps the nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable +was attempted by Tennyson, particularly in those parts of _In Memoriam_ +where he dragged in analogies to geological discoveries and the +biological theories of his time. Well, these are just those parts of +Tennyson which are now most universally repudiated as lifeless and +jejune. + +Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would +"bind together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human +society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time." I +suppose that in composing those huge works, so full of scattered +beauties, but in their entirety so dry and solid, _The Excursion_ and +_The Prelude_, he was consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme +of a wide and all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts +of this kind will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in +whom the memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the +imagination, employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social +poetry the elements of which, prima facie, should be deeply attractive +to us all. But I do not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard +Kipling, brilliant as they are, are calculated to encourage the poets of +the future to pursue their lyric celebration of machinery and sociology +and the mysteries of natural religion. Already is it not that portion of +his work which we approach with most languor, in spite of its +originality and its outlook upon "the vast empire of human society"? And +lesser poets than he who seek for popularity by such violent means are +not, I think, rewarded by the distinguished loyalty of the best readers. +We are startled by their novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but +when, a few years later, we return to them, we are apt to observe with +distress how + + "their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw." + +If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater +prophets, my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy +of future poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid +social character, but that as civilisation more and more tightly lays +hold upon literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one +province after another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more +and more what Hazlitt calls "a mere effusion of natural sensibility." +Hazlitt used the phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and +not shrink from adopting it. In most public remarks about current and +coming literature in the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which +it is taken for granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers +of the imagination is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to +embrace the world, to take part in a universal scheme of pacification, +to immortalise imperial events, to be as public as possible. But surely +it is more and more clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for +such grandiose themes as these. Within the last year our minds have been +galvanised into collective sympathy by two great sensations of +catastrophe, each case wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can +take in the revolt of nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I +suppose we may consider the destruction of the Titanic and the loss of +Captain Scott's expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is +thought by journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common +consent, these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to +any really remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody +could equal in vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These +are matters in which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose +does not require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. +The impact of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and +forcible. + +My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming +poets will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should +define it as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which +are of collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the +intense cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical +observation of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the +future poet. I will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of +his principal preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery +piece of mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of +me alike. The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn +writers of the imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is +the only safeguard against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But +although the ivory tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although +the poets may be strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_ +there, it should not be the year-long habitation of any healthy +intelligence. + +I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an "effusion of +natural sensibility," will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be +tempted, in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to +draw farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap +his singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat +his readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our +successors must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not +merely sees nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I +am not concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; +the moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that +this unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on +the positive value of his verse. + +The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries--it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the +misanthropy of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the +rowdiness of Marlowe?--the higher the note of the lyre, the more +ridiculous is the attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds +the violence of Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with +a greater pride than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude +of the sacred bard, maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and +hollowed out and made haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will +have to be abandoned as a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it +is preserved by the poets of the future it will be peculiar to those +monasteries of song, those "little clans," of which I am now about to +speak as likely more and more to prevail. + +In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of +these bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is +perhaps instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de +Creteil, which was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was +founded in October 1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal +dissensions in January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance +of the public, in contemptuous disregard of established "literary +opinion," a sort of prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be +the active centre of energy for a new generation, and there were five +founders, each of whom was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in +verse. At Creteil there was a printing-press in a great park, so that +the members should be altogether independent of the outside world. The +poets were to cultivate the garden and keep house with the sale of the +produce. When not at work, there were recitations, discussions, +exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up with the latest vagaries +of the Cubists and Post-impressionists. + +This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one +among the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any +measure of talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in +vague and nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call +charlatans, the refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider +that it is interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a +sense correct when they announced that they were performing "a heroic +act," an act symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future +disdainfully protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the +dreadful impact of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you +wish to pursue the subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your +eye on this tendency to a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed +much evidence of it yet in England, but it is beginning to stir a good +deal in France and Italy. After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious +thing, like the practices of the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was +said, "Our House of the Holy Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should +have looked upon it, is yet doomed to remain untouched, imperturbable, +out of sight, and unrevealed to the whole godless world for ever." If I +am sure of anything, it is that the Poets of the Future will look upon +massive schemes of universal technical education, and such democratic +reforms as those which are now occupying the enthusiasm and energy of +Lord Haldane, as peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a +godless world. + +To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me possible that +sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical poetry +of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort +of obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other +phenomenon worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with +the various tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was +the mark of the sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and +craftily exhibited, but often, as in foreign examples which will easily +occur to your memory, rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a +slightly stale perfume, an irritating odour of last night's opopanax or +vervain. And this is the one point, almost I think the only point, in +which the rather absurd and certainly very noisy and hoydenish +manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, led by M. Marinetti and his crew +of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious attention. It is a plank in +their platform to banish eroticism, of the good kind and of the bad, +from the poetic practice of the future. I do not, to say the truth, find +much help for the inquiry we have taken up to-day, in the manifestoes of +these raucous young gentlemen, who, when they have succeeded in flinging +the ruins of the architecture of Venice into its small stinking canals, +will find themselves hard put to it to build anything beautiful in the +place of them. But in their reaction against "the eternal feminine," +they may, I think, very possibly be followed by the serious poets of the +future. + +Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry +in England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in +the direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is +known as pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to +listening audiences behind the footlights, but in the increased study of +life in its exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with +the tendency, of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world +itself, either into an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered +association of more or less independent figures united only in a +rebellious and contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the +inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well +happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped +social surfaces of life, the ignorance--really, the happy and hieratic +ignorance--of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be +saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and +penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and +permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I +think it not improbable that the poetry of the future may become more +and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series of acts of definite +creation, rather than as the result of observation, which will be left +to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant masters of our prose. + +As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for +mankind than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an +excessive observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate +to the violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general +exaggeration of the darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of +what was called the "sub-fusc" colours which art-critics of a century +ago judged essential to sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, +and particularly in the very latest Russian drama, this determination to +see blackness and blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of +existence as a Valley of the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully +frequent. In England we had a poet of considerable power, whose tragic +figure crossed me in my youth, in whose work there is not a single gleam +of hope or dignity for man;--I mean the unfortunate James Thomson, +author of _The City of Dreadful Night_. I cannot but believe that the +poetry of the future, being more deeply instructed, will insist less +emphatically upon human failure and less savagely upon the revolt of +man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an earnestness, a fullness +of tribute to the noble passion of life, an utterance simple and direct. +I believe that it will take as its theme the magnificence of the +spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not the grotesque and +squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat. + +It has been admirably said, in a charming essay, that "History may be +abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be purely formal; +but poetry must be full of human life." This consideration, I think, may +make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance of poetic +expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever changes may be +introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may occur in +religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification of +composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action +possible as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the +hopes and fears, of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic +imagination will be found to insist on expression in the mode of formal +art. It is quite possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of +the democratic instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such +as was presented in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank +verse lyrics in _The Princess_, by Browning in the more brilliant parts +of _One Word More_, by Swinburne in his fulminating _Sapphics_, may be +as little repeated as the analogous hardness of Dryden in _MacFlecknoe_ +or the lapidary splendour of Gray in his _Odes_. I should rather look, +at least in the immediate future, for a revival of the liquid ease of +Chaucer or the soft redundancies of _The Faerie Queene_. The remarkable +experiments of the Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon +the whole body of French verse, leads me to expect a continuous movement +in that direction. + +It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal--perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognised their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of +it in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, +which at once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or +imminent service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of +poetry is not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and +only partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will +consider it, all that the Symbolists have been saying is involved in +Bacon's phrase that "poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires +of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things." There +could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up with a +rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that which I +have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope that you +will not think that your time has been wasted while we have touched, +lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the probable +or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, or I, or +the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn poets, +we may be certain that there will + + "hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue" + +of ours can "digest." I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on +any expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest +our only sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable +arrival, ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon +as ever they bubble from the blow of his hoof. + +[Footnote 8: Address delivered before the English Association, May 30, +1913.] + + + + +THE AGONY OF THE VICTORIAN AGE + + +For a considerable time past everybody must have noticed, especially in +private conversation, a growing tendency to disparagement and even +ridicule of all men and things, and aspects of things, which can be +defined as "Victorian." Faded habits of mind are lightly dismissed as +typical of the Victorian Age, and old favourite poets, painters, and +musicians are treated with the same scorn as the glued chairs and glass +bowls of wax flowers of sixty years ago. The new generation are hardly +willing to distinguish what was good from what was bad in the time of +their grandmothers. With increasing audacity they repudiate the +Victorian Age as a _sæclum insipiens et infacetum_, and we meet +everywhere with the exact opposite of Montaigne's "Je les approuve tous +Tun après l'autre, quoi qu'ils disent." Our younger contemporaries are +slipping into the habit of approving of nothing from the moment that +they are told it is Victorian. + +This may almost be described as an intellectual and moral revolution. +Every such revolution means some liberation of the intellect from +bondage, and shows itself first of all in a temper of irreverence; the +formulas of the old faith are no longer treated with respect and +presently they are even ridiculed. It is useless to close our eyes to +the fact that a spirit of this kind is at work amongst us, undermining +the dignity and authority of objects and opinions and men that seemed +half a century ago to be more perennial than bronze. Successive orators +and writers have put the public in possession of arguments, and +especially have sparkled in pleasantries, which have sapped the very +foundations of the faith of 1850. The infection has attacked us all, and +there is probably no one who is not surprised, if he seriously reflects, +to realise that he once implicitly took his ideas of art from Ruskin and +of philosophy from Herbert Spencer. These great men are no longer +regarded by anybody with the old credulity; their theories and their +dogmas are mined, as were those of the early eighteenth century in +France by the Encyclopædists, by a select class of destructive critics, +in whose wake the whole public irregularly follows. The ordinary +unthinking man accepts the change with exhilaration, since in this +country the majority have always enjoyed seeing noses knocked off +statues. But if we are to rejoice in liberation from the bondage of the +Victorian Age we ought to know what those bonds were. + +The phenomena of the decadence of an age are never similar to those of +its rise. This is a fact which is commonly overlooked by the opponents +of a particular section of social and intellectual history. In the +initial stages of a "period" we look for audacity, fire, freshness, +passion. We look for men of strong character who will hew a channel +along which the torrent of new ideals and subversive sentiments can +rush. But this violence cannot be expected to last, and it would lead to +anarchy if it did. Slowly the impetus of the stream diminishes, the +river widens, and its waters reach a point where there seems to be no +further movement in their expanse. No age contains in itself the +elements of endless progress; it starts in fury, and little by little +the force of it declines. Its decline is patent--but not until long +afterwards--in a deadening of effort, in a hardening of style. Dryden +leads on to Pope, Pope points down to Erasmus Darwin, after whom the +world can but reject the whole classical system. The hungry sheep of a +new generation look up and are not fed, and this is the vision which +seems to face us in the last adventures of the schools of yesterday. + +But what is, or was, the Victorian Age? The world speaks glibly of it as +though it were a province of history no less exactly defined than the +career of a human being from birth to death; but in practice no one +seems in a hurry to mark out its frontiers. Indeed, to do so is an +intrepid act. If the attempt is to be made at all, then 1840, the year +of Queen Victoria's marriage with Prince Albert, may be suggested as the +starting-point, and 1890 (between the death-dates of Browning, Newman, +and Tennyson) as the year in which the Victorian Age is seen sinking +into the sands. Nothing could be vaguer, or more open to contention in +detail, than this delineation, but at all events it gives our +deliberations a frame. It excludes _Pickwick_, which is the typical +picture of English life under William IV., and _Sartor Resartus_, which +was the tossing of the bound giant in his sleep; but it includes the +two-volume Tennyson, "chiefly lyrical," the stir of the Corn Law +agitation, the Tractarian Crisis of 1841, and the _History of the French +Revolution and Past and Present_, when the giant opened his eyes and +fought with his chains. Darwin was slowly putting together the notes he +had made on the Beagle, and Hugh Miller was disturbing convention by his +explorations of the Old Red Sandstone. Most of all, the discussion of +permanent and transient elements in Christianity was taking a foremost +place in all strata of society, not merely in the form of the contest +around _Tract 90_, but in the divergent directions of Colenso, the +Simeon Evangelicals, and Maurice. + +The Victorian Age began in rancour and turmoil. This is an element which +we must not overlook, although it was in a measure superficial. A series +of storms, rattling and recurrent tempests of thunder and lightning, +swept over public opinion, which had been so calm under George IV. and +so dull under William IV. Nothing could exceed the discord of +vituperation, the Hebraism of Carlyle denouncing the Vaticanism of +Wiseman, "Free Kirk and other rubbish" pitted against "Comtism, +ghastliest of algebraic spectralities." This theological tension marks +the first twenty years and then slowly dies down, after the passion +expended over _Essays and Reviews_. It was in 1840 that we find +Macaulay, anxious to start a scheme of Whig reform and to cut a +respectable figure as Secretary of State for War, unable to get to +business because of the stumbling-block of religious controversy. +Everything in heaven and earth was turned into "a theological treatise," +and all that people cared about was "the nature of the sacraments, the +operation of holy orders, the visibility of the Church and baptismal +regeneration." The sitting member goes down to Edinburgh to talk to his +constituents about Corn Laws and Sugar Duties and the Eastern Question; +he is met by "a din" of such objections as "Yes, Mr. Macaulay, that is +all very well for a statesman, but what becomes of the headship of our +Lord Jesus Christ?" + +If the Victorian Age opened in a tempest of theology, it was only +natural that it should cultivate a withering disdain for those who had +attempted to reform society on a non-theological basis. In sharp +contradistinction to the indulgence of the Georgian period for +philosophic speculation, England's interest in which not even her long +continental wars had been able to quench, we find with the accession of +Victoria the credit of the French thinkers almost abruptly falling. +Voltaire, never very popular in England, becomes "as mischievous a +monkey as any of them"; the enthusiasm for Rousseau, which had reached +extravagant proportions, completely disappears, and he is merely the +slanderous sceptic, who, after soaking other people's waistcoats with +his tears, sent his own babies to the Foundling Hospital. The influence +of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was +first combated and then baldly denied. The premier journalist of the age +declared, with the satisfaction of a turkey-cock strutting round his +yard, that no trace of the lowest level of what could be called +popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt +himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a +French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the +Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious +taint. + +Notwithstanding, or perhaps we ought to say inevitably conducted by +these elements of passion and disdain, the infant Victorian Age passed +rapidly into the great political whirlpool of 1846, with its violent +concentration of enthusiasm on the social questions which affected the +welfare of the masses, with, in short, its tremendous upheaval of a +practical radicalism. From that time forth its development baffles +analysis. Whatever its present enemies may allege to its discredit, they +cannot pretend that it was languid or monotonous. No Age hitherto lived +out upon the world's surface has been so multiform or so busy; none +defies the art of the historian to such a bewildering degree. Its latest +critic does not exaggerate when he says that our fathers and our +grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of +information concerning it "that the industry of a Ranke would be +submerged by it and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it." +This is manifestly true, and it is evident that an encyclopædia would be +required to discuss all the divisions of so tremendous a subject. If we +look over too wide a horizon we lose our bearings altogether. We get a +hopelessly confused notion of the course of progress; we see +experiments, criticisms, failures, but who is to assure us what was the +tendency of evolution? + +Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians" has arrived at the very +moment when all readers are prepared to discuss the age he deals with, +and when public opinion is aware of the impatience which has been +"rising in the bosom of a man like smoke" under the pressure of the +insistent praise of famous men. The book has attracted a very remarkable +degree of notice; it has been talked about wherever people have met +together; and has received the compliment of being seriously displayed +before the University of Oxford by one of the most eminent of the +Victorian statesmen whom Oxford has produced. If we look into the causes +of this success, enjoyed by the earliest extended book of a writer +almost unknown, a book, too, which pretends to no novelty of matter or +mystery of investigation, we find them partly in the preparedness of the +public mind for something in the way of this exposure, but partly also +in the skill of the writer. Whatever else may be said of Mr. Lytton +Strachey, no one can deny that he is very adroit, or that he possesses +the art of arresting attention. + +It is part of this adroitness that he contrives to modify, and for a +long time even to conceal the fact that his purpose is to damage and +discredit the Victorian Age. He is so ceremonious in his approach, so +careful to avoid all brusqueness and coarseness, that his real aim may +be for awhile unobserved. He even professes to speak "dispassionately, +impartially, and without ulterior intentions." We may admit the want of +passion and perhaps the want of partiality, but we cannot avoid seeing +the ulterior intention, which is to undermine and belittle the +reputation of the great figures of the Victorian Age. When the +prodigious Signor Marinetti proposes to hurl the "leprous palaces" of +his native city into her "fetid canals," and to build in their place +warehouses and railway stations, he does not differ in essential +attitude from Mr. Lytton Strachey, delicately "laying bare the facts of +some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the +greater knowledge of history--in short, the superior equipment of the +English iconoclast. Each of them--and all the troop of opponents who +grumble and mutter between their extremes--each of them is roused by an +intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they +have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a +virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an exasperating monotony +of effect. + +Mr. Strachey has conducted his attack from the point of view of +biography. He realises the hopelessness of writing a history of the +Victorian Age; it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled +into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of +the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend +themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst +in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the +Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most of +them are buried. Mr. Strachey has some criticism of these monsters which +could hardly be bettered: + + "Those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate + the dead--who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of + material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, + their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design? They + are as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker, and bear the same + air of slow, funereal barbarism." + +It is impossible not to agree with this pungent criticism. Every candid +reader could point to a dozen Victorian biographies which deserve Mr. +Strachey's condemnation. For instance, instead of taking up any of the +specimens which he has chosen for illustration, we need only refer the +reader's memory to the appendix of "Impressions," by a series of elderly +friends, which closes the official _Life of Tennyson_, published in +1897. He will find there an expression of the purest Victorian optimism. +The great object being to foist on the public a false and superhuman +picture of the deceased, a set of illustrious contemporaries--who +themselves expected to be, when they died, transfigured in like +manner--form a bodyguard around the corpse of the poet and emit their +"tedious panegyric." In this case, more even than in any of the +instances which Mr. Strachey has taken, the contrast between the real +man and the funereal image is positively grotesque. + +Without question this contrast is not a little responsible for the +discredit into which the name of Tennyson has fallen. Lord Selborne +found nothing in Tennyson "inconsistent with the finest courtesy and the +gentlest heart." Dr. Jowett had preserved through forty years "an +ever-increasing wonder at the depth of his thought," and emphatically +stated that he "was above such feelings as a desire of praise, or fear +of blame." (Tennyson, who was thirsty for ceaseless laudation, and to +whom a hint of censure was like the bite of a mosquito!) Frederick Myers +ejaculated, "How august, how limitless a thing was Tennyson's own +spirit's upward flight!" The Duke of Argyll, again, during the space of +forty years, had found him "always reverent, hating all levity or +flippancy," and was struck by his possessing "the noblest humility I +have ever known." Lord Macaulay, who "had stood absolutely aloof," once +having been permitted to glance at the proof-sheets of _Guenevere_, was +"absolutely subdued" to "unfeigned and reverent admiration." The duke +was the glad emissary who was "the medium of introduction," and he +recognised in Macaulay's subjugation "a premonition" of Tennyson's +complete "conquest over the living world and over the generations that +are to come." + +Thus the priesthood circled round their idol, waving their censers and +shouting their hymns of praise, while their ample draperies effectively +hid from the public eye the object which was really in the centre of +their throng, namely, a gaunt, black, touzled man, rough in speech, +brooding like an old gipsy over his inch of clay pipe stuffed with shag, +and sucking in port wine with gusto--"so long as it is black and sweet +and strong, I care not!" Their fault lay, not in their praise, which was +much of it deserved, but in their deliberate attempt in the interests of +what was Nice and Proper--gods of the Victorian Age--to conceal what any +conventional person might think not quite becoming. There were to be no +shadows in the picture, no stains or rugosities on the smooth bust of +rosy wax. + +On the pretext, therefore, of supplying a brief and above all a +complimentary set of portraits, Mr. Strachey takes the biography of an +ecclesiastic, an educational authority, a woman of action, and a man of +adventure, and tells them over again in his own way. The four figures he +chooses are all contemporary, and yet, so implacably does time hurry us +along, all would be very old if they still survived. Three of them could +hardly survive, for Cardinal Manning and Dr. Arnold would be far over a +hundred, and Florence Nightingale in her ninety-ninth year; the fourth, +General Gordon, would be eighty-five. The motto of Mr. Strachey is "Put +not your trust in the intellectual princes of the Victorian Age," or, at +least, in what their biographers have reported of them; they were not +demi-gods in any sense, but eccentric and forceful figures working dimly +towards aims which they only understood in measure, and which very +often were not worth the energy which they expended on them. This +attitude alone would be enough to distinguish Mr. Strachey from the +purveyors of indiscriminate praise, and in adopting it he emphasises his +deliberate break with the age of which they were the envy and the +ornament. Given his 1918 frame of mind, no blame can attach to him for +adopting this gesture. At moments when the tradition of a people has +been violently challenged there have always ensued these abrupt acts of +what to the old school seems injustice. If Mr. Lytton Strachey is +reproached with lack of respect, he might reply: In the midst of a +revolution, who is called on to be respectful to the fallen monarch? +Extreme admiration for this or that particular leader, the principle of +Victorian hero-worship, is the very heresy, he might say, which I have +set out to refute. + +When St. John the Divine addressed his Apocalypse to the Angels of the +Seven Churches, he invented a system of criticism which is worthy of all +acceptation. He dwelt first upon the merits of each individual church; +not till he had exhausted them did he present the reverse of the coin. +In the same spirit, critics who, in the apostle's phrase, have +"something against" Mr. Lytton Strachey, will do well to begin by +acknowledging what is in his favour. In the first place, he writes +sensibly, rapidly, and lucidly--without false ornament of any kind. Some +of his pages might, with advantage, be pinned up opposite the +writing-tables of our current authors of detestable pseudo-Meredithian +and decayed Paterese. His narrative style is concise and brisk. His book +may undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with _Whiggism +in its Relations to Literature_, although it is less discursive and does +not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In +this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an +argument against his own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, +the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline +from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much more the result of +individual taste than of fashion? There seems to be no radical change in +the methods of style. The extravagant romanticism of rebellion against +the leaders of the Victorian Age finds at length an exponent, and behold +he writes as soberly as Lord Morley, or as Newman himself! + +The longest of these biographies is that of Cardinal Manning, and it is +the one with which Mr. Lytton Strachey has taken most pains. Briefer +than the briefest of the _English Men of Letters_ series of biographies, +it is yet conducted with so artful an economy as to give the impression, +to an uninstructed reader, that nothing essential about the career of +Manning has been omitted. To produce this impression gifts of a very +unusual order were required, since the writer, pressed on all sides by a +plethora of information, instead of being incommoded by it, had to seem +to be moving smoothly in an atmosphere of his own choosing, and to be +completely unembarrassed by his material. He must have the air of +saying, in Froude's famous impertinence, "This is all we know, and more +than all, yet nothing to what the angels know." In the face of a whole +literature of controversy and correspondence, after a storm of Purcell +and Hutton, Ward and Mozley and Liddon tearing at one another's throats, +Mr. Lytton Strachey steps delicately on to the stage and says, in a low +voice, "Come here and I will tell you all about a funny ecclesiastic who +had a Hat, and whose name was Henry Edward Manning. It will not take us +long, and ever afterwards, if you hear that name mentioned, you will +know everything about him which you need to remember." It is audacious, +and to many people will seem shocking, but it is very cleverly done. + +The study of Florence Nightingale is an even better example of Mr. +Strachey's method, since she is the one of his four subjects for whom he +betrays some partiality. "The Miss Nightingale of fact was not as facile +fancy painted her," and it has greatly entertained Mr. Strachey to chip +the Victorian varnish off and reveal the iron will beneath. His first +chapter puts it in one of his effective endings:-- + + "Her mother was still not quite resigned; surely Florence might at + least spend the summer in the country. At this, indeed, among her + intimates, Mrs. Nightingale almost wept. 'We are ducks,' she said + with tears in her eyes, 'who have hatched a wild swan.' But the + poor lady was wrong; it was not a swan that they had hatched, it + was an eagle." + +It is therefore as an eagle, black, rapacious, with hooked bill and +crooked talons, that he paints Miss Nightingale; and the Swan of +Scutari, the delicate Lady with the Lamp, fades into a fable. Mr. +Strachey glorifies the demon that possessed this pitiless, rushing +spirit of philanthropy. He gloats over its ravages; its irresistible +violence of purpose. It is an evident pleasure to him to be able to +detach so wild a figure from the tameness of the circumambient scene, +and all his enmity to the period comes out in the closing pages, in +which he describes how the fierce philanthropist lived so long that the +Victorian Age had its revenge upon her, and reduced her, a smiling, fat +old woman, to "compliance and complacency." It is a picture which will +give much offence, but it is certainly extremely striking, and Mr. +Strachey can hardly be accused of having done more than deepen the +shadows which previous biographers had almost entirely omitted. + +In this study, if the author is unusually indulgent to his subject, he +is relatively severer than usual to the surrounding figures. To some of +them, notably to Arthur Hugh Clough, he seems to be intolerably unjust. +On the other hand, to most of those public men who resisted the work of +Florence Nightingale it is difficult to show mercy. Mr. Strachey is so +contemptuous, almost so vindictive, in his attitude to Lord Panmure, +that the reader is tempted to take up the cudgels in defence of an +official so rudely flouted. But, on reflection, what is there that can +be said in palliation of Lord Panmure? He was the son of a man of whom +his own biographer has admitted that "he preserved late into the +[nineteenth] century the habits and passions--scandalous and +unconcealed--which had, except in his case, passed away. He was devoted +to his friends so long as they remained complaisant, and violent and +implacable to all who thwarted him.--His uncontrollable temper alienated +him from nearly all his family in his latter years. In private life he +was an immovable despot." + +This was the father of Fox Maule, second Baron Panmure, of whom Mr. +Strachey has so much to say. Evidently he was a Regency type, as the son +was a Victorian. Determined not to resemble his father, Fox Maule early +became a settled and industrious M.P., and in 1846 Lord John Russell +made him Secretary of War. He held the same post under Lord Palmerston +from 1855 to 1858. Nothing could dislodge him from office; not even the +famous despatch "Take care of Dawb" could stir him. In 1860 he became +eleventh Earl of Dalhousie. He died two years later, having enjoyed +every distinction, even that of President of the Royal Military Asylum. +He was "unco guid," as pious as his father had been profane, but he had +no social or political or intellectual merit of any kind which can at +this distance of time be discerned. Florence Nightingale called him the +Bison, and his life's energy seems to have been expended in trying, +often with success, to frustrate every single practical reform which +she suggested. To the objection that Mr. Strachey has depicted the +heroine as "an ill-tempered, importunate spinster, who drove a statesman +to his death," he might conceivably reply that if history, grown calm +with the passage of years, does so reveal her, it is rather absurd to go +on idealising her. Why not study the real Eagle in place of the fabulous +Swan? It is difficult to condemn Mr. Strachey along this line of +argument. + +The early Victorians liked what was definable and tangible; they were +"ponderous mechanists of style." Even in their suggestions of change +they preserved an impenetrable decorum of demeanour, a studied progress, +a deep consciousness of the guiding restraint of tradition upon +character. Their preoccupation with moral ideas tinged the whole of +their surroundings, their literature, their art, their outlook upon +life. That the works of Mr. Charles Dickens, so excruciatingly funny, +should have been produced and appreciated in the midst of this intense +epoch of exhortation seems a paradox, till we recollect how careful +Dickens is, when his laughter is loudest, never to tamper with "the deep +sense of moral evil." This apprehension of the rising immorality of the +world, against which the only rampart was the education of "a thorough +English gentleman, Christian, manly and enlightened" was dominant in no +spirit more than in that of Mr. Thomas Arnold, of whom Mr. Strachey +gives a somewhat deterrent portrait. It is deterrent, because we have +passed, in three-quarters of a century, completely out of the atmosphere +in which Dr. Arnold moved and breathed. We are not sure that Mr. +Strachey acted very wisely in selecting Dr. Arnold for one of his four +subjects, since the great schoolmaster was hardly a Victorian at all. +When he entered the Church George III. was on the throne; his +accomplishment at Rugby was started under George IV.; he died when the +Victorian Age was just beginning. He was a forerunner, but hardly a +contemporary. + +Although in his attitude to the great Rugby schoolmaster Mr. Strachey +shows more approbation than usual, this portrait has not given universal +satisfaction. It has rather surprisingly called forth an indignant +protest from Dr. Arnold's granddaughter. Yet such is the perversity of +the human mind that the mode in which Mrs. Humphry Ward "perstringes" +the biographer brings us round to that biographer's side. For Mrs. Ward +has positively the indiscretion, astounding in a writer of her learning +and experience, to demand the exclusion of irony from the legitimate +weapons of the literary combatant. This is to stoop to sharing one of +the meanest prejudices of the English commonplace mind, which has always +resented the use of that delicate and pointed weapon. Moreover, Mrs. +Ward does not merely adopt the plebeian attitude, but she delivers +herself bound hand and foot to the enemy by declaring the use of irony +to be "unintelligent." In support of this amazing statement she quotes +some wandering phrase of Sainte-Beuve. By the light of recent +revelations, whether Sainte-Beuve was ironical or not, he was certainly +perfidious. But, to waive that matter, does Mrs. Humphry Ward consider +that Swift and Lucian and Machiavelli were, as she puts it, "doomed to +failure" because they used irony as a weapon? Was Heine and is Anatole +France conspicuous for want of intelligence? And, after all, ought not +Mrs. Ward to remember that if she had a very serious grandfather, she +had a still more celebrated uncle, who wrote _Friendship's Garland_? + +While no one else will seriously blame Mr. Strachey for employing irony +in his investigation of character, the subject leads on to what may be +regarded as a definite fault in his method. A biographer should be +sympathetic; not blind, not indulgent, but _sympathetic_. He should be +able to enter into the feelings of his subjects, and be anxious to do +so. It is in sympathy, in imaginative insight, that Mr. Strachey fails. +His personages are like puppets observed from a great height by an +amiable but entirely superior intelligence. The peculiar aim of Mr. +Strachey, his desire to lower our general conception of the Victorian +Age, tempts him to exaggerate this tendency, and he succumbs to the +temptation. His description of Lord Acton at Rome in 1870--"he despised +Lord Acton almost as much as he disliked him"--is not ironic, it is +contemptuous. Arthur Hugh Clough presents no aspect to Mr. Strachey but +that of a timid and blundering packer-up of parcels; one might conceive +that the biographer had never contemplated the poet in any other +capacity than, with sealing-wax in his hand and string between his lips, +shuddering under the eye of Miss Nightingale. The occasional references +to Lord Wolseley suggest an unaccountable hurrying figure of pygmy size, +which Mr. Strachey can only just discern. This attitude of hovering +superiority is annoying. + +But it reaches a more dangerous importance when it affects spiritual +matters. The author interests himself, from his great height, in the +movements of his Victorian dwarfs, and notices that they are +particularly active, and prone to unusual oddity of movement, when they +are inspired by religious and moral passion. Their motions attract his +attention, and he describes them with gusto and often with wit. His +sketch of Rome before the Oecumenical Council is an admirably studied +page. Miss Nightingale's ferocity when the War Office phalanx closed its +ranks is depicted in the highest of spirits; it is impossible not to be +riveted by the scene round Cardinal Manning's death-bed; but what did +those manifestations mean? To Mr. Strachey it is evident that the fun of +the whole thing is that they meant nothing at all; they were only part +of the Victorian absurdity. It is obvious that religious enthusiasm, as +a personal matter, means nothing to him. He investigates the feelings +of Newman or Keble as a naturalist might the contortions of an insect. +The ceremonies and rites of the Church are objects of subdued hilarity +to him, and in their presence, if he suppresses his laughter, it is +solely to prevent his missing any detail precious to his curiosity. When +the subject of Baptismal Regeneration agitates the whole pious world of +England Mr. Strachey seems to say, looking down with exhilaration on the +anthill beneath him, "The questions at issue are being taken very +seriously by a large number of persons. How Early Victorian of them!" +Mr. Strachey has yet to learn that questions of this kind are "taken +seriously" by serious people, and that their emotion is both genuine and +deep. He sees nothing but alcoholic eccentricity in the mysticism of +Gordon. His cynicism sometimes carries him beyond the confines of good +taste, as in the passage where he refers to the large and dirty ears of +the Roman cardinals. Still worse is the query as to what became of the +soul of Pope Pius IX. after his death. + +These are errors in discretion. A fault in art is the want of care which +the author takes in delineating his minor or subordinate figures. He +gives remarkable pains, for example, to his study of General Gordon, but +he is indifferent to accuracy in his sketches of the persons who came +into contact, and often into collision, with Gordon. In this he +resembles those French painters, such as Bastien Lepage, who focus their +eye on one portion of their canvas, and work that up to a high +perfection, while leaving the rest of the picture misty and vague. Even +in that case the subordinate figures, if subdued in fogginess, should +not be falsely drawn, but Mr. Strachey, intent upon the violent portrait +of Gordon, is willing to leave his Baring and Hartington and Wolseley +inexact as well as shadowy. The essay on General Gordon, indeed, is the +least successful of the four monographs. Dexterous as he is, Mr. +Strachey has not had the material to work upon which now exists to +elucidate his other and earlier subjects. But it is difficult to account +for his apparently not having read Mr. Bernard Holland's life of the +Duke of Devonshire, which throws much light, evidently unknown to Mr. +Strachey, on the Gordon relief expedition. He ought to know that Sir +Evelyn Baring urged the expedition, while Chamberlain was one of its +opponents. Mr. Strachey does not seem to have noticed how much the issue +was confused by conflicting opinions as to whether the route to be taken +should be by Suakin or up the Nile. + +No part of his book is more vigorous or picturesque than the chapter +dealing with the proclamation of Papal Infallibility. But here again one +is annoyed by the glibness with which Mr. Strachey smoothly asserts what +are only his conjectures. + +In his account of Manning's reception in Rome--and this is of central +importance in his picture of Manning's whole career--he exaggerates the +personal policy of Pio Nono, whom he represents as more independent of +the staff of the Curia than was possible. Rome has never acknowledged +the right of the individual, even though that individual be the Pope, to +an independent authority. Mr. Odo Russell was resident secretary in Rome +from 1858 to 1870, and his period of office was drawing to a close when +Manning arrived; he was shortly afterwards removed to become Assistant +Under Secretary of State at our Foreign Office. The author of _Eminent +Victorians_ is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better +than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging +diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes +that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by +no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced +when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for +stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the government, that the +Black Sea question was one on which Great Britain might be compelled to +go to war with or without allies. Lord Morley's _Life of Gladstone_ +(vol. ii., p. 354) is explicit on this interesting point. The +information which, by special permission of the Pope, Cardinal Manning +was able to give to him on all that was going on in the Council was, of +course, of great value to Odo Russell, but his views on other aspects of +the question were derived from quite different sources. + +In this respect he had the advantage of the Cardinal, both on account of +his diplomatic position and of his long and intimate knowledge both of +Vatican policy and of the forces which the Curia has at its command. On +the strength of those forces, and on the small amount of effective +support which British opposition to the Decree of Infallibility was +likely to receive from the Catholic Powers, he no doubt held strong +opinions. Some years later he did not conceal his conviction that Prince +Bismarck would be worsted in his conflict with Rome on the Education +Laws, and the event proved his forecast to be perfectly correct. This is +an example of the dangers which beset a too glib and superficial +treatment of political events which were conducted in secret, and with +every circumstance of mystery. + +Several of the characteristics which diversify Mr. Strachey's remarkable +volume are exemplified in the following quotation. It deals with the +funeral of Cardinal Manning:-- + + "The route of the procession was lined by vast crowds of working + people, whose imaginations, in some instinctive manner, had been + touched. Many who had hardly seen him declared that in Cardinal + Manning they had lost their best friend. Was it the magnetic vigour + of the dead man's spirit that moved them? Or was it his valiant + disregard of common custom and those conventional reserves and + poor punctilios, which are wont to hem about the great? Or was it + something untameable in his glances and in his gestures? Or was it, + perhaps, the mysterious glamour lingering about him of the antique + organisation of Rome? For whatever cause, the mind of the people + had been impressed; and yet, after all, the impression was more + acute than lasting. The Cardinal's memory is a dim thing to-day. + And he who descends into the crypt of that Cathedral which Manning + never lived to see, will observe, in the quiet niche with the + sepulchral monument, that the dust lies thick on the strange, the + incongruous, the almost impossible object which, with its + elaborations of dependent tassels, hangs down from the dim vault + like some forlorn and forgotten trophy, the Hat." + +Longinus tells us that "a just judgment of style is the final fruit of +long experience." In the measured utterances of Mr. Asquith we recognise +the speech of a man to whom all that is old and good is familiar, and in +whom the art of finished expression has become a habit. No more +elegantly balanced, no more delicately perceptive mind than his has +appeared of recent times in our midst, and there is something in the +equipoise of his own genius which points Mr. Asquith out as a judge +peculiarly well fitted to sit in judgment upon rival ages. In his +Romanes lecture there was but one thing to be regretted: the restricted +space which it offered for the full expansion of the theme. Mr. Asquith +excels in swift and rapid flights, but even for him the Victorian Age is +too broad a province to be explored within one hour. He endeavoured to +lighten his task by excluding theology and politics, and indeed but for +such self-denial he could scarcely have moved at all in so dense an air. +He was able, however, having thrown out so much formidable ballast, to +rise above his subject, and gazing at the Victorian Age, as it recedes, +he declared it to have been very good. The young men who despise and +attack that Age receive no support in any particular from Mr. Asquith. + +He dwells on the fecundity of the literature of the Victorian Age in its +middle period, and especially on the publications which adorned the +decade from 1850 to 1859. He calls those years, very justly, "marvellous +and almost unexampled" in their rich profusion. I may suggest that the +only rival to them in our history is the period from 1590 to 1600, which +saw the early plays of Shakespeare, the _Faerie Queene_, the _Arcadia_, +the _Ecclesiastical Polity_, _Tamburlaine_, _The Discovery of Guiana_, +and Bacon's _Essays_. If the works catalogued by Mr. Asquith do not +equal these in intensity, they excel them by the breadth of the ground +they cover, extending from Browning to Darwin and from Thackeray to +Ruskin. Moreover, the Oxford list might have included _Lavengro_ and +Newman's _Lectures_, and Herbert Spencer's _Social Statics_. The only +third decade worthy to be named with those of 1590 and 1850 is that +which opens in 1705, and is illuminated by the names of Pope, +Shaftesbury, Swift, Arbuthnot, Defoe, Steele, Addison, and Berkeley. It +is pleasant to compare these three magnificently flowering epochs, but +not profitable if we attempt to weigh one against the other. They are +comparable only in the splendour of their accomplishment. + +It is more difficult to fit science into our scheme of the Victorian Age +than to find places there for Art and Literature. Perhaps the reason of +this is that the latter were national in their character, whereas +scientific inquiry, throughout the nineteenth century, was carried on +upon international lines, or, at least, in a spirit unprecedentedly +non-provincial. The vast achievements of science, practical and +theoretical, were produced for the world, not for a race. Mr. Asquith +speaks with justice and eloquence of the appearance of Darwin's _Origin +of Species_ which he distinguishes as being "if not actually the most +important, certainly the most interesting event of the Age," and his +remarks on the fortune of that book are excellent. No one can +over-estimate the value of what we owe to Darwin. But perhaps a +Frenchman might speak in almost the same terms of Claude Bernard, whose +life and work ran parallel with Darwin's. If the _Origin of Species_ +made an epoch in 1859, the _Introduction à la médicine expérimental_ +made another in 1865. Both these books, as channels by which the +experimental labours of each investigator reached the prepared and +instructed public, exercised at once, and have continued ever since to +exercise, an enormous effect on thought as well as on knowledge. They +transformed the methods by which man approaches scientific +investigation, and while they instructed they stimulated a new ardour +for instruction. In each case the value of the discovery lay in the +value of the idea which led to the discovery, and, as some one has said +in the case of Claude Bernard, they combined for the first time the +operations of science and philosophy. The parallel between these two +contemporaries extends, in a measure, to their disciples and successors, +and seems to suggest that Mr. Asquith in his generous and difficult +estimate may have exaggerated the purely Victorian element in the +science of the age of Darwin. This only accentuates the difficulty, and +he may perhaps retort that there is an extreme danger in suggesting what +does and what does not form a part of so huge a system. + +Justifiably Mr. Asquith takes it for granted that the performance of the +central years of the Victorian Age was splendid. With those who deny +merit to the writers and artists of the last half century it is +difficult to reach a common ground for argument. What is to be the +criterion of taste if all the multiform exhibitions of it which passed +muster from 1840 to 1890 are now to be swept away with contumely? +Perhaps indeed it is only among those extravagant romanticists who are +trying to raise entirely new ideals, unrelated to any existing forms of +art and literature, that we find a denial of all merit to the Victorian +masters. Against this caricature of criticism, this Bolshevism, it would +be hopeless to contend. But there is a large and growing class of more +moderate thinkers who hold, in the first place, that the merit of the +leading Victorian writers has been persistently over-estimated, and that +since its culmination the Victorian spirit has not ceased to decay, +arriving at length at the state of timidity and repetition which +encourages what is ugly, narrow, and vulgar, and demands nothing better +than a swift dismissal to the dust-bin. + +Every stratum of society, particularly if it is at all sophisticated, +contains a body of barbarians who are usually silent from lack of +occasion to express themselves, but who are always ready to seize an +opportunity to suppress a movement of idealism. We accustom ourselves to +the idea that certain broad principles of taste are universally +accepted, and our respectable newspapers foster this benevolent delusion +by talking habitually "over the heads," as we say, of the majority of +their readers. They make "great music for a little clan," and nothing +can be more praiseworthy than their effort, but, as a matter of fact, +with or without the aid of the newspapers, the people who really care +for literature or art, or for strenuous mental exercise of any kind, are +relatively few. If we could procure a completely confidential statement +of the number of persons to whom the names of Charles Lamb and +Gainsborough have a distinct meaning, and still more of those who can +summon up an impression of the essays of the one and of the pictures of +the other, we should in all probability be painfully startled. Yet since +these names enjoy what we call a universal celebrity, what must be the +popular relation to figures much less prominent? + +The result of this tyranny of fame, for so it must appear to all those +who are inconvenienced by the expression of it, is to rouse a sullen +tendency to attack the figures of art and literature whenever there +arrives a chance of doing that successfully. Popular audiences can +always be depended upon to cheer the statement of "a plain man" that he +is not "clever" enough to understand Browning or Meredith. An assurance +that life is too short to be troubled with Henry James wakes the lower +middle class to ecstasy. An opportunity for such protests is provided by +our English lack of critical tradition, by our accepted habit of saying, +"I do hate" or "I must say I rather like" this or that without reference +to any species of authority. This seems to have grown with dangerous +rapidity of late years. It was not tolerated among the Victorians, who +carried admiration to the highest pitch. They marshalled it, they +defined it, they turned it from a virtue into a religion, and called it +Hero Worship. Even their abuse was a kind of admiration turned inside +out, as in Swinburne's diatribes against Carlyle, who himself fought +against the theory of Darwin, not philosophically, but as though it were +a personal insult to himself. Such violence of taste is now gone out of +fashion; every scribbler and dauber likes to believe himself on a level +with the best, and the positive criterion of value which sincere +admiration gave is lost to us. Hence the success of Mr. Lytton Strachey. + +But the decline of ardour does not explain the whole position, which we +have to face with firmness. Epochs come to an end, and before they have +their place finally awarded to them in history they are bound to endure +much vicissitude of fortune. No amount of sarcasm or of indignant +protest will avail to conceal the fact that we stand to-day at the +porch, that much more probably we have already penetrated far into the +vestibule, of a new age. What its character will be, or what its +principal products, it is absolutely impossible for us as yet to +conjecture. Meanwhile the Victorian Age recedes, and it loses size and +lustre as we get further and further away from it. When what was called +"Symbolism" began to act in urgent and direct reaction to the aims of +those still in authority, the old order received its notice to quit, but +that was at least five and twenty years ago, and the change is not +complete. Ages so multiform and redundant and full of blood as the +Victorian take a long time to die; they have their surprising recoveries +and their uncovenanted convalescences. But even they give up the ghost +at length, and are buried hastily with scant reverence. The time has +doubtless come when aged mourners must prepare themselves to attend the +obsequies of the Victorian Age with as much decency as they can muster. + +1918. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abbaye de Creteil, 303-4 +Acton, Lord, 328 +Addison, J., relation of, to Romanticists, 70-1; 68, 76, 82 +_Agnes de Castro_, by Catharine Trotter, 43-5 +Akenside, 74 +Allard-Méeus, J., 273 +_Alroy_, by B. Disraeli, 161 +American criticism, and Edgar Allan Poe, 104, 105 +Anne, Queen, 58 +_Annabel Lee_, by E.A. Poe, 103, 112 +Argyll, Duke of, 320 +Ariosto, 84, 85 +Arnauld, Angelique, 39 +Arnold, M., 3, 68, 71, 133, 267 +Arnold, Dr. T., Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 326-7 +Asquith, Mr., Romanes lecture of, 332-5 + +Bacon, 17 +Bagehot, W., 96 +Balfour, A.J., _re_ standards of taste, 4, 5, 10 +Ballenden, Sarah, 40 +Baring, M., poems of, 265, 273-5 +Barrie, Sir J., 100 +Barry, Mrs., 57 +Batsford, Lord Redesdale at, 217-8, 222, 224-8, 229 +Baudelaire, 106 +Bayle, 59 +Behn, Aphra, 39 +Bell, T., of Selborne, 182 +Berkeley, 98 +Betterton, 48, 57 +Birch, Rev. Dr., 61 +Blake, W., 5, 90 +Blessington, Lady, 131 +Boileau, 70, 77, 82 +Booth, 57 +Bottomley, G., 262 +Bridges, R., War poetry of, 161; 110 +de Brillac, Mlle., 44 +Brontë, Charlotte, dislike of Dewsbury, 142-3; + message of, arose from pain and resistance, 144; + her unhappiness, its causes, 145-6; + defiance the note of her writings, 146-50 +Brontë, Emily, 149 +Brontës, The Challenge of the, address delivered on, 141-50; + their connexion with Dewsbury, 141-2 +Brooke, Rupert, poems of, 268-70 +Browning, R., 9, 81, 132 +Brunetière, 7 +Bruxambille, 95 +Bryant, 107, 108 +Bulwer-Lytton, E., ambiguity of his position in literature, 117; + R. Lytton's biography, 118, 121; + Lord Lytton's biography, 117, 118-9, 120, 122, 129, 130, 131, 133, 137; + autobiography, 119-20; + story of matrimonial troubles, 121-9; + character, 129-30; + acquaintances and friends, 130-2; + relations with contemporary writers and poets, 132-4; + stormy life, 134; + unfavourable attitude of critics towards, 134-5; + popularity of his writings, 135-6; + versatility and merits, 136-7; 178 +Bulwer-Lytton, Mrs., opposition to Bulwer-Lytton's marriage, 124-7 +Burghclere, Lady, open letter to, on Lady D. Nevill, 181-96 +Burnet, George, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60 +Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, patron of the Trotters, 41, 52, 53 +Burnet, Mrs., 52, 53 +Burney, Dr., 33 +Burton, 96 +Byron, 76, 104, 108, 148, 161-2 + +Carlyle, 100 +Carlyle, Mrs., her opinion of Keats, 9 +Catullus, 84 +Charles II, 40, 41 +Chateaubriand, 74 +Chatterton, 87 +Cibber, Colley, 44 +Classic poetry, Romanticists' revolt against principles of, 70-90 +Clough, A.H., 325, 328 +Cockburn, Mr., 60, 61 +Coleridge, 104, 108, 274 +Collier, Jeremy, attack on stage immorality, 47 +Collins, 86, 110 +Colonisation, England's debt to Walter Raleigh, 24-5 +Congreve, Catherine Trotter's relations with, 43, 47, 48, 50; 57, 58 +_Coningsby_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 164, 165-6, 169, 170-2, 173 +_Contarini Fleming_, by B. Disraeli, 159-61, 162 +Corbett, N.M.F., poems of, 275 +Cowes in war time, 219-21 +Cowley, 82 +Cowper, 253 +Crabbe, G., Hardy compared with, 248 +Cranch, C.P., 105 +Cromer, Lord, essay on, 196-216; + intellectual and literary activity, 197-8; + as a speaker, 198-200; + interest in House of Lords Library, 200; + classical tastes, 200-203; + conversation, attitude to life and letters, 204-8; + correspondence and reflections, 208-10; + humour, 210-12; + verse, 212-15; + literary activities, 215-16 + +Dacier, Mme., 52 +_Dacre_, by Countess of Morley, 153, 156 +Dante, 225-6 +Dartmouth, George, Earl of, 40, 42 +D'Aubigné, 78 +Daudet, A., 252 +Daudet, E., 229-30 +Davies, W.H., 262 +De Vere, Mrs., 59 +Devey, Miss, "Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," by, 121 +Dewsbury, the Brontës' connexion with, 141-2 +Dickens, C, 100, 128, 131 +Disraeli, B., novels of, address, 153-78; + not taken seriously as an author, 153-4; + three periods of writing, 154-5; + contemporary fiction, 155-6; + _Vivian Grey_, 156-9; + _The Young Duke_, 157; + _Henrietta Temple_, 159; + _Contarini Fleming_, 159-60; + Byron's influence on, 161; + Voltaire's influence on, 162; + fascinated by Venice, 163; + _Venetia_, 163; + Parliamentary experience and literary results, 164; + _Coningsby_, 165-6; + _Sybil_, 167-8; + _Tancred_, 169-72; + Prime Minister, 172; + _Lothair_, 173-8; 131, 135 +Donne, J., 78, 111, 236, 244, 252 +Dorset, Charles, Earl of, 43 +Dowden, 34 +Doyle, Sir A.C., 103 +Dryden, 34, 49, 50, 70, 82, 274 +Du Bos, Abbé, 90 +Durham, Lord, 131 +Dyer, 70 + +Elizabeth, Queen, sympathy between Raleigh and, 18 +_Eloisa to Abelard_, by Pope, its appeal to Romanticists, 83-4 +Emerson, 107 +_Eminent Victorians_, by Lytton Strachey, review of, 318-32 +English Poetry, The Future of, 289-309; + instances of national lapses in poetic output, 290; + necessity of novelty of expression and difficulties arising, 291-2; + advantages of vernacular poetry, 293; + future poetry bound to dispense with obvious description and + reflection and to take on greater subtlety of expression, 294-7; + Wordsworth's speculations concerning nineteenth-century poetry, 298-9; + prospect of social poetry, 299-301; + "effusion of natural sensibility" more probable, 302-3; + French experiments, 303-4; + as to disappearance of erotic poetry, 305-6; + dramatic poetry and symbolism, 306-9 +_Essay on Criticism_, by Pope, Romanticists' attack upon, 71-4 +_Essay on Genius of Pope_, by J. Warton, 80-3 + +Farquhar, 48 +_Fatal Friendship_, by C. Trotter, 47-8 +Fawcett, Rev. J., 97 +Fenn, Mr., 60 +Fletcher, John, songs of, 35 +_For Annie_, by E.A. Poe, 112 +Ford, songs of, 35 +Forster, John, 131-2, 133 +France, Anatole, 7 + +Gaskell, Mrs., 141 +Gautier, T., 6, 10 +Genoa, Duke of, 133 +Georgian poetry, its pre-war characteristics, 261-2 +Gibbon, 98 +Gibson, W.W., 262 +Gilbert, Sir H., 25 +Gilpin, 87 +Godolphin, Henrietta, 58 +Goethe, 161 +de Goncourt, E., 252 +Gongora, 78 +Gordon, General, 15; + Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 329-30 +Gore, Mrs., 178 +de Gourmont, Rémy, his opinion of Sully-Prudhomme, 9, 10 +de Gournay, Mlle., 39 +Granville, 47 +Graves, R., poetry of, 280-1 +Gray, 89, 108 +Greene, 32 +Grenfell, J., poems of, 271-3 +Guiana, Raleigh's "gold mine" in, 20 + +Halifax, Lord, 50 +Handel, 80 +Harcourt, Mrs., 57 +Hardy, Thomas, lyrical poetry of, 233-58; + independence of his career as a poet, 233-4; + unity and consistence of his poetry, 234; + sympathy with Swinburne, 235; + historic development of lyrics, 236; + novel writing interfering with, 237-8; + place of poetry in his literary career, 238; + "Wessex Ballads" and "Poems of Past and Present," 238-40; + "The Dynasts" and "Times' Laughing Stocks," 240-2; + "Satires of Circumstance," 242-3; + "Moments of Vision," 243-4; + technical quality of his poetry, 244; + metrical forms, 245-6; + pessimistic conception of life, 247-8; + compared with Crabbe, 248; + consolation found by, 249-51; + compared with Wordsworth, 251; + human sympathy, 251; + range of subjects, 252-5; + speculations on immortality, 256; + "The Dynasts," 68, 257; + unchangeableness of his art, 257-8; + "Song of the Soldiers," 263 +Hawthorne, 107 +Hayley, 5 +Hazlitt, 301 +_Henrietta Temple_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 159 +Heywood, songs of, 35 +Higgons, Bevil, 43 +Hobbes, 98 +Hodgson, W.N., 284 +Homer, 12 +Hooker, 17 +Hope, H.T., 164 +Housman, A.E., 268 +Hugo, V., 6, 12, 111, 134 +Hume, 98 +Hunt, Leigh, 104 + +Inglis, Dr., 51, 58 +Ireland, Raleigh in, 23 + +James I, distrust and treatment of Raleigh, 19, 20, 21 +James II, 42 +Johnson, Dr., his opinion of the Wartons, 86, 98 +Jowett, Dr., 320 + +Keats, Mrs. Carlyle's opinion of, 9; 5, 90, 104, 105 +King, Peter, 53, 59 +Kipling, R., poetry of, 300 + +Landon, Letitia, 131 +Lansdowne, Lord, 191 +Lauderdale, Earl of, 42 +Lauderdale, Maitland, Duke of, 40, 41 +Lawson, H., poems of, 284 +Lee, 50 +Leibnitz, 42, 54, 55, 56, 59 +Lemaître, J., 7 +Lewis, "Monk," 162 +Locke, Catharine Trotter's defence of, 53-5; + death of, 55; 42 +Lockhart, 135 +Lodge, 32 +_Lothair_, by B. Disraeli, 173-8 +_Love at a Loss_, by Catharine Trotter, 51 +Lowell, 108 +Lucas, Lord, 274 +Lyly, John, 31 +Lytton, Bulwer-, _see_ Bulwer-Lytton. +Lytton, Lord, biography of Bulwer-Lytton, 117, 118-19, 120, 122, 129, + 130, 131, 133, 137 +Lytton, R., biography of Bulwer-Lytton, 118, 121 + +Macaulay, Lord, 320-1 +Macpherson, 86 +Malebranche, 52 +Malherbe, 70, 77 +Mallarmé, 77, 106 +Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, 85 +Manley, Mrs., 44, 45, 46, 61 +Manning, Cardinal, Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 323, 330-2 +Manoa, 19 +Mant, 73 +Marinetti, M., 305, 318 +Marini, 78 +Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, 57 +Marlborough, Duke of, Catharine Trotter's poem of welcome to, 58 +Marlowe, songs of, 34 +Marsh, E., 261 +Masham, Lady, 55, 56, 59 +Massinger, 35 +Melbourne, Lord, 131 +_Memories_, by Lord Redesdale, 216, 217, 219, 221 +Milton, influence upon eighteenth-century poetry, 79; 82, 110 +Mitford, Major Hon. C, 218 +Mockel, A., 112 +_Moments of Vision_, by T. Hardy, 243-4 +Monckton-Milnes, Sir R., 133 +Morris, 104 +Myers, F., 320 + +Nevill, Lady Dorothy, Open Letter to Lady Burghclere on, 181-96; + memoirs of, 181-2; + writer's friendship with, 152; + appearance and physical strength, 183-4; + characteristics, 184-5; + a spectator of life, 186-7; + attitude to the country, 187; + wit, conversation and correspondence, 187-92; + relation to literature and art, 192-4; + emotional nature, 194-6 +Nevill, Ralph, Memoirs of Lady D. Nevill by, 181-2 +Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, 39 +Nichols, R., poetry of, 276-80 +Nietzsche, 219-20 +Nightingale, Florence, Mr. Strachey's Life of, 324 +Norris, John, 52, 53 + +Obermann, 76 +_Observations on the Faerie Queene_, by T. Warton, 84-6 +_Ode on the Approach of Summer_, by T. Warton, 79 +_Odes_, by J. Warton, 69, 75, 80 +Otway, 50 + +Panmure, Lord, 325-6 +Paris, Gaston, 7, 8 +Parnell, 76 +Parr, Dr. S., 120 +Pater, W., 71 +Patmore, C., 237 +Peacock, 104 +Peele, 32 +Péguy, C., 268 +_Pelham_, by Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, the author of, 117-37; 135, 155 +Pepys, S., 27 +Perth, 4th Earl of, 40, 42 +_Philip van Artevelde_, by H. Taylor, 107 +Piers, Lady, 50, 51 +Piers, Sir G., 50 +Pix, Mrs. Mary, 45, 46, 61 +Poe, E.A., centenary of, address on, 103-13; + importance as a poet ignored, 103; + original want of recognition of, 104-5; + his reaction to unfriendly criticism, 105-6; + essential qualities of his genius, 106-7; + contemporary conception of poetry, 107-8; + his ideal of poetry, 108; + influences upon, 108-9; + early verses, poetic genius in, 109; + melodiousness of, 110-11; + symbolism of, 112-13 +_Poems and Ballads_, by A.C. Swinburne, Bulwer-Lytton's support of, 133-4 +_Poems of Past and Present_, by T. Hardy, 238-40 +Pope, Romanticists' revolt against classicism of, 70-90; 68 +Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, Queen of, 58 + +Rabelais, 90 +Radcliffe, Mrs., 85, 162 +Raleigh, North Carolina, foundation of, 25-6 +Raleigh, W., junr., 20 +Raleigh, Sir W., address delivered on Tercentenary celebration of, 15-27; + patriotism and hatred of Spain, 15-17, 21-2; + character, 18; + adventurous nature, 18-19; + James I and, 19-20; + his El Dorado dreams, 20; + fall and trial, 21; + savage aspects of, 23; + as a naval strategist, 23-4; + genius as coloniser, 24-5; + imprisonment and execution, 26-7 +Ramsay, Allan, 70 +Redesdale, Lord, last days of, 216-30; + literary career, 216-7; + vitality: pride in authorship and garden, 217-8; + death of son, 218; + "Memories," 219; + loneliness and problem of occupying his time, 219-22; + origin of last book, its theme, 222-4; + last days, 224-30 +René, 76 +Rentoul, L., poems of, 284 +Retté, A., 112 +Reynolds, 104 +Ritson, Joseph, attack upon T. Warton, 88-9 +Roanoke, Virginia, British settlement in, 25 +Roche, Lord and Lady, 23 +Romanticism, Two Pioneers of, Joseph and Thomas Warton, address on, 65-90 +Romantic movement, features of, 71-90 +Rossetti, D.G., 104, 136 +Rousseau, J.J., English Romanticists' relation to, 68, 68, 75 +Ruskin, 100 +Russell, Odo, 330 + +Sainte-Beuve, 6 +Sappho, 84 +Sassoon, S., poems of, 282-4 +_Satires of Circumstance_, by T. Hardy, 242-3 +Satow, Sir E., 223 +Scott, Sir W., 108, 128, 135 +Scudéry, M. de, 39 +Seaman, Sir G., war invective of, 264 +Selbourne, Lord, 320 +Selden, 98 +Senancour, 74 +_Sentimental Journey_, The, by L. Sterne, 96, 100 +Seventeenth century, English women writers of, 39 +Shakespeare, the Songs of, 31-5; + their dramatic value, 31-3; + lyrical qualities, 33-5; + comparison with contemporary lyricists, 35; 17, 82 +Shelley, 74, 104, 108, 162 +Shenstone, 70 +_Shepherd of the Ocean, The_, 15-27 +Shorter, C., 141 +Some Soldier Poets, 261-85; + outbreak of war poetry, 262-3; + mildness of British Hymns of Hate, 264-5; + military influence upon poetic feeling, 265-6; + tendency to dispense with form, 266; + common literary influences, 267-8; + Rupert Brooke, 268-70; + J. Grenfell, 271-3; + M. Baring, 273-5; + N.M.F. Corbett, 275; + E.W. Tennant, 275; + R. Nichols, 276-80; + R. Graves, 280-1; + S. Sassoon, 282-4; + C.H. Sorley, W.N. Hodgson, K. Lawson, L. Rentoul, R.E. Vernède, 284 +Sorley, C.H., poems of, 284 +Southey, 5, 104 +Spain, Anglo-Spanish rivalry in days of Walter Raleigh, 16-17, 21-3, 24 +Spenser, 17, 82, 84, 111 +Stephen, Sir Leslie, 106, 237 +Sterne, Laurence, Essay on the Charm of, 93-100; + birth and childhood, 93-4; + temperament, 94-5; + intellectual development, 95-6; + alternation of feeling about, 97; + English literature's debt to, 98; + his "indelicacy," 99; + irrelevancy, 99; + Shandean influences upon literature, 100 +Sterne, Mrs., 93 +Sterne, Roger, 93 +Stevenson, R.L., 100 +Strachey, Lytton, "Eminent Victorians" by, review of, 318-32 +Stukeley, Sir L., 21 +Sully-Prudhomme, fluctuations in taste as regards, 5-9 +Sumners, Montagu, 39 +Swinburne, A. C, Bulwer-Lytton and, 133-4; + Hardy's sympathy with, 235; 68, 81, 111 +Symbolism and poetry, 308-9 + +_Tales of Old Japan_, by Lord Redesdale, 216 +_Tancred_, by B. Disraeli, 153 +Taste, fluctuations in, 3-12; + regarding Wordsworth, 3-4; + Mr. Balfour's conclusions, 4-5, 10; + volte-face concerning Sully-Prudhomme, 5-10 +_Tea-Table Miscellany_, 70 +Temple, Mrs., 45 +Tennant, E.W., poetry of, 275 +Tennyson, Victorian opinion of, 320-1; 7, 12, 81, 106, 116, 132, 299 +Thackeray, 144 +_The Bamboo Garden_, by Lord Redesdale, 216 +_The Bells_, by E.A. Poe, 111 +_The Dynasts_, by T. Hardy, 240, 257 +_The Enthusiast_, by Joseph Warton, importance of, 69, 73 +_The Female Wits_, by Catharine Trotter, 45-6 +_The Raven_, by E.A. Poe, 108, 111 +_The Revolution in Sweden_, by Catharine Trotter, 57-8 +_The Unhappy Penitent_, by Catharine Trotter, 50-1 +_The Young Duke_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 157 +Thomson, James, 78, 307 +Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_, 68 +_Times' Laughing Stocks_, by T. Hardy, 240-2 +Tottel's Miscellany, 261 +_Tristram Shandy_, by L. Sterne, 94, 96, 98, 99, 100 +Trotter, Capt. D., R.N., 40 +Trotter, Catharine, 39-62; + precocity, 39, 42; + parentage, 40; + poverty, 41-2; + early verses, 43; + correspondence with celebrated people, 43; + _Agnes de Castro_, 43-5; + _The Female Wits_, 45-6; + _Fatal Friendship_, 47-9; + elegy on Dryden's death, 49-50; + _The Unhappy Penitent_, 50-1; + _Love at a Loss_, 51; + friendship with the Burnets, 52; + philosophical studies, 42, 52-3; + enthusiasm for Locke, 53, 55; + _The Revolution in Sweden_, 54, 57; + correspondence with Leibnitz, 55; + indignation at aspersions on feminine intellectuality, 56-7; + poem of welcome to Marlborough, 58; + attachment to G. Burnet, 59-60; + marriage with Mr. Cockburn, 60; + later life, 60-1 +Trotter, Mrs., poverty of, 41 +Tupper, 5 +Turkey Company, 40 + +_Ulalume_, by E.A. Poe, 103, 107, 109, 112 +Upchear, Henry, 31 + +_Veluvana_, by Lord Redesdale, theme of, 222-4, 226 +_Venetia_, by B. Disraeli, 163 +Venice, its fascination for Disraeli, 163 +Verbruggen, Mrs., 45 +Verlaine, Paul, 7 +Vernède, R.E., poems of, 284 +de Verville, B., 95, 95, 96 +Victorian Age, the Agony of, 313-37 +Virgil, 12 +_Vivian Grey_, by B. Disraeli, 155, 156, 157-9 +Voltaire, 3, 162 + +Waller, 82 +Warburton, Dr., 33, 81, 97 +Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, 144, 327 +Ward, Plumer, novels of, 155, 156, 178 +Warton, Joseph and Thomas; Two Pioneers of Romanticism, address + on, 65-90; + parentage and early habits, 66-7; + heralds of romantic movement, 67; + literary contemporaries and atmosphere, 68; + Joseph, the leading spirit, 68-9; + _The Enthusiast_, its romantic qualities, 69; + their revolt against principles of classic poetry, 70-4; + characteristic features of early Romanticism, 74-9; + Miltonic influence, 79-80; + _Essay on the Genius of Pope_, 80-4; + _Observations on the Faerie Queene_, 84-6; + Johnson's criticism of, 86-7; + Ritson's attack upon Thomas, 88; + defects of, 89-90 +Webster's _White Devil_, 34 +_Wessex Ballads_, by T. Hardy, 238-40 +Wheeler, R.D. (Lady Lytton), Miss Devey's Life of, 121; + story of marriage with Bulwer-Lytton, 121-9 +Whitehead, 74 +William III, 41 +Willis, N.P., 105 +Wilson, Harriette, 130-1 +Wolseley, Lord, 328 +Wooler, Miss, 141, 142, 143 +Wordsworth, Hardy compared with, 251; + speculations concerning future poetry, 298-9; 3, 4, 10, 74, 78, 90, + 104, 107, 108, 110, 253 +Wycherley, 44 + +Yeats, 70 +Young, 68, 69, 81 + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by +Edmund William Gosse + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 18649-8.txt or 18649-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/4/18649/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.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: Some Diversions of a Man of Letters + +Author: Edmund William Gosse + +Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18649] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<h1>SOME DIVERSIONS</h1> +<h3>OF</h3> +<h1>A MAN OF LETTERS</h1> + + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.</h2> + + +<h4>LONDON<br /> +WILLIAM HEINEMANN<br /> +1920</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<div style="margin-left: 16em;"><i>First published October 1919</i><br /> +<i>New Impressions November 1919; February 1920</i></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h2><i>OTHER WORKS BY MR. EDMUND GOSSE</i></h2> + + +<div style="margin-left: 16em;"> +<p><i>Northern Studies</i>. 1879.</p> + +<p><i>Life of Gray</i>. 1882.</p> + +<p><i>Seventeenth-Century Studies</i>. 1883.</p> + +<p><i>Life of Congreve</i>. 1888.</p> + +<p><i>A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature</i>. 1889.</p> + +<p><i>Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S.</i> 1890.</p> + +<p><i>Gossip in a Library</i>. 1891.</p> + +<p><i>The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance</i>. 1892.</p> + +<p><i>Questions at Issue</i>. 1893.</p> + +<p><i>Critical Kit-Kats</i>. 1896.</p> + +<p><i>A Short History of Modern English Literature</i>. 1897.</p> + +<p><i>Life and Letters of John Donne</i>. 1899.</p> + +<p><i>Hypolympia</i>. 1901.</p> + +<p><i>Life of Jeremy Taylor</i>. 1904.</p> + +<p><i>French Profiles</i>. 1904.</p> + +<p><i>Life of Sir Thomas Browne</i>. 1905.</p> + +<p><i>Father and Son</i>. 1907.</p> + +<p><i>Life of Ibsen</i>. 1908.</p> + +<p><i>Two Visits to Denmark</i>. 1911.</p> + +<p><i>Collected Poems</i>. 1911.</p> + +<p><i>Portraits and Sketches</i>. 1912.</p> + +<p><i>Inter Arma</i>. 1916.</p> + +<p><i>Three French Moralists</i>. 1918.</p> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>TO</h2> + +<h2>EVAN CHARTERIS</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr> + <td align='left'></td> + <td align='right'>PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>Preface: On Fluctuations of Taste</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">1</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Shepherd of the Ocean</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_15">13</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Songs of Shakespeare</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_31">29</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>Catharine Trotter, the Precursor of the Bluestockings</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_39">37</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Message of the Wartons</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">63</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Charm of Sterne</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_93">91</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_103">101</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Author of "Pelham"</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_117">115</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Challenge of the Brontës</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_141">139</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>Disraeli's Novels</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_153">151</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>Three Experiments in Portraiture—</td> + <td align='right'></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">I. Lady Dorothy Nevill</span></td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">II. Lord Cromer</span></td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">III. The Last Days of Lord Redesdale</span></td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_233">231</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>Some Soldier Poets</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_261">259</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Future of English Poetry</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_289">287</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>The Agony of the Victorian Age</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_313">311</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td align='left'>Index</td> + <td align='right'><a href="#Page_338">338</a></td> +</tr> +</table></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE:</h2> + +<h3>ON FLUCTUATIONS OF TASTE</h3> + + +<p>When Voltaire sat down to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his +first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day +might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to +expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard +in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing +years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed by the recurrence of +them. In early youth we fight for the new forms of art, for the new +æsthetic shibboleths, and in that happy ardour of battle we have no time +or inclination to regret the demigods whom we dispossess. But the years +glide on, and, behold! one morning, we wake up to find our own +predilections treated with contempt, and the objects of our own idolatry +consigned to the waste-paper basket. Then the matter becomes serious, +and we must either go on struggling for a cause inevitably lost, or we +must give up the whole matter in indifference. This week I read, over +the signature of a very clever and very popular literary character of +our day, the remark that Wordsworth's was "a genteel mind of the third +rank." I put down the newspaper in which this airy dictum was printed, +and, for the first time, I was glad that poor Mr. Matthew Arnold was no +longer with us. But, of course, the evolutions of taste must go on, +whether they hurt the living and the dead, or no.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p> + +<p>Is there, then, no such thing as a permanent element of poetic beauty? +The curious fact is that leading critics in each successive generation +are united in believing that there is, and that the reigning favourite +conforms to it. The life of a reputation is like the life of a plant, +and seems, in these days, to be like the life of an annual. We watch the +seed, admiration for Wordsworth, planted about 1795, shoot obscurely +from the ground, and gradually clothe itself with leaves till about +1840; then it bursts into blossom of rapturous praise, and about 1870 is +hung with clusters of the fruit of "permanent" appreciation. In 1919, +little more than a century from its first evolution in obscurity, it +recedes again in the raggedness of obloquy, and cumbers the earth, as +dim old "genteel" Wordsworth, whom we are assured that nobody reads. But +why were "the best judges" scornful in 1800 and again in 1919 of what +gave the noblest and the most inspiriting pleasure to "the best judges" +in 1870? The execution of the verse has not altered, the conditions of +imagination seem the same, why then is the estimate always changing? Is +every form of poetic taste, is all trained enjoyment of poetry, merely a +graduated illusion which goes up and down like a wave of the sea and +carries "the best judges" with it? If not, who is right, and who is +wrong, and what is the use of dogmatising? Let us unite to quit all vain +ambition, and prefer the jangle of the music-halls, with its direct +"æsthetic thrill."</p> + +<p>So far as I know, the only philosopher who has dared to face this +problem is Mr. Balfour, in the brilliant second chapter of his +"Foundations of Belief." He has there asked, "Is there any fixed and +permanent element in beauty?" The result of his inquiry is +disconcerting; after much discussion he decides that there is not. Mr. +Balfour deals, in particular, with only two forms of art, Music and +Dress, but he tacitly includes the others with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> them. It is certain that +the result of his investigations is the singularly stultifying one that +we are not permitted to expect "permanent relations" in or behind the +feeling of poetic beauty, which may be indifferently awakened by Blake +to-day and by Hayley to-morrow. If the critic says that the verse of +Blake is beautiful and that of Hayley is not, he merely "expounds +case-made law." The result seems to be that no canons of taste exist; +that what are called "laws" of style are enacted only for those who make +them, and for those whom the makers can bully into accepting their +legislation, a new generation of lawbreakers being perfectly free to +repeal the code. Southey yesterday and Keats to-day; why not Southey +again to-morrow, or perhaps Tupper? Such is the cynical <i>cul-de-sac</i> +into which the logic of a philosopher drives us.</p> + +<p>We have had in France an example of <i>volte-face</i> in taste which I +confess has left me gasping. I imagine that if Mr. Balfour was able to +spare a moment from the consideration of fiscal reform, he must have +spent it in triumphing over the fate of M. Sully-Prudhomme. In the month +of September 1906 this poet closed, after a protracted agony, "that long +disease, his life." He had compelled respect by his courage in the face +of hopeless pain, and, one might suppose, some gratitude by the +abundance of his benefactions. His career was more than blameless, it +was singularly exemplary. Half-blind, half-paralysed, for a long time +very poor, pious without fanaticism, patient, laborious, devoted to his +friends, he seems to have been one of those extraordinary beings whose +fortitude in the face of affliction knows no abatement. It would be +ridiculous to quote any of these virtues as a reason for admiring the +poetry of Sully-Prudhomme. I mention them merely to show that there was +nothing in his personal temperament to arouse hatred or in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> personal +conditions to excuse envy. Nothing to account for the, doubtless, +entirely sincere detestation which his poetry seemed to awaken in all +"the best minds" directly he was dead.</p> + +<p>As every one knows, from about 1870 to 1890, Sully-Prudhomme was, +without a rival, the favourite living poet of the French. Victor Hugo +was there, of course, until 1885—and posthumously until much later—but +he was a god, and the object of idolatry. All who loved human poetry, +the poetry of sweetness and light, took Sully-Prudhomme to their heart +of hearts. The <i>Stances et Poèmes</i> of 1865 had perhaps the warmest +welcome that ever the work of a new poet had in France. Théophile +Gautier instantly pounced upon <i>Le Vase Brisé</i> (since too-famous) and +introduced it to a thousand school-girls. Sainte-Beuve, though grown old +and languid, waked up to celebrate the psychology and the music of this +new poetry, so delicate, fresh and transparent. An unknown beauty of +extreme refinement seemed to have been created in it, a beauty made up +of lucidity, pathos and sobriety. Readers who are now approaching +seventy will not forget with what emotion they listened, for instance, +to that dialogue between the long-dead father and the newly-buried son, +which closes:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"J' ai laissé ma sœur et ma mère<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et les beaux livres que j' ai lus;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vous n'avez pas de bru, mon père,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On m'a blesse, je n'aime plus."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"De tes aïeux compte le nombre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Va baiser leurs fronts inconnus,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et viens faire ton lit dans l'ombre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A côté des derniers venus.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ne pleure pas, dors dans l'argile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">En espérant le grand reveit."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"O père, qu'il est difficile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">De ne plus penser au soleil!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>This body of verse, to which was presently added fresh collections—<i>Les +Epreuves</i> (1886), <i>Les Vaines Tendresses</i> (1875), <i>Le Prisme</i> +(1886),—was welcomed by the elder Sanhedrim, and still more +vociferously and unanimously by the younger priesthood of criticism. It +pleased the superfine amateurs of poetry, it was accepted with +enthusiasm by the thousands who enjoy without analysing their enjoyment. +In 1880, to have questioned that Sully-Prudhomme was a very noble poet +would have been like challenging Tennyson in 1870, or Cowley in 1660. +Jules Lemaître claimed that he was the greatest artist in symbols that +France had ever produced. Brunetière, so seldom moved by modern +literature, celebrated with ardour the author of <i>Les Vaines Tendresses</i> +as having succeeded better than any other writer who had ever lived in +translating into perfect language the dawn and the twilight of emotion. +That Gaston Paris and M. Anatole France competed in lofty praise of the +lyrics of Sully-Prudhomme, is perhaps less remarkable than that Paul +Verlaine, whom all the younger schools still look upon as their apostle +and guide, declared, in reviewing <i>Les Ecuries d'Augias</i>, that the force +of style of Sully-Prudhomme was excelled only by the beauty of his +detail. It is needless to multiply examples of the unanimous praise +given by the divers schools of criticism to Sully-Prudhomme up to about +1890. His was, perhaps, the least contested literary glory of France.</p> + +<p>His death startlingly reminded us that this state of things had to be +entirely reversed. It is true that the peculiar talent of +Sully-Prudhomme, being almost exclusively lyrical, scarcely survived his +youth, and that he cumbered his moon of sands with two huge and clumsy +wrecks, <i>La Justice</i> (1878) and <i>Le Bonheur</i> (1898), round which the +feet of the fairies could hardly be expected to trip. One must be an +academician and hopelessly famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> before one dares to inflict two +elephantine didactic epics on one's admirers. Unfortunately, too, the +poet undertook to teach the art of verse in his <i>Réflexions</i> (1892) and +his <i>Testament Poétique</i> (1901), brochures which greatly irritated the +young. It is probably wise for academicians, whether poets or the +reverse, to sit beside their nectar, and not to hurl bolts down into the +valley. But, behind these errors of judgment, there they remain—those +early volumes, which seemed to us all so full of exquisite little +masterpieces. Why is it that nobody, except a few elderly persons, any +longer delights in them? The notices which Sully-Prudhomme's death +awakened in the Paris Press were either stamped with the mark of old +contemporary affection, or else, when they were not abusive, were as +frigid as the tomb itself. "Ses tendresses sucrées, sirupeuses, sont +vaines en effet," said a critic of importance! Indeed, it would appear +so; and where are the laurels of yester-year?</p> + +<p>To those who were young when Sully-Prudhomme entered into his +immortality it seems impossible to realise that the glory has already +departed. Gaston Paris celebrated "the penetrating sincerity and the +exquisite expression of feeling" which distinguished Sully-Prudhomme +above all other poets. He was the bard of the inner life, sincere and +dignified, full of melancholy reverie. A great critic compared <i>La Vote +Lactic</i> and <i>Les Stalactites</i> with the far-off sound of bells heard down +some lovely valley in a golden afternoon. Yet the images and the +language were precise; Sully-Prudhomme was a mathematician, and if he +was reproached with anything like a fault, it was that his style was +slightly geometrical. It would be otiose to collect any more tributes to +his genius, as it appeared to all Frenchmen, cultivated or +semi-cultivated, about the year 1880. With an analysis of +Sully-Prudhomme's poetry I am not here concerned, but with the question +of why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> it is that such an authority as Rémy de Gourmont could, in 1907, +without awakening any protest among persons under fifty say that it was +a "sort of social crime" to impose such balderdash as the verse of +Sully-Prudhomme on the public.</p> + +<p>It is not needful to quote other living critics, who may think such +prolongation of their severities ungraceful. But a single contrast will +suffice. When, in 1881, Sully-Prudhomme was elected to the French +Academy, expert opinion throughout the Press was unanimous in admitting +that this was an honour deservedly given to the best lyric poet of the +age. In 1906, when a literary journal sent out this question, "Who is +the poet you love best?" and was answered by more than two hundred +writers of verse, the diversity of opinion was indeed excessive; such +poets as Sainte-Beuve, as Brizeux, as Rodenbach, received votes, all the +great masters received many. But Sully-Prudhomme, alone, received not +one vote. A new generation had arisen, and one of its leaders, with +cruel wit, transferred to the reputation of the author his own most +famous line:—"N'y touchez pas, il est brisé."</p> + +<p>It is necessary to recollect that we are not dealing with the phenomenon +of the inability of very astute literary people to recognise at once a +startling new sort of beauty. When Robert Browning lent the best poems +of Keats to Mrs. Carlyle, she read them and returned them with the +remark that "almost any young gentleman with a sweet tooth might be +expected to write such things." Mrs. Carlyle was a very clever woman, +but she was not quite "educated up to" Keats. The history of letters is +full of these grotesque limitations of taste, in the presence of great +art which has not yet been "classed." But we are here considering the +much stranger and indeed extremely disconcerting case of a product which +has been accepted, with acclamation, by the judges of one generation, +and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> contemptuously hooted out of court by the next. It is not, on +this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics. +If Théophile Gautier was right in 1867, Rémy de Gourmont must have been +wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of +criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however +ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact +that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that +another whole generation is of the same mind as Rémy de Gourmont.</p> + +<p>Then it is that Mr. Balfour, like Galuppi with his "cold music," comes +in and tells us that this is precisely what we have to expect. All +beauty consists in the possession of certain relations, which being +withdrawn, beauty disappears from the object that seemed to possess it. +There is no permanent element in poetic excellence. We are not to demand +any settled opinion about poetry. So Mr. Balfour seems to creak it, and +we want the heart to scold. But is it quite so certain that there is no +fixed norm of beauty imaginable? Is it the fact that poetic pleasure +cannot "be supposed to last any longer than the transient reaction +between it" and the temporary prejudice of our senses? If this be true, +then are critics of all men most miserable.</p> + +<p>Yet, deeply dejected as it leaves me to know that very clever people +despise the "genteel third-rate mind" of Wordsworth, I am not quite +certain that I yield to Mr. Balfour's brilliant and paralysing logic. +That eminent philosopher seems to say "you find the poets, whom you +revered in your youth, treated with contempt in your old age. Well! It +is very sad, and perhaps it would annoy me too, if I were not a +philosopher. But it only shows how right I was to tell, you not to +expect permanent relations behind the feeling of beauty, since all is +illusion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> and there is no such thing as a principle of taste, but only +a variation of fashion."</p> + +<p>Is it, however, quite so certain, after all, that there is no standard? +It must be admitted that there seems to be no fixed rule of taste, not +even a uniformity of practice or general tendency to agreement in +particular cases. But the whole study of the fine arts would lead to +despair if we allowed ourselves to accept this admission as implying +that no conceivable principle of taste exists. We may not be able to +produce it, like a yard-measure, and submit works of imagination to it, +once and for all, in the eyes of a consternated public. But when we +observe, as we must allow, that art is no better at one age than at +another, but only different; that it is subject to modification, but +certainly not to development; may we not safely accept this stationary +quality as a proof that there does exist, out of sight, unattained and +unattainable, a positive norm of poetic beauty? We cannot define it, but +in each generation all excellence must be the result of a relation to +it. It is the moon, heavily wrapt up in clouds, and impossible exactly +to locate, yet revealed by the light it throws on distant portions of +the sky. At all events, it appears to me that this is the only theory by +which we can justify a continued interest in literature when it is +attacked, now on one side, now on another, by the vicissitudes of +fashion.</p> + +<p>The essays which are here collected deal, for the most part, with +figures in the history of English literature which have suffered from +the changes of fortune and the instability of taste. In every case, +there has been something which is calculated to attract the sympathy and +interest of one who, like myself, has been closely concerned with two +distinct but not unrelated branches of his subject, the literary +character and the literary craft. More than fifty years have +passed—like a cloud, like a dream!—since<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> I first saw my name printed +below a passage of critical opinion. How many reputations, within that +half-century, have not been exalted, how many have not been depressed! +We have seen Tennyson advanced beyond Virgil and Victor Hugo beyond +Homer. We have seen the latest freak of futurism preferred to <i>The Lotus +Eaters</i>, and the first <i>Légende des Siècles</i> rejected as unreadable. In +face of this whirlwind of doctrine the public ceases to know whether it +is on its head or its feet—"its trembling tent all topsy-turvy wheels," +as an Elizabethan has it. To me it seems that security can only be found +in an incessant exploration of the by-ways of literary history and +analysis of the vagaries of literary character. To pursue this analysis +and this exploration without bewilderment and without prejudice is to +sum up the pleasures of a life devoted to books.</p> + +<p><i>August 1919.</i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h2> + + +<p>Three hundred years have gone by to-day since Sir Walter Raleigh was +beheaded, in presence of a vast throng of spectators, on the scaffold of +Old Palace Yard in Westminster. General Gordon said that England is what +her adventurers have made her, and there is not in all English history a +more shining and violent specimen of the adventurous type than Raleigh. +I am desired to deliver a brief panegyric on this celebrated freebooter, +and I go behind the modern definition of the word "panegyric" (as a +pompous and ornamented piece of rhetoric) to its original significance, +which was, as I take it, the reminder, to a great assembly of persons, +of the reason why they have been brought together in the name of a man +long dead. Therefore I shall endeavour, in the short space of time +allotted to me, not so much to eulogise as to explain and to define what +Sir Walter Raleigh was and represents.</p> + +<p>I suggest, therefore, before we touch upon any of the details of his +career and character, that the central feature of Raleigh, as he appears +to us after three hundred years, is his unflinching determination to see +the name of England written across the forehead of the world. Others +before him had been patriots of the purest order, but Raleigh was the +first man who laid it down, as a formula, that "England shall by the +favour of God resist, repel and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> confound all whatsoever attempts +against her sacred kingdom." He had no political sense nor skill in +statecraft. For that we go to the Burghleys or the Cecils, crafty men of +experience and judgment. But he understood that England had enemies and +that those enemies must be humbled and confounded. He understood that +the road of England's greatness, which was more to him than all other +good things, lay across the sea. The time was ripe for the assertion of +English liberty, of English ascendancy, too; and the opportunity of the +moment lay in "those happy hands which the Holy Ghost hath guided," the +fortunate adventurers. Of these Raleigh was the most eminent as he was +also, in a sense, the most unfortunate.</p> + +<p>A heavy shadow lay all over the Western world, the shadow of a fierce +bird of prey hovering over its victim. Ever since Ferdinand expelled the +Moors out of Granada, Spain had been nursing insensate dreams of +universal empire. She was endeavouring to destroy the infant system of +European civilisation by every means of brutality and intrigue which the +activity of her arrogance could devise. The Kings of Spain, in their +ruthless ambition, encouraged their people in a dream of Spanish +world-dominion. Their bulletins had long "filled the earth with their +vainglorious vaunts, making great appearance of victories"; they had +spread their propaganda "in sundry languages in print," distributing +braggart pamphlets in which they boasted, for the benefit of neutrals, +of their successes against England, France, and Italy. They had "abused +and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of the Low Countries, and they +held that the force of arms which they brandished would weigh against +justice, humanity, and freedom in the servitude which they meant to +inflict upon Europe. It was to be <i>Spanien über alles</i>.</p> + +<p>But there was one particular nation against which the malignity of the +great enemy blazed most fiercely. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> King of Spain blasphemously +regarded himself as the instrument of God, and there was one country +which more than the rest frustrated his pious designs. This was England, +and for that reason England was more bitterly hated than any other +enemy. The Spaniards did "more greedily thirst after English blood than +after the lives of any other people of Europe." The avowed purpose of +Castile was to destroy that maritime supremacy of England on which the +very existence of the English State depends. The significance of Sir +Walter Raleigh consists in the clairvoyance with which he perceived and +the energy with which he combated this monstrous assumption. Other noble +Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and +had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, +but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with +resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight full +upon him. The classic writing of the crisis is contained in the <i>Last +Fight of the Revenge at Sea</i> of 1591, where the splendid defiance and +warning of the Preface are like trumpets blown to the four quarters of +the globe. Raleigh stands out as the man who above all others laboured, +as he said, "against the ambitious and bloody pretences of the +Spaniards, who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves +devoured."</p> + +<p>There is a blessing upon the meek of the earth, but I do not present +Raleigh to you as a humble-minded man. In that wonderful Elizabethan age +there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the +subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable +wisdom of Shakespeare. Raleigh had no part in any of these, and to +complain of that would be to grumble because a hollyhock is neither a +violet nor a rose. He had his enemies during his life and his detractors +ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +was a typical man of that heroic age in that he possessed, even to +excess, all its tropic irregularity of ethics. He lived in a perpetual +alternation of thunderstorm and blazing sunshine. He admitted himself +that his "reason," by which he meant his judgment, "was exceeding weak," +and his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his +courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made +him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where +everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did +not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we +are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with +serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from +ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his +protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive +pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong +silent" type of soldier which the nineteenth century invented for +exclusive British consumption.</p> + +<p>In judging his character we must take into consideration not only the +times in which he lived, but the leaders of English policy with whom he +came into collision. He was not thirty years of age, and still at the +height of his vivacity, when he was taken into the close favour of Queen +Elizabeth. There can be no question that he found in the temper of the +monarch something to which his own nature intimately responded. The +Queen was an adventurer at heart, as he was, and she was an Englishman +of Englishmen. We are accustomed to laugh at the extravagance of the +homage which Raleigh paid to a woman old enough to be his mother, at the +bravado which made him fling his new plush cloak across a puddle for the +Queen to tread over gently, as Fuller tells us, "rewarding him +afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so +fair a footcloth," or at the story of the rhymes the couple cut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> on the +glass with their diamond rings. In all this, no doubt, there was the +fashion of the time, and on Raleigh's part there was ambition and the +desire to push his fortunes without scruple. But there was, you may be +sure, more than that; there was the instinctive sympathy between the two +who hated with the most unflagging and the most burning hate the wicked +aggression of Spain. We may be sure that Elizabeth never for a day +forgot that Pope Alexander VI. had generously bestowed the Western world +on the Crown of Spain. Raleigh spoke a language which might be +extravagant and which might be exasperating, which might, in fact, lead +to outrageous quarrels between his Cynthia and himself, but which, at +least, that Cynthia understood.</p> + +<p>But in 1602, when Raleigh was fifty years of age and had his splendours +behind him, there came another Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. James I. was +the type of the cautious man who only looks to the present, who hopes by +staving off a crisis till Tuesday that something fresh will "turn up" by +Wednesday. He was disposed, from the very first, to distrust and to +waylay the plans of Raleigh. We are told, and can well believe it, that +he was "diffident" of Sir Walter's designs. He was uncomfortable in the +presence of that breezy "man of desperate fortunes." A very excellent +example of the opposition of the two types is offered by the discussion +about the golden city of Manoa. Raleigh believed, and after all +disappointments continued to be sure, that in the heart of the swamps of +the Orinoco there existed a citadel of magnificent wealth, an emporium +of diamonds and gold, from which Spain was secretly drawing the riches +with which she proposed to overwhelm civilisation. He struggled for +nearly a quarter of a century to win this marvellous city for England. +James I. chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that +any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> in nature," as he craftily +said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May +1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the +seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no +golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams +were more real than reality; they existed in the future; he looked far +ahead, and our sympathies to-day, and our gratitude also, are all for +the noble and valorous knight who sailed out into the West searching for +an unknown El Dorado.</p> + +<p>It is not so easy to defend the character of our hero against those who, +like Hume, have objected to his methods in the prosecution of his +designs. To Hume, as to many others before and since, Raleigh seemed +"extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both." +The excellent historians of the eighteenth century could not make up +their minds whether he was a hero or an impostor. Did he believe in the +Guiana mine, or was he, through all those strenuous years, hoodwinking +the world? Had he any purpose, save to plunder the Spaniard? Perhaps his +own family doubted his sanity, for his son Walter, when he charged the +Spanish settlement at San Thomé, pointed to the house of the little +colony and shouted to his men: "Come on, this is the true mine, and none +but fools would look for any other!" Accusations of bad faith, of +factious behaviour, of disloyal intrigue, were brought up against Sir +Walter over and over again during the "day of his tempestuous life, +drawn on into an evening" of ignominy and blood. These charges were the +"inmost and soul-piercing wounds" of which he spoke, still "aching," +still "uncured."</p> + +<p>There is no need to recount to you the incidents of his life, but I may +remind you that after the failure of the latest expedition to South +America the Privy Council, under pressure from the Spanish Ambassador, +gave orders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> to Sir Lewis Stukeley to bring the body of Sir Walter +Raleigh speedily to London. This was the culmination of his fall, since, +three days after Raleigh landed at Plymouth, the King had assured Spain +that "not all those who have given security for Raleigh can save him +from the gallows." His examination followed, and the publication of the +<i>Apology for the Voyage to Guiana</i>. The trial dragged on, while James +I., in a manner almost inconceivable, allowed himself to be hurried and +bullied by the insolent tyrant Philip II. If the English King did not +make haste to execute Raleigh the Spaniards would fetch him away and +hang him in Madrid. In these conditions, and clutching at life as a man +clutches at roots and branches when he is sliding down a precipice, the +conduct of Raleigh has given cause to his critics to blaspheme. He +wriggled like an eel, he pretended to be sick, he pretended to be mad, +in order to protract his examination. He prevaricated about his mine, +about the French alliance, about the Spanish treaties, about his stores +and instruments. Did he believe, or did he not believe, in the Empire of +the Inca, in the Amazons or Republic of Women, in the gold lying hidden +in the hard white spar of El Dorado? We do not know, and his own latest +efforts at explanation only cloud our counsel. He was perhaps really a +little mad at last, his feverish brain half-crazed by the movement on +land and sea of the triumphant wealth of Spain.</p> + +<p>Let us never overlook that the master-passion of his whole career was +hatred of this tyrannous prosperity of England's most formidable rival. +He acted impulsively, and even unjustly; there was much in his methods +that a cool judgment must condemn; but he was fighting, with his back to +the wall, in order that the British race should not be crowded out of +existence by "the proud Iberian." He saw that if Spain were permitted to +extend her military and commercial supremacy unchecked, there would be +an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> end to civilisation. Democracy was a thing as yet undeveloped, but +the seeds of it were lying in the warm soil of English liberty, and +Raleigh perceived, more vehemently than any other living man, that the +complete victory of Spain would involve the shipwreck of England's hopes +of future prosperity. Nor was he exclusively interested in England, +though all his best hopes were ours. When he had been a lad at Oxford he +had broken away from his studies in 1569 to help the Protestant princes +as a gentleman volunteer in France, and he took part in the famous +battle of Jarnac. He is supposed to have fought in France for six years. +From early youth his mind was "bent on military glory," and always in +opposition to Spain. His escape from the bloody Vespers of Saint +Bartholomew had given him a deep distrust of the policy of Rome. The +Spaniard had "abused and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of +Flanders. Sir Walter Raleigh dreamed that by the combination in arms of +England, France, and the Low Countries, the Spaniards "might not only be +persuaded to live in peace, but all their swelling and overflowing +streams might be brought back into their natural channels and old +banks."</p> + +<p>Raleigh stood out, as he put it himself, against "the continuance of +this boundless ambition in mortal men." The rulers in Madrid, +transported by their own arrogance, had determined to impose their +religion, their culture, their form of government, on the world. It was +a question whether the vastly superior moral and intellectual energy of +England and France would not be crushed beneath the heel of Spain. +Raleigh was ready to sacrifice everything, to imperil his own soul, to +prevent that. He says you might as well "root out the Christian religion +altogether" as join "the rest of all Europe to Spain." In his zeal to +prevent "the continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men," he +lent himself to acts which we must not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> attempt to condone. There is no +use in trying to explain away the facts of his cruel and even savage +fanaticism in Ireland when he was governor of Munster. He was always apt +to be abruptly brutal to a man who crossed his path. But even his Irish +career offers aspects on which we may dwell with pure pleasure. Nothing +could be more romantic than those adventures, like the feats of a +paladin of the Faerie Queen, which he encountered in the great wood of +Lismore; while the story of how he carried off Lord and Lady Roche from +their breakfast-table in their own castle of Ballyinharsh, and how he +rode with them up ravines and round precipices in that mad flight from +their retainers, is as rousing as any scene ever imagined by Dumas +<i>père</i>.</p> + +<p>Raleigh called himself the Shepherd of the Ocean, and the name fits him +well, even though his flock were less like sheep than like a leash of +hunting leopards. His theory was that with a pack of small and active +pinnaces he could successfully hunt the lumbering Spanish galleons +without their being able to hit back. He was, in contradistinction to +many preceding English admirals, a cautious fighter at sea, and he says, +in a striking passage of the <i>History of the World</i>, written towards the +end of his career, "to clap ships together without any consideration +belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war." He must have taken the +keenest interest in the gigantic failure of the Felicissima Armada in +1588, but, tantalisingly enough, we have no record of his part in it. On +the other hand, the two finest of his prose pamphlets, the <i>Relation of +the Action in Cadiz Harbour</i> and the incomparable <i>Report on the Fight +in the Revenge</i>, supply us with ample materials for forming an idea of +his value as a naval strategist. Raleigh's earliest biographer, Oldys +the antiquary, speaks of him as "raising a grove of laurels out of the +sea," and it is certainly upon that element that he reaches his highest +effect of prominence. It was at sea that he could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> give fullest scope to +his hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. He had to be at once a +gamekeeper and a poacher; he had to protect the legitimate interests of +English shipping against privateers and pirates, while he was persuaded +to be, or felt himself called upon to become, no little of a pirate +himself. He was a passionate advocate of the freedom of the seas, and +those who look upon Raleigh as a mere hot-brained enthusiast should read +his little book called <i>Observations on Trade and Commerce</i>, written in +the Tower, and see what sensible views he had about the causes of the +depression of trade. These sage opinions did not check him, or his +fleets of hunting-pinnaces, from lying in wait for the heavy wallowing +plate-ships, laden with Indian carpets and rubies and sandalwood and +ebony, which came swinging up to the equator from Ceylon or Malabar. The +"freedom of the seas" was for Raleigh's ship, the <i>Roebuck</i>; it was by +no means for the <i>Madre de Dios</i>. We find these moral inconsistencies in +the mind of the best of adventurers.</p> + +<p>A sketch of Raleigh's character would be imperfect indeed if it +contained no word concerning his genius as a coloniser. One of his main +determinations, early in life, was "to discover and conquer unknown +lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name." We celebrate in +Sir Walter Raleigh one of the most intelligent and imaginative of the +founders of our colonial empire. The English merchantmen before his time +had been satisfied with the determination to grasp the wealth of the New +World as it came home to Spain; it had not occurred to them to compete +with the great rival at the fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake +and Frobisher had been content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the +poet Wither said, "to check our ships from sailing where they please." +South America was already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was +still open to invasion. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey +Gilbert, who first thought of planting an English settlement in what is +now the United States, in 1578. But Gilbert had "no luck at sea," as +Queen Elizabeth observed, and it was Raleigh who, in 1584, took up the +scheme of colonisation. He did not drop it until the death of Elizabeth, +when, under the east wind of the new <i>régime</i>, the blossom of his +colonial enterprises flagged.</p> + +<p>The motion for the ceremony of to-day originated with the authorities of +an important American city, which proudly bears the name of our +adventurer. The earliest settlement in what are now the United States +was made at Roanoke, in Virginia, on a day which must always be +prominent in the annals of civilisation, August 17th, 1585. But this +colony lasted only ten months, and it was not until nearly two years +later that the fourth expedition which Raleigh sent out succeeded in +maintaining a perilous foothold in the new country. This was the little +trembling taper to which his own name was given, the twinkling spark +which is now the flourishing city of Raleigh in North Carolina. We may +well marvel at the pertinacity with which Sir Walter persisted, in the +face of innumerable difficulties, in sending out one colonising fleet +after another, although, contrary to common legend, he himself never set +foot in North America. It was fortunate that at this period of his +career he was wealthy, for the attempts to plant settlements in the vast +region which he named Virginia cost him more than £40,000. We note at +all turns of his fortune his extraordinary tenacity of purpose, which he +illustrated, as though by a motto, in the verses he addressed to a +comrade towards the end of his imprisonment in the Tower:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Change not! to change thy fortune 'tis too late;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who with a manly faith resolves to die<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May promise to himself a lasting State,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though not so great, yet free from infamy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>So we may think of him in his prime, as he stood on the Hoe of Plymouth +twenty years before, a gallant figure of a man, bedizened with precious +stones, velvets, and embroidered damasks, shouting his commands to his +captains in a strong Devonshire accent. We think of him resolutely +gazing westward always, with the light of the sea in his eyes.</p> + +<p>We come to the final scene which we are here to-day to commemorate. +Little honour to the rulers of England in 1618 redounds from it, and yet +we may feel that it completed and even redeemed from decay the character +of Raleigh. This tragedy, which was almost a murder, was needed to round +off the accomplishment of so strange and frantic a career of romantic +violence, and to stamp it with meaning. If Raleigh had been thrown from +his horse or had died of the ague in his bed, we should have been +depressed by the squalid circumstances, we should have been less +conscious than we are now of his unbroken magnanimity. His failures and +his excesses had made him unpopular throughout England, and he was both +proud and peevish in his recognition of the fact. He declared that he +was "nothing indebted" to the world, and again that, "the common people +are evil judges of honest things." But the thirteen years of his +imprisonment caused a reaction. People forgot how troublesome he had +been and only recollected his magnificence. They remembered nothing but +that he had spent his whole energy and fortune in resisting the +brutality and avarice of the Spaniard.</p> + +<p>Then came the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at Westminster, +and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of a paltry king. +It became known, or shrewdly guessed, that Spain had sent to James I. a +hectoring alternative that Raleigh must be executed in London or sent +alive for a like purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and +ignominious submission of the English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Government to the insolence of +England's hereditary enemy. Raleigh seemed for the moment to have failed +completely, yet it was really like the act of Samson, who slew more men +at his death than in all his life. Samuel Pepys, who had some fine +intuitions at a time when the national <i>moral</i> was very low, spoke of +Raleigh as being "given over, as a sacrifice," to our enemies. This has +been, in truth, the secret of his unfailing romantic popularity, and it +is the reason of the emotion which has called us together here three +hundred years after his death upon the scaffold.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE</h2> + + +<p>Among the "co-supremes and stars of love" which form the constellated +glory of our greatest poet there is one small splendour which we are apt +to overlook in our general survey. But, if we isolate it from other +considerations, it is surely no small thing that Shakespeare created and +introduced into our literature the Dramatic Song. If with statistical +finger we turn the pages of all his plays, we shall discover, not +perhaps without surprise, that these contain not fewer than fifty +strains of lyrical measure. Some of the fifty, to be sure, are mere +star-dust, but others include some of the very jewels of our tongue. +They range in form from the sophisticated quatorzains of <i>The Two +Gentlemen of Verona</i> (where, however, comes "Who is Silvia?") to the +reckless snatches of melody in <i>Hamlet</i>. But all have a character which +is Shakespearean, and this regardless of the question so often raised, +and so incapable of reply, as to whether some of the wilder ones are +Shakespeare's composition or no. Whoever originally may have written +such scraps as "They bore him bare-faced on the bier" and "Come o'er the +bourne, Bessy, to me," the spirit of Shakespeare now pervades and +possesses them.</p> + +<p>Our poet was a prodigious innovator in this as in so many other matters. +Of course, the idea and practice of musical interludes in plays was not +quite novel. In Shakespeare's early youth that remarkable artist in +language, John Lyly, had presented songs in several of his plays, and +these were notable for what his contemporary, Henry Upchear, called +"their labouring beauty." We may notice that Lyly's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> songs were not +printed till long after Shakespeare's death, but doubtless he had +listened to them. Peele and Greene had brilliant lyrical gifts, but they +did not exercise them in their dramas, nor did Lodge, whose novel of +Rosalynde (1590) contains the only two precedent songs which we could +willingly add to Shakespeare's juvenile repertory. But while I think it +would be rash to deny that the lyrics of Lodge and Lyly had their direct +influence on the style of Shakespeare, neither of those admirable +precursors conceived the possibility of making the Song an integral part +of the development of the drama. This was Shakespeare's invention, and +he applied it with a technical adroitness which had never been dreamed +of before and was never rivalled after.</p> + +<p>This was not apprehended by the early critics of our divine poet, and +has never yet, perhaps, received all the attention it deserves. We may +find ourselves bewildered if we glance at what the eighteenth-century +commentators said, for instance, about the songs in <i>Twelfth Night</i>. +They called the adorable rhapsodies of the Clown "absurd" and +"unintelligible"; "O Mistress mine" was in their ears "meaningless"; +"When that I was" appeared to them "degraded buffoonery." They did not +perceive the close and indispensable connection between the Clown's song +and the action of the piece, although the poet had been careful to point +out that it was a moral song "dulcet in contagion," and too good, except +for sarcasm, to be wasted on Sir Andrew and Sir Toby. The critics +neglected to note what the Duke says about "Come away, come away, +Death," and they prattled in their blindness as to whether this must not +really have been sung by Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant +dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of +the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of <i>Twelfth Night</i> is burdened +with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> at each +change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string. +The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this +musical tension at its height.</p> + +<p>Rather different, and perhaps still more subtle, is the case of <i>A +Winter's Tale</i>, where the musical obsession is less prominent, and where +the songs are all delivered from the fantastic lips of Autolycus. Here +again the old critics were very wonderful. Dr. Burney puts "When +daffodils begin to peer" and "Lawn as white as driven snow" into one +bag, and flings it upon the dust-heap, as "two nonsensical songs" sung +by "a pickpocket." Dr. Warburton blushed to think that such "nonsense" +could be foisted on Shakespeare's text. Strange that those learned men +were unable to see, not merely that the rogue-songs are intensely human +and pointedly Shakespearean, but that they are an integral part of the +drama. They complete the revelation of the complex temperament of +Autolycus, with his passion for flowers and millinery, his hysterical +balancing between laughter and tears, his impish mendacity, his sudden +sentimentality, like the Clown's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not a friend, not a friend greet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is in these subtle lyrical amalgams of humour and tenderness that the +firm hand of the creator of character reveals itself.</p> + +<p>But it is in <i>The Tempest</i> that Shakespeare's supremacy as a writer of +songs is most brilliantly developed. Here are seven or eight lyrics, and +among them are some of the loveliest things that any man has written. +What was ever composed more liquid, more elastic, more delicately +fairy-like than Ariel's First Song?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come unto these yellow sands,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And then take hands:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wild waves whist."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>That is, not "kissed the wild waves," as ingenious punctuators pretend, +but, parenthetically, "kissed one another,—the wild waves being silent +the while." Even fairies do not kiss waves, than which no embrace could +be conceived less rewarding. Has any one remarked the echo of Marlowe +here, from <i>Hero and Leander</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"when all is whist and still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save that the sea playing on yellow sand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Marlowe, with all his gifts, could never have written the lyrical +parts of <i>The Tempest</i>. This song is in emotional sympathy with +Ferdinand, and in the truest sense dramatic, not a piece of pretty verse +foisted in to add to the entertainment.</p> + +<p>Ariel's Second Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin +redbreast" in <i>The White Devil</i>, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it +tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls +it, is like a breath of the west wind over an æolian harp. Where, in any +language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's +Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative +genius of English poetry, recently delivered from Sycorax. If we glance +at Dry den's recension of <i>The Tempest</i> we may be inclined to think that +the "wicked dam" soon won back her mastery. With all respect to Dryden, +what are we to think of his discretion in eking out Shakespeare's +insufficiencies with such staves as this:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Upon the floods we'll sing and play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And celebrate a halcyon day;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Great Nephew Aeolus make no noise,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Muzzle your roaring boys."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so forth? What had happened to the ear of England in seventy years?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<p>As a matter of fact the perfection of dramatic song scarcely survived +Shakespeare himself. The early Jacobeans, Heywood, Ford, and Dekker in +particular, broke out occasionally in delicate ditties. But most +playwrights, like Massinger, were persistently pedestrian. The only man +who came at all close to Shakespeare as a lyrist was John Fletcher, +whose "Lay a garland on my hearse" nobody could challenge if it were +found printed first in a Shakespeare quarto. The three great songs in +"Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's, +though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of +"Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be +the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their +sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection +gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately +procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be +certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was +by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure +of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of +Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent +portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of +Shakespeare, and perhaps of him alone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> +<h2>CATHARINE TROTTER,</h2> + +<h3>THE PRECURSOR OF THE BLUESTOCKINGS</h3> + + +<p>The practically complete absence of the Woman of Letters from our +tropical and profuse literature of the early and middle seventeenth +century has often been observed with wonder. While France had her +Madeleine de Scudéry and her Mlle. de Gournay and her Mère Angelique +Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into +philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they +read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to +write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with +every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional +woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose +genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers. +Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had left no +heritage to her sex. But there presently appeared a set of female +writers, who enlivened the last years of the century, but who were soon +eclipsed by the wits of the age of Anne, and who have been entirely +forgotten. It is to the most interesting of these "transient phantoms" +that I wish to draw attention.</p> + +<p>The extreme precocity of Catharine Trotter makes her seem to belong to +the age of Dryden, but she was in reality younger than Addison and most +of the other contemporaries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> of Pope. She was born on August 16th, 1679, +the younger daughter of a naval officer, Captain David Trotter, R.N.; +her mother's maiden name had been Sarah Ballenden, probably of the +well-known Catholic family of that ilk. She "had the honour of being +nearly related to the illustrious families of Maitland, Duke of +Lauderdale and Drummond, Earl of Perth." The Jacobite fourth Earl of +Perth seems to have been the patron of Captain Trotter, of whom he wrote +in 1684 that he was "an ornament to his country." Apparently the gallant +captain was attached to Trinity House, where his probity and integrity +earned him the epithet of "honest David," and where he attracted the +notice of George, first Lord Dartmouth, when that rising statesman was +appointed Master. Captain Trotter had served the Crown from his youth, +"with great gallantry and fidelity, both by land and sea," and had been +very successful in the Dutch wars. He had a brother who was a commander +in the Navy. We get an impression of high respectability in the outer, +but not outermost, circles of influential Scottish society. Doubtless +the infancy of Catharine was spent in conditions of dependent +prosperity. These conditions were not to last. When she was four years +old Lord Dartmouth started on the famous expedition to demolish Tangier, +and he took Captain Trotter with him as his commodore. In this affair, +as before, the captain distinguished himself by his ability, and instead +of returning to London after Tangier he was recommended to King Charles +II. as the proper person to convoy the fleet of the Turkey Company to +its destination. Apparently it was understood that this would be the +final reward of his services and that he was to "make his fortune" out +of the Turks. Unhappily, after convoying his charge safely to +Scanderoon, he fell sick of the plague that was raging there, and died, +in the course of January 1684, in company with all the other officers of +his ship. Every misfortune now ensued;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> the purser, who was thus left to +his own devices, helped himself to the money destined for the expenses +of the voyage, while, to crown all, the London goldsmith in whose hands +the captain had left his private fortune took this occasion to go +bankrupt. The King, in these melancholy circumstances, granted an +Admiralty pension to the widow, but when he died early in the following +year this was no longer paid, and the unfortunate ladies of the Trotter +family might well murmur:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"One mischief brings another on his neck,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As mighty billows tumble in the seas."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From the beginning of her fifth year, then, Catharine experienced the +precarious lot of those who depend for a livelihood on the charity of +more or less distant relatives. We dimly see a presentable mother +piteously gathering up such crumbs as fell from the tables of the +illustrious families with whom she was remotely connected. But the Duke +of Lauderdale himself was now dead, and the Earl of Perth had passed the +zenith of his power. No doubt in the seventeenth century the protection +of poor relations was carried on more systematically than it is to-day, +and certainly Mrs. Trotter contrived to live and to bring up her two +daughters genteelly. The first years were the worst; the accession of +William III. brought back to England and to favour Gilbert Burnet, who +became Bishop of Salisbury in 1688, when Catharine was nine years old. +Mrs. Trotter found a patron and perhaps an employer in the Bishop, and +when Queen Anne came to the throne her little pension was renewed.</p> + +<p>There is frequent reference to money in Catharine Trotter's writings, +and the lack of it was the rock upon which her gifts were finally +wrecked. With a competency she might have achieved a much more prominent +place in English literature than she could ever afford to reach. She +offers a curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> instance of the depressing effect of poverty, and we +get the impression that she was never, during her long and virtuous +career, lifted above the carking anxiety which deadens the imagination. +As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order. +She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an +illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female +darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own +application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some +assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject +became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an +abstract" of that science "for her own use." Thus she prepared for her +future communion with Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small, +in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of +England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the +Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the +conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned +out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman, +her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the Anglican +faith when she was twenty-eight years of age.)</p> + +<p>She was in her tenth year when the unhappy reign of James II. came to a +close. Mrs. Trotter's connections were now in a poor plight. The new +Earl of Lauderdale was in great distress for money; Lord Dartmouth, +abandoned by the King in his flight, was thrown into the Tower, where he +died on October 25th, 1691, in which year the estates of the Earl of +Perth were sequestered and he himself hunted out of the country. Ruin +simultaneously fell on all the fine friends of our infant prodigy, and +we can but guess how it affected her. Yet there were plenty of other +Jacobites left in London, and Catharine's first public appearance shows +that she cultivated their friendship. She published<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> in 1693 a copy of +verses addressed to Mr. Bevil Higgons on the occasion of his recovery +from the smallpox; she was then fourteen years of age. Higgons was a +young man of twenty-three, who had lately returned from the exiled court +in France, where he had distinguished himself by his agreeable manners, +and who had just made a name for himself by poems addressed to Dryden +and by a prologue to Congreve's <i>Old Batchelor</i>. He was afterwards to +become famous for a little while as a political historian. Catharine +Trotter's verses are bad, but she addresses Higgons as "lovely youth," +and claims his gratitude for her tribute in terms which are almost +boisterous. This poem was not only her introduction to the public, but, +through Bevil Higgons, was probably the channel of her acquaintance with +Congreve and Dryden.</p> + +<p>Throughout her life she was fond of writing letters to celebrated +people; she now certainly wrote to Congreve and doubtless to Dryden. A +freedom in correspondence ran in the family. Her poor mother is revealed +to us as always "renewing her application" to somebody or other. We next +find the youthful poet in relation with the Earl of Dorset, from whom +she must have concealed her Jacobite propensities. Dorset was the great +public patron of poetry under William III., and Catharine Trotter, aged +sixteen, having composed a tragedy, appealed to him for support. It was +very graciously granted, and <i>Agnes de Castro</i>, in five acts and in +blank verse, "written by a young lady," was produced at the Theatre +Royal in 1695, under the "protection" of Charles Earl of Dorset and +Middlesex, Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household. The event caused +a considerable commotion. No woman had written for the English stage +since the death of Mrs. Behn, and curiosity was much excited. Mrs. +Verbruggen, that enchanting actress, but in male attire, recited a +clever, ranting epilogue at the close of the performance, in which she +said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"'tis whispered here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our Poetess is virtuous, young and fair,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but the secret was an open one. Wycherley, who contributed verses, knew +all about it, and so did Mrs. Manley, while Powell and Colley Cibber +were among the actors. We may be sure that little Mistress Trotter's +surprising talents were the subjects of much discussion at Will's Coffee +House, and that the question of securing her for the rival theatre was +anxiously debated at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her success in Agnes de +Castro was the principal asset which Drury Lane had to set that season +against Congreve's splendid adventure with Love for Love.</p> + +<p>Agnes de Castro is an immature production, and shows a juvenile +insensibility to plagiarism, since the subject and treatment are +borrowed implicitly from a French novel by Mlle. de Brillac, published +in Paris and London a few years before.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The conception of court life +at Coimbra in the fourteenth century is that of this French lady, and is +innocent of Portuguese local colour. But, as the dramatic work of a girl +of sixteen, the play is rather extraordinary for nimble movement and +adroit theatrical arrangements. It is evident that Catharine Trotter was +well versed in the stage traditions of her own day, and we may wonder +how a highly respectable girl of sixteen found her opportunity. The +English playhouse under William III. was no place for a very young lady, +even if she wore a mask. There is a good deal of meritorious +character-drawing in Agnes de Castro. The conception of a benevolent and +tenderly forgiving Princess is well contrasted with the fierce purity of +Agnes and the infatuation of the Prince. Towards the close of the first +act there is a capital scene of exquisite confusion between this +generous and distracted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> trio. The opening of the third act, between +Elvira and her brother Alvaro, is not at all young-ladyish, and has some +strong turns of feeling. The end of the play, with the stabbing of the +Princess and the accusation of Agnes by Elvira, is puerile, but was +doubtless welcome to a sentimental audience. It is a bad play, but not +at all an unpromising one.</p> + +<p>Early in 1696 <i>Agnes de Castro</i>, still anonymous, was published as a +book, and for the next five or six years we find Catharine Trotter +habitually occupied in writing for the stage. Without question she did +so professionally, though in what way dramatists at the close of the +seventeenth century lived by their pens is difficult to conjecture. A +very rare play, <i>The Female Wits; or, the Triumvirate of Poets</i>, the +authorship of which has hitherto defied conjecture, was acted at Drury +Lane after Catharine Trotter had been tempted across to Lincoln's Inn +Fields, and is evidently inspired by the intense jealousy which +smouldered between the two great houses. The success of Miss Trotter +incited two older ladies to compete with her; these were Mrs. +Delariviere Manley, who was a discarded favourite of Barbara Villiers, +and fat Mrs. Mary Pix, the stage-struck consort of a tailor. These +rather ridiculous women professed themselves followers of Catharine, and +they produced plays of their own not without some success. With her they +formed the trio of Female Wits who were mocked in the lively but, on the +whole, rather disappointing play I have just mentioned, in the course of +which it is spitefully remarked of Calista—who is Miss Trotter—that +she has "made no small struggle in the world to get into print," and is +"now in such a state of wedlock to pen and ink that it will be very +difficult" for her "to get out of it."</p> + +<p>In acting <i>The Female Wits</i> Mrs. Temple, who had played the Princess in +<i>Agnes de Castro</i>, took the part of Calista,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> and doubtless, in the +coarse fashion of those days, made up exactly like poor Catharine +Trotter, who was described as "a Lady who pretends to the learned +Languages, and assumes to herself the name of a Critic." This was a +character, however, which she would not have protested against with much +vigour, for she had now quite definitely taken up the position of a +reformer and a pioneer. She posed as the champion of women's +intellectual rights, and she was accepted as representing in active +literary work the movement which Mary Astell had recently foreshadowed +in her remarkable <i>Serious Proposal to Ladies</i> of 1694. We turn again to +<i>The Female Wits</i>, and we find Marsilia (Mrs. Manley) describing Calista +to Mrs. Wellfed (Mrs. Fix) as "the vainest, proudest, senseless Thing! +She pretends to grammar! writes in mood and figure! does everything +methodically!" Yet when Calista appears on the stage, Mrs. Manley rushes +across to fling her arms around her and to murmur: "O charmingest Nymph +of all Apollo's Train, let me embrace thee!" Later on Calista says to +Mrs. Pix, the fat tailoress, "I cannot but remind you, Madam ... I read +Aristotle in his own language"; and of a certain tirade in a play of Ben +Jonson she insists: "I know it so well, as to have turn'd it into +Latin." Mrs. Pix admits her own ignorance of all these things; she "can +go no further than the eight parts of speech." This brings down upon her +an icy reproof from Calista: "Then I cannot but take the Freedom to say +... you impose upon the Town." We get the impression of a preciseness of +manner and purpose which must have given Catharine a certain air of +priggishness, not entirely unbecoming, perhaps, but very strange in that +loose theatre of William III.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, in her next appearance, we find her complaining to the +Princess (afterwards Queen Anne) that she has become "the mark of ill +Nature" through recom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>mending herself "by what the other Sex think their +peculiar Prerogative"—that is, intellectual distinction. Catharine +Trotter was still only nineteen years of age when she produced her +tragedy of <i>Fatal Friendship</i>, the published copy of which (1698) is all +begarlanded with evidences of her high moral purpose in the shape of a +succession of "applausive copies" of verses. In these we are told that +she had "checked the rage of reigning vice that had debauched the +stage." This was an allusion to the great controversy then just raised +by Jeremy Collier in his famous <i>Short View of the Immorality and +Profaneness of the Stage</i>, in which all the dramatists of the day were +violently attacked for their indecency. Catharine Trotter has the +courage to side with Collier, and the tact to do so without quarrelling +with her male colleagues. She takes the side of the decent women.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You as your Sex's champion art come forth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To fight their quarrel and assert their worth,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>one of her admirers exclaims, and another adds:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You stand the first of stage-reformers too."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The young poetess aimed at reconciling the stage with virtue and at +vindicating the right of woman to assume "the tragic laurel."</p> + +<p>This was the most brilliant moment in the public career of our +bluestocking. <i>Fatal Friendship</i> enjoyed a success which Catharine +Trotter was not to taste again, and of all her plays it is the only one +which has ever been reprinted. It is very long and extremely +sentimental, and written in rather prosy blank verse. Contemporaries +said that it placed Miss Trotter in the forefront of British drama, in +company with Congreve and Granville "the polite," who had written a +<i>She-Gallants</i>, which was everything that Miss Trotter did not wish her +plays to be. <i>Fatal Friendship</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> has an ingenious plot, in which the +question of money takes a prominence very unusual in tragedy. Almost +every character in the piece is in reduced circumstances. Felicia, +sister to Belgard (who is too poor to maintain her), is wooed by the +wealthy Roquelaure, although she is secretly married to Gramont, who is +also too poor to support a wife. Belgard, afraid that Gramont will make +love to Felicia (that is, to his own secret wife), persuades him—in +order that his best friend, Castalio, may be released from a debtor's +prison—bigamously to many Lamira, a wealthy widow. But Castalio is in +love with Lamira, and is driven to frenzy by Gramont's illegal marriage. +It all depends upon income in a manner comically untragical. The quarrel +between the friends in the fifth act is an effective piece of +stage-craft, but the action is spoiled by a ridiculous general butchery +at the close of all. However, the audience was charmed, and even "the +stubbornest could scarce deny their Tears."</p> + +<p><i>Fatal Friendship</i> was played at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, and no doubt +it was Congreve who brought Miss Trotter over from Drury Lane. His warm +friendship for her had unquestionably a great deal to do with her +success and with the jealousy of her rivals. A letter exists in which +the great dramatist acknowledges, in 1697, the congratulations of his +young admirer, and it breathes an eager cordiality. Congreve requested +Betterton to present him to Catharine Trotter, and his partiality for +her company is mentioned by several writers. The spiteful author of <i>The +Female Wits</i> insinuates that Congreve made the looking-over of +Catharine's scenes "his pretence for daily visits." Another satirist, in +1698, describes Congreve sitting very gravely with his hat over his +eyes, "together with the two she-things called Poetesses which write for +his house," half-hidden from the public in a little side-box. Farquhar, +too, seeing the celebrated writer of <i>Fatal Friendship</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> in the theatre +on the third night of the performance of his <i>Love and a Bottle</i>, had +"his passions wrought so high" by a sight of the beautiful author that +he wrote her a letter in which he called her "one of the fairest of the +sex, and the best judge." If Catharine Trotter, as the cynosure of +delicacy, at the age of nineteen, sat through <i>Love and a Bottle</i> +without a blush, even <i>her</i> standard of decency was not very exacting. +But in all this rough, coarse world of wit her reputation never suffered +a rebuff.</p> + +<p>Encouraged by so much public and private attention, our young dramatist +continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts +were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national +temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary +historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had +been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had sunk deeply +into the conscience of the people. There followed with alarming +abruptness a general public repulsion against the playhouses, and to +this, early in 1699, a roughly worded Royal Proclamation gave voice. +During the whole of that year the stage was almost in abeyance, and even +Congreve, with <i>The Way of the World</i>, was unable to woo his audience +back to Lincoln's Inn. During this time of depression Catharine Trotter +composed at least two tragedies, which she was unable to get performed, +while the retirement of Congreve in a paroxysm of annoyance must have +been a very serious disadvantage to her.</p> + +<p>On May 1st, 1700, Dryden died, and with him a dramatic age passed away. +What Miss Trotter's exact relations with the great poet had been is +uncertain; she not only celebrated his death in a long elegy, in which +she speaks on behalf of the Muses, but wrote another and more important +poem, in which she gives very sound advice to the poetical beginner, who +is to take Dryden as a model, and to be particularly careful to disdain +Settle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> Durfey, and Blackmore, typical poetasters of the period. She +recommends social satire to the playwright:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let the nice well-bred beau himself perceive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The most accomplished, useless thing alive;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Expose the bottle-sparks that range the town,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shaming themselves with follies not their own,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But chief these foes to virgin innocence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who, while they make to honour vain pretence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all that's base and impious can dispense."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Honour to those who aim high and execute boldly!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If Shakespeare's spirit, with transporting fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The animated scene throughout inspire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If in the piercing wit of Vanbrugh drest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each sees his darling folly made a jest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If Garth's and Dryden's genius, through each line,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In artful praise and well-turn'd satire shine,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To us ascribe the immortal sacred flame."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In this dead period of the stage Catharine Trotter found a warm friend +and doubtless an efficient patron in a Lady Piers, of whom we should be +glad to know more. Sir George Piers, the husband of this lady, was an +officer of rank under the Duke of Marlborough, later to become useful to +Catharine Trotter. Meanwhile the latter returned to the Theatre Royal in +Drury Lane, where, in 1701, under the patronage of Lord Halifax—Pope's +"Bufo"—she produced her third tragedy, <i>The Unhappy Penitent</i>. The +dedication of this play to Halifax is a long and interesting essay on +the poetry of the age. The author passes Dryden, Otway, Congreve, and +Lee under examination, and finds technical blemishes in them all:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The inimitable Shakespeare seems alone secure on every side from +an attack. I speak not here of faults against the rules of poetry, +but against the natural Genius. He had all the images of nature +present to him, studied her thoroughly, and boldly copied all her +various features, for though he has chiefly exerted himself on the +more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> masculine passions, 'tis as the choice of his judgment, not +the restraint of his genius, and he has given us as a proof he +could be every way equally admirable."</p></div> + +<p>Lady Piers wrote the prologue to <i>The Unhappy Penitent</i> in verses better +turned than might have been expected. She did not stint praise to her +young friend, whom she compares to the rising sun:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Like him, bright Maid, Thy great perfections shine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As awful, as resplendent, as divine!...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Minerva and Diana guard your soul!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>The Unhappy Penitent</i> is not a pleasing performance: it is amorous and +violent, but yet dull. Catharine's theory was better than her practice. +Nevertheless, it seems to have been successful, for the author some time +afterwards, speaking of the town's former discouragement of her dramas, +remarks that "the taste is mended." Later in 1701 she brought out at +Drury Lane her only comedy, <i>Love at a Loss</i>, dedicated in most +enthusiastic terms to Lady Piers, to whom "I owe the greatest Blessing +of my Fate," the privilege of a share in her friendship. <i>Love at a +Loss</i> was made up of the comic scenes introduced into an old tragedy +which the author had failed to get acted. This is not a fortunate method +of construction, and the town showed no favour to Love at a Loss. The +first and only public section of Catharine Trotter's career was now +over, and she withdrew, a wayworn veteran at the age of twenty-two, to +more elevated studies.</p> + +<p>When <i>Love at a Loss</i> was published the author had already left town, +and after a visit to Lady Piers in Kent she now settled at Salisbury, at +the house of a physician, Dr. Inglis, who had married her only sister. +Her growing intimacy with the family of Bishop Burnet may have had +something to do with her determination to make this city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> her home. She +formed a very enthusiastic friendship with the Bishop's second lady, who +was an active theologian and a very intelligent woman. Our poetess was +fascinated by Mrs. Burnet. "I have not met," she writes in 1701, "such +perfection in any of our sex." She now visited in the best Wiltshire +society. When the famous singer, John Abell, was in Salisbury, he gave a +concert at the palace, and Catharine Trotter was so enchanted that she +rode out after him six miles to Tisbury to hear him sing again at Lord +Arundell of Wardour's house. She had a great appreciation of the +Bishop's "volatile activity." It is now that the name of Locke first +occurs in her correspondence, and we gather that she came into some +personal contact with him through a member of the Bishop's +family—George Burnet of Kemney, in Aberdeenshire—probably a cousin, +with whom she now cultivated an ardent intellectual friendship. He left +England on a mission which occupied him from the middle of 1701 until +1708, and this absence, as we may suspect, alone prevented their +acquaintance from ripening into a warmer feeling. The romance and +tragedy of Catharine Trotter's life gather, it is plain, around this +George Burnet, who was a man of brilliant accomplishments and +interested, like herself, in philosophical studies.</p> + +<p>These, it would appear, Catharine Trotter had never abandoned, but she +applied herself to them closely at Salisbury, where she made some +superior acquaintances. One of these was John Norris of Bemerton, whose +<i>Theory of an Ideal and Intelligible World</i> had just made some +sensation. By the intermediary of George Burnet she came in touch with +some of the leading French writers of the moment, such as Malebranche +and Madame Dacier. There is a French poet, unnamed, who understands +English, but he is gone to Rome before he can be made to read <i>The Fatal +Friendship</i>. Meanwhile, Catharine Trotter's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> obsession with the ideas of +Locke was giving some anxiety to her friends. That philosopher had +published his famous <i>Essay on the Human Understanding</i> in 1690, and it +had taken several years for the opposition to his views, and in +particular to his theological toleration, to take effect. But in 1697 +there were made a number of almost simultaneous attacks on Locke's +position. The circle at Salisbury was involved in them, for one of these +was written by Norris of Bemerton, and another is attributed to a member +of the Burnet family. Catharine Trotter, who had studied Locke's later +works with enthusiastic approval, was scandalised by the attacks, and +sat down to refute them. This must have been in 1701.</p> + +<p>Although the intellectual society of Salisbury was prominent in taking +the conservative view of Locke, our bluestocking could not refrain from +telling Mrs. Burnet what she had done, nor from showing her treatise to +that friend under vows of confidence. But Mrs. Burnet, who was impulsive +and generous, could not keep the secret; she spoke about it to the +Bishop, and then to Norris of Bemerton, and finally (in June 1702) to +Locke himself. Locke was at Oates, confined by his asthma; he was old +and suffering, but still full of benevolence and curiosity, and he was +graciously interested in his remarkable defender at Salisbury. As he +could not himself travel, he sent his adopted son to call on Catharine +Trotter, with a present of books; this was Peter King, still a young +man, but already M.P. for Beer Alston, and later to become Lord +Chancellor and the first Lord King of Ockham. George Burnet, writing +from Paris, had been very insistent that Catharine should not publish +her treatise, but she overruled his objections, and her <i>Defence of Mr. +Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding</i> appeared anonymously in May +1702. People were wonderfully polite in those days, and Locke himself +wrote to his "protectress" a charming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> letter in which he told her that +her "<i>Defence</i> was the greatest honour my Essay could have procured me."</p> + +<p>She sent her <i>Defence</i> to Leibnitz, who criticised it at considerable +length:—<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"J'ai lu livre de Mlle. Trotter. Dans la dedicace elle exhorte M. +Locke à donner des démonstrations de morale. Je crois qu'il aurait +eu de la peine à y reussir. L'art de démontrer n'est pas son fait. +Je tiens que nous nous appercevons sans raisonnement de ce qui est +juste et injuste, comme nous nous appercevons sans raison de +quelques theoremes de Geometrie; mais il est tousjours bon de venir +à la démonstration. Justice et injustice ne dependent seulement de +la nature humaine, mais de la nature de la substance intelligente +en général; et Mlle. Trotter remarque fort bien qu'elle vient de la +nature de Dieu et n'est point arbitraire. La nature de Dieu est +tousjours fondée en raison."</p></div> + +<p>Notwithstanding all this, the commentators of Locke appear, without +exception, to ignore the <i>Defence</i>, and it was probably never much read +outside the cultivated Salisbury circle.</p> + +<p>In this year, 1702, the health of Catharine Trotter began to give her +uneasiness, and it was for this reason that she left Salisbury for a +while. She was once more living in that city, however, from May 1703 to +March 1704, making a special study of geography. "My strength," she +writes to George Burnet, "is very much impaired, and God knows whether I +shall ever retrieve it." Her thoughts turned again to the stage, and in +the early months of 1703 she composed her fifth and last play, the +tragedy of <i>The Revolution in Sweden</i>; "but it will not be ready for +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> stage," she says, "till next winter." Her interest in philosophy +did not flag. She was gratified by some communications, through Burnet, +with Leibnitz, and she would have liked to be the intermediary between +Locke and some philosophical "gentlemen" on the Continent, probably +Malebranche and Leibnitz, in a controversy. But this was hopeless, and +she writes (March 16th, 1704):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen +you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him, +for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only +employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend +the mind."</p></div> + +<p>Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained +his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end +approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was +least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into +discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine +Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest +object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was +rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at +Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke and to throw +suspicion on their influence. She read over and over again his +philosophical, educational, and religious treatises, and ever found them +more completely to her taste. If she had enjoyed the power to do so she +would have proclaimed the wisdom and majesty of Locke from every +housetop, and she envied Lady Masham her free and constant intercourse +with so beautiful a mind. Catharine Trotter watched, but from a +distance, the extinction of a life thus honoured, which came to a +peaceful end at Oates on October 28th, 1704. The following passage does +not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> appear—or I am much mistaken—to have attracted the attention of +Locke's biographers:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I was very sensibly touched with the news of Mr. Locke's death. +All the particulars I hear of it are that he retained his perfect +senses to the last, and spoke with the same composedness and +indifference on affairs as usual. His discourse was much on the +different views a dying man has of worldly things; and that nothing +gives him any satisfaction, but the reflection of what good he has +done in his life. Lady Masham went to his chamber to speak to him +on some, business; when he had answered in the same manner he was +accustomed to speak, he desired her to leave the room, and, +immediately after she was gone, turned about and died."</p></div> + +<p>She records that, after the death of Locke, Lady Masham communicated +with Leibnitz, and Catharine is very indignant because a doubt had been +suggested as to whether the writer's thoughts and expressions were her +own. This was calculated to infuriate Catharine Trotter, who outpours in +forcible terms her just indignation:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Women are as capable of penetrating into the grounds of things, +and reasoning justly, as men are, who certainly have no advantage +of us, but in their opportunities of knowledge. As Lady Masham is +allowed by everybody to have great natural endowments, she has +taken pains to improve them; and no doubt profited much by a long +intimate society with so extraordinary a man as Mr. Locke. So that +I see no reason to suspect a woman of her character would pretend +to write anything that was not entirely her own. I pray, be more +equitable to her sex than the generality of your's are, who, when +anything is written by a woman that they cannot deny their +approbation to,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> are sure to rob us of the glory of it by +concluding 'tis not her own."</p></div> + +<p>This is the real voice of Catharine Trotter, raised to defend her sex, +and conscious of the many intellectual indignities and disabilities +which they suffered.</p> + +<p>The first draft of <i>The Revolution in Sweden</i> being now completed, she +sent it to Congreve, who was living very quietly in lodgings in Arundell +Street. He allowed some time to go by before, on November 2nd, 1703, he +acknowledged it. His criticism, which is extremely kind, is also +penetrating and full. "I think the design in general," he says, "very +great and noble; the conduct of it very artful, if not too full of +business which may run into length and obscurity." He warns her against +having too much noise of fighting on the stage in her second act, and +against offending probability in the third. The fourth act is confused, +and in the fifth there are too many harangues. Catharine Trotter has +asked him to be frank, and so he is, but his criticism is practical and +encouraging. This excellent letter deserves to be better known.</p> + +<p>To continue the history of Miss Trotter's fifth and last play, <i>The +Revolution in Sweden</i> was at length brought out at the Queen's Theatre +in the Haymarket, towards the close of 1704. It had every advantage +which popular acting could give it, since the part of the hero, Count +Arwide, was played by Betterton; that of Constantia, the heroine, by +Mrs. Barry; Gustavus by Booth; and Christina by Mrs. Harcourt. In spite +of this galaxy of talent, the reception of the play was unfavourable. +The Duchess of Marlborough "and all her beauteous family" graced the +theatre on the first night, but the public was cold and inattentive. +Some passages of a particularly lofty moral tone provoked laughter. <i>The +Revolution in Sweden</i>, in fact, was shown to suffer from the +ineradicable faults<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> which Congreve had gently but justly suggested. It +was very long, and very dull, and very wordy, and we could scarcely find +a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was +dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being +styled—by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of +Prussia—"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to +readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further +revision, she published <i>The Revolution in Sweden</i>, she dedicated it in +most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter, +Henrietta Godolphin.</p> + +<p>How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from +various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now +physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the +General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced, +Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be +supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke, +with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem +enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord +Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said +they were better than any other which had been written on the subject. +George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased +with her—"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped, +with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no +longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of £20 from Queen Anne +gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was +wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was +ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet +would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> he sent +her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une +Demoiselle fort spirituelle."</p> + +<p>Catharine Trotter now left London and Salisbury, and took up her abode +at Ockham Mills, close to Ripley, in Surrey, as companion to an invalid, +Mrs. De Vere. She probably chose this place on account of the Locke +connection and the friendship of Peter King, since there is now much in +her correspondence about Damaris, Lady Masham, and others in that circle +in which George Burnet himself was intimate. But great changes were +imminent. Although her correspondence at this time is copious it is not +always very intelligible, and it is very carelessly edited. Her constant +interchange of letters with George Burnet leaves the real position +between them on many points obscure. In 1704, when he thought that he +was dying in Berlin, he wrote to Catharine Trotter that he had left her +£100 in his will, and added: "Pray God I might live to give you much +more myself." He regrets that he had so easily "pulled himself from her +company," and suggests that if she had not left London to settle in +Salisbury he would have stayed in England. Years after they had parted +we find him begging her to continue writing to him "at least once a +week." She, on her part, tells him that he well knows that there is but +one person she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her +want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, +but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a +fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her +by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who +might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing +(Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with +extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, passionately +in love with a man whom she had just accepted as her future<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> husband, +was expected, in 1705, to close her letter by describing herself as +"Sir, your very humble servant."</p> + +<p>If George Burnet hinted of "parties" in Hanover, Catharine Trotter on +her side could boast of Mr. Fenn, "a young clergyman of excellent +character," who now laid an ardent siege to her heart. Embarrassed by +these attentions, she took the bold step of placing the matter before +Mr. Cockburn, a still younger clergyman, of even more excellent +character. The letter in which she makes this ingenuous declaration as +to a father confessor is one of the tenderest examples extant of the +"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" form of correspondence. Mr. +Cockburn, one of the minor clergy of the Salisbury set, did speak for +himself, and George Burnet having at length announced his own projected +marriage with a lady of old acquaintance, Catharine Trotter hesitated no +longer but accepted the hand of Mr. Cockburn. They were married early in +1708. Thackeray could have created an amusing romance out of the +relations of these four people to one another, and in particular it +would have been very interesting to see what he would have made of the +character of George Burnet.</p> + +<p>Catharine Cockburn was now, after so eventful a life of emotional and +intellectual experience, still a young woman, not far past her +twenty-eighth birthday. She was to survive for more than forty-three +years, during which time she was to correspond much, to write +persistently, and to publish whenever opportunity offered. But I do not +propose to accompany her much further on her blameless career. All +through her married life, which was spent at various places far from +London, she existed almost like a plant in a Leyden jar. Constant +genteel poverty, making it difficult for her to buy books and impossible +to travel was supported by her with dignity and patience, but it dwarfed +her powers. Her later writings, on philosophy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> on morality, on the +principles of the Christian religion, are so dull that merely to think +of them brings tears into one's eyes. She who had sparkled as a girl +with Congreve and exchanged polite amenities with Locke lived on to see +modern criticism begin with Samuel Johnson and the modern novel start +with Samuel Richardson, but without observing that any change had come +into the world of letters. Her husband, owing to his having fallen "into +a scruple about the oath of abjuration," lost his curacy and "was +reduced to great difficulties in the support of his family." +Nevertheless—a perfect gentleman at heart—he "always prayed for the +King and Royal family by name." Meanwhile, to uplift his spirits in this +dreadful condition, he is discovered engaged upon a treatise on the +Mosaic deluge, which he could persuade no publisher to print. He reminds +us of Dr. Primrose in <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>, and, like him, Mr. +Cockburn probably had strong views on the Whistonian doctrine.</p> + +<p>So little mark did poor Mrs. Cockburn make on her younger contemporaries +that she disappeared forthwith from literary history. Her works, +especially her plays, have become so excessively rare as to be almost +unprocurable. The brief narrative of her life and her activities which I +have taken the liberty of presenting to-day would be hopelessly engulfed +in obscurity, and we should know as little of Catharine Trotter as we do +of Mary Pix, and Delariviere Manley, and many late seventeenth-century +authors more eminent than they, had it not been that in 1751, two years +after her death, all her papers were placed in the hands of an ingenious +clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Birch, who printed them for subscribers +in two thick and singularly unpleasing volumes. This private edition was +never reissued, and is now itself a rare book. It is the sort of book +that for two hundred and fifty years must fatally have been destroyed as +lumber whenever an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> old country mansion that contained it has been +cleared out.</p> + +<p>During all that time no one, so far as I can discover, has evinced the +smallest interest in Catharine Trotter. We gain an idea of the blackness +of her obscurity when we say that even Mr. Austin Dobson appears to have +never heard of her. The champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent +of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar, +she seems to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on +time. But I hope her thin little lady-like ghost, still hovering in a +phantom-like transparence round the recognised seats of learning, will +be a little comforted at last by the polite attention of a few of my +readers.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> +<h2>TWO PIONEERS OF ROMANTICISM:</h2> + +<h3>JOSEPH AND THOMAS WARTON<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></h3> + + +<p>The origins of the Romantic Movement in literature have been examined so +closely and so often that it might be supposed that the subject must be +by this time exhausted. But no subject of any importance in literature +is ever exhausted, because the products of literature grow or decay, +burgeon or wither, as the generations of men apply their ever-varying +organs of perception to them. I intend, with your permission, to present +to you a familiar phase of the literary life of the eighteenth century +from a fresh point of view, and in relation to two men whose surname +warrants a peculiar emphasis of respect in the mouth of a Warton +Lecturer. It is well, perhaps, to indicate exactly what it is which a +lecturer proposes to himself to achieve during the brief hour in which +you indulge him with your attention; it certainly makes his task the +easier if he does so. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to divine for +you, by scanty signs and indications, what it was in poetry, as it +existed up to the period of their childhood, which was stimulating to +the Wartons, and what they disapproved of in the verse which was +fashionable and popular among the best readers in their day.</p> + +<p>There is an advantage, which I think that our critics are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> apt to +neglect, in analysing the character and causes of poetic pleasure +experienced by any sincere and enthusiastic reader, at any epoch of +history. We are far too much in the habit of supposing that what +we—that is the most instructed and sensitive of us—admire now must +always have been admired by people of a like condition. This has been +one of the fallacies of Romantic criticism, and has led people as +illustrious as Keats into blaming the taste of foregoing generations as +if it were not only heretical, but despicable as well. Young men to-day +speak of those who fifty years ago expatiated in admiration of Tennyson +as though they were not merely stupid, but vulgar and almost wicked, +neglectful of the fact that it was by persons exactly analogous to +themselves that those portions of Tennyson were adored which the young +repudiate to-day. Not to expand too largely this question of the +oscillation of taste—which, however, demands more careful examination +than it has hitherto received—it is always important to discover what +was honestly admired at a given date by the most enthusiastic and +intelligent, in other words by the most poetic, students of poetry. But +to do this we must cultivate a little of that catholicity of heart which +perceives technical merit wherever it has been recognised at an earlier +date, and not merely where the current generation finds it.</p> + +<p>Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of an Oxford professor of poetry, +an old Jacobite of no observable merit beyond that of surrounding his +family with an atmosphere of the study of verse. The elder brother was +born in 1722, the younger in 1728. I must be forgiven if I dwell a +little tediously on dates, for our inquiry depends upon the use of them. +Without dates the whole point of that precedency of the Wartons, which I +desire to bring out, is lost. The brothers began very early to devote +themselves to the study of poetry, and in spite of the six years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> which +divided them, they appear to have meditated in unison. Their writings +bear a close resemblance to one another, and their merits and their +failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we +can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the +woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with +ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of +birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas +were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." They avoided, +with a certain disdain, the affectation of vague and conventional +reference to definite objects.</p> + +<p>Above all they read the poets who were out of fashion, and no doubt the +library of their father, the Professor of Poetry, was at their disposal +from a very early hour. The result of their studies was a remarkable +one, and the discovery was unquestionably first made by Joseph. He was, +so far as we can gather, the earliest person in the modern world of +Europe to observe what vain sacrifices had been made by the classicists, +and in particular by the English classicists, and as he walked +enthusiastically in the forest he formed a determination to reconquer +the realm of lost beauty. The moment that this instinct became a +purpose, we may say that the great Romantic Movement, such as it has +enlarged and dwindled down to our own day, took its start. The Wartons +were not men of creative genius, and their works, whether in prose or +verse, have not taken hold of the national memory. But the advance of a +great army is not announced by a charge of field-marshals. In the +present war, the advance of the enemy upon open cities has generally +been announced by two or three patrols on bicycles, who are the heralds +of the body. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the bicyclist-scouts who +prophesied of an advance which was nearly fifty years delayed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p> + +<p>The general history of English literature in the eighteenth century +offers us little opportunity for realising what the environment could be +of two such lads as the Wartons, with their enthusiasm, their +independence, and their revolutionary instinct. But I will take the year +1750, which is the year of Rousseau's first <i>Discours</i> and therefore the +definite starting-point of European Romanticism. You will perhaps find +it convenient to compare the situation of the Wartons with what is the +situation to-day of some very modern or revolutionary young poet. In +1750, then, Joseph was twenty-eight years of age and Thomas twenty-two. +Pope had died six years before, and this was equivalent to the death of +Swinburne in the experience of our young man of to-day. Addison's death +was as distant as is from us that of Matthew Arnold; and Thomson, who +had been dead two years, had left The <i>Castle of Indolence</i> as an +equivalent to Mr. Hardy's <i>Dynasts</i>. All the leading writers of the age +of Anne—except Young, who hardly belonged to it—were dead, but the +Wartons were divided from them only as we are from those of the age of +Victoria. I have said that Pope was not more distant from them than +Swinburne is from us, but really a more just parallel is with Tennyson. +The Wartons, wandering in their woodlands, were confronted with a +problem such as would be involved, to a couple of youths to-day, in +considering the reputation of Tennyson and Browning.</p> + +<p>There remains no doubt in my mind, after a close examination of such +documents as remain to us, that Joseph Warton, whose attitude has +hitherto been strangely neglected, was in fact the active force in this +remarkable revolt against existing conventions in the world of +imaginative art. His six years of priority would naturally give him an +advantage over his now better-known and more celebrated brother. +Moreover, we have positive evidence of the firmness of his opinions at a +time when his brother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> Thomas was still a child. The preface to Joseph's +<i>Odes</i> of 1746 remains as a dated document, a manifesto, which admits of +no question. But the most remarkable of his poems, "The Enthusiast," was +stated to have been written in 1740, when he was eighteen and his +brother only twelve years of age. It is, of course, possible that these +verses, which bear no sign of juvenile mentality, were touched up at a +later date. But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and +we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph, +that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a +fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary +importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it +would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much +discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had +"no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to +stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and +poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express himself with +creative charm. But this is not what constitutes his interest for us, +which is moreover obscured by the tameness of his Miltonic-Thomsonian +versification. What should arrest our attention is the fact that here, +for the first time, we find unwaveringly emphasised and repeated what +was entirely new in literature, the essence of romantic hysteria. "The +Enthusiast" is the earliest expression of full revolt against the +classical attitude which had been sovereign in all European literature +for nearly a century. So completely is this expressed by Joseph Warton +that it is extremely difficult to realise that he could not have come +under the fascination of Rousseau, whose apprenticeship to love and +idleness was now drawing to a close at Les Charmettes, and who was not +to write anything characteristic until ten years later.</p> + +<p>But these sentiments were in the air. Some of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> had vaguely occurred +to Young, to Dyer, and to Shenstone, all of whom received from Joseph +Warton the ardent sympathy which a young man renders to his immediate +contemporaries. The Scotch resumption of ballad-poetry held the same +relation to the Wartons as the so-called Celtic Revival would to a young +poet to-day; the <i>Tea-Table Miscellany</i> dates from 1724, and Allan +Ramsay was to the author of "The Enthusiast" what Mr. Yeats is to us. +But all these were glimmerings or flashes; they followed no system, they +were accompanied by no principles of selection or rejection. These we +find for the first time in Joseph Warton. He not merely repudiates the +old formulas and aspirations, but he defines new ones. What is very +interesting to observe in his attitude to the accepted laws of poetical +practice is his solicitude for the sensations of the individual. These +had been reduced to silence by the neo-classic school in its +determination to insist on broad Palladian effects of light and line. +The didactic and moral aim of the poets had broken the springs of +lyrical expression, and had replaced those bursts of enthusiasm, those +indiscretions, those rudenesses which are characteristic of a romantic +spirit in literature, by eloquence, by caution, by reticence and +vagueness.</p> + +<p>It is not necessary to indicate more than very briefly what the +principles of the classic poetry had been. The time had passed when +readers and writers in England gave much attention to the sources of the +popular poetry of their day. Malherbe had never been known here, and the +vigorous <i>Art poétique</i> of Boileau, which had been eagerly studied at +the close of the seventeenth century, was forgotten. Even the Prefaces +of Dryden had ceased to be read, and the sources of authority were now +the prose of Addison and the verse of Pope. To very young readers these +stood in the same relation as the writings of the post-Tennysonian +critics stand now. To reject them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> to question their authority, was +like eschewing the essays of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. In +particular, the <i>Essay on Criticism</i> was still immensely admired and +read; it had crystallised around cultivated opinion very much as the +<i>Studies in the Renaissance</i> did from 1875 onwards. It was the last +brilliant word on the aims and experiences of poetical art, and how +brilliant it was can be judged by the pleasure with which we read it +to-day, in spite of our total repudiation of every æsthetic dogma which +it conveys. It is immortal, like every supreme literary expression, and +it stands before us in the history of poetry as an enduring landmark. +This was the apparently impregnable fortress which the Wartons had the +temerity to bombard.</p> + +<p>Pope had said that Nature was the best guide to judgment, but what did +he mean by nature? He had meant the "rules," which he declared were +"Nature methodis'd" or, as we should say, systematised. The "rules" were +the maxims, rather than laws, expressed by Aristotle in a famous +treatise. The poet was to follow the Stagirite, "led"—as Pope says in +one of those rare lines in which he catches, in spite of himself, the +Romantic accent—"led by the light of the Mæonian Star." Aristotle +illustrated by Homer—that was to be the standard of all poetic +expression. But literature had wandered far from Homer, and we have to +think of what rules the <i>Essay on Criticism</i> laid down. The poet was to +be cautious, "to avoid extremes": he must be conventional, never +"singular"; there was constant reference to "Wit," "Nature," and "The +Muse," and these were convertible terms. A single instance is luminous. +We have the positive authority of Warburton for saying that Pope +regarded as the finest effort of his skill and art as a poet the +insertion of the machinery of the Sylphs into the revised edition of +<i>The Rape of the Lock</i> (1714). Now this insertion was ingenious, +brilliant, and in strict accordance with the practice of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Vida and of +Boileau, both of whom it excelled. But the whole conception of it was as +unlike that of Romanticism as possible.</p> + +<p>In particular, the tendency of the classic school, in its later +development, had been towards the exclusion of all but didactic and +ethical considerations from treatment in verse. Pope had given great and +ever-increasing emphasis to the importance of making "morals" prominent +in poetry. All that he wrote after he retired to Twickenham, still a +young man, in 1718, was essentially an attempt to gather together "moral +wisdom" clothed in consummate language. He inculcated a moderation of +feeling, a broad and general study of mankind, an acceptance of the +benefits of civilisation, and a suppression of individuality. Even in so +violent and so personal a work as the <i>Dunciad</i> he expends all the +resources of his genius to make his anger seem moral and his indignation +a public duty. This conception of the ethical responsibility of verse +was universal, and even so late as 1745, long after the composition of +Warton's "Enthusiast," we find Blacklock declaring, with general +acceptance, that "poetical genius depends entirely on the quickness of +moral feeling," and that not to "feel poetry" was the result of having +"the affections and internal senses depraved by vice."</p> + +<p>The most important innovation suggested by Joseph Warton was an +outspoken assertion that this was by no means the object or the proper +theme of poetry. His verses and those of his brother, the <i>Essay on +Pope</i> of the elder, the critical and historical writings of the younger, +may be searched in vain for the slightest evidence of moral or didactic +sentiment. The instructive and ethical mannerisms of the later +classicists had produced some beautiful and more accomplished verse, +especially of a descriptive order, but its very essence had excluded +self-revelation. Dennis, at whom Pope taught the world to laugh, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +who was in several respects a better critic than either Addison or +himself, had come close to the truth sometimes, but was for ever edged +away from it by the intrusion of the moral consideration. Dennis feels +things æsthetically, but he blunders into ethical definition. The result +was that the range of poetry was narrowed to the sphere of didactic +reflection, a blunt description of scenery or objects being the only +relief, since</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"who could take offence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While pure description held the place of sense?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To have perceived the bankruptcy of the didactic poem is Joseph Warton's +most remarkable innovation. The lawlessness of the Romantic Movement, or +rather its instinct for insisting that genius is a law unto itself, is +first foreshadowed in "The Enthusiast," and when the history of the +school comes to be written there will be a piquancy in tracing an +antinomianism down from the blameless Wartons to the hedonist essays of, +Oscar Wilde and the frenzied anarchism of the Futurists. Not less +remarkable, or less characteristic, was the revolt against the quietism +of the classical school. "Avoid extremes," Pope had said, and +moderation, calmness, discretion, absence of excitement had been laid +down as capital injunctions. Joseph Warton's very title, "The +Enthusiast," was a challenge, for "enthusiasm" was a term of reproach. +He was himself a scandal to classical reserve. Mant, in the course of +some excellent lines addressed to Joseph Warton, remarks</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Thou didst seek<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ecstatic vision by the haunted stream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or grove of fairy: then thy nightly ear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As from the wild notes of some airy harp,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thrilled with strange music."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The same excess of sensibility is still more clearly divulged in +Joseph's own earliest verses:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All beauteous Nature! by thy boundless charms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oppress'd, O where shall I begin thy praise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where turn the ecstatic eye, <i>how ease my breast</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That pants with wild astonishment and love</i>?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Nature here addressed is a very different thing from the "Nature +methodis'd" of the <i>Essay on Criticism</i>. It is not to be distinguished +from the object of pantheistic worship long afterwards to be celebrated +in widely differing language, but with identical devotion, by Wordsworth +and Senancour, by Chateaubriand and Shelley.</p> + +<p>Closely connected with this attitude towards physical nature is the +determination to deepen the human interest in poetry, to concentrate +individuality in passion. At the moment when the Wartons put forth their +ideas, a change was taking place in English poetry, but not in the +direction of earnest emotion. The instrument of verse had reached an +extraordinary smoothness, and no instance of its capability could be +more interesting than the poetry of Shenstone, with his perfect +utterance of things essentially not worth saying. In the most important +writers of that very exhausted moment, technical skill seems the only +quality calling for remark, and when we have said all that sympathy can +say for Whitehead and Akenside, the truth remains that the one is vapid, +the other empty. The Wartons saw that more liberty of imagination was +wanted, and that the Muse was not born to skim the meadows, in short low +flights, like a wagtail. They used expressions which reveal their +ambition. The poet was to be "bold, without confine," and "imagination's +chartered libertine"; like a sort of Alastor, he was</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"in venturous bark to ride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down turbulent Delight's tempestuous tide."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These are aspirations somewhat absurdly expressed, but the aim of them +is undeniable and noteworthy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> + +<p>A passion for solitude always precedes the romantic obsession, and in +examining the claim of the Wartons to be pioneers, we naturally look for +this element. We find it abundantly in their early verses. When Thomas +was only seventeen—the precocity of the brothers was remarkable—he +wrote a "Pleasures of Melancholy," in which he expresses his wish to +retire to "solemn glooms, congenial to the soul." In the early odes of +his brother Joseph we find still more clearly indicated the intention to +withdraw from the world, in order to indulge the susceptibilities of the +spirit in solitary reflection. A curious air of foreshadowing the +theories of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an +effect which is faintly indicated, but in its phantom way unique in +English literature up to that date, 1740. There had been a tendency to +the sepulchral in the work of several writers, in particular in the +powerful and preposterous religious verse of Isaac Watts, but nothing +had been suggested in the pure Romantic style.</p> + +<p>In Joseph Warton, first, we meet with the individualist attitude to +nature; a slightly hysterical exaggeration of feeling which was to be +characteristic of romance; an intention of escaping from the vanity of +mankind by an adventure into the wilds; a purpose of recovering +primitive manners by withdrawing into primitive conditions; a passion +for what we now consider the drawing-master's theory of the +picturesque—the thatched cottage, the ruined castle with the moon +behind it, the unfettered rivulet, the wilderness of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"the pine-topped precipice<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Abrupt and shaggy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There was already the fallacy, to become so irresistibly attractive to +the next generation, that man in a state of civilisation was in a +decayed and fallen condition, and that to achieve happiness he must +wander back into a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> Golden Age. Pope, in verses which had profoundly +impressed two generations, had taken the opposite view, and had proved +to the satisfaction of theologian and free-thinker alike that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"God and Nature link'd the general frame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bade Self-love and Social be the same."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Joseph Warton would have nothing to say to Social Love. He designed, or +pretended to design, to emigrate to the backwoods of America, to live</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"With simple Indian swains, that I may hunt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The boar and tiger through savannahs wild,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through fragrant deserts and through citron groves,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>indulging, without the slightest admixture of any active moral principle +in social life, all the ecstasies, all the ravishing emotions, of an +abandonment to excessive sensibility. The soul was to be, no longer the +"little bark attendant" that "pursues the triumph and partakes the gale" +in Pope's complacent <i>Fourth Epistle</i>, but an æolian harp hung in some +cave of a primeval forest for the winds to rave across in solitude.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Happy the first of men, ere yet confin'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To smoky cities."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Already the voice is that of Obermann, of René, of Byron.</p> + +<p>Another point in which the recommendations of the Wartons far outran the +mediocrity of their execution was their theory of description. To +comprehend the state of mind in which such pieces of stately verse as +Parnell's <i>Hermit</i> or Addison's <i>Campaign</i> could be regarded as +satisfactory in the setting of their descriptive ornament we must +realise the aim which those poets put before them. Nothing was to be +mentioned by its technical—or even by its exact name; no clear picture +was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite +or vivid.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this +conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if +we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the +sudden advent of a heavy shower at a funeral in these terms—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Tis done, and nature's various charms decay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">See gloomy clouds obscure the cheerful day!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now hung with pearls the dropping trees appear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their faded honours scatter'd on her bier,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>it was not because he had not the skill to come into closer touch with +reality, but that he did not wish to do so. It had been plainly laid +down by Malherbe and confirmed by Boileau that objects should be named +in general, not in precise terms. We are really, in studying the +descriptive parts of the Classicist poets, very close to the theories of +Mallarmé and the Symbolists which occupied us twenty years ago. The +object of the poet was not to present a vivid picture to the reader, but +to start in him a state of mind.</p> + +<p>We must recollect, in considering what may seem to us the sterility and +stiffness of the English poets from 1660 to 1740, that they were +addressing a public which, after the irregular violence and anarchical +fancy of the middle of the seventeenth century, had begun to yearn for +regularity, common sense, and a moderation in relative variety. The +simplest ideas should be chosen, and should depend for their poetical +effect, not upon a redundant and gorgeous ornament, but solely upon +elegance of language. There were certain references, certain channels of +imagery, which were purely symbolical, and these could be defended only +on the understanding that they produced on the mind of the reader, +instantly and without effort, the illustrative effect required. For +instance, with all these neo-classicists, the mythological allusions, +which seem vapid and ridiculous to us, were simplified metaphor and a +question<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> of style. In short, it rested the jaded imagination of Europe, +after Gongora and Marini, Donne and D'Aubigné, to sink back on a poetry +which had taken a vow to remain scrupulous, elegant, and selected.</p> + +<p>But the imagination of England was now beginning to be impatient of +these bonds. It was getting tired of a rest-cure so prolonged. It asked +for more colour, more exuberance, more precise reproduction of visual +impressions. Thomson had summed up and had carried to greater lengths +the instinct for scenery which had never entirely died out in England, +except for a few years after the Restoration. It was left to Joseph +Warton, however, to rebel against the whole mode in which the cabbage of +landscape was shredded into the classical <i>pot-au-feu</i>. He proposes +that, in place of the mention of "Idalia's groves," when Windsor Forest +is intended, and of milk-white bulls sacrificed to Phoebus at +Twickenham, the poets should boldly mention in their verses English +"places remarkably romantic, the supposed habitation of druids, bards, +and wizards," and he vigorously recommends Theocritus as a model far +superior to Pope because of the greater exactitude of his references to +objects, and because of his more realistic appeal to the imagination. +Description, Warton says, should be uncommon, exact, not symbolic and +allusive, but referring to objects clearly, by their real names. He very +pertinently points out that Pope, in a set piece of extraordinary +cleverness—which was to be read, more than half a century later, even +by Wordsworth, with pleasure—confines himself to rural beauty in +general, and declines to call up before us the peculiar beauties which +characterise the Forest of Windsor.</p> + +<p>A specimen of Joseph Warton's descriptive poetry may here be given, not +for its great inherent excellence, but because it shows his resistance +to the obstinate classic mannerism:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To thy unknown sequestered cell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where woodbines cluster round the door,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on whose top an hawthorn blows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid whose thickly-woven boughs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some nightingale still builds her nest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each evening warbling thee to rest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then lay me by the haunted stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rapt in some wild poetic dream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In converse while methinks I rove<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Spenser through a fairy grove."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To show how identical were the methods of the two brothers we may +compare the foregoing lines with the following from Thomas Warton's "Ode +on the Approach of Summer" (published when he was twenty-five, and +possibly written much earlier):—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"His wattled cotes the shepherd plaits;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath her elm the milkmaid chats;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The woodman, speeding home, awhile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rests him at a shady stile;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor wants there fragrance to dispense<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Refreshment o'er my soothèd sense;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor tangled woodbine's balmy bloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor grass besprent to breathe perfume,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor lurking wild-thyme's spicy sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To bathe in dew my roving feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor wants there note of Philomel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor sound of distant-tinkling bell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor lowings faint of herds remote,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rustle the breezes lightly borne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er deep embattled ears of corn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Round ancient elms, with humming noise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full loud the chafer-swarms rejoice."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The youthful poet is in full revolt against the law which forbade his +elders to mention objects by their plain names. Here we notice at once, +as we do in similar early effusions of both the Wartons, the direct +influence of Milton's lyrics. To examine the effect of the rediscovery +of Milton upon the poets of the middle of the eighteenth century would +lead us too far from the special subject of our inquiry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> to-day. But it +must be pointed out that <i>L'Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i> had been +entirely neglected, and practically unknown, until a date long after the +rehabilitation of <i>Paradise Lost</i>. The date at which Handel set them to +music, 1740, is that of the revived or discovered popularity of these +two odes, which then began to be fashionable, at all events among the +younger poets. They formed a bridge, which linked the new writers with +the early seventeenth century across the Augustan Age, and their +versification as well as their method of description were as much +resisted by the traditional Classicists as they were attractive, and +directly preferred above those of Pope, by the innovators. Joseph +Warton, who attributed many of the faults of modern lyrical writing to +the example of Petrarch, sets Milton vehemently over against him, and +entreats the poets "to accustom themselves to contemplate fully every +object before they attempt to describe it." They were above all to avoid +nauseous repetition of commonplaces, and what Warton excellently calls +"hereditary images."</p> + +<p>We must not, however, confine ourselves to a consideration of "The +Enthusiast" of 1740 and the preface to the <i>Odes</i> of 1746. Certain of +the expressions, indeed, already quoted, are taken from the two very +important critical works which the brothers published while they were +still quite young. We must now turn particularly to Joseph Warton's +<i>Essay on the Genius of Pope</i> of 1756, and to Thomas Warton's +<i>Observations on the Faerie Queene</i> of 1754. Of these the former is the +more important and the more readable. Joseph's <i>Essay on Pope</i> is an +extraordinary production for the time at which it was produced. Let me +suggest that we make a great mistake in treating the works of old +writers as if they had been always written by old men. I am trying to +present the Wartons to you as I see them, and that is as enthusiastic +youths, flushed with a kind of intellectual felicity, and dreaming how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +poetry shall be produced as musicians make airs, by inspiration, not by +rote. Remember that when they took their walks in the forest at +Hackwood, the whole world of culture held that true genius had expired +with Pope, and this view was oracularly supported by Warburton and +such-like pundits. I have already pointed out to you that Pope was +divided from them not more than Swinburne is divided from us. Conceive +two very young men to-day putting their heads together to devise a +scheme of poetry which should entirely supersede that, not of Swinburne +only, but of Tennyson and Browning also, and you have the original +attitude of the Wartons.</p> + +<p>It is difficult for us to realise what was the nature of the spell which +Pope threw over the literary conscience of the eighteenth century. Forty +years after the revolt of the Wartons, Pope was still looked upon by the +average critic as "the most distinguished and the most interesting Poet +of the nation." Joseph Warton was styled "the Winton Pedant" for +suggesting that Pope paid too dearly for his lucidity and lightness, and +for desiring to break up with odes and sonnets the oratorical mould +which gave a monotony of form to early eighteenth-century verse. His +<i>Essay on Pope</i>, though written with such studied moderation that we +may, in a hasty reading, regard it almost as a eulogy, was so shocking +to the prejudices of the hour that it was received with universal +disfavour, and twenty-six years passed before the author had the moral +courage to pursue it to a conclusion. He dedicated it to Young, who, +alone of the Augustans, had admitted that charm in a melancholy +solitude, that beauty of funereal and mysterious effects, which was to +be one of the leading characteristics of the Romantic School, and who +dimly perceived the sublime and the pathetic to be "the two chief nerves +of all genuine poetry."</p> + +<p>Warton's <i>Essay on the Genius of Pope</i> is not well arranged,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> and, in +spite of eloquent passages, as literature it does not offer much +attraction to the reader of the present day. But its thesis is one which +is very interesting to us, and was of startling novelty when it was +advanced. In the author's own words it was to prove that "a clear head +and acute understanding are not sufficient, alone, to make a poet." The +custom of critics had been to say that, when supported by a profound +moral sense, they were sufficient, and Pope was pointed to as the +overwhelming exemplar of the truth of this statement. Pope had taken +this position himself and, as life advanced, the well of pure poetry in +him had dried up more and more completely, until it had turned into a +sort of fountain of bright, dry sand, of which the <i>Epilogue to the +Satires</i>, written in 1738, when Joseph Warton was sixteen years of age, +may be taken as the extreme instance. The young author of the <i>Essay</i> +made the earliest attempt which any one made to put Pope in his right +place, that is to say, not to deny him genius or to deprecate the +extreme pleasure readers found in his writings, but to insist that, by +the very nature of his gifts, his was genius of a lower rank than that +of the supreme poets, with whom he was commonly paralleled when he was +not preferred to them all.</p> + +<p>Warton admitted but three supreme English poets—Spenser, Shakespeare, +Milton—and he vehemently insisted that moral, didactic and panegyrical +poetry could never rise above the second class in importance. To assert +this was not merely to offend against the undoubted supremacy of Pope, +but it was to flout the claims of all those others to whom the age gave +allegiance. Joseph Warton does not shrink from doing this, and he gives +reason for abating the claims of all the classic favourites—Cowley, +Waller, Dryden, Addison. When it was advanced against him that he showed +arrogance in placing his opinion against that of a multitude of highly +trained judges, he replied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> that a real "relish and enjoyment of poetry" +is a rare quality, and "a creative and glowing imagination" possessed by +few. When the <i>dicta</i> of Boileau were quoted against him, he repudiated +their authority with scarcely less vivacity than Keats was to display +half a century later.</p> + +<p>Joseph Warton's <i>Essay</i> wanders about, and we may acknowledge ourselves +more interested in the mental attitude which it displays than in the +detail of its criticism. The author insists, with much force, on the +value of a grandiose melancholy and a romantic horror in creating a +poetical impression, and he allows himself to deplore that Pope was so +ready to forget that "wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but +nature and passion are eternal." We need not then be surprised when +Joseph Warton boldly protests that no other part of the writings of Pope +approaches <i>Eloisa to Abelard</i> in the quality of being "truly poetical." +He was perhaps led to some indulgence by the fact that this is the one +composition in which Pope appears to be indebted to Milton's lyrics, but +there was much more than that. So far as I am aware, <i>Eloisa to Abelard</i> +had never taken a high place with Pope's extreme admirers, doubtless +because of its obsession with horror and passion. But when we read how</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Black melancholy sits, and round her throws<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A death-like silence and a dead repose,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and still more when we reflect on the perpetual and powerful appeals +which the poem makes to emotion unbridled by moral scruple, we have no +difficulty in perceiving why <i>Eloisa to Abelard</i> exercised so powerful +an attraction on Joseph Warton. The absence of ethical reservation, the +licence, in short, was highly attractive to him, and he rejoiced in +finding Pope, even so slightly, even so briefly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> faithless to his +formula. It is worth while to note that Joseph Warton's sympathy with +the sentimental malady of the soul which lies at the core of Romanticism +permitted him to be, perhaps, the first man since the Renaissance who +recognised with pleasure the tumult of the <i>Atys</i> of Catullus and the +febrile sensibility of Sappho.</p> + +<p>Both brothers urged that more liberty of imagination was what English +poetry needed; that the lark had been shut up long enough in a gilded +cage. We have a glimpse of Thomas Warton introducing the study of the +great Italian classics into Oxford at a very early age, and we see him +crowned with laurel in the common-room of Trinity College at the age of +nineteen. This was in the year before the death of Thomson. No doubt he +was already preparing his <i>Observations on the Faerie Queene</i>, which +came out a little later. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford before he +was thirty. Both the brothers took great pleasure in the study of +Spenser, and they both desired that the supernatural "machinery" of +Ariosto, in common with the romance of <i>The Faerie Queene</i>, should be +combined with a description of nature as untrimmed and unshackled as +possible. Thomas Warton, in his remarkable Oxford poem, "The Painted +Window," describes himself as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A faithless truant to the classic page,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long have I loved to catch the simple chime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rhyme,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and again he says:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I soothed my sorrows with the dulcet lore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which Fancy fabled in her elfin age,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>that is to say when Spenser was writing "upon Mulla's shore."</p> + +<p>After all this, the Observations on the Faerie Queene of 1754 is rather +disappointing. Thomas was probably much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> more learned as a historian of +literature than Joseph, but he is not so interesting a critic. Still, he +followed exactly the same lines, with the addition of a wider knowledge. +His reading is seen to be already immense, but he is tempted to make too +tiresome a display of it. Nevertheless, he is as thorough as his brother +in his insistence upon qualities which we have now learned to call +Romantic, and he praises all sorts of old books which no one then spoke +of with respect. He warmly recommends the <i>Morte d'Arthur</i>, which had +probably not found a single admirer since 1634. When he mentions Ben +Jonson, it is characteristic that it is to quote the line about "the +charmed boats and the enchanted wharves," which sounds like a foretaste +of Keats's "magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas." The +public of Warton's day had relegated all tales about knights, dragons, +and enchanters to the nursery, and Thomas Warton shows courage in +insisting that they are excellent subjects for serious and adult +literature. He certainly would have thoroughly enjoyed the romances of +Mrs. Radcliffe, whom a later generation was to welcome as "the mighty +magician bred and nourished by the Muses in their sacred solitary +caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition," and he despised +the neo-classic make-believe of grottoes. He says, with firmness, that +epic poetry—and he is thinking of Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser—would +never have been written if the critical judgments current in 1754 had +been in vogue.</p> + +<p>Thomas Warton closely studied the influence of Ariosto on Spenser, and +no other part of the <i>Observations</i> is so valuable as the pages in which +those two poets are contrasted. He remarked the polish of the former +poet with approval, and he did not shrink from what is violently +fantastic in the plot of the <i>Orlando Furioso</i>. On that point he says, +"The present age is too fond of manner'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> poetry to relish fiction and +fable," but perhaps he did not observe that although there is no +chivalry in <i>The Schoolmistress</i>, that accomplished piece was the +indirect outcome of the Italian mock-heroic epics. The Classicists had +fought for lucidity and common sense, whereas to be tenebrous and vague +was a merit with the precursors of Romanticism, or at least, without +unfairness, we may say that they asserted the power of imagination to +make what was mysterious, and even fabulous, true to the fancy. This +tendency, which we first perceive in the Wartons, rapidly developed, and +it led to the blind enthusiasm with which the vapourings of Macpherson +were presently received. The earliest specimens of <i>Ossian</i> were +revealed to a too-credulous public in 1760, but I find no evidence of +any welcome which they received from either Joseph or Thomas. The +brothers personally preferred a livelier and more dramatic presentation, +and when Dr. Johnson laughed at Collins because "he loved fairies, +genii, giants, and monsters," the laugh was really at the expense of his +school-fellow Joseph Warton, to whom Collins seems to have owed his +boyish inspiration, although he was by a few months the senior.</p> + +<p>Johnson was a resolute opponent of the principles of the Wartons, though +he held Thomas, at least, in great personal regard. He objected to the +brothers that they "affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of +revival," and his boutade about their own poetry is well known:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Phrase that time hath flung away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Uncouth words in disarray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ode and elegy and sonnet."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This conservatism was not peculiar to Johnson; there was a general +tendency to resist the reintroduction into language and literature of +words and forms which had been allowed to disappear. A generation later, +a careful and thoughtful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> grammarian like Gilpin was in danger of being +dismissed as "a cockscomb" because he tried to enlarge our national +vocabulary. The Wartons were accused of searching old libraries for +glossaries of disused terms in order to display them in their own +writings. This was not quite an idle charge; it is to be noted as one of +the symptoms of active Romanticism that it is always dissatisfied with +the diction commonly in use, and desires to dazzle and mystify by +embroidering its texture with archaic and far-fetched words. Chatterton, +who was not yet born when the Wartons formed and expressed their ideas, +was to carry this instinct to a preposterous extreme in his Rowley +forgeries, where he tries to obtain a mediæval colouring by transferring +words out of an imperfect Anglo-Saxon lexicon, often without discerning +the actual meaning of those words.</p> + +<p>Both the Wartons continued, in successive disquisitions, to repeat their +definition of poetry, but it cannot be said that either of them +advanced. So far as Joseph is concerned, he seems early to have +succumbed to the pressure of the age and of his surroundings. In 1766 he +became head master of Winchester, and settled down after curious +escapades which had nothing poetical about them. In the head master of a +great public school, reiterated murmurs against bondage to the Classical +Greeks and Romans would have been unbecoming, and Joseph Warton was a +man of the world. Perhaps in the solitude of his study he murmured, as +disenchanted enthusiasts often murmur, "Say, are the days of blest +delusion fled?" Yet traces of the old fire were occasionally manifest; +still each brother woke up at intervals to censure the criticism of +those who did not see that imagination must be paramount in poetry, and +who made the mistake of putting "discernment" in the place of +"enthusiasm." I hardly know why it gives me great pleasure to learn that +"the manner in which the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton read the Communion +Service was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> remarkably awful," but it must be as an evidence that he +carried a "Gothick" manner into daily life.</p> + +<p>The spirit of pedantry, so amicably mocked by the Wartons, took its +revenge upon Thomas in the form of a barren demon named Joseph Ritson, +who addressed to him in 1782 what he aptly called <i>A Familiar Letter</i>. +There is hardly a more ferocious pamphlet in the whole history of +literature. Ritson, who had the virulence of a hornet and the same +insect's inability to produce honey of his own, was considered by the +reactionaries to have "punched Tom Warton's historick body full of +deadly holes." But his strictures were not really important. In +marshalling some thousands of facts, Warton had made perhaps a couple of +dozen mistakes, and Ritson advances these with a reiteration and a +violence worthy of a maniac. Moreover, and this is the fate of angry +pedants, he himself is often found to be as dustily incorrect as Warton +when examined by modern lights. Ritson, who accuses Warton of "never +having consulted or even seen" the books he quotes from, and of +intentionally swindling the public, was in private life a vegetarian who +is said to have turned his orphan nephew on to the streets because he +caught him eating a mutton-chop. Ritson flung his arrows far and wide, +for he called Dr. Samuel Johnson himself "that great luminary, or rather +dark lantern of literature."</p> + +<p>If we turn over Ritson's distasteful pages, it is only to obtain from +them further proof of the perception of Warton's Romanticism by an +adversary whom hatred made perspicacious. Ritson abuses the <i>History of +English Poetry</i> for presuming to have "rescued from oblivion irregular +beauties" of which no one desired to be reminded. He charges Warton with +recommending the poetry of "our Pagan fathers" because it is untouched +by Christianity, and of saying that "religion and poetry are +incompatible." He accuses him of "constantly busying himself with +pas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>sages which he does not understand, because they appeal to his ear +or his fancy." "Old poetry," Ritson says to Warton, "is the same thing +to you, sense or nonsense." He dwells on Warton's marked attraction to +whatever is prodigious and impossible. The manner in which these +accusations are made is insolent and detestable; but Ritson had +penetration, and without knowing what he reached, in some of these +diatribes he pierced to the heart of the Romanticist fallacy.</p> + +<p>It is needful that I should bring these observations to a close. I hope +I have made good my claim that it was the Wartons who introduced into +the discussion of English poetry the principle of Romanticism. To use a +metaphor of which both of them would have approved, that principle was +to them like the mystical bowl of ichor, the <i>ampolla</i>, which Astolpho +was expected to bring down from heaven in the <i>Orlando Furioso</i>. If I +have given you an exaggerated idea of the extent to which they foresaw +the momentous change in English literature, I am to blame. No doubt by +extracting a great number of slight and minute remarks, and by putting +them together, the critic may produce an effect which is too emphatic. +But you will be on your guard against such misdirection. It is enough +for me if you will admit the priority of the intuition of the brothers, +and I do not think that it can be contested.</p> + +<p>Thomas Warton said, "I have rejected the ideas of men who are the most +distinguished ornaments" of the history of English poetry, and he +appealed against a "mechanical" attitude towards the art of poetry. The +brothers did more in rebelling against the Classic formulas than in +starting new poetic methods. There was an absence in them of "the pomps +and prodigality" of genius of which Gray spoke in a noble stanza. They +began with enthusiasm, but they had no native richness of expression, no +store of energy. It needed a nature as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> unfettered as Blake's, as wide +as Wordsworth's, as opulent as Keats's, to push the Romantic attack on +to victory. The instinct for ecstasy, ravishment, the caprices and +vagaries of emotion, was there; there was present in both brothers, +while they were still young, an extreme sensibility. The instinct was +present in them, but the sacred fire died out in the vacuum of their +social experience, and neither Warton had the energy to build up a style +in prose or verse. They struggled for a little while, and then they +succumbed to the worn verbiage of their age, from which it is sometimes +no light task to disengage their thought. In their later days they made +some sad defections, and I can never forgive Thomas Warton for arriving +at Marlowe's <i>Hero and Leander</i> and failing to observe its beauties. We +are told that as Camden Professor he "suffered the rostrum to grow +cold," and he was an ineffective poet laureate. His brother Joseph felt +the necessity or the craving for lyrical expression, without attaining +more than a muffled and a second-rate effect.</p> + +<p>All this has to be sadly admitted. But the fact remains that between +1740 and 1750, while even the voice of Rousseau had not begun to make +itself heard in Europe, the Wartons had discovered the fallacy of the +poetic theories admitted in their day, and had formed some faint +conception of a mode of escape from them. The Abbé Du Bos had laid down +in his celebrated <i>Réflexions</i> (1719) that the poet's art consists of +making a general moral representation of incidents and scenes, and +embellishing it with elegant images. This had been accepted and acted +upon by Pope and by all his followers. To have been the first to +perceive the inadequacy and the falsity of a law which excluded all +imagination, all enthusiasm, and all mystery, is to demand respectful +attention from the historian of Romanticism, and this attention is due +to Joseph and Thomas Warton.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE CHARM OF STERNE<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></h2> + + +<p>It is exactly two hundred years to-night since there was born, at +Clonmel, in Ireland, a son to a subaltern in an English regiment just +home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, +"was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with +many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world +with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of +perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, +daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been +the widow of a soldier before she married Roger Sterne. In the +extraordinary fashion of the army of those days, the regiment was +hurried from place to place—as was that of the father of the infant +Borrow a century later—and with it hastened the unhappy Mrs. Sterne, +for ever bearing and for ever losing children, "most rueful journeys," +marked by a long succession of little tombstones left behind. Finally, +at Gibraltar, the weary father, pugnacious to the last, picked a quarrel +about a goose and was pinked through the body, surviving in a thoroughly +damaged condition, to die, poor exhausted pilgrim of Bellona, in +barracks in Jamaica.</p> + +<p>It would be difficult to imagine a childhood better calculated than this +to encourage pathos in a humorist and fun in a sentimentalist. His +account, in his brief auto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>biography, of the appearance and +disappearance of his hapless brothers and sisters is a proof of how +early life appealed to Laurence Sterne in the dappled colours of an +April day. We read there of how at Wicklow "we lost poor Joram, a pretty +boy"; how "Anne, that pretty blossom, fell in the barracks of Dublin"; +how little Devijehar was "left behind" in Carrickfergus. We know not +whether to sob or to giggle, so tragic is the rapid catalogue of dying +babies, so ridiculous are their names and fates. Here, then, I think, we +have revealed to us the prime characteristic of Sterne, from which all +his other characteristics branch away, for evil or for good. As no other +writer since Shakespeare, and in a different and perhaps more intimate +way than even Shakespeare, he possessed the key of those tears that +succeed the hysteria of laughter, and of that laughter which succeeds +the passion of tears. From early childhood, and all through youth and +manhood, he had been collecting observations upon human nature in these +rapidly alternating moods.</p> + +<p>He observed it in its frailty, but being exquisitely frail himself, he +was no satirist. A breath of real satire would blow down the whole +delicate fabric of <i>Tristram Shandy</i> and the <i>Sentimental Journey</i>. +Sterne pokes fun at people and things; he banters the extravagance of +private humour; but it is always with a consciousness that he is himself +more extravagant than any one. If we compare him for a moment with +Richardson, who buttonholes the reader in a sermon; or with Smollett, +who snarls and bites like an angry beast; we feel at once that Sterne +could not breathe in the stuffiness of the one or in the tempest of the +other. Sympathy is the breath of his nostrils, and he cannot exist +except in a tender, merry relation with his readers. His own ideal, +surely, is that which he attributed to the fantastic and gentle Yorick, +who never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of old and +young. "Labour stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> still as he passed; the bucket hung suspended in +the middle of the well; the spinning-wheel forgot its round, even +chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got +out of sight." Like Yorick, Sterne loved a jest in his heart.</p> + +<p>There are, it seems to me, two distinct strains in the intellectual +development of Sterne, and I should like to dwell upon them for a +moment, because I think a lack of recognition of them has been apt to +darken critical counsel in the consideration of his writings. You will +remember that he was forty-six years of age before he took up the +business of literature seriously. Until that time he had been a country +parson in Yorkshire, carrying his body, that "cadaverous bale of goods," +from Sutton to Stillington, and from Stillington to Skelton. He had +spent his life in riding, shooting, preaching, joking, and philandering +in company, and after a fashion, most truly reprehensible from a +clerical point of view, yet admirably fitted to prepare such an artist +for his destined labours as a painter of the oddities of average +Englishmen. But by the side of this indolent search after the enjoyment +of the hour, Sterne cultivated a formidable species of literature in +which he had so few competitors that, in after years, his indolence +prompted him to plagiarise freely from sources which, surely, no human +being would discover. He steeped himself in the cumbrous learning of +those writers of the Renaissance in whom congested Latin is found +tottering into colloquial French. He studied Rabelais perhaps more +deeply than any other Englishman of his time, and certainly Beroalde de +Verville, Bruscambille, and other absurdities of the sixteenth century +were familiar to him and to him alone in England.</p> + +<p>Hence, when Sterne began to write, there were two streams flowing in his +brain, and these were, like everything else about him, inconsistent with +one another. The faithful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> tender colour of modern life competed with +the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the +annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and +there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained +readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is +the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the +real merits of Sterne. When so acute a writer as Bagehot condemns much +of <i>Tristram Shandy</i> as "a sort of antediluvian fun, in which uncouth +saurian jokes play idly in an unintelligible world," he hits the nail on +the head of why so many readers nowadays turn with impatience from that +work. But they should persevere, for Sterne himself saw his error, and +gradually dropped the "uncouth saurian jokes" which he had filched out +of Burton and Beroalde, relying more and more exclusively on his own +rich store of observations taken directly from human nature. In the +adorable seventh volume of <i>Tristram</i>, and in <i>The Sentimental Journey</i>, +there is nothing left of Rabelais except a certain rambling artifice of +style.</p> + +<p>The death of Sterne, at the age of fifty-four, is one of those events +which must be continually regretted, because to the very end of his life +he was growing in ease and ripeness, was discovering more perfect modes +of self-expression, and was purging himself of his compromising +intellectual frailties. It is true that from the very first his +excellences were patent. The portrait of my Uncle Toby, which Hazlitt +truly said is "one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature," +occurs, or rather begins, in the second volume of <i>Tristram Shandy</i>. But +the marvellous portraits which the early sections of that work contain +are to some extent obscured, or diluted, by the author's determination +to gain piquancy by applying old methods to new subjects. Frankly, much +as I love Sterne, I find Kunastrockius and Lithopaedus a bore. I suspect +they have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> driven more than one modern reader away from the enjoyment of +<i>Tristram Shandy</i>.</p> + +<p>Towards the end of the eighteenth century a leading Dissenting minister, +the Rev. Joseph Fawcett, said in answer to a question: "Do I <i>like</i> +Sterne? Yes, to be sure I should deserve to be hanged if I didn't!" That +was the attitude of thoughtful and scrupulous people of cultivation more +than one hundred years ago. But it was their attitude only on some +occasions. There is no record of the fact, but I am ready to believe +that Mr. Fawcett may, with equal sincerity, have said that Sterne was a +godless wretch. We know that Bishop Warburton presented him with a purse +of gold, in rapturous appreciation of his talents, and then in a +different mood described him as "an irrevocable scoundrel." No one else +has ever flourished in literature who has combined such alternating +powers of attraction and repulsion. We like Sterne extremely at one +moment, and we dislike him no less violently at another. He is attar of +roses to-day and asafœtida to-morrow, and it is not by any means easy +to define the elements which draw us towards him and away from him. Like +Yorick, he had "a wild way of talking," and he wrote impetuously and +impudently "in the naked temper which a merry heart discovered." As he +"seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without +much ceremony, he had but too many temptations in life of scattering his +wit and his humour, his gibes and his jests, about him."</p> + +<p>So that even if he had been merely Yorick, Sterne would have had +manifold opportunities of giving offence and causing scandal. But lie +was not only a humorist with "a thousand little sceptical notions to +defend," but he was a sentimentalist as well. Those two characteristics +he was constantly mingling, or trying to mingle, since sentimentality +and humour are in reality like oil and wine. He would exasperate his +readers by throwing his wig in their faces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> at the moment when they were +weeping, or put them out of countenance by ending a farcical story on a +melancholy note. A great majority of Englishmen like to be quite sure of +the tone of what they read; they wish an author to be straightforward; +they dread irony and they loathe impishness. Now Sterne is the most +impish of all imaginative writers. He is what our grandmothers, in +describing the vagaries of the nursery, used to call "a limb of Satan." +Tristram Shandy, in his light-hearted way, declared that "there's not so +much difference between good and evil as the world is apt to imagine." +No doubt that is so, but the world does not like its preachers to play +fast and loose with moral definitions.</p> + +<p>The famous sensibility of Sterne was a reaction against the seriousness, +the ponderosity, of previous prose literature in England. We talk of the +heaviness of the eighteenth century, but the periods of even such +masters of solid rhetoric as Johnson and Gibbon are light as thistledown +in comparison with the academic prose of the seventeenth century. Before +the eighteenth century is called lumbering, let us set a page of Hume +against a page of Hobbes, or a passage out of Berkeley by a passage out +of Selden. Common justice is seldom done to the steady clarification of +English prose between 1660 and 1750, but it was kept within formal lines +until the sensitive recklessness of Sterne broke up the mould, and gave +it the flying forms of a cloud or a wave. He owed this beautiful +inspiration to what Nietzsche calls his "squirrel-soul," which leaped +from bough to bough, and responded without a trace of conventional +restraint to every gust of emotion. Well might Goethe be inspired to +declare that Sterne was the most emancipated spirit of his century.</p> + +<p>His very emancipation gives us the reason why Sterne's admirers nowadays +are often divided in their allegiance to him. A frequent part of his +humour deals very flippantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> with subjects that are what we have been +taught to consider indelicate or objectionable. It is worse than useless +to try to explain this foible of his away, because he was aware of it +and did it on purpose. He said that "nothing but the more gross and +carnal parts of a composition will go down." His indecency was objected +to in his own age, but not with any excluding severity. And I would like +to call your attention to the curious conventionality of our views on +this subject. Human nature does not change, but it changes its modes of +expression. In the eighteenth century very grave people, even bishops, +allowed themselves, in their relaxed moments, great licence in jesting. +Yet they would have been scandalised by the tragic treatment of sex by +our more audacious novelists of to-day. We are still interested in these +matters, but we have agreed not to joke about them. I read the other day +a dictum of one of those young gentlemen who act as our moral policemen: +he prophesied that a jest on a sexual subject would, in twenty years, be +not merely reprehensible, as it is now, but unintelligible. Very proper, +no doubt, only do not let us call this morality, it is only a change of +habits.</p> + +<p>Sterne is not suited to readers who are disheartened at irrelevancy. It +is part of his charm, and it is at the same time his most whimsical +habit, never to proceed with his story when you expect him to do so, and +to be reminded by his own divagations of delightful side-issues which +lead you, entranced, whither you had no intention of going. He did not +merely not shun occasions of being irrelevant, but he sought them out +and eagerly cultivated them. Remember that a whole chapter of <i>Tristram</i> +is devoted to the <i>attitude</i> of Corporal Trim as he prepared himself to +read the Sermon. Sterne kept a stable of prancing, plump little +hobby-horses, and he trotted them out upon every occasion. But this is +what makes his books the best conversational writing in the English +language. He writes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> for all the world exactly as though he were talking +at his ease, and we listen enchanted to the careless, frolicking, idle, +penetrating speaker who builds up for us so nonchalantly, with +persistent but unobtrusive touch upon touch, the immortal figures of Mr. +Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Yorick, the Widow Wadman, and so many more.</p> + +<p>This, I am inclined to think, in drawing this brief sketch to an end, is +Sterne's main interest for ourselves. He broke up the rhetorical manner +of composition, or, rather, he produced an alternative manner which was +gradually accepted and is in partial favour still. I would ask you to +read for yourselves the scene of the ass who blocked the way for +Tristram at Lyons, and to consider how completely new that method of +describing, of facing a literary problem, was in 1765. I speak here to +an audience of experts, to a company of authors who are accustomed to a +close consideration of the workmanship of their <i>métier</i>. I ask them +where, at all events in English, anything like that scene had been found +before the days of Sterne. Since those days we have never been without +it.</p> + +<p>To trace the Shandean influence down English literature for the last +century and a half would take me much too long for your patience. In +Dickens, in Carlyle, even in Ruskin, the Shandean element is often +present and not rarely predominant. None of those great men would have +expressed himself exactly as he does but for Laurence Sterne. And coming +down to our own time, I see the influence of Sterne everywhere. The +pathos of Sir James Barrie is intimately related to that of the creator +of Uncle Toby and Maria of Moulines, while I am not sure that of all the +books which Stevenson read it was not the <i>Sentimental Journey</i> which +made the deepest impression upon him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE CENTENARY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE</h2> + + +<p>In the announcements of the approaching celebration of the centenary of +Poe in this country, the fact of his having been a poet was concealed. +Perhaps his admirers hoped that it might be overlooked, as without +importance, or condoned as the result of bad habits. At all events, the +statement that the revels on that occasion would be conducted by Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle was quite enough to prove that it was the prose +writer of "The Black Cat" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and not +the verso writer of "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee" who would be the centre +of attention. On that side of Poe's genius, therefore, although it is +illustrated by such masterpieces of sullen beauty as "The Fall of the +House of Usher" and such triumphs of fantastic ingenuity as "The Gold +Bug," I feel it needless to dwell here, the more as I think the +importance of these tales very slight by the side of that of the best +poems. Edgar Poe was, in my opinion, one of the most significant poetic +artists of a century rich in poetic artists, and I hold it to be for +this reason, and not because he wrote thrilling "detective" stories, +that he deserves persistent commemoration.</p> + +<p>The dominance of Poe as an important poetic factor of the nineteenth +century has not been easily or universally admitted, and it is only +natural to examine both the phenomena and the causes of the objections +so persistently brought against it. In the first instance, if the fame +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> Browning and Tennyson advanced slowly, it advanced firmly, and it +was encouraged from the beginning by the experts, by the cultivated +minority. Poe, on the other hand, was challenged, and his credentials +were grudgingly inspected, by those who represented the finest culture +of his own country, and the carpings of New England criticism are not +quite silent yet. When he died, in 1849, the tribunal of American +letters sat at Cambridge, in the neighbourhood of Boston, and it was +ill-prepared to believe that anything poetical could deserve salvation +if it proceeded from a place outside the magic circle. Edgar Poe, the +son of Irish strolling players, called "The Virginia Comedians," settled +in the South and was educated in England. By an odd coincidence, it now +appears that he actually was a native, as it were by accident, of Boston +itself. In the words of the Psalmist, "Lo! there was he born!" This +Gentile poet, such was the then state of American literature, could not +arrive on earth elsewhere than in the Jerusalem of Massachusetts. But +that concession was not known to the high priests, the Lowells, the +Holmeses, the Nortons, to whom Poe seemed a piratical intruder from +Javan or Gadire.</p> + +<p>Nothing is so discouraging to a young poet of originality as to find +himself isolated. Everything new is regarded with suspicion and dislike +by the general world of readers, and usually by the leaders of criticism +as well. Yet the daring prophet feels supported if he has but his Aaron +and his Hur. In the generation that immediately preceded Poe, Wordsworth +and Coleridge had been derided, but they had enjoyed the emphatic +approbation of one another and of Southey. Shelley had been a pariah of +letters, yet he was cordially believed in by Byron and by Peacock. Even +Keats could shrink from the mud-storms of the Scotch reviewers behind +the confident zeal of Leigh Hunt and Reynolds. At a still later moment +Rossetti and Morris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> would shelter themselves securely, and even +serenely, from the obloquy of criticism, within a slender peel-tower of +the praise of friends. In all these cases there could be set against the +stupidity of the world at large the comfortable cleverness of a few +strong persons of taste, founded, as all good taste must be, upon +principles. The poet could pride himself on his eclecticism, on his +recognition within, as Keats said, "a little clan." But Poe's misfortune +was to have no clan of his own, and to be rejected by precisely those +persons who represented, and on the whole justly represented, good taste +in America.</p> + +<p>His behaviour in this predicament was what might have been expected from +a man whose genius was more considerable than his judgment or his +manners. He tried, at first, to conciliate the New England authorities, +and he flattered not merely the greater planets but some of the very +little stars. He danced, a plaintive Salome, before Christopher P. +Cranch and Nathaniel P. Willis. When he found that his blandishments +were of no avail, he turned savage, and tried to prove that he did not +care, by being rude to Bryant and Longfellow. He called the whole solemn +Sanhedrim a college of Frog-pondian professors. Thus, of course, he +closed upon himself the doors of mercy, since the central aim and object +of the excellent men who at that time ruled American literature was to +prove that, in what this impertinent young man from Virginia called the +Frog Pond, the United States possessed its Athens and its Weimar, its +home of impeccable distinction. Indeed, but for the recognition of +Europe, which began to flow in richly just as Poe ceased to be able to +enjoy it, the prestige of this remarkable poet might have been +successfully annihilated.</p> + +<p>Nor was it only the synod of Boston wits who issued the edict that he +should be ignored, but in England also many good judges of literature, +especially those who belonged to the intellectual rather than the +artistic class, could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> away with him. I recollect hearing Leslie +Stephen say, now nearly thirty years ago, that to employ strong terms of +praise for Poe was "simply preposterous." And one whom I admire so +implicitly that I will not mention his name in a context which is not +favourable to his judgment, wrote (in his haste) of Poe's "singularly +valueless verses."</p> + +<p>This opposition, modified, it is true, by the very different attitude +adopted by Tennyson and most subsequent English poets, as well as by +Baudelaire, Mallarmé and the whole younger school in France, was +obstinately preserved, and has not wholly subsided. It would be a +tactical mistake for those who wish to insist on Poe's supremacy in his +own line to ignore the serious resistance which has been made to it. In +the canonisation-trial of this whimsical saint, the Devil's advocates, +it may be confessed, are many, and their objections are imposing. It is +possible that local pique and a horror of certain crude surroundings may +have had something to do with the original want of recognition in New +England, but such sources of prejudice would be ephemeral. There +remained, and has continued to remain, in the very essence of Poe's +poetry, something which a great many sincere and penetrating lovers of +verse cannot endure to admit as a dominant characteristic of the art.</p> + +<p>To recognise the nature of this quality is to take the first step +towards discovering the actual essence of Poe's genius. His detractors +have said that his verses are "singularly valueless." It is therefore +necessary to define what it is they mean by "value." If they mean an +inculcation, in beautiful forms, of moral truth; if they mean a +succession of ideas, clothed in exalted and yet definite language; if +they are thinking of what stirs the heart in reading parts of <i>Hamlet</i> +and <i>Comus</i>, of what keeps the pulse vibrating after the "Ode to Duty" +has been recited; then the verses of Poe are indeed without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> value. A +poet less gnomic than Poe, one from whom less, as they say in the +suburbs, "can be learned," is scarcely to be found in the whole range of +literature. His lack of curiosity about moral ideas is so complete that +evil moves him no more than good. There have been writers of eccentric +or perverse morality who have been so much irritated by the preaching of +virtue that they have lent their genius to the recommendation of vice. +This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is +vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as +innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers +than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is +hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any +ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains +of valuable thoughts" must go elsewhere.</p> + +<p>In 1840 they might, in New England, go to Bryant, to Emerson, to +Hawthorne; and it is more than excusable that those who were +endeavouring to refine the very crude community in the midst of which +they were anxiously holding up the agate lamp of Psyche, should see +nothing to applaud in the vague and shadowy rhapsodies then being issued +by a dissipated hack in Philadelphia. What the New England critics +wanted, patriotically as well as personally, was as little like +"Ulalume" as can possibly be conceived. They defined what poetry should +be—there was about that time a mania for defining poetry—and what +their definition was may be seen no less plainly in the American <i>Fable +for Critics</i> than in the preface to the English <i>Philip van Artevelde</i>. +It was to be picturesque, intellectual, pleasing; it was to deal, above +all, with moral "truths"; it was to avoid vagueness and to give no +uncertain sound; it was to regard "passion" with alarm, as the siren +which was bound sooner or later to fling a bard upon the rocks. It is +not necessary to treat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> this conception of poetry with scorn, nor to +reject principles of precise thought and clear, sober language, which +had been illustrated by Wordsworth in the present and by Gray in the +past. The ardent young critics of our own age, having thrown off all +respect for the traditions of literature, speak and write as if to them, +and them alone, had been divinely revealed the secrets of taste. They do +not give themselves time to realise that in Apollo's house there are +many mansions.</p> + +<p>It is sufficient for us to note here that the discomfort of Poe's +position resided in the fact that he was not admitted into so much as +the forecourt of the particular mansion inhabited by Bryant and Lowell. +There is a phrase in one of his own rather vague and "valueless" essays +(for Poe was a poor critic) which, as it were accidentally, describes +his ideal in poetry, although it is not his own verse of which he is +speaking. He described—in 1845, when his ripe genius had just brought +forth "The Raven"—the poetic faculty as producing "a sense of dreamy, +wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight." This +shadowy but absorbing and mastering pleasure impregnated his own best +writings to such a degree that it gives us the measure of his unlikeness +to his contemporaries, and states the claim of his individuality. +Without precisely knowing it or perceiving his revolution, in an age of +intelligent, tame, lucid and cautiously-defined poetry, Edgar Poe +expressed the emotions which surged within him in numbers that were, +even to excess, "dreamy, wild, indefinite and indefinable."</p> + +<p>His early verses are remarkably exempt from the influences which we +might expect to find impressed on them. He imitated, as every man of +genuine originality imitates while he learns his trade, but his models +were not, as might have been anticipated, Coleridge and Shelley; they +were Byron and Scott. In the poetry of Byron and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Scott, Poe found +nothing to transfer to his own nature, and the early imitations, +therefore, left no trace on him. Brief as is the volume of his poems, +half of it might be discarded without much regret. Scattered among his +Byron and Scott imitations, however, we find a few pieces which reveal +to us that, while he was still almost a child, the true direction of his +genius was occasionally revealed to him. The lyric "To Helen," which is +said to have been composed in his fourteenth year, is steeped in the +peculiar purity, richness and vagueness which were to characterise his +mature poems:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"On desperate seas long wont to roam,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy Naiad airs have brought me home<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the glory that was Greece,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the grandeur that was Rome."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This was not published, however, until the author was two-and-twenty, +and it may have been touched up. Here is a fragment of a suppressed +poem, "Visit of the Dead," which Poe certainly printed in his eighteenth +year:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The breeze, the breath of God, is still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the mist upon the hill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is a symbol and a token;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How it hangs upon the trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A mystery of mysteries!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is not so perfect, but it is even more than "To Helen" symptomatic +of Poe's peculiar relation to the poetic faculty as fostering a state of +indefinite and indeed indefinable delight. And from these faint +breathings how direct is the advance to such incomparable specimens of +symbolic fancy as "The City in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and finally +"Ulalume"!</p> + +<p>The determination to celebrate, in a minor key, indefinite and +melancholy symbols of fancy, is a snare than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> which none more dangerous +can be placed in the path of a feeble foot. But Poe was not feeble, and +he was protected, and permanent value was secured for his poetry, by the +possession of one or two signal gifts to which attention must now be +paid. He cultivated the indefinite, but, happily for us, in language so +definite and pure that when he succeeds it is with a cool fulness, an +absence of all fretting and hissing sound, such as can rarely be +paralleled in English literature. The finest things in Milton's 1645 +volume, Wordsworth at his very best, Tennyson occasionally, Collins in +some of his shorter odes, have reached that perfection of syllabic +sweetness, that clear sound of a wave breaking on the twilight sands, +which Poe contrives to render, without an effort, again and again:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"By a route obscure and lonely,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Haunted by ill angels only,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where an Eidolon,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> nam'd Night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On a black throne reigns upright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have reached these lands but newly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From an ultimate dim Thule,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Out of space, out of time."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The present moment is one in which the reaction against plastic beauty +in poetry has reached such a height that it is almost vain to appeal +against it. There is scarcely a single English poet of consequence in +the younger school who does not treat the strings of his lyre as though +he were preluding with a slate-pencil upon a slate. That this is done +purposely, and in accordance with mysterious harmonic laws entirely +beyond the comprehension of ordinary ears, makes the matter worse. There +is no heresiarch so dangerous as the priest of holy and self-abnegating +life, and it is to a poet no less learned than Mr. Robert Bridges, that +the twentieth century seems to owe the existing rage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> for cacophony. He +holds something of the same place in relation to Swinburne and Poe, that +Donne did to Spenser three hundred years ago. In this condition of +things it may seem useless to found any claim for Poe on the ground of +the exquisite mellifluousness of his versification. We may hope, +however, some day to regain the use of our ears, and to discover once +more that music and metre are utterly distinct arts. When that +re-discovery has been made, Poe will resume his position as one of the +most uniformly melodious of all those who have used the English +language.</p> + +<p>Critics who have admitted the extraordinary perfection of his prosody +have occasionally objected that in the most popular examples of it, "The +Raven" and "The Bells," he obtains his effect by a trick. It might be +objected, with equal force, that Victor Hugo in "Les Djinns" and even +Tennyson in "The Lotus Eaters" made use of "tricks." On the other hand, +if the charge be deserved, it seems odd that in the course of nearly +seventy years no other juggler or conjurer has contrived to repeat the +wonderful experiment. In each poem there are what must be judged +definite errors against taste in detail—Poe's taste was never very +sure—but the skill of the long voluptuous lamentation, broken at equal +intervals by the croak of the raven, and that of the verbal translation, +as if into four tones or languages, of the tintinabulation of the bells, +is so extraordinary, so original, and so closely in keeping with the +personal genius of the writer, that it is surely affectation to deny its +value.</p> + +<p>It is not, however, in "The Bells" or in "The Raven," marvellous as are +these <i>tours de force</i>, that we see the essential greatness of Poe +revealed. The best of his poems are those in which he deals less +boisterously with the sentiment of mystery. During the latest months of +his unhappy life, he composed three lyrics which, from a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> technical +point of view, must be regarded not only as the most interesting, which +he wrote, but as those which have had the most permanent effect upon +subsequent literature, not in England merely, but in France. These are +"Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," "For Annie." One of Poe's greatest inventions +was the liquidation of stanzaic form, by which he was able to mould it +to the movements of emotion without losing its essential structure. Many +poets had done this with the line; it was left for Poe to do it with the +stanza. In the three latest lyrics this stanzaic legerdemain is +practised with an enchanting lightness, an ecstasy of sinuous and +elastic grace. Perhaps, had it been subjected to the poet's latest +revision, "For Annie" would have been the most wonderful of all in the +sensitive response of its metre to the delicate fluctuations of +sentiment.</p> + +<p>We may, then, briefly summarise that Poe's first claim to commemoration +is that he was the pioneer in restoring to the art of poetry a faculty +which it had almost lost in its attempt to compete with science and +philosophy. It had become the aim of the poets to state facts; it was +given to Poe to perceive that no less splendid a future lay before those +who only hinted feelings. He was the earliest modern poet who +substituted the symbol for the exact description of an object or an +event. That "expression directe," about which the French have been +debating for the last quarter of a century, and over which M. Adolphe +Retté and M. Albert Mockel periodically dispute like Fathers of the +Church, was perceived and was deliberately repudiated by Poe eighty +years ago. He was deeply impregnated with the sense that the harmony of +imagination is not destroyed, but developed, by drawing over a subject +veil after veil of suggestion. His native temperament aided him in his +research after the symbol. He was naturally a cultivator of terror, one +who loved to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> people the world with strange and indefinable powers. His +dreams were innocent and agitating, occupied with supernatural terrors, +weighed upon by the imminence of shadowy presentments. He trembled at he +knew not what; in this he was related to the earliest poets of the +world, and in his perpetual recurrence to symbol he recalls the action +of their alarms.</p> + +<p>The cardinal importance, then, of Poe as a poet is that he restored to +poetry a primitive faculty of which civilisation seemed successfully to +have deprived her. He rejected the doctrinal expression of positive +things, and he insisted upon mystery and symbol. He endeavoured to +clothe unfathomable thoughts and shadowy images in melody that was like +the wind wandering over the strings of an æolian harp. In other words, +he was the pioneer of a school which has spread its influence to the +confines of the civilised world, and is now revolutionising literature. +He was the discoverer and the founder of Symbolism.</p> + +<p>1909.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE AUTHOR OF "PELHAM"</h2> + + +<p>One hundred and twenty years have nearly passed since the birth of +Bulwer-Lytton, and he continues to be suspended in a dim and ambiguous +position in the history of our literature. He combined extraordinary +qualities with fatal defects. He aimed at the highest eminence, and +failed to reach it, but he was like an explorer, who is diverted from +the main ascent of a mountain, and yet annexes an important table-land +elsewhere. Bulwer-Lytton never secured the ungrudging praise of the best +judges, but he attained great popularity, and has even now not wholly +lost it. He is never quoted as one of our great writers, and yet he +holds a place of his own from which it is improbable that he will ever +be dislodged. Although he stood out prominently among his fellows, and +although his career was tinged with scandal and even with romance, very +little has been known about him. Curiosity has been foiled by the +discretion of one party and the malignity of another. The public has not +been in a position to know the truth, nor to possess the real portrait +of a politician and a man of letters who has been presented as an angel +and as a gargoyle, but never as a human being. Forty years after his +death the candour and the skill of his grandson reveal him to us at last +in a memoir of unusual excellence.</p> + +<p>In no case would Lord Lytton's task have been an easy one, but it must +have been made peculiarly difficult by the work of those who had +preceded him. Of these, the only one who deserves serious attention is +Robert Lytton, who published certain fragments in 1883. That the son +wished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> to support the memory of his father is unquestionable. But it is +difficult to believe that he intended his contribution to be more than +an aid to some future biographer's labour. He scattered his material +about him in rough heaps. Apart from the "Literary Remains," which +destroyed the continuity of even such brief biography as he gave, Robert +Lytton introduced a number of chapters which are more or less of the +nature of essays, and are often quite foreign to his theme. Moreover, he +dedicated several chapters to literary criticism of his father's works. +It is, in fact, obvious to any one who examines the two volumes of 1883 +which Robert Lytton contrived to fill, that he was careful to contribute +as little as he possibly could to the story which he had started out to +relate. Although there is much that is interesting in the memoirs of +1883, the reader is continually losing the thread of the narrative. The +reason is, no doubt, that Robert Lytton stood too close to his parents, +had seen too much of their disputes, was too much torn by the agonies of +his own stormy youth, and was too sensitively conscious of the scandal, +to tell the story at all. We have the impression that, in order to +forestall any other biography, he pretended himself to write a book +which he was subtle enough to make unintelligible.</p> + +<p>This baffling discretion, this feverish race from hiding-place to +hiding-place, has not only not been repeated by Lord Lytton in the new +<i>Life</i>, but the example of his father seems to have positively +emphasised his own determination to be straightforward and lucid. I know +no modern biography in which the writer has kept more rigidly to the +business of his narrative, or has less successfully been decoyed aside +by the sirens of family vanity. It must have been a great difficulty to +the biographer to find his pathway cumbered by the volumes of 1883, set +by his father as a plausible man-trap for future intruders.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> Lord +Lytton, however, is the one person who is not an intruder, and he was +the only possessor of the key which his father had so diplomatically +hidden. His task, however, was further complicated by the circumstance +that Bulwer-Lytton himself left in MS. an autobiography, dealing very +fully with his own career and character up to the age of twenty-two. The +redundancy of all the Lyttons is amazing. Bulwer-Lytton would not have +been himself if he had not overflowed into reflections which swelled his +valuable account of his childhood into monstrous proportions. Lord +Lytton, who has a pretty humour, tells an anecdote which will be read +with pleasure:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"An old woman, who had once been one of Bulwer-Lytton's trusted +domestic servants, is still living in a cottage at Knebworth. One +day she was talking to me about my grandfather, and inadvertently +used an expression which summed him up more perfectly than any +elaborate description could have done. She was describing his house +at Copped Hall, where she had been employed as caretaker, and +added: 'In one of his attacks of <i>fluency</i>, I nursed him there for +many weeks.' 'Pleurisy,' I believe, was what she meant."</p></div> + +<p>The bacillus of "<i>fluency</i>" interpenetrates the Autobiography, the +letters, the documents of every kind, and at any moment this disease +will darken Bulwer-Lytton's brightest hours. But curtailed by his +grandson, and with its floral and heraldic ornaments well pared away, +the Autobiography is a document of considerable value. It is written +with deliberate candour, and recalls the manner of Cobbett, a writer +with whom we should not expect to find Bulwer-Lytton in sympathy. It is +probable that the author of it never saw himself nor those who +surrounded him in precisely their true relation. There was something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +radically twisted in his image of life, which always seems to have +passed through a refracting surface on its way to his vision. No doubt +this is more or less true of all experience; no power has given us the +gift "to see ourselves as others see us." But in the case of +Bulwer-Lytton this refractive habit of his imagination produced a +greater swerving aside from positive truth than is usual. The result is +that an air of the fabulous, of the incredible, is given to his +narratives, and often most unfairly.</p> + +<p>A close examination, in fact, of the Autobiography results in confirming +the historic truth of it. What is surprising is not, when we come to +consider them, the incidents themselves, but Bulwer-Lytton's odd way of +narrating them. Lord Lytton, without any comment, provides us with +curious material for the verification of his grandfather's narrative. He +prints, here and there, letters from entirely prosaic persons which +tally, often to a surprising degree, with the extravagant statements of +Bulwer-Lytton. To quote a single instance, of a very remarkable +character, Bulwer-Lytton describes the effect his scholarship produced, +at the age of seventeen, upon sober, elderly people, who were dazzled +with his accomplishments and regarded him as a youthful prodigy. It is +the sort of confession, rather full-blooded and lyrical, which we might +easily set down to that phenomenon of refraction. But Lord Lytton prints +a letter from Dr. Samuel Parr (whom, by the way, he calls "a man of +sixty-four," but Parr, born in 1747, was seventy-four in 1821), which +confirms the autobiographer's account in every particular. The aged Whig +churchman, who boasted a wider knowledge of Greek literature than any +other scholar of his day, and whose peremptory temper was matter of +legend, could write to this Tory boy a long letter of enthusiastic +criticism, and while assuring Bulwer-Lytton that he kept "all the +letters with which you have honoured me," could add: "I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> proud of +such a correspondent; and, if we lived nearer to each other, I should +expect to be very happy indeed in such a friend." Letters of this kind, +judiciously printed by Lord Lytton in his notes, serve to call us back +from the nebulous witchcraft in which Bulwer-Lytton was so fond of +wrapping up the truth, and to remind us that, in spite of the +necromancer, the truth is there.</p> + +<p>From the point where the fragment of autobiography closes, although for +some time much the same material is used and some of the same letters +are quoted, as were quoted and used by Robert Lytton, the presentation +of these is so different that the whole effect is practically one of +novelty. But with the year 1826, when Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at the age +of three-and-twenty, became engaged to Rosina Doyle Wheeler, all is +positively new. The story of the marriage, separation, and subsequent +relations has never before been presented to the world with any approach +to accuracy or fulness. No biographical notices of Bulwer-Lytton even +touch on this subject, which has been hitherto abandoned to the gossip +of irresponsible contemporaries. It is true that a Miss Devey composed a +"Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," in which the tale was told. This work was +immediately suppressed, and is inaccessible to the public; but the only +person who is known to be familiar with its contents reports that it +"contains fragments of the narrative, obviously biassed, wholly +inaccurate, and evidently misleading." So far as the general public is +concerned, Lord Lytton's impartial history of the relations between his +grandfather and his grandmother is doubtless that portion of his book +which will be regarded as the most important. I may, therefore, dwell +briefly upon his treatment of it.</p> + +<p>The biographer, in dealing with a subject of this incalculable +difficulty, could but lay himself open to the censure of those who +dislike the revelation of the truth on any disagreeable subject. This +lion, however, stood in the middle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> of his path, and he had either to +wrestle with it or to turn back. Lord Lytton says in his preface that it +was necessary to tell all or nothing of the matrimonial adventures of +his grandparents, but, in reality, this was not quite the alternative, +which was to tell the truth or to withdraw from the task of writing a +Life of Bulwer-Lytton. The marriage and its results were so predominant +in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour +of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear +reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the +Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord +Lytton shall give his own apology:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"As it was impossible to give a true picture of my grandfather +without referring to events which overshadowed his whole life, and +which were already partially known to the public, I decided to tell +the whole story as fully and as accurately as possible, in the firm +belief that the truth can damage neither the dead nor the living. +The steps which led to the final separation between my +grandparents, and the forces which brought about so disastrous a +conclusion of a marriage of love, apart from their biographical +interest, afford a study of human nature of the utmost value; and +so great are the moral lessons which this story contains, that I +venture to hope that the public may find in much that is tragic and +pitiful much also that is redeeming, and that the ultimate verdict +of posterity may be that these two unfortunate people did not +suffer entirely in vain."</p></div> + +<p>His story, therefore, is not written with any partiality, and it seems +to be as full and as truthful as the ample materials at the author's +disposal permitted. The reader will conjecture that Lord Lytton could +have given many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> more details, but apart from the fact that they would +often have been wholly unfit for publication, it is difficult to see +that they would in any degree have altered the balance of the story, or +modified our judgment, which is quite sufficiently enlightened by the +copious letters on both sides which are now for the first time printed.</p> + +<p>Voltaire has remarked of love that it is "de toutes les passions la plus +forte, parce qu'elle attaque, à la fois, la tête, le cœur, le corps." +It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have +been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is true in +measure of every strong juvenile attachment: but it is rarely indeed so +copiously or so fatally true as it was in his case. His existence was +overwhelmed by this event; it was turned topsy-turvey, and it never +regained its equilibrium. In this adventure all was exaggerated; there +was excess of desire, excess of gratification, an intense weariness, a +consuming hatred.</p> + +<p>On the first evening when the lovers met, in April 1826, an observer, +watching them as they talked, reflected that Bulwer's "bearing had that +aristocratic something bordering on <i>hauteur</i>" which reminded the +onlooker "of the passage, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou!'" The same +observer, dazzled, like the rest of the world, by the loveliness of Miss +Wheeler, judged that it would be best "to regard her as we do some +beautiful caged wild creature of the woods—at a safe and secure +distance." It would have preserved a chance of happiness for +Bulwer-Lytton to possess something of this stranger's clairvoyance. It +was not strange perhaps, but unfortunate, that he did not notice—or +rather that he was not repelled by, for he did notice—the absence of +moral delicacy in the beautiful creature, the radiant and seductive +Lamia, who responded so instantly to his emotion. He, the most +fastidious of men, was not offended by the vivacity of a young lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> who +called attention to the vulgarity of her father's worsted stockings and +had none but words of abuse for her mother. These things, indeed, +disconcerted the young aristocrat, but he put them down to a lack of +training; he persuaded himself that these were superficial blemishes and +could be remedied; and he resigned his senses to the intoxication of +Rosina's beauty.</p> + +<p>At first—and indeed to the last—she stimulated his energy and his +intellect. His love and his hatred alike spurred him to action. In +August 1826, in spite of the violent opposition of his mother, he and +Rosina were betrothed. By October Mrs. Bulwer had so far prevailed that +the engagement was broken off, and Edward tossed in a whirlpool of +anger, love, and despair. It took the form of such an attack of +"fluency" as was never seen before or after. Up to that time he had been +an elegant although feverish idler. Now he plunged into a strenuous life +of public and private engagements. He prepared to enter the House of +Commons; he finished <i>Falkland</i>, his first novel; he started the +composition of <i>Pelham</i> and of another "light prose work," which may +have disappeared; he achieved a long narrative in verse, <i>O'Neill, or +the Rebel</i>; and he involved himself in literary projects without bound +and without end. The aim of all this energy was money. It is true that +he had broken off his betrothal; but it was at first only a pretence at +estrangement, to hoodwink his mother. He was convinced that he could not +live without possessing Rosina, and as his mother held the strings of +the common purse, he would earn his own income and support a wife.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, who had a Roman firmness, was absolutely determined +that her son should not marry "a penniless girl whose education had been +so flagrantly neglected, who was vain and flighty, with a mocking humour +and a conspicuous lack of principle." At this point the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> story becomes +exceedingly interesting. A Balzac would strip it of its romantic +trappings, and would penetrate into its physiology. Out of Rosina's +sight, and diverted by the excess of his literary labours, Edward's +infatuation began to decline. His mother, whose power of character would +have been really formidable if it had been enforced by sympathy or even +by tact, relaxed her opposition; and instantly her son, himself, no +longer attacked, became calmer and more clear-sighted. Rosina's faults +were patent to his memory; the magic of her beauty less invincible. +Within a month all was changed again. Rosina fretted herself into what +she contrived to have reported to Bulwer-Lytton as an illness. She +begged for an interview, and he went with reluctance to bid her farewell +for ever. It was Bulwer-Lytton's habit to take with him a masterpiece of +literature upon every journey. It seems unfortunate that on this +occasion <i>The Tempest</i> was not his companion, for it might have warned +him, as Prospero warned Ferdinand, against the fever in the blood:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make this contract grow; but barren hate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall bestrew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The union of your bed, with weeds so loathly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That you shall hate it, both."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When his short interview, which was to have been a final one, was over, +that had happened which made a speedy marriage necessary, whatever the +consequences might be.</p> + +<p>The new conditions were clearly stated to old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, but +that formidable lady belonged to an earlier generation, and saw no +reason for Quixotic behaviour. Her conscience had been trained in the +eighteenth century, and all her blame was for Rosina Wheeler. Torn +between his duty and his filial affection, Bulwer-Lytton now passed +through a period of moral agony. He wrote to his mother: "I am far too +wretched, and have had too severe a contest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> with myself, not to look to +the future rather with despondency than pleasure, and the view you take +of the matter is quite enough to embitter my peace of mind." Miss +Wheeler, not unnaturally stung to anger, used disrespectful expressions +regarding Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, and these bickerings filled the lover and +son with indignation. His life, between these ladies, grew to be hardly +worth living, and in the midst of one such crisis this brilliant young +dandy of four-and-twenty wrote:—"I feel more broken-hearted, +despondent, and sated than any old valetudinarian who has seen all his +old hopes and friends drop off one by one, and finds himself left for +the rest of his existence to the solitary possession of gloom and gout." +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton fought fiercely to the last, and Edward determined to +close the matter; on August 29th, 1827, he married Rosina.</p> + +<p>At first, in spite of, and even because of, the wild hostility of his +mother, the marriage seemed successful. The rage of the mother drove the +husband to the wife. Lord Lytton has noted that in later years all that +his grandfather and his grandmother said about one another was +unconsciously biassed by their memory of later complications. Neither +Bulwer-Lytton nor Rosina could give an accurate history of their +relations at the beginning, because the mind of each was prejudiced by +their knowledge of the end. Each sought to justify the hatred which both +had lived to feel, by representing the other as hateful from the first. +But the letters survive, and the recollections of friends, to prove that +this was entirely untrue. It must be admitted that their union was never +based upon esteem, but wholly upon passion, and that from the first they +lacked that coherency of relation, in moral respects, which was needed +to fix their affections. But those who have dimly heard how bitterly +these two unfortunate people hated one another in later life will be +astonished to learn that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> they spent the two first years together like +infatuated turtle-doves.</p> + +<p>Their existence was romantic and absurd. Cut off from all support by the +implacable anger of old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, they depended on a combined +income of £380 a year and whatever the husband could make to increase +it. Accordingly they took a huge country house, Woodcot in Oxon, and +lived at the rate of several thousands a year. There they basked in an +affluent splendour of bad taste which reminds us of nothing in the world +so much as of those portions of <i>The Lady Flabella</i> which Mrs. +Wititterly was presently to find so soft and so voluptuous. The +following extract from one of Rosina's lively letters-and she was a very +sprightly correspondent—gives an example of her style, of her husband's +Pelhamish extravagance, and of the gaudy recklessness of their manner of +life. They had now been married nearly two years:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"How do you think my audacious husband has spent his time since he +has been in town? Why, he must needs send me down what he termed a +little Christmas box, which was a huge box from Howel and James's, +containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours +not made up, four Gros des Indes, two merino ones, four satin ones, +an amber, a black, a white and a blue, eight pocket handkerchiefs +that look as if they had been spun out of lilies and air and +<i>brodée</i> by the fairies, they are so exquisitely fine and so +beautifully worked. Four pieces (16 yards in each) of beautiful +white blonde, two broad pieces and two less broad, a beautiful and +very large blue real cashmere shawl, a Chantilly veil that would +reach from this to Dublin, and six French long pellerines very +richly embroidered on the finest India muslin, three dozen pair of +white silk stockings, one dozen of black, a most beautiful black +satin cloak with very pretty odd sort of capes and trimmed round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> +and up the sides with a very broad band of a new kind of figured +plush—I forget what they call it (it came from Paris), and a hat +of the same—such a hat as can only be made in the Rue Vivienne. +You would think that this 'little Christmas box' would have been +enough to have lasted for some time. However, he thought +differently, for on New Year's morning before I was out of bed, +there came a parcel by the mail, which on opening proved to be a +large red Morocco case containing a bright gold chain, a yard and a +half long, with the most beautiful and curious cross to it that I +ever saw—the chain is as thick as my dead gold necklace, and you +may guess what sort of a thing it is when I tell you that I took it +to a jeweller here to have it weighed, and it weighed a pound all +but an ounce. The man said it never was made for less than fifty +guineas, but that he should think it had cost more."</p></div> + +<p>Rosina, who has only £80 a year of her own, will not be outdone, and +cannot "resist ordering" Edward "a gold toilette, which he has long +wished for.... Round the rim of the basin and the handle of the ewer I +have ordered a wreath of <i>narcissus</i> in dead gold, which, for Mr. +Pelham, you'll own, is not a bad idea."</p> + +<p>It would be expected that all this crazy display would lead the young +couple rapidly and deeply into debt. That it did not do so is the most +curious phase of the story. Bulwer-Lytton immediately, and apparently +without the slightest difficulty, developed a literary industry the +sober record of which approaches the fabulous. Walter Scott alone may be +held to have equalled it. The giants of popular fiction did, indeed, +enjoy larger single successes than Bulwer-Lytton did, but none of them, +not Dickens himself, was so uniformly successful. Everything he wrote +sold as though it were bread displayed to a hungry crowd. Even his +poetry, so laboriously and lifelessly second-hand,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> always sold. He did +not know what failure was; he made money by <i>Devereux</i>; even <i>The New +Timon</i> went into many editions. To earn what was required, however—and +in these early years he seems to have made £3000 his minimum of needful +return—to live in the insane style which his wife and he demanded, an +enormous nervous strain was required. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's temper had +always been warm and eager; it now grew irritable to the highest degree. +His mother continued to exasperate him; his wife suddenly failed to +please him; his health waned; and he became the most miserable of men; +yet without ceasing for a moment to be the most indefatigable of +authors. The reader will follow the evolution of the tragedy, which is +of poignant interest, in Lord Lytton's pages. The whole story is one of +the most extraordinary in the history of literature.</p> + +<p>It has been a feature of Bulwer-Lytton's curious posthumous fortune that +he has seemed solitary in his intellectual if not in his political and +social action. We think of him as one of those morose and lonely bees +that are too busy gathering pollen to join the senate of the hive, and +are dwellers in the holes of the rocks. It is quite true that, with a +painful craving for affection, he had not the genius of friendship. The +general impression given by his biography is one of isolation; in "the +sea of life" he was one of those who are most hopelessly "enisled." +Nothing is sadder than this severance of a delicate and sensitive +temperament from those who surround it closely and to whom it stretches +out its arms in vain. But a careful reading of these interesting volumes +leaves us in no doubt of the cause of this loneliness. Bulwer-Lytton, +with all his ardour and his generosity, was devoid of the gift of +sympathy. In characters of a simpler mould a natural kindliness may take +the place of comprehension. But Bulwer-Lytton had a lively and protean +fancy which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> perpetually deceived him. In human relations he was always +moving, but always on the wrong track.</p> + +<p>The letters to his mother, to his wife, to his son, exemplify this +unfortunate tendency. They are eloquent, they are even too eloquent, for +Bulwer-Lytton intoxicated himself with his own verbosity; they are meant +to be kind, they are meant to be just, they are meant to be wise and +dignified and tender; but we see, in Lord Lytton's impartial narrative, +that they scarcely ever failed to exasperate the receiver. His dealings +with his son, of whom he was exquisitely proud and sensitively fond, are +of the saddest character, because of the father's want of comprehension, +haste of speech and intolerance of temper. The very fact that a son, a +wife, or a mother could with impunity be addressed in terms of +exaggerated sensibility, because there could be no appeal, was a snare +to the too-ready pen of Bulwer-Lytton, which, poured out its oceans of +ink without reflection and without apprehension. If violent offence were +given, the post went out again later in the day, and equally violent +self-humiliation would restore the emotional balance. But what could not +be restored was the sense of confidence and domestic security.</p> + +<p>In his contact with other literary men of his own age more restraint was +necessary, and we learn from Lord Lytton's pages of valuable and +prolonged acquaintanceships which were sometimes almost friendships. His +company was much sought after, and occasionally by very odd persons. +Lord Lytton prints a series of most diverting letters from the notorious +Harriette Wilson, who, in spite of the terror into which her "Memoirs" +had thrown society, desired to add the author of <i>Pelham</i> to the aviary +of her conquests. But the snare was set in vain before the eyes of so +shrewd a bird as Bulwer-Lytton; he declined to see the lady, but he kept +her amazing letters. This was in 1829, when the novelist seems to have +had no literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> or political associates. But by 1831, we find him +editing the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, and attaching himself to Lord +Melbourne and Lord Durham on the one hand and to Disraeli and Dickens on +the other. When to these we have added Lady Blessington and Letitia +Landon, we have mentioned all those public persons with whom +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have been on terms of intimacy during his early +manhood. All through these years he was an incessant diner-out and +party-goer, and the object of marvellous adulation, but he passed +through all this social parade as though it had been a necessary portion +of the exterior etiquette of life. Why he fatigued himself by these +formal exercises, in which he seems to have found no pleasure, it is +impossible to conceive, but a sense of the necessity of parade was +strangely native to him.</p> + +<p>He had, however, one close and constant friend. John Forster was by far +the most intimate of all his associates throughout his career. +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have met him first about 1834, when he was +twenty-eight and Forster only twenty-two. In spite of this disparity in +age, the younger man almost at once took a tone of authority such as the +elder seldom permitted in an acquaintance. Forster had all the gifts +which make a friend valuable. He was rich in sympathy and resource, his +temper was reasonable, he comprehended a situation, he knew how to hold +his own in argument and yet yield with grace. Lord Lytton prints a very +interesting character-sketch of Forster, which he has found among his +grandfather's MSS. It is a tribute which does equal credit to him who +makes it and to him of whom it is made:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"John Forster.... A most sterling man, with an intellect at once +massive and delicate. Few, indeed, have his strong practical sense +and sound judgment; fewer still unite with such qualities his +exquisite appreciation of latent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> beauties in literary art. Hence, +in ordinary life, there is no safer adviser about literary work, +especially poetry; no more refined critic. A large heart naturally +accompanies so masculine an understanding. He has the rare capacity +for affection which embraces many friendships without loss of depth +or warmth in one. Most of my literary contemporaries are his +intimate companions, and their jealousies of each other do not +diminish their trust in him. More than any living critic, he has +served to establish reputations. Tennyson and Browning owed him +much in their literary career. Me, I think, he served in that way +less than any of his other friends. But, indeed, I know of no +critic to whom I have been much indebted for any position I hold in +literature. In more private matters I am greatly indebted to his +counsels. His reading is extensive. What faults he has lie on the +surface. He is sometimes bluff to rudeness. But all such faults of +manner (and they are his only ones) are but trifling inequalities +in a nature solid and valuable as a block of gold."</p></div> + +<p>This was written with full experience, as the names of Tennyson and +Browning will remind us, for Bulwer-Lytton was slow to admit the value +of these younger talents. His relations with Tennyson have always been +known to be unfortunate; as they are revealed in Lord Lytton's biography +they approach the incredible. He met Browning at Covent Garden Theatre +during the Macready "revival" of the poetic stage, but it was not until +after the publication of <i>Men and Women</i> that he became conscious of +Browning's claim, which he then very grudgingly admitted. He was +grateful to Browning for his kindness to Robert Lytton in Italy, but he +never understood his genius or his character.</p> + +<p>What, however, we read with no less pleasure than surprise are the +evidences of Bulwer-Lytton's interest in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> certain authors of a later +generation, of whom the general public has never suspected him to have +been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867 +between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew +Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds +it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure +those of his immediate contemporaries. The <i>Essays in Criticism</i> and +<i>The Study of Celtic Literature</i> called forth from the author of <i>My +Novel</i> and <i>The Caxtons</i> such eulogy as had never been spared for the +writings of Thackeray or Carlyle. Matthew Arnold appeared to +Bulwer-Lytton to have "brought together all that is most modern in +sentiment, with all that is most scholastic in thought and language." +Arnold was a guest at Knebworth, and brought the Duke of Genoa with him. +He liked Bulwer-Lytton, and their relations became very cordial and +lasted for some years; Arnold has given an amusing, but very +sympathetic, account of the dignified hospitalities of Knebworth.</p> + +<p>No revelation in Lord Lytton's volumes is, however, more pleasing or +more unexpected than his grandfather's correspondence with Swinburne. It +is thought that he heard of him through Monckton Milnes; at all events, +he was an early reader of <i>Atalanta in Calydon</i>. When, in 1866, all the +furies of the Press fell shrieking on <i>Poems and Ballads</i>, Bulwer-Lytton +took a very generous step. He wrote to Swinburne, expressing his +sympathy and begging him to be calm. The young poet was extremely +touched, and took occasion to beg the elder writer for his advice, the +publisher having, without consulting him, withdrawn his volume from +sale. Bulwer-Lytton's reply was a most cordial invitation to stay with +him at Knebworth and talk the matter over. Swinburne gratefully +accepted, and John Forster was asked to meet him. It was Bulwer-Lytton, +it appears, who found another publisher for the outraged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> volume, and +helped Swinburne out of the scrape. He was always kindness itself if an +appeal was made to his protection, and to his sense of justice. However, +pleasant as the visit to Knebworth was, there is no evidence that it was +repeated. Bulwer-Lytton considered Swinburne's opinions preposterous, +and indeed if he told Swinburne, as in 1869 he told his son Robert, that +Victor Hugo was "but an epileptic dwarf in a state of galvanism," there +must have been wigs on the green at Knebworth.</p> + +<p>The student of the biography, if he is already familiar with the more +characteristic works of Bulwer-Lytton, will find himself for the first +time provided with a key to much that has puzzled him in the nature of +that author. The story itself, apart from the tragic matrimonial trouble +which runs through it like a blood-red cord, is of unusual interest. It +is a story of strife, without repose, without enjoyment, but with a good +deal of splendour and satisfaction. Almost to the end Bulwer-Lytton was +engaged in struggle. As an ambitious social being he was fighting the +world; as an author he was battling with his critics; as a statesman he +was always in the wild storm of party politics. As a private individual +he was all the time keeping his head up against the tide of social +scandal which attacked him when he least expected it, and often +threatened to drown him altogether. This turmoil contrasts with the calm +of the evening years, after the peerage had been won, the ambition +satisfied, the literary reputation secured.</p> + +<p>Few writers have encountered, in their own time and after their death, +so much adverse criticism, and yet have partly survived it. It is hardly +realised, even perhaps by Lord Lytton, how unwilling the reviewers were +to give credit to his grandfather. He never found favour in their eyes, +and it was a matter of constant resentment with him that they did him, +as he thought, injustice. The evidence of his wounded feelings is +constant in his letters.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> The Quarterly Review never mentioned him +without contempt until 1865, when the publication of his works, in +forty-three volumes, forced it to consider this indefatigable and +popular writer with a measure of respect. Sir Walter Scott, with his +universal geniality, read <i>Pelham</i> in 1828 and "found it very +interesting: the light is easy and gentlemanlike, the dark very grand +and sombrous." He asked who was the author, and he tried to interest his +son-in-law in the novel. But Lockhart was implacable: "<i>Pelham</i>," he +replied, "is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I +have not read the book, from disliking the author." Lockhart, however, +did read <i>Devereux</i>, and three years afterwards, when reviewing some +other novel, he said of the historical characters in that romance: "It +seems hard to disquiet so many bright spirits for the sole purpose of +showing that they <i>could</i> be dull." That was the attitude of the higher +criticism to Bulwer-Lytton from, let us say, 1830 to 1860; he was "a +horrid puppy" and he was also "dull."</p> + +<p>But this was far from being the opinion of the reading public. We have +seen that he never failed, and sometimes he soared into the very +empyrean of popularity. In 1834, when he published <i>The Last Days of +Pompeii</i>, again in 1837 when he published <i>Ernest Maltravers</i>, the +ecstasy of his adorers discovered their favourite in a moment under the +mask of anonymity which he chose to assume. This was just before the +outburst of the great school of Victorian novelists; Bulwer had as yet +practically no one but Disraeli to compete with. These two, the author +of <i>Pelham</i> and the author of <i>Vivian Grey</i>, raced neck and neck at the +head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them +forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted +personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm" +was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest +and most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so +shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until +Bulwer-Lytton adopted his <i>Caxtons</i> manner in the middle of the century. +As always in Byronic periods, the portrait of the author himself was +searched for among his most fatal conceptions. To the young library +subscriber the stoical, solitary figure of Mordaunt, in <i>The Disowned</i>, +was exactly what was wanted as a representation of the mysterious +novelist himself. Pelham was the apotheosis of the man of fashion, and +it is amusing to read how, when the Bulwer-Lyttons travelled, they were +gazed at in reverence as the Pelham and the Pelhamess.</p> + +<p>It would be difficult to improve upon the language used so early as 1832 +by one of the very few critics who attempted to do justice to +Bulwer-Lytton's merits. The <i>Edinburgh Review</i> found in him "a style +vigorous and pliable, sometimes strangely incorrect, but often rising +into a touching eloquence." Ten years later such was the private opinion +of D.G. Rossetti, who was "inspired by reading <i>Rienzi</i> and <i>Ernest +Maltravers</i>, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at +Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more +justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one +thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we +must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his +own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful +ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of +Continental history, he made realistic and humorous studies of +middle-class life, he engaged in vehement controversy on topics of the +hour, he prophesied of the order of the future, he wrote comedies and +tragedies, epics and epistles, satires and lyrics. His canvasses were +myriad and he crowded every one of them with figures. At his most +Byronic moment he flung his dark cloak aside, and danced in motley +through <i>Paul</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> <i>Clifford</i>, with its outrageous caricature of George IV. +and his Ministers as a gang of Hounslow highwaymen. Perhaps his best +claim to regard is the insatiability of his human curiosity, evinced in +the almost infinite variety of his compositions.</p> + +<p>The singular being who wrote so large a library of works and whose +actual features have so carefully been concealed from the public, will +be known at last. The piety of his grandson has presented him to us with +no reservations and no false lights. Here he stands, this half-fabulous +being, not sheathed in sham armour and padding the stage in buskins, but +a real personality at length, "with all his weaknesses and faults, his +prejudices, affectations, vanities, susceptibilities, and +eccentricities, and also with all his great qualities of industry, +courage, kindness of heart; sound judgment, patience, and perseverance." +Lord Lytton has carried through to the close a biographical enterprise +of unusual difficulty, and he deserves the thanks of all students of +English literature.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRONTËS<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></h2> + + +<p>Although I possess in no degree the advantage which so many of the +members of your society enjoy in being personally connected with the +scenes and even, perhaps, with the characters associated with the Brontë +family, I cannot begin my little address to you to-day without some +invocation of the genius of the place. We meet at Dewsbury because the +immortal sisters were identified with Dewsbury. Is it then not +imperative that for whatever picture of them I may endeavour to present +before you this afternoon, Dewsbury should form the background? +Unfortunately, however, although in the hands of a skilful painter the +figures of the ladies may glow forth, I fear that in the matter of +taking Dewsbury as the background some vagueness and some darkness are +inevitable. In the biographies of Mrs. Gaskell and of Mr. Clement +Shorter, as well as in the proceedings of your society, I have searched +for evidences of the place Dewsbury took in the lives of the Brontës. +What I find—I expect you to tell me that it is not exhaustive—is this. +Their father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, was curate here from 1809 to +1811. In 1836, when Charlotte was twenty, Miss Wooler transferred her +school from Roe Head to Heald's House at the top of Dewsbury Moor. In +this school, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Charlotte had been a pupil since 1831, she was now a +governess, and a governess she remained until early in 1838. In April of +that year Miss Wooler was taken ill and Charlotte was for a little while +in charge. Then there was an explosion of temper, of some kind, and +Charlotte went back to Haworth.</p> + +<p>That, then, in the main, is the limit of what the scrupulous Muse of +history vouchsafes to tell us about Charlotte Brontë's relation to +Dewsbury. But it also supplies us with one or two phrases which I cannot +bring myself to spare you. In January 1838, Charlotte reviews her +experience at Dewsbury Moor; "I feel," she says, "in nothing better, +nothing humbler nor purer." Again, in 1841, after there had passed time +enough to mellow her exacerbations, she continues to express herself +with vigour. Miss Wooler is making overtures to Charlotte and Emily to +take over the school at Heald's House; perhaps a place might be found +for Anne as well. Miss Wooler, one of the kindest of women, is most +thoughtful, most conciliatory. Charlotte will have none of the idea; she +puts it roughly from her. Of Dewsbury she has nothing to say but that +"it is a poisoned place for me." This is all we know of Charlotte's +relation to Dewsbury, yet nothing, you will tell me, in Froude's phrase, +to what the angels know. Well, I must be frank with you and say that I +am afraid the angels have been inclined to record exceedingly little of +Charlotte Brontë's residence in your inoffensive neighbourhood. I have +to paint a background to my picture, and I find none but the gloomiest +colours. They have to be what the art-critics of the eighteenth century +called "sub-fusc." But it is not the fault of Dewsbury, it is the fault, +or the misfortune, of our remarkable little genius. She was here, in +this wholesome and hospitable vicinity, for several months, during which +time "she felt in nothing better, neither humbler nor purer," and +looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> back upon it, she had to admit that it was "a poisoned place" +to her.</p> + +<p>I cannot help fancying that you will agree with me, that on such an +occasion as the present, and especially when dealing with a group of +writers about whom so much as has been said as about the Brontës, it is +wise not to cover too wide a ground, but to take, and keep to, one +aspect of the subject. Our little excursion into the history seems to +have given us, under the heading "Dewsbury," a rather grim text, from +which, nevertheless, we may perhaps extract some final consolation. Let +me say at the outset that for the grimness, for the harshness, Dewsbury +is not at all to blame. I fancy that if, in the years from 1836 to 1838, +the Brontë girls had been visitors to Kubla Khan, and had been fed on +honey by his myrmidons at Xanadu, that pleasure-dome would yet have been +"poisoned" to them. It was not poverty, and cold, and the disagreeable +position of a governess, it was not the rough landscape of your moors, +nor its lack of southern amenity which made Charlotte wretched here. It +was not in good Miss Wooler, nor in the pupils, nor in the visitors at +Heald's House that the mischief lay, it was in the closed and patient +crater of Charlotte's own bosom. And I am almost persuaded that, if you +had lived in Dewsbury sixty-five years ago, you would have heard on very +quiet days a faint subterranean sound which you would never have been +able to guess was really the passion, furiously panting, shut up in the +heart of a small, pale governess in Heald's House schoolroom.</p> + +<p>If you accuse me of fatalism, I am helpless in your hands, for I confess +I do not see how it could be otherwise, and do scarcely wish that it +could have been. Let us not be too sentimental in this matter. Figures +in literature are notable and valuable to us for what they give us. The +more personal and intense and definite that is, the greater<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the gift, +the more strenuous the toil and the more severe the initiation which +lead to its expression. The Brontës had a certain thing to learn to +give; what that was we shall presently try to note. But whatever we find +it to be, we start with allowing that it was extremely and boldly +original. It was not to be mastered by lying upon padded sofas and +toying with a little Berlin wool-work. It involved pain, resistance, a +stern revision of things hitherto taken for granted. The secrets which +they designed to wring from nature and from life were not likely to be +revealed to the self-indulgent and the dilettante. The sisters had a +message from the sphere of indignation and revolt. In order that they +should learn it as well as teach it, it was necessary that they should +arrive on the scene at an evil hour for their own happiness. <i>Jane Eyre</i> +and <i>Shirley</i> and <i>Villette</i> could not have been written unless, for +long years, the world had been "a poisoned place" for Charlotte Brontë.</p> + +<p>It has been excellently said by Mrs. Humphry Ward that in many respects, +and to the very last, the Brontës challenge no less than they attract +us. This is an aspect which, in the midst of rapturous modern +heroine-worship, we are apt to forget. Thackeray, who respected the +genius of the family, and was immensely kind to the author of <i>Jane +Eyre</i>, never really felt comfortable in her company. We know how he +stole out of his own front-door, and slipped away into the night to +escape her. "A very austere little person," he called her, and we may +put what emphasis on the austerity we will. I feel sure that any +maladroit "white-washing of Charlotte" will tend, sooner or later, +good-natured though it may be, in a failure to comprehend what she +really was, in what her merit consisted, what the element in her was +that, for instance, calls us here together nearly half a century after +she completed her work and passed away. Young persons of genius<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> very +commonly write depressing books; since, the more vivid an unripe +creature's impression of life is, the more acute is its distress. It is +only extremely stupid Sunday-school children who shout in chorus, "We +are so happy, happy, happy!" Genius thrown naked, with exposed nerves, +on a hard indifferent world, is never "happy" at first. Earth is a +"poisoned place" to it, until it has won its way and woven its garments +and discovered its food.</p> + +<p>But in the case of Charlotte Brontë, unhappiness was more than juvenile +fretfulness. All her career was a revolt against conventionality, +against isolation, against irresistible natural forces, such as climate +and ill-health and physical insignificance. Would this insubmissive +spirit have passed out of her writings, as it passed, for instance, out +of those of George Sand? I am not sure, for we see it as strongly, +though more gracefully and skilfully expressed, in <i>Villette</i> as in the +early letters which her biographers have printed. Her hatred of what was +commonplace and narrow and obvious flung her against a wall of +prejudice, which she could not break down. She could only point to it by +her exhausting efforts; she could only invite the generation which +succeeded her to bring their pickaxes to bear upon it. Hence, to the +very last, she seems, more than any other figure in our literature, to +be forever ruffled in temper, for ever angry and wounded and indignant, +rejecting consolation, crouched like a sick animal in the cavern of her +own quenchless pride. This is not an amiable attitude, nor is it +historically true that this was Charlotte Brontë's constant aspect. But +I will venture to say that her amiabilities, her yielding moods, are +really the unessential parts of her disposition, and that a certain +admirable ferocity is the notable feature of her intellectual character.</p> + +<p>Her great heart was always bleeding. Here at Dewsbury, in the years we +are contemplating, the hemorrhage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> was of the most doleful kind, for it +was concealed, suppressed, it was an inward flow. When once she became +an author the pain of her soul was relieved. She said, in 1850, looking +back on the publication of the hapless first volume of poems, "The mere +effort to succeed gave a wonderful zest to existence." Then, a little +later, when no one had paid the slightest attention to the slender trio +of maiden voices, "Something like the chill of despair began to invade +their hearts." With a less powerful inspiration, they must have ceased +to make the effort; they must have succumbed in a melancholy oblivion. +But they were saved by the instinct of a mission. It was not their +private grief which primarily stirred them. What urged them on was the +dim consciousness that they gave voice to a dumb sense of the suffering +of all the world. They had to go on working; they had to pursue their +course, though it might seem sinister or fatal; their business was to +move mankind, not to indulge or please it. They "must be honest; they +must not varnish, soften, or conceal."</p> + +<p>What Charlotte Brontë was learning to do in her grim and, let us admit +it, her unlovely probation on Dewsbury Moor, was to introduce a fresh +aspect of the relations of literature to life. Every great writer has a +new note; hers was—defiance. All the aspects in which life presented +itself to her were distressing, not so much in themselves as in herself. +She rebelled against the outrages of poverty, and she drank to its dregs +the cup of straitened circumstances. She was proud, as proud as Lucifer, +and she was forced into positions which suppleness and cheerfulness +might have made tolerable, if not agreeable. She wrung from these +positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of +this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by +universal report, were generous, genial, and unassuming. To Charlotte<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> +Brontë these kindly, if somewhat commonplace folk, grew to seem what a +Turkish pasha seems to the inhabitants of a Macedonian village. It was +not merely the surroundings of her life—it was life itself, in its +general mundane arrangements, which was intolerable to her. She fretted +in it, she beat her wings against its bars, and she would have done the +same if those bars had been of gold, and if the fruits of paradise had +been pushed to her between them. This, I think, is why the expression of +her anger seems too often disproportionate, and why her irony is so apt +to be preposterous. She was born to resist being caged in any form. Her +defiance was universal, and often it was almost indiscriminate.</p> + +<p>Do not let us presume to blame this insubmission. Still less let us +commit the folly of minimising it. A good cheerful little Charlotte +Brontë, who thought the best of everybody, who gaily took her place +without a grudging sigh, whose first aim was to make those about her +happy and to minister to their illusions, would have been a much more +welcome inmate of Miss Wooler's household than the cantankerous +governess whom nobody could please, whose susceptibilities were always +on edge, whose lonely arrogance made her feared by all but one or two +who timidly persisted in loving her. But such a paragon of the obvious +virtues would have passed as the birds pass and as the flowers. She +would have left no mark behind. She would never have enriched the +literature of England by one of its master-evidences of the force of +human will. She would never have stirred hundreds of thousands of +consciences to a wholesome questioning of fate and their own souls.</p> + +<p>Let us endeavour to pursue the inquiry a few steps further. It is +impossible to separate the ethical conditions of an author's mind from +the work that he produces. The flower requires the soil; it betrays in +its colour and its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> perfume the environment of its root. The moral +constitution of the writer is reflected in the influence of the written +page. This is the incessant contention; on one hand the independence of +art asserts itself; on the other, it is impossible to escape from the +implicit influence of conduct upon art. There have been few writers of +any age in whom this battle raged more fiercely than it did in Charlotte +Brontë. Her books, and those of her sisters, seem anodyne enough to-day; +to readers of a sensitive species they seemed, when they were published, +as dangerous as <i>Werther</i> had been, as seductive as the <i>Nouvelle +Heloïse</i>. The reason of this was, in the main, the spirit of revolt +which inspired them. There was something harsh and glaring in their +landscape; there was that touch of Salvator Rosa which one of their +earliest critics observed in them. But more essential was the +stubbornness, the unflinching determination to revise all accepted +formulas of conduct, to do this or that, not because it was usual to do +it, but because it was rational, and in harmony with human nature.</p> + +<p>Into an age which had become almost exclusively utilitarian, and in +which the exercise of the imagination, in its real forms, was sedulously +discountenanced, Charlotte Brontë introduced passion in the sphere of +prose fiction, as Byron had introduced it in the sphere of verse thirty +years earlier. It was an inestimable gift; it had to come to us, from +Charlotte Brontë or another, to save our literature from a decline into +triviality and pretension. But she suffered, as Byron had suffered, in +the direct ratio of her originality. If a writer employs passion in an +age which has ceased to recognise it as one of the necessities of +literary vitality he is safe to be accused of perverting his readers. +Balzac says, "When nothing else can be charged against an author, the +reproach of immorality is thrown at his head." When we study the record +of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> grim life of the sisters at Haworth, like that of three young +soldiers round a camp-fire with the unseen enemy prowling in the +darkness just out of their sight—when we think of the strenuous vigil, +the intractable and indomitable persistence, the splendour of the +artistic result—we may console ourselves in our anger at the insults +they endured, by reflecting how little they cared. And their noble +indifference to opinion further endears them to us. We may repeat of +them all what Charlotte in a letter once said of Emily, "A certain +harshness in her powerful and peculiar character only makes me cling to +her more."</p> + +<p>This insubmissiveness, which was the unconscious armour given to protect +her against the inevitable attacks of fortune, while, on the other hand, +it was the very sign-manual of Charlotte's genius, was, on the other, a +drawback from which she did not live long enough to emancipate her +nature. It is responsible for her lack of interest in what is delicate +and complex; it excused to herself a narrowness of vision which we are +sometimes tempted to find quite distressing. It is probably the cause of +a fault that never quits her for long, a tendency to make her characters +express themselves with a lyrical extravagance which sometimes comes +close to the confines of rodomontade. Charlotte Brontë never arrives at +that mastery of her material which permits the writer to stand apart +from his work, and sway the reader with successive tides of emotion +while remaining perfectly calm himself. Nor is she one of those whose +visible emotion is nevertheless fugitive, like an odour, and evaporates, +leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. On +the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her +sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with +serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager +spirit, immortal in its active force, seems to throb beside it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> + +<p>The aspect of Charlotte Brontë which I have tried to indicate to you +to-day, and which I have sketched thus hastily and slightly against the +background of her almost voiceless residence in Dewsbury, is far from +being a complete or unique one. I offer it to you only as a single facet +of her wonderful temperament, of the rich spectacle of her talent. I +have ventured to propose it, because, in the multiplication of honours +and attentions, the tendency to deify the human, to remove those +phenomena of irregularity which are the evidence of mortal strength, +grows irresistible, and we find ourselves, unconsciously, substituting a +waxen bust, with azure eyes and golden hair, for the homely features +which (if we could but admit it) so infinitely better match the honest +stories. Let us not busy ourselves to make excuse for our austere little +genius of the moors. Let us be content to take her exactly as she was, +with her rebellion and her narrowness, her angers and her urgencies, +perceiving that she had to be this sorrowful offspring of a poisoned +world in order to clear the wells of feeling for others, and to win from +emancipated generations of free souls the gratitude which is due to a +precursor.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE NOVELS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI</h2> + + +<p>It is not easy for a man whose sovereign ambition is seen to be leading +him with great success in a particular direction to obtain due credit +for what he accomplishes with less manifest success in another. There is +no doubt that Disraeli as an author has, at all events until very +lately, suffered from the splendour of his fame as a politician. But he +was an author long before he became a statesman, and it certainly is a +little curious that even in his youth, although he was always +commercially successful with his books, they were never, as we say, +"taken seriously" by the critics. His earliest novels were largely +bought, and produced a wide sensation, but they were barely accepted as +contributions to literature. If we look back to the current criticism of +those times, we find such a book as <i>Dacre</i>, a romance by the Countess +of Morley, which is now absolutely forgotten, treated with a dignity and +a consideration never accorded to <i>The Young Duke</i> or to <i>Henrietta +Temple</i>. Even Disraeli's satiric squibs, in the manner of Lucian and +Swift, which seem to us among the most durable ornaments of light +literature in the days of William IV., were read and were laughed at, +but were not critically appraised.</p> + +<p>So, too, at the middle period of Disraeli's literary life, such books as +<i>Coningsby</i> and <i>Tancred</i> were looked upon as amusing commentaries on +the progress of a strenuous politician, not by any means, or by any +responsible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> person, as possible minor classics of our language. And at +his third period, the ruling criticism of the hour was aghast at faults +which now entertain us, and was blind to sterling merits which we are +now ready to acknowledge. Shortly after his death, perhaps his most +brilliant apologist was fain to admit that if Disraeli had been +undistinguished as a speaker, his novels would have been "as the flowers +of the field, charming for the day which was passing over them, and then +forgotten." It is only since the beginning of the present century that a +conviction has been gaining ground that some of these books were in +themselves durable, not because they were the work of a man who became +Prime Minister of England and made his sovereign Empress of India, but +as much or as little as if they had been composed by a recluse in a +hermitage. This impression has now become so general with enlightened +critics that the danger seems to be that we should underrate certain +excesses of rhetoric and the Corinthian mode the errors of which used to +be over-emphasised, but should not, in a comparative survey of Victorian +literature, be neglected as serious drawbacks to our perfect enjoyment +of the high-spirited, eloquent, and ardent writings of Benjamin +Disraeli. It is in this spirit of moderation that I now attempt a rapid +sketch of his value as an English author.</p> + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<p>There is, perhaps, no second example of a writer whose work is divided, +as is that of Disraeli, into three totally distinct periods. Other +authors, as for example, the poet Crabbe, and in a less marked degree +Rogers, have abandoned the practice of writing for a considerable number +of years, and then have resumed it. But the case of Disraeli seems to be +unique as that of a man who pursued the writing, of books with great +ardour during three brief and indepen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>dent spaces of time. We have his +first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with <i>Vivian Grey</i> +(1826) and closed with <i>Venetia</i> (1837). We have a second epoch, opening +with <i>Coningsby</i> (1844) and ending with <i>Tancred</i> (1847), during which +time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels +which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. +Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, +but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted +for. It will, therefore, be convenient to treat them successively.</p> + +<p>As oblivion scatters its poppy over the prose fiction of the reigns of +George IV. and William IV., it becomes in creasingly dangerous that +criticism should take the early "fashionable" novels of Disraeli as +solitary representations of literary satire or observation. It is true +that to readers of to-day this class of romance is exclusively +suggestive of <i>Vivian Grey</i> and its fellows, with perhaps the <i>Pelham</i> +of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of +these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary +in their treatment of society. In the course of <i>The Young Duke</i>, +written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances +"written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had +only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as +it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of <i>Tremaine</i> +(1825) and <i>De Vere</i> (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English +gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough. +But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold +the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they +lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the +age.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<p>The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing +years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were +welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books +as <i>Granby</i> and <i>Dacre</i>. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli +belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned. +They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge +flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in +general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a +sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded +innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who +think of <i>Vivian Grey</i> as a work of amazing novelty, to the fact that +the <i>genre</i> it represents to us was one which had been lifted into high +credit the year before by the consecrated success of <i>Tremaine</i>, and was +at that moment cultivated by a multitude of minor novelists.</p> + +<p>There was, however, a distinction, and it lay in the greater fund of +animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. <i>Vivian Grey</i> was +absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the +opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent +young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid +for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to +be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." <i>Vivian +Grey</i> is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli +himself called it "a hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he +had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing +lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has +exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the +impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has +always been a tendency to exalt <i>Vivian Grey</i> at the expense of <i>The</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> +<i>Young Duke</i> (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the +former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in +this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be +supposed. In <i>The Young Duke</i> the manner is not so burlesque, but there +is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and +fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to +our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the +existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron +Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche? +The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is +particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always +hovering between sublimity and a giggle.</p> + +<p>But here is an example, from <i>Vivian Grey</i>, of Disraeli's earliest +manner:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice, +and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke +of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured +views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes, +his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in +his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of +human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which +now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon +his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet! +my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been +imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!'</p> + +<p>"She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head +still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her +off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive +her. But when he tried to lay her a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> moment on the bank, she clung +to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He +leant over her; he did not attempt to disengage her arms; and, by +degrees, by very slow degrees, her grasp loosened. At last her arms +gave way and fell by her side, and her eyes partly opened.</p> + +<p>"'Thank God! Violet, my own, my beloved, say you are better!'</p> + +<p>"She answered not, evidently she did not know him, evidently she +did not see him. A film was on her sight, and her eye was glassy. +He rushed to the water-side, and in a moment he had sprinkled her +temples, now covered with a cold dew. Her pulse beat not, her +circulation seemed suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he +covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the +bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No +one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he +shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no +answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not +leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were +still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her +hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the +warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he +prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting +like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the +screech of an owl!</p> + +<p>"Once more at the river-side, once more bending over her with +starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the +soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have +given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her +position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was +a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite +cold,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> her limbs stiffened. He gazed, and gazed, and gazed. He bent +over her with stupor rather than grief stamped on his features. It +was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind, very +slowly that the horrible truth seized upon his soul. He gave a loud +shriek, and fell on the lifeless body of VIOLET FANE!"</p></div> + +<p>A line in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of <i>Alarcos</i> pathetically +admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli +was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased +should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his +writings. <i>Henrietta Temple</i> is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell +a great consecutive story of passion, and no doubt there have been those +who have palpitated over the love-at-first-sight of Ferdinand Armine and +Henrietta Temple. But Disraeli's serious vein is here over-luscious; the +love-passages are too emphatic and too sweet. An early critic spoke of +this <i>dulcia vitia</i> of style which we meet with even in <i>Contarini +Fleming</i> as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His +attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often +deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine +against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn +who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or +murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy +nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry +us over such marshlands of cold style.</p> + +<p>Of these imperfections, fewer are to be found in <i>Venetia</i> and fewest in +<i>Contarini Fleming</i>. This beautiful romance is by far the best of +Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can +be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is +thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> direct sense an +autobiography, and yet the mental and moral experiences of the author +animate every chapter of it. This novel is written with far more ease +and grace than any previous book of the author's, and Contarini gives a +reason which explains the improvement in his creator's manner when he +remarks: "I wrote with greater facility than before, because my +experience of life was so much increased that I had no difficulty in +making my characters think and act." <i>Contarini Fleming</i> belongs to +1831, when its writer, at the comparatively ripe age of twenty-seven, +had already seen a vast deal of man and of the world of Europe.</p> + +<p>We are not to believe the preposterous account that Contarini-Disraeli +gives of his methods of composition:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"My thoughts, my passion, the rush of my invention, were too quick +for my pen. Page followed page; as a sheet was finished I threw it +on the floor; I was amazed at the rapid and prolific production, +yet I could not stop to wonder. In half a dozen hours I sank back +exhausted, with an aching frame. I rang the bell, ordered some +refreshment, and walked about the room. The wine invigorated me and +warmed up my sinking fancy, which, however, required little fuel. I +set to it again, and it was midnight before I retired to bed."</p></div> + +<p>At this rate we may easily compute that the longest of his novels would +be finished in a week. <i>Contarini Fleming</i> seems to have occupied him +the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him, +exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes, +flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a +matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts of +composition.</p> + +<p>It is to be noted that the whole tone of <i>Contarini</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> <i>Fleming</i> is +intensely literary. The appeal to the intellectual, to the fastidious +reader is incessant. This is an attitude always rare in English fiction, +but at that epoch almost unknown, and its presence in the writings of +Disraeli gives them a cachet. Under all the preposterous conversation, +all the unruly turmoil of description, there runs a strong thread of +entirely sober, political, and philosophical ambition. Disraeli striving +with all his might to be a great poet, of the class of Byron and Goethe, +a poet who is also a great mover and master of men—this is what is +manifest to us throughout <i>Contarini Fleming</i>. It is almost pathetically +manifest, because Disraeli—whatever else he grew to be—never became a +poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over +the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never +persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a +poet.</p> + +<p>A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial +one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his +serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the +mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in +verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain +buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome, +in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had +been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he +had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding +admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who +complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna +insupportable and the <i>naïveté</i> of Christiana mawkish. There are pages +in <i>Alroy</i> that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how +much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been +conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> gravity +of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his +earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired, +especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift.</p> + +<p>But in <i>Contarini Fleming</i> we detect a new flavour, and it is a very +fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with +the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of +reading <i>Zadig</i> and <i>Candide</i> was the completion of the style of +Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth" +which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic <i>contes</i> +of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does +not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a +tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de +Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the +old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the +startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those +which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in +Parliament.</p> + +<p>In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of <i>Contarini +Fleming</i> cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and +Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is +a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with +Alcesté Contarini is plainly borrowed from <i>Epiphsychidion</i>. Disraeli +does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his +voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is +bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through +it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the +extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as <i>Contarini +Fleming</i> are borrowed from no exotic source.</p> + +<p>It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> exercises +over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to +indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's <i>Life +and Letters</i> and the completion of Rogers' <i>Italy</i> with Turner's +paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic +interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city." +Whenever Disraeli reaches Venice his style improves, and if he mourns +over her decay, his spirits rise when he has to describe her +enchantments by moonlight. He reserves his most delicate effects for +Greece and Venice:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A Grecian sunset! The sky is like the neck of a dove! the rocks +and waters are bathed with a violet light. Each moment it changes; +each moment it shifts into more graceful and more gleaming shadows. +And the thin white moon is above all; the thin white moon, followed +by a single star, like a lady by a page."</p></div> + +<p>There are many passages as sumptuous as this in <i>Venetia</i>, the romance +about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in +publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia +is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron +(Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the +indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which +the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord +Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and refined spirits that have +adorned these our latter days" is highly characteristic of Disraeli. The +reception of Lord Cadurcis in the House of Peers and the subsequent riot +in Palace Yard mark, perhaps, the highest point in direct narrative +power which the novelist had yet reached; but <i>Venetia</i> was not liked, +and Disraeli withdrew from literature into public life.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p> + +<h4>II</h4> + +<p>When Disraeli resumed the art of the novelist, he was no longer talking +of what lay outside his experience when he touched on politics. In 1837 +he had entered the House at last, as Member for Maidstone, and although +his enemies roared him down on the first occasion of his rising to +speak, he soon learned how to impose his voice on Parliament. In 1839 +his declaration that "the rights of labour are as sacred as the rights +of property" made him famous, and in 1841 he was one of Sir Robert +Peel's Conservative army in the House. Then followed the formation of +the Young England Party, with Disraeli as one of its leaders; these men +broke away from Peel, and held that the Tory Party required stringent +reform from within. It was in 1843 that Henry Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, +urged, at a meeting of the Young Englanders, the expediency of +Disraeli's "treating in a literary form those views and subjects which +were the matter of their frequent conversations." Disraeli instantly +returned to literary composition, and produced in quick succession the +four books which form the second section of his work as an author; these +are <i>Coningsby</i>, <i>Sybil</i>, <i>Tancred</i>, and the <i>Life of Lord George +Bentinck</i>.</p> + +<p>In this group of books we observe, in the first place, a great advance +in vitality and credibility over the novels of the earlier period. +Disraeli is now describing what he knows, no longer what he hopes in +process of time to know. He writes from within, no longer from without +the world of political action. These three novels and a biography are +curiously like one another in form, and all equally make a claim to be +considered not mere works of entertainment, but serious contributions to +political philosophy. The assumption is borne out by the character of +the books, each of which had a definite aim and purpose.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> <i>Coningsby</i> +was designed to make room for new talent in the Tory Party by an +unflinching attack on the "mediocrities." In <i>Sybil</i> the heartless abuse +of capital and the vices of class distinction are exposed. <i>Tancred</i> is +a vision of better things to follow upon the reforms already indicated. +In <i>Lord George Bentinck</i>, under the guise of a record of the struggle +between Protection and Free Trade, we have a manual of personal conduct +as applied to practical politics.</p> + +<p>In all these works narrative pure and simple inclines to take a +secondary place. It does so least in <i>Coningsby</i> which, as a story, is +the most attractive book of Disraeli's middle period, and one of the +most brilliant studies of political character ever published. The tale +is interspersed with historical essays, which impede its progress but +add to its weight and value. Where, however, the author throws himself +into his narrative, the advance he has made in power, and particularly +in truth of presentment, is very remarkable. In the early group of his +novels he had felt a great difficulty in transcribing conversations so +as to produce a natural and easy effect. He no longer, in <i>Coningsby</i>, +is confronted by this artificiality. His dialogues are now generally +remarkable for their ease and nature. The speeches of Rigby (who +represents John Wilson Croker), of Lord Monmouth (who stands for Lord +Hertford), of the Young Englanders themselves, of the laughable chorus +of Taper and Tadpole, who never "despaired of the Commonwealth," are +often extremely amusing. In <i>Coningsby</i> we have risen out of the +rose-coloured mist of unreality which hung over books like <i>The Young +Duke</i> and <i>Henrietta Temple</i>. The agitated gentleman whose peerage hangs +in the balance, and who on hearing that the Duke of Wellington is with +the King breathes out in a sigh of relief "Then there <i>is</i> a +Providence," is a type of the subsidiary figure which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> Disraeli had now +learned to introduce with infinite lightness of irony.</p> + +<p>Disraeli had a passion for early youth, and in almost all his books he +dwells lovingly upon its characteristics. It is particularly in +<i>Contarini Fleming</i> and in <i>Coningsby</i>—that is to say, in the best +novels of his first and of his second period—that he lingers over the +picture of schoolboy life with tenderness and sympathy. We have only to +compare them, however, to see how great an advance he had made in ten +years in his power of depicting such scenes. The childish dreams of +Contarini are unchecked romance, and though the friendship with Musæus +is drawn with delicacy and insight, and though that is an extremely +pretty scene where Christiana soothes the pride of Contarini, yet a +manliness and a reality are missing which we find in the wonderful Eton +scenes of <i>Coningsby</i>.</p> + +<p>Disraeli's comprehension of the feelings of half-grown ambitious boys of +good family was extraordinary, and when we consider that he had never +been to a public school, his picture of the life and conversation at +Eton is remarkable for its fidelity to nature. The relation of the elder +schoolboys to one another—a theme to which he was fond of recurring—is +treated in a very adroit and natural spirit, not without a certain +Dorian beauty. This preoccupation with the sentiments and passions of +schoolboys was rather crudely found fault with at the time. We need have +no difficulty in comprehending the pleasure he felt in watching the +expansion of those youthful minds from whom he hoped for all that was to +make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at +Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed, +and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour—an act +of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of—is +justified by the dignified success of a very dangerous experiment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<p>The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest +good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the +most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the +caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's +poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as +Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he +was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just +scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might +want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who "might have +acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so +many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely +have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all +the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale +stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the +forest, over the celebrated dish of "still-hissing bacon and eggs that +looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur, +and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli +himself.</p> + +<p>When we pass from <i>Coningsby</i> to <i>Sybil</i> we find the purely narrative +interest considerably reduced in the pursuit of a scheme of political +philosophy. This is of all Disraeli's novels the one which most +resembles a pamphlet on a serious topic. For this reason it has never +been a favourite among his works, and his lighter readers have passed it +over with a glance. <i>Sybil</i>, however, is best not read at all if it is +not carefully studied. In the course of <i>Coningsby</i>, that young hero had +found his way to Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world, +"poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and +feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in +our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the +portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But +it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the +working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract +his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious +and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear +witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied +Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that +he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he +was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers.</p> + +<p>All this is reflected on the surface of <i>Sybil</i>, and, notwithstanding +curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and +true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted +than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard, +the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his +daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell +you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant +answer, "You <i>are</i> a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You +are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town." +This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations +among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave <i>Sybil</i> no +chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the +depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to +produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories, +which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier +simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given +fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of +Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not +blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures +of human suffering in <i>Sybil</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then followed <i>Tancred</i>, which, as it has always been reported, +continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary +offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties +which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he +became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began +to despair of discovering any cure for it. In <i>Tancred</i> he laid aside in +great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book +is steeped in the colours of poetry—of poetry, that is to say, as the +florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens—as all his books love to +open—with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is +commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type +of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a +flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative. +Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely +picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream.</p> + +<p>The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in +<i>Coningsby</i>, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central +theme of the story in <i>Tancred</i>. This novel is inspired by an outspoken +and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its +future. In the presence of the mighty monuments of Jerusalem, Disraeli +forgets that he is a Christian and an ambitious member of the English +Parliament. His only solicitude is to recover his privileges as a Jew, +and to recollect that he stands in the majestic cradle of his race. He +becomes interpenetrated with solemn mysticism; a wind of faith blows in +his hair. He cries, "God never spoke except to an Arab," and we are +therefore not surprised to find an actual Divine message presently +pronounced in Tancred's ears as he stands on the summit of Mount Sinai. +This is, perhaps, the boldest flight of imagination which occurs in the +writings of Disraeli.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> Tancred endeavours to counteract the purely +Hebraic influences of Palestine by making a journey of homage to +Astarte, a mysterious and beautiful Pagan queen—an "Aryan," as he loves +to put it—who reigns in the mountains of Syria. But even she does not +encourage him to put his trust in the progress of Western Europe.</p> + +<p><i>Tancred</i> is written in Disraeli's best middle style, full, sonorous, +daring, and rarely swelling into bombast. It would even be too uniformly +grave if the fantastic character of Facredeen did not relieve the +solemnity of the discourse with his amusing tirades. Like that of all +Disraeli's novels, the close of this one is dim and unsatisfactory. If +there is anything that the patient reader wants to know it is how the +Duke and Duchess of Bellemont behaved to the Lady of Bethany when they +arrived at Jerusalem and found their son in the kiosk under her +palm-tree. But this is curiosity of a class which Disraeli is not +unwilling to awaken, but which he never cares to satisfy. He places the +problems in a heap before us, and he leaves us to untie the knots. It is +a highly characteristic trait of his mind as a writer that he is for +ever preoccupied with the beginnings of things, and as little as +possible with their endings.</p> + +<p>It is not, however, from <i>Tancred</i> but from <i>Coningsby</i>, that we take +our example of Disraeli's second manner:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Even to catch Lord Monmouth's glance was not an easy affair; he +was much occupied on one side by the great lady, on the other were +several gentlemen who occasionally joined in the conversation. But +something must be done.</p> + +<p>"There ran through Coningsby's character, as we have before +mentioned, a vein of simplicity which was not its least charm. It +resulted, no doubt, in a great degree from the earnestness of his +nature. There never was a boy so totally devoid of affectation, +which was remarkable, for he had a brilliant imagination, a quality +that, from its fantasies, and the vague and indefinite desires it +en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>genders, generally makes those whose characters are not formed, +affected. The Duchess, who was a fine judge of character, and who +greatly regarded Coningsby, often mentioned this trait as one +which, combined with his great abilities and acquirements so +unusual at his age, rendered him very interesting. In the present +instance it happened that, while Coningsby was watching his +grandfather, he observed a gentleman advance, make his bow, say and +receive a few words and retire. This little incident, however, made +a momentary diversion in the immediate circle of Lord Monmouth, and +before they could all resume their former talk and fall into their +previous positions, an impulse sent forth Coningsby, who walked up +to Lord Monmouth, and standing before him, said,</p> + +<p>"'How do you do, grandpapa?'</p> + +<p>"Lord Monmouth beheld his grandson. His comprehensive and +penetrating glance took in every point with a flash. There stood +before him one of the handsomest youths he had ever seen, with a +mien as graceful as his countenance was captivating; and his whole +air breathing that freshness and ingenuousness which none so much +appreciates as the used man of the world. And this was his child; +the only one of his blood to whom he had been kind. It would be an +exaggeration to say that Lord Monmouth's heart was touched; but his +good-nature effervesced, and his fine taste was deeply gratified. +He perceived in an instant such a relation might be a valuable +adherent; an irresistible candidate for future elections: a +brilliant tool to work out the Dukedom. All these impressions and +ideas, and many more, passed through the quick brain of Lord +Monmouth ere the sound of Coningsby's words had seemed to cease, +and long before the surrounding guests had recovered from the +surprise which they had occasioned them, and which did not +diminish, when Lord Monmouth, advancing, placed his arms round +Coningsby with a dignity of affection that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> would have become Louis +XIV., and then, in the high manner of the old Court, kissed him on +each cheek.</p> + +<p>"'Welcome to your home,' said Lord Monmouth. 'You have grown a +great deal.'</p> + +<p>"Then Lord Monmouth led the agitated Coningsby to the great lady, +who was a Princess and an Ambassadress, and then, placing his arm +gracefully in that of his grandson, he led him across the room, and +presented him in due form to some royal blood that was his guest, +in the shape of a Russian Grand Duke. His Imperial Highness +received our hero as graciously as the grandson of Lord Monmouth +might expect; but no greeting can be imagined warmer than the one +he received from the lady with whom the Grand Duke was conversing. +She was a dame whose beauty was mature, but still radiant. Her +figure was superb; her dark hair crowned with a tiara of curious +workmanship. Her rounded arm was covered with costly bracelets, but +not a jewel on her finely-formed bust, and the least possible rouge +on her still oval cheek. Madame Colonna retained her charms."</p></div> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<p>Nearly a quarter of a century passed, during which Disraeli slowly rose +to the highest honours in the State. Lord Derby died, and the novelist, +already Leader of the House of Commons, found himself called to be Prime +Minister of England. His first administration, however, was brief, and +in the last days of 1868 he resigned in favour of Mr. Gladstone. The +Liberals were in for five years, and Disraeli, in opposition, found a +sort of tableland stretch in front of him after so much arduous +climbing. It was at this moment, shortly after the resignation of the +Tory Minister, that the publisher of a magazine approached him with the +request that he would write a novel to appear in its pages. He was +offered, it is said, a sum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> of money far in excess of what any one, at +that time, had ever received for "serial rights." Disraeli refused the +offer, but it may have drawn his thoughts back to literature, and in the +course of 1869, after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was +completed, he found time to write what is unquestionably the greatest of +his literary works—the superb ironic romance of <i>Lothair</i>.</p> + +<p>Eminent as he was and eminently successful, Disraeli was far, in 1870, +from having conquered public opinion in England. The reception of his +new novel was noisy, and enjoyed to the full the clamours of +advertisement, but it was not favourable. The critics laughed it to +scorn, and called it a farce and a failure. The <i>Quarterly Review</i>, in +the course of a savage diatribe, declared that it was "as dull as +ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it +as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the +criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as +Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to +kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit +that if the stormy Parliamentarian life Disraeli had led so long had +given him immense personal advantages, it had also developed some +defects. It had taught him boundless independence and courage, it had +given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his +satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had +encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the +bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of <i>Coningsby</i> and +of <i>Tancred</i> he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But +<i>Lothair</i>, even in its corrected form—and the first edition is a +miracle of laxity—is curiously incorrect. It reads as though it were +taken down from the flowing speech of a fine orator, not as though it +were painfully composed in a study; it contains surprising ellipses, +strange freaks of grammar. There was all this, and more,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> to encourage +the critics, whom Disraeli had gone out of his way to affront in a +violent epigram, to attack <i>Lothair</i> with contempt and resentment.</p> + +<p>The critics took irony for timidity; they thought that the sardonic +novelist was the dupe of the splendours which he invented and gloated +over. But if one thing is more evident than another to-day it is that +this gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl +and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an +immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in +another sense, the keynote of <i>Lothair</i> is "mockery blended with Ionian +splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been +more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise +that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life, +and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous, +but he let himself go in <i>Lothair</i>; all is like the dream of a Lorenzo +dei Medicis or an Aurungzebe. Nothing is done by halves. Muriel Towers +was set on "the largest natural lake that inland England boasts"—some +lake far larger than Windermere and entirely unsuspected by geographers. +This piece of water is studded with "green islands," which is natural. +But the author cannot stay his hand: this largest of the English lakes +is also alive with "golden gondolas," which are rarer objects. In one of +the odd little flashes of self-criticism which illuminate the book +Lothair says of a certain northern garden, with its fanes and its +fountains, its glittering statues and its Babylonian terraces, that +there are "perhaps too many temples."</p> + +<p>There are perhaps too many temples in the landscape of <i>Lothair</i>, but +they were put in on purpose. The splendour is part of the satire. When +the hero has ordered an architect to make some plans for a building, the +door opens and servants enter bearing "a large and magnificent portfolio +of morocco, made of prelatial purple with broad bands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> of gold and +alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet." It is the sort of +portfolio that Belshazzar might have used, but no English master-builder +since time began ever launched forth into such splendour. This is +characteristic of Disraeli and of his book; it pleased him to wrap all +his fancies in jewelled cloth of gold. He chose that the world should +consist of nothing but Tudor palaces in colossal parks, and that time +should be no other than a perpetual Holy Week of golden ceremonial. He +knew his public, and that it adored these follies. He spoke to them in +the language that they loved, but in a tone of the most seraphical +disdain and irony.</p> + +<p>What marks the whole of Disraeli's writings more than any other quality +is the buoyant and radiant temperament of their author. In <i>Lothair</i> he +is like an inspired and enfranchised boy, set free from all the trammels +of reality, and yet bringing to the service of his theme the results of +an extraordinary inherited experience. If the picture is not real, we +may take courage to say that it is far better than reality—more rich, +more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly +written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and +when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a +mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is +seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of <i>Lothair</i>, and have become +part of our habitual speech—the phrase about eating "a little fruit on +a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the +gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that +Disraeli is one of those who have felt most vividly and expressed most +gaily the peculiar physical beauty of London. He saw the Park as the +true Londoner sees it—when "the chestnuts are in silver bloom, and the +pink may has flushed the thorns, and banks of sloping turf are radiant +with plots of gorgeous flowers; when the water glitters in the sun, and +the air is fragrant with that spell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> which only can be found in +metropolitan mignonette." He describes as no one else has ever done with +equal mastery a stately and successful house-party in a great country +mansion. He had developed, when he composed <i>Lothair</i>, a fuller sense of +beauty than he had ever possessed before, but it revelled in forms that +were partly artificial and partly fabulous. An example of these forms +may now be welcome:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Giles took an early easy opportunity of apprising Lady +Farringford that she had nearly met Cardinal Grandison at dinner, +and that his Eminence would certainly pay his respects to Mrs. +Putney Giles in the evening. As Lady Farringford was at present a +high ritualist, and had even been talked of as 'going to Rome,' +this intelligence was stunning, and it was observed that her +Ladyship was unusually subdued during the whole of the second +course.</p> + +<p>"On the right of Lothair sate the wife of a Vice-Chancellor, a +quiet and pleasing lady, to whom Lothair, with natural good +breeding, paid snatches of happy attention, when he could for a +moment with propriety withdraw himself from the blaze of +Apollonia's coruscating conversation. Then there was a rather +fierce-looking Red Ribbon, medalled as well as be-starred, and the +Red Ribbon's wife, with a blushing daughter, in spite of her +parentage not yet accustomed to stand fire. A partner and his +unusually numerous family had the pleasure also of seeing Lothair +for the first time, and there were no less than four M.P.'s, one of +whom was even in office.</p> + +<p>"Apollonia was stating to Lothair, with brilliant perspicuity, the +reasons which quite induced her to believe that the Gulf Stream had +changed its course, and the political and social consequences that +might accrue.</p> + +<p>"'The religious sentiment of the Southern races must be wonderfully +affected by a more rigorous climate,' said Apollonia. 'I cannot +doubt,' she continued, 'that a series of severe winters at Rome +might put an end to Romanism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> + +<p>"'But is there any fear that a reciprocal influence might be +exercised on the Northern nations?' inquired Lothair. 'Would there +be any apprehension of our Protestantism becoming proportionately +relaxed?'</p> + +<p>"'Of course not,' said Apollonia. 'Truth cannot be affected by +climate. Truth is truth alike in Palestine and Scandinavia.'</p> + +<p>"'I wonder what the Cardinal would think of this,' said Lothair, +'who, you tell me, is coming to you this evening.'</p> + +<p>"'Yes, I am most interested to see him, though he is the most +puissant of our foes. Of course he would take refuge in sophistry; +and science, you know, they deny.'</p> + +<p>"'Cardinal Grandison is giving some lectures on science,' said the +Vice-Chancellor's lady, quietly.</p> + +<p>"'It is remorse,' said Apollonia. 'Their clever men can never +forget that unfortunate affair of Galileo, and think they can +divert the indignation of the nineteenth century by mock zeal about +red sandstone or the origin of species.'</p> + +<p>"'And are you afraid of the Gulf Stream?' inquired Lothair of his +calmer neighbour.</p> + +<p>"'I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor +and I went down to a place we have near town on Saturday, where +there is a very nice piece of water; indeed, some people call it a +lake; it was quite frozen, and my boys wanted to skate, but that I +would not permit.'</p> + +<p>"'You believe in the Gulf Stream to that extent,' said Lothair; 'no +skating.'</p> + +<p>"The Cardinal came early; the ladies had not long left the +dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even +Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the +inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence with +Caprera.</p> + +<p>"Nothing could exceed the simple suavity with which the Cardinal +appeared, approached, and greeted them. He thanked Apollonia for +her permission to pay his respects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> to her, which he had long +wished to do; and then they were all presented, and he said exactly +the right thing to every one."</p></div> + +<p>Disraeli began his career, as I have pointed out in the earlier part of +this essay, as a purveyor of entertainment to the public in a popular +and not very dignified kind. He contended with the crowd of fashionable +novelists whose books consoled the leisure of Mrs. Wititterly as she +reclined on the drawing-room sofa. He found rivals in Bulwer and Mrs. +Gore, and a master in Plumer Ward. His brilliant stories sold, but at +first they won him little advantage. Slowly, by dint of his inherent +force of genius, his books have not merely survived their innumerable +fellows, but they have come to represent to us the form and character of +a whole school; nay, more, they have come to take the place in our +memories of a school which, but for them, would have utterly passed away +and been forgotten. Disraeli, accordingly, is unique, not merely because +his are the only fashionable novels of the pre-Victorian era which any +one ever reads nowadays, but because in his person that ineffable manner +of the "thirties" reaches an isolated sublimity and finds a permanent +place in literature. But if we take a still wider view of the literary +career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the +interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence +their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do +what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and +Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite +resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices +of convention, and trod English society beneath his foot in the +triumphant irony of success. It is the living Disraeli who is always +more salient than the most fascinating of his printed pages.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> +<h2>THREE EXPERIMENTS IN PORTRAITURE</h2> + + +<h4>I</h4> + +<h3>LADY DOROTHY NEVILL</h3> + +<h4>AN OPEN LETTER</h4> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Dear Lady Burghclere,</p> + +<p>When we met for the first time after the death of our friend, you +desired me to produce what you were kind enough to call "one of my +portraits." But the art of the portrait-writer is capricious, and +at that time I felt wholly disinclined for the adventure. I excused +myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her +reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected, +though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the +evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy were insuperable. +I partly think so still, but your command has lingered in my memory +all these months, and I have determined to attempt to obey you, +although what I send you can be no "portrait," but a few leaves +torn out of a painter-writer's sketch-book.</p> + +<p>The existence of the three published volumes does, after all, not +preclude a more intimate study, because they are confessedly +exterior. They represent what she saw and heard, not what others +perceived in her. In the first place, they are very much better +written than she would have written them herself. I must dwell +presently on the curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> fact that, with all her wit, she +possessed no power of sustained literary expression. Her Memoirs +were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised +writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public. +On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all +the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has +been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better +part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he +extracted these old anecdotes of my early years." This is as +bravely characteristic of her modesty as it is of her candour, but +I think it shows that there is still room for some record of the +more intimate features of her charming and elusive character. I +take up my pencil, but with little hope of success, since no more +formidable task could be set me. I will at least try to be, as she +would have scorned me for not being, sincere.</p> + +<p>My friendship with Lady Dorothy Nevill occupied more than a quarter +of a century. I met her first in the house of Sir Redvers and Lady +Audrey Buller in the winter of 1887, soon after their return from +Ireland. She had done me the great honour of desiring that I should +be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the +zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in +years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked +together on that first occasion for hours, and it seems to me that +I was lifted, without preliminaries, into her intimacy. From that +afternoon, until I drank tea with her for the last time, ten days +before her death, the precious link was never loosened.</p> + +<p>In 1887, her great social popularity had not begun. She was, I now +know, already near sixty, but it never occurred to me to consider +her age. She possessed a curious static quality, a perennial +youthfulness. Every one must have observed how like Watts' picture +of her at twenty she still was at eighty-six. This was not +preserved by any arts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> or fictile graces. She rather affected, +prematurely, the dress and appearance of an elderly woman. I +remember her as always the same, very small and neat, very pretty +with her chiselled nose, the fair oval of her features, the +slightly ironic, slightly meditative smile, the fascinating colour +of the steady eyes, beautifully set in the head, with the eyebrows +rather lifted as in a perpetual amusement of curiosity. Her head, +slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little +sideways, like a bird's that contemplates a hemp-seed. She had no +quick movements, no gestures; she held herself very still. It +always appeared to me that, in face of her indomitable energy and +love of observation, this was an unconscious economy of force. It +gave her a very peculiar aspect; I remember once frivolously saying +to her that she looked as though she were going to "pounce" at me; +but she never pounced. When she had to move, she rose energetically +and moved with determination, but she never wasted a movement. Her +physical strength—and she such a tiny creature—seemed to be +wonderful. She was seldom unwell, although, like most very healthy +people, she bewailed herself with exaggerated lamentations whenever +anything was the matter with her. But even on these occasions she +defied what she called "coddling." Once I found her suffering from +a cold, on a very chilly day, without a fire, and I expostulated. +She replied, with a sort of incongruity very characteristic of her, +"Oh! none of your hot bottles for me!" In her last hours of +consciousness she battled with the doctor's insistence that she +must have a fire in her bedroom, and her children had to conceal +the flame behind screens because she threatened to get out of bed +and put it out. Her marvellous physical force has to be insisted +on, for it was the very basis of her character.</p> + +<p>Her humorous petulance, her little sharp changes of voice, the +malice of her downcast eyes, the calmness of her demure and easy +smile—how is any impression to be given of things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> so fugitive? +Her life, which had not been without its troubles and anxieties, +became one of prolonged and intense enjoyment. I think that this +was the main reason of the delight which her company gave to almost +every one. She was like a household blaze upon a rainy day, one +stretched out one's hands to be warmed. She guarded herself against +the charge of being amiable. "It would be horrid to be amiable," +she used to say, and, indeed, there was always a touch of sharpness +about her. She was amused once because I told her she was like an +acidulated drop, half sweet and half sour. "Oh! any stupid woman +can be sweet," she said, "it's often another name for imbecile."</p> + +<p>She had curious little prejudices and antipathies. I never fathomed +the reason of her fantastic horror of the feasts of the Church, +particularly of Christmas. She always became curiously agitated as +the month of December waned. In her notes she inveighed, in quaint +alarm, against the impending "Christmas pains and penalties." I +think she disliked the disturbance of social arrangements which +these festivals entailed. But there was more than that. She was +certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century +sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly +said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after any project, +even of the most frivolous kind. The idea was that one should be +polite all round, in case of any contingency. When she was in the +Riviera, she was much interested to hear that the Prince of Monaco +had built and endowed a handsome church at Monte Carlo. "Very +clever of him," she said, "for you never can tell."</p> + +<p>Lady Dorothy's entire absence of affectation was eminently +attractive. She would be mistress of herself, though China fell. +Her strange little activities, her needlework, her paperwork, her +collections, were the wonder of everybody, but she did not require +approval; she adopted them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> in the light of day, for her own +amusement. She never pushed her peculiarities on the notice of +visitors, but, at the same time, if discovered in the act of some +incredible industry, she went on with it calmly. When she was in +Heidelberg in 1892 and successive years, what interested her was +the oddity of the students' life; she expatiated to me on their +beer and their sabre-cuts. Whenever I went abroad of late years, I +was exhorted to send her picture post-cards from out-of-the-way +places, and "Remember that I like vulgar ones best," she added +imperturbably. The story is perhaps known to you of how, in a +circle of superfine ladies, the conversation turned to food, and +the company outdid one another in protestations of delicacy. This +one could only touch a little fruit, and that one was practically +confined to a cup of tea. Lady Dorothy, who had remained silent and +detached, was appealed to as to her opinion. In a sort of loud +cackling—a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted—she replied, +"Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of +the <i>précieuses</i>. She had a wholesome respect for food, quite +orthodox and old-fashioned, although I think she ate rather +markedly little. But she liked that little good. She wrote to me +once from Cannes, "This is not an intellectual place, but then the +body rejoices in the cooking, and thanks God for that." She liked +to experiment in foods, and her guests sometimes underwent strange +surprises. One day she persuaded old Lord Wharncliffe, who was a +great friend of hers, to send her a basket of guinea-pig, and she +entertained a very distinguished company on a fricassee of this +unusual game. She refused to say what the dish was until every one +had heartily partaken, and then Mr. George Russell turned suddenly +pale and fled from the room. "Nothing but fancy," remarked the +hostess, composedly. When several years ago there was a proposal +that we should feed upon horse-flesh, and a purveyor of that dainty +opened a shop in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> Mayfair, Lady Dorothy was one of the first of his +customers. She sallied forth in person, followed by a footman with +a basket, and bought a joint in the presence of a jeering populace.</p> + +<p>She had complete courage and absolute tolerance. Sometimes she +pretended to be timid or fanatical, but that was only her fun. Her +toleration and courage would have given her a foremost place among +philanthropists or social reformers, if her tendencies had been +humanitarian. She might have been another Elizabeth Fry, another +Florence Nightingale. But she had no impulse whatever towards +active benevolence, nor any interest in masses of men and women. +And, above all, she was not an actor, but a spectator in life, and +she evaded, often with droll agility, all the efforts which people +made to drag her into propagandas of various kinds. She listened to +what they had to say, and she begged for the particulars of +specially awful examples of the abuses they set out to remedy. She +was all sympathy and interest, and the propagandist started with +this glittering ally in tow; but he turned, and where was she? She +had slipped off, and was in contemplation of some other scheme of +experience.</p> + +<p>She described her life to me, in 1901, as a "treadmill of +friendship, perpetually on the go"; and later she wrote: "I am +hampered by perpetual outbursts of hospitality in every shape." +Life was a spectacle to her, and society a congeries of little +<i>guignols</i>, at all of which she would fain be seated, in a front +stall. If she complained that hospitality "hampered" her, it was +not that it interfered with any occupation or duty, but simply that +she could not eat luncheon at three different houses at once. I +remember being greatly amused when I congratulated her on having +enjoyed some eminent public funeral, by her replying, grudgingly: +"Yes—but I lost another most interesting ceremony through its +being at the same hour." She grum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>bled: "People are tugging me to +go and see things," not from any shyness of the hermit or +reluctance to leave her home, but simply because she would gladly +have yielded to them all. "Such a nuisance one can't be in two +places at once, like a bird!" she remarked to me.</p> + +<p>In this relation, her attitude to country life was droll. After +long indulgence in her amazing social energy in London, she would +suddenly become tired. The phenomenon never ceased to surprise her; +she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this +must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to +Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the +soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss +of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the +future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short +while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, D.N.," would show the +dawn of a return to nature. Then <i>boutades</i> of increasing vehemence +would mark the rising impatience. Sept 12: "How dreadful it is that +the country is so full of ladies." Sept. 15: "I am surrounded by +tall women and short women, all very tiresome." Sept. 20: "So dull +here, except for one pleasant episode of a drunken housemaid." +Sept. 23: "Oh! I am so longing for the flesh-pots of dear dirty old +London"; and then one knew that her return to Charles Street would +not be long delayed. She was very fond indeed of country life, for +a short time, and she was interested in gardens, but she really +preferred streets. "Eridge is such a paradise—especially the +quadrupeds," she once wrote to me from a house in which she found +peculiar happiness. But she liked bipeds best.</p> + +<p>However one may postpone the question, sooner or later it is +necessary to consider the quality of Lady Dorothy Nevill's wit, +since all things converge in her to that. But her wit is so +difficult to define that it is not surprising that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> one avoids, as +long as possible, coming actually to grips with it. We may lay the +foundation of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound +of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality of speech. +The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly +intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of +such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who +enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with +annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did +not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of +solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right +and sane; it was exhilarating to a high degree; it was lighted up +by merriment, and piquancy, and salt; but it was the result of a +kind of magic which needed the wand of the magician; it could not +be reproduced by an imitator. It is very unfortunate, but the fact +has to be faced. When we tell our grandchildren that Lady Dorothy +Nevill was the finest female wit of her age, they will ask us for +examples of her talent, and we shall have very few to give.</p> + +<p>She liked to discuss people better than books or politics or +principles, although she never shrank from these. But it was what +she said about human beings that kept her interlocutors hanging on +her lips. She made extraordinarily searching strictures on persons, +without malice, but without nonsense of any kind. Her own +favourites were treated with reserve in this respect: it was as +though they were put in a pen by themselves, not to be criticised +so long as they remained in favour; and she was not capricious, +was, on the contrary, conspicuously loyal. But they always had the +impression that it was only by special licence that they escaped +the criticism that every one else was subjected to. Lady Dorothy +Nevill was a stringent observer, and no respecter of persons. She +carried a bow, and shot at folly as it flew. But I particularly +wish to insist on the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> that her arrows, though they were +feathered, were not poisoned.</p> + +<p>Light was thrown on the nature of Lady Dorothy's wit by her +correspondence. She could in no accepted sense be called a good +letter-writer, although every now and then brilliantly amusing +phrases occurred in her letters. I doubt whether she ever wrote one +complete epistle; her correspondence consisted of tumultuous, +reckless, sometimes extremely confused and incorrect notes, which, +however, repeated—for those who knew how to interpret her +language—the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with +her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary +value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, +and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was +generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what +stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She once wrote to me: "I +should like to tell you all about it, but alas! old Horace +Walpole's talent has not descended on me." Unfortunately, that was +true; so far as literary expression and the construction of +sentences went, it had not. Her correspondence could never be given +to the world, because it would need to be so much revised and +expanded and smoothed out that it would no longer be hers at all.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, her reckless notes were always delightful to receive, +because they gave the person to whom they were addressed a +reflection of the writer's mood at the moment. They were ardent and +personal, in their torrent of broken sentences, initials, mis-spelt +names and nouns that had dropped their verbs. They were not so good +as her talk, but they were like enough to it to be highly +stimulating and entertaining; and in the course of them phrases +would be struck out, like sparks from flint, which were nearly as +good, and of the very same quality, as the things she used to say. +She wrote her letters on a fantastic variety of strangely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> coloured +paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey, +paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or frilled like +a lace handkerchief, or embossed with forget-me-nots like a child's +valentine. She had tricks of time-saving; always put "I" for "one," +and "x" for "cross," a word which she, who was never cross, loved +to use. "I did not care for any of the guests; we seemed to live in +a storm of x questions and crooked answers," she would write, or "I +am afraid my last letter was rather x."</p> + +<p>Lady Dorothy, as a letter-writer, had no superstitious reverence +for the parts of speech. Like M. Bergeret, she "se moquait de +l'orthographie comme une chose méprisable." The spelling in her +tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the +seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of +her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected +her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering +denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns +and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to +1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most +of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to +him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.," +she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from +"Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she +had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to +recognise the author of <i>English Monastic Life</i>. She would laugh +herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her +about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be +a bright specimen—like you!" When she made arrangements to come to +see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always +wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle.</p> + +<p>One curious observation which the recipient of hundreds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> of her +notes is bound to make, is the remarkable contrast between the +general tone of them and the real disposition of their writer. Lady +Dorothy Nevill in person was placid, indulgent, and calm; she never +raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her +individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the +amused and attentive spectator in the theatre of life. But in her +letters she pretended to be, or supposed herself called upon to +seem, passionate and distracted. They are all twinkling with +humorous or petulant exaggeration. She happens to forget an +engagement, which was of no sort of importance, and this is how she +apologises:—</p> + +<p>"To think that every hour since you said you would come I have +repeated to myself—Gosse at 5, Gosse at 5, and then after all to +go meandering off and leaving you to cuss and swear on the +doorstep, and you will never come again now, really. No punishment +here or hereafter will be too much for me. Lead me to the Red Hill +Asylum, and leave me there."</p> + +<p>This was written nearly twenty years ago, and she was not less +vivacious until the end. Lord Lansdowne tells me of an anonymous +letter which he once received, to which she afterwards pleaded +guilty. A cow used to be kept at the back of Lansdowne House, and +the animal, no doubt feeling lonely, was in the habit of lowing at +all sorts of hours. The letter, which was supposed to voice the +complaint of the neighbours in Charles Street, was couched in the +broadest Wiltshire dialect, and ended with the postscript: "Dang +'un, there 'ee goes again!" As a matter of fact, her letters, about +which she had no species of vanity or self-consciousness, were to +her merely instruments of friendship. There was an odd mingling of +affection and stiffness in them. She marshalled her acquaintances +with them, and almost invariably they were concerned with +arrangements for meeting or explanations of absence. In my own +experience,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> I must add that she made an exception when her friends +were abroad, when she took considerable pains to tell them the +gossip, often in surprising terms. I was once regaled with her +experiences as the neighbour of a famous African magnate, and with +the remark, "Mrs. ——," a London fine lady of repute, "has been +here, and has scraped the whole inside out of Mr. ——, and gone +her way rejoicing." Nor did she spare the correspondent himself:—</p> + +<p>"Old Dr. —— has been here, and tells me he admires you very much; +but I believe he has lost his memory, and he never had good taste +at any time."</p> + +<p>This was not a tribute which self-esteem could hug to its bosom. Of +a very notorious individual she wrote to me:—</p> + +<p>"I thought I should never be introduced to him, and I had to wait +100 years, but everything is possible in the best of worlds, and he +was very satisfactory at last." Satisfactory! No word could be more +characteristic on the pen of Lady Dorothy. To be "satisfactory," +whether you were the President of the French Republic or Lord +Wolseley or the Human Elephant (a pathetic freak in whom she took a +great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her +unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by +Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he +did his job thoroughly. The only entirely unsatisfactory people +were those who were insipid, conventional, and empty. "The first +principle of society should be to extinguish the bores," she once +said. I remember going with her to the Zoo in 1898, and being +struck with a remark which she made, not because it was important, +but because it was characteristic. We were looking at the wolves +which she liked; and then, close by, she noticed some kind of +Indian cow. "What a bore for the wolves to have to live opposite a +cow!" and then, as if talking to herself, "I do hate a ruminant!"</p> + +<p>Her relations to literature, art, and science were specta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>cular +also. She was a sympathetic and friendly onlooker, always on the +side of those things against the Philistines, but not affecting +special knowledge herself. She was something of a virtuoso. She +once said, "I have a passion for reading, but on subjects which +nobody else will touch," and this indicated the independence of her +mind. She read to please herself, and to satisfy her thirst for +experience. When our friendship began, Zola was in the act of +producing the tremendous series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. It +was one of our early themes of conversation. Zola was then an +object of shuddering horror to the ordinary English reader. Lady +Dorothy had already read <i>L'Assommoir</i>, and had not shrunk from it; +so I ventured to tell her of <i>La Terre</i>, which was just appearing. +She wrote to me about it: "I have been reading Zola. He takes the +varnish off rural life, I must say. Oh! these horrid demons of +Frenchmen know how to write. Even the most disgusting things they +know how to describe poetically. I wish Zola could describe +Haslemere with all the shops shut, rain falling, and most of the +inhabitants in their cups." She told me later—for we followed our +Zola to <i>Lourdes</i> and <i>Paris</i>—that some young Oxford prig saw <i>La +Bête Humaine</i> lying on the table at Charles Street, and remarked +that Lady Dorothy could surely not be aware that that was "no book +for a lady." She said, "I told him it was just the book for me!"</p> + +<p>She read Disraeli's novels over again, from time to time, with a +renewal of sentiment. "I am dedicating my leisure hours to +<i>Endymion</i>. What a charm after the beef and mutton of ordinary +novels!" She gradually developed a cult for Swinburne, whom she had +once scorned; in her repentance after his death, she wrote: "I +never hear enough about that genius Swinburne! My heart warms when +I think of him and read his poems." I think she was very much +annoyed that he had never been a visitor at Charles Street. When +Verlaine was in England, to deliver a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> lecture, in 1894, Lady +Dorothy was insistent that, as I was seeing him frequently, I +should bring the author of <i>Parallelement</i> to visit her. She +said—I think under some illusion—"Verlaine is one of my pet +poets, though," she added, "not of this world." I was obliged to +tell her that neither Verlaine's clothes, nor his person, nor his +habits, admitted of his being presented in Mayfair, and that, +indeed, it was difficult to find a little French eating-house in +Soho where he could be at home. She then said: "Why can't you take +me to see him in this eating-house?" I had to explain that of the +alternatives that was really the least possible. She was not +pleased.</p> + +<p>Nor am I pleased with this attempt of mine to draw the features of +our wonderful fairy friend. However I may sharpen the pencil, the +line it makes is still too heavy. I feel that these anecdotes seem +to belie her exquisite refinement, the rapidity and delicacy of her +mental movement. To tell them is like stroking the wings of a moth. +Above all, it is a matter of despair to attempt to define her +emotional nature. Lady Dorothy Nevill was possessed neither of +gravity nor of pathos; she was totally devoid of sentimentality. +This made it easy for a superficial observer to refuse to believe +that the author of so many pungent observations and such apparently +volatile cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in +company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, +and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was +shown, with great fidelity, to those whom she really honoured with +her favour. I do not know whether it would be strictly correct to +say that she had the genius of friendship, because that supposes a +certain initiative and action which were foreign to Lady Dorothy's +habits. But she possessed, to a high degree, the genius of +comradeship. She held the reins very tightly, and she let no one +escape whom she wished to retain. She took immense pains to +preserve her friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>ships, and indeed became, dear creature, a +little bit tyrannical at last. Her notes grew to be excessively +emphatic. She would begin a letter quite cheerfully with "Oh, you +demon!" or complain of "total and terrible neglect of an old +friend; I could fill this sheet of paper with an account of your +misdeeds!" She was ingenious in reproach: "I cannot afford to waste +penny after penny, and no assets forthcoming," or "I have only two +correspondents, and one of them is a traitor; I therefore cease to +write to you for ever!" This might sound formidable, but it was +only one of the constant surprises of her humour, and would be +followed next day by the most placable of notelets.</p> + +<p>Her curiosity with regard to life spread to her benevolences, which +often took somewhat the form of voyages of discovery. Among these +her weekly excursion to the London Hospital, in all weathers and in +every kind of cheap conveyance, was prominent. I have to confess +that I preferred that a visit to her should not be immediately +prefaced by one of these adventures among the "pore dear things" at +the hospital, because that was sure to mean the recital of some +gruesome operation she had heard of, or the details of some almost +equally gruesome cure. She enjoyed the whole experience in a way +which is blank to the professional humanitarian, but I suspect the +"pore dear things" appreciated her listening smile and sympathetic +worldliness much more than they would have done the admonitions of +a more conscious philanthropist.</p> + +<p>And, indeed, in retrospect, it is her kindliness that shines forth. +She followed all that her friends did, everything that happened to +those who were close to them. She liked always to receive the +tribute of what she called my "literary efforts," and was +ruthlessly sharp in observing announcements of them: "Publishing +again, and of course no copy for poor old me," when not a volume +had yet left the binders. She took up absurd little phrases with +delightful <i>camaraderie</i>;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> I have forgotten why at one time she +took to signing herself "Your Koh-i-Noor," and wrote: "If I can +hope to be the Koh-i-Noor of Mrs. Gosse's party, I shall be sure to +come on Monday." One might go on indefinitely reviving these +memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close +on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She +had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the +tone of her persiflage rather excessive; a few hours later came a +second note, which began: "You have made my life happier for me +these last years—you, and Lady Airlie, and dearest Winifred." From +her who never gave way to sentimentality in any form, and who +prided herself on being as rigid as a nut-cracker, this was worth +all the protestations of some more ebullient being. And there, dear +Lady Burghclere, I must leave this poor sketch for such approval as +you can bring yourself to give it.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">Very faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 20em;">EDMUND GOSSE.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>January 1914.</i></span><br /> +</p></div> + + +<h4>II</h4> + +<h3>LORD CROMER AS A MAN OF LETTERS</h3> + +<p>In the obituary notices which attended the death of Lord Cromer, it was +necessary and proper that almost the whole space at the command of the +writers should be taken up by a sketch of his magnificent work as an +administrator, or, as the cant phrase goes, "an empire-builder." For +thirty years, during which time he advanced to be one of the most +powerful and efficient of proconsuls, he held a place in the political +world which arrested the popular imagination, and must continue to +outweigh all other aspects of his character. Of this side of Lord +Cromer's splendid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> career I am not competent to say a word. But there +was another facet of it, one more private and individual, which became +prominent after his retirement, I mean his intellectual and literary +activity, which I had the privilege of observing. It would be a pity, +perhaps, to let this be wholly submerged, and I propose to give, from my +own recollection, some features of it. Lord Cromer was the author of six +or seven published volumes, but these are before the public, and it is +needless to speak much about them. What may be found more interesting +are a few impressions of his attitude towards books and towards ideas.</p> + +<p>On the first occasion on which I met him, he was characteristic. It was +some fifteen years ago, at the time when the brilliant young politicians +who called themselves (or were rather ineptly called) the Hooligans had +the graceful habit of asking some of their elders to dine with them in a +private room of the House of Commons. At one of these little dinners the +only guests were Lord Cromer and myself. I had never seen him before, +and I regarded him with some awe and apprehension, but no words had +passed between us, when the division-bell rang, and our youthful hosts +darted from the room.</p> + +<p>The moment we were left alone, Lord Cromer looked across the deserted +tablecloth and said quietly, as though he were asking me to pass the +salt, "Where is Bipontium?" I was driven by sheer fright into an +exercise of intelligence, and answered at once, "I should think it must +be the Latin for Zweibrücken. Why?" "Oh! I saw this afternoon that my +edition of Diodorus Siculus was printed <i>ex typographia societatis +Bipontinæ</i>, and I couldn't imagine for the life of me what 'Bipontium' +was. No doubt you're quite right." Nothing could be more characteristic +of Lord Cromer's habit of mind than this sudden revulsion of ideas. His +active brain needed no preparation to turn from subject to subject, but +seemed to be always ready, at a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> moment's notice, to take up a fresh +line of thought with ardour. What it could not endure was to be left +stranded with no theme on which to expatiate. In succeeding years, when +it was often my daily enjoyment to listen to Lord Cromer's desultory +conversation, as it leaped from subject to subject, I often thought of +the alarming way in which "Bipontium" had pounced upon me at the +dinner-table in the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>Some years passed before I had the privilege of renewing my experience +of that evening. It was not until after his retirement from Egypt in the +autumn of 1907 that I saw him again, and not then for some months. He +returned, it will be remembered, in broken health. He used to say that +when King Edward VII. wrote out to Cairo, strongly pressing him to stay, +he had replied, in the words of Herodotus, "I am too old, oh King, and +too inactive; so bid thou one of the younger men here to do these +things." He very soon, however, recovered elasticity of mind and body +when the load of office was removed from his shoulders, and "inactive" +was the last epithet which could ever be applied to Lord Cromer. He +began to attend the House of Lords, but, like a wise man, he was in no +hurry to speak there till he had grown accustomed to the tone of the +place. His earliest utterance (I may note the date, February 6th, 1908) +we listened to with equal respect and curiosity; this was a new element +from which much enjoyment might be expected.</p> + +<p>This maiden speech was not long, but it produced a very happy +impression. The subject was the Anglo-Russian Convention, of which the +orator cordially approved, and I recall that a certain sensation was +caused by Lord Cromer's dwelling on the dangers of the Pan-Islamite +intrigues in Egypt. This is the sort of thing that the House of Lords +enjoys—a man of special knowledge speaking, almost confidentially, of +matters within his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> professional competency. During that year and the +next Lord Cromer spoke with increasing frequency. There were great +differences of opinion with regard to his efficiency in Parliament. I +may acknowledge that I was not an unmeasured admirer of his oratory. +When he rose from his seat on the Cross-bench, and advanced towards the +table, with a fine gesture of his leonine head, sympathy was always +mingled with respect. His independence and his honesty were patent, and +his slight air of authority satisfactory. His public voice was not +unpleasing, but when he was tired it became a little veiled, and he had +the sad trick of dropping it at the end of his sentences. I confess that +I sometimes found it difficult to follow what he was saying, and I do +not think that he understood how to fill a large space with his voice. +He spoke as a man accustomed to wind up the debates of a council sitting +round a table, rather than as a senator addressing the benches of +Parliament.</p> + +<p>He was interested in the art of eloquence, and fond of criticising in +private the methods of other speakers. He had a poor opinion of much +studied oratory, and used to declare that no one had ever convinced him +by merely felicitous diction. Perhaps he did not sufficiently realise +that his own strength of purpose offered rather a granitic surface to +persuasion. But no doubt he was right in saying that, coming as he did +from the florid East, he found English eloquence more plain and +businesslike than he left it. He used to declare that he never spoke +impromptu if he could possibly help doing so, and he made great fun of +the statesmen who say, "Little did I think when I came down to this +House to-day that I should be called upon to speak," and then pour out +by heart a Corinthian discourse. Lord Cromer always openly and frankly +prepared his speeches, and I have seen him entranced in the process. As +he always had a classical reference for everything he did, he was in the +habit of mentioning that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> Demosthenes also was unwilling to "put his +faculty at the mercy of Fortune."</p> + +<p>He became an habitual attendant at the House of Lords, and, while it was +sitting, he usually appeared in the Library about an hour before the +House met. He took a very lively interest in what was going on, +examining new books, and making a thousand suggestions. If the Lords' +Library contains to-day one of the most complete collections of Latin +and Greek literature in the country, this is largely due to the zeal of +Lord Cromer, who was always egging me on to the purchase of fresh +rarities. He was indefatigable in kindness, sending me booksellers' +catalogues in which curious texts were recorded, and scouring even Paris +and Leipzig in our behalf. When I entered into this sport so heartily as +to provide the Greek and Latin Fathers also for their Lordships, Lord +Cromer became unsympathetic. He had no interest whatever in Origen or +Tertullian, and I think it rather annoyed him to recall that several of +these oracles of the early Church had written in Greek. Nothing in +history or philosophy or poetry which the ancient world had handed down +to us came amiss to Lord Cromer, but I think he considered it rather +impertinent of the Fathers to have presumed to use the language of +Attica. He had not an ecclesiastical mind.</p> + +<p>Lord Cromer's familiar preoccupation with the classics was a point in +his mental habits which deserves particular attention. I have always +supposed that he inherited it from his mother, the Hon. Mrs. Baring, who +was a Windham. She was a woman of learning; and she is said to have +discomfited Sir William Harcourt at a dinner-table by quoting Lucan in +direct disproof of a statement about the Druids which he had been rash +enough to advance. She sang the odes of Anacreon to her son in his +infancy, and we may conjecture that she sowed in his bosom the seeds of +his love of antiquity. Lord Cromer made no pretension to be what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> is +called an "exact" scholar, but I think it is a mistake to say, as has +been alleged, that he did not take up the study of Latin and Greek until +middle life. It is true that he enjoyed no species of university +training, but passed from Woolwich straight into the diplomatic service. +In 1861, at the age of twenty, he was appointed A.D.C. to Sir Henry +Storks in the Ionian Islands, and I believe that one of the first things +he did was to look about for an instructor in ancient Greek. He found +one in a certain Levantine in Corfu, whose name was Romano, and their +studies opened with the odes of Anacreon. Whether this was a +coincidence, or a compliment to Mrs. Baring, I do not know. This is a +rather different account from what Lord Cromer gave in the preface to +his <i>Paraphrases</i>, but I report it on his own later authority.</p> + +<p>If his scholarship was not professorial, it was at least founded upon a +genuine and enduring love of the ancient world. I suppose that for fifty +years, after the episode in Corfu, however busy he was, however immersed +in Imperial policy, he rarely spent a day without some communing with +antiquity. He read Latin, and still more Greek, not in the spirit of a +pedant or a pedagogue, but genuinely for pleasure and refreshment. He +had no vanity about it, and if he had any doubt as to the meaning of a +passage he would "consult the crib," as he used to say. We may +conjecture further that he did not allow his curiosity to be balked by +the barrier of a hopelessly obscure passage, but leaped over it, and +went on. He always came back to Homer, whom he loved more than any other +writer of the world, and particularly to the <i>Iliad</i>, which I think he +knew nearly by heart. But he did not, as some pundits consider dignified +and necessary, confine himself to the reading of the principal classics +in order to preserve a pure taste. On the contrary, Lord Cromer, +especially towards the close of his life, pushed up into all the byways +of the Silver Age.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> As he invariably talked about the books he happened +to be reading, it was easy to trace his footsteps. Eight or nine years +ago he had a sudden passion for Empedocles, whose fragments he had found +collected and translated by Mr. Leonard, an American. Lord Cromer used +to march into the Library, and greet me by calling out, "Do you know? +Empedocles says" something or other, probably some parallelism with a +modern phrase, the detection of which always particularly amused Lord +Cromer.</p> + +<p>In 1908 he took a fancy to Theognis, whose works I procured for him at +the House of Lords, since he happened not to possess that writer at 36 +Wimpole Street. He would settle himself in an armchair in the +smoking-room, his eyes close to the book, and plunge into those dark +waters of the gnomic elegist. He loved maxims and the expression of +principles, and above all, as I have said, the discovery of identities +of thought between the modern and the ancient world. He was delighted +when he found in Theognis the proverb about having an ox on the tongue. +I suppose this was quite well known to the learned, but the charm of the +matter for Lord Cromer was that he was not deterred by any fear of +academic criticism, and found out these things for himself. He read +Theognis as other people read Rudyard Kipling, for stimulus and +pleasure. He swept merely "scholarly" questions aside. He read his +<i>Iliad</i> like a love-letter, but he was bored to death by discussions +about the authorship of the Homeric epics.</p> + +<p>In one matter, the serene good sense which was so prominently +characteristic of Lord Cromer tinged his attitude towards the classics. +He was not at all like Thomas Love Peacock, who entreated his friends to +desist from mentioning anything that had happened in the world for the +last 2,000 years. On the contrary, Lord Cromer was always bent on +binding the old and the new together. It was very noticeable in his +conversation that he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> fond of setting classic instances side by side +with modern ones. If books dealt with this parallelism, they exercised a +charm over Lord Cramer's imagination which may sometimes have led him a +little astray about their positive value. I recall a moment when he was +completely under the sway of M. Ferrero's <i>Greatness and Decline of +Rome</i>, largely because of the pertinacity with which the Italian +historian compares Roman institutions with modern social arrangements. +It was interesting to the great retired proconsul to discover that +Augustus "considered that in the majority of cases subject peoples had +to be governed through their own national institutions." It is scarcely +necessary to point out that these analogies form the basis of what is, +perhaps, Lord Cromer's most important late essay, his <i>Ancient and +Modern Imperialism</i>.</p> + +<p>In a practical administration of India and Egypt, those oceans of +unplumbed antiquity, the ordinary British official has neither time nor +taste to do more than skim the surface of momentary experience. But Lord +Cromer had always been acutely aware of the mystery of the East, and +always looked back into the past with deep curiosity. Sometimes the +modern life in Egypt, exciting as it was, almost seemed to him a +phantasmagoria dancing across the real world of Rameses. This tendency +of thought coloured one branch of his reading; he could not bear to miss +a book which threw any light on the social and political manners of +antiquity. Works like Fowler's <i>Social Life at Rome</i> or Marquardt's <i>Le +Culte chez les Romains</i> thrilled him with excitement and animated his +conversation for days. He wanted, above all things, to realise how the +ancients lived and what, feelings actuated their behaviour. On one +occasion, in a fit of gaiety, I ventured to tell him that he reminded me +of Mrs. Blimber (in <i>Dombey and Son</i>), who could have died contented had +she visited Cicero in his retirement at beautiful Tusculum. "Well!" +replied Lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> Cromer, laughing, "and a very delightful visit that would +be."</p> + +<p>In the admirable appreciation contributed to the <i>Times</i> by "C." (our +other proconsular "C."!) it was remarked that the "quality of mental +balance is visible in all that Lord Cromer wrote, whether, in his +official despatches, his published books, or his private +correspondence." It was audible, too, in his delightful conversation, +which was vivid, active, and yet never oppressive. He spoke with the +firm accent of one accustomed to govern, but never dictatorially. His +voice was a very agreeable one, supple and various in its tones, neither +loud nor low. Although he had formed the life-long habit of expressing +his opinions with directness, he never imposed them unfairly, or took +advantage of his authority. On the contrary, there was something +extremely winning in his eagerness to hear the reply of his +interlocutor. "Well, there's a great deal in that," he would graciously +and cordially say, and proceed to give the opposing statement what +benefit he thought it deserved. He could be very trenchant, but I do not +think that any one whom he had advanced to the privilege of his +confidence can remember that he was so to a friend.</p> + +<p>The attitude of Lord Cromer to life and letters—I speak, of course, +only of what I saw in the years of his retirement from office—was not +exactly representative of our own or even of the last century. He would +have been at home in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, +before the French Revolution. I judge him to have been born with an +inflexible and commanding character, which in the person of many men +exposed to such dangerous successes as he enjoyed might have degenerated +into tyranny. On Lord Cromer, on the other hand, time produced a +humanising and mellowing effect. It may very well prove that he has +stamped his mark on the East of the twentieth century, as Turgot did his +on the West of the nineteenth century;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> but without straying into the +perilous fields of prophecy we are safe in recording the impression that +Lord Cromer was not altogether a man of to-day; he looked forward and he +looked backward. Probably the nearest counterpart to his manner of mind +and conversation may be found in the circle of whom we read in the +<i>Diary</i> of Fanny Burney. We can conceive Lord Cromer leaning against the +Committee Box in earnest conversation with Mr. Windham and Mr. Burke at +Warren Hastings' trial. We can restore the half-disdainful gesture with +which he would drop an epigram ("from the Greek") into the Bath Easton +Vase. His politeness and precision, his classical quotations, his +humour, his predilections in literature and art, were those of the inner +circle of Whigs nearly a century and a half ago, and I imagine that +their talk was very much like his.</p> + +<p>He was fond of repeating Bagehot's description of the Whigs, and it +seems to me to apply so exactly to himself that I will quote part of +it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Perhaps as long as there has been a political history in this +country there have been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute +firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little prone to +enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and +speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of +the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong conviction +that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief that +the present would, can, and should be quietly improved."</p></div> + +<p>In a full analysis of Lord Cromer's character, I think that every clause +of this description might be expanded with illustrations. In the +intellectual domain, Bagehot's words, "little prone to enthusiastic +sentiment," seem made to fit Lord Cromer's detachment from all the +tendencies of romanticism. His literary tastes were highly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> developed +and eagerly indulged, but they were all in their essence +pre-Revolutionary. Those who are familiar with a book once famous, the +<i>Diary of a Lover of Literature</i> of Thomas Green, written down to the +very end of the eighteenth century, have in their hands a volume in +which the very accents of Lord Cromer may seem to be heard. Isaac +d'Israeli said that Green had humbled all modern authors in the dust; +Lord Cromer had a short way with many of the writers most fashionable at +this moment. When he was most occupied with the resuscitations of +ancient manners, of which I have already spoken, I found to my surprise +that he had never read <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>. I recommended it to him, +and with his usual instant response to suggestion, he got it at once and +began reading it. But I could not persuade him to share my enthusiasm, +and, what was not like him, he did not read <i>Marius</i> to the end. The +richness and complication of Pater's style annoyed him. He liked prose +to be clear and stately; he liked it, in English, to be Addisonian. Even +Gibbon-though he read <i>The Decline and Fall</i> over again, very carefully, +so late as 1913—was not entirely to his taste. He enjoyed the limpidity +and the irony, but the sustained roll of Gibbon's antitheses vexed him a +little. He liked prose to be quite simple.</p> + +<p>In many ways, Lord Cromer, during those long and desultory conversations +about literature which will be so perennial a delight to look back upon, +betrayed his constitutional detestation of the Romantic attitude. He +believed himself to be perfectly catholic in his tastes, and resented +the charge of prejudice. But he was, in fact, irritated by the excesses +and obscurities of much that is fashionable to-day in the world of +letters, and he refused his tribute of incense to several popular idols. +He thought that, during the course of the nineteenth century, German +influences had seriously perturbed the balance of taste in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> Europe. I do +not know that Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or +that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was +very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always +found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical +order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as +he should not be drawn to the pathetic figure of Pascal, but he was +puzzled by him. He described him as "manifestly a man full of contrasts, +difficult to understand, and as many-sided as Odysseus." On another +occasion, losing patience with Pascal, he called him "a half-lunatic man +of genius." Fénélon annoyed him still more; the spiritual experiences of +the Archbishop of Cambrai he found "almost incomprehensible." His +surprising, but after all perfectly consistent, comment on both Fénélon +and Pascal was, "How much more easy Buffon is to understand!"</p> + +<p>He recommended all young men who intend to take a part in politics +carefully to study pre-Revolutionary history, and one of his objections +to the romantic literature of Rousseau downwards was that it did not +help such study. It was too individualistic in its direction. It tended, +moreover, Lord Cromer thought, to disturb the balance of judgment, that +"level-headedness" which he valued so highly, and had exercised with +such magnificent authority. He disliked the idea that genius involved a +lack of sanity, or, in other words, of self-command. He regretted that +Dryden had given general currency to this idea by his famous lines in +<i>Absalom and Achitophel</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thin partitions do their bounds divide;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but Lord Cromer was himself, perhaps, too ready to account by insanity +for every odd or confused expression in literature. He had nothing to +say about Mazzini, whom he swept aside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> impatiently, except that he "was +a semi-lunatic," and I have heard him declare of Chatterton and +Verlaine—a strange couple—that they were a pair of madmen. He objected +violently to Baudelaire, but I think he knew very little about that +poet's works.</p> + +<p>If I mention these things, it is because they seem to be necessary to +give human character to any sketch of the mind of Lord Cromer. He +himself hated mere eulogy, which he said had ruined most of the +biographies of the world. The official lives of Disraeli and Gladstone +did not escape a measure of his blame in this respect, and it will be +recalled that resentment against what he thought a shadowless portrait +led to his own very vivacious paper on Disraeli, which he afterwards +issued as a pamphlet. He was an avid reader of memoirs, and of political +memoirs in particular, but he almost always passed upon them the same +criticism—that they were too <i>public</i>. "I don't want Mr. ——," he +would say, "to tell me what I can learn for myself by turning up the +file of the <i>Morning Post</i>. I want him to tell me what I can't find out +elsewhere. And he need not be so very much afraid of hinting that his +hero had faults, for if he had not had defects we should never have +heard of his qualities. We are none of us perfect, and we don't want a +priggish biographer to pretend that we are." He was speaking here mainly +of political matters; but Lord Cromer's training and experience had a +strong bearing on his literary tastes. With him politics reacted on +literature, although he liked to fancy that he kept them wholly apart.</p> + +<p>No doubt a selection from his correspondence will one day be given to +the world, for he was a vivid, copious, and daring letter-writer. I +suppose that he wrote to each of his friends mainly on the subject which +absorbed that friend most, and as his own range of sympathies and +interests was very wide, it is probable that his letters will prove +excellent general reading. As in so many other of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> the departments of +life, Lord Cromer did not think letter-writing a matter to be lightly +regarded or approached without responsibility. He said:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There are two habits which I have contracted, and which I have +endeavoured to pass on to my children, as I have found them useful. +One is to shut the door after me when I leave the room, and the +other is always to affix the day of the month and the year to every +document, however unimportant, that I sign. I have received numbers +of letters, not only from women, one of whose numerous privileges +it is to be vague, but also from men in high official positions, +dated with the day of the week only. When the document is +important, such a proceeding is a fraud on posterity."</p></div> + +<p>He often, both in conversation and in letters, took up one of his +favourite classic tags, and wove a shrewd modern reflection round it. +For instance, a couple of years before the war, a phrase of Aristotle +recommending a ruthless egotism in the conduct of war, led him to say:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think that at times almost every modern nation has acted on this +principle, though they gloss it over with fine words. Its principal +exponents of late have unquestionably been the Hohenzollerns."</p></div> + +<p>And, in connection with the axiom of Thucydides that war educates +through violence, he wrote, about the same time:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Germans, who, in spite of their culture, preserve a strain of +barbarism in their characters, are the modern representatives of +this view. There is just this amount of truth in it—that at the +cost of undue and appalling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> sacrifices, war brings out certain +fine qualities in individuals, and sometimes in nations."</p></div> + +<p>This may, surely, be taken as a direct prophecy of the magnificent +effort of France. Lord Cromer's reflections, thrown off in the warmth of +personal contact, often had a pregnant directness. For instance, how +good this is:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The prejudice against the Bœotians was probably in a large +measure due to the fact that, as the late Lord Salisbury might have +said, they 'put their money on the wrong horse' during the Persian +war. So also, it may be observed, did the oracle at Delphi."</p></div> + +<p>Lord Cromer's public speeches and published writings scarcely give a +hint of his humour, which was lambent and sometimes almost boyish. He +loved to be amused, and he repaid his entertainer by being amusing. I +suppose that after his return from Cairo he allowed this feature of his +character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked +upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was +not the man, we may be sure, to be funny with a Young Turk, or to crack +needless jokes with a recalcitrant Khedive. But retirement softened him, +and the real nature of Lord Cromer, with its elements of geniality and +sportiveness, came into full play.</p> + +<p>Eight years ago, I regret to admit, Mr. Lloyd George was not the +universal favourite in the House of Lords that he has since become. Lord +Cromer was one of those who were not entirely reconciled to the +financial projects of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. He compared +the Chancellor with Pescennius Niger,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"who aspired to be Emperor after the death of Pertinax, and was +already Governor of Syria. On being asked by the inhabitants of +that province to diminish the land tax,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> he replied that, so far as +he was concerned, not only would he effect no diminution, but he +regretted that he could not tax the air which they breathed."</p></div> + +<p>The strained relations between Mr. Lloyd George and the House of Lords +inspired Lord Cromer with a really delightful parallel from Dryden's +<i>Absalom and Achitophel</i> (which, by the way, was one of his favourite +poems):—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thus, worn or weakened, well or ill content,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Submit they must to DAVID'S government;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Impoverished and deprived of all command,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their taxes doubled as they lost their land;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And—what was harder yet to flesh and blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When he pointed this out to me, I entreated him to introduce it into a +speech on the Budget. But he said that he was not sure of his audience, +and then it was most painful to an orator to make a literary reference +which was not taken up. Once at Sheffield, when he was urging the +necessity of a strong Navy upon a large public meeting, he quoted +Swinburne's splendid lines:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All our past comes wailing in the wind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all our future thunders on the sea,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>without producing any effect at all. But the House of Lords is not an +illiterate audience, and I recollect that on one occasion, when Lord +Cromer himself was speaking on preferential treatment for the Colonies, +and quoted Prior:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Euphemia (that is Preference) serves to grace my measure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But Chloe (that is Protection) is my real flame,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the Peers received the couplet with hilarious appreciation.</p> + +<p>He was very entertaining about the oddities of his life in the East, and +his stories were numberless. One was of a petition which he once +received from a young Egyptian with a grievance, which opened with these +words:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"O Hell! Lordship's face grow red when he hear quite ghastly +behaviour of Public Works Department towards our humble servant."</p></div> + +<p>He used to repeat these things with an inimitable chuckle of enjoyment.</p> + +<p>We have been told that he who blows through bronze may breathe through +silver. The severe preoccupations of Lord Cromer's public life did not +prevent him from sedulously cultivating the art of verse. In 1903, +before his retirement from Egypt, he published a volume of <i>Paraphrases +and Translations from the Greek</i>, in the preparation or selection of +which I believe that he enjoyed the advice of Mr. Mackail. It was rather +unlucky that, with a view to propitiate the angry critics, Lord Cromer +prefixed to this little book a preface needlessly modest. He had no +cause to apologise so deeply for exercises which were both elegant and +learned. It is a curious fact that, in this collection of paraphrases, +the translator did not touch the Attic authors whom he knew so well—he +used to copy out pages of Æschylus and Sophocles in his loose Greek +script, with notes of his own—but dealt entirely with lyric and +epigrammatic poets of the Alexandrian age. Perhaps it seemed to him less +daring to touch them than to affront Æschylus. He was not quite sure +about these verses of his; he liked them, and then he was afraid that +they were unworthy of the original. Out in Cairo it was so difficult, he +said, to get a critical opinion.</p> + +<p>Among his unpublished translations there is one, from a fragment of +Euripides, which should not be lost, if only because Lord Cromer himself +liked it better than any other of his versions. It runs:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I learn what may be taught;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I seek what may be sought;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My other wants I dare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To ask from Heaven in prayer."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>Of his satirical <i>vers-de-société</i>, which it amused him to distribute in +private, he never, I believe, gave any to the world, but they deserve +preservation. Some serious reflections on the advantages of the British +occupation of Egypt close with the quotation:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let them suffice for Britain's need—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No nobler prize was ever won—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blessings of a people freed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The consciousness of duty done."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These were, in a high degree, the rewards of Lord Cromer himself.</p> + +<p>After his settlement in London, Mr. T.E. Page sent him a book, called +<i>Between Whiles</i>, of English verse translated into Latin and Greek. Lord +Cromer was delighted with this, and the desire to write in metre +returned to him. He used to send his friends, in letters, little +triolets and epigrams, generally in English, but sometimes in Greek. But +he was more ambitious than this. So lately as February 1911, during the +course of one of our long conversations upon literature, he asked me to +suggest a task of translation on which he could engage. It was just the +moment when he was particularly busy with Constitutional Free Trade and +Woman Suffrage and other public topics, but that made no difference. It +had always seemed to me that he had been most happy in his versions of +the Bucolic poets, and so I urged him to continue his translations by +attempting the <i>Europa</i> of Moschus. He looked at it, and pronounced it +unattractive. I was therefore not a little surprised to receive a +letter, on March 25th, in which he said:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Not sleeping very well last night, I composed in my head these few +lines merely as a specimen to begin <i>Europa</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"When dawn is nigh, at the third watch of night,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">What time, more sweet than honey of the bee,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> +<span class="i4">Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To lift the veil which hides futurity,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Pictured the direful clash of horrid war,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And she, Europa, was the victor's prize."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"They are, of course, only a first attempt, and I do not think much +of them myself. But do you think the sort of style and metre +suitable?"</p></div> + +<p>He went steadily on till he completed the poem, and on April 27th I +received a packet endorsed "Patched-up Moschus returned herewith." So +far as I know, this version of the <i>Europa</i>, conducted with great spirit +in his seventieth year, has never been published. It is the longest and +most ambitious of all his poetical experiments.</p> + +<p>Lord Cromer was fond of saying that he considered the main beauty of +Greek poetry to reside in its simplicity. In all his verses he aimed at +limpidity and ease. He praised the Greek poets for not rhapsodising +about the beauties of nature, and this was very characteristic of his +own eighteenth-century habit of mind. His general attitude to poetry, +which he read incessantly and in four languages, was a little difficult +to define. He was ready to give lists of his life-long prime favourites, +and, as was very natural, these differed from time to time. But one list +of the books he had "read more frequently than any other" consisted of +the <i>Iliad</i>, the Book of Job, <i>Tristram Shandy</i>, and <i>Pickwick</i>, to +which he added <i>Lycidas</i> and the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It would +require a good deal of ingenuity to bring these six masterpieces into +line. He was consistent in declaring that the 28th chapter of Job was +"the finest bit of poetry ever written."</p> + +<p>He was violently carried away in 1912 by reading Mr. Livingstone's book +on <i>The Greek Genius</i>. It made him a little regret the pains he had +expended on the Hymns of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> Callimachus and the Bucolics of Theocritus, +and he thought that perhaps he ought to have confined himself to the +severer and earlier classics. But surely he had followed his instinct, +and it would have been a pity if he had narrowed his range. It was the +modernness of the Alexandrian authors, and perhaps their Egyptian +flavour, which had justly attracted him. He did not care very much for +an antiquity which he could not revivify for his own vision. I urged him +to read a book which had fascinated me, <i>The Religion of Numa</i>, by a +learned American, the late Mr. Jesse Carter. Lord Cromer read it with +respect, but he admitted that those earliest Roman ages were too remote +and cold for him.</p> + +<p>Lord Cromer was very much annoyed with Napoleon for having laid it down +that <i>après soixante ans, un homme ne vaut rien</i>. The rash dictum had +certainly no application to himself. It is true that, under the strain +of the long tropical years, his bodily health declined as he approached +the age of sixty. But his mental activity, his marvellous receptivity, +were not merely maintained, but seemed steadily to advance. He continued +to be consumed by that lust for knowledge, <i>libido sciendi</i>, which he +admired in the ancient Greeks. When the physicians forbade him, four +years ago, to expend his failing strength any longer on political and +social propaganda, instead of retiring, as most men of his age would +have done, to dream in the recesses of his library, he plunged with +renewed ardour into the one occupation still permitted to him: +literature. The accident of his publishing a criticism which excited +wide popular attention led to his becoming, when past his seventieth +birthday, a "regular reviewer" for the <i>Spectator</i>, where the very +frequent papers signed "C." became a prominent feature. Those articles +were, perhaps, most remarkable for the light they threw on the writer's +own temperament, on his insatiable desire for knowledge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> Lord Cromer's +curiosity in all intellectual directions was, to the last, like that of +a young man beginning his mental career; and when he adopted the +position, so uncommon in a man of his experience and authority, of a +reviewer of current books, it was because he wished to share with others +the excitement he himself enjoyed in the tapping of fresh sources of +information.</p> + + +<h4>III</h4> + +<h3>THE LAST DAYS OF LORD REDESDALE</h3> + +<p>The publication of Lord Redesdale's <i>Memories</i>—which was one of the +most successful autobiographies of recent times—familiarised thousands +of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but, +when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his taste +and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his +earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one. He +took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become a +classic—<i>Tales of Old Japan</i>. He did not immediately pursue this +success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which +distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out <i>The +Bamboo Garden</i>, and from that time—until, in his eightieth year, he +died in full intellectual energy—he constantly devoted himself to the +art of writing. His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was +impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and +that zeal suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his +life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He +retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain +stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself was always acutely +conscious.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> + +<p>This did not interfere with the direct and sincere appeal made to +general attention by the 1915 <i>Memories</i>, a book so full of geniality +and variety, so independent in its judgments and so winning in its +ingenuousness, that its wider popularity could be the object of no +surprise. But, to those who knew Lord Redesdale intimately, it must +always appear that his autobiography fails to explain him from what we +may call the subjective point of view. It tells us of his adventures and +his friendships, of the strange lands he visited and of the unexpected +confidences he received, but it does not reveal very distinctly the +character of the writer. There is far more of his intellectual +constitution, of his personal tastes and mental habits, in the volume of +essays of 1912, called <i>A Tragedy in Stone</i>, but even here much is left +unsaid and even unsuggested.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Lord Redesdale was the redundant +vitality of his character. His nature swarmed with life, like a drop of +pond-water under a microscope. There cannot be found room in any one +nature for all the qualities, and what he lacked in some degree was +concentration. But very few men who have lived in our complicated age +have done well in so many directions as he, or, aiming widely, have +failed in so few. He shrank from no labour and hesitated before no +difficulty, but pushed on with an extraordinary energy along many +various lines of activity. But the two lines in which he most desired +and most determined to excel, gardening and authorship, are scarcely to +be discerned, except below the surface, in his <i>Memories</i>. Next to his +books, what he regarded with most satisfaction was his wonderful garden +at Batsford, and of this there is scarcely a word of record in the +autobiography. He had always intended to celebrate this garden, and when +he was preparing to return to Batsford in 1915 he wrote to me that he +was going to write an <i>Apologia pro Horto meo</i>, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> long before he had +composed one <i>pro Banibusis meis</i>. A book which should combine with the +freest fancies of his intellect a picture of the exotic groves of +Batsford was what was required to round off Lord Redesdale's literary +adventures. It will be seen that he very nearly succeeded in thus +setting the top-stone on his literary edifice.</p> + +<p>One reason, perhaps, why Batsford, which was ever present to his +thoughts, is so very slightly and vaguely mentioned in Lord Redesdale's +<i>Memories</i>, may be the fact that from 1910 onwards he was not living in +it himself, and that it was irksome to him to magnify in print +horticultural beauties which were for the time being in the possession +of others. The outbreak of the war, in which all his five sons were +instantly engaged, was the earliest of a series of changes which +completely altered the surface of Lord Redesdale's life. Batsford came +once more into his personal occupation, and at the same time it became +convenient to give up his London house in Kensington Court. Many things +combined to transform his life in the early summer of 1915. His eldest +son, Major the Hon. Clement Mitford, after brilliantly distinguishing +himself in battle, was received by the King and decorated, to the +rapturous exultation of his father. Major Mitford returned to the French +front, only to fall on May 13th, 1915.</p> + +<p>At this time I was seeing Lord Redesdale very frequently, and I could +not but be struck by the effect of this blow upon his temperament. After +the first shock of sorrow, I observed in him the determination not to +allow himself to be crushed. His dominant vitality asserted itself +almost with violence, and he seemed to clench his tooth in defiance of +the assault on his individuality. It required on the part of so old a +man no little fortitude, for it is easier to bear a great and heroic +bereavement than to resist the wearing vexation of seeing one's system +of daily occupation crumbling away. Lord Redesdale was pleased to be +going again to Batsford,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> which had supplied him in years past with so +much sumptuous and varied entertainment, but it was a matter of alarm +with him to give up all, or almost all, the various ties with London +which had meant so much to his vividly social nature.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, during the early months of 1915 in London, he had plenty of +employment in finishing and revising his <i>Memories</i>, which it had taken +him two years to write. This was an occupation which bridged over the +horrid chasm between his old active life in London, with its thousand +interests, and the uncertain and partly dreaded prospect of exile in the +bamboo-gardens of a remote corner of Gloucestershire, where he foresaw +that deafness must needs exclude him from the old activities of local +life.</p> + +<p>He finished revising the manuscript of his <i>Memories</i> in July, and then +went down, while the actual transference of his home was taking place, +to the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, Cowes, where he had been accustomed +to spend some of the most enjoyable hours of his life. But this scene, +habitually thronged with people, and palpitating with gaiety, in the +midst of which Lord Redesdale found himself so singularly at home, was +now, more than perhaps any other haunt of the English sportsman, in +complete eclipse. The weather was lovely, but there were no yachts, no +old chums, no charming ladies. "It is very dull," he wrote; "the sole +inhabitant of the Club besides myself was Lord Falkland, and now he is +gone." In these conditions Lord Redesdale became suddenly conscious that +the activity of the last two or three years was over, that the aspect of +his world had changed, and that he was in danger of losing that hold +upon life to which he so resolutely clung. In conditions of this kind he +always turned to seek for something mentally "craggy," as Byron said, +and at Cowes he wonderfully found the writings of Nietzsche. The result +is described in a remarkable letter to myself (July 28th, 1915), which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> +I quote because it marks the earliest stage in the composition of his +last unfinished book:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have been trying to occupy myself with Nietzsche, on the theory +that there must be something great about a man who exercised the +immense influence that he did. But I confess I am no convert to any +of his various moods. Here and there I find gems of thought, but +one has to wade through a morass of blue mud to get at them. Here +is a capital saying of his which may be new to you—in a letter to +his friend Rohde he writes: 'Eternally we need midwives in order to +be delivered of our thoughts,' We cannot work in solitude. 'Woe to +us who lack the sunlight of a friend's presence.'</p> + +<p>"How true that is! When I come down here, I think that with so much +time on my hands I shall be able to get through a pile of work. Not +a bit of it! I find it difficult even to write a note. To me it is +an imperative necessity to have the sympathetic counsel of a +friend."</p></div> + +<p>The letter continued with an impassioned appeal to his correspondent to +find some definite intellectual work for him to undertake. "You make me +dare, and that is much towards winning a game. You must sharpen my wits, +which are blunt enough just now." In short, it was a cry from the island +of boredom to come over the water and administer first-aid.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, I started for Cowes, and was welcomed at the pier with all +my host's habitual and vivacious hospitality. Scarcely were we seated in +our wicker-chairs in face of the Solent, not twinkling as usual with +pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than +he began the attack. "What am I to do with myself?" was the instant +question; "what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of +leisure?" To which the obvious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> reply was: "First of all, you must +exhibit to me the famous attractions of Cowes!" "There are none," he +replied in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit, +which extended over several radiant days of a perfect August, was +diversified with walks and excursions by land and water, in which my +companion was as active and as ardent as though he had been nineteen +instead of seventy-nine. In a suit picturesquely marine, with his +beautiful silver hair escaping from a jaunty yachting cap, he was the +last expression of vivacity and gaiety.</p> + +<p>The question of his intellectual occupation in the future came, however, +incessantly to the front; and our long talks in the strange and uncanny +solitude of the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle always came to this: What +task was he to take up next? His large autobiography was now coming back +to him from the printers in packets of proof, with which he was closeted +night and morning; and I suggested that while this was going on there +was no need for him to think about future enterprises. To tell the +truth, I had regarded the <i>Memories</i> as likely to be the final labour of +Lord Redesdale's busy life. It seemed to me that at his advanced age he +might now well withdraw into dignified repose. I even hinted so much in +terms as delicate as I could make them, but the suggestion was not well +received. I became conscious that there was nothing he was so little +prepared to welcome as "repose"; that, in fact, the terror which +possessed him was precisely the dread of having to withdraw from the +stage of life. His deafness, which now began to be excessive, closed to +his eager spirit so many of the avenues of experience, that he was more +than ever anxious to keep clear those that remained to him, and of +these, literary expression came to be almost the only one left. In the +absence of a definite task his path in this direction led through +darkness.</p> + +<p>But it was not until after several suggestions and many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> conversations +that light was found. The friend so pressingly appealed to returned to +London, where he was stern in rejecting several projects, hotly flung at +his head and then coldly abandoned. A study of the Empress Maria +Theresa, suggested by a feverish perusal of Pechler, was the latest and +least attractive of these. Lord Redesdale then frankly demanded that a +subject should be found for him. "You have brought this upon yourself," +he said, "by encouraging me to write." What might prove the scheme of a +very pleasant book then occurred to me, and I suggested to the fiery and +impatient author, who had by this time retired for good to Batsford, +that he should compose a volume of essays dealing with things in +general, but bound together by a constantly repeated reference to his +wild garden of bamboos and the Buddha in his secret grove. The author +was to suppose himself seated with a friend on the terrace at the top of +the garden, and to let the idea of the bamboo run through the whole +tissue of reflections and reminiscences like an emerald thread. Lord +Redesdale was enchanted, and the idea took fire at once. He replied:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones! I +shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now proceeding to +my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try to make a picture of +the VELUVANA, the bamboo-garden which was the first Vikara or +monastery of Buddha and his disciples. There I will sit, and, +looking on the great statue of Buddha in meditation, I shall begin +to arrange all sorts of wild imaginings which may come into my +crazy brain."</p></div> + +<p>In this way was started the book, of which, alas! only such fragments +were composed as form the earlier part of the volume published after his +death. It is, however, right to point out that for the too-brief +remainder of his life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> Lord Redesdale was eagerly set on the scheme of +which a hint has just been given. The <i>Veluvana</i> was to be the crowning +production of his literary life, and it was to sum up the wisdom of the +East and the gaiety of the West. He spoke of it incessantly, in letters +and conversation. "That will do to go into <i>Veluvana</i>," was his cry when +he met with anything rare or strange. For instance, on September 15th, +1915, he wrote to me:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To-day, all of a sudden I was struck by the idea that plants, +having many human qualities, may also in some degree have human +motives—that they are not altogether mere automata—and as I +thought, I began to imagine that I could detect something +resembling purpose in the movements of certain plants. I have +jotted down a few notes, and you will see when I expand them that +at any rate the idea calls attention to the movements themselves, +some of which seem never to have been noticed at all, or certainly +at best very inadequately. You will see that this brings in the +bamboo-garden and Buddha, and so keeps to the scheme of +<i>Veluvana</i>."</p></div> + +<p>The monasteries of twelfth-century Japanese Buddhism, which he had +visited long before in the neighbourhood of Kioto, now recurred to his +memory, and he proposed to describe in what a monk of Hiyeisan differed +from an Indian Buddhist monk. This was a theme of extraordinary +interest, and wholly germane to his purpose. It drove him back to his +Japanese books, and to his friend Sir Ernest Satow's famous dictionary. +He wrote to me:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"No praise can be too high for the work which Satow did in the +early days of our intercourse with Japan. He was a valuable asset +to England, and to Sir Harry Parkes, who, with all his energy and +force of character, would never have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> succeeded as he did without +Satow. Aston was another very strong man."</p></div> + +<p>These reveries were strictly in accordance with the spirit of +<i>Veluvana</i>, but unfortunately what Lord Redesdale wrote in this +direction proved to be too slight for publication. He met with some +expressions of extremely modern Japanese opinion which annoyed him, and +to which he was tempted to give more attention than they deserve. It +began to be obvious that the enterprise was one for which great +concentration of effort, and a certain serenity of purpose which was not +to be secured at will, were imperatively needed. In leaving London, he +was not content, and no one could have wished him to be willing, to +break abruptly all the cords of his past life. He was still a Trustee of +the National Gallery, still chairman of the Marlborough Club, still +occupied with the administration of the Wallace Collection, and he did +not abate his interest in these directions. They made it necessary that +he should come up to town every other week. This made up in some measure +for the inevitable disappointment of finding that in Gloucestershire his +deafness now completely cut him off from all the neighbourly duties +which had in earlier years diversified and entertained his country life. +He had been a great figure among the squires and farmers of the +Cotswolds, but all this was now at an end, paralysed by the hopeless +decay of his hearing. It grieved him, too, that he was unable to do any +useful war-work in the county, and he was forced to depend upon his pen +and his flying visits to London for refreshment. He was a remarkably +good letter-writer, and he now demanded almost pathetically to be fed +with the apples of correspondence. He wrote (November 26th, 1915):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Your letters are a consolation for being deprived of taking a part +any longer in the doings of the great world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> The Country +Mouse—even if the creature were able to scuttle back into the +cellars of the great—would still be out of all communion with the +mighty, owing to physical infirmity. And now comes the kind Town +Mouse and tells him all that he most cares to know."</p></div> + +<p>He had books and his garden to enjoy, and he made the most of both. "I +hate the autumn," he said, "for it means the death of the year, but I +try to make the death of the garden as beautiful as possible." Among his +plants, and up and down the high places of his bamboo-feathered +rockeries, where little cascades fell with a music which he could no +longer hear into small dark pools full of many-coloured water-lilies, +his activity was like that of a boy. He had the appearance, the tastes, +the instincts of vigorous manhood prolonged far beyond the usual limit +of such gifts, and yet all were marred and rendered bankrupt for him by +the one intolerable defect, the deafness which had by this time become +almost impenetrable to sound.</p> + +<p>Yet it seemed as though this disability actually quickened his mental +force. With the arrival of his eightieth year, his activity and +curiosity of intellect were certainly rather increased than abated. He +wrote to me from Batsford (December 28th, 1915):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have been busy for the last two months making a close study of +Dante. I have read all the <i>Inferno</i> and half of the <i>Purgatorio</i>. +It is hard work, but the 'readings' of my old schoolfellow, W.W. +Vernon, are an incalculable help, and now within the last week or +two has appeared Hoare's Italian Dictionary, published by the +Cambridge University Press. A much-needed book, for the previous +dictionaries were practically useless except for courier's work. +How splendid Dante is! But how sickening are the Commentators, +Benvenuto da Imola, Schartazzini and the rest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> them! They won't +let the poet say that the sun shone or the night was dark without +seeing some hidden and mystic meaning in it. They always seem to +<i>chercher midi à quatorze heures</i>, and irritate me beyond measure. +There is invention enough in Dante without all their embroidery. +But this grubbing and grouting seems to be infectious among Dante +scholars—they all catch the disease."</p></div> + +<p>He flung himself into these Italian studies with all his accustomed +ardour. He corresponded with the eminent veteran of Dante scholarship, +the Honourable W.W. Vernon, whom he mentions in the passage just quoted, +and Mr. Vernon's letters gave him great delight. He wrote to me again:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course, I knew +the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before attempted to read +him. The difficulty scared me."</p></div> + +<p>Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away +for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the <i>Purgatorio</i> without +flagging, but he broke down early in the <i>Paradiso</i>. He had no sympathy +whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored +by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took +advantage of this to recall his attention to <i>Veluvana</i>, for which it +was no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any +material out of Dante.</p> + +<p>An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during +the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian +chapters of his <i>Memories</i>, but it was another distraction. It took his +thoughts away from <i>Veluvana</i>, although he protested to me that he +could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his +fancies for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for +he wrote (March 17th, 1916):—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my +troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking part +in society, the Three R's alone remain to me, and, indeed, of those +only two—for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton education in days +when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of the intellectual +panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add, subtract, nor divide! I +am a gluttonous reader, and only write from time to time."</p></div> + +<p>He was really composing more actively than he himself realised. About +this time he wrote:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Just now I am busy trying to whitewash Lord Hertford—not the +Marquess of Steyne, that would be impossible—but the unhappy +hypochondriac recluse of the Rue Lafitte, who I believe has been +most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in +Paris—all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even +hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look +upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to +be told that he had many admirable points."</p></div> + +<p>At the beginning of last year the aspect of Lord Redesdale was very +remarkable. He had settled down into his life at Batsford, diversified +by the frequent dashes to London. His years seemed to sit upon him more +lightly than ever. His azure eyes, his curled white head thrown back, +the almost jaunty carriage of his well-kept figure, were the external +symbols of an inner man perpetually fresh, ready for adventure and +delighted with the pageant of existence. He found no fault at all with +life, save that it must leave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> him, and he had squared his shoulders not +to give way to weakness. Perhaps the only sign of weakness was just that +visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character +had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which +Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless +of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His +curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in +spite of his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was +his memory of passing events. In the petulance of his optimism he was +like a lad.</p> + +<p>There was no change in the early part of last year, although it was +manifest that the incessant journeying between Batsford and London +exhausted him. The garden occupied him more and more, and he was +distracted by the great storm of the end of March, which blew down and +destroyed at the head of the bridge the wonderful group of cypresses, +which he called "the pride of my old age." But, after a gesture of +despair, he set himself energetically to repair the damage. He was in +his usual buoyant health when the very hot spell in May tempted him out +on May 18th, with his agent, Mr. Kennedy, to fish at Swinbrook, a +beautiful village on his Oxfordshire property, of which he was +particularly fond. He was not successful, and in a splenetic mood he +flung himself at full length upon a bank of wet grass. He was not +allowed to remain there long, but the mischief was done, and in a few +hours he was suffering from a bad cold. Even now, the result might not +have been serious had it not been that in a few days' time he was due to +fulfil certain engagements in town. Nothing vexed Lord Redesdale more +than not to keep a pledge. In all such matters he prided himself on +being punctual and trustworthy, and he refused to change his plans by +staying at home.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, on May 23rd he came to London to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> transact some business, +and to take the chair next day at a meeting of the Royal Society of +Literature, of which he was a vice-president. This meeting took place in +the afternoon, and he addressed a crowded assembly, which greeted him +with great warmth. Those who were present, and saw his bright eyes and +heard his ringing voice, could have no suspicion that they would see him +again no more. His intimate friends alone perceived that he was making a +superlative effort. There followed a very bad night, and he went down to +Batsford next day, going straight to his bed, from which he never rose +again. His condition, at first, gave rise to little alarm. The disease, +which proved to be catarrhal jaundice, took its course; but for a long +time his spirit and his unconsciousness of danger sustained him and +filled those around him with hope. There was no disturbance of mind to +the very last. In a shaky hand, with his stylograph, he continued to +correspond with certain friends, about politics, and books, and even +about Veluvana. In the beginning of August there seemed to be symptoms +of improvement, but these were soon followed by a sudden and final +relapse. Even after this, Lord Redesdale's interest and curiosity were +sustained. In his very last letter to myself, painfully scrawled only +one week before his death, he wrote:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Have you seen Ernest Daudet's book just published, <i>Les auteurs de +la guerre de</i> 1914? Bismarck is the subject of the first volume; +the second will deal with the Kaiser and the Emperor Joseph; and +the third with <i>leurs complices</i>. I know E.D., he is a brother of +Alphonse, and is a competent historian. His book is most +illuminating. Of course there are exaggerations, but he is always +well <i>documenté</i>, and there is much in his work that is new. I +don't admire his style. The abuse of the historic present is bad +enough, but what can be said in favour of the historic future with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> +which we meet at every step? It sets my teeth on edge."</p></div> + +<p>But he grew physically weaker, and seven days later he passed into an +unconscious state, dying peacefully at noon on August 17th, 1916. He was +saved, as he had wished to be, from all consciousness of decrepitude.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE LYRICAL POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY</h2> + + +<p>When, about Christmas time in 1898, Mr. Hardy's admirers, who were +expecting from him a new novel, received instead a thick volume of +verse, there was mingled with their sympathy and respect a little +disappointment and a great failure in apprehension. Those who were not +rude enough to suggest that a cobbler should stick to his last, reminded +one another that many novelists had sought relaxation by trifling with +the Muses. Thackeray had published <i>Ballads</i>, and George Eliot had +expatiated in a <i>Legend of Jubal</i>. No one thought the worse of +<i>Coningsby</i> because its author had produced a <i>Revolutionary Epic</i>. It +took some time for even intelligent criticism to see that the new +<i>Wessex Poems</i> did not fall into this accidental category, and still, +after twenty years, there survives a tendency to take the verse of Mr. +Hardy, abundant and solid as it has become, as a mere subsidiary and +ornamental appendage to his novels. It is still necessary to insist on +the complete independence of his career as a poet, and to point out that +if he had never published a page of prose he would deserve to rank high +among the writers of his country on the score of the eight volumes of +his verse. It is as a lyrical poet, and solely as a lyrical poet, that I +propose to speak of him to-day.</p> + +<p>It has been thought extraordinary that Cowper was over fifty when he +published his first secular verses, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> Mr. Hardy was approaching his +sixtieth year when he sent <i>Wessex Poems</i> to the press. Such +self-restraint—"none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with +more unwearied spirit none shall"—has always fascinated the genuine +artist, but few have practised it with so much tenacity. When the work +of Mr. Hardy is completed, nothing, it is probable, will more strike +posterity than its unity, its consistency. He has given proof, as scarce +any other modern writer has done, of tireless constancy of resolve. His +novels formed an unbroken series from the <i>Desperate Remedies</i> of 1871 +to <i>The Well-Beloved</i> of 1897. In the fulness of his success, and +unseduced by all temptation, he closed that chapter of his career, and +has kept it closed. Since 1898 he has been, persistently and +periodically, a poet and nothing else. That he determined, for reasons +best left to his own judgment, to defer the exhibition of his verse +until he had completed his work in prose, ought not to prejudice +criticism in its analysis of the lyrics and the colossal dramatic +panorama. Mr. Hardy, exclusively as a poet, demands our undivided +attention.</p> + +<p>It is legitimate to speculate on other probable causes of Mr. Hardy's +delay. From such information as lies scattered before us, we gather that +it was from 1865 to 1867 that he originally took poetry to be his +vocation. The dated pieces in the volume of 1898 help us to form an idea +of the original character of his utterance. On the whole it was very +much what it remains in the pieces composed after a lapse of half a +century. Already, as a very young man, Mr. Hardy possessed his +extraordinary insight into the movements of human character, and his +eloquence in translating what he had observed of the tragedy and pain of +rustic lives. No one, for sixty years, had taken so closely to heart the +admonitions of Wordsworth in his famous Preface to the 1800 edition of +<i>Lyrical Ballads</i> to seek for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> inspiration in that condition where "the +passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful forms of nature." +But it may well be doubted whether Mr. Hardy's poems would have been +received in the mid-Victorian age with favour, or even have been +comprehended. Fifty years ahead of his time, he was asking in 1866 for +novelty of ideas, and he must have been conscious that his questioning +would seem inopportune. He needed a different atmosphere, and he left +the task of revolt to another, and, at first sight, a very unrelated +force, that of the <i>Poems and Ballads</i> of the same year. But Swinburne +succeeded in his revolution, and although he approached the art from an +opposite direction, he prepared the way for an ultimate appreciation of +Mr. Hardy.</p> + +<p>We should therefore regard the latter, in spite of his silence of forty +years, as a poet who laboured, like Swinburne, at a revolution against +the optimism and superficial sweetness of his age. Swinburne, it is +true, tended to accentuate the poetic side of poetry, while Mr. Hardy +drew verse, in some verbal respects, nearer to prose. This does not +affect their common attitude, and the sympathy of these great artists +for one another's work has already been revealed, and will be still more +clearly exposed. But they were unknown to each other in 1866, when to +both of them the cheap philosophy of the moment, the glittering +femininity of the "jewelled line," the intense respect for Mrs. Grundy +in her Sunday satin, appeared trumpery, hateful, and to be trampled +upon. We find in Mr. Hardy's earliest verse no echo of the passionate +belief in personal immortality which was professed by Ruskin and +Browning. He opposed the Victorian theory of human "progress"; the +Tennysonian beatific Vision seemed to him ridiculous. He rejected the +idea of the sympathy and goodness of Nature, and was in revolt against +the self-centredness of the Romantics. We may conjecture that he +combined a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> great reverence for <i>The Book of Job</i> with a considerable +contempt for <i>In Memoriam</i>.</p> + +<p>This was not a mere rebellious fancy which passed off; it was something +inherent that remained, and gives to-day their peculiar character to Mr. +Hardy's latest lyrics. But before we examine the features of this +personal mode of interpreting poetry to the world, we may collect what +little light we can on the historic development of it. In the pieces +dated between 1865 and 1867 we find the germ of almost everything which +has since characterised the poet. In "Amabel" the ruinous passage of +years, which has continued to be an obsession with Mr. Hardy, is already +crudely dealt with. The habit of taking poetical negatives of small +scenes—"your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, and a pond edged +with grayish leaves" ("Neutral Times")—which had not existed in English +verse since the days of Crabbe, reappears. There is marked already a +sense of terror and resentment against the blind motions of chance—In +"Hap" the author would positively welcome a certainty of divine hatred +as a relief from the strain of depending upon "crass casualty." Here and +there in these earliest pieces an extreme difficulty of utterance is +remarkable in the face of the ease which the poet attained afterwards in +the expression of his most strange images and fantastic revelations. We +read in "At a Bridal":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And each thus found apart, of false desire<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As had fired ours could ever have mingled we!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This, although perfectly reducible, takes time to think out, and at a +hasty glance seems muffled up in obscurity beyond the darkness of Donne; +moreover, it is scarcely worthy in form of the virtuoso which Mr. Hardy +was presently to become. Perhaps of the poems certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> attributable to +this earliest period, the little cycle of sonnets called "She to Him" +gives clearest promise of what was coming. The sentiment is that of +Ronsard's famous "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la +chandelle," but turned round, as Mr. Hardy loves to do, from the man to +the woman, and embroidered with ingenuities, such as where the latter +says that as her temperament dies down the habit of loving will remain, +and she be</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">True to the wind that kissed ere canker came,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which attest a complexity of mind that Ronsard's society knew nothing +of.</p> + +<p>On the whole, we may perhaps be safe in conjecturing that whatever the +cause, the definite dedication to verse was now postponed. Meanwhile, +the writing of novels had become the business of Mr. Hardy's life, and +ten years go by before we trace a poet in that life again. But it is +interesting to find that when the great success of <i>Far from the Madding +Crowd</i> had introduced him to a circle of the best readers, there +followed an effect which again disturbed his ambition for the moment. +Mr. Hardy was once more tempted to change the form of his work. He +wished "to get back to verse," but was dissuaded by Leslie Stephen, who +induced him to start writing <i>The Return of the Native</i> instead. On +March 29th, 1875, Coventry Patmore, then a complete stranger, wrote to +express his regret that "such almost unequalled beauty and power as +appeared in the novels should not have assured themselves the +immortality which would have been conferred upon them by the form of +verse." This was just at the moment when we find Mr. Hardy's +conversations with "long Leslie Stephen in the velveteen coat" +obstinately turning upon "theologies decayed and defunct, the origin of +things, the constitution of matter, and the unreality of time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> To this +period belongs also the earliest conception of <i>The Dynasts</i>, an old +note-book containing, under the date June 20th, 1875, the suggestion +that the author should attempt "An Iliad of Europe from 1789 to 1815."</p> + +<p>To this time also seems to belong the execution of what has proved the +most attractive section of Mr. Hardy's poetry, the narratives, or short +Wessex ballads. The method in which these came into the world is very +curious. Many of these stories were jotted down to the extent of a +stanza or two when the subject first occurred to the author. For +instance, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," first published by Lionel +Johnson in 1894, had been begun as early as 1867, and was finished ten +years later. The long ballad of "Leipzig" and the savage "San +Sebastian," both highly characteristic, were also conceived and a few +lines of each noted down long before their completion. "Valenciennes," +however, belongs to 1878, and the "Dance at the Phœnix," of which the +stanza beginning "'Twas Christmas" alone had been written years before, +seems to have been finished about the same time. What evidence is before +us goes to prove that in the 'seventies Mr. Hardy became a complete +master of the art of verse, and that his poetic style was by this time +fixed. He still kept poetry out of public sight, but he wrote during the +next twenty years, as though in a backwater off the stream of his +novels, the poems which form the greater part of the volume of 1898. If +no other collection of his lyrical verse existed, we should miss a +multitude of fine things, but our general conception of his genius would +be little modified.</p> + +<p>We should judge carelessly, however, if we treated the subsequent +volumes as mere repetitions of the original <i>Wessex Poems</i>. They present +interesting differences, which I may rapidly note before I touch on the +features which characterise the whole body of Mr. Hardy's verse. <i>Poems +of the Past and Present</i>, which came out in the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> days of 1902, +could not but be in a certain measure disappointing, in so far as it +paralleled its three years' product with that of the thirty years of +<i>Wessex Poems</i>. Old pieces were published in it, and it was obvious that +in 1898 Mr. Hardy might be expected to have chosen from what used to be +called his "portfolio" those specimens which he thought to be most +attractive. But on further inspection this did not prove to be quite the +case. After pondering for twelve years on the era of Napoleon, his +preoccupation began in 1887 to drive him into song:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Must I pipe a palinody,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or be silent thereupon?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He decides that silence has become impossible:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nay; I'll sing 'The Bridge of Lodi'—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That long-loved, romantic thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though none show by smile or nod, he<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Guesses why and what I sing!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here is the germ of <i>The Dynasts</i>. But in the meantime the crisis of the +Boer War had cut across the poet's dream of Europe a hundred years ago, +and a group of records of the Dorsetshire elements of the British army +at the close of 1899 showed in Mr. Hardy's poetry what had not been +suspected there—a military talent of a most remarkable kind. Another +set of pieces composed in Rome were not so interesting; Mr. Hardy always +seems a little languid when he leaves the confines of his native Wessex. +Another section of <i>Poems of the Past and Present</i> is severely, almost +didactically, metaphysical, and expands in varied language the daring +thought, so constantly present in Mr. Hardy's reverie, that God Himself +has forgotten the existence of earth, this "tiny sphere," this "tainted +ball," "so poor a thing," and has left all human life to be the +plaything of blind chance. This sad conviction is hardly ruffled by "The +Darkling Thrush," which goes as far towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> optimism as Mr. Hardy can +let himself be drawn, or by such reflections as those in "On a Fine +Morning":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Whence comes Solace? Not from seeing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What is doing, suffering, being;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not from noting Life's conditions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not from heeding Time's monitions;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">But in cleaving to the Dream,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And in gazing on the gleam<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Whereby gray things golden seem."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Eight years more passed, years marked by the stupendous effort of <i>The +Dynasts</i>, before Mr. Hardy put forth another collection of lyrical +poems. <i>Time's Laughingstocks</i> confirmed, and more than confirmed, the +high promise of <i>Wessex Poems</i>. The author, in one of his modest +prefaces, where he seems to whisper while we bend forward in our anxiety +not to miss one thrifty sentence, expresses the hope that <i>Time's +Laughingstocks</i> will, as a whole, take the "reader forward, even if not +far, rather than backward."</p> + +<p>The book, indeed, does not take us "far" forward, simply because the +writer's style and scope were definitely exposed to us already, and yet +it does take us "forward," because the hand of the master is +conspicuously firmer and his touch more daring. The <i>Laughingstocks</i> +themselves are fifteen in number, tragical stories of division and +isolation, of failures in passion, of the treason of physical decay. No +landscape of Mr. Hardy's had been more vivid than the night-pictures in +"The Revisitation," where the old soldier in barracks creeps out on to +the gaunt down, and meets (by one of Mr. Hardy's coincidences) his +ancient mistress, and no picture more terrible than the revelation of +each to the other in a blaze of sunrise. What a document for the future +is "Reminiscences of a Dancing Man"? If only Shakespeare could have left +us such a song of the London in 1585! But the power of the poet +culminates in the pathos of "The Tramp Woman"—perhaps the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> greatest of +all Mr. Hardy's lyrical poems—and in the horror of "A Sunday Morning's +Tragedy."</p> + +<p>It is noticeable that <i>Time's Laughingstocks</i> is, in some respects, a +more daring collection than its predecessors. We find the poet here +entirely emancipated from convention, and guided both in religion and +morals exclusively by the inner light of his reflection. His energy now +interacts on his clairvoyance with a completeness which he had never +quite displayed before, and it is here that we find Mr. Hardy's +utterance peculiarly a quintessence of himself. Especially in the +narrative pieces—which are often Wessex novels distilled into a +wine-glass, such as "Rose-Ann," and "The Vampirine Fair"—he allows no +considerations of what the reader may think "nice" or "pleasant" to +shackle his sincerity or his determination; and it is therefore to +<i>Time's Laughingstocks</i> that the reader who wishes to become intimately +acquainted with Mr. Hardy as a moralist most frequently recurs. We +notice here more than elsewhere in his poems Mr. Hardy's sympathy with +the local music of Wessex, and especially with its expression by the +village choir, which he uses as a spiritual symbol. Quite a large +section of <i>Time's Laughingstocks</i> takes us to the old-fashioned gallery +of some church, where the minstrels are bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount +Ephraim," or to a later scene where the ghosts, in whose melancholy +apparition Mr. Hardy takes such pleasure, chant their goblin melodies +and strum "the viols of the dead" in the moonlit churchyard. The very +essence of Mr. Hardy's reverie at this moment of his career is to be +found, for instance, in "The Dead Quire," where the ancient +phantom-minstrels revenge themselves on their gross grandsons outside +the alehouse.</p> + +<p>Almost immediately after the outbreak of the present war Mr. Hardy +presented to a somewhat distraught and inattentive public another +collection of his poems. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> cannot be said that <i>Satires of +Circumstance</i> is the most satisfactory of those volumes; it is, perhaps, +that which we could with the least discomposure persuade ourselves to +overlook. Such a statement refers more to the high quality of other +pages than to any positive decay of power or finish here. There is no +less adroitness of touch and penetration of view in this book than +elsewhere, and the poet awakens once more our admiration by his skill in +giving poetic value to minute conditions of life which have escaped less +careful observers. But in <i>Satires of Circumstance</i> the ugliness of +experience is more accentuated than it is elsewhere, and is flung in our +face with less compunction. The pieces which give name to the volume are +only fifteen in number, but the spirit which inspires them is very +frequently repeated in other parts of the collection. That spirit is one +of mocking sarcasm, and it acts in every case by presenting a +beautifully draped figure of illusion, from which the poet, like a +sardonic showman, twitches away the robe that he may display a skeleton +beneath it. We can with little danger assume, as we read the <i>Satires of +Circumstance</i>, hard and cruel shafts of searchlight as they seem, that +Mr. Hardy was passing through a mental crisis when he wrote them. This +seems to be the <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> of his life's work, the book in +which he is revealed most distracted by conjecture and most overwhelmed +by the miscarriage of everything. The wells of human hope have been +poisoned for him by some condition of which we know nothing, and even +the picturesque features of Dorsetshire landscape, that have always +before dispersed his melancholy, fail to win his attention:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Bright yellowhammers<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Made mirthful clamours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And billed long straws with a bustling air,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And bearing their load,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Flew up the road<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That he followed alone, without interest there."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>The strongest of the poems of disillusion which are the outcome of this +mood, is "The Newcomer's Wife," with the terrible abruptness of its last +stanza. It is not for criticism to find fault with the theme of a work +of art, but only to comment upon its execution. Of the merit of these +monotonously sinister <i>Satires of Circumstance</i> there can be no +question; whether the poet's indulgence in the mood which gave birth to +them does not tend to lower our moral temperature and to lessen the +rebound of our energy, is another matter. At all events, every one must +welcome a postscript in which a blast on the bugle of war seemed to have +wakened the poet from his dark brooding to the sense of a new chapter in +history.</p> + +<p>In the fourth year of the war the veteran poet published <i>Moments of +Vision</i>. These show a remarkable recovery of spirit, and an ingenuity +never before excelled. With the passage of years Mr. Hardy, observing +everything in the little world of Wessex, and forgetting nothing, has +become almost preternaturally wise, and, if it may be said so, +"knowing," with a sort of magic, like that of a wizard. He has learned +to track the windings of the human heart with the familiarity of a +gamekeeper who finds plenty of vermin in the woods, and who nails what +he finds, be it stoat or squirrel, to the barn-door of his poetry. But +there is also in these last-fruits of Mr. Hardy's mossed tree much that +is wholly detached from the bitterness of satire, much that simply +records, with an infinite delicacy of pathos, little incidents of the +personal life of long ago, bestowing the immortality of art on these +fugitive fancies in the spirit of the Japanese sculptor when he chisels +the melting of a cloud or the flight of an insect on his sword hilt:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I idly cut a parsley stalk<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And blew therein towards the moon;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I had not thought what ghosts would walk<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With shivering footsteps to my tune.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> +<span class="i0">"I went and knelt, and scooped my hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As if to drink, into the brook,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a faint figure seemed to stand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Above me, with the bye-gone look.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I lipped rough rhymes of chance not choice,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I thought not what my words might be;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There came into my ear a voice<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That turned a tenderer verse for me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We have now in brief historic survey marshalled before us the various +volumes in which Mr. Hardy's lyrical poetry was originally collected. +Before we examine its general character more closely, it may be well to +call attention to its technical quality, which was singularly +misunderstood at first, and which has never, we believe, been boldly +faced. In 1898, and later, when a melodious <i>falsetto</i> was much in +fashion amongst us, the reviewers found great fault with Mr. Hardy's +prosody; they judged him as a versifier to be rude and incorrect. As +regards the single line, it may be confessed that Mr. Hardy, in his +anxiety to present his thought in an undiluted form, is not infrequently +clogged and hard. Such a line as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fused from its separateness by ecstasy"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>hisses at us like a snake, and crawls like a wounded one. Mr. Hardy is +apt to clog his lines with consonants, and he seems indifferent to the +stiffness which is the consequence of this neglect. Ben Jonson said that +"Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; perhaps we may go +so far as to say that Mr. Hardy, for his indifference to a mellifluous +run lays himself open to a mild rebuke. He is negligent of that eternal +ornament of English verse, audible intricacy, probably because of +Swinburne's abuse of it. But most of what is called his harshness should +rather be called bareness, and is the result of a revolt, conscious or +unconscious, against Keats' prescription of "loading the rifts with +ore."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> + +<p>In saying this, all has been said that an enemy could in justice say in +blame of his metrical peculiarities. Unquestionably he does +occasionally, like Robert Browning, err in the direction of cacophony. +But when we turn to the broader part of prosody, we must perceive that +Mr. Hardy is not only a very ingenious, but a very correct and admirable +metricist. His stanzaic invention is abundant; no other Victorian poet, +not even Swinburne, has employed so many forms, mostly of his own +invention, and employed them so appropriately, that is to say, in so +close harmony with the subject or story enshrined in them. To take an +example from his pure lyrics of reflection first, from "The +Bullfinches":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Brother Bulleys, let us sing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the dawn till evening!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For we know not that we go not<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the day's pale visions fold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unto those who sang of old,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>in the exquisite fineness and sadness of the stanza we seem to hear the +very voices of the birds warbling faintly in the sunset. Again, the +hurried, timid irresolution of a lover always too late is marvellously +rendered in the form of "Lizbie Browne":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And Lizbie Browne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who else had hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bay-red as yours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or flesh so fair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bred out of doors,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet Lizbie Browne?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>On the other hand, the fierceness of "I said to Love" is interpreted in +a stanza that suits the mood of denunciation, while "Tess's Lament" +wails in a metre which seems to rock like an ageing woman seated alone +before the fire, with an infinite haunting sadness.</p> + +<p>It is, however, in the narrative pieces, the little <i>Wessex</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> <i>Tales</i>, +that Mr. Hardy's metrical imagination is most triumphant. No two of +these are identical in form, and for each he selects, or more often +invents, a wholly appropriate stanza. He makes many experiments, one of +the strangest being the introduction of rhymeless lines at regular +intervals. Of this, "Cicely" is an example which repays attention:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And still sadly onward I followed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That Highway the Icen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which trails its pale riband down Wessex<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er lynchet and lea.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where legions had wayfared,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where the slow river up-glasses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its green canopy";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and one still more remarkable is the enchanting "Friends Beyond," to +which we shall presently recur. The drawling voice of a weary old +campaigner is wonderfully rendered in the stanza of "Valenciennes":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is now the on'y town I care to be in..<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As we did Valencieën!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>whereas for long Napoleonic stories like "Leipzig" and "The Peasant's +Confession," a ballad-measure which contemporaries such as Southey or +Campbell might have used is artfully chosen. In striking contrast we +have the elaborate verse-form of "The Souls of the Slain," in which the +throbbing stanza seems to dilate and withdraw like the very cloud of +moth-like phantoms which it describes. It is difficult to follow out +this theme without more frequent quotation than I have space, for here, +but the reader who pursues it carefully will not repeat the rumour that +Mr. Hardy is a careless or "incorrect" metricist. He is, on the +contrary, a metrical artist of great accomplishment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> + +<p>The conception of life revealed in his verses by this careful artist is +one which displays very exactly the bent of his temperament. During the +whole of his long career Mr. Hardy has not budged an inch from his +original line of direction. He holds that, abandoned by God, treated +with scorn by Nature, man lies helpless at the mercy of "those purblind +Doomsters," accident, chance, and time, from whom he has had to endure +injury and insult from the cradle to the grave. This is stating the +Hardy doctrine in its extreme form, but it is not stating it too +strongly. This has been called his "pessimism," a phrase to which some +admirers, unwilling to give things their true name, have objected. But, +of course, Mr. Hardy is a pessimist, just as Browning is an optimist, +just as white is not black, and day is not night. Our juggling with +words in paradox is too often apt to disguise a want of decision in +thought. Let us admit that Mr. Hardy's conception of the fatal forces +which beleaguer human life is a "pessimistic" one, or else words have no +meaning.</p> + +<p>Yet it is needful to define in what this pessimism consists. It is not +the egotism of Byron or the morbid melancholy of Chateaubriand. It is +directed towards an observation of others, not towards an analysis of +self, and this gives it more philosophical importance, because although +romantic peevishness is very common among modern poets, and although +ennui inspires a multitude of sonnets, a deliberate and imaginative +study of useless suffering in the world around us is rare indeed among +the poets. It is particularly to be noted that Mr. Hardy, although one +of the most profoundly tragic of all modern writers, is neither +effeminate nor sickly. His melancholy could never have dictated the +third stanza of Shelley's "Lines written in Dejection in the Bay of +Naples." His pessimism is involuntary, forced from him by his experience +and his constitution, and no analysis could give a better definition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> of +what divides him from the petulant despair of a poet like Leopardi than +the lines "To Life":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"O life, with the sad scared face,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">I weary of seeing thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And thy too-forced pleasantry!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"I know what thou would'st tell<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of Death, Time, Destiny—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have known it long, and know, too, well<br /></span> +<span class="i6">What it all means for me.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"But canst thou not array<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Thyself in rare disguise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And feign like truth, for one mad day,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That Earth is Paradise?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"I'll tune me to the mood,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And mumm with thee till eve,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And maybe what as interlude<br /></span> +<span class="i6">I feign, I shall believe!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the mumming goes no deeper than it does in the exquisite poem of +"The Darkling Thrush," where the carolings of an aged bird, on a frosty +evening, are so ecstatic that they waken a vague hope in the listener's +mind that the thrush may possibly know of "some blessed hope" of which +the poet is "unaware." This is as far as Mr. Hardy ever gets on the +blest Victorian pathway of satisfaction.</p> + +<p>There are certain aspects in which it is not unnatural to see a parallel +between Mr. Hardy and George Crabbe. Each is the spokesman of a +district, each has a passion for the study of mankind, each has gained +by long years of observation a profound knowledge of local human +character, and each has plucked on the open moor, and wears in his coat, +the hueless flower of disillusion. But there is a great distinction in +the aim of the two poets. Crabbe, as he describes himself in <i>The Parish +Register</i>, was "the true physician" who "walks the foulest ward." He was +utilitarian in his morality; he exposed the pathos of tragedy by +dwelling on the faults which led to it, forgetful of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> fatality which +in more consistent moments he acknowledged. Crabbe was realistic with a +moral design, even in the <i>Tales of the Hall</i>, where he made a gallant +effort at last to arrive at a detachment of spirit. No such effort is +needed by Mr. Hardy, who has none of the instinct of a preacher, and who +considers moral improvement outside his responsibility. He admits, with +his great French contemporary, that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tout désir est menteur, toute joie éphémère,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Toute liqueur au fond de la coupe est amère,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but he is bent on discovering the cause of this devastation, and not +disposed to waste time over its consequences. At the end he produces a +panacea which neither Crabbe nor Byron dreamed of—resignation.</p> + +<p>But the poet has not reached the end of his disillusion. He thinks to +secure repose on the breast of Nature, the <i>alma mater</i>, to whom Goethe +and Wordsworth and Browning each in his own way turned, and were +rewarded by consolation and refreshment. We should be prepared to find +Mr. Hardy, with his remarkable aptitude for the perception of natural +forms, easily consoled by the influences of landscape and the inanimate +world. His range of vision is wide and extremely exact; he has the gift +of reproducing before us scenes of various character with a vividness +which is sometimes startling. But Mr. Hardy's disdain of sentimentality, +and his vigorous analysis of the facts of life, render him insensible +not indeed to the mystery nor to the beauty, but to the imagined +sympathy, of Nature. He has no more confidence in the visible earth than +in the invisible heavens, and neither here nor there is he able to +persuade himself to discover a counsellor or a friend. In this +connection, we do well to follow the poet's train of thought in the +lyric called "In a Wood," where he enters a copse dreaming that, in that +realm of "sylvan peace," Nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> would offer "a soft release from man's +unrest." He immediately observes that the pine and the beech are +struggling for existence, and trying to blight each other with dripping +poison. He sees the ivy eager to strangle the elm, and the hawthorns +choking the hollies. Even the poplars sulk and turn black under the +shadow of a rival. In the end, filled with horror at all these crimes of +Nature, the poet flees from the copse as from an accursed place, and he +determines that life offers him no consolation except the company of +those human beings who are as beleaguered as himself:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Since, then, no grace I find<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Taught me of trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turn I back to my kind<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Worthy as these.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There at least smiles abound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There discourse trills around,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There, now and then, are found,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Life-loyalties."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is absurd, he decides, to love Nature, which has either no response +to give, or answers in irony. Let us even avoid, as much as we can, deep +concentration of thought upon the mysteries of Nature, lest we become +demoralised by contemplating her negligence, her blindness, her +implacability. We find here a violent reaction against the poetry of +egotistic optimism which had ruled the romantic school in England for +more than a hundred years, and we recognise a branch of Mr. Hardy's +originality. He has lifted the veil of Isis, and he finds beneath it, +not a benevolent mother of men, but the tomb of an illusion. One short +lyric, "Yell'ham-Wood's Story," puts this, again with a sylvan setting, +in its unflinching crudity:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And Clyffe-hill Clump says 'Yea!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But Yell'ham says a thing of its own:<br /></span> +<span class="i6">It's not, 'Gray, gray,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Is Life alway!'<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That Yell'ham says,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor that Life is for ends unknown.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> +<span class="i0">"It says that Life would signify<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A thwarted purposing:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That we come to live, and are called to die.<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Yes, that's the thing<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In fall, in spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That Yell'ham says:—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life offers—to deny!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is therefore almost exclusively to the obscure history of those who +suffer and stumble around him, victims of the universal disillusion, men +and women "come to live but called to die," that Mr. Hardy dedicates his +poetic function. "Lizbie Browne" appeals to us as a typical instance of +his rustic pathos, his direct and poignant tenderness, and if we compare +it with such poems of Wordsworth's as "Lucy Gray" or "Alice Fell" we see +that he starts by standing much closer to the level of the subject than +his great predecessor does. Wordsworth is the benevolent philosopher +sitting in a post-chaise or crossing the "wide moor" in meditation. Mr. +Hardy is the familiar neighbour, the shy mourner at the grave; his +relation is a more intimate one: he is patient, humble, un-upbraiding. +Sometimes, as in the remarkable colloquy called "The Ruined Maid," his +sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the +system of Victorian morality. Mr. Hardy, indeed, is not concerned with +sentimental morals, but with the primitive instincts of the soul, +applauding them, or at least recording them with complacency, even when +they outrage ethical tradition, as they do in the lyric narrative called +"A Wife and Another." The stanzas "To an Unborn Pauper Child" sum up +what is sinister and what is genial in Mr. Hardy's attitude to the +unambitious forms of life which he loves to contemplate.</p> + +<p>His temperature is not always so low as it is in the class of poems to +which we have just referred, but his ultimate view is never more +sanguine. He is pleased sometimes to act as the fiddler at a dance, +surveying the hot-blooded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> couples, and urging them on by the lilt of +his instrument, but he is always perfectly aware that they will have "to +pay high for their prancing" at the end of all. No instance of this is +more remarkable than the poem called "Julie-Jane," a perfect example of +Mr. Hardy's metrical ingenuity and skill, which begins thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Sing; how 'a would sing!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">How 'a would raise the tune<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When we rode in the waggon from harvesting<br /></span> +<span class="i6">By the light o' the moon!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Dance; how 'a would dance!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">If a fiddlestring did but sound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And go round and round.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Laugh; how 'a would laugh!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Her peony lips would part<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if none such a place for a lover to quaff<br /></span> +<span class="i6">At the deeps of a heart,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and which then turns to the most plaintive and the most irreparable +tragedy, woven, as a black design on to a background of gold, upon this +basis of temperamental joyousness.</p> + +<p>Alphonse Daudet once said that the great gift of Edmond de Goncourt was +to, "<i>rendre l'irrendable</i>." This is much more true of Mr. Hardy than it +was of Goncourt, and more true than it is of any other English poet +except Donne. There is absolutely no observation too minute, no flutter +of reminiscence too faint, for Mr. Hardy to adopt as the subject of a +metaphysical lyric, and his skill in this direction has grown upon him; +it is nowhere so remarkable as in his latest volume, aptly termed +<i>Moments of Vision</i>. Everything in village life is grist to his mill; he +seems to make no selection, and his field is modest to humility and yet +practically boundless. We have a poem on the attitude of two people with +nothing to do and no book to read, waiting in the parlour of an hotel +for the rain to stop, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> recollection after more than forty years. That +the poet once dropped a pencil into the cranny of an old church where he +was sketching inspires an elaborate lyric. The disappearance of a rotted +summer-house, the look of a row of silver drops of fog condensed on the +bar of a gate, the effect of candlelight years and years ago on a +woman's neck and hair, the vision of a giant at a fair, led by a dwarf +with a red string—such are amongst the subjects which awaken in Mr. +Hardy thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears, and call for +interpretation in verse. The skeleton of a lady's sunshade, picked up on +Swanage Cliffs, the pages of a fly-blown Testament lying in a railway +waiting-room, a journeying boy in a third-class carriage, with his +ticket stuck in the band of his hat—such are among the themes which +awake in Mr. Hardy's imagination reveries which are always wholly +serious and usually deeply tragic.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hardy's notation of human touches hitherto excluded from the realm +of poetry is one of the most notable features of his originality. It +marked his work from the beginning, as in the early ballad of "The +Widow," where the sudden damping of the wooer's amatory ardour in +consequence of his jealousy of the child is rendered with extraordinary +refinement. The difficulty of course is to know when to stop. There is +always a danger that a poet, in his search after the infinitely +ingenious, may lapse into <i>amphigory</i>, into sheer absurdity and +triviality, which Cowper, in spite of his elegant lightness, does not +always escape. Wordsworth, more serious in his intent, fell headlong in +parts of <i>Peter Bell</i>, and in such ballads as "Betty Foy." Mr. Hardy, +whatever the poverty of his incident, commonly redeems it by the oddity +of his observation; as in "The Pedigree":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"I bent in the deep of night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over a pedigree the chronicler gave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> +<span class="i0">The uncurtained panes of my window-square<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Let in the watery light<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Of the moon in its old age:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where mute and cold it globed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a dying dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mr. Hardy's love of strange experiences, and of adventures founded on a +balance of conscience and instinct, is constantly exemplified in those +ballads and verse-anecdotes which form the section of his poetry most +appreciated by the general public. Among these, extraordinarily +representative of the poet's habit of mind, is "My Cicely," a tale of +the eighteenth century, where a man impetuously rides from London +through Wessex to be present at the funeral of the wrong woman; as he +returns, by a coincidence, he meets the right woman, whom he used to +love, and is horrified at "her liquor-fired face, her thick accents." He +determines that by an effort of will the dead woman (whom he never saw) +shall remain, what she seemed during his wild ride, "<i>my</i> Cicely," and +the living woman be expunged from memory. A similar deliberate electing +that the dream shall hold the place of the fact is the motive of "The +Well-Beloved." The ghastly humour of "The Curate's Kindness" is a sort +of reverse action of the same mental subtlety. Misunderstanding takes a +very prominent place in Mr. Hardy's irony of circumstance; as, almost +too painfully, in "The Rash Bride," a hideous tale of suicide following +on the duplicity of a tender and innocent widow.</p> + +<p>The grandmother of Mr. Hardy was born in 1772, and survived until 1857. +From her lips he heard many an obscure old legend of the life of Wessex +in the eighteenth century. Was it she who told him the terrible Exmoor +story of "The Sacrilege;" the early tale of "The Two Men," which might +be the skeleton-scenario for a whole elaborate novel; or that +incomparable comedy in verse, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," with its +splendid human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> touch at the very end? We suspect that it was; and +perhaps at the same source he acquired his dangerous insight into the +female heart, whether exquisitely feeble as in "The Home-coming" with +its delicate and ironic surprise, or treacherous, as in the desolating +ballad of "Rose-Ann." No one, in prose or verse, has expatiated more +poignantly than Mr. Hardy on what our forefathers used to call "cases of +conscience." He seems to have shared the experiences of souls to whom +life was "a wood before your doors, and a labyrinth within the wood, and +locks and bars to every door within that labyrinth," as Jeremy Taylor +describes that of the anxious penitents who came to him to confession. +The probably very early story of "The Casterbridge Captains" is a +delicate study in compunction, and a still more important example is +"The Alarm," where the balance of conscience and instinct gives to what +in coarser hands might seem the most trivial of actions a momentous +character of tragedy.</p> + +<p>This is one of Mr. Hardy's studies in military history, where he is +almost always singularly happy. His portraits of the non-commissioned +officer of the old service are as excellent in verse as they are in the +prose of <i>The Trumpet-Major</i> or <i>The Melancholy Hussar</i>. The reader of +the novels will not have to be reminded that "Valenciennes" and the +other ballads have their prose-parallel in Simon Burden's reminiscences +of Minden. Mr. Hardy, with a great curiosity about the science of war +and a close acquaintance with the mind of the common soldier, has +pondered on the philosophy of fighting. "The Man he Killed," written in +1902, expresses the wonder of the rifleman who is called upon to shoot +his brother-in-arms, although</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Had he and I but met,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">By some old ancient inn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We should have set us down to wet<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Right many a nipperkin."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>In this connection the <i>Poems of War and Patriotism</i>, which form an +important part of the volume of 1918, should be carefully examined by +those who meditate on the tremendous problems of the moment.</p> + +<p>A poet so profoundly absorbed in the study of life could not fail to +speculate on the probabilities of immortality. Here Mr. Hardy presents +to us his habitual serenity in negation. He sees the beautiful human +body "lined by tool of time," and he asks what becomes of it when its +dissolution is complete. He sees no evidence of a conscious state after +death, of what would have to be, in the case of aged or exhausted +persons, a revival of spiritual force, and on the whole he is +disinclined to cling to the faith in a future life. He holds that the +immortality of a dead man resides in the memory of the living, his +"finer part shining within ever-faithful hearts of those bereft." He +pursues this theme in a large number of his most serious and affecting +lyrics, most gravely perhaps in "The To-be-Forgotten" and in "The +Superseded." This sense of the forlorn condition of the dead, surviving +only in the dwindling memory of the living, inspires what has some +claims to be considered the loveliest of all Mr. Hardy's poems, "Friends +Beyond," which in its tenderness, its humour, and its pathos contains in +a few pages every characteristic of his genius.</p> + +<p>His speculation perceives the dead as a crowd of slowly vanishing +phantoms, clustering in their ineffectual longing round the footsteps of +those through whom alone they continue to exist. This conception has +inspired Mr. Hardy with several wonderful visions, among which the +spectacle of "The Souls of the Slain" in the Boer War, alighting, like +vast flights of moths, over Portland Bill at night, is the most +remarkable. It has the sublimity and much of the character of some +apocalyptic design by Blake. The volume of 1902 contains a whole group +of phantasmal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> pieces of this kind, where there is frequent mention of +spectres, who address the poet in the accents of nature, as in the +unrhymed ode called "The Mother Mourns." The obsession of old age, with +its physical decay ("I look into my glass"), the inevitable division +which leads to that isolation which the poet regards as the greatest of +adversities ("The Impercipient"), the tragedies of moral indecision, the +contrast between the tangible earth and the bodyless ghosts, and endless +repetition of the cry, "Why find we us here?" and of the question "Has +some Vast Imbecility framed us in jest, and left us now to +hazardry?"—all start from the overwhelming love of physical life and +acquaintance with its possibilities, which Mr. Hardy possesses to an +inordinate degree.</p> + +<p>It would be ridiculous at the close of an essay to attempt any +discussion of the huge dramatic panorama which many believe to be Mr. +Hardy's most weighty contribution to English literature. The spacious +theatre of <i>The Dynasts</i> with its comprehensive and yet concise +realisations of vast passages of human history, is a work which calls +for a commentary as lengthy as itself, and yet needs no commentary at +all. No work of the imagination is more its own interpreter than this +sublime historic peep-show, this rolling vision of the Napoleonic +chronicle drawn on the broadest lines, and yet in detail made up of +intensely concentrated and vivid glimpses of reality. But the subject of +my present study, the lyrical poetry of Mr. Hardy, is not largely +illustrated in <i>The Dynasts</i>, except by the choral interludes of the +phantom intelligences, which have great lyrical value, and by three or +four admirable songs.</p> + +<p>When we resume the effect which the poetry of Mr. Hardy makes upon the +careful reader, we note, as I have indicated already, a sense of unity +of direction throughout. Mr. Hardy has expressed himself in a thousand +ways, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> has never altered his vision. From 1867 to 1917, through half +a century of imaginative creation, he has not modified the large +outlines of his art in the smallest degree. To early readers of his +poems, before the full meaning of them became evident, his voice sounded +inharmonious, because it did not fit in with the exquisite melodies of +the later Victorian age. But Mr. Hardy, with characteristic pertinacity, +did not attempt to alter his utterance in the least, and now we can all +perceive, if we take the trouble to do so, that what seemed harsh in his +poetry was his peculiar and personal mode of interpreting his thoughts +to the world.</p> + +<p>As in his novels so in his poems, Mr. Hardy has chosen to remain local, +to be the interpreter for present and future times of one rich and +neglected province of the British realm. From his standpoint there he +contemplates the wide aspect of life, but it seems huge and misty to +him, and he broods over the tiny incidents of Wessex idiosyncracy. His +irony is audacious and even sardonic, and few poets have been less +solicitous to please their weaker brethren. But no poet of modern times +has been more careful to avoid the abstract and to touch upon the real.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> +<h2>SOME SOLDIER POETS</h2> + + +<p>The two years which preceded the outbreak of the war were marked in this +country by a revival of public interest in the art of poetry. To this +movement coherence was given and organisation introduced by Mr. Edward +Marsh's now-famous volume entitled <i>Georgian Poetry</i>. The effect of this +collection—for it is hardly correct to call it an anthology—of the +best poems written by the youngest poets since 1911 was two-fold; it +acquainted readers with work few had "the leisure or the zeal to +investigate," and it brought the writers themselves together in a +corporate and selected relation. I do not recollect that this had been +done—except prematurely and partially by <i>The Germ</i> of 1850—since the +<i>England's Parnassus</i> and <i>England's Helicon</i> of 1600. In point of fact +the only real precursor of Mr. Marsh's venture in our whole literature +is the <i>Songs and Sonnettes</i> of 1557, commonly known as <i>Tottel's +Miscellany</i>. Tottel brought together, for the first time, the lyrics of +Wyatt, Surrey, Churchyard, Vaux, and Bryan, exactly as Mr. Marsh called +public attention to Rupert Brooke, James Elroy Flecker and the rest of +the Georgians, and he thereby fixed the names of those poets, as Mr. +Marsh has fixed those of our youngest fledglings, on the roll of English +literature.</p> + +<p>The general tone of the latest poetry, up to the moment of the outbreak +of hostilities, was pensive, instinct with natural piety, given somewhat +in excess to description of landscape, tender in feeling, essentially +unaggressive except towards the clergy and towards other versifiers of +an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> earlier generation. There was absolutely not a trace in any one of +the young poets of that arrogance and vociferous defiance which marked +German verse during the same years. These English shepherds might hit at +their elders with their staves, but they had turned their swords into +pruning-hooks and had no scabbards to rattle. This is a point which +might have attracted notice, if we had not all been too drowsy in the +lap of our imperial prosperity to observe the signs of the times in +Berlin. Why did no one call our attention to the beating of the big drum +which was going on so briskly on the Teutonic Parnassus? At all events, +there was no echo of such a noise in the "chambers of imagery" which +contained Mr. Gordon Bottomley, or in Mr. W.H. Davies' wandering "songs +of joy," or on "the great hills and solemn chanting seas" where Mr. John +Drinkwater waited for the advent of beauty. And the guns of August 1914 +found Mr. W.W. Gibson encompassed by "one dim, blue infinity of starry +peace." There is a sort of German <i>Georgian Poetry</i> in existence; in +time to come a comparison of its pages with those of Mr. Marsh may throw +a side-light on the question, Who prepared the War?</p> + +<p>The youngest poets were more completely taken by surprise in August 1914 +than their elders. The earliest expressions of lyric military feeling +came from veteran voices. It was only proper that the earliest of all +should be the Poet Laureate's address to England, ending with the +prophecy:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Much suffering shall cleanse thee!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But thou through the flood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shalt win to Salvation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To Beauty through blood."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As sensation, however, followed sensation in those first terrific and +bewildering weeks, much was happening that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> called forth with the utmost +exuberance the primal emotions of mankind; there was full occasion for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"exultations, agonies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And love, and man's unconquerable mind."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>By September a full chorus was vocal, led by our national veteran, Mr. +Thomas Hardy, with his <i>Song of the Soldiers</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What of the faith and fire within us,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Men who march away<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ere the barn-cocks say<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Night is growing gray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To hazards whence no tears can win us;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What of the faith and fire within us,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Men who march away?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Already, before the close of the autumn of 1914, four or five +anthologies of war-poems were in the press, and the desire of the +general public to be fed with patriotic and emotional verse was +manifested in unmistakable ways. We had been accustomed for some time +past to the issue of a multitude of little pamphlets of verse, often +very carefully written, and these the critics had treated with an +indulgence which would have whitened the hair of the stern reviewers of +forty years ago. The youthful poets, almost a trade-union in themselves, +protected one another by their sedulous generosity. It was very unusual +to see anything criticised, much less "slated"; the balms of praise were +poured over every rising head, and immortalities were predicted by the +dozen. Yet, as a rule, the sale of these little poetic pamphlets had +been small, and they had been read only by those who had a definite +object in doing so.</p> + +<p>The immediate success of the anthologies, however, proved that the war +had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse, an attention +anxious to be stirred or soothed by the assiduous company of poets who +had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> been ripening their talents in a little clan. These had now an +eager world ready to listen to them. The result was surprising; we may +even, without exaggeration, call it unparalleled. There had never +before, in the world's history, been an epoch which had tolerated and +even welcomed such a flood of verse as was poured forth over Great +Britain during the first three years of the war. Those years saw the +publication, as I am credibly informed, of more than five hundred +volumes of new and original poetry. It would be the silliest +complaisance to pretend that all of this, or much of it, or any but a +very little of it, has been of permanent value. Much of it was windy and +superficial, striving in wild vague terms to express great agitations +which were obscurely felt by the poet. There was too much of the bathos +of rhetoric, especially at first; too much addressing the German as +"thou fell, bloody brute," and the like, which broke no bones and took +no trenches.</p> + +<p>When once it was understood that, as a cancelled line in Tennyson's +<i>Maud</i> has it,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The long, long canker of peace was over and done,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the sentiments of indignation and horror made themselves felt with +considerable vivacity. In this direction, however, none of the youngest +poets approached Sir Owen Seaman in the vigour of their invective. Most +of them seemed to be overpowered by the political situation, and few +could free themselves from their inured pacific habit of speech. Even +when they wrote of Belgium, the Muse seemed rather to weep than to +curse. Looking back to the winter of 1914, it is almost pathetic to +observe how difficult it was for our easy-going British bards to hate +the Germans. There was a good deal of ineffective violence, and +considerable misuse of technical terms, caused, in many cases, by a too +hasty reference to newspaper reports<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> of gallantry under danger, in the +course of which the more or less obscure verbiage of military science +was picturesquely and inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious +reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he +cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a +family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from +another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British +prejudice, and to a horrible confidence in England's power of "muddling +through," which look rather ghastly in the light of subsequent +struggles.</p> + +<p>There was, however, a new spirit presently apparent, and a much +healthier one. The bards became soldiers, and in crossing over to France +and Flanders, each had packed his flute in his kit. They began to send +home verses in which they translated into music their actual experiences +and their authentic emotions. We found ourselves listening to young men +who had something new, and what was better, something noble to say to +us, and we returned to the national spirit which inspired the Chansons +de Geste in the eleventh century. To the spirit—but not in the least to +the form, since it is curious that the war-poetry of 1914-17 was, even +in the most skilful hands, poetry on a small scale. The two greatest of +the primal species of verse, the Epic and the Ode, were entirely +neglected, except, as will later be observed, in one notable instance by +Major Maurice Baring. As a rule, the poets constrained themselves to +observe the discipline of a rather confined lyrical analysis in forms of +the simplest character. Although particular examples showed a rare +felicity of touch, and although the sincerity of the reflection in many +cases hit upon very happy forms of expression, it is impossible to +overlook the general monotony. There used to be a story that the +Japanese Government sent a committee of its best art-critics to study +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> relative merits of the modern European painters, and that they +returned with the bewildered statement that they could make no report, +because all European pictures were exactly alike. A student from +Patagonia might conceivably argue that he could discover no difference +whatever between our various poets of the war.</p> + +<p>This would be unjust, but it is perhaps not unfair to suggest that the +determined resistance to all restraint, which has marked the latest +school, is not really favourable to individuality. There has been a very +general, almost a universal tendency to throw off the shackles of poetic +form. It has been supposed that by abandoning the normal restraints, or +artificialities, of metre and rhyme, a greater directness and fidelity +would be secured. Of course, if an intensified journalistic impression +is all that is desired, "prose cut up into lengths" is the readiest +by-way to effect. But if the poets desire—and they all do desire—to +speak to ages yet unborn, they should not forget that all the experience +of history goes to prove discipline not unfavourable to poetic +sincerity, while, on the other hand, the absence of all restraint is +fatal to it. Inspiration does not willingly attend upon flagging metre +and discordant rhyme, and never in the whole choral progress from Pindar +down to Swinburne has a great master been found who did not exult in the +stubbornness of "dancing words and speaking strings," or who did not +find his joy in reducing them to harmony. The artist who avoids all +difficulties may be pleased with the rapidity of his effect, but he will +have the vexation of finding his success an ephemeral one. The old +advice to the poet, in preparing the rich chariot of the Muse, still +holds good:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let the postillion, Nature, mount, but let<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The coachman, Art, be set."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Too many of our recent rebellious bards fancy that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> coach will drive +itself, if only the post-boy sticks his heels hard into Pegasus.</p> + +<p>It is not, however, the object of this essay to review all the poetry +which was written about the war, nor even that part of it which owed its +existence to the strong feeling of non-combatants at home. I propose to +fix our attention on what was written by the young soldiers themselves +in their beautiful gallantry, verse which comes to us hallowed by the +glorious effort of battle, and in too many poignant cases by the +ultimate sacrifice of life itself. The poet achieves his highest meed of +contemporary glory, if</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"some brave young man's untimely fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In words worth, dying for he celebrate,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and when he is himself a young man striving for the same deathless +honour on the same field of blood it is difficult to conceive of +circumstances more poignant than those which surround his effort. On +many of these poets a death of the highest nobility set the seal of +eternal life. They were simple and passionate, radiant and calm, they +fought for their country, and they have entered into glory. This alone +might be enough to say in their praise, but star differeth from star in +brightness, and from the constellation I propose to select half a dozen +of the clearest luminaries. What is said in honest praise of these may +be said, with due modification, of many others who miss merely the +polish of their accomplishment. It is perhaps worth noticing, in +passing, that most of the poets are men of university training, and that +certain literary strains are common to the rank and file of them. The +influence of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and Rossetti is almost +entirely absent. The only one of the great Victorians whom they seem to +have read is Matthew Arnold, but it is impossible to help observing that +the <i>Shropshire Lad</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> of Mr. A.E. Housman was in the tunic-pocket of +every one of them. Among the English poets of the past, it is mainly the +so-called "metaphysical" writers in the seventeenth century whom they +studied; Donne seems to have been a favourite with them all, and Vaughan +and Treherne were not far behind.</p> + +<p>The spontaneous instinct of readers has taken the name of Rupert Brooke +to illustrate the poetic spirit of the great war in a superlative +degree. His posthumous volume, brought out in May 1915, a few weeks +after his death, has enjoyed a success which is greater, perhaps, than +that of all the other poems of the war put together. He has become a +sort of symbol, even a sort of fetish, and he is to English sentiment +what Charles Péguy is to France, an oriflamme of the chivalry of his +country. It is curious, in this connection, that neither Péguy nor +Brooke had the opportunity of fighting much in the cause; they fell, as +it seemed for the moment, obscurely. Rupert Brooke was a pawn in the +dark and dolorous flight from Antwerp. He died in the Ægean, between +Egypt and Gallipoli, having never seen a Turkish enemy. So Péguy faded +out of sight on the very opening day of the battle of the Marne, yet +each of these young men was immediately perceived to have embodied the +gallantry of his country. The extraordinary popularity of Rupert Brooke +is due to the excellence of his verse, to the tact with which it was +presented to the public, but also to a vague perception of his +representative nature. He was the finest specimen of a certain type +produced at the universities, and then sacrificed to our national +necessity.</p> + +<p>It is needless to describe the verses of Rupert Brooke, which have +attained a circulation which any poet might envy. They are comprised in +two slender volumes, that above mentioned, and one of 1911, published +while he was still at Cambridge. He was born in 1887, and when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> he died +off Skyros, in circumstances of the most romantic pathos, he had not +completed his twenty-eighth year. He was, unlike the majority of his +contemporaries, a meticulous and reserved writer, little inclined to be +pleased with his work, and cautious to avoid the snare of improvisation. +Hence, though he lived to be older than did Keats or Fergusson, he left +a very slender garland of verse behind him, in which there is scarcely a +petal which is not of some permanent value. For instance, in the volume +of 1911 we found not a few pieces which then seemed crude in taste and +petulant in temper; but even these now illustrate a most interesting +character of which time has rounded the angles, and we would not have +otherwise what illustrates so luminously—and so divertingly—that +precious object, the mind of Rupert Brooke.</p> + +<p>Yet there is a danger that this mind and character may be +misinterpreted, even by those who contemplate the poet's memory with +idolatry. There is some evidence of a Rupert Brooke legend in the +process of formation, which deserves to be guarded against not less +jealously than the R.L. Stevenson legend of a few years ago. We know +that for some people gold and lilies are not properly honoured until +they are gilded and painted. Rupert Brooke was far from being either a +plaster saint or a vivid public witness. He was neither a trumpet nor a +torch. He lives in the memory of those who knew him as a smiling and +attentive spectator, eager to watch every flourish of the pageantry of +life. Existence was a wonderful harmony to Rupert Brooke, who was +determined to lose no tone of it by making too much noise himself. In +company he was not a great talker, but loved to listen, with sparkling +deference, to people less gifted than himself if only they had +experience to impart. He lived in a fascinated state, bewitched with +wonder and appreciation. His very fine appearance, which seemed to glow +with dormant vitality,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> his beautiful manners, the quickness of his +intelligence, his humour, were combined under the spell of a curious +magnetism, difficult to analyse. When he entered a room, he seemed to +bring sunshine with him, although he was usually rather silent, and +pointedly immobile. I do not think it would be easy to recollect any +utterance of his which was very remarkable, but all he said and did +added to the harmonious, ardent, and simple effect.</p> + +<p>There is very little of the poetry of Rupert Brooke which can be +definitely identified with the war. The last six months of his life, +spent in conditions for which nothing in his previous existence in +Cambridge or Berlin, in Grantchester or Tahiti, had in the least +prepared him, were devoted—for we must not say wasted—to breaking up +the <i>cliché</i> of civilised habits. But of this harassed time there remain +to us the five immortal Sonnets, which form the crown of Rupert Brooke's +verse, and his principal legacy to English literature. Our record would +be imperfect without the citation of one, perhaps the least hackneyed of +these:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These laid the world away; poured out the red<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That men call age; and those who would have been,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their sons, they gave, their immortality.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And paid his subjects with a royal wage;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Nobleness walks in our ways again;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And we have come into our heritage."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If the fortune of his country had not disturbed his plans, it is more +than probable that Rupert Brooke would have become an enlightened and +enthusiastic professor. Of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> poet who detains us next it may be said +that there was hardly any walk of life, except precisely this, which he +could not have adorned. Julian Grenfell, who was a poet almost by +accident, resembled the most enlightened of the young Italian noblemen +of the Renaissance, who gave themselves with violence to a surfeit of +knowledge and a riot of action. He was a humanist of the type of the +fifteenth century, soldier, scholar, and man of pleasure, such as we +read of in Vespasiano's famous book. Everything he did was done in the +service of St. Epicurus, it was done to <i>darsi buon tempo</i>, as the +Tuscans used to say. But this was only the superficial direction taken +by his energy; if he was imperious in his pleasures, he was earnest in +his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of +the physical, intellectual, and emotional faculties at his disposal. +Julian Grenfell was a master of the body and of the mind, an unrivalled +boxer, a pertinacious hunter, skilled in swimming and polo, a splendid +shot, a swift runner, and an unwearying student. That an athlete so +accomplished should have had time left for intellectual endowments is +amazing, but his natural pugnacity led him to fight lexicons as he +fought the wild boar, and with as complete success.</p> + +<p>The record of the brief and shining life of Julian Grenfell has been +told in an anonymous record of family life which is destined to +reverberate far beyond the discreet circle of friends to which it is +provisionally addressed. It is a document of extraordinary candour, +tact, and fidelity, and it is difficult to say whether humour or courage +is the quality which illuminates it most. It will be referred to by +future historians of our race as the most vivid record which has been +preserved of the red-blooded activity of a spirited patrician family at +the opening of the twentieth century. It is partly through his place at +the centre of this record that, as one of the most gifted of his elder +friends has said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> the name of Julian Grenfell will be linked "with all +that is swift and chivalrous, lovely and courageous," but it is also +through his rare and careless verses.</p> + +<p>Julian Grenfell, who was born to excel with an enviable ease, was not a +poet by determination. In a family where everything has been preserved, +no verses of his that are not the merest boyish exercises are known to +exist previous to the war. He was born in 1888, and he became a +professional soldier in India in 1911. He was on his way home from South +Africa when hostilities broke out, and he was already fighting in +Flanders in October 1914. After a very brilliant campaign, in the course +of which he won the D.S.O. and was twice mentioned in despatches, he was +shot in the head near Ypres and died of his wounds at Boulogne on May +26th, 1915. During these months in France, by the testimony of all who +saw him and of all to whom he wrote, his character received its final +touch of ripeness. Among his other attainments he abruptly discovered +the gift of noble gnomic verse. On receiving news of the death of Rupert +Brooke, and a month before his own death, Julian Grenfell wrote the +verses called "Into Battle," which contain the unforgettable stanzas:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The fighting man shall from the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Speed with the light-foot winds to run,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And with the trees to newer birth....<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The woodland trees that stand together,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They stand to him each one a friend;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They gently speak in the windy weather;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They guide to valley and ridge's end.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The kestrel hovering by day,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the little owls that call by night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bid him be swift and keen as they,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As keen of ear, as swift of sight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The blackbird sings to him 'Brother, brother,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If this be the last song you shall sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sing well, for you may not sing another,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Brother, sing.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>The whole of this poem is memorable, down to its final prophetic +quatrain:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The thundering line of battle stands,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And in the air Death moans and sings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Night shall fold him in soft wings."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Could any other man in the British Army have knocked out a heavy-weight +champion one week and written that poem the next?" a brother officer +asked. "Into Battle" remains, and will probably continue to remain, the +clearest lyrical expression of the fighting spirit of England in which +the war has found words. It is a poem for soldiers, and it gives noble +form to their most splendid aspirations. Julian Grenfell wrote, as he +boxed and rode, as he fought in the mud of Flanders, as the ideal +sporting Englishman of our old, heroic type.</p> + +<p>The ancient mystery of verse is so deeply based on tradition that it is +not surprising that all the strange contrivances of twentieth-century +warfare have been found too crabbed for our poets to use. When great +Marlborough, as Addison puts it, "examin'd all the dreadful scenes of +war" at Blenheim, he was really in closer touch with Marathon than with +the tanks and gas of Ypres. But there is one military implement so +beautiful in itself, and so magical in the nature of its service, that +it is bound to conquer a place in poetry. The air-machine, to quote <i>The +Campaign</i> once more, "rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." But +the poets are still shy of it. In French it has, as yet, inspired but +one good poem, the "Plus haut toujours!" of Jean Allard-Méeus, a hymn of +real aerial majesty. In English Major Maurice Baring's ode "In Memoriam: +A.H." is equally unique, and, in its complete diversity from +Allard-Méeus' rhapsody, suggests that the aeroplane has a wide field +before it in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> realms of imaginative writing. Major Baring's subject +is the death of Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas, who was killed on November +3rd, 1916. This distinguished young statesman and soldier had just been +promoted, after a career of prolonged gallantry in the air, and would +have flown no more, if he had returned in safety to our front on that +fatal day.</p> + +<p>Major Baring has long been known as an excellent composer of sonnets and +other short pieces. But "In Memoriam: A.H." lifts him to a position +among our living poets to which he had hardly a pretension. In a long +irregular threnody or funeral ode, the great technical difficulty is to +support lyrical emotion throughout. No form of verse is more liable to +lapses of dignity, to dull and flagging passages. Even Dryden in <i>Anne +Killigrew</i>, even Coleridge in the <i>Departing Year</i>, have not been able +to avoid those languors. Many poets attempt to escape them by a use of +swollen and pompous language. I will not say that Major Baring has been +universally successful, where the success of the great masters is only +relative, but he has produced a poem of great beauty and originality, +which interprets an emotion and illustrates an incident the poignancy of +which could scarcely be exaggerated. I have no hesitation in asserting +that "A.H." is one of the few durable contributions to the literature of +the present war.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to quote effectively from a poem which is constructed +with great care on a complicated plan, but a fragment of Major Baring's +elegy may lead readers to the original:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And maimed you with a bullet long ago,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gave back your youth to you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And packed in moments rare and few<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Achievements manifold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And happiness untold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bade you spring to Death as to a bride,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In manhood's ripeness, power and pride,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on your sandals the strong wings of youth."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is no rhetoric here, no empty piling up of fine words; it is a +closely followed study in poetical biography.</p> + +<p>The water has its marvels like the air, but they also have hardly yet +secured the attention of the poets. In <i>A Naval Motley</i>, by Lieut. +N.M.F. Corbett, published in June 1916, we encounter the submarine:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Not yours to know delight<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In the keen hard-fought fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shock of battle and the battle's thunder;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">But suddenly to feel<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Deep, deep beneath the keel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The vital blow that rives the ship asunder!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A section of the new war-poetry which is particularly pathetic is that +which is inspired by the nostalgia of home, by the longing in the midst +of the guns and the dust and the lice for the silent woodlands and cool +waters of England. When this is combined with the sense of extreme +youth, and of a certain brave and beautiful innocence, the poignancy of +it is almost more than can be borne. The judgment is hampered, and one +doubts whether one's critical feeling can be trusted. This particular +species of emotion is awakened by no volume more than by the slender +<i>Worple Flit</i> of E. Wyndham Tennant, who died on the Somme in September +1916. He was only nineteen when he fell, at an age when, on the one +hand, more precocious verse than his has been written, and when yet, on +the other, some of the greatest poets had not achieved a mastery of +words equal to that already possessed by this young Wykehamist. The +voice is faltering, and there is a want of sureness in the touch; the +metrical hammer does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> always tap the centre of the nail's head. But +what pathos in the sentiment, what tenderness in the devotion to beauty! +Tennant had, we may suppose, read Flecker before he wrote "How shall I +tell you of the roads that stretch away?"; or was it merely the family +likeness in the generation? But I know not what but his own genius can +have inspired the "Home Thoughts in Laventie," a poem about a little +garden left unravished among the rubble of the wrecked village, a poem +which ends thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I saw green banks of daffodil,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Slim poplars in the breeze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Great tan-brown hares in gusty March<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A-courting on the leas.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And meadows, with their glittering streams—and silver-scurrying dace—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Home, what a perfect place."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Among these boy-poets, so cruelly and prematurely snatched from the +paternal earth, Tennant suggests to us the possibility that a talent of +very high order was quenched by death, because in few of them do we find +so much evidence of that "perception and awe of Beauty" which Plotinus +held to be the upward path to God.</p> + +<p>In June 1917 there was published a slender volume which is in several +ways the most puzzling and the most interesting of all that lie upon my +table to-day. This is the <i>Ardours and Endurances</i> of Lieut. Robert +Nichols. I knew nothing of the author save what I learned from his +writings, that he is very young, that he went out from Oxford early in +the war, that he was fighting in Flanders before the end of 1914, that +he was wounded, perhaps at Loos, in 1915, and that he was long in +hospital. I felt the hope, which later information has confirmed, that +he was still alive and on the road to recovery. Before <i>Ardours and</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> +<i>Endurances</i> reached me, I had met with <i>Invocation</i>, a smaller volume +published by Lieut. Nichols in December 1915. There has rarely been a +more radical change in the character of an artist than is displayed by a +comparison of these two collections. <i>Invocation</i>, in which the war +takes a small and unconvincing place, is creditable, though rather +uncertain, in workmanship, and displays a tendency towards experiment in +rich fancy and vague ornament. In <i>Ardours and Endurances</i> the same +accents are scarcely to be detected; the pleasant boy has grown into a +warworn man; while the mastery over the material of poetic art has +become so remarkable as to make the epithet "promising" otiose. There is +no "promise" here; there is high performance.</p> + +<p>Alone among the poets before me, Lieut. Nichols has set down a reasoned +sequence of war impressions. The opening Third of his book, and by far +its most interesting section, consists of a cycle of pieces in which the +personal experience of fighting is minutely reported, stage by stage. We +have "The Summons," the reluctant but unhesitating answer to the call in +England, the break-up of plans; then the farewell to home, "the place of +comfort." "The Approach," in three successive lyrics, describes the +arrival at the Front. "Battle," in eleven sections, reproduces the +mental and physical phenomena of the attack. "The Dead," in four +instalments, tells the tale of grief. "The Aftermath," with +extraordinary skill, records in eight stages the gradual recovery of +nerve-power after the shattering emotions of the right. The first +section of "Battle," as being shorter than the rest, may be quoted in +full as an example of Lieut. Nichols's method:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"It is mid-day: the deep trench glares—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A buzz and blaze of flies—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hot wind puffs the giddy airs,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The great sun rakes the skies,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> +<span class="i0">"No sound in all the stagnant trench<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where forty standing men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Endure the sweat and grit and stench,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like cattle in a pen.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or twangs the whining wire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As in hell's forging fire.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"From out a high cool cloud descends<br /></span> +<span class="i2">An aeroplane's far moan;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The black speck travels on.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And sweating, dizzied, isolate<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the hot trench beneath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We bide the next shrewd move of fate<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be it of life or death."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is painfully vivid, but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what +follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from +the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the +hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken +melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section of +<i>Ardours and Endurances</i>:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In a far field, away from England, lies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A Boy I friended with a care like love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The melancholy clouds drive on above.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There, separate from him by a little span,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Two Grenfells, lie, and my Boy is made man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">One with these elder knights of chivalry."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is difficult to qualify, it seems almost indelicate to intrude upon, +such passionate grief. These poems form a revelation of the agony of a +spirit of superabundant refinement and native sensuousness suddenly +stunned, and as it were momentarily petrified, by horrible spiritual +anguish. If the strain were not relieved by the final numbers of +"Aftermath," where the pain of the soul is abated, and where the poet, +scarred and shattered, but "free at last,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> snaps the chain of despair, +these poems would be positively intolerable.</p> + +<p>In the closeness of his analysis and in the accurate heaping up of exact +and pregnant observations, Lieut. Nichols comes closer than any other of +these English poets to the best of the French paladins, of whom I wrote +in <i>Three French Moralists</i>. One peculiarity which he shares with them +is his seriousness: there is no trace in him of the English cheerfulness +and levity. Most of our war-writers are incorrigible Mark Tapleys. But +Lieut. Nichols, even when he uses colloquial phrases—and he introduces +them with great effect—never smiles. He is most unlike the French, on +the other hand, in his general attitude towards the war. He has no +military enthusiasm, no aspiration after <i>gloire</i>. Indeed, the most +curious feature of his poetry is that its range is concentrated on the +few yards about the trench in which he stands. He seems to have no +national view of the purpose of the war, no enthusiasm for the cause, no +anger against the enemy. There is but a single mention of the Germans +from beginning to end; the poet does not seem to know of their +existence. His experiences, his agonies, his despair, are what a purely +natural phenomenon, such as the eruption of a volcano or the chaos of an +earthquake, might cause. We might read his poems over and over again +without forming the slightest idea of what all the distress was about, +or who was guilty, or what was being defended. This is a mark of great +artistic sincerity; but it also points to a certain moral narrowness. +Lieut. Robert Nichols' "endurances" are magnificently described, but we +are left in the dark regarding his "ardours." We are sure of one thing, +however, that none of us may guess what such a talent, in one still so +young, may have in store for us; and we may hope for broader views +expressed in no less burning accents.</p> + +<p>There could hardly be a more vivid contrast than exists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> between the +melancholy passion of Lieut. Nichols and the fantastic high spirits of +Captain Robert Graves. He again is evidently a very young man, who was +but yester-year a jolly boy at the Charterhouse. He has always meant to +be a poet; he is not one of those who have been driven into verse by the +strenuous emotion of the war. In some diverting prefatory lines to <i>Over +the Brazier</i> he gives us a picture of the nursery-scene when a bright +green-covered book bewitched him by its "metre twisting like a chain of +daisies, with great big splendid words." He has still a wholesome hunger +for splendid words; he has kept more deliberately than most of his +compeers a poetical vocation steadily before him. He has his moments of +dejection when the first battle faces him:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here's an end to my art!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I must die and I know it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With battle-murder at my heart—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sad death, for a poet!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, my songs never sung,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And my plays to darkness blown!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am still so young, so young,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And life was my own."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But this mood soon passes, and is merged in the humoristic and fantastic +elation characteristic of this buoyant writer, whose whim it is to meet +the tragedy not mournfully but boisterously. Where by most of the +soldier-bards the subjective manner is a little over-done, it is +impossible not to welcome so objective a writer as Captain Graves, from +whose observations of the battle of La Bassée I quote an episode:—</p> + +<h4>THE DEAD FOX HUNTER</h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We found the little captain at the head;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">His men lay well aligned.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We touched his hand, stone-cold, and he was dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And they, all dead behind,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Had never reached their goal, but they died well;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They charged in line, and in the same line fell.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> +<span class="i0">"The well-known rosy colours of his face<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Were almost lost in grey.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We saw that, dying and in hopeless case,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">For others' sake that day<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For those who live uprightly and die true<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Heaven has no bars or locks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And serves all taste.... Or what's for him to do<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Up there, but hunt the fox?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For one who rode straight and at hunting died.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Why, it must find one now:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If any shirk and doubt they know the game,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">There's one to teach them how:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the whole host of Seraphim complete<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I have a notion that this is a gallant poem which Englishmen will not +allow to be forgotten. The great quality of Captain Graves' verse at +present is its elated vivacity, which neither fire, nor pain, nor grief +can long subdue. Acutely sensitive to all these depressing elements, his +animal spirits lift him like an aeroplane, and he is above us in a +moment, soaring through clouds of nonsense under a sky of unruffled +gaiety. In our old literature, of which he is plainly a student, he has +found a neglected author who is wholly to his taste. This is Skelton, +Henry VIII's Rabelaisian laureate. Captain Graves imitates, with a great +deal of bravado, those breathless absurdities, <i>The Tunning of Elinore +Rummyng</i> and <i>Colin Clout</i>. He likes rough metre, bad rhymes and squalid +images: we suspect him of an inclination to be rude to his immediate +predecessors. But his extreme modernness—"Life is a cliché—I would +find a gesture of my own"—is, in the case of so lively a songster, an +evidence of vitality. He promises a new volume, to be called <i>Fairies +and Fusiliers</i>, and it will be looked forward to with anticipation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> + +<p>All these poets seem to be drawn into relation to one another. Robert +Graves and Siegfried Sassoon are both Fusiliers, and they publish a +στιχομυθία "on Nonsense," just as Cowley and Crashaw did "on +Hope" two centuries and a half ago. Lieut. Sassoon's own volume is later +than those which we have hitherto examined, and bears a somewhat +different character. The gallantry of 1915 and the optimism of 1916 have +passed away, and in Lieut. Sassoon's poems their place is taken by a +sense of intolerable weariness and impatience: "How long, O Lord, how +long?" The name-piece of the volume, and perhaps its first in execution, +is a monologue by an ignorant and shrewd old huntsman, who looks back +over his life with philosophy and regret. Like Captain Graves, he is +haunted with the idea that there must be fox-hounds in Heaven. All +Lieut. Sassoon's poems about horses and hunting and country life +generally betray his tastes and habits. This particular poem hardly +touches on the war, but those which follow are absorbed by the ugliness, +lassitude, and horror of fighting. Lieut. Sassoon's verse has not yet +secured the quality of perfection; he is not sufficiently alive to the +importance of always hitting upon the best and only word. He is +essentially a satirist, and sometimes a very bold one, as in "The Hero," +where the death of a soldier is announced home in "gallant lies," so +that his mother brags to her neighbours of the courage of her dead son. +At the close of all this pious make-believe, the Colonel</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"thought how 'Jack,' cold-footed, useless swine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had panicked down the trench that night the mine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To get sent home; and how, at last, he died,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blown to small bits";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or, again, as in "Blighters," where the sentimentality of London is +contrasted with the reality in Flanders:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home!'—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is this note of bitter anger, miles away from the serenity of Rupert +Brooke, the lion-heart of Julian Grenfell, the mournful passion of +Robert Nichols, which differentiates Lieut. Sassoon from his fellows. +They accept the war, with gallantry or with resignation; he detests it +with wrathful impatience. He has much to learn as an artist, for his +diction is often hard, and he does not always remember that Horace, +"when he writ on vulgar subjects, yet writ not vulgarly." But he has +force, sincerity, and a line of his own in thought and fancy. A +considerable section of his poetry is occupied with studies of men he +has observed at the Front, a subaltern, a private of the Lancashires, +conscripts, the dross of a battle-field, the one-legged man ("Thank God, +they had to amputate!"), the sniper who goes crazy—savage, +disconcerting silhouettes drawn roughly against a lurid background.</p> + +<p>The bitterness of Lieut. Sassoon is not cynical, it is the rage of +disenchantment, the violence of a young man eager to pursue other aims, +who, finding the age out of joint, resents being called upon to help to +mend it. His temper is not altogether to be applauded, for such +sentiments must tend to relax the effort of the struggle, yet they can +hardly be reproved when conducted with so much honesty and courage. +Lieut. Sassoon, who, as we learn, has twice been severely wounded and +has been in the very furnace of the fighting, has reflected, more +perhaps than his fellow-singers, about the causes and conditions of the +war. He may not always have thought correctly, nor have recorded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> his +impressions with proper circumspection, but his honesty must be +respectfully acknowledged.</p> + +<p>I have now called attention to those soldier-writers of verse who, in my +judgment, expressed themselves with most originality during the war. +There is a temptation to continue the inquiry, and to expatiate on +others of only less merit and promise. Much could be said of Charles +Hamilton Sorley, who gave evidence of precocious literary talent, though +less, I think, in verse, since the unmistakable singing faculty is +absent in <i>Marlborough</i> (Cambridge University Press, 1916), than in +prose, a form in which he already excelled. Sorley must have shown +military gifts as well as a fine courage, for when he was killed in +action in October 1915, although he was but twenty years of age, he had +been promoted captain. In the universal sorrow, few figures awaken more +regret, than his. Something, too, had I space, should be said about the +minstrels who have been less concerned with the delicacies of +workmanship than with stirring the pulses of their auditors. In this +kind of lyric "A Leaping Wind from England" will long keep fresh the +name of W.N. Hodgson, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. His +verses were collected in November 1916. The strange rough drum-taps of +Mr. Henry Lawson, published in Sydney at the close of 1915, and those of +Mr. Lawrence Rentoul, testify to Australian enthusiasm. Most of the +soldier-poets were quite youthful; an exception was R.E. Vernède, whose +<i>War Poems</i> (W. Heinemann, 1917) show the vigour of moral experience. He +was killed in the attack on Harrincourt, in April 1917, having nearly +closed his forty-second year. To pursue the list would only be to make +my omissions more invidious.</p> + +<p>There can be no healthy criticism where the principle of selection is +neglected, and I regret that patriotism or indulgence has tempted so +many of those who have spoken of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> the war-poets of the day to plaster +them with indiscriminate praise. I have here mentioned a few, in whose +honour even a little excess of laudation may not be out of place. But +these are the exceptions, in a mass of standardised poetry made to +pattern, loosely versified, respectable in sentiment, uniformly +meditative, and entirely without individual character. The reviewers who +applaud all these ephemeral efforts with a like acclaim, and who say +that there are hundreds of poets now writing who equal if they do not +excel the great masters of the past, talk nonsense; they talk nonsense, +and they know it. They lavish their flatteries in order to widen the +circle of their audience. They are like the prophets of Samaria, who +declared good unto the King of Israel with one mouth; and we need a +Micaiah to clear the scene of all such flatulent Zedekiahs. It is not +true that the poets of the youngest generation are a myriad Shelleys and +Burnses and Bérangers rolled into one. But it is true that they carry on +the great tradition of poetry with enthusiasm, and a few of them with +high accomplishment.</p> + +<p>1917.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Verdoyant à jamais, hier comme aujourd'hui,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 20em;">HENRI DE RÉGNIER.</span></p> + + +<p>In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen +to those whose positive authority is universally recognised, and in +taking for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its +definitions or consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I +perform what you may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy +audacity. My subject is chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures +which you may well believe yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to +propound. Nevertheless, and in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite +you to join with me in some reflections on what is the probable course +of English poetry during, let us say, the next hundred years. If I +happen to be right, I hope some of the youngest persons present will +say, when I am long turned to dust, what an illuminating prophet I was. +If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will remember anything at all about +the matter. In any case we may possibly be rewarded this afternoon by +some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation of some pleasant +analogies.</p> + +<p>Our title takes for granted that English poetry will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as +an art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which +is fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and +another, in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in +the history of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of +writing verse was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three +Scandinavian countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no +poetry, in our sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost +died out here in England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran +very low in France at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these +instances, whether ancient or modern, of the attempt to prove prose a +sufficing medium for all expression of human thought have hitherto +failed, and it is now almost certain that they will more and more +languidly be revived, and with less and less conviction.</p> + +<p>It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his <i>Epistle to the Reverend Divine</i> +(1574) that "It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not +only permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing." +Poetry has occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and +you will remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his +philosophical Utopia, was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical +verse himself. So, to come down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry +out of the living language of his country, had been one of the most +skilful of prosodical proficients. Such instances may allay our alarm. +There cannot be any lasting force in arguments which remind us of the +pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. It needs more than the zeal of +a turncoat to drive Apollo out of Parnassus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> + +<p>There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of +it? There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious +water-colour painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It +is very fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, +the horse of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his +wings, against a sky so dark that it must symbolise the obscure +discourse of those who write in prose. You are left quite doubtful +whether he will strike the rocky terrace in the foreground with his +slender, silver hooves, or will swoop down into the valley below, or +will soar to heaven and out of sight. You are left by the painter in a +pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may break out anywhere, and of the +vivacious courser himself all that we can be sure of is that we are +certain to see him alighting before us when we least expect him.</p> + +<p>We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his +apparently aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical +spirit, and yet acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of +believing that verse will continue to be written in the English language +for a quite indefinite period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of +these difficulties at once. The principal danger, then, to the future of +poetry seems to me to rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. +Every school of verse is a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because +its leaders have become capable of new forms of attractive expression; +its crest is some writer, or several writers, of genius, who combine +skill and fire and luck at a moment of extreme opportuneness; and then +the wave breaks, because later writers cannot support the ecstasy, and +merely repeat formulas which have lost their attractiveness. Shirley +would have been a portent, if he had flourished in 1595 and had written +then as he did in 1645. Erasmus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> Darwin would be one of the miracles of +prosody if <i>The Loves of the Plants</i> could be dated 1689 instead of +1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this rise and fall in +value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the trough of the +last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. <i>Cantate +Domino</i> is the cry of youth, sing a <i>new</i> song unto the Lord.</p> + +<p>But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray's +<i>Elegy</i>, and much of <i>Hamlet</i>, and some of Burns's songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are +like rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the +script of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who +wish to speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In +several of the literatures of modern Europe—those which began late, or +struggled long against great disadvantages—it is still possible to +produce pleasure by poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly +limpid language. But with us in England, I confess that it seems to me +certain that whatever we retain, we can never any more have patience to +listen to a new shepherd piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation +is likely to be more acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire +for novelty of expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which +is so fervently demanded from every new school of writers, will force +the poets of the future to sweep away all recognised impressions. The +consequence must be, I think—I confess so far as language is concerned +that I see no escape from this—that the natural uses of English and the +obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our national poetry, as +they are even now so generally being driven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> + +<p>No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. +The poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that "Qui saura penser de +lui-même et former de nobles idées, qu'il prenne, s'il pent, la manière +et le tour élevé des maîtres." These are words which should inspire +every new aspirant to the laurel. "S'il peut"; you see that Vauvenargues +puts it so, because he does not wish that we should think that such +victories as these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce +them. They are not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the +rubbed-out, conventionalised coinage of our language.</p> + +<p>In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has +recently been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular +poets, has never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am +debarred by what Keats called "giant ignorance" from expressing an +opinion on the subject, but I presume that in Welsh the resources of +language are far from being so seriously exhausted as we have seen that +they are in our own complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the +higher forms of poetic diction through five centuries has made simple +expression extremely difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in +Welsh, as in Gaelic and in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of +lyric, epic, and dramatic art untilled. We have seen, in the latter half +of the nineteenth century, Provençal poets capable of producing simple +and thrilling numbers which are out of the reach of their sophisticated +brethren who employ the worn locutions of the French language.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p> + +<p>In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not +any longer satisfy to write</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The rose is red, the violet blue,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And both are sweet, and so are you."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were +so still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is +quite impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will +seek to analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their <i>naïvetés</i> lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school.</p> + +<p>We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that +Pegasus, with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue +to accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will +only be at the cost of much that we at present admire and enjoy that the +continuity of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly +present to you some characteristic passages of the best English poetry +of 1963, I doubt extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of +their merit. I am not sure that you would understand what the poet +intended to convey, any more than the Earl of Surrey would have +understood the satires of Donne, or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of +George Meredith. Young minds invariably display their vitality by +attacking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> the accepted forms of expression, and then they look about +for novelties, which they cultivate with what seems to their elders to +be extravagance. Before we attempt to form an idea, however shadowy, of +what poetry will be in the future, we must disabuse ourselves of the +delusion that it will be a repetition of what is now produced and +accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of philosophy to do away with +the embarrassing and painful, but after all perhaps healthful antagonism +between those who look forward and those who live in the past. The +earnestness expended on new work will always render young men incapable +of doing justice to what is a very little older than themselves; and the +piety with which the elderly regard what gave them full satisfaction in +their days of emotional freshness will always make it difficult for them +to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what they loved.</p> + +<p>If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in +our vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must +follow on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find +the modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing +symbolic subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are +still unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That +is to say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had +been said before him, and in his horror of the trite and the +superficial, he will achieve effect and attach interest <i>obscuris vera +involvens</i>—wrapping the truth in darkness. The "darkness" will be +relative, as his own contemporaries, being more instructed and +sophisticated than we are, will find those things transparent, or at +least translucent, which remain opaque enough to us. And, of course, as +epithets and adjectives that seem fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn +to him, he will have to exert his ingenuity to find parallel +expres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>sions which would startle us by their oddity if we met with them +now.</p> + +<p>A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognised +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never +fail to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We +may instructively examine the history of literature with special +attention to this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. +It was fatal to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in +an obscurity to which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given +from the name of its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several +highly-gifted writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who +endeavoured to give freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I +need only remind you of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril +Tourneur, called <i>The Transform'd Metamorphosis</i>, and of the cryptic +rhymed dramas of Lord Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think +desperately perilous to a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable +Stéphane Mallarmé. Nothing, I feel, is more dangerous to the health of +poetry than the praise given by a group of irresponsible disciples to +verse which transfers commonplace thought to an exaggerated, violent, +and involved scheme of diction, and I confess that I should regard the +future of poetry in this country with much more apprehension than I do, +if I believed that the purely learned poet, the prosodical pedant, was +destined to become paramount amongst us. That would, indeed, threaten +the permanence of the art; and it is for this reason that I look with a +certain measure of alarm on the excess of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> verbiage about versification +which attends not merely criticism—for that matters little—but the +actual production and creation. I am confident, however, that the common +sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in favour of sanity +and lucidity.</p> + +<p>One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what +the French call "la vraie hauteur." This elevation of style, this +dignity, is foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the +rude air of modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe saw it +degenerate for a century and a half, into pomposity relieved by +flatness. It is apt to become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of +empty fine phrases. If we examine the serious poetry of the end of the +seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century—especially +in the other countries of Europe, for England was never without some dew +on the threshing-floor—if we examine it in France, for instance, +between Racine and André Chenier, we are obliged to recognise that it +was very rarely both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, +which we are beginning ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to +poetry the sense of a genuine stateliness of expression, which once more +gave it the requisite dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and +the noble sentiments of humanity.</p> + +<p>Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the +subjects with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. +Here we are confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of +history, we see that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed +by the incursions of a more and more powerful and wide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> embracing prose. +At the dawn of civilisation poetry had it all its own way. If +instruction was desired upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, +the bard produced it in a prosodical shape, combining with the dignity +of form the aid which the memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus +you conceive of a Hesiod before you think of a Homer, and the earliest +poetry was probably of a purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, +with its exact pedestrian method, took over more and more completely the +whole province of information, but it was not until the nineteenth +century that the last strongholds of the poetry of instruction were +stormed. I will, if you please, bring this home to you by an example +which may surprise you.</p> + +<p>The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But +it was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a +hundred years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable +passage in which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of +1800:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"If the labours of men of science,—Wordsworth said,—should ever +create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our +condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the +Poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to +follow the steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general +indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation +into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest +discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be +as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be +employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be +familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated +by the followers of these respective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> sciences, thus familiarised +to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and +blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the +transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a +dear and genuine inmate of the household of man."</p></div> + +<p>It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same +spirit as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to +assure us of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of +one so sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. +The belief of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, +in some vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But +when we look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our +national poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany +or chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an +effort made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. +Perhaps the nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable +was attempted by Tennyson, particularly in those parts of <i>In Memoriam</i> +where he dragged in analogies to geological discoveries and the +biological theories of his time. Well, these are just those parts of +Tennyson which are now most universally repudiated as lifeless and +jejune.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would +"bind together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> human +society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time." I +suppose that in composing those huge works, so full of scattered +beauties, but in their entirety so dry and solid, <i>The Excursion</i> and +<i>The Prelude</i>, he was consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme +of a wide and all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts +of this kind will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in +whom the memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the +imagination, employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social +poetry the elements of which, prima facie, should be deeply attractive +to us all. But I do not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard +Kipling, brilliant as they are, are calculated to encourage the poets of +the future to pursue their lyric celebration of machinery and sociology +and the mysteries of natural religion. Already is it not that portion of +his work which we approach with most languor, in spite of its +originality and its outlook upon "the vast empire of human society"? And +lesser poets than he who seek for popularity by such violent means are +not, I think, rewarded by the distinguished loyalty of the best readers. +We are startled by their novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but +when, a few years later, we return to them, we are apt to observe with +distress how</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"their lean and flashy songs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater +prophets, my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy +of future poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid +social character, but that as civilisation more and more tightly lays +hold upon literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one +province after another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more +and more what Hazlitt calls "a mere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> effusion of natural sensibility." +Hazlitt used the phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and +not shrink from adopting it. In most public remarks about current and +coming literature in the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which +it is taken for granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers +of the imagination is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to +embrace the world, to take part in a universal scheme of pacification, +to immortalise imperial events, to be as public as possible. But surely +it is more and more clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for +such grandiose themes as these. Within the last year our minds have been +galvanised into collective sympathy by two great sensations of +catastrophe, each case wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can +take in the revolt of nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I +suppose we may consider the destruction of the Titanic and the loss of +Captain Scott's expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is +thought by journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common +consent, these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to +any really remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody +could equal in vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These +are matters in which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose +does not require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. +The impact of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and +forcible.</p> + +<p>My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming +poets will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should +define it as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which +are of collective interest to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> race at large. I dread lest the +intense cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical +observation of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the +future poet. I will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of +his principal preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery +piece of mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of +me alike. The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn +writers of the imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is +the only safeguard against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But +although the ivory tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although +the poets may be strongly recommended to prolong their <i>villeggiatura</i> +there, it should not be the year-long habitation of any healthy +intelligence.</p> + +<p>I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an "effusion of +natural sensibility," will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be +tempted, in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to +draw farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap +his singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat +his readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our +successors must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not +merely sees nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I +am not concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; +the moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that +this unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> and he will have to depend for success entirely on +the positive value of his verse.</p> + +<p>The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries—it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the +misanthropy of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the +rowdiness of Marlowe?—the higher the note of the lyre, the more +ridiculous is the attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds +the violence of Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with +a greater pride than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude +of the sacred bard, maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and +hollowed out and made haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will +have to be abandoned as a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it +is preserved by the poets of the future it will be peculiar to those +monasteries of song, those "little clans," of which I am now about to +speak as likely more and more to prevail.</p> + +<p>In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of +these bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is +perhaps instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de +Creteil, which was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was +founded in October 1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal +dissensions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> in January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance +of the public, in contemptuous disregard of established "literary +opinion," a sort of prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be +the active centre of energy for a new generation, and there were five +founders, each of whom was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in +verse. At Creteil there was a printing-press in a great park, so that +the members should be altogether independent of the outside world. The +poets were to cultivate the garden and keep house with the sale of the +produce. When not at work, there were recitations, discussions, +exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up with the latest vagaries +of the Cubists and Post-impressionists.</p> + +<p>This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one +among the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any +measure of talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in +vague and nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call +charlatans, the refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider +that it is interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a +sense correct when they announced that they were performing "a heroic +act," an act symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future +disdainfully protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the +dreadful impact of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you +wish to pursue the subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your +eye on this tendency to a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed +much evidence of it yet in England, but it is beginning to stir a good +deal in France and Italy. After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious +thing, like the practices of the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was +said, "Our House of the Holy Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should +have looked upon it, is yet doomed to remain untouched,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> imperturbable, +out of sight, and unrevealed to the whole godless world for ever." If I +am sure of anything, it is that the Poets of the Future will look upon +massive schemes of universal technical education, and such democratic +reforms as those which are now occupying the enthusiasm and energy of +Lord Haldane, as peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a +godless world.</p> + +<p>To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me possible that +sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical poetry +of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort +of obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other +phenomenon worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with +the various tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was +the mark of the sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and +craftily exhibited, but often, as in foreign examples which will easily +occur to your memory, rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a +slightly stale perfume, an irritating odour of last night's opopanax or +vervain. And this is the one point, almost I think the only point, in +which the rather absurd and certainly very noisy and hoydenish +manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, led by M. Marinetti and his crew +of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious attention. It is a plank in +their platform to banish eroticism, of the good kind and of the bad, +from the poetic practice of the future. I do not, to say the truth, find +much help for the inquiry we have taken up to-day, in the manifestoes of +these raucous young gentlemen, who, when they have succeeded in flinging +the ruins of the architecture of Venice into its small stinking canals, +will find themselves hard put to it to build anything beautiful in the +place of them. But in their reaction against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> "the eternal feminine," +they may, I think, very possibly be followed by the serious poets of the +future.</p> + +<p>Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry +in England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in +the direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is +known as pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to +listening audiences behind the footlights, but in the increased study of +life in its exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with +the tendency, of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world +itself, either into an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered +association of more or less independent figures united only in a +rebellious and contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the +inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well +happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped +social surfaces of life, the ignorance—really, the happy and hieratic +ignorance—of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be +saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and +penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and +permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I +think it not improbable that the poetry of the future may become more +and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series of acts of definite +creation, rather than as the result of observation, which will be left +to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant masters of our prose.</p> + +<p>As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for +mankind than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an +excessive observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate +to the violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general +exaggeration of the darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of +what was called the "sub-fusc" colours which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> art-critics of a century +ago judged essential to sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, +and particularly in the very latest Russian drama, this determination to +see blackness and blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of +existence as a Valley of the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully +frequent. In England we had a poet of considerable power, whose tragic +figure crossed me in my youth, in whose work there is not a single gleam +of hope or dignity for man;—I mean the unfortunate James Thomson, +author of <i>The City of Dreadful Night</i>. I cannot but believe that the +poetry of the future, being more deeply instructed, will insist less +emphatically upon human failure and less savagely upon the revolt of +man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an earnestness, a fullness +of tribute to the noble passion of life, an utterance simple and direct. +I believe that it will take as its theme the magnificence of the +spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not the grotesque and +squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat.</p> + +<p>It has been admirably said, in a charming essay, that "History may be +abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be purely formal; +but poetry must be full of human life." This consideration, I think, may +make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance of poetic +expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever changes may be +introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may occur in +religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification of +composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action +possible as will give free scope to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> energies and passions, the +hopes and fears, of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic +imagination will be found to insist on expression in the mode of formal +art. It is quite possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of +the democratic instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such +as was presented in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank +verse lyrics in <i>The Princess</i>, by Browning in the more brilliant parts +of <i>One Word More</i>, by Swinburne in his fulminating <i>Sapphics</i>, may be +as little repeated as the analogous hardness of Dryden in <i>MacFlecknoe</i> +or the lapidary splendour of Gray in his <i>Odes</i>. I should rather look, +at least in the immediate future, for a revival of the liquid ease of +Chaucer or the soft redundancies of <i>The Faerie Queene</i>. The remarkable +experiments of the Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon +the whole body of French verse, leads me to expect a continuous movement +in that direction.</p> + +<p>It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal—perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognised their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of +it in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, +which at once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or +imminent service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of +poetry is not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and +only partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will +consider it, all that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Symbolists have been saying is involved in +Bacon's phrase that "poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires +of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things." There +could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up with a +rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that which I +have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope that you +will not think that your time has been wasted while we have touched, +lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the probable +or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, or I, or +the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn poets, +we may be certain that there will</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"hover in their restless heads<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which into words no virtue"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>of ours can "digest." I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on +any expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest +our only sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable +arrival, ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon +as ever they bubble from the blow of his hoof.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE AGONY OF THE VICTORIAN AGE</h2> + + +<p>For a considerable time past everybody must have noticed, especially in +private conversation, a growing tendency to disparagement and even +ridicule of all men and things, and aspects of things, which can be +defined as "Victorian." Faded habits of mind are lightly dismissed as +typical of the Victorian Age, and old favourite poets, painters, and +musicians are treated with the same scorn as the glued chairs and glass +bowls of wax flowers of sixty years ago. The new generation are hardly +willing to distinguish what was good from what was bad in the time of +their grandmothers. With increasing audacity they repudiate the +Victorian Age as a <i>sæclum insipiens et infacetum</i>, and we meet +everywhere with the exact opposite of Montaigne's "Je les approuve tous +Tun après l'autre, quoi qu'ils disent." Our younger contemporaries are +slipping into the habit of approving of nothing from the moment that +they are told it is Victorian.</p> + +<p>This may almost be described as an intellectual and moral revolution. +Every such revolution means some liberation of the intellect from +bondage, and shows itself first of all in a temper of irreverence; the +formulas of the old faith are no longer treated with respect and +presently they are even ridiculed. It is useless to close our eyes to +the fact that a spirit of this kind is at work amongst us, undermining +the dignity and authority of objects and opinions and men that seemed +half a century ago to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> more perennial than bronze. Successive orators +and writers have put the public in possession of arguments, and +especially have sparkled in pleasantries, which have sapped the very +foundations of the faith of 1850. The infection has attacked us all, and +there is probably no one who is not surprised, if he seriously reflects, +to realise that he once implicitly took his ideas of art from Ruskin and +of philosophy from Herbert Spencer. These great men are no longer +regarded by anybody with the old credulity; their theories and their +dogmas are mined, as were those of the early eighteenth century in +France by the Encyclopædists, by a select class of destructive critics, +in whose wake the whole public irregularly follows. The ordinary +unthinking man accepts the change with exhilaration, since in this +country the majority have always enjoyed seeing noses knocked off +statues. But if we are to rejoice in liberation from the bondage of the +Victorian Age we ought to know what those bonds were.</p> + +<p>The phenomena of the decadence of an age are never similar to those of +its rise. This is a fact which is commonly overlooked by the opponents +of a particular section of social and intellectual history. In the +initial stages of a "period" we look for audacity, fire, freshness, +passion. We look for men of strong character who will hew a channel +along which the torrent of new ideals and subversive sentiments can +rush. But this violence cannot be expected to last, and it would lead to +anarchy if it did. Slowly the impetus of the stream diminishes, the +river widens, and its waters reach a point where there seems to be no +further movement in their expanse. No age contains in itself the +elements of endless progress; it starts in fury, and little by little +the force of it declines. Its decline is patent—but not until long +afterwards—in a deadening of effort, in a hardening of style. Dryden +leads on to Pope, Pope points down to Erasmus Darwin, after whom the +world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> can but reject the whole classical system. The hungry sheep of a +new generation look up and are not fed, and this is the vision which +seems to face us in the last adventures of the schools of yesterday.</p> + +<p>But what is, or was, the Victorian Age? The world speaks glibly of it as +though it were a province of history no less exactly defined than the +career of a human being from birth to death; but in practice no one +seems in a hurry to mark out its frontiers. Indeed, to do so is an +intrepid act. If the attempt is to be made at all, then 1840, the year +of Queen Victoria's marriage with Prince Albert, may be suggested as the +starting-point, and 1890 (between the death-dates of Browning, Newman, +and Tennyson) as the year in which the Victorian Age is seen sinking +into the sands. Nothing could be vaguer, or more open to contention in +detail, than this delineation, but at all events it gives our +deliberations a frame. It excludes <i>Pickwick</i>, which is the typical +picture of English life under William IV., and <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, which +was the tossing of the bound giant in his sleep; but it includes the +two-volume Tennyson, "chiefly lyrical," the stir of the Corn Law +agitation, the Tractarian Crisis of 1841, and the <i>History of the French +Revolution and Past and Present</i>, when the giant opened his eyes and +fought with his chains. Darwin was slowly putting together the notes he +had made on the Beagle, and Hugh Miller was disturbing convention by his +explorations of the Old Red Sandstone. Most of all, the discussion of +permanent and transient elements in Christianity was taking a foremost +place in all strata of society, not merely in the form of the contest +around <i>Tract 90</i>, but in the divergent directions of Colenso, the +Simeon Evangelicals, and Maurice.</p> + +<p>The Victorian Age began in rancour and turmoil. This is an element which +we must not overlook, although it was in a measure superficial. A series +of storms, rattling and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> recurrent tempests of thunder and lightning, +swept over public opinion, which had been so calm under George IV. and +so dull under William IV. Nothing could exceed the discord of +vituperation, the Hebraism of Carlyle denouncing the Vaticanism of +Wiseman, "Free Kirk and other rubbish" pitted against "Comtism, +ghastliest of algebraic spectralities." This theological tension marks +the first twenty years and then slowly dies down, after the passion +expended over <i>Essays and Reviews</i>. It was in 1840 that we find +Macaulay, anxious to start a scheme of Whig reform and to cut a +respectable figure as Secretary of State for War, unable to get to +business because of the stumbling-block of religious controversy. +Everything in heaven and earth was turned into "a theological treatise," +and all that people cared about was "the nature of the sacraments, the +operation of holy orders, the visibility of the Church and baptismal +regeneration." The sitting member goes down to Edinburgh to talk to his +constituents about Corn Laws and Sugar Duties and the Eastern Question; +he is met by "a din" of such objections as "Yes, Mr. Macaulay, that is +all very well for a statesman, but what becomes of the headship of our +Lord Jesus Christ?"</p> + +<p>If the Victorian Age opened in a tempest of theology, it was only +natural that it should cultivate a withering disdain for those who had +attempted to reform society on a non-theological basis. In sharp +contradistinction to the indulgence of the Georgian period for +philosophic speculation, England's interest in which not even her long +continental wars had been able to quench, we find with the accession of +Victoria the credit of the French thinkers almost abruptly falling. +Voltaire, never very popular in England, becomes "as mischievous a +monkey as any of them"; the enthusiasm for Rousseau, which had reached +extravagant proportions, completely disappears, and he is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> merely the +slanderous sceptic, who, after soaking other people's waistcoats with +his tears, sent his own babies to the Foundling Hospital. The influence +of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was +first combated and then baldly denied. The premier journalist of the age +declared, with the satisfaction of a turkey-cock strutting round his +yard, that no trace of the lowest level of what could be called +popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt +himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a +French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the +Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious +taint.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, or perhaps we ought to say inevitably conducted by +these elements of passion and disdain, the infant Victorian Age passed +rapidly into the great political whirlpool of 1846, with its violent +concentration of enthusiasm on the social questions which affected the +welfare of the masses, with, in short, its tremendous upheaval of a +practical radicalism. From that time forth its development baffles +analysis. Whatever its present enemies may allege to its discredit, they +cannot pretend that it was languid or monotonous. No Age hitherto lived +out upon the world's surface has been so multiform or so busy; none +defies the art of the historian to such a bewildering degree. Its latest +critic does not exaggerate when he says that our fathers and our +grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of +information concerning it "that the industry of a Ranke would be +submerged by it and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it." +This is manifestly true, and it is evident that an encyclopædia would be +required to discuss all the divisions of so tremendous a subject. If we +look over too wide a horizon we lose our bearings altogether. We get a +hopelessly confused notion of the course of progress; we see +experi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>ments, criticisms, failures, but who is to assure us what was the +tendency of evolution?</p> + +<p>Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians" has arrived at the very +moment when all readers are prepared to discuss the age he deals with, +and when public opinion is aware of the impatience which has been +"rising in the bosom of a man like smoke" under the pressure of the +insistent praise of famous men. The book has attracted a very remarkable +degree of notice; it has been talked about wherever people have met +together; and has received the compliment of being seriously displayed +before the University of Oxford by one of the most eminent of the +Victorian statesmen whom Oxford has produced. If we look into the causes +of this success, enjoyed by the earliest extended book of a writer +almost unknown, a book, too, which pretends to no novelty of matter or +mystery of investigation, we find them partly in the preparedness of the +public mind for something in the way of this exposure, but partly also +in the skill of the writer. Whatever else may be said of Mr. Lytton +Strachey, no one can deny that he is very adroit, or that he possesses +the art of arresting attention.</p> + +<p>It is part of this adroitness that he contrives to modify, and for a +long time even to conceal the fact that his purpose is to damage and +discredit the Victorian Age. He is so ceremonious in his approach, so +careful to avoid all brusqueness and coarseness, that his real aim may +be for awhile unobserved. He even professes to speak "dispassionately, +impartially, and without ulterior intentions." We may admit the want of +passion and perhaps the want of partiality, but we cannot avoid seeing +the ulterior intention, which is to undermine and belittle the +reputation of the great figures of the Victorian Age. When the +prodigious Signor Marinetti proposes to hurl the "leprous palaces" of +his native city into her "fetid canals," and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> build in their place +warehouses and railway stations, he does not differ in essential +attitude from Mr. Lytton Strachey, delicately "laying bare the facts of +some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the +greater knowledge of history—in short, the superior equipment of the +English iconoclast. Each of them—and all the troop of opponents who +grumble and mutter between their extremes—each of them is roused by an +intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they +have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a +virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an exasperating monotony +of effect.</p> + +<p>Mr. Strachey has conducted his attack from the point of view of +biography. He realises the hopelessness of writing a history of the +Victorian Age; it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled +into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of +the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend +themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst +in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the +Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most of +them are buried. Mr. Strachey has some criticism of these monsters which +could hardly be bettered:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate +the dead—who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of +material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, +their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design? They +are as familiar as the cortège of the undertaker, and bear the same +air of slow, funereal barbarism."</p></div> + +<p>It is impossible not to agree with this pungent criticism. Every candid +reader could point to a dozen Victorian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> biographies which deserve Mr. +Strachey's condemnation. For instance, instead of taking up any of the +specimens which he has chosen for illustration, we need only refer the +reader's memory to the appendix of "Impressions," by a series of elderly +friends, which closes the official <i>Life of Tennyson</i>, published in +1897. He will find there an expression of the purest Victorian optimism. +The great object being to foist on the public a false and superhuman +picture of the deceased, a set of illustrious contemporaries—who +themselves expected to be, when they died, transfigured in like +manner—form a bodyguard around the corpse of the poet and emit their +"tedious panegyric." In this case, more even than in any of the +instances which Mr. Strachey has taken, the contrast between the real +man and the funereal image is positively grotesque.</p> + +<p>Without question this contrast is not a little responsible for the +discredit into which the name of Tennyson has fallen. Lord Selborne +found nothing in Tennyson "inconsistent with the finest courtesy and the +gentlest heart." Dr. Jowett had preserved through forty years "an +ever-increasing wonder at the depth of his thought," and emphatically +stated that he "was above such feelings as a desire of praise, or fear +of blame." (Tennyson, who was thirsty for ceaseless laudation, and to +whom a hint of censure was like the bite of a mosquito!) Frederick Myers +ejaculated, "How august, how limitless a thing was Tennyson's own +spirit's upward flight!" The Duke of Argyll, again, during the space of +forty years, had found him "always reverent, hating all levity or +flippancy," and was struck by his possessing "the noblest humility I +have ever known." Lord Macaulay, who "had stood absolutely aloof," once +having been permitted to glance at the proof-sheets of <i>Guenevere</i>, was +"absolutely subdued" to "unfeigned and reverent admiration." The duke +was the glad emissary who was "the medium<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> of introduction," and he +recognised in Macaulay's subjugation "a premonition" of Tennyson's +complete "conquest over the living world and over the generations that +are to come."</p> + +<p>Thus the priesthood circled round their idol, waving their censers and +shouting their hymns of praise, while their ample draperies effectively +hid from the public eye the object which was really in the centre of +their throng, namely, a gaunt, black, touzled man, rough in speech, +brooding like an old gipsy over his inch of clay pipe stuffed with shag, +and sucking in port wine with gusto—"so long as it is black and sweet +and strong, I care not!" Their fault lay, not in their praise, which was +much of it deserved, but in their deliberate attempt in the interests of +what was Nice and Proper—gods of the Victorian Age—to conceal what any +conventional person might think not quite becoming. There were to be no +shadows in the picture, no stains or rugosities on the smooth bust of +rosy wax.</p> + +<p>On the pretext, therefore, of supplying a brief and above all a +complimentary set of portraits, Mr. Strachey takes the biography of an +ecclesiastic, an educational authority, a woman of action, and a man of +adventure, and tells them over again in his own way. The four figures he +chooses are all contemporary, and yet, so implacably does time hurry us +along, all would be very old if they still survived. Three of them could +hardly survive, for Cardinal Manning and Dr. Arnold would be far over a +hundred, and Florence Nightingale in her ninety-ninth year; the fourth, +General Gordon, would be eighty-five. The motto of Mr. Strachey is "Put +not your trust in the intellectual princes of the Victorian Age," or, at +least, in what their biographers have reported of them; they were not +demi-gods in any sense, but eccentric and forceful figures working dimly +towards aims which they only understood in measure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> and which very +often were not worth the energy which they expended on them. This +attitude alone would be enough to distinguish Mr. Strachey from the +purveyors of indiscriminate praise, and in adopting it he emphasises his +deliberate break with the age of which they were the envy and the +ornament. Given his 1918 frame of mind, no blame can attach to him for +adopting this gesture. At moments when the tradition of a people has +been violently challenged there have always ensued these abrupt acts of +what to the old school seems injustice. If Mr. Lytton Strachey is +reproached with lack of respect, he might reply: In the midst of a +revolution, who is called on to be respectful to the fallen monarch? +Extreme admiration for this or that particular leader, the principle of +Victorian hero-worship, is the very heresy, he might say, which I have +set out to refute.</p> + +<p>When St. John the Divine addressed his Apocalypse to the Angels of the +Seven Churches, he invented a system of criticism which is worthy of all +acceptation. He dwelt first upon the merits of each individual church; +not till he had exhausted them did he present the reverse of the coin. +In the same spirit, critics who, in the apostle's phrase, have +"something against" Mr. Lytton Strachey, will do well to begin by +acknowledging what is in his favour. In the first place, he writes +sensibly, rapidly, and lucidly—without false ornament of any kind. Some +of his pages might, with advantage, be pinned up opposite the +writing-tables of our current authors of detestable pseudo-Meredithian +and decayed Paterese. His narrative style is concise and brisk. His book +may undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with <i>Whiggism +in its Relations to Literature</i>, although it is less discursive and does +not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In +this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an +argument against his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, +the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline +from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much more the result of +individual taste than of fashion? There seems to be no radical change in +the methods of style. The extravagant romanticism of rebellion against +the leaders of the Victorian Age finds at length an exponent, and behold +he writes as soberly as Lord Morley, or as Newman himself!</p> + +<p>The longest of these biographies is that of Cardinal Manning, and it is +the one with which Mr. Lytton Strachey has taken most pains. Briefer +than the briefest of the <i>English Men of Letters</i> series of biographies, +it is yet conducted with so artful an economy as to give the impression, +to an uninstructed reader, that nothing essential about the career of +Manning has been omitted. To produce this impression gifts of a very +unusual order were required, since the writer, pressed on all sides by a +plethora of information, instead of being incommoded by it, had to seem +to be moving smoothly in an atmosphere of his own choosing, and to be +completely unembarrassed by his material. He must have the air of +saying, in Froude's famous impertinence, "This is all we know, and more +than all, yet nothing to what the angels know." In the face of a whole +literature of controversy and correspondence, after a storm of Purcell +and Hutton, Ward and Mozley and Liddon tearing at one another's throats, +Mr. Lytton Strachey steps delicately on to the stage and says, in a low +voice, "Come here and I will tell you all about a funny ecclesiastic who +had a Hat, and whose name was Henry Edward Manning. It will not take us +long, and ever afterwards, if you hear that name mentioned, you will +know everything about him which you need to remember." It is audacious, +and to many people will seem shocking, but it is very cleverly done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p> + +<p>The study of Florence Nightingale is an even better example of Mr. +Strachey's method, since she is the one of his four subjects for whom he +betrays some partiality. "The Miss Nightingale of fact was not as facile +fancy painted her," and it has greatly entertained Mr. Strachey to chip +the Victorian varnish off and reveal the iron will beneath. His first +chapter puts it in one of his effective endings:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Her mother was still not quite resigned; surely Florence might at +least spend the summer in the country. At this, indeed, among her +intimates, Mrs. Nightingale almost wept. 'We are ducks,' she said +with tears in her eyes, 'who have hatched a wild swan.' But the +poor lady was wrong; it was not a swan that they had hatched, it +was an eagle."</p></div> + +<p>It is therefore as an eagle, black, rapacious, with hooked bill and +crooked talons, that he paints Miss Nightingale; and the Swan of +Scutari, the delicate Lady with the Lamp, fades into a fable. Mr. +Strachey glorifies the demon that possessed this pitiless, rushing +spirit of philanthropy. He gloats over its ravages; its irresistible +violence of purpose. It is an evident pleasure to him to be able to +detach so wild a figure from the tameness of the circumambient scene, +and all his enmity to the period comes out in the closing pages, in +which he describes how the fierce philanthropist lived so long that the +Victorian Age had its revenge upon her, and reduced her, a smiling, fat +old woman, to "compliance and complacency." It is a picture which will +give much offence, but it is certainly extremely striking, and Mr. +Strachey can hardly be accused of having done more than deepen the +shadows which previous biographers had almost entirely omitted.</p> + +<p>In this study, if the author is unusually indulgent to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> subject, he +is relatively severer than usual to the surrounding figures. To some of +them, notably to Arthur Hugh Clough, he seems to be intolerably unjust. +On the other hand, to most of those public men who resisted the work of +Florence Nightingale it is difficult to show mercy. Mr. Strachey is so +contemptuous, almost so vindictive, in his attitude to Lord Panmure, +that the reader is tempted to take up the cudgels in defence of an +official so rudely flouted. But, on reflection, what is there that can +be said in palliation of Lord Panmure? He was the son of a man of whom +his own biographer has admitted that "he preserved late into the +[nineteenth] century the habits and passions—scandalous and +unconcealed—which had, except in his case, passed away. He was devoted +to his friends so long as they remained complaisant, and violent and +implacable to all who thwarted him.—His uncontrollable temper alienated +him from nearly all his family in his latter years. In private life he +was an immovable despot."</p> + +<p>This was the father of Fox Maule, second Baron Panmure, of whom Mr. +Strachey has so much to say. Evidently he was a Regency type, as the son +was a Victorian. Determined not to resemble his father, Fox Maule early +became a settled and industrious M.P., and in 1846 Lord John Russell +made him Secretary of War. He held the same post under Lord Palmerston +from 1855 to 1858. Nothing could dislodge him from office; not even the +famous despatch "Take care of Dawb" could stir him. In 1860 he became +eleventh Earl of Dalhousie. He died two years later, having enjoyed +every distinction, even that of President of the Royal Military Asylum. +He was "unco guid," as pious as his father had been profane, but he had +no social or political or intellectual merit of any kind which can at +this distance of time be discerned. Florence Nightingale called him the +Bison, and his life's energy seems to have been expended in trying, +often with success, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> frustrate every single practical reform which +she suggested. To the objection that Mr. Strachey has depicted the +heroine as "an ill-tempered, importunate spinster, who drove a statesman +to his death," he might conceivably reply that if history, grown calm +with the passage of years, does so reveal her, it is rather absurd to go +on idealising her. Why not study the real Eagle in place of the fabulous +Swan? It is difficult to condemn Mr. Strachey along this line of +argument.</p> + +<p>The early Victorians liked what was definable and tangible; they were +"ponderous mechanists of style." Even in their suggestions of change +they preserved an impenetrable decorum of demeanour, a studied progress, +a deep consciousness of the guiding restraint of tradition upon +character. Their preoccupation with moral ideas tinged the whole of +their surroundings, their literature, their art, their outlook upon +life. That the works of Mr. Charles Dickens, so excruciatingly funny, +should have been produced and appreciated in the midst of this intense +epoch of exhortation seems a paradox, till we recollect how careful +Dickens is, when his laughter is loudest, never to tamper with "the deep +sense of moral evil." This apprehension of the rising immorality of the +world, against which the only rampart was the education of "a thorough +English gentleman, Christian, manly and enlightened" was dominant in no +spirit more than in that of Mr. Thomas Arnold, of whom Mr. Strachey +gives a somewhat deterrent portrait. It is deterrent, because we have +passed, in three-quarters of a century, completely out of the atmosphere +in which Dr. Arnold moved and breathed. We are not sure that Mr. +Strachey acted very wisely in selecting Dr. Arnold for one of his four +subjects, since the great schoolmaster was hardly a Victorian at all. +When he entered the Church George III. was on the throne; his +accomplishment at Rugby was started under George IV.;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> he died when the +Victorian Age was just beginning. He was a forerunner, but hardly a +contemporary.</p> + +<p>Although in his attitude to the great Rugby schoolmaster Mr. Strachey +shows more approbation than usual, this portrait has not given universal +satisfaction. It has rather surprisingly called forth an indignant +protest from Dr. Arnold's granddaughter. Yet such is the perversity of +the human mind that the mode in which Mrs. Humphry Ward "perstringes" +the biographer brings us round to that biographer's side. For Mrs. Ward +has positively the indiscretion, astounding in a writer of her learning +and experience, to demand the exclusion of irony from the legitimate +weapons of the literary combatant. This is to stoop to sharing one of +the meanest prejudices of the English commonplace mind, which has always +resented the use of that delicate and pointed weapon. Moreover, Mrs. +Ward does not merely adopt the plebeian attitude, but she delivers +herself bound hand and foot to the enemy by declaring the use of irony +to be "unintelligent." In support of this amazing statement she quotes +some wandering phrase of Sainte-Beuve. By the light of recent +revelations, whether Sainte-Beuve was ironical or not, he was certainly +perfidious. But, to waive that matter, does Mrs. Humphry Ward consider +that Swift and Lucian and Machiavelli were, as she puts it, "doomed to +failure" because they used irony as a weapon? Was Heine and is Anatole +France conspicuous for want of intelligence? And, after all, ought not +Mrs. Ward to remember that if she had a very serious grandfather, she +had a still more celebrated uncle, who wrote <i>Friendship's Garland</i>?</p> + +<p>While no one else will seriously blame Mr. Strachey for employing irony +in his investigation of character, the subject leads on to what may be +regarded as a definite fault in his method. A biographer should be +sympathetic; not blind, not indulgent, but <i>sympathetic</i>. He should be +able to enter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> into the feelings of his subjects, and be anxious to do +so. It is in sympathy, in imaginative insight, that Mr. Strachey fails. +His personages are like puppets observed from a great height by an +amiable but entirely superior intelligence. The peculiar aim of Mr. +Strachey, his desire to lower our general conception of the Victorian +Age, tempts him to exaggerate this tendency, and he succumbs to the +temptation. His description of Lord Acton at Rome in 1870—"he despised +Lord Acton almost as much as he disliked him"—is not ironic, it is +contemptuous. Arthur Hugh Clough presents no aspect to Mr. Strachey but +that of a timid and blundering packer-up of parcels; one might conceive +that the biographer had never contemplated the poet in any other +capacity than, with sealing-wax in his hand and string between his lips, +shuddering under the eye of Miss Nightingale. The occasional references +to Lord Wolseley suggest an unaccountable hurrying figure of pygmy size, +which Mr. Strachey can only just discern. This attitude of hovering +superiority is annoying.</p> + +<p>But it reaches a more dangerous importance when it affects spiritual +matters. The author interests himself, from his great height, in the +movements of his Victorian dwarfs, and notices that they are +particularly active, and prone to unusual oddity of movement, when they +are inspired by religious and moral passion. Their motions attract his +attention, and he describes them with gusto and often with wit. His +sketch of Rome before the Œcumenical Council is an admirably studied +page. Miss Nightingale's ferocity when the War Office phalanx closed its +ranks is depicted in the highest of spirits; it is impossible not to be +riveted by the scene round Cardinal Manning's death-bed; but what did +those manifestations mean? To Mr. Strachey it is evident that the fun of +the whole thing is that they meant nothing at all; they were only part +of the Victorian absurdity. It is obvious that religious enthusiasm, as +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> personal matter, means nothing to him. He investigates the feelings +of Newman or Keble as a naturalist might the contortions of an insect. +The ceremonies and rites of the Church are objects of subdued hilarity +to him, and in their presence, if he suppresses his laughter, it is +solely to prevent his missing any detail precious to his curiosity. When +the subject of Baptismal Regeneration agitates the whole pious world of +England Mr. Strachey seems to say, looking down with exhilaration on the +anthill beneath him, "The questions at issue are being taken very +seriously by a large number of persons. How Early Victorian of them!" +Mr. Strachey has yet to learn that questions of this kind are "taken +seriously" by serious people, and that their emotion is both genuine and +deep. He sees nothing but alcoholic eccentricity in the mysticism of +Gordon. His cynicism sometimes carries him beyond the confines of good +taste, as in the passage where he refers to the large and dirty ears of +the Roman cardinals. Still worse is the query as to what became of the +soul of Pope Pius IX. after his death.</p> + +<p>These are errors in discretion. A fault in art is the want of care which +the author takes in delineating his minor or subordinate figures. He +gives remarkable pains, for example, to his study of General Gordon, but +he is indifferent to accuracy in his sketches of the persons who came +into contact, and often into collision, with Gordon. In this he +resembles those French painters, such as Bastien Lepage, who focus their +eye on one portion of their canvas, and work that up to a high +perfection, while leaving the rest of the picture misty and vague. Even +in that case the subordinate figures, if subdued in fogginess, should +not be falsely drawn, but Mr. Strachey, intent upon the violent portrait +of Gordon, is willing to leave his Baring and Hartington and Wolseley +inexact as well as shadowy. The essay on General Gordon, indeed, is the +least successful of the four monographs. Dexterous as he is, Mr. +Strachey has not had the material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> to work upon which now exists to +elucidate his other and earlier subjects. But it is difficult to account +for his apparently not having read Mr. Bernard Holland's life of the +Duke of Devonshire, which throws much light, evidently unknown to Mr. +Strachey, on the Gordon relief expedition. He ought to know that Sir +Evelyn Baring urged the expedition, while Chamberlain was one of its +opponents. Mr. Strachey does not seem to have noticed how much the issue +was confused by conflicting opinions as to whether the route to be taken +should be by Suakin or up the Nile.</p> + +<p>No part of his book is more vigorous or picturesque than the chapter +dealing with the proclamation of Papal Infallibility. But here again one +is annoyed by the glibness with which Mr. Strachey smoothly asserts what +are only his conjectures.</p> + +<p>In his account of Manning's reception in Rome—and this is of central +importance in his picture of Manning's whole career—he exaggerates the +personal policy of Pio Nono, whom he represents as more independent of +the staff of the Curia than was possible. Rome has never acknowledged +the right of the individual, even though that individual be the Pope, to +an independent authority. Mr. Odo Russell was resident secretary in Rome +from 1858 to 1870, and his period of office was drawing to a close when +Manning arrived; he was shortly afterwards removed to become Assistant +Under Secretary of State at our Foreign Office. The author of <i>Eminent +Victorians</i> is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better +than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging +diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes +that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by +no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced +when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for +stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the government, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> +Black Sea question was one on which Great Britain might be compelled to +go to war with or without allies. Lord Morley's <i>Life of Gladstone</i> +(vol. ii., p. 354) is explicit on this interesting point. The +information which, by special permission of the Pope, Cardinal Manning +was able to give to him on all that was going on in the Council was, of +course, of great value to Odo Russell, but his views on other aspects of +the question were derived from quite different sources.</p> + +<p>In this respect he had the advantage of the Cardinal, both on account of +his diplomatic position and of his long and intimate knowledge both of +Vatican policy and of the forces which the Curia has at its command. On +the strength of those forces, and on the small amount of effective +support which British opposition to the Decree of Infallibility was +likely to receive from the Catholic Powers, he no doubt held strong +opinions. Some years later he did not conceal his conviction that Prince +Bismarck would be worsted in his conflict with Rome on the Education +Laws, and the event proved his forecast to be perfectly correct. This is +an example of the dangers which beset a too glib and superficial +treatment of political events which were conducted in secret, and with +every circumstance of mystery.</p> + +<p>Several of the characteristics which diversify Mr. Strachey's remarkable +volume are exemplified in the following quotation. It deals with the +funeral of Cardinal Manning:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The route of the procession was lined by vast crowds of working +people, whose imaginations, in some instinctive manner, had been +touched. Many who had hardly seen him declared that in Cardinal +Manning they had lost their best friend. Was it the magnetic vigour +of the dead man's spirit that moved them? Or was it his valiant +disregard of common custom and those conventional reserves and +poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> punctilios, which are wont to hem about the great? Or was it +something untameable in his glances and in his gestures? Or was it, +perhaps, the mysterious glamour lingering about him of the antique +organisation of Rome? For whatever cause, the mind of the people +had been impressed; and yet, after all, the impression was more +acute than lasting. The Cardinal's memory is a dim thing to-day. +And he who descends into the crypt of that Cathedral which Manning +never lived to see, will observe, in the quiet niche with the +sepulchral monument, that the dust lies thick on the strange, the +incongruous, the almost impossible object which, with its +elaborations of dependent tassels, hangs down from the dim vault +like some forlorn and forgotten trophy, the Hat."</p></div> + +<p>Longinus tells us that "a just judgment of style is the final fruit of +long experience." In the measured utterances of Mr. Asquith we recognise +the speech of a man to whom all that is old and good is familiar, and in +whom the art of finished expression has become a habit. No more +elegantly balanced, no more delicately perceptive mind than his has +appeared of recent times in our midst, and there is something in the +equipoise of his own genius which points Mr. Asquith out as a judge +peculiarly well fitted to sit in judgment upon rival ages. In his +Romanes lecture there was but one thing to be regretted: the restricted +space which it offered for the full expansion of the theme. Mr. Asquith +excels in swift and rapid flights, but even for him the Victorian Age is +too broad a province to be explored within one hour. He endeavoured to +lighten his task by excluding theology and politics, and indeed but for +such self-denial he could scarcely have moved at all in so dense an air. +He was able, however, having thrown out so much formidable ballast, to +rise above his subject, and gazing at the Victorian Age, as it recedes, +he declared it to have been very good.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> The young men who despise and +attack that Age receive no support in any particular from Mr. Asquith.</p> + +<p>He dwells on the fecundity of the literature of the Victorian Age in its +middle period, and especially on the publications which adorned the +decade from 1850 to 1859. He calls those years, very justly, "marvellous +and almost unexampled" in their rich profusion. I may suggest that the +only rival to them in our history is the period from 1590 to 1600, which +saw the early plays of Shakespeare, the <i>Faerie Queene</i>, the <i>Arcadia</i>, +the <i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>, <i>Tamburlaine</i>, <i>The Discovery of Guiana</i>, +and Bacon's <i>Essays</i>. If the works catalogued by Mr. Asquith do not +equal these in intensity, they excel them by the breadth of the ground +they cover, extending from Browning to Darwin and from Thackeray to +Ruskin. Moreover, the Oxford list might have included <i>Lavengro</i> and +Newman's <i>Lectures</i>, and Herbert Spencer's <i>Social Statics</i>. The only +third decade worthy to be named with those of 1590 and 1850 is that +which opens in 1705, and is illuminated by the names of Pope, +Shaftesbury, Swift, Arbuthnot, Defoe, Steele, Addison, and Berkeley. It +is pleasant to compare these three magnificently flowering epochs, but +not profitable if we attempt to weigh one against the other. They are +comparable only in the splendour of their accomplishment.</p> + +<p>It is more difficult to fit science into our scheme of the Victorian Age +than to find places there for Art and Literature. Perhaps the reason of +this is that the latter were national in their character, whereas +scientific inquiry, throughout the nineteenth century, was carried on +upon international lines, or, at least, in a spirit unprecedentedly +non-provincial. The vast achievements of science, practical and +theoretical, were produced for the world, not for a race. Mr. Asquith +speaks with justice and eloquence of the appearance of Darwin's <i>Origin +of Species</i> which he distinguishes as being "if not actually the most +important, certainly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> most interesting event of the Age," and his +remarks on the fortune of that book are excellent. No one can +over-estimate the value of what we owe to Darwin. But perhaps a +Frenchman might speak in almost the same terms of Claude Bernard, whose +life and work ran parallel with Darwin's. If the <i>Origin of Species</i> +made an epoch in 1859, the <i>Introduction à la médicine expérimental</i> +made another in 1865. Both these books, as channels by which the +experimental labours of each investigator reached the prepared and +instructed public, exercised at once, and have continued ever since to +exercise, an enormous effect on thought as well as on knowledge. They +transformed the methods by which man approaches scientific +investigation, and while they instructed they stimulated a new ardour +for instruction. In each case the value of the discovery lay in the +value of the idea which led to the discovery, and, as some one has said +in the case of Claude Bernard, they combined for the first time the +operations of science and philosophy. The parallel between these two +contemporaries extends, in a measure, to their disciples and successors, +and seems to suggest that Mr. Asquith in his generous and difficult +estimate may have exaggerated the purely Victorian element in the +science of the age of Darwin. This only accentuates the difficulty, and +he may perhaps retort that there is an extreme danger in suggesting what +does and what does not form a part of so huge a system.</p> + +<p>Justifiably Mr. Asquith takes it for granted that the performance of the +central years of the Victorian Age was splendid. With those who deny +merit to the writers and artists of the last half century it is +difficult to reach a common ground for argument. What is to be the +criterion of taste if all the multiform exhibitions of it which passed +muster from 1840 to 1890 are now to be swept away with contumely? +Perhaps indeed it is only among those extravagant romanticists who are +trying to raise entirely new ideals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> unrelated to any existing forms of +art and literature, that we find a denial of all merit to the Victorian +masters. Against this caricature of criticism, this Bolshevism, it would +be hopeless to contend. But there is a large and growing class of more +moderate thinkers who hold, in the first place, that the merit of the +leading Victorian writers has been persistently over-estimated, and that +since its culmination the Victorian spirit has not ceased to decay, +arriving at length at the state of timidity and repetition which +encourages what is ugly, narrow, and vulgar, and demands nothing better +than a swift dismissal to the dust-bin.</p> + +<p>Every stratum of society, particularly if it is at all sophisticated, +contains a body of barbarians who are usually silent from lack of +occasion to express themselves, but who are always ready to seize an +opportunity to suppress a movement of idealism. We accustom ourselves to +the idea that certain broad principles of taste are universally +accepted, and our respectable newspapers foster this benevolent delusion +by talking habitually "over the heads," as we say, of the majority of +their readers. They make "great music for a little clan," and nothing +can be more praiseworthy than their effort, but, as a matter of fact, +with or without the aid of the newspapers, the people who really care +for literature or art, or for strenuous mental exercise of any kind, are +relatively few. If we could procure a completely confidential statement +of the number of persons to whom the names of Charles Lamb and +Gainsborough have a distinct meaning, and still more of those who can +summon up an impression of the essays of the one and of the pictures of +the other, we should in all probability be painfully startled. Yet since +these names enjoy what we call a universal celebrity, what must be the +popular relation to figures much less prominent?</p> + +<p>The result of this tyranny of fame, for so it must appear to all those +who are inconvenienced by the expression of it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> is to rouse a sullen +tendency to attack the figures of art and literature whenever there +arrives a chance of doing that successfully. Popular audiences can +always be depended upon to cheer the statement of "a plain man" that he +is not "clever" enough to understand Browning or Meredith. An assurance +that life is too short to be troubled with Henry James wakes the lower +middle class to ecstasy. An opportunity for such protests is provided by +our English lack of critical tradition, by our accepted habit of saying, +"I do hate" or "I must say I rather like" this or that without reference +to any species of authority. This seems to have grown with dangerous +rapidity of late years. It was not tolerated among the Victorians, who +carried admiration to the highest pitch. They marshalled it, they +defined it, they turned it from a virtue into a religion, and called it +Hero Worship. Even their abuse was a kind of admiration turned inside +out, as in Swinburne's diatribes against Carlyle, who himself fought +against the theory of Darwin, not philosophically, but as though it were +a personal insult to himself. Such violence of taste is now gone out of +fashion; every scribbler and dauber likes to believe himself on a level +with the best, and the positive criterion of value which sincere +admiration gave is lost to us. Hence the success of Mr. Lytton Strachey.</p> + +<p>But the decline of ardour does not explain the whole position, which we +have to face with firmness. Epochs come to an end, and before they have +their place finally awarded to them in history they are bound to endure +much vicissitude of fortune. No amount of sarcasm or of indignant +protest will avail to conceal the fact that we stand to-day at the +porch, that much more probably we have already penetrated far into the +vestibule, of a new age. What its character will be, or what its +principal products, it is absolutely impossible for us as yet to +conjecture. Meanwhile the Victorian Age recedes, and it loses size and +lustre as we get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> further and further away from it. When what was called +"Symbolism" began to act in urgent and direct reaction to the aims of +those still in authority, the old order received its notice to quit, but +that was at least five and twenty years ago, and the change is not +complete. Ages so multiform and redundant and full of blood as the +Victorian take a long time to die; they have their surprising recoveries +and their uncovenanted convalescences. But even they give up the ghost +at length, and are buried hastily with scant reverence. The time has +doubtless come when aged mourners must prepare themselves to attend the +obsequies of the Victorian Age with as much decency as they can muster.</p> + +<p>1918.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p> +<h2>INDEX</h2> + + + +<ul><li>Abbaye de Creteil, <a href='#Page_303'>303-4</a></li> +<li>Acton, Lord, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li> +<li>Addison, J., relation of, to Romanticists, <a href='#Page_70'>70-1</a>; <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li><i>Agnes de Castro</i>, by Catharine Trotter, <a href='#Page_43'>43-5</a></li> +<li>Akenside, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>Allard-Méeus, J., <a href='#Page_273'>273</a></li> +<li><i>Alroy</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a></li> +<li>American criticism, and Edgar Allan Poe, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>Anne, Queen, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li> +<li><i>Annabel Lee</i>, by E.A. Poe, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a></li> +<li>Argyll, Duke of, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></li> +<li>Ariosto, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li> +<li>Arnauld, Angelique, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Arnold, M., <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a></li> +<li>Arnold, Dr. T., Mr. Strachey's portrait of, <a href='#Page_326'>326-7</a></li> +<li>Asquith, Mr., Romanes lecture of, <a href='#Page_332'>332-5</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Bacon, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a></li> +<li>Bagehot, W., <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></li> +<li>Balfour, A.J., <i>re</i> standards of taste, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a></li> +<li>Ballenden, Sarah, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +<li>Baring, M., poems of, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273-5</a></li> +<li>Barrie, Sir J., <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li> +<li>Barry, Mrs., <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li> +<li>Batsford, Lord Redesdale at, <a href='#Page_217'>217-8</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224-8</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a></li> +<li>Baudelaire, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a></li> +<li>Bayle, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Behn, Aphra, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Bell, T., of Selborne, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a></li> +<li>Berkeley, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li> +<li>Betterton, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li> +<li>Birch, Rev. Dr., <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li> +<li>Blake, W., <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></li> +<li>Blessington, Lady, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li> +<li>Boileau, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>Booth, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li> +<li>Bottomley, G., <a href='#Page_262'>262</a></li> +<li>Bridges, R., War poetry of, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>; <a href='#Page_110'>110</a></li> +<li>de Brillac, Mlle., <a href='#Page_44'>44</a></li> +<li>Brontë, Charlotte, dislike of Dewsbury, <a href='#Page_142'>142-3</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">message of, arose from pain and resistance, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">her unhappiness, its causes, <a href='#Page_145'>145-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">defiance the note of her writings, <a href='#Page_146'>146-50</a></span></li> +<li>Brontë, Emily, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a></li> +<li>Brontës, The Challenge of the, address delivered on, <a href='#Page_141'>141-50</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">their connexion with Dewsbury, <a href='#Page_141'>141-2</a></span></li> +<li>Brooke, Rupert, poems of, <a href='#Page_268'>268-70</a></li> +<li>Browning, R., <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a></li> +<li>Brunetière, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></li> +<li>Bruxambille, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a></li> +<li>Bryant, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li> +<li>Bulwer-Lytton, E., ambiguity of his position in literature, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">R. Lytton's biography, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lord Lytton's biography, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118-9</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">autobiography, <a href='#Page_119'>119-20</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">story of matrimonial troubles, <a href='#Page_121'>121-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">character, <a href='#Page_129'>129-30</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">acquaintances and friends, <a href='#Page_130'>130-2</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">relations with contemporary writers and poets, <a href='#Page_132'>132-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">stormy life, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">unfavourable attitude of critics towards, <a href='#Page_134'>134-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">popularity of his writings, <a href='#Page_135'>135-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">versatility and merits, <a href='#Page_136'>136-7</a>; <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></span></li> +<li>Bulwer-Lytton, Mrs., opposition to Bulwer-Lytton's marriage, <a href='#Page_124'>124-7</a></li> +<li>Burghclere, Lady, open letter to, on Lady D. Nevill, <a href='#Page_181'>181-96</a></li> +<li>Burnet, George, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a></li> +<li>Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, patron of the Trotters, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a></li> +<li>Burnet, Mrs., <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a></li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>Burney, Dr., <a href='#Page_33'>33</a></li> +<li>Burton, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></li> +<li>Byron, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161-2</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Carlyle, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li> +<li>Carlyle, Mrs., her opinion of Keats, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></li> +<li>Catullus, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></li> +<li>Charles II, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li> +<li>Chateaubriand, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>Chatterton, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></li> +<li>Cibber, Colley, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a></li> +<li>Classic poetry, Romanticists' revolt against principles of, <a href='#Page_70'>70-90</a></li> +<li>Clough, A.H., <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li> +<li>Cockburn, Mr., <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li> +<li>Coleridge, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a></li> +<li>Collier, Jeremy, attack on stage immorality, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a></li> +<li>Collins, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a></li> +<li>Colonisation, England's debt to Walter Raleigh, <a href='#Page_24'>24-5</a></li> +<li>Congreve, Catherine Trotter's relations with, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>; <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li> +<li><i>Coningsby</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_165'>165-6</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170-2</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a></li> +<li><i>Contarini Fleming</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_159'>159-61</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li> +<li>Corbett, N.M.F., poems of, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></li> +<li>Cowes in war time, <a href='#Page_219'>219-21</a></li> +<li>Cowley, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>Cowper, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></li> +<li>Crabbe, G., Hardy compared with, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a></li> +<li>Cranch, C.P., <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>Cromer, Lord, essay on, <a href='#Page_196'>196-216</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">intellectual and literary activity, <a href='#Page_197'>197-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">as a speaker, <a href='#Page_198'>198-200</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">interest in House of Lords Library, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">classical tastes, <a href='#Page_200'>200-203</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">conversation, attitude to life and letters, <a href='#Page_204'>204-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">correspondence and reflections, <a href='#Page_208'>208-10</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">humour, <a href='#Page_210'>210-12</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">verse, <a href='#Page_212'>212-15</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">literary activities, <a href='#Page_215'>215-16</a></span></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Dacier, Mme., <a href='#Page_52'>52</a></li> +<li><i>Dacre</i>, by Countess of Morley, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a></li> +<li>Dante, <a href='#Page_225'>225-6</a></li> +<li>Dartmouth, George, Earl of, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li> +<li>D'Aubigné, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li> +<li>Daudet, A., <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li> +<li>Daudet, E., <a href='#Page_229'>229-30</a></li> +<li>Davies, W.H., <a href='#Page_262'>262</a></li> +<li>De Vere, Mrs., <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Devey, Miss, "Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," by, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a></li> +<li>Dewsbury, the Brontës' connexion with, <a href='#Page_141'>141-2</a></li> +<li>Dickens, C, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li> +<li>Disraeli, B., novels of, address, <a href='#Page_153'>153-78</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">not taken seriously as an author, <a href='#Page_153'>153-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">three periods of writing, <a href='#Page_154'>154-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">contemporary fiction, <a href='#Page_155'>155-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Vivian Grey</i>, <a href='#Page_156'>156-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Young Duke</i>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Henrietta Temple</i>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Contarini Fleming</i>, <a href='#Page_159'>159-60</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Byron's influence on, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Voltaire's influence on, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">fascinated by Venice, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Venetia</i>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Parliamentary experience and literary results, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Coningsby</i>, <a href='#Page_165'>165-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Sybil</i>, <a href='#Page_167'>167-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Tancred</i>, <a href='#Page_169'>169-72</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Prime Minister, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Lothair</i>, <a href='#Page_173'>173-8</a>; <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></span></li> +<li>Donne, J., <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li> +<li>Dorset, Charles, Earl of, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a></li> +<li>Dowden, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a></li> +<li>Doyle, Sir A.C., <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li> +<li>Dryden, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a></li> +<li>Du Bos, Abbé, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></li> +<li>Durham, Lord, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li> +<li>Dyer, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Elizabeth, Queen, sympathy between Raleigh and, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a></li> +<li><i>Eloisa to Abelard</i>, by Pope, its appeal to Romanticists, <a href='#Page_83'>83-4</a></li> +<li>Emerson, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></li> +<li><i>Eminent Victorians</i>, by Lytton Strachey, review of, <a href='#Page_318'>318-32</a></li> +<li>English Poetry, The Future of, <a href='#Page_289'>289-309</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">instances of national lapses in poetic output, <a href='#Page_290'>290</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">necessity of novelty of expression and difficulties arising, <a href='#Page_291'>291-2</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">advantages of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>vernacular poetry, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">future poetry bound to dispense with obvious description and reflection and to take on greater subtlety of expression, <a href='#Page_294'>294-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wordsworth's speculations concerning nineteenth-century poetry, <a href='#Page_298'>298-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">prospect of social poetry, <a href='#Page_299'>299-301</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"effusion of natural sensibility" more probable, <a href='#Page_302'>302-3</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">French experiments, <a href='#Page_303'>303-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">as to disappearance of erotic poetry, <a href='#Page_305'>305-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">dramatic poetry and symbolism, <a href='#Page_306'>306-9</a></span></li> +<li><i>Essay on Criticism</i>, by Pope, Romanticists' attack upon, <a href='#Page_71'>71-4</a></li> +<li><i>Essay on Genius of Pope</i>, by J. Warton, <a href='#Page_80'>80-3</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Farquhar, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a></li> +<li><i>Fatal Friendship</i>, by C. Trotter, <a href='#Page_47'>47-8</a></li> +<li>Fawcett, Rev. J., <a href='#Page_97'>97</a></li> +<li>Fenn, Mr., <a href='#Page_60'>60</a></li> +<li>Fletcher, John, songs of, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li><i>For Annie</i>, by E.A. Poe, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a></li> +<li>Ford, songs of, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>Forster, John, <a href='#Page_131'>131-2</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li> +<li>France, Anatole, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Gaskell, Mrs., <a href='#Page_141'>141</a></li> +<li>Gautier, T., <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a></li> +<li>Genoa, Duke of, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li> +<li>Georgian poetry, its pre-war characteristics, <a href='#Page_261'>261-2</a></li> +<li>Gibbon, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li> +<li>Gibson, W.W., <a href='#Page_262'>262</a></li> +<li>Gilbert, Sir H., <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></li> +<li>Gilpin, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></li> +<li>Godolphin, Henrietta, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li> +<li>Goethe, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a></li> +<li>de Goncourt, E., <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li> +<li>Gongora, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li> +<li>Gordon, General, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mr. Strachey's portrait of, <a href='#Page_329'>329-30</a></span></li> +<li>Gore, Mrs., <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></li> +<li>de Gourmont, Rémy, his opinion of Sully-Prudhomme, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a></li> +<li>de Gournay, Mlle., <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Granville, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a></li> +<li>Graves, R., poetry of, <a href='#Page_280'>280-1</a></li> +<li>Gray, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li> +<li>Greene, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></li> +<li>Grenfell, J., poems of, <a href='#Page_271'>271-3</a></li> +<li>Guiana, Raleigh's "gold mine" in, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Halifax, Lord, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></li> +<li>Handel, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li> +<li>Harcourt, Mrs., <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li> +<li>Hardy, Thomas, lyrical poetry of, <a href='#Page_233'>233-58</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">independence of his career as a poet, <a href='#Page_233'>233-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">unity and consistence of his poetry, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">sympathy with Swinburne, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">historic development of lyrics, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">novel writing interfering with, <a href='#Page_237'>237-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">place of poetry in his literary career, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Wessex Ballads" and "Poems of Past and Present," <a href='#Page_238'>238-40</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"The Dynasts" and "Times' Laughing Stocks," <a href='#Page_240'>240-2</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Satires of Circumstance," <a href='#Page_242'>242-3</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Moments of Vision," <a href='#Page_243'>243-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">technical quality of his poetry, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">metrical forms, <a href='#Page_245'>245-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">pessimistic conception of life, <a href='#Page_247'>247-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">compared with Crabbe, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">consolation found by, <a href='#Page_249'>249-51</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">compared with Wordsworth, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">human sympathy, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">range of subjects, <a href='#Page_252'>252-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">speculations on immortality, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"The Dynasts," <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">unchangeableness of his art, <a href='#Page_257'>257-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Song of the Soldiers," <a href='#Page_263'>263</a></span></li> +<li>Hawthorne, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></li> +<li>Hayley, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a></li> +<li>Hazlitt, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a></li> +<li><i>Henrietta Temple</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a></li> +<li>Heywood, songs of, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>Higgons, Bevil, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a></li> +<li>Hobbes, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li> +<li>Hodgson, W.N., <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li> +<li>Homer, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a></li> +<li>Hooker, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a></li> +<li>Hope, H.T., <a href='#Page_164'>164</a></li> +<li>Housman, A.E., <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>Hugo, V., <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a></li> +<li>Hume, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li> +<li>Hunt, Leigh, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Inglis, Dr., <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li> +<li>Ireland, Raleigh in, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>James I, distrust and treatment of Raleigh, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li>James II, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li> +<li>Johnson, Dr., his opinion of the Wartons, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li> +<li>Jowett, Dr., <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Keats, Mrs. Carlyle's opinion of, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>; <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>King, Peter, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Kipling, R., poetry of, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Landon, Letitia, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li> +<li>Lansdowne, Lord, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a></li> +<li>Lauderdale, Earl of, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li> +<li>Lauderdale, Maitland, Duke of, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li> +<li>Lawson, H., poems of, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li> +<li>Lee, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></li> +<li>Leibnitz, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Lemaître, J., <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></li> +<li>Lewis, "Monk," <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li> +<li>Locke, Catharine Trotter's defence of, <a href='#Page_53'>53-5;</a></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">death of, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>; <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></span></li> +<li>Lockhart, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li> +<li>Lodge, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></li> +<li><i>Lothair</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_173'>173-8</a></li> +<li><i>Love at a Loss</i>, by Catharine Trotter, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a></li> +<li>Lowell, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li> +<li>Lucas, Lord, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a></li> +<li>Lyly, John, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a></li> +<li>Lytton, Bulwer-, <i>see</i> Bulwer-Lytton.</li> +<li>Lytton, Lord, biography of Bulwer-Lytton, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118-19</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></li> +<li>Lytton, R., biography of Bulwer-Lytton, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Macaulay, Lord, <a href='#Page_320'>320-1</a></li> +<li>Macpherson, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a></li> +<li>Malebranche, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a></li> +<li>Malherbe, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li> +<li>Mallarmé, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a></li> +<li>Malory's <i>Morte d'Arthur</i>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li> +<li>Manley, Mrs., <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li> +<li>Manning, Cardinal, Mr. Strachey's portrait of, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330-2</a></li> +<li>Manoa, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a></li> +<li>Mant, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a></li> +<li>Marinetti, M., <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a></li> +<li>Marini, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li> +<li>Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li> +<li>Marlborough, Duke of, Catharine Trotter's poem of welcome to, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li> +<li>Marlowe, songs of, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a></li> +<li>Marsh, E., <a href='#Page_261'>261</a></li> +<li>Masham, Lady, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li> +<li>Massinger, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li> +<li>Melbourne, Lord, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li> +<li><i>Memories</i>, by Lord Redesdale, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a></li> +<li>Milton, influence upon eighteenth-century poetry, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>; <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a></li> +<li>Mitford, Major Hon. C, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a></li> +<li>Mockel, A., <a href='#Page_112'>112</a></li> +<li><i>Moments of Vision</i>, by T. Hardy, <a href='#Page_243'>243-4</a></li> +<li>Monckton-Milnes, Sir R., <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li> +<li>Morris, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a></li> +<li>Myers, F., <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Nevill, Lady Dorothy, Open Letter to Lady Burghclere on, <a href='#Page_181'>181-96</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">memoirs of, <a href='#Page_181'>181-2</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">writer's friendship with, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">appearance and physical strength, <a href='#Page_183'>183-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">characteristics, <a href='#Page_184'>184-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">a spectator of life, <a href='#Page_186'>186-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">attitude to the country, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">wit, conversation and correspondence, <a href='#Page_187'>187-92</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">relation to literature and art, <a href='#Page_192'>192-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">emotional nature, <a href='#Page_194'>194-6</a></span></li> +<li>Nevill, Ralph, Memoirs of Lady D. Nevill by, <a href='#Page_181'>181-2</a></li> +<li>Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Nichols, R., poetry of, <a href='#Page_276'>276-80</a></li> +<li>Nietzsche, <a href='#Page_219'>219-20</a></li> +<li>Nightingale, Florence, Mr. Strachey's Life of, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a></li> +<li>Norris, John, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>Obermann, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a></li> +<li><i>Observations on the Faerie Queene</i>, by T. Warton, <a href='#Page_84'>84-6</a></li> +<li><i>Ode on the Approach of Summer</i>, by T. Warton, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></li> +<li><i>Odes</i>, by J. Warton, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li> +<li>Otway, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Panmure, Lord, <a href='#Page_325'>325-6</a></li> +<li>Paris, Gaston, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></li> +<li>Parnell, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a></li> +<li>Parr, Dr. S., <a href='#Page_120'>120</a></li> +<li>Pater, W., <a href='#Page_71'>71</a></li> +<li>Patmore, C., <a href='#Page_237'>237</a></li> +<li>Peacock, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a></li> +<li>Peele, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></li> +<li>Péguy, C., <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></li> +<li><i>Pelham</i>, by Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, the author of, <a href='#Page_117'>117-37</a>; <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a></li> +<li>Pepys, S., <a href='#Page_27'>27</a></li> +<li>Perth, 4th Earl of, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li> +<li><i>Philip van Artevelde</i>, by H. Taylor, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></li> +<li>Piers, Lady, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a></li> +<li>Piers, Sir G., <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></li> +<li>Pix, Mrs. Mary, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li> +<li>Poe, E.A., centenary of, address on, <a href='#Page_103'>103-13</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">importance as a poet ignored, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">original want of recognition of, <a href='#Page_104'>104-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">his reaction to unfriendly criticism, <a href='#Page_105'>105-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">essential qualities of his genius, <a href='#Page_106'>106-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">contemporary conception of poetry, <a href='#Page_107'>107-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">his ideal of poetry, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">influences upon, <a href='#Page_108'>108-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">early verses, poetic genius in, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">melodiousness of, <a href='#Page_110'>110-11</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">symbolism of, <a href='#Page_112'>112-13</a></span></li> +<li><i>Poems and Ballads</i>, by A.C. Swinburne, Bulwer-Lytton's support of, <a href='#Page_133'>133-4</a></li> +<li><i>Poems of Past and Present</i>, by T. Hardy, <a href='#Page_238'>238-40</a></li> +<li>Pope, Romanticists' revolt against classicism of, <a href='#Page_70'>70-90</a>; <a href='#Page_68'>68</a></li> +<li>Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, Queen of, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Rabelais, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></li> +<li>Radcliffe, Mrs., <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li> +<li>Raleigh, North Carolina, foundation of, <a href='#Page_25'>25-6</a></li> +<li>Raleigh, W., junr., <a href='#Page_20'>20</a></li> +<li>Raleigh, Sir W., address delivered on Tercentenary celebration of, <a href='#Page_15'>15-27</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">patriotism and hatred of Spain, <a href='#Page_15'>15-17</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21-2</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">character, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">adventurous nature, <a href='#Page_18'>18-19</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">James I and, <a href='#Page_19'>19-20</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">his El Dorado dreams, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">fall and trial, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">savage aspects of, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">as a naval strategist, <a href='#Page_23'>23-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">genius as coloniser, <a href='#Page_24'>24-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">imprisonment and execution, <a href='#Page_26'>26-7</a></span></li> +<li>Ramsay, Allan, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li>Redesdale, Lord, last days of, <a href='#Page_216'>216-30</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">literary career, <a href='#Page_216'>216-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">vitality: pride in authorship and garden, <a href='#Page_217'>217-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">death of son, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Memories," <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">loneliness and problem of occupying his time, <a href='#Page_219'>219-22</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">origin of last book, its theme, <a href='#Page_222'>222-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">last days, <a href='#Page_224'>224-30</a></span></li> +<li>René, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a></li> +<li>Rentoul, L., poems of, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li> +<li>Retté, A., <a href='#Page_112'>112</a></li> +<li>Reynolds, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a></li> +<li>Ritson, Joseph, attack upon T. Warton, <a href='#Page_88'>88-9</a></li> +<li>Roanoke, Virginia, British settlement in, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></li> +<li>Roche, Lord and Lady, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li> +<li>Romanticism, Two Pioneers of, Joseph and Thomas Warton, address on, <a href='#Page_65'>65-90</a></li> +<li>Romantic movement, features of, <a href='#Page_71'>71-90</a></li> +<li>Rossetti, D.G., <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a></li> +<li>Rousseau, J.J., English Romanticists' relation to, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li> +<li>Ruskin, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li> +<li>Russell, Odo, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Sainte-Beuve, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a></li> +<li>Sappho, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></li> +<li>Sassoon, S., poems of, <a href='#Page_282'>282-4</a></li> +<li><i>Satires of Circumstance</i>, by T. Hardy, <a href='#Page_242'>242-3</a></li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>Satow, Sir E., <a href='#Page_223'>223</a></li> +<li>Scott, Sir W., <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li> +<li>Scudéry, M. de, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Seaman, Sir G., war invective of, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a></li> +<li>Selbourne, Lord, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></li> +<li>Selden, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li> +<li>Senancour, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li><i>Sentimental Journey</i>, The, by L. Sterne, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li> +<li>Seventeenth century, English women writers of, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Shakespeare, the Songs of, <a href='#Page_31'>31-5</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">their dramatic value, <a href='#Page_31'>31-3</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">lyrical qualities, <a href='#Page_33'>33-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">comparison with contemporary lyricists, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>; <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></span></li> +<li>Shelley, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li> +<li>Shenstone, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li><i>Shepherd of the Ocean, The</i>, <a href='#Page_15'>15-27</a></li> +<li>Shorter, C., <a href='#Page_141'>141</a></li> +<li>Some Soldier Poets, <a href='#Page_261'>261-85</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">outbreak of war poetry, <a href='#Page_262'>262-3</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">mildness of British Hymns of Hate, <a href='#Page_264'>264-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">military influence upon poetic feeling, <a href='#Page_265'>265-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">tendency to dispense with form, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">common literary influences, <a href='#Page_267'>267-8</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rupert Brooke, <a href='#Page_268'>268-70</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">J. Grenfell, <a href='#Page_271'>271-3</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">M. Baring, <a href='#Page_273'>273-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">N.M.F. Corbett, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">E.W. Tennant, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">R. Nichols, <a href='#Page_276'>276-80</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">R. Graves, <a href='#Page_280'>280-1</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">S. Sassoon, <a href='#Page_282'>282-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">C.H. Sorley, W.N. Hodgson, K. Lawson, L. Rentoul, R.E. Vernède, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></span></li> +<li>Sorley, C.H., poems of, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li> +<li>Southey, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a></li> +<li>Spain, Anglo-Spanish rivalry in days of Walter Raleigh, <a href='#Page_16'>16-17</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21-3</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li> +<li>Spenser, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></li> +<li>Stephen, Sir Leslie, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a></li> +<li>Sterne, Laurence, Essay on the Charm of, <a href='#Page_93'>93-100</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">birth and childhood, <a href='#Page_93'>93-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">temperament, <a href='#Page_94'>94-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">intellectual development, <a href='#Page_95'>95-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">alternation of feeling about, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">English literature's debt to, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">his "indelicacy," <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">irrelevancy, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shandean influences upon literature, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></span></li> +<li>Sterne, Mrs., <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li> +<li>Sterne, Roger, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li> +<li>Stevenson, R.L., <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li> +<li>Strachey, Lytton, "Eminent Victorians" by, review of, <a href='#Page_318'>318-32</a></li> +<li>Stukeley, Sir L., <a href='#Page_21'>21</a></li> +<li>Sully-Prudhomme, fluctuations in taste as regards, <a href='#Page_5'>5-9</a></li> +<li>Sumners, Montagu, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li> +<li>Swinburne, A. C, Bulwer-Lytton and, <a href='#Page_133'>133-4</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Hardy's sympathy with, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>; <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></span></li> +<li>Symbolism and poetry, <a href='#Page_308'>308-9</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li><i>Tales of Old Japan</i>, by Lord Redesdale, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li> +<li><i>Tancred</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a></li> +<li>Taste, fluctuations in, <a href='#Page_3'>3-12</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">regarding Wordsworth, <a href='#Page_3'>3-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mr. Balfour's conclusions, <a href='#Page_4'>4-5</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">volte-face concerning Sully-Prudhomme, <a href='#Page_5'>5-10</a></span></li> +<li><i>Tea-Table Miscellany</i>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li>Temple, Mrs., <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li> +<li>Tennant, E.W., poetry of, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></li> +<li>Tennyson, Victorian opinion of, <a href='#Page_320'>320-1</a>; <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></li> +<li>Thackeray, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a></li> +<li><i>The Bamboo Garden</i>, by Lord Redesdale, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li> +<li><i>The Bells</i>, by E.A. Poe, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></li> +<li><i>The Dynasts</i>, by T. Hardy, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a></li> +<li><i>The Enthusiast</i>, by Joseph Warton, importance of, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a></li> +<li><i>The Female Wits</i>, by Catharine Trotter, <a href='#Page_45'>45-6</a></li> +<li><i>The Raven</i>, by E.A. Poe, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></li> +<li><i>The Revolution in Sweden</i>, by Catharine Trotter, <a href='#Page_57'>57-8</a></li> +<li><i>The Unhappy Penitent</i>, by Catharine Trotter, <a href='#Page_50'>50-1</a></li> +<li><i>The Young Duke</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a></li> +<li>Thomson, James, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a></li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>Thomson's <i>Castle of Indolence</i>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a></li> +<li><i>Times' Laughing Stocks</i>, by T. Hardy, <a href='#Page_240'>240-2</a></li> +<li>Tottel's Miscellany, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a></li> +<li><i>Tristram Shandy</i>, by L. Sterne, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></li> +<li>Trotter, Capt. D., R.N., <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +<li>Trotter, Catharine, <a href='#Page_39'>39-62</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">precocity, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">parentage, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">poverty, <a href='#Page_41'>41-2</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">early verses, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">correspondence with celebrated people, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Agnes de Castro</i>, <a href='#Page_43'>43-5</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Female Wits</i>, <a href='#Page_45'>45-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Fatal Friendship</i>, <a href='#Page_47'>47-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">elegy on Dryden's death, <a href='#Page_49'>49-50</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Unhappy Penitent</i>, <a href='#Page_50'>50-1</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Love at a Loss</i>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">friendship with the Burnets, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">philosophical studies, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52-3</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">enthusiasm for Locke, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Revolution in Sweden</i>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">correspondence with Leibnitz, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">indignation at aspersions on feminine intellectuality, <a href='#Page_56'>56-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">poem of welcome to Marlborough, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">attachment to G. Burnet, <a href='#Page_59'>59-60</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">marriage with Mr. Cockburn, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">later life, <a href='#Page_60'>60-1</a></span></li> +<li>Trotter, Mrs., poverty of, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li> +<li>Tupper, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a></li> +<li>Turkey Company, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li><i>Ulalume</i>, by E.A. Poe, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a></li> +<li>Upchear, Henry, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li><i>Veluvana</i>, by Lord Redesdale, theme of, <a href='#Page_222'>222-4</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a></li> +<li><i>Venetia</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a></li> +<li>Venice, its fascination for Disraeli, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a></li> +<li>Verbruggen, Mrs., <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li> +<li>Verlaine, Paul, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></li> +<li>Vernède, R.E., poems of, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li> +<li>de Verville, B., <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></li> +<li>Victorian Age, the Agony of, <a href='#Page_313'>313-37</a></li> +<li>Virgil, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a></li> +<li><i>Vivian Grey</i>, by B. Disraeli, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157-9</a></li> +<li>Voltaire, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Waller, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li> +<li>Warburton, Dr., <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a></li> +<li>Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a>, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a></li> +<li>Ward, Plumer, novels of, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></li> +<li>Warton, Joseph and Thomas; Two Pioneers of Romanticism, address on, <a href='#Page_65'>65-90</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">parentage and early habits, <a href='#Page_66'>66-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">heralds of romantic movement, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">literary contemporaries and atmosphere, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Joseph, the leading spirit, <a href='#Page_68'>68-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Enthusiast</i>, its romantic qualities, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">their revolt against principles of classic poetry, <a href='#Page_70'>70-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">characteristic features of early Romanticism, <a href='#Page_74'>74-9</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Miltonic influence, <a href='#Page_79'>79-80</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Essay on the Genius of Pope</i>, <a href='#Page_80'>80-4</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Observations on the Faerie Queene</i>, <a href='#Page_84'>84-6</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Johnson's criticism of, <a href='#Page_86'>86-7</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ritson's attack upon Thomas, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>;</span></li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">defects of, <a href='#Page_89'>89-90</a></span></li> +<li>Webster's <i>White Devil</i>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a></li> +<li><i>Wessex Ballads</i>, by T. Hardy, <a href='#Page_238'>238-40</a></li> +<li>Wheeler, R.D. (Lady Lytton), Miss Devey's Life of, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">story of marriage with Bulwer-Lytton, <a href='#Page_121'>121-9</a></span></li> +<li>Whitehead, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li> +<li>William III, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li> +<li>Willis, N.P., <a href='#Page_105'>105</a></li> +<li>Wilson, Harriette, <a href='#Page_130'>130-1</a></li> +<li>Wolseley, Lord, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li> +<li>Wooler, Miss, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></li> +<li>Wordsworth, Hardy compared with, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>;</li> +<li> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">speculations concerning future poetry, <a href='#Page_298'>298-9</a>; <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></span></li> +<li>Wycherley, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a></li> +</ul> +<ul> +<li>Yeats, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></li> +<li>Young, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a></li> +</ul> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h5> +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED<br /> +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.<br /> +</h5> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<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"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Address delivered at the Mansion House, October 29th, 1918, +on occasion of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh's death.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Around the story of Agnes de Castro there gathered a whole +literature of fiction, which Mr. Montague Summers has investigated in +his <i>Works of Aphra Behn</i>, Vol. V. pp. 211-212.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Printed in Otto Klopp's <i>Correspondance de Leibnitz avec +l'Electrice Sophie</i>. Hanover, 1875.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Delivered, as the Warton Lecture, before the British +Academy, October 27th, 1915.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Address delivered to the Authors' Club, November 24th, +1913</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> A shocking false quantity; but how little that would matter +to Poe</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Address delivered before the Brontë Society in the Town +Hall of Dewsbury, March 28th, 1903.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Address delivered before the English Association, May 30, +1913.</p></div></div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by +Edmund William Gosse + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 18649-h.htm or 18649-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/4/18649/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.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: Some Diversions of a Man of Letters + +Author: Edmund William Gosse + +Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18649] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net. + + + + + + + + + + +SOME DIVERSIONS +OF +A MAN OF LETTERS + + +BY +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + + +LONDON +WILLIAM HEINEMANN +1920 + + +_First published October 1919_ +_New Impressions November 1919; February 1920_ + + + +_OTHER WORKS BY MR. EDMUND GOSSE_ + + +_Northern Studies_. 1879. + +_Life of Gray_. 1882. + +_Seventeenth-Century Studies_. 1883. + +_Life of Congreve_. 1888. + +_A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature_. 1889. + +_Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S._ 1890. + +_Gossip in a Library_. 1891. + +_The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance_. 1892. + +_Questions at Issue_. 1893. + +_Critical Kit-Kats_. 1896. + +_A Short History of Modern English Literature_. 1897. + +_Life and Letters of John Donne_. 1899. + +_Hypolympia_. 1901. + +_Life of Jeremy Taylor_. 1904. + +_French Profiles_. 1904. + +_Life of Sir Thomas Browne_. 1905. + +_Father and Son_. 1907. + +_Life of Ibsen_. 1908. + +_Two Visits to Denmark_. 1911. + +_Collected Poems_. 1911. + +_Portraits and Sketches_. 1912. + +_Inter Arma_. 1916. + +_Three French Moralists_. 1918. + + + + +TO + +EVAN CHARTERIS + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +Preface: On Fluctuations of Taste 1 + +The Shepherd of the Ocean 13 + +The Songs of Shakespeare 29 + +Catharine Trotter, the Precursor of the Bluestockings 37 + +The Message of the Wartons 63 + +The Charm of Sterne 91 + +The Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe 101 + +The Author of "Pelham" 115 + +The Challenge of the Brontes 139 + +Disraeli's Novels 151 + +Three Experiments in Portraiture-- + I. Lady Dorothy Nevill 181 + II. Lord Cromer 196 + III. The Last Days of Lord Redesdale 216 + +The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy 231 + +Some Soldier Poets 259 + +The Future of English Poetry 287 + +The Agony of the Victorian Age 311 + +Index 338 + + + + +PREFACE: + +ON FLUCTUATIONS OF TASTE + + +When Voltaire sat down to write a book on Epic Poetry, he dedicated his +first chapter to "Differences of Taste in Nations." A critic of to-day +might well find it necessary, on the threshold of a general inquiry, to +expatiate on "Differences of Taste in Generations." Changes of standard +in the arts are always taking place, but it is only with advancing +years, perhaps, that we begin to be embarrassed by the recurrence of +them. In early youth we fight for the new forms of art, for the new +aesthetic shibboleths, and in that happy ardour of battle we have no time +or inclination to regret the demigods whom we dispossess. But the years +glide on, and, behold! one morning, we wake up to find our own +predilections treated with contempt, and the objects of our own idolatry +consigned to the waste-paper basket. Then the matter becomes serious, +and we must either go on struggling for a cause inevitably lost, or we +must give up the whole matter in indifference. This week I read, over +the signature of a very clever and very popular literary character of +our day, the remark that Wordsworth's was "a genteel mind of the third +rank." I put down the newspaper in which this airy dictum was printed, +and, for the first time, I was glad that poor Mr. Matthew Arnold was no +longer with us. But, of course, the evolutions of taste must go on, +whether they hurt the living and the dead, or no. + +Is there, then, no such thing as a permanent element of poetic beauty? +The curious fact is that leading critics in each successive generation +are united in believing that there is, and that the reigning favourite +conforms to it. The life of a reputation is like the life of a plant, +and seems, in these days, to be like the life of an annual. We watch the +seed, admiration for Wordsworth, planted about 1795, shoot obscurely +from the ground, and gradually clothe itself with leaves till about +1840; then it bursts into blossom of rapturous praise, and about 1870 is +hung with clusters of the fruit of "permanent" appreciation. In 1919, +little more than a century from its first evolution in obscurity, it +recedes again in the raggedness of obloquy, and cumbers the earth, as +dim old "genteel" Wordsworth, whom we are assured that nobody reads. But +why were "the best judges" scornful in 1800 and again in 1919 of what +gave the noblest and the most inspiriting pleasure to "the best judges" +in 1870? The execution of the verse has not altered, the conditions of +imagination seem the same, why then is the estimate always changing? Is +every form of poetic taste, is all trained enjoyment of poetry, merely a +graduated illusion which goes up and down like a wave of the sea and +carries "the best judges" with it? If not, who is right, and who is +wrong, and what is the use of dogmatising? Let us unite to quit all vain +ambition, and prefer the jangle of the music-halls, with its direct +"aesthetic thrill." + +So far as I know, the only philosopher who has dared to face this +problem is Mr. Balfour, in the brilliant second chapter of his +"Foundations of Belief." He has there asked, "Is there any fixed and +permanent element in beauty?" The result of his inquiry is +disconcerting; after much discussion he decides that there is not. Mr. +Balfour deals, in particular, with only two forms of art, Music and +Dress, but he tacitly includes the others with them. It is certain that +the result of his investigations is the singularly stultifying one that +we are not permitted to expect "permanent relations" in or behind the +feeling of poetic beauty, which may be indifferently awakened by Blake +to-day and by Hayley to-morrow. If the critic says that the verse of +Blake is beautiful and that of Hayley is not, he merely "expounds +case-made law." The result seems to be that no canons of taste exist; +that what are called "laws" of style are enacted only for those who make +them, and for those whom the makers can bully into accepting their +legislation, a new generation of lawbreakers being perfectly free to +repeal the code. Southey yesterday and Keats to-day; why not Southey +again to-morrow, or perhaps Tupper? Such is the cynical _cul-de-sac_ +into which the logic of a philosopher drives us. + +We have had in France an example of _volte-face_ in taste which I +confess has left me gasping. I imagine that if Mr. Balfour was able to +spare a moment from the consideration of fiscal reform, he must have +spent it in triumphing over the fate of M. Sully-Prudhomme. In the month +of September 1906 this poet closed, after a protracted agony, "that long +disease, his life." He had compelled respect by his courage in the face +of hopeless pain, and, one might suppose, some gratitude by the +abundance of his benefactions. His career was more than blameless, it +was singularly exemplary. Half-blind, half-paralysed, for a long time +very poor, pious without fanaticism, patient, laborious, devoted to his +friends, he seems to have been one of those extraordinary beings whose +fortitude in the face of affliction knows no abatement. It would be +ridiculous to quote any of these virtues as a reason for admiring the +poetry of Sully-Prudhomme. I mention them merely to show that there was +nothing in his personal temperament to arouse hatred or in his personal +conditions to excuse envy. Nothing to account for the, doubtless, +entirely sincere detestation which his poetry seemed to awaken in all +"the best minds" directly he was dead. + +As every one knows, from about 1870 to 1890, Sully-Prudhomme was, +without a rival, the favourite living poet of the French. Victor Hugo +was there, of course, until 1885--and posthumously until much later--but +he was a god, and the object of idolatry. All who loved human poetry, +the poetry of sweetness and light, took Sully-Prudhomme to their heart +of hearts. The _Stances et Poemes_ of 1865 had perhaps the warmest +welcome that ever the work of a new poet had in France. Theophile +Gautier instantly pounced upon _Le Vase Brise_ (since too-famous) and +introduced it to a thousand school-girls. Sainte-Beuve, though grown old +and languid, waked up to celebrate the psychology and the music of this +new poetry, so delicate, fresh and transparent. An unknown beauty of +extreme refinement seemed to have been created in it, a beauty made up +of lucidity, pathos and sobriety. Readers who are now approaching +seventy will not forget with what emotion they listened, for instance, +to that dialogue between the long-dead father and the newly-buried son, +which closes:-- + + "J' ai laisse ma soeur et ma mere + Et les beaux livres que j' ai lus; + Vous n'avez pas de bru, mon pere, + On m'a blesse, je n'aime plus." + + "De tes aieux compte le nombre, + Va baiser leurs fronts inconnus, + Et viens faire ton lit dans l'ombre + A cote des derniers venus. + + "Ne pleure pas, dors dans l'argile + En esperant le grand reveit." + "O pere, qu'il est difficile + De ne plus penser au soleil!" + +This body of verse, to which was presently added fresh collections--_Les +Epreuves_ (1886), _Les Vaines Tendresses_ (1875), _Le Prisme_ +(1886),--was welcomed by the elder Sanhedrim, and still more +vociferously and unanimously by the younger priesthood of criticism. It +pleased the superfine amateurs of poetry, it was accepted with +enthusiasm by the thousands who enjoy without analysing their enjoyment. +In 1880, to have questioned that Sully-Prudhomme was a very noble poet +would have been like challenging Tennyson in 1870, or Cowley in 1660. +Jules Lemaitre claimed that he was the greatest artist in symbols that +France had ever produced. Brunetiere, so seldom moved by modern +literature, celebrated with ardour the author of _Les Vaines Tendresses_ +as having succeeded better than any other writer who had ever lived in +translating into perfect language the dawn and the twilight of emotion. +That Gaston Paris and M. Anatole France competed in lofty praise of the +lyrics of Sully-Prudhomme, is perhaps less remarkable than that Paul +Verlaine, whom all the younger schools still look upon as their apostle +and guide, declared, in reviewing _Les Ecuries d'Augias_, that the force +of style of Sully-Prudhomme was excelled only by the beauty of his +detail. It is needless to multiply examples of the unanimous praise +given by the divers schools of criticism to Sully-Prudhomme up to about +1890. His was, perhaps, the least contested literary glory of France. + +His death startlingly reminded us that this state of things had to be +entirely reversed. It is true that the peculiar talent of +Sully-Prudhomme, being almost exclusively lyrical, scarcely survived his +youth, and that he cumbered his moon of sands with two huge and clumsy +wrecks, _La Justice_ (1878) and _Le Bonheur_ (1898), round which the +feet of the fairies could hardly be expected to trip. One must be an +academician and hopelessly famous before one dares to inflict two +elephantine didactic epics on one's admirers. Unfortunately, too, the +poet undertook to teach the art of verse in his _Reflexions_ (1892) and +his _Testament Poetique_ (1901), brochures which greatly irritated the +young. It is probably wise for academicians, whether poets or the +reverse, to sit beside their nectar, and not to hurl bolts down into the +valley. But, behind these errors of judgment, there they remain--those +early volumes, which seemed to us all so full of exquisite little +masterpieces. Why is it that nobody, except a few elderly persons, any +longer delights in them? The notices which Sully-Prudhomme's death +awakened in the Paris Press were either stamped with the mark of old +contemporary affection, or else, when they were not abusive, were as +frigid as the tomb itself. "Ses tendresses sucrees, sirupeuses, sont +vaines en effet," said a critic of importance! Indeed, it would appear +so; and where are the laurels of yester-year? + +To those who were young when Sully-Prudhomme entered into his +immortality it seems impossible to realise that the glory has already +departed. Gaston Paris celebrated "the penetrating sincerity and the +exquisite expression of feeling" which distinguished Sully-Prudhomme +above all other poets. He was the bard of the inner life, sincere and +dignified, full of melancholy reverie. A great critic compared _La Vote +Lactic_ and _Les Stalactites_ with the far-off sound of bells heard down +some lovely valley in a golden afternoon. Yet the images and the +language were precise; Sully-Prudhomme was a mathematician, and if he +was reproached with anything like a fault, it was that his style was +slightly geometrical. It would be otiose to collect any more tributes to +his genius, as it appeared to all Frenchmen, cultivated or +semi-cultivated, about the year 1880. With an analysis of +Sully-Prudhomme's poetry I am not here concerned, but with the question +of why it is that such an authority as Remy de Gourmont could, in 1907, +without awakening any protest among persons under fifty say that it was +a "sort of social crime" to impose such balderdash as the verse of +Sully-Prudhomme on the public. + +It is not needful to quote other living critics, who may think such +prolongation of their severities ungraceful. But a single contrast will +suffice. When, in 1881, Sully-Prudhomme was elected to the French +Academy, expert opinion throughout the Press was unanimous in admitting +that this was an honour deservedly given to the best lyric poet of the +age. In 1906, when a literary journal sent out this question, "Who is +the poet you love best?" and was answered by more than two hundred +writers of verse, the diversity of opinion was indeed excessive; such +poets as Sainte-Beuve, as Brizeux, as Rodenbach, received votes, all the +great masters received many. But Sully-Prudhomme, alone, received not +one vote. A new generation had arisen, and one of its leaders, with +cruel wit, transferred to the reputation of the author his own most +famous line:--"N'y touchez pas, il est brise." + +It is necessary to recollect that we are not dealing with the phenomenon +of the inability of very astute literary people to recognise at once a +startling new sort of beauty. When Robert Browning lent the best poems +of Keats to Mrs. Carlyle, she read them and returned them with the +remark that "almost any young gentleman with a sweet tooth might be +expected to write such things." Mrs. Carlyle was a very clever woman, +but she was not quite "educated up to" Keats. The history of letters is +full of these grotesque limitations of taste, in the presence of great +art which has not yet been "classed." But we are here considering the +much stranger and indeed extremely disconcerting case of a product which +has been accepted, with acclamation, by the judges of one generation, +and is contemptuously hooted out of court by the next. It is not, on +this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics. +If Theophile Gautier was right in 1867, Remy de Gourmont must have been +wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of +criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however +ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact +that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that +another whole generation is of the same mind as Remy de Gourmont. + +Then it is that Mr. Balfour, like Galuppi with his "cold music," comes +in and tells us that this is precisely what we have to expect. All +beauty consists in the possession of certain relations, which being +withdrawn, beauty disappears from the object that seemed to possess it. +There is no permanent element in poetic excellence. We are not to demand +any settled opinion about poetry. So Mr. Balfour seems to creak it, and +we want the heart to scold. But is it quite so certain that there is no +fixed norm of beauty imaginable? Is it the fact that poetic pleasure +cannot "be supposed to last any longer than the transient reaction +between it" and the temporary prejudice of our senses? If this be true, +then are critics of all men most miserable. + +Yet, deeply dejected as it leaves me to know that very clever people +despise the "genteel third-rate mind" of Wordsworth, I am not quite +certain that I yield to Mr. Balfour's brilliant and paralysing logic. +That eminent philosopher seems to say "you find the poets, whom you +revered in your youth, treated with contempt in your old age. Well! It +is very sad, and perhaps it would annoy me too, if I were not a +philosopher. But it only shows how right I was to tell, you not to +expect permanent relations behind the feeling of beauty, since all is +illusion, and there is no such thing as a principle of taste, but only +a variation of fashion." + +Is it, however, quite so certain, after all, that there is no standard? +It must be admitted that there seems to be no fixed rule of taste, not +even a uniformity of practice or general tendency to agreement in +particular cases. But the whole study of the fine arts would lead to +despair if we allowed ourselves to accept this admission as implying +that no conceivable principle of taste exists. We may not be able to +produce it, like a yard-measure, and submit works of imagination to it, +once and for all, in the eyes of a consternated public. But when we +observe, as we must allow, that art is no better at one age than at +another, but only different; that it is subject to modification, but +certainly not to development; may we not safely accept this stationary +quality as a proof that there does exist, out of sight, unattained and +unattainable, a positive norm of poetic beauty? We cannot define it, but +in each generation all excellence must be the result of a relation to +it. It is the moon, heavily wrapt up in clouds, and impossible exactly +to locate, yet revealed by the light it throws on distant portions of +the sky. At all events, it appears to me that this is the only theory by +which we can justify a continued interest in literature when it is +attacked, now on one side, now on another, by the vicissitudes of +fashion. + +The essays which are here collected deal, for the most part, with +figures in the history of English literature which have suffered from +the changes of fortune and the instability of taste. In every case, +there has been something which is calculated to attract the sympathy and +interest of one who, like myself, has been closely concerned with two +distinct but not unrelated branches of his subject, the literary +character and the literary craft. More than fifty years have +passed--like a cloud, like a dream!--since I first saw my name printed +below a passage of critical opinion. How many reputations, within that +half-century, have not been exalted, how many have not been depressed! +We have seen Tennyson advanced beyond Virgil and Victor Hugo beyond +Homer. We have seen the latest freak of futurism preferred to _The Lotus +Eaters_, and the first _Legende des Siecles_ rejected as unreadable. In +face of this whirlwind of doctrine the public ceases to know whether it +is on its head or its feet--"its trembling tent all topsy-turvy wheels," +as an Elizabethan has it. To me it seems that security can only be found +in an incessant exploration of the by-ways of literary history and +analysis of the vagaries of literary character. To pursue this analysis +and this exploration without bewilderment and without prejudice is to +sum up the pleasures of a life devoted to books. + +_August 1919._ + + + + +THE SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN[1] + + +Three hundred years have gone by to-day since Sir Walter Raleigh was +beheaded, in presence of a vast throng of spectators, on the scaffold of +Old Palace Yard in Westminster. General Gordon said that England is what +her adventurers have made her, and there is not in all English history a +more shining and violent specimen of the adventurous type than Raleigh. +I am desired to deliver a brief panegyric on this celebrated freebooter, +and I go behind the modern definition of the word "panegyric" (as a +pompous and ornamented piece of rhetoric) to its original significance, +which was, as I take it, the reminder, to a great assembly of persons, +of the reason why they have been brought together in the name of a man +long dead. Therefore I shall endeavour, in the short space of time +allotted to me, not so much to eulogise as to explain and to define what +Sir Walter Raleigh was and represents. + +I suggest, therefore, before we touch upon any of the details of his +career and character, that the central feature of Raleigh, as he appears +to us after three hundred years, is his unflinching determination to see +the name of England written across the forehead of the world. Others +before him had been patriots of the purest order, but Raleigh was the +first man who laid it down, as a formula, that "England shall by the +favour of God resist, repel and confound all whatsoever attempts +against her sacred kingdom." He had no political sense nor skill in +statecraft. For that we go to the Burghleys or the Cecils, crafty men of +experience and judgment. But he understood that England had enemies and +that those enemies must be humbled and confounded. He understood that +the road of England's greatness, which was more to him than all other +good things, lay across the sea. The time was ripe for the assertion of +English liberty, of English ascendancy, too; and the opportunity of the +moment lay in "those happy hands which the Holy Ghost hath guided," the +fortunate adventurers. Of these Raleigh was the most eminent as he was +also, in a sense, the most unfortunate. + +A heavy shadow lay all over the Western world, the shadow of a fierce +bird of prey hovering over its victim. Ever since Ferdinand expelled the +Moors out of Granada, Spain had been nursing insensate dreams of +universal empire. She was endeavouring to destroy the infant system of +European civilisation by every means of brutality and intrigue which the +activity of her arrogance could devise. The Kings of Spain, in their +ruthless ambition, encouraged their people in a dream of Spanish +world-dominion. Their bulletins had long "filled the earth with their +vainglorious vaunts, making great appearance of victories"; they had +spread their propaganda "in sundry languages in print," distributing +braggart pamphlets in which they boasted, for the benefit of neutrals, +of their successes against England, France, and Italy. They had "abused +and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of the Low Countries, and they +held that the force of arms which they brandished would weigh against +justice, humanity, and freedom in the servitude which they meant to +inflict upon Europe. It was to be _Spanien ueber alles_. + +But there was one particular nation against which the malignity of the +great enemy blazed most fiercely. The King of Spain blasphemously +regarded himself as the instrument of God, and there was one country +which more than the rest frustrated his pious designs. This was England, +and for that reason England was more bitterly hated than any other +enemy. The Spaniards did "more greedily thirst after English blood than +after the lives of any other people of Europe." The avowed purpose of +Castile was to destroy that maritime supremacy of England on which the +very existence of the English State depends. The significance of Sir +Walter Raleigh consists in the clairvoyance with which he perceived and +the energy with which he combated this monstrous assumption. Other noble +Englishmen of his time, and before his time, had been clear-sighted and +had struck hard against the evil tyranny of Spanish dynastic militarism, +but no other man before or since was so luminously identified with +resistance. He struts upon the stage of battle with the limelight full +upon him. The classic writing of the crisis is contained in the _Last +Fight of the Revenge at Sea_ of 1591, where the splendid defiance and +warning of the Preface are like trumpets blown to the four quarters of +the globe. Raleigh stands out as the man who above all others laboured, +as he said, "against the ambitious and bloody pretences of the +Spaniards, who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves +devoured." + +There is a blessing upon the meek of the earth, but I do not present +Raleigh to you as a humble-minded man. In that wonderful Elizabethan age +there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the +subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable +wisdom of Shakespeare. Raleigh had no part in any of these, and to +complain of that would be to grumble because a hollyhock is neither a +violet nor a rose. He had his enemies during his life and his detractors +ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He +was a typical man of that heroic age in that he possessed, even to +excess, all its tropic irregularity of ethics. He lived in a perpetual +alternation of thunderstorm and blazing sunshine. He admitted himself +that his "reason," by which he meant his judgment, "was exceeding weak," +and his tactlessness constantly precluded a due appreciation of his +courage and nobility. For long years his violent and haughty temper made +him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where +everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did +not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we +are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with +serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from +ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his +protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive +pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong +silent" type of soldier which the nineteenth century invented for +exclusive British consumption. + +In judging his character we must take into consideration not only the +times in which he lived, but the leaders of English policy with whom he +came into collision. He was not thirty years of age, and still at the +height of his vivacity, when he was taken into the close favour of Queen +Elizabeth. There can be no question that he found in the temper of the +monarch something to which his own nature intimately responded. The +Queen was an adventurer at heart, as he was, and she was an Englishman +of Englishmen. We are accustomed to laugh at the extravagance of the +homage which Raleigh paid to a woman old enough to be his mother, at the +bravado which made him fling his new plush cloak across a puddle for the +Queen to tread over gently, as Fuller tells us, "rewarding him +afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so +fair a footcloth," or at the story of the rhymes the couple cut on the +glass with their diamond rings. In all this, no doubt, there was the +fashion of the time, and on Raleigh's part there was ambition and the +desire to push his fortunes without scruple. But there was, you may be +sure, more than that; there was the instinctive sympathy between the two +who hated with the most unflagging and the most burning hate the wicked +aggression of Spain. We may be sure that Elizabeth never for a day +forgot that Pope Alexander VI. had generously bestowed the Western world +on the Crown of Spain. Raleigh spoke a language which might be +extravagant and which might be exasperating, which might, in fact, lead +to outrageous quarrels between his Cynthia and himself, but which, at +least, that Cynthia understood. + +But in 1602, when Raleigh was fifty years of age and had his splendours +behind him, there came another Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. James I. was +the type of the cautious man who only looks to the present, who hopes by +staving off a crisis till Tuesday that something fresh will "turn up" by +Wednesday. He was disposed, from the very first, to distrust and to +waylay the plans of Raleigh. We are told, and can well believe it, that +he was "diffident" of Sir Walter's designs. He was uncomfortable in the +presence of that breezy "man of desperate fortunes." A very excellent +example of the opposition of the two types is offered by the discussion +about the golden city of Manoa. Raleigh believed, and after all +disappointments continued to be sure, that in the heart of the swamps of +the Orinoco there existed a citadel of magnificent wealth, an emporium +of diamonds and gold, from which Spain was secretly drawing the riches +with which she proposed to overwhelm civilisation. He struggled for +nearly a quarter of a century to win this marvellous city for England. +James I. chopped in with his cold logic, and declined to believe that +any golden mine existed in Guiana "anywhere in nature," as he craftily +said. When Raleigh returned after his last miserable failure in May +1617, the monarch spared no sneer and no reproof to the pirate of the +seas. Of course, the King was right; there was no mine of diamonds, no +golden city. But the immense treasures that haunted Raleigh's dreams +were more real than reality; they existed in the future; he looked far +ahead, and our sympathies to-day, and our gratitude also, are all for +the noble and valorous knight who sailed out into the West searching for +an unknown El Dorado. + +It is not so easy to defend the character of our hero against those who, +like Hume, have objected to his methods in the prosecution of his +designs. To Hume, as to many others before and since, Raleigh seemed +"extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both." +The excellent historians of the eighteenth century could not make up +their minds whether he was a hero or an impostor. Did he believe in the +Guiana mine, or was he, through all those strenuous years, hoodwinking +the world? Had he any purpose, save to plunder the Spaniard? Perhaps his +own family doubted his sanity, for his son Walter, when he charged the +Spanish settlement at San Thome, pointed to the house of the little +colony and shouted to his men: "Come on, this is the true mine, and none +but fools would look for any other!" Accusations of bad faith, of +factious behaviour, of disloyal intrigue, were brought up against Sir +Walter over and over again during the "day of his tempestuous life, +drawn on into an evening" of ignominy and blood. These charges were the +"inmost and soul-piercing wounds" of which he spoke, still "aching," +still "uncured." + +There is no need to recount to you the incidents of his life, but I may +remind you that after the failure of the latest expedition to South +America the Privy Council, under pressure from the Spanish Ambassador, +gave orders to Sir Lewis Stukeley to bring the body of Sir Walter +Raleigh speedily to London. This was the culmination of his fall, since, +three days after Raleigh landed at Plymouth, the King had assured Spain +that "not all those who have given security for Raleigh can save him +from the gallows." His examination followed, and the publication of the +_Apology for the Voyage to Guiana_. The trial dragged on, while James +I., in a manner almost inconceivable, allowed himself to be hurried and +bullied by the insolent tyrant Philip II. If the English King did not +make haste to execute Raleigh the Spaniards would fetch him away and +hang him in Madrid. In these conditions, and clutching at life as a man +clutches at roots and branches when he is sliding down a precipice, the +conduct of Raleigh has given cause to his critics to blaspheme. He +wriggled like an eel, he pretended to be sick, he pretended to be mad, +in order to protract his examination. He prevaricated about his mine, +about the French alliance, about the Spanish treaties, about his stores +and instruments. Did he believe, or did he not believe, in the Empire of +the Inca, in the Amazons or Republic of Women, in the gold lying hidden +in the hard white spar of El Dorado? We do not know, and his own latest +efforts at explanation only cloud our counsel. He was perhaps really a +little mad at last, his feverish brain half-crazed by the movement on +land and sea of the triumphant wealth of Spain. + +Let us never overlook that the master-passion of his whole career was +hatred of this tyrannous prosperity of England's most formidable rival. +He acted impulsively, and even unjustly; there was much in his methods +that a cool judgment must condemn; but he was fighting, with his back to +the wall, in order that the British race should not be crowded out of +existence by "the proud Iberian." He saw that if Spain were permitted to +extend her military and commercial supremacy unchecked, there would be +an end to civilisation. Democracy was a thing as yet undeveloped, but +the seeds of it were lying in the warm soil of English liberty, and +Raleigh perceived, more vehemently than any other living man, that the +complete victory of Spain would involve the shipwreck of England's hopes +of future prosperity. Nor was he exclusively interested in England, +though all his best hopes were ours. When he had been a lad at Oxford he +had broken away from his studies in 1569 to help the Protestant princes +as a gentleman volunteer in France, and he took part in the famous +battle of Jarnac. He is supposed to have fought in France for six years. +From early youth his mind was "bent on military glory," and always in +opposition to Spain. His escape from the bloody Vespers of Saint +Bartholomew had given him a deep distrust of the policy of Rome. The +Spaniard had "abused and tormented" the wretched inhabitants of +Flanders. Sir Walter Raleigh dreamed that by the combination in arms of +England, France, and the Low Countries, the Spaniards "might not only be +persuaded to live in peace, but all their swelling and overflowing +streams might be brought back into their natural channels and old +banks." + +Raleigh stood out, as he put it himself, against "the continuance of +this boundless ambition in mortal men." The rulers in Madrid, +transported by their own arrogance, had determined to impose their +religion, their culture, their form of government, on the world. It was +a question whether the vastly superior moral and intellectual energy of +England and France would not be crushed beneath the heel of Spain. +Raleigh was ready to sacrifice everything, to imperil his own soul, to +prevent that. He says you might as well "root out the Christian religion +altogether" as join "the rest of all Europe to Spain." In his zeal to +prevent "the continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men," he +lent himself to acts which we must not attempt to condone. There is no +use in trying to explain away the facts of his cruel and even savage +fanaticism in Ireland when he was governor of Munster. He was always apt +to be abruptly brutal to a man who crossed his path. But even his Irish +career offers aspects on which we may dwell with pure pleasure. Nothing +could be more romantic than those adventures, like the feats of a +paladin of the Faerie Queen, which he encountered in the great wood of +Lismore; while the story of how he carried off Lord and Lady Roche from +their breakfast-table in their own castle of Ballyinharsh, and how he +rode with them up ravines and round precipices in that mad flight from +their retainers, is as rousing as any scene ever imagined by Dumas +_pere_. + +Raleigh called himself the Shepherd of the Ocean, and the name fits him +well, even though his flock were less like sheep than like a leash of +hunting leopards. His theory was that with a pack of small and active +pinnaces he could successfully hunt the lumbering Spanish galleons +without their being able to hit back. He was, in contradistinction to +many preceding English admirals, a cautious fighter at sea, and he says, +in a striking passage of the _History of the World_, written towards the +end of his career, "to clap ships together without any consideration +belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war." He must have taken the +keenest interest in the gigantic failure of the Felicissima Armada in +1588, but, tantalisingly enough, we have no record of his part in it. On +the other hand, the two finest of his prose pamphlets, the _Relation of +the Action in Cadiz Harbour_ and the incomparable _Report on the Fight +in the Revenge_, supply us with ample materials for forming an idea of +his value as a naval strategist. Raleigh's earliest biographer, Oldys +the antiquary, speaks of him as "raising a grove of laurels out of the +sea," and it is certainly upon that element that he reaches his highest +effect of prominence. It was at sea that he could give fullest scope to +his hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain. He had to be at once a +gamekeeper and a poacher; he had to protect the legitimate interests of +English shipping against privateers and pirates, while he was persuaded +to be, or felt himself called upon to become, no little of a pirate +himself. He was a passionate advocate of the freedom of the seas, and +those who look upon Raleigh as a mere hot-brained enthusiast should read +his little book called _Observations on Trade and Commerce_, written in +the Tower, and see what sensible views he had about the causes of the +depression of trade. These sage opinions did not check him, or his +fleets of hunting-pinnaces, from lying in wait for the heavy wallowing +plate-ships, laden with Indian carpets and rubies and sandalwood and +ebony, which came swinging up to the equator from Ceylon or Malabar. The +"freedom of the seas" was for Raleigh's ship, the _Roebuck_; it was by +no means for the _Madre de Dios_. We find these moral inconsistencies in +the mind of the best of adventurers. + +A sketch of Raleigh's character would be imperfect indeed if it +contained no word concerning his genius as a coloniser. One of his main +determinations, early in life, was "to discover and conquer unknown +lands, and take possession of them in the Queen's name." We celebrate in +Sir Walter Raleigh one of the most intelligent and imaginative of the +founders of our colonial empire. The English merchantmen before his time +had been satisfied with the determination to grasp the wealth of the New +World as it came home to Spain; it had not occurred to them to compete +with the great rival at the fountain-head of riches. Even men like Drake +and Frobisher had been content with a policy of forbidding Spain, as the +poet Wither said, "to check our ships from sailing where they please." +South America was already mainly in Spanish hands, but North America was +still open to invasion. It was Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey +Gilbert, who first thought of planting an English settlement in what is +now the United States, in 1578. But Gilbert had "no luck at sea," as +Queen Elizabeth observed, and it was Raleigh who, in 1584, took up the +scheme of colonisation. He did not drop it until the death of Elizabeth, +when, under the east wind of the new _regime_, the blossom of his +colonial enterprises flagged. + +The motion for the ceremony of to-day originated with the authorities of +an important American city, which proudly bears the name of our +adventurer. The earliest settlement in what are now the United States +was made at Roanoke, in Virginia, on a day which must always be +prominent in the annals of civilisation, August 17th, 1585. But this +colony lasted only ten months, and it was not until nearly two years +later that the fourth expedition which Raleigh sent out succeeded in +maintaining a perilous foothold in the new country. This was the little +trembling taper to which his own name was given, the twinkling spark +which is now the flourishing city of Raleigh in North Carolina. We may +well marvel at the pertinacity with which Sir Walter persisted, in the +face of innumerable difficulties, in sending out one colonising fleet +after another, although, contrary to common legend, he himself never set +foot in North America. It was fortunate that at this period of his +career he was wealthy, for the attempts to plant settlements in the vast +region which he named Virginia cost him more than L40,000. We note at +all turns of his fortune his extraordinary tenacity of purpose, which he +illustrated, as though by a motto, in the verses he addressed to a +comrade towards the end of his imprisonment in the Tower:-- + + "Change not! to change thy fortune 'tis too late; + Who with a manly faith resolves to die + May promise to himself a lasting State, + Though not so great, yet free from infamy." + +So we may think of him in his prime, as he stood on the Hoe of Plymouth +twenty years before, a gallant figure of a man, bedizened with precious +stones, velvets, and embroidered damasks, shouting his commands to his +captains in a strong Devonshire accent. We think of him resolutely +gazing westward always, with the light of the sea in his eyes. + +We come to the final scene which we are here to-day to commemorate. +Little honour to the rulers of England in 1618 redounds from it, and yet +we may feel that it completed and even redeemed from decay the character +of Raleigh. This tragedy, which was almost a murder, was needed to round +off the accomplishment of so strange and frantic a career of romantic +violence, and to stamp it with meaning. If Raleigh had been thrown from +his horse or had died of the ague in his bed, we should have been +depressed by the squalid circumstances, we should have been less +conscious than we are now of his unbroken magnanimity. His failures and +his excesses had made him unpopular throughout England, and he was both +proud and peevish in his recognition of the fact. He declared that he +was "nothing indebted" to the world, and again that, "the common people +are evil judges of honest things." But the thirteen years of his +imprisonment caused a reaction. People forgot how troublesome he had +been and only recollected his magnificence. They remembered nothing but +that he had spent his whole energy and fortune in resisting the +brutality and avarice of the Spaniard. + +Then came the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at Westminster, +and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of a paltry king. +It became known, or shrewdly guessed, that Spain had sent to James I. a +hectoring alternative that Raleigh must be executed in London or sent +alive for a like purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and +ignominious submission of the English Government to the insolence of +England's hereditary enemy. Raleigh seemed for the moment to have failed +completely, yet it was really like the act of Samson, who slew more men +at his death than in all his life. Samuel Pepys, who had some fine +intuitions at a time when the national _moral_ was very low, spoke of +Raleigh as being "given over, as a sacrifice," to our enemies. This has +been, in truth, the secret of his unfailing romantic popularity, and it +is the reason of the emotion which has called us together here three +hundred years after his death upon the scaffold. + +[Footnote 1: Address delivered at the Mansion House, October 29th, 1918, +on occasion of the Tercentenary of Sir Walter Raleigh's death.] + + + + +THE SONGS OF SHAKESPEARE + + +Among the "co-supremes and stars of love" which form the constellated +glory of our greatest poet there is one small splendour which we are apt +to overlook in our general survey. But, if we isolate it from other +considerations, it is surely no small thing that Shakespeare created and +introduced into our literature the Dramatic Song. If with statistical +finger we turn the pages of all his plays, we shall discover, not +perhaps without surprise, that these contain not fewer than fifty +strains of lyrical measure. Some of the fifty, to be sure, are mere +star-dust, but others include some of the very jewels of our tongue. +They range in form from the sophisticated quatorzains of _The Two +Gentlemen of Verona_ (where, however, comes "Who is Silvia?") to the +reckless snatches of melody in _Hamlet_. But all have a character which +is Shakespearean, and this regardless of the question so often raised, +and so incapable of reply, as to whether some of the wilder ones are +Shakespeare's composition or no. Whoever originally may have written +such scraps as "They bore him bare-faced on the bier" and "Come o'er the +bourne, Bessy, to me," the spirit of Shakespeare now pervades and +possesses them. + +Our poet was a prodigious innovator in this as in so many other matters. +Of course, the idea and practice of musical interludes in plays was not +quite novel. In Shakespeare's early youth that remarkable artist in +language, John Lyly, had presented songs in several of his plays, and +these were notable for what his contemporary, Henry Upchear, called +"their labouring beauty." We may notice that Lyly's songs were not +printed till long after Shakespeare's death, but doubtless he had +listened to them. Peele and Greene had brilliant lyrical gifts, but they +did not exercise them in their dramas, nor did Lodge, whose novel of +Rosalynde (1590) contains the only two precedent songs which we could +willingly add to Shakespeare's juvenile repertory. But while I think it +would be rash to deny that the lyrics of Lodge and Lyly had their direct +influence on the style of Shakespeare, neither of those admirable +precursors conceived the possibility of making the Song an integral part +of the development of the drama. This was Shakespeare's invention, and +he applied it with a technical adroitness which had never been dreamed +of before and was never rivalled after. + +This was not apprehended by the early critics of our divine poet, and +has never yet, perhaps, received all the attention it deserves. We may +find ourselves bewildered if we glance at what the eighteenth-century +commentators said, for instance, about the songs in _Twelfth Night_. +They called the adorable rhapsodies of the Clown "absurd" and +"unintelligible"; "O Mistress mine" was in their ears "meaningless"; +"When that I was" appeared to them "degraded buffoonery." They did not +perceive the close and indispensable connection between the Clown's song +and the action of the piece, although the poet had been careful to point +out that it was a moral song "dulcet in contagion," and too good, except +for sarcasm, to be wasted on Sir Andrew and Sir Toby. The critics +neglected to note what the Duke says about "Come away, come away, +Death," and they prattled in their blindness as to whether this must not +really have been sung by Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant +dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of +the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of _Twelfth Night_ is burdened +with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and at each +change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string. +The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this +musical tension at its height. + +Rather different, and perhaps still more subtle, is the case of _A +Winter's Tale_, where the musical obsession is less prominent, and where +the songs are all delivered from the fantastic lips of Autolycus. Here +again the old critics were very wonderful. Dr. Burney puts "When +daffodils begin to peer" and "Lawn as white as driven snow" into one +bag, and flings it upon the dust-heap, as "two nonsensical songs" sung +by "a pickpocket." Dr. Warburton blushed to think that such "nonsense" +could be foisted on Shakespeare's text. Strange that those learned men +were unable to see, not merely that the rogue-songs are intensely human +and pointedly Shakespearean, but that they are an integral part of the +drama. They complete the revelation of the complex temperament of +Autolycus, with his passion for flowers and millinery, his hysterical +balancing between laughter and tears, his impish mendacity, his sudden +sentimentality, like the Clown's + + "Not a friend, not a friend greet + My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown!" + +It is in these subtle lyrical amalgams of humour and tenderness that the +firm hand of the creator of character reveals itself. + +But it is in _The Tempest_ that Shakespeare's supremacy as a writer of +songs is most brilliantly developed. Here are seven or eight lyrics, and +among them are some of the loveliest things that any man has written. +What was ever composed more liquid, more elastic, more delicately +fairy-like than Ariel's First Song? + + "Come unto these yellow sands, + And then take hands: + Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd,-- + The wild waves whist." + +That is, not "kissed the wild waves," as ingenious punctuators pretend, +but, parenthetically, "kissed one another,--the wild waves being silent +the while." Even fairies do not kiss waves, than which no embrace could +be conceived less rewarding. Has any one remarked the echo of Marlowe +here, from _Hero and Leander_, + + "when all is whist and still, + Save that the sea playing on yellow sand + Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land!" + +But Marlowe, with all his gifts, could never have written the lyrical +parts of _The Tempest_. This song is in emotional sympathy with +Ferdinand, and in the truest sense dramatic, not a piece of pretty verse +foisted in to add to the entertainment. + +Ariel's Second Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin +redbreast" in _The White Devil_, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it +tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls +it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any +language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's +Fourth Song,--"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative +genius of English poetry, recently delivered from Sycorax. If we glance +at Dry den's recension of _The Tempest_ we may be inclined to think that +the "wicked dam" soon won back her mastery. With all respect to Dryden, +what are we to think of his discretion in eking out Shakespeare's +insufficiencies with such staves as this:-- + + "Upon the floods we'll sing and play + And celebrate a halcyon day; + Great Nephew Aeolus make no noise, + Muzzle your roaring boys." + +and so forth? What had happened to the ear of England in seventy years? + +As a matter of fact the perfection of dramatic song scarcely survived +Shakespeare himself. The early Jacobeans, Heywood, Ford, and Dekker in +particular, broke out occasionally in delicate ditties. But most +playwrights, like Massinger, were persistently pedestrian. The only man +who came at all close to Shakespeare as a lyrist was John Fletcher, +whose "Lay a garland on my hearse" nobody could challenge if it were +found printed first in a Shakespeare quarto. The three great songs in +"Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's, +though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of +"Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be +the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their +sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection +gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately +procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be +certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was +by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure +of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of +Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent +portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of +Shakespeare, and perhaps of him alone. + + + + +CATHARINE TROTTER, + +THE PRECURSOR OF THE BLUESTOCKINGS + + +The practically complete absence of the Woman of Letters from our +tropical and profuse literature of the early and middle seventeenth +century has often been observed with wonder. While France had her +Madeleine de Scudery and her Mlle. de Gournay and her Mere Angelique +Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into +philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they +read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to +write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with +every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional +woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose +genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers. +Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had left no +heritage to her sex. But there presently appeared a set of female +writers, who enlivened the last years of the century, but who were soon +eclipsed by the wits of the age of Anne, and who have been entirely +forgotten. It is to the most interesting of these "transient phantoms" +that I wish to draw attention. + +The extreme precocity of Catharine Trotter makes her seem to belong to +the age of Dryden, but she was in reality younger than Addison and most +of the other contemporaries of Pope. She was born on August 16th, 1679, +the younger daughter of a naval officer, Captain David Trotter, R.N.; +her mother's maiden name had been Sarah Ballenden, probably of the +well-known Catholic family of that ilk. She "had the honour of being +nearly related to the illustrious families of Maitland, Duke of +Lauderdale and Drummond, Earl of Perth." The Jacobite fourth Earl of +Perth seems to have been the patron of Captain Trotter, of whom he wrote +in 1684 that he was "an ornament to his country." Apparently the gallant +captain was attached to Trinity House, where his probity and integrity +earned him the epithet of "honest David," and where he attracted the +notice of George, first Lord Dartmouth, when that rising statesman was +appointed Master. Captain Trotter had served the Crown from his youth, +"with great gallantry and fidelity, both by land and sea," and had been +very successful in the Dutch wars. He had a brother who was a commander +in the Navy. We get an impression of high respectability in the outer, +but not outermost, circles of influential Scottish society. Doubtless +the infancy of Catharine was spent in conditions of dependent +prosperity. These conditions were not to last. When she was four years +old Lord Dartmouth started on the famous expedition to demolish Tangier, +and he took Captain Trotter with him as his commodore. In this affair, +as before, the captain distinguished himself by his ability, and instead +of returning to London after Tangier he was recommended to King Charles +II. as the proper person to convoy the fleet of the Turkey Company to +its destination. Apparently it was understood that this would be the +final reward of his services and that he was to "make his fortune" out +of the Turks. Unhappily, after convoying his charge safely to +Scanderoon, he fell sick of the plague that was raging there, and died, +in the course of January 1684, in company with all the other officers of +his ship. Every misfortune now ensued; the purser, who was thus left to +his own devices, helped himself to the money destined for the expenses +of the voyage, while, to crown all, the London goldsmith in whose hands +the captain had left his private fortune took this occasion to go +bankrupt. The King, in these melancholy circumstances, granted an +Admiralty pension to the widow, but when he died early in the following +year this was no longer paid, and the unfortunate ladies of the Trotter +family might well murmur:-- + + "One mischief brings another on his neck, + As mighty billows tumble in the seas." + +From the beginning of her fifth year, then, Catharine experienced the +precarious lot of those who depend for a livelihood on the charity of +more or less distant relatives. We dimly see a presentable mother +piteously gathering up such crumbs as fell from the tables of the +illustrious families with whom she was remotely connected. But the Duke +of Lauderdale himself was now dead, and the Earl of Perth had passed the +zenith of his power. No doubt in the seventeenth century the protection +of poor relations was carried on more systematically than it is to-day, +and certainly Mrs. Trotter contrived to live and to bring up her two +daughters genteelly. The first years were the worst; the accession of +William III. brought back to England and to favour Gilbert Burnet, who +became Bishop of Salisbury in 1688, when Catharine was nine years old. +Mrs. Trotter found a patron and perhaps an employer in the Bishop, and +when Queen Anne came to the throne her little pension was renewed. + +There is frequent reference to money in Catharine Trotter's writings, +and the lack of it was the rock upon which her gifts were finally +wrecked. With a competency she might have achieved a much more prominent +place in English literature than she could ever afford to reach. She +offers a curious instance of the depressing effect of poverty, and we +get the impression that she was never, during her long and virtuous +career, lifted above the carking anxiety which deadens the imagination. +As a child, however, she seems to have awakened hopes of a high order. +She was a prodigy, and while little more than an infant she displayed an +illumination in literature which was looked upon, in that age of female +darkness, as quite a portent. She taught herself French, "by her own +application without any instructor," but was obliged to accept some +assistance in acquiring Latin and logic. The last-mentioned subject +became her particular delight, and at a very tender age she drew up "an +abstract" of that science "for her own use." Thus she prepared for her +future communion with Locke and with Leibnitz. When she was very small, +in spite of frequent conferences with learned members of the Church of +England, she became persuaded of the truth of Catholicism and joined the +Roman communion. We may conjecture that this coincided with the +conversion of her kinsman, Lord Chancellor Perth, but as events turned +out it cannot but have added to the sorrows of that much-tried woman, +her mother. (It should be stated that Catharine resumed the Anglican +faith when she was twenty-eight years of age.) + +She was in her tenth year when the unhappy reign of James II. came to a +close. Mrs. Trotter's connections were now in a poor plight. The new +Earl of Lauderdale was in great distress for money; Lord Dartmouth, +abandoned by the King in his flight, was thrown into the Tower, where he +died on October 25th, 1691, in which year the estates of the Earl of +Perth were sequestered and he himself hunted out of the country. Ruin +simultaneously fell on all the fine friends of our infant prodigy, and +we can but guess how it affected her. Yet there were plenty of other +Jacobites left in London, and Catharine's first public appearance shows +that she cultivated their friendship. She published in 1693 a copy of +verses addressed to Mr. Bevil Higgons on the occasion of his recovery +from the smallpox; she was then fourteen years of age. Higgons was a +young man of twenty-three, who had lately returned from the exiled court +in France, where he had distinguished himself by his agreeable manners, +and who had just made a name for himself by poems addressed to Dryden +and by a prologue to Congreve's _Old Batchelor_. He was afterwards to +become famous for a little while as a political historian. Catharine +Trotter's verses are bad, but she addresses Higgons as "lovely youth," +and claims his gratitude for her tribute in terms which are almost +boisterous. This poem was not only her introduction to the public, but, +through Bevil Higgons, was probably the channel of her acquaintance with +Congreve and Dryden. + +Throughout her life she was fond of writing letters to celebrated +people; she now certainly wrote to Congreve and doubtless to Dryden. A +freedom in correspondence ran in the family. Her poor mother is revealed +to us as always "renewing her application" to somebody or other. We next +find the youthful poet in relation with the Earl of Dorset, from whom +she must have concealed her Jacobite propensities. Dorset was the great +public patron of poetry under William III., and Catharine Trotter, aged +sixteen, having composed a tragedy, appealed to him for support. It was +very graciously granted, and _Agnes de Castro_, in five acts and in +blank verse, "written by a young lady," was produced at the Theatre +Royal in 1695, under the "protection" of Charles Earl of Dorset and +Middlesex, Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household. The event caused +a considerable commotion. No woman had written for the English stage +since the death of Mrs. Behn, and curiosity was much excited. Mrs. +Verbruggen, that enchanting actress, but in male attire, recited a +clever, ranting epilogue at the close of the performance, in which she +said:-- + + "'tis whispered here + Our Poetess is virtuous, young and fair," + +but the secret was an open one. Wycherley, who contributed verses, knew +all about it, and so did Mrs. Manley, while Powell and Colley Cibber +were among the actors. We may be sure that little Mistress Trotter's +surprising talents were the subjects of much discussion at Will's Coffee +House, and that the question of securing her for the rival theatre was +anxiously debated at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her success in Agnes de +Castro was the principal asset which Drury Lane had to set that season +against Congreve's splendid adventure with Love for Love. + +Agnes de Castro is an immature production, and shows a juvenile +insensibility to plagiarism, since the subject and treatment are +borrowed implicitly from a French novel by Mlle. de Brillac, published +in Paris and London a few years before.[2] The conception of court life +at Coimbra in the fourteenth century is that of this French lady, and is +innocent of Portuguese local colour. But, as the dramatic work of a girl +of sixteen, the play is rather extraordinary for nimble movement and +adroit theatrical arrangements. It is evident that Catharine Trotter was +well versed in the stage traditions of her own day, and we may wonder +how a highly respectable girl of sixteen found her opportunity. The +English playhouse under William III. was no place for a very young lady, +even if she wore a mask. There is a good deal of meritorious +character-drawing in Agnes de Castro. The conception of a benevolent and +tenderly forgiving Princess is well contrasted with the fierce purity of +Agnes and the infatuation of the Prince. Towards the close of the first +act there is a capital scene of exquisite confusion between this +generous and distracted trio. The opening of the third act, between +Elvira and her brother Alvaro, is not at all young-ladyish, and has some +strong turns of feeling. The end of the play, with the stabbing of the +Princess and the accusation of Agnes by Elvira, is puerile, but was +doubtless welcome to a sentimental audience. It is a bad play, but not +at all an unpromising one. + +Early in 1696 _Agnes de Castro_, still anonymous, was published as a +book, and for the next five or six years we find Catharine Trotter +habitually occupied in writing for the stage. Without question she did +so professionally, though in what way dramatists at the close of the +seventeenth century lived by their pens is difficult to conjecture. A +very rare play, _The Female Wits; or, the Triumvirate of Poets_, the +authorship of which has hitherto defied conjecture, was acted at Drury +Lane after Catharine Trotter had been tempted across to Lincoln's Inn +Fields, and is evidently inspired by the intense jealousy which +smouldered between the two great houses. The success of Miss Trotter +incited two older ladies to compete with her; these were Mrs. +Delariviere Manley, who was a discarded favourite of Barbara Villiers, +and fat Mrs. Mary Pix, the stage-struck consort of a tailor. These +rather ridiculous women professed themselves followers of Catharine, and +they produced plays of their own not without some success. With her they +formed the trio of Female Wits who were mocked in the lively but, on the +whole, rather disappointing play I have just mentioned, in the course of +which it is spitefully remarked of Calista--who is Miss Trotter--that +she has "made no small struggle in the world to get into print," and is +"now in such a state of wedlock to pen and ink that it will be very +difficult" for her "to get out of it." + +In acting _The Female Wits_ Mrs. Temple, who had played the Princess in +_Agnes de Castro_, took the part of Calista, and doubtless, in the +coarse fashion of those days, made up exactly like poor Catharine +Trotter, who was described as "a Lady who pretends to the learned +Languages, and assumes to herself the name of a Critic." This was a +character, however, which she would not have protested against with much +vigour, for she had now quite definitely taken up the position of a +reformer and a pioneer. She posed as the champion of women's +intellectual rights, and she was accepted as representing in active +literary work the movement which Mary Astell had recently foreshadowed +in her remarkable _Serious Proposal to Ladies_ of 1694. We turn again to +_The Female Wits_, and we find Marsilia (Mrs. Manley) describing Calista +to Mrs. Wellfed (Mrs. Fix) as "the vainest, proudest, senseless Thing! +She pretends to grammar! writes in mood and figure! does everything +methodically!" Yet when Calista appears on the stage, Mrs. Manley rushes +across to fling her arms around her and to murmur: "O charmingest Nymph +of all Apollo's Train, let me embrace thee!" Later on Calista says to +Mrs. Pix, the fat tailoress, "I cannot but remind you, Madam ... I read +Aristotle in his own language"; and of a certain tirade in a play of Ben +Jonson she insists: "I know it so well, as to have turn'd it into +Latin." Mrs. Pix admits her own ignorance of all these things; she "can +go no further than the eight parts of speech." This brings down upon her +an icy reproof from Calista: "Then I cannot but take the Freedom to say +... you impose upon the Town." We get the impression of a preciseness of +manner and purpose which must have given Catharine a certain air of +priggishness, not entirely unbecoming, perhaps, but very strange in that +loose theatre of William III. + +Accordingly, in her next appearance, we find her complaining to the +Princess (afterwards Queen Anne) that she has become "the mark of ill +Nature" through recommending herself "by what the other Sex think their +peculiar Prerogative"--that is, intellectual distinction. Catharine +Trotter was still only nineteen years of age when she produced her +tragedy of _Fatal Friendship_, the published copy of which (1698) is all +begarlanded with evidences of her high moral purpose in the shape of a +succession of "applausive copies" of verses. In these we are told that +she had "checked the rage of reigning vice that had debauched the +stage." This was an allusion to the great controversy then just raised +by Jeremy Collier in his famous _Short View of the Immorality and +Profaneness of the Stage_, in which all the dramatists of the day were +violently attacked for their indecency. Catharine Trotter has the +courage to side with Collier, and the tact to do so without quarrelling +with her male colleagues. She takes the side of the decent women. + + "You as your Sex's champion art come forth + To fight their quarrel and assert their worth," + +one of her admirers exclaims, and another adds:-- + + "You stand the first of stage-reformers too." + +The young poetess aimed at reconciling the stage with virtue and at +vindicating the right of woman to assume "the tragic laurel." + +This was the most brilliant moment in the public career of our +bluestocking. _Fatal Friendship_ enjoyed a success which Catharine +Trotter was not to taste again, and of all her plays it is the only one +which has ever been reprinted. It is very long and extremely +sentimental, and written in rather prosy blank verse. Contemporaries +said that it placed Miss Trotter in the forefront of British drama, in +company with Congreve and Granville "the polite," who had written a +_She-Gallants_, which was everything that Miss Trotter did not wish her +plays to be. _Fatal Friendship_ has an ingenious plot, in which the +question of money takes a prominence very unusual in tragedy. Almost +every character in the piece is in reduced circumstances. Felicia, +sister to Belgard (who is too poor to maintain her), is wooed by the +wealthy Roquelaure, although she is secretly married to Gramont, who is +also too poor to support a wife. Belgard, afraid that Gramont will make +love to Felicia (that is, to his own secret wife), persuades him--in +order that his best friend, Castalio, may be released from a debtor's +prison--bigamously to many Lamira, a wealthy widow. But Castalio is in +love with Lamira, and is driven to frenzy by Gramont's illegal marriage. +It all depends upon income in a manner comically untragical. The quarrel +between the friends in the fifth act is an effective piece of +stage-craft, but the action is spoiled by a ridiculous general butchery +at the close of all. However, the audience was charmed, and even "the +stubbornest could scarce deny their Tears." + +_Fatal Friendship_ was played at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, and no doubt +it was Congreve who brought Miss Trotter over from Drury Lane. His warm +friendship for her had unquestionably a great deal to do with her +success and with the jealousy of her rivals. A letter exists in which +the great dramatist acknowledges, in 1697, the congratulations of his +young admirer, and it breathes an eager cordiality. Congreve requested +Betterton to present him to Catharine Trotter, and his partiality for +her company is mentioned by several writers. The spiteful author of _The +Female Wits_ insinuates that Congreve made the looking-over of +Catharine's scenes "his pretence for daily visits." Another satirist, in +1698, describes Congreve sitting very gravely with his hat over his +eyes, "together with the two she-things called Poetesses which write for +his house," half-hidden from the public in a little side-box. Farquhar, +too, seeing the celebrated writer of _Fatal Friendship_ in the theatre +on the third night of the performance of his _Love and a Bottle_, had +"his passions wrought so high" by a sight of the beautiful author that +he wrote her a letter in which he called her "one of the fairest of the +sex, and the best judge." If Catharine Trotter, as the cynosure of +delicacy, at the age of nineteen, sat through _Love and a Bottle_ +without a blush, even _her_ standard of decency was not very exacting. +But in all this rough, coarse world of wit her reputation never suffered +a rebuff. + +Encouraged by so much public and private attention, our young dramatist +continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts +were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national +temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary +historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had +been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had sunk deeply +into the conscience of the people. There followed with alarming +abruptness a general public repulsion against the playhouses, and to +this, early in 1699, a roughly worded Royal Proclamation gave voice. +During the whole of that year the stage was almost in abeyance, and even +Congreve, with _The Way of the World_, was unable to woo his audience +back to Lincoln's Inn. During this time of depression Catharine Trotter +composed at least two tragedies, which she was unable to get performed, +while the retirement of Congreve in a paroxysm of annoyance must have +been a very serious disadvantage to her. + +On May 1st, 1700, Dryden died, and with him a dramatic age passed away. +What Miss Trotter's exact relations with the great poet had been is +uncertain; she not only celebrated his death in a long elegy, in which +she speaks on behalf of the Muses, but wrote another and more important +poem, in which she gives very sound advice to the poetical beginner, who +is to take Dryden as a model, and to be particularly careful to disdain +Settle, Durfey, and Blackmore, typical poetasters of the period. She +recommends social satire to the playwright:-- + + "Let the nice well-bred beau himself perceive + The most accomplished, useless thing alive; + Expose the bottle-sparks that range the town,-- + Shaming themselves with follies not their own,-- + But chief these foes to virgin innocence, + Who, while they make to honour vain pretence, + With all that's base and impious can dispense." + +Honour to those who aim high and execute boldly! + + "If Shakespeare's spirit, with transporting fire, + The animated scene throughout inspire; + If in the piercing wit of Vanbrugh drest, + Each sees his darling folly made a jest; + If Garth's and Dryden's genius, through each line, + In artful praise and well-turn'd satire shine,-- + To us ascribe the immortal sacred flame." + +In this dead period of the stage Catharine Trotter found a warm friend +and doubtless an efficient patron in a Lady Piers, of whom we should be +glad to know more. Sir George Piers, the husband of this lady, was an +officer of rank under the Duke of Marlborough, later to become useful to +Catharine Trotter. Meanwhile the latter returned to the Theatre Royal in +Drury Lane, where, in 1701, under the patronage of Lord Halifax--Pope's +"Bufo"--she produced her third tragedy, _The Unhappy Penitent_. The +dedication of this play to Halifax is a long and interesting essay on +the poetry of the age. The author passes Dryden, Otway, Congreve, and +Lee under examination, and finds technical blemishes in them all:-- + + "The inimitable Shakespeare seems alone secure on every side from + an attack. I speak not here of faults against the rules of poetry, + but against the natural Genius. He had all the images of nature + present to him, studied her thoroughly, and boldly copied all her + various features, for though he has chiefly exerted himself on the + more masculine passions, 'tis as the choice of his judgment, not + the restraint of his genius, and he has given us as a proof he + could be every way equally admirable." + +Lady Piers wrote the prologue to _The Unhappy Penitent_ in verses better +turned than might have been expected. She did not stint praise to her +young friend, whom she compares to the rising sun:-- + + "Like him, bright Maid, Thy great perfections shine + As awful, as resplendent, as divine!... + Minerva and Diana guard your soul!" + +_The Unhappy Penitent_ is not a pleasing performance: it is amorous and +violent, but yet dull. Catharine's theory was better than her practice. +Nevertheless, it seems to have been successful, for the author some time +afterwards, speaking of the town's former discouragement of her dramas, +remarks that "the taste is mended." Later in 1701 she brought out at +Drury Lane her only comedy, _Love at a Loss_, dedicated in most +enthusiastic terms to Lady Piers, to whom "I owe the greatest Blessing +of my Fate," the privilege of a share in her friendship. _Love at a +Loss_ was made up of the comic scenes introduced into an old tragedy +which the author had failed to get acted. This is not a fortunate method +of construction, and the town showed no favour to Love at a Loss. The +first and only public section of Catharine Trotter's career was now +over, and she withdrew, a wayworn veteran at the age of twenty-two, to +more elevated studies. + +When _Love at a Loss_ was published the author had already left town, +and after a visit to Lady Piers in Kent she now settled at Salisbury, at +the house of a physician, Dr. Inglis, who had married her only sister. +Her growing intimacy with the family of Bishop Burnet may have had +something to do with her determination to make this city her home. She +formed a very enthusiastic friendship with the Bishop's second lady, who +was an active theologian and a very intelligent woman. Our poetess was +fascinated by Mrs. Burnet. "I have not met," she writes in 1701, "such +perfection in any of our sex." She now visited in the best Wiltshire +society. When the famous singer, John Abell, was in Salisbury, he gave a +concert at the palace, and Catharine Trotter was so enchanted that she +rode out after him six miles to Tisbury to hear him sing again at Lord +Arundell of Wardour's house. She had a great appreciation of the +Bishop's "volatile activity." It is now that the name of Locke first +occurs in her correspondence, and we gather that she came into some +personal contact with him through a member of the Bishop's +family--George Burnet of Kemney, in Aberdeenshire--probably a cousin, +with whom she now cultivated an ardent intellectual friendship. He left +England on a mission which occupied him from the middle of 1701 until +1708, and this absence, as we may suspect, alone prevented their +acquaintance from ripening into a warmer feeling. The romance and +tragedy of Catharine Trotter's life gather, it is plain, around this +George Burnet, who was a man of brilliant accomplishments and +interested, like herself, in philosophical studies. + +These, it would appear, Catharine Trotter had never abandoned, but she +applied herself to them closely at Salisbury, where she made some +superior acquaintances. One of these was John Norris of Bemerton, whose +_Theory of an Ideal and Intelligible World_ had just made some +sensation. By the intermediary of George Burnet she came in touch with +some of the leading French writers of the moment, such as Malebranche +and Madame Dacier. There is a French poet, unnamed, who understands +English, but he is gone to Rome before he can be made to read _The Fatal +Friendship_. Meanwhile, Catharine Trotter's obsession with the ideas of +Locke was giving some anxiety to her friends. That philosopher had +published his famous _Essay on the Human Understanding_ in 1690, and it +had taken several years for the opposition to his views, and in +particular to his theological toleration, to take effect. But in 1697 +there were made a number of almost simultaneous attacks on Locke's +position. The circle at Salisbury was involved in them, for one of these +was written by Norris of Bemerton, and another is attributed to a member +of the Burnet family. Catharine Trotter, who had studied Locke's later +works with enthusiastic approval, was scandalised by the attacks, and +sat down to refute them. This must have been in 1701. + +Although the intellectual society of Salisbury was prominent in taking +the conservative view of Locke, our bluestocking could not refrain from +telling Mrs. Burnet what she had done, nor from showing her treatise to +that friend under vows of confidence. But Mrs. Burnet, who was impulsive +and generous, could not keep the secret; she spoke about it to the +Bishop, and then to Norris of Bemerton, and finally (in June 1702) to +Locke himself. Locke was at Oates, confined by his asthma; he was old +and suffering, but still full of benevolence and curiosity, and he was +graciously interested in his remarkable defender at Salisbury. As he +could not himself travel, he sent his adopted son to call on Catharine +Trotter, with a present of books; this was Peter King, still a young +man, but already M.P. for Beer Alston, and later to become Lord +Chancellor and the first Lord King of Ockham. George Burnet, writing +from Paris, had been very insistent that Catharine should not publish +her treatise, but she overruled his objections, and her _Defence of Mr. +Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding_ appeared anonymously in May +1702. People were wonderfully polite in those days, and Locke himself +wrote to his "protectress" a charming letter in which he told her that +her "_Defence_ was the greatest honour my Essay could have procured me." + +She sent her _Defence_ to Leibnitz, who criticised it at considerable +length:--[3] + + "J'ai lu livre de Mlle. Trotter. Dans la dedicace elle exhorte M. + Locke a donner des demonstrations de morale. Je crois qu'il aurait + eu de la peine a y reussir. L'art de demontrer n'est pas son fait. + Je tiens que nous nous appercevons sans raisonnement de ce qui est + juste et injuste, comme nous nous appercevons sans raison de + quelques theoremes de Geometrie; mais il est tousjours bon de venir + a la demonstration. Justice et injustice ne dependent seulement de + la nature humaine, mais de la nature de la substance intelligente + en general; et Mlle. Trotter remarque fort bien qu'elle vient de la + nature de Dieu et n'est point arbitraire. La nature de Dieu est + tousjours fondee en raison." + +Notwithstanding all this, the commentators of Locke appear, without +exception, to ignore the _Defence_, and it was probably never much read +outside the cultivated Salisbury circle. + +In this year, 1702, the health of Catharine Trotter began to give her +uneasiness, and it was for this reason that she left Salisbury for a +while. She was once more living in that city, however, from May 1703 to +March 1704, making a special study of geography. "My strength," she +writes to George Burnet, "is very much impaired, and God knows whether I +shall ever retrieve it." Her thoughts turned again to the stage, and in +the early months of 1703 she composed her fifth and last play, the +tragedy of _The Revolution in Sweden_; "but it will not be ready for +the stage," she says, "till next winter." Her interest in philosophy +did not flag. She was gratified by some communications, through Burnet, +with Leibnitz, and she would have liked to be the intermediary between +Locke and some philosophical "gentlemen" on the Continent, probably +Malebranche and Leibnitz, in a controversy. But this was hopeless, and +she writes (March 16th, 1704):-- + + "Mr. Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen + you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him, + for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only + employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend + the mind." + +Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained +his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end +approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was +least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into +discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine +Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest +object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was +rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at +Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke and to throw +suspicion on their influence. She read over and over again his +philosophical, educational, and religious treatises, and ever found them +more completely to her taste. If she had enjoyed the power to do so she +would have proclaimed the wisdom and majesty of Locke from every +housetop, and she envied Lady Masham her free and constant intercourse +with so beautiful a mind. Catharine Trotter watched, but from a +distance, the extinction of a life thus honoured, which came to a +peaceful end at Oates on October 28th, 1704. The following passage does +not appear--or I am much mistaken--to have attracted the attention of +Locke's biographers:-- + + "I was very sensibly touched with the news of Mr. Locke's death. + All the particulars I hear of it are that he retained his perfect + senses to the last, and spoke with the same composedness and + indifference on affairs as usual. His discourse was much on the + different views a dying man has of worldly things; and that nothing + gives him any satisfaction, but the reflection of what good he has + done in his life. Lady Masham went to his chamber to speak to him + on some, business; when he had answered in the same manner he was + accustomed to speak, he desired her to leave the room, and, + immediately after she was gone, turned about and died." + +She records that, after the death of Locke, Lady Masham communicated +with Leibnitz, and Catharine is very indignant because a doubt had been +suggested as to whether the writer's thoughts and expressions were her +own. This was calculated to infuriate Catharine Trotter, who outpours in +forcible terms her just indignation:-- + + "Women are as capable of penetrating into the grounds of things, + and reasoning justly, as men are, who certainly have no advantage + of us, but in their opportunities of knowledge. As Lady Masham is + allowed by everybody to have great natural endowments, she has + taken pains to improve them; and no doubt profited much by a long + intimate society with so extraordinary a man as Mr. Locke. So that + I see no reason to suspect a woman of her character would pretend + to write anything that was not entirely her own. I pray, be more + equitable to her sex than the generality of your's are, who, when + anything is written by a woman that they cannot deny their + approbation to, are sure to rob us of the glory of it by + concluding 'tis not her own." + +This is the real voice of Catharine Trotter, raised to defend her sex, +and conscious of the many intellectual indignities and disabilities +which they suffered. + +The first draft of _The Revolution in Sweden_ being now completed, she +sent it to Congreve, who was living very quietly in lodgings in Arundell +Street. He allowed some time to go by before, on November 2nd, 1703, he +acknowledged it. His criticism, which is extremely kind, is also +penetrating and full. "I think the design in general," he says, "very +great and noble; the conduct of it very artful, if not too full of +business which may run into length and obscurity." He warns her against +having too much noise of fighting on the stage in her second act, and +against offending probability in the third. The fourth act is confused, +and in the fifth there are too many harangues. Catharine Trotter has +asked him to be frank, and so he is, but his criticism is practical and +encouraging. This excellent letter deserves to be better known. + +To continue the history of Miss Trotter's fifth and last play, _The +Revolution in Sweden_ was at length brought out at the Queen's Theatre +in the Haymarket, towards the close of 1704. It had every advantage +which popular acting could give it, since the part of the hero, Count +Arwide, was played by Betterton; that of Constantia, the heroine, by +Mrs. Barry; Gustavus by Booth; and Christina by Mrs. Harcourt. In spite +of this galaxy of talent, the reception of the play was unfavourable. +The Duchess of Marlborough "and all her beauteous family" graced the +theatre on the first night, but the public was cold and inattentive. +Some passages of a particularly lofty moral tone provoked laughter. _The +Revolution in Sweden_, in fact, was shown to suffer from the +ineradicable faults which Congreve had gently but justly suggested. It +was very long, and very dull, and very wordy, and we could scarcely find +a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was +dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being +styled--by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of +Prussia--"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to +readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further +revision, she published _The Revolution in Sweden_, she dedicated it in +most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter, +Henrietta Godolphin. + +How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from +various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now +physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the +General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced, +Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be +supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke, +with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem +enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord +Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said +they were better than any other which had been written on the subject. +George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased +with her--"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped, +with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no +longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of L20 from Queen Anne +gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was +wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was +ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet +would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that he sent +her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une +Demoiselle fort spirituelle." + +Catharine Trotter now left London and Salisbury, and took up her abode +at Ockham Mills, close to Ripley, in Surrey, as companion to an invalid, +Mrs. De Vere. She probably chose this place on account of the Locke +connection and the friendship of Peter King, since there is now much in +her correspondence about Damaris, Lady Masham, and others in that circle +in which George Burnet himself was intimate. But great changes were +imminent. Although her correspondence at this time is copious it is not +always very intelligible, and it is very carelessly edited. Her constant +interchange of letters with George Burnet leaves the real position +between them on many points obscure. In 1704, when he thought that he +was dying in Berlin, he wrote to Catharine Trotter that he had left her +L100 in his will, and added: "Pray God I might live to give you much +more myself." He regrets that he had so easily "pulled himself from her +company," and suggests that if she had not left London to settle in +Salisbury he would have stayed in England. Years after they had parted +we find him begging her to continue writing to him "at least once a +week." She, on her part, tells him that he well knows that there is but +one person she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her +want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her, +but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a +fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her +by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who +might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing +(Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with +extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, passionately +in love with a man whom she had just accepted as her future husband, +was expected, in 1705, to close her letter by describing herself as +"Sir, your very humble servant." + +If George Burnet hinted of "parties" in Hanover, Catharine Trotter on +her side could boast of Mr. Fenn, "a young clergyman of excellent +character," who now laid an ardent siege to her heart. Embarrassed by +these attentions, she took the bold step of placing the matter before +Mr. Cockburn, a still younger clergyman, of even more excellent +character. The letter in which she makes this ingenuous declaration as +to a father confessor is one of the tenderest examples extant of the +"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" form of correspondence. Mr. +Cockburn, one of the minor clergy of the Salisbury set, did speak for +himself, and George Burnet having at length announced his own projected +marriage with a lady of old acquaintance, Catharine Trotter hesitated no +longer but accepted the hand of Mr. Cockburn. They were married early in +1708. Thackeray could have created an amusing romance out of the +relations of these four people to one another, and in particular it +would have been very interesting to see what he would have made of the +character of George Burnet. + +Catharine Cockburn was now, after so eventful a life of emotional and +intellectual experience, still a young woman, not far past her +twenty-eighth birthday. She was to survive for more than forty-three +years, during which time she was to correspond much, to write +persistently, and to publish whenever opportunity offered. But I do not +propose to accompany her much further on her blameless career. All +through her married life, which was spent at various places far from +London, she existed almost like a plant in a Leyden jar. Constant +genteel poverty, making it difficult for her to buy books and impossible +to travel was supported by her with dignity and patience, but it dwarfed +her powers. Her later writings, on philosophy, on morality, on the +principles of the Christian religion, are so dull that merely to think +of them brings tears into one's eyes. She who had sparkled as a girl +with Congreve and exchanged polite amenities with Locke lived on to see +modern criticism begin with Samuel Johnson and the modern novel start +with Samuel Richardson, but without observing that any change had come +into the world of letters. Her husband, owing to his having fallen "into +a scruple about the oath of abjuration," lost his curacy and "was +reduced to great difficulties in the support of his family." +Nevertheless--a perfect gentleman at heart--he "always prayed for the +King and Royal family by name." Meanwhile, to uplift his spirits in this +dreadful condition, he is discovered engaged upon a treatise on the +Mosaic deluge, which he could persuade no publisher to print. He reminds +us of Dr. Primrose in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and, like him, Mr. +Cockburn probably had strong views on the Whistonian doctrine. + +So little mark did poor Mrs. Cockburn make on her younger contemporaries +that she disappeared forthwith from literary history. Her works, +especially her plays, have become so excessively rare as to be almost +unprocurable. The brief narrative of her life and her activities which I +have taken the liberty of presenting to-day would be hopelessly engulfed +in obscurity, and we should know as little of Catharine Trotter as we do +of Mary Pix, and Delariviere Manley, and many late seventeenth-century +authors more eminent than they, had it not been that in 1751, two years +after her death, all her papers were placed in the hands of an ingenious +clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Birch, who printed them for subscribers +in two thick and singularly unpleasing volumes. This private edition was +never reissued, and is now itself a rare book. It is the sort of book +that for two hundred and fifty years must fatally have been destroyed as +lumber whenever an old country mansion that contained it has been +cleared out. + +During all that time no one, so far as I can discover, has evinced the +smallest interest in Catharine Trotter. We gain an idea of the blackness +of her obscurity when we say that even Mr. Austin Dobson appears to have +never heard of her. The champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent +of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar, +she seems to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on +time. But I hope her thin little lady-like ghost, still hovering in a +phantom-like transparence round the recognised seats of learning, will +be a little comforted at last by the polite attention of a few of my +readers. + +[Footnote 2: Around the story of Agnes de Castro there gathered a whole +literature of fiction, which Mr. Montague Summers has investigated in +his _Works of Aphra Behn_, Vol. V. pp. 211-212.] + +[Footnote 3: Printed in Otto Klopp's _Correspondance de Leibnitz avec +l'Electrice Sophie_. Hanover, 1875.] + + + + +TWO PIONEERS OF ROMANTICISM: + +JOSEPH AND THOMAS WARTON[4] + + +The origins of the Romantic Movement in literature have been examined so +closely and so often that it might be supposed that the subject must be +by this time exhausted. But no subject of any importance in literature +is ever exhausted, because the products of literature grow or decay, +burgeon or wither, as the generations of men apply their ever-varying +organs of perception to them. I intend, with your permission, to present +to you a familiar phase of the literary life of the eighteenth century +from a fresh point of view, and in relation to two men whose surname +warrants a peculiar emphasis of respect in the mouth of a Warton +Lecturer. It is well, perhaps, to indicate exactly what it is which a +lecturer proposes to himself to achieve during the brief hour in which +you indulge him with your attention; it certainly makes his task the +easier if he does so. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to divine for +you, by scanty signs and indications, what it was in poetry, as it +existed up to the period of their childhood, which was stimulating to +the Wartons, and what they disapproved of in the verse which was +fashionable and popular among the best readers in their day. + +There is an advantage, which I think that our critics are apt to +neglect, in analysing the character and causes of poetic pleasure +experienced by any sincere and enthusiastic reader, at any epoch of +history. We are far too much in the habit of supposing that what +we--that is the most instructed and sensitive of us--admire now must +always have been admired by people of a like condition. This has been +one of the fallacies of Romantic criticism, and has led people as +illustrious as Keats into blaming the taste of foregoing generations as +if it were not only heretical, but despicable as well. Young men to-day +speak of those who fifty years ago expatiated in admiration of Tennyson +as though they were not merely stupid, but vulgar and almost wicked, +neglectful of the fact that it was by persons exactly analogous to +themselves that those portions of Tennyson were adored which the young +repudiate to-day. Not to expand too largely this question of the +oscillation of taste--which, however, demands more careful examination +than it has hitherto received--it is always important to discover what +was honestly admired at a given date by the most enthusiastic and +intelligent, in other words by the most poetic, students of poetry. But +to do this we must cultivate a little of that catholicity of heart which +perceives technical merit wherever it has been recognised at an earlier +date, and not merely where the current generation finds it. + +Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of an Oxford professor of poetry, +an old Jacobite of no observable merit beyond that of surrounding his +family with an atmosphere of the study of verse. The elder brother was +born in 1722, the younger in 1728. I must be forgiven if I dwell a +little tediously on dates, for our inquiry depends upon the use of them. +Without dates the whole point of that precedency of the Wartons, which I +desire to bring out, is lost. The brothers began very early to devote +themselves to the study of poetry, and in spite of the six years which +divided them, they appear to have meditated in unison. Their writings +bear a close resemblance to one another, and their merits and their +failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we +can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the +woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with +ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of +birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas +were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." They avoided, +with a certain disdain, the affectation of vague and conventional +reference to definite objects. + +Above all they read the poets who were out of fashion, and no doubt the +library of their father, the Professor of Poetry, was at their disposal +from a very early hour. The result of their studies was a remarkable +one, and the discovery was unquestionably first made by Joseph. He was, +so far as we can gather, the earliest person in the modern world of +Europe to observe what vain sacrifices had been made by the classicists, +and in particular by the English classicists, and as he walked +enthusiastically in the forest he formed a determination to reconquer +the realm of lost beauty. The moment that this instinct became a +purpose, we may say that the great Romantic Movement, such as it has +enlarged and dwindled down to our own day, took its start. The Wartons +were not men of creative genius, and their works, whether in prose or +verse, have not taken hold of the national memory. But the advance of a +great army is not announced by a charge of field-marshals. In the +present war, the advance of the enemy upon open cities has generally +been announced by two or three patrols on bicycles, who are the heralds +of the body. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the bicyclist-scouts who +prophesied of an advance which was nearly fifty years delayed. + +The general history of English literature in the eighteenth century +offers us little opportunity for realising what the environment could be +of two such lads as the Wartons, with their enthusiasm, their +independence, and their revolutionary instinct. But I will take the year +1750, which is the year of Rousseau's first _Discours_ and therefore the +definite starting-point of European Romanticism. You will perhaps find +it convenient to compare the situation of the Wartons with what is the +situation to-day of some very modern or revolutionary young poet. In +1750, then, Joseph was twenty-eight years of age and Thomas twenty-two. +Pope had died six years before, and this was equivalent to the death of +Swinburne in the experience of our young man of to-day. Addison's death +was as distant as is from us that of Matthew Arnold; and Thomson, who +had been dead two years, had left The _Castle of Indolence_ as an +equivalent to Mr. Hardy's _Dynasts_. All the leading writers of the age +of Anne--except Young, who hardly belonged to it--were dead, but the +Wartons were divided from them only as we are from those of the age of +Victoria. I have said that Pope was not more distant from them than +Swinburne is from us, but really a more just parallel is with Tennyson. +The Wartons, wandering in their woodlands, were confronted with a +problem such as would be involved, to a couple of youths to-day, in +considering the reputation of Tennyson and Browning. + +There remains no doubt in my mind, after a close examination of such +documents as remain to us, that Joseph Warton, whose attitude has +hitherto been strangely neglected, was in fact the active force in this +remarkable revolt against existing conventions in the world of +imaginative art. His six years of priority would naturally give him an +advantage over his now better-known and more celebrated brother. +Moreover, we have positive evidence of the firmness of his opinions at a +time when his brother Thomas was still a child. The preface to Joseph's +_Odes_ of 1746 remains as a dated document, a manifesto, which admits of +no question. But the most remarkable of his poems, "The Enthusiast," was +stated to have been written in 1740, when he was eighteen and his +brother only twelve years of age. It is, of course, possible that these +verses, which bear no sign of juvenile mentality, were touched up at a +later date. But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and +we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph, +that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a +fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary +importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it +would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much +discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had +"no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to +stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and +poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express himself with +creative charm. But this is not what constitutes his interest for us, +which is moreover obscured by the tameness of his Miltonic-Thomsonian +versification. What should arrest our attention is the fact that here, +for the first time, we find unwaveringly emphasised and repeated what +was entirely new in literature, the essence of romantic hysteria. "The +Enthusiast" is the earliest expression of full revolt against the +classical attitude which had been sovereign in all European literature +for nearly a century. So completely is this expressed by Joseph Warton +that it is extremely difficult to realise that he could not have come +under the fascination of Rousseau, whose apprenticeship to love and +idleness was now drawing to a close at Les Charmettes, and who was not +to write anything characteristic until ten years later. + +But these sentiments were in the air. Some of them had vaguely occurred +to Young, to Dyer, and to Shenstone, all of whom received from Joseph +Warton the ardent sympathy which a young man renders to his immediate +contemporaries. The Scotch resumption of ballad-poetry held the same +relation to the Wartons as the so-called Celtic Revival would to a young +poet to-day; the _Tea-Table Miscellany_ dates from 1724, and Allan +Ramsay was to the author of "The Enthusiast" what Mr. Yeats is to us. +But all these were glimmerings or flashes; they followed no system, they +were accompanied by no principles of selection or rejection. These we +find for the first time in Joseph Warton. He not merely repudiates the +old formulas and aspirations, but he defines new ones. What is very +interesting to observe in his attitude to the accepted laws of poetical +practice is his solicitude for the sensations of the individual. These +had been reduced to silence by the neo-classic school in its +determination to insist on broad Palladian effects of light and line. +The didactic and moral aim of the poets had broken the springs of +lyrical expression, and had replaced those bursts of enthusiasm, those +indiscretions, those rudenesses which are characteristic of a romantic +spirit in literature, by eloquence, by caution, by reticence and +vagueness. + +It is not necessary to indicate more than very briefly what the +principles of the classic poetry had been. The time had passed when +readers and writers in England gave much attention to the sources of the +popular poetry of their day. Malherbe had never been known here, and the +vigorous _Art poetique_ of Boileau, which had been eagerly studied at +the close of the seventeenth century, was forgotten. Even the Prefaces +of Dryden had ceased to be read, and the sources of authority were now +the prose of Addison and the verse of Pope. To very young readers these +stood in the same relation as the writings of the post-Tennysonian +critics stand now. To reject them, to question their authority, was +like eschewing the essays of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. In +particular, the _Essay on Criticism_ was still immensely admired and +read; it had crystallised around cultivated opinion very much as the +_Studies in the Renaissance_ did from 1875 onwards. It was the last +brilliant word on the aims and experiences of poetical art, and how +brilliant it was can be judged by the pleasure with which we read it +to-day, in spite of our total repudiation of every aesthetic dogma which +it conveys. It is immortal, like every supreme literary expression, and +it stands before us in the history of poetry as an enduring landmark. +This was the apparently impregnable fortress which the Wartons had the +temerity to bombard. + +Pope had said that Nature was the best guide to judgment, but what did +he mean by nature? He had meant the "rules," which he declared were +"Nature methodis'd" or, as we should say, systematised. The "rules" were +the maxims, rather than laws, expressed by Aristotle in a famous +treatise. The poet was to follow the Stagirite, "led"--as Pope says in +one of those rare lines in which he catches, in spite of himself, the +Romantic accent--"led by the light of the Maeonian Star." Aristotle +illustrated by Homer--that was to be the standard of all poetic +expression. But literature had wandered far from Homer, and we have to +think of what rules the _Essay on Criticism_ laid down. The poet was to +be cautious, "to avoid extremes": he must be conventional, never +"singular"; there was constant reference to "Wit," "Nature," and "The +Muse," and these were convertible terms. A single instance is luminous. +We have the positive authority of Warburton for saying that Pope +regarded as the finest effort of his skill and art as a poet the +insertion of the machinery of the Sylphs into the revised edition of +_The Rape of the Lock_ (1714). Now this insertion was ingenious, +brilliant, and in strict accordance with the practice of Vida and of +Boileau, both of whom it excelled. But the whole conception of it was as +unlike that of Romanticism as possible. + +In particular, the tendency of the classic school, in its later +development, had been towards the exclusion of all but didactic and +ethical considerations from treatment in verse. Pope had given great and +ever-increasing emphasis to the importance of making "morals" prominent +in poetry. All that he wrote after he retired to Twickenham, still a +young man, in 1718, was essentially an attempt to gather together "moral +wisdom" clothed in consummate language. He inculcated a moderation of +feeling, a broad and general study of mankind, an acceptance of the +benefits of civilisation, and a suppression of individuality. Even in so +violent and so personal a work as the _Dunciad_ he expends all the +resources of his genius to make his anger seem moral and his indignation +a public duty. This conception of the ethical responsibility of verse +was universal, and even so late as 1745, long after the composition of +Warton's "Enthusiast," we find Blacklock declaring, with general +acceptance, that "poetical genius depends entirely on the quickness of +moral feeling," and that not to "feel poetry" was the result of having +"the affections and internal senses depraved by vice." + +The most important innovation suggested by Joseph Warton was an +outspoken assertion that this was by no means the object or the proper +theme of poetry. His verses and those of his brother, the _Essay on +Pope_ of the elder, the critical and historical writings of the younger, +may be searched in vain for the slightest evidence of moral or didactic +sentiment. The instructive and ethical mannerisms of the later +classicists had produced some beautiful and more accomplished verse, +especially of a descriptive order, but its very essence had excluded +self-revelation. Dennis, at whom Pope taught the world to laugh, but +who was in several respects a better critic than either Addison or +himself, had come close to the truth sometimes, but was for ever edged +away from it by the intrusion of the moral consideration. Dennis feels +things aesthetically, but he blunders into ethical definition. The result +was that the range of poetry was narrowed to the sphere of didactic +reflection, a blunt description of scenery or objects being the only +relief, since + + "who could take offence + While pure description held the place of sense?" + +To have perceived the bankruptcy of the didactic poem is Joseph Warton's +most remarkable innovation. The lawlessness of the Romantic Movement, or +rather its instinct for insisting that genius is a law unto itself, is +first foreshadowed in "The Enthusiast," and when the history of the +school comes to be written there will be a piquancy in tracing an +antinomianism down from the blameless Wartons to the hedonist essays of, +Oscar Wilde and the frenzied anarchism of the Futurists. Not less +remarkable, or less characteristic, was the revolt against the quietism +of the classical school. "Avoid extremes," Pope had said, and +moderation, calmness, discretion, absence of excitement had been laid +down as capital injunctions. Joseph Warton's very title, "The +Enthusiast," was a challenge, for "enthusiasm" was a term of reproach. +He was himself a scandal to classical reserve. Mant, in the course of +some excellent lines addressed to Joseph Warton, remarks + + "Thou didst seek + Ecstatic vision by the haunted stream + Or grove of fairy: then thy nightly ear, + As from the wild notes of some airy harp, + Thrilled with strange music." + +The same excess of sensibility is still more clearly divulged in +Joseph's own earliest verses:-- + + "All beauteous Nature! by thy boundless charms + Oppress'd, O where shall I begin thy praise, + Where turn the ecstatic eye, _how ease my breast + That pants with wild astonishment and love_?" + +The Nature here addressed is a very different thing from the "Nature +methodis'd" of the _Essay on Criticism_. It is not to be distinguished +from the object of pantheistic worship long afterwards to be celebrated +in widely differing language, but with identical devotion, by Wordsworth +and Senancour, by Chateaubriand and Shelley. + +Closely connected with this attitude towards physical nature is the +determination to deepen the human interest in poetry, to concentrate +individuality in passion. At the moment when the Wartons put forth their +ideas, a change was taking place in English poetry, but not in the +direction of earnest emotion. The instrument of verse had reached an +extraordinary smoothness, and no instance of its capability could be +more interesting than the poetry of Shenstone, with his perfect +utterance of things essentially not worth saying. In the most important +writers of that very exhausted moment, technical skill seems the only +quality calling for remark, and when we have said all that sympathy can +say for Whitehead and Akenside, the truth remains that the one is vapid, +the other empty. The Wartons saw that more liberty of imagination was +wanted, and that the Muse was not born to skim the meadows, in short low +flights, like a wagtail. They used expressions which reveal their +ambition. The poet was to be "bold, without confine," and "imagination's +chartered libertine"; like a sort of Alastor, he was + + "in venturous bark to ride + Down turbulent Delight's tempestuous tide." + +These are aspirations somewhat absurdly expressed, but the aim of them +is undeniable and noteworthy. + +A passion for solitude always precedes the romantic obsession, and in +examining the claim of the Wartons to be pioneers, we naturally look for +this element. We find it abundantly in their early verses. When Thomas +was only seventeen--the precocity of the brothers was remarkable--he +wrote a "Pleasures of Melancholy," in which he expresses his wish to +retire to "solemn glooms, congenial to the soul." In the early odes of +his brother Joseph we find still more clearly indicated the intention to +withdraw from the world, in order to indulge the susceptibilities of the +spirit in solitary reflection. A curious air of foreshadowing the +theories of Rousseau, to which I have already referred, produces an +effect which is faintly indicated, but in its phantom way unique in +English literature up to that date, 1740. There had been a tendency to +the sepulchral in the work of several writers, in particular in the +powerful and preposterous religious verse of Isaac Watts, but nothing +had been suggested in the pure Romantic style. + +In Joseph Warton, first, we meet with the individualist attitude to +nature; a slightly hysterical exaggeration of feeling which was to be +characteristic of romance; an intention of escaping from the vanity of +mankind by an adventure into the wilds; a purpose of recovering +primitive manners by withdrawing into primitive conditions; a passion +for what we now consider the drawing-master's theory of the +picturesque--the thatched cottage, the ruined castle with the moon +behind it, the unfettered rivulet, the wilderness of + + "the pine-topped precipice + Abrupt and shaggy." + +There was already the fallacy, to become so irresistibly attractive to +the next generation, that man in a state of civilisation was in a +decayed and fallen condition, and that to achieve happiness he must +wander back into a Golden Age. Pope, in verses which had profoundly +impressed two generations, had taken the opposite view, and had proved +to the satisfaction of theologian and free-thinker alike that + + "God and Nature link'd the general frame, + And bade Self-love and Social be the same." + +Joseph Warton would have nothing to say to Social Love. He designed, or +pretended to design, to emigrate to the backwoods of America, to live + + "With simple Indian swains, that I may hunt + The boar and tiger through savannahs wild, + Through fragrant deserts and through citron groves," + +indulging, without the slightest admixture of any active moral principle +in social life, all the ecstasies, all the ravishing emotions, of an +abandonment to excessive sensibility. The soul was to be, no longer the +"little bark attendant" that "pursues the triumph and partakes the gale" +in Pope's complacent _Fourth Epistle_, but an aeolian harp hung in some +cave of a primeval forest for the winds to rave across in solitude. + + "Happy the first of men, ere yet confin'd + To smoky cities." + +Already the voice is that of Obermann, of Rene, of Byron. + +Another point in which the recommendations of the Wartons far outran the +mediocrity of their execution was their theory of description. To +comprehend the state of mind in which such pieces of stately verse as +Parnell's _Hermit_ or Addison's _Campaign_ could be regarded as +satisfactory in the setting of their descriptive ornament we must +realise the aim which those poets put before them. Nothing was to be +mentioned by its technical--or even by its exact name; no clear picture +was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite +or vivid. We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this +conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if +we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the +sudden advent of a heavy shower at a funeral in these terms-- + + "'Tis done, and nature's various charms decay; + See gloomy clouds obscure the cheerful day! + Now hung with pearls the dropping trees appear, + Their faded honours scatter'd on her bier," + +it was not because he had not the skill to come into closer touch with +reality, but that he did not wish to do so. It had been plainly laid +down by Malherbe and confirmed by Boileau that objects should be named +in general, not in precise terms. We are really, in studying the +descriptive parts of the Classicist poets, very close to the theories of +Mallarme and the Symbolists which occupied us twenty years ago. The +object of the poet was not to present a vivid picture to the reader, but +to start in him a state of mind. + +We must recollect, in considering what may seem to us the sterility and +stiffness of the English poets from 1660 to 1740, that they were +addressing a public which, after the irregular violence and anarchical +fancy of the middle of the seventeenth century, had begun to yearn for +regularity, common sense, and a moderation in relative variety. The +simplest ideas should be chosen, and should depend for their poetical +effect, not upon a redundant and gorgeous ornament, but solely upon +elegance of language. There were certain references, certain channels of +imagery, which were purely symbolical, and these could be defended only +on the understanding that they produced on the mind of the reader, +instantly and without effort, the illustrative effect required. For +instance, with all these neo-classicists, the mythological allusions, +which seem vapid and ridiculous to us, were simplified metaphor and a +question of style. In short, it rested the jaded imagination of Europe, +after Gongora and Marini, Donne and D'Aubigne, to sink back on a poetry +which had taken a vow to remain scrupulous, elegant, and selected. + +But the imagination of England was now beginning to be impatient of +these bonds. It was getting tired of a rest-cure so prolonged. It asked +for more colour, more exuberance, more precise reproduction of visual +impressions. Thomson had summed up and had carried to greater lengths +the instinct for scenery which had never entirely died out in England, +except for a few years after the Restoration. It was left to Joseph +Warton, however, to rebel against the whole mode in which the cabbage of +landscape was shredded into the classical _pot-au-feu_. He proposes +that, in place of the mention of "Idalia's groves," when Windsor Forest +is intended, and of milk-white bulls sacrificed to Phoebus at +Twickenham, the poets should boldly mention in their verses English +"places remarkably romantic, the supposed habitation of druids, bards, +and wizards," and he vigorously recommends Theocritus as a model far +superior to Pope because of the greater exactitude of his references to +objects, and because of his more realistic appeal to the imagination. +Description, Warton says, should be uncommon, exact, not symbolic and +allusive, but referring to objects clearly, by their real names. He very +pertinently points out that Pope, in a set piece of extraordinary +cleverness--which was to be read, more than half a century later, even +by Wordsworth, with pleasure--confines himself to rural beauty in +general, and declines to call up before us the peculiar beauties which +characterise the Forest of Windsor. + +A specimen of Joseph Warton's descriptive poetry may here be given, not +for its great inherent excellence, but because it shows his resistance +to the obstinate classic mannerism:-- + + "Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell, + To thy unknown sequestered cell, + Where woodbines cluster round the door, + Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor, + And on whose top an hawthorn blows, + Amid whose thickly-woven boughs + Some nightingale still builds her nest, + Each evening warbling thee to rest; + Then lay me by the haunted stream, + Rapt in some wild poetic dream, + In converse while methinks I rove + With Spenser through a fairy grove." + +To show how identical were the methods of the two brothers we may +compare the foregoing lines with the following from Thomas Warton's "Ode +on the Approach of Summer" (published when he was twenty-five, and +possibly written much earlier):-- + + "His wattled cotes the shepherd plaits; + Beneath her elm the milkmaid chats; + The woodman, speeding home, awhile + Rests him at a shady stile; + Nor wants there fragrance to dispense + Refreshment o'er my soothed sense; + Nor tangled woodbine's balmy bloom, + Nor grass besprent to breathe perfume, + Nor lurking wild-thyme's spicy sweet + To bathe in dew my roving feet; + Nor wants there note of Philomel, + Nor sound of distant-tinkling bell, + Nor lowings faint of herds remote, + Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot; + Rustle the breezes lightly borne + O'er deep embattled ears of corn; + Round ancient elms, with humming noise, + Full loud the chafer-swarms rejoice." + +The youthful poet is in full revolt against the law which forbade his +elders to mention objects by their plain names. Here we notice at once, +as we do in similar early effusions of both the Wartons, the direct +influence of Milton's lyrics. To examine the effect of the rediscovery +of Milton upon the poets of the middle of the eighteenth century would +lead us too far from the special subject of our inquiry to-day. But it +must be pointed out that _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ had been +entirely neglected, and practically unknown, until a date long after the +rehabilitation of _Paradise Lost_. The date at which Handel set them to +music, 1740, is that of the revived or discovered popularity of these +two odes, which then began to be fashionable, at all events among the +younger poets. They formed a bridge, which linked the new writers with +the early seventeenth century across the Augustan Age, and their +versification as well as their method of description were as much +resisted by the traditional Classicists as they were attractive, and +directly preferred above those of Pope, by the innovators. Joseph +Warton, who attributed many of the faults of modern lyrical writing to +the example of Petrarch, sets Milton vehemently over against him, and +entreats the poets "to accustom themselves to contemplate fully every +object before they attempt to describe it." They were above all to avoid +nauseous repetition of commonplaces, and what Warton excellently calls +"hereditary images." + +We must not, however, confine ourselves to a consideration of "The +Enthusiast" of 1740 and the preface to the _Odes_ of 1746. Certain of +the expressions, indeed, already quoted, are taken from the two very +important critical works which the brothers published while they were +still quite young. We must now turn particularly to Joseph Warton's +_Essay on the Genius of Pope_ of 1756, and to Thomas Warton's +_Observations on the Faerie Queene_ of 1754. Of these the former is the +more important and the more readable. Joseph's _Essay on Pope_ is an +extraordinary production for the time at which it was produced. Let me +suggest that we make a great mistake in treating the works of old +writers as if they had been always written by old men. I am trying to +present the Wartons to you as I see them, and that is as enthusiastic +youths, flushed with a kind of intellectual felicity, and dreaming how +poetry shall be produced as musicians make airs, by inspiration, not by +rote. Remember that when they took their walks in the forest at +Hackwood, the whole world of culture held that true genius had expired +with Pope, and this view was oracularly supported by Warburton and +such-like pundits. I have already pointed out to you that Pope was +divided from them not more than Swinburne is divided from us. Conceive +two very young men to-day putting their heads together to devise a +scheme of poetry which should entirely supersede that, not of Swinburne +only, but of Tennyson and Browning also, and you have the original +attitude of the Wartons. + +It is difficult for us to realise what was the nature of the spell which +Pope threw over the literary conscience of the eighteenth century. Forty +years after the revolt of the Wartons, Pope was still looked upon by the +average critic as "the most distinguished and the most interesting Poet +of the nation." Joseph Warton was styled "the Winton Pedant" for +suggesting that Pope paid too dearly for his lucidity and lightness, and +for desiring to break up with odes and sonnets the oratorical mould +which gave a monotony of form to early eighteenth-century verse. His +_Essay on Pope_, though written with such studied moderation that we +may, in a hasty reading, regard it almost as a eulogy, was so shocking +to the prejudices of the hour that it was received with universal +disfavour, and twenty-six years passed before the author had the moral +courage to pursue it to a conclusion. He dedicated it to Young, who, +alone of the Augustans, had admitted that charm in a melancholy +solitude, that beauty of funereal and mysterious effects, which was to +be one of the leading characteristics of the Romantic School, and who +dimly perceived the sublime and the pathetic to be "the two chief nerves +of all genuine poetry." + +Warton's _Essay on the Genius of Pope_ is not well arranged, and, in +spite of eloquent passages, as literature it does not offer much +attraction to the reader of the present day. But its thesis is one which +is very interesting to us, and was of startling novelty when it was +advanced. In the author's own words it was to prove that "a clear head +and acute understanding are not sufficient, alone, to make a poet." The +custom of critics had been to say that, when supported by a profound +moral sense, they were sufficient, and Pope was pointed to as the +overwhelming exemplar of the truth of this statement. Pope had taken +this position himself and, as life advanced, the well of pure poetry in +him had dried up more and more completely, until it had turned into a +sort of fountain of bright, dry sand, of which the _Epilogue to the +Satires_, written in 1738, when Joseph Warton was sixteen years of age, +may be taken as the extreme instance. The young author of the _Essay_ +made the earliest attempt which any one made to put Pope in his right +place, that is to say, not to deny him genius or to deprecate the +extreme pleasure readers found in his writings, but to insist that, by +the very nature of his gifts, his was genius of a lower rank than that +of the supreme poets, with whom he was commonly paralleled when he was +not preferred to them all. + +Warton admitted but three supreme English poets--Spenser, Shakespeare, +Milton--and he vehemently insisted that moral, didactic and panegyrical +poetry could never rise above the second class in importance. To assert +this was not merely to offend against the undoubted supremacy of Pope, +but it was to flout the claims of all those others to whom the age gave +allegiance. Joseph Warton does not shrink from doing this, and he gives +reason for abating the claims of all the classic favourites--Cowley, +Waller, Dryden, Addison. When it was advanced against him that he showed +arrogance in placing his opinion against that of a multitude of highly +trained judges, he replied that a real "relish and enjoyment of poetry" +is a rare quality, and "a creative and glowing imagination" possessed by +few. When the _dicta_ of Boileau were quoted against him, he repudiated +their authority with scarcely less vivacity than Keats was to display +half a century later. + +Joseph Warton's _Essay_ wanders about, and we may acknowledge ourselves +more interested in the mental attitude which it displays than in the +detail of its criticism. The author insists, with much force, on the +value of a grandiose melancholy and a romantic horror in creating a +poetical impression, and he allows himself to deplore that Pope was so +ready to forget that "wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but +nature and passion are eternal." We need not then be surprised when +Joseph Warton boldly protests that no other part of the writings of Pope +approaches _Eloisa to Abelard_ in the quality of being "truly poetical." +He was perhaps led to some indulgence by the fact that this is the one +composition in which Pope appears to be indebted to Milton's lyrics, but +there was much more than that. So far as I am aware, _Eloisa to Abelard_ +had never taken a high place with Pope's extreme admirers, doubtless +because of its obsession with horror and passion. But when we read how + + "o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, + Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves, + Black melancholy sits, and round her throws + A death-like silence and a dead repose," + +and still more when we reflect on the perpetual and powerful appeals +which the poem makes to emotion unbridled by moral scruple, we have no +difficulty in perceiving why _Eloisa to Abelard_ exercised so powerful +an attraction on Joseph Warton. The absence of ethical reservation, the +licence, in short, was highly attractive to him, and he rejoiced in +finding Pope, even so slightly, even so briefly, faithless to his +formula. It is worth while to note that Joseph Warton's sympathy with +the sentimental malady of the soul which lies at the core of Romanticism +permitted him to be, perhaps, the first man since the Renaissance who +recognised with pleasure the tumult of the _Atys_ of Catullus and the +febrile sensibility of Sappho. + +Both brothers urged that more liberty of imagination was what English +poetry needed; that the lark had been shut up long enough in a gilded +cage. We have a glimpse of Thomas Warton introducing the study of the +great Italian classics into Oxford at a very early age, and we see him +crowned with laurel in the common-room of Trinity College at the age of +nineteen. This was in the year before the death of Thomson. No doubt he +was already preparing his _Observations on the Faerie Queene_, which +came out a little later. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford before he +was thirty. Both the brothers took great pleasure in the study of +Spenser, and they both desired that the supernatural "machinery" of +Ariosto, in common with the romance of _The Faerie Queene_, should be +combined with a description of nature as untrimmed and unshackled as +possible. Thomas Warton, in his remarkable Oxford poem, "The Painted +Window," describes himself as + + "A faithless truant to the classic page, + Long have I loved to catch the simple chime + Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rhyme," + +and again he says:-- + + "I soothed my sorrows with the dulcet lore + Which Fancy fabled in her elfin age," + +that is to say when Spenser was writing "upon Mulla's shore." + +After all this, the Observations on the Faerie Queene of 1754 is rather +disappointing. Thomas was probably much more learned as a historian of +literature than Joseph, but he is not so interesting a critic. Still, he +followed exactly the same lines, with the addition of a wider knowledge. +His reading is seen to be already immense, but he is tempted to make too +tiresome a display of it. Nevertheless, he is as thorough as his brother +in his insistence upon qualities which we have now learned to call +Romantic, and he praises all sorts of old books which no one then spoke +of with respect. He warmly recommends the _Morte d'Arthur_, which had +probably not found a single admirer since 1634. When he mentions Ben +Jonson, it is characteristic that it is to quote the line about "the +charmed boats and the enchanted wharves," which sounds like a foretaste +of Keats's "magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas." The +public of Warton's day had relegated all tales about knights, dragons, +and enchanters to the nursery, and Thomas Warton shows courage in +insisting that they are excellent subjects for serious and adult +literature. He certainly would have thoroughly enjoyed the romances of +Mrs. Radcliffe, whom a later generation was to welcome as "the mighty +magician bred and nourished by the Muses in their sacred solitary +caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition," and he despised +the neo-classic make-believe of grottoes. He says, with firmness, that +epic poetry--and he is thinking of Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser--would +never have been written if the critical judgments current in 1754 had +been in vogue. + +Thomas Warton closely studied the influence of Ariosto on Spenser, and +no other part of the _Observations_ is so valuable as the pages in which +those two poets are contrasted. He remarked the polish of the former +poet with approval, and he did not shrink from what is violently +fantastic in the plot of the _Orlando Furioso_. On that point he says, +"The present age is too fond of manner'd poetry to relish fiction and +fable," but perhaps he did not observe that although there is no +chivalry in _The Schoolmistress_, that accomplished piece was the +indirect outcome of the Italian mock-heroic epics. The Classicists had +fought for lucidity and common sense, whereas to be tenebrous and vague +was a merit with the precursors of Romanticism, or at least, without +unfairness, we may say that they asserted the power of imagination to +make what was mysterious, and even fabulous, true to the fancy. This +tendency, which we first perceive in the Wartons, rapidly developed, and +it led to the blind enthusiasm with which the vapourings of Macpherson +were presently received. The earliest specimens of _Ossian_ were +revealed to a too-credulous public in 1760, but I find no evidence of +any welcome which they received from either Joseph or Thomas. The +brothers personally preferred a livelier and more dramatic presentation, +and when Dr. Johnson laughed at Collins because "he loved fairies, +genii, giants, and monsters," the laugh was really at the expense of his +school-fellow Joseph Warton, to whom Collins seems to have owed his +boyish inspiration, although he was by a few months the senior. + +Johnson was a resolute opponent of the principles of the Wartons, though +he held Thomas, at least, in great personal regard. He objected to the +brothers that they "affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of +revival," and his boutade about their own poetry is well known:-- + + "Phrase that time hath flung away, + Uncouth words in disarray, + Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, + Ode and elegy and sonnet." + +This conservatism was not peculiar to Johnson; there was a general +tendency to resist the reintroduction into language and literature of +words and forms which had been allowed to disappear. A generation later, +a careful and thoughtful grammarian like Gilpin was in danger of being +dismissed as "a cockscomb" because he tried to enlarge our national +vocabulary. The Wartons were accused of searching old libraries for +glossaries of disused terms in order to display them in their own +writings. This was not quite an idle charge; it is to be noted as one of +the symptoms of active Romanticism that it is always dissatisfied with +the diction commonly in use, and desires to dazzle and mystify by +embroidering its texture with archaic and far-fetched words. Chatterton, +who was not yet born when the Wartons formed and expressed their ideas, +was to carry this instinct to a preposterous extreme in his Rowley +forgeries, where he tries to obtain a mediaeval colouring by transferring +words out of an imperfect Anglo-Saxon lexicon, often without discerning +the actual meaning of those words. + +Both the Wartons continued, in successive disquisitions, to repeat their +definition of poetry, but it cannot be said that either of them +advanced. So far as Joseph is concerned, he seems early to have +succumbed to the pressure of the age and of his surroundings. In 1766 he +became head master of Winchester, and settled down after curious +escapades which had nothing poetical about them. In the head master of a +great public school, reiterated murmurs against bondage to the Classical +Greeks and Romans would have been unbecoming, and Joseph Warton was a +man of the world. Perhaps in the solitude of his study he murmured, as +disenchanted enthusiasts often murmur, "Say, are the days of blest +delusion fled?" Yet traces of the old fire were occasionally manifest; +still each brother woke up at intervals to censure the criticism of +those who did not see that imagination must be paramount in poetry, and +who made the mistake of putting "discernment" in the place of +"enthusiasm." I hardly know why it gives me great pleasure to learn that +"the manner in which the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton read the Communion +Service was remarkably awful," but it must be as an evidence that he +carried a "Gothick" manner into daily life. + +The spirit of pedantry, so amicably mocked by the Wartons, took its +revenge upon Thomas in the form of a barren demon named Joseph Ritson, +who addressed to him in 1782 what he aptly called _A Familiar Letter_. +There is hardly a more ferocious pamphlet in the whole history of +literature. Ritson, who had the virulence of a hornet and the same +insect's inability to produce honey of his own, was considered by the +reactionaries to have "punched Tom Warton's historick body full of +deadly holes." But his strictures were not really important. In +marshalling some thousands of facts, Warton had made perhaps a couple of +dozen mistakes, and Ritson advances these with a reiteration and a +violence worthy of a maniac. Moreover, and this is the fate of angry +pedants, he himself is often found to be as dustily incorrect as Warton +when examined by modern lights. Ritson, who accuses Warton of "never +having consulted or even seen" the books he quotes from, and of +intentionally swindling the public, was in private life a vegetarian who +is said to have turned his orphan nephew on to the streets because he +caught him eating a mutton-chop. Ritson flung his arrows far and wide, +for he called Dr. Samuel Johnson himself "that great luminary, or rather +dark lantern of literature." + +If we turn over Ritson's distasteful pages, it is only to obtain from +them further proof of the perception of Warton's Romanticism by an +adversary whom hatred made perspicacious. Ritson abuses the _History of +English Poetry_ for presuming to have "rescued from oblivion irregular +beauties" of which no one desired to be reminded. He charges Warton with +recommending the poetry of "our Pagan fathers" because it is untouched +by Christianity, and of saying that "religion and poetry are +incompatible." He accuses him of "constantly busying himself with +passages which he does not understand, because they appeal to his ear +or his fancy." "Old poetry," Ritson says to Warton, "is the same thing +to you, sense or nonsense." He dwells on Warton's marked attraction to +whatever is prodigious and impossible. The manner in which these +accusations are made is insolent and detestable; but Ritson had +penetration, and without knowing what he reached, in some of these +diatribes he pierced to the heart of the Romanticist fallacy. + +It is needful that I should bring these observations to a close. I hope +I have made good my claim that it was the Wartons who introduced into +the discussion of English poetry the principle of Romanticism. To use a +metaphor of which both of them would have approved, that principle was +to them like the mystical bowl of ichor, the _ampolla_, which Astolpho +was expected to bring down from heaven in the _Orlando Furioso_. If I +have given you an exaggerated idea of the extent to which they foresaw +the momentous change in English literature, I am to blame. No doubt by +extracting a great number of slight and minute remarks, and by putting +them together, the critic may produce an effect which is too emphatic. +But you will be on your guard against such misdirection. It is enough +for me if you will admit the priority of the intuition of the brothers, +and I do not think that it can be contested. + +Thomas Warton said, "I have rejected the ideas of men who are the most +distinguished ornaments" of the history of English poetry, and he +appealed against a "mechanical" attitude towards the art of poetry. The +brothers did more in rebelling against the Classic formulas than in +starting new poetic methods. There was an absence in them of "the pomps +and prodigality" of genius of which Gray spoke in a noble stanza. They +began with enthusiasm, but they had no native richness of expression, no +store of energy. It needed a nature as unfettered as Blake's, as wide +as Wordsworth's, as opulent as Keats's, to push the Romantic attack on +to victory. The instinct for ecstasy, ravishment, the caprices and +vagaries of emotion, was there; there was present in both brothers, +while they were still young, an extreme sensibility. The instinct was +present in them, but the sacred fire died out in the vacuum of their +social experience, and neither Warton had the energy to build up a style +in prose or verse. They struggled for a little while, and then they +succumbed to the worn verbiage of their age, from which it is sometimes +no light task to disengage their thought. In their later days they made +some sad defections, and I can never forgive Thomas Warton for arriving +at Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_ and failing to observe its beauties. We +are told that as Camden Professor he "suffered the rostrum to grow +cold," and he was an ineffective poet laureate. His brother Joseph felt +the necessity or the craving for lyrical expression, without attaining +more than a muffled and a second-rate effect. + +All this has to be sadly admitted. But the fact remains that between +1740 and 1750, while even the voice of Rousseau had not begun to make +itself heard in Europe, the Wartons had discovered the fallacy of the +poetic theories admitted in their day, and had formed some faint +conception of a mode of escape from them. The Abbe Du Bos had laid down +in his celebrated _Reflexions_ (1719) that the poet's art consists of +making a general moral representation of incidents and scenes, and +embellishing it with elegant images. This had been accepted and acted +upon by Pope and by all his followers. To have been the first to +perceive the inadequacy and the falsity of a law which excluded all +imagination, all enthusiasm, and all mystery, is to demand respectful +attention from the historian of Romanticism, and this attention is due +to Joseph and Thomas Warton. + +[Footnote 4: Delivered, as the Warton Lecture, before the British +Academy, October 27th, 1915.] + + + + +THE CHARM OF STERNE[5] + + +It is exactly two hundred years to-night since there was born, at +Clonmel, in Ireland, a son to a subaltern in an English regiment just +home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, +"was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with +many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world +with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of +perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, +daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been +the widow of a soldier before she married Roger Sterne. In the +extraordinary fashion of the army of those days, the regiment was +hurried from place to place--as was that of the father of the infant +Borrow a century later--and with it hastened the unhappy Mrs. Sterne, +for ever bearing and for ever losing children, "most rueful journeys," +marked by a long succession of little tombstones left behind. Finally, +at Gibraltar, the weary father, pugnacious to the last, picked a quarrel +about a goose and was pinked through the body, surviving in a thoroughly +damaged condition, to die, poor exhausted pilgrim of Bellona, in +barracks in Jamaica. + +It would be difficult to imagine a childhood better calculated than this +to encourage pathos in a humorist and fun in a sentimentalist. His +account, in his brief autobiography, of the appearance and +disappearance of his hapless brothers and sisters is a proof of how +early life appealed to Laurence Sterne in the dappled colours of an +April day. We read there of how at Wicklow "we lost poor Joram, a pretty +boy"; how "Anne, that pretty blossom, fell in the barracks of Dublin"; +how little Devijehar was "left behind" in Carrickfergus. We know not +whether to sob or to giggle, so tragic is the rapid catalogue of dying +babies, so ridiculous are their names and fates. Here, then, I think, we +have revealed to us the prime characteristic of Sterne, from which all +his other characteristics branch away, for evil or for good. As no other +writer since Shakespeare, and in a different and perhaps more intimate +way than even Shakespeare, he possessed the key of those tears that +succeed the hysteria of laughter, and of that laughter which succeeds +the passion of tears. From early childhood, and all through youth and +manhood, he had been collecting observations upon human nature in these +rapidly alternating moods. + +He observed it in its frailty, but being exquisitely frail himself, he +was no satirist. A breath of real satire would blow down the whole +delicate fabric of _Tristram Shandy_ and the _Sentimental Journey_. +Sterne pokes fun at people and things; he banters the extravagance of +private humour; but it is always with a consciousness that he is himself +more extravagant than any one. If we compare him for a moment with +Richardson, who buttonholes the reader in a sermon; or with Smollett, +who snarls and bites like an angry beast; we feel at once that Sterne +could not breathe in the stuffiness of the one or in the tempest of the +other. Sympathy is the breath of his nostrils, and he cannot exist +except in a tender, merry relation with his readers. His own ideal, +surely, is that which he attributed to the fantastic and gentle Yorick, +who never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of old and +young. "Labour stood still as he passed; the bucket hung suspended in +the middle of the well; the spinning-wheel forgot its round, even +chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got +out of sight." Like Yorick, Sterne loved a jest in his heart. + +There are, it seems to me, two distinct strains in the intellectual +development of Sterne, and I should like to dwell upon them for a +moment, because I think a lack of recognition of them has been apt to +darken critical counsel in the consideration of his writings. You will +remember that he was forty-six years of age before he took up the +business of literature seriously. Until that time he had been a country +parson in Yorkshire, carrying his body, that "cadaverous bale of goods," +from Sutton to Stillington, and from Stillington to Skelton. He had +spent his life in riding, shooting, preaching, joking, and philandering +in company, and after a fashion, most truly reprehensible from a +clerical point of view, yet admirably fitted to prepare such an artist +for his destined labours as a painter of the oddities of average +Englishmen. But by the side of this indolent search after the enjoyment +of the hour, Sterne cultivated a formidable species of literature in +which he had so few competitors that, in after years, his indolence +prompted him to plagiarise freely from sources which, surely, no human +being would discover. He steeped himself in the cumbrous learning of +those writers of the Renaissance in whom congested Latin is found +tottering into colloquial French. He studied Rabelais perhaps more +deeply than any other Englishman of his time, and certainly Beroalde de +Verville, Bruscambille, and other absurdities of the sixteenth century +were familiar to him and to him alone in England. + +Hence, when Sterne began to write, there were two streams flowing in his +brain, and these were, like everything else about him, inconsistent with +one another. The faithful tender colour of modern life competed with +the preposterous oddity of burlesque erudition. When he started the +annals of Tristram Shandy, the Rabelais vein was in the ascendant, and +there is plenty of evidence that it vastly dazzled and entertained +readers of that day. But it no longer entertains us very much, and it is +the source of considerable injustice done by modern criticism to the +real merits of Sterne. When so acute a writer as Bagehot condemns much +of _Tristram Shandy_ as "a sort of antediluvian fun, in which uncouth +saurian jokes play idly in an unintelligible world," he hits the nail on +the head of why so many readers nowadays turn with impatience from that +work. But they should persevere, for Sterne himself saw his error, and +gradually dropped the "uncouth saurian jokes" which he had filched out +of Burton and Beroalde, relying more and more exclusively on his own +rich store of observations taken directly from human nature. In the +adorable seventh volume of _Tristram_, and in _The Sentimental Journey_, +there is nothing left of Rabelais except a certain rambling artifice of +style. + +The death of Sterne, at the age of fifty-four, is one of those events +which must be continually regretted, because to the very end of his life +he was growing in ease and ripeness, was discovering more perfect modes +of self-expression, and was purging himself of his compromising +intellectual frailties. It is true that from the very first his +excellences were patent. The portrait of my Uncle Toby, which Hazlitt +truly said is "one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature," +occurs, or rather begins, in the second volume of _Tristram Shandy_. But +the marvellous portraits which the early sections of that work contain +are to some extent obscured, or diluted, by the author's determination +to gain piquancy by applying old methods to new subjects. Frankly, much +as I love Sterne, I find Kunastrockius and Lithopaedus a bore. I suspect +they have driven more than one modern reader away from the enjoyment of +_Tristram Shandy_. + +Towards the end of the eighteenth century a leading Dissenting minister, +the Rev. Joseph Fawcett, said in answer to a question: "Do I _like_ +Sterne? Yes, to be sure I should deserve to be hanged if I didn't!" That +was the attitude of thoughtful and scrupulous people of cultivation more +than one hundred years ago. But it was their attitude only on some +occasions. There is no record of the fact, but I am ready to believe +that Mr. Fawcett may, with equal sincerity, have said that Sterne was a +godless wretch. We know that Bishop Warburton presented him with a purse +of gold, in rapturous appreciation of his talents, and then in a +different mood described him as "an irrevocable scoundrel." No one else +has ever flourished in literature who has combined such alternating +powers of attraction and repulsion. We like Sterne extremely at one +moment, and we dislike him no less violently at another. He is attar of +roses to-day and asafoetida to-morrow, and it is not by any means easy +to define the elements which draw us towards him and away from him. Like +Yorick, he had "a wild way of talking," and he wrote impetuously and +impudently "in the naked temper which a merry heart discovered." As he +"seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without +much ceremony, he had but too many temptations in life of scattering his +wit and his humour, his gibes and his jests, about him." + +So that even if he had been merely Yorick, Sterne would have had +manifold opportunities of giving offence and causing scandal. But lie +was not only a humorist with "a thousand little sceptical notions to +defend," but he was a sentimentalist as well. Those two characteristics +he was constantly mingling, or trying to mingle, since sentimentality +and humour are in reality like oil and wine. He would exasperate his +readers by throwing his wig in their faces at the moment when they were +weeping, or put them out of countenance by ending a farcical story on a +melancholy note. A great majority of Englishmen like to be quite sure of +the tone of what they read; they wish an author to be straightforward; +they dread irony and they loathe impishness. Now Sterne is the most +impish of all imaginative writers. He is what our grandmothers, in +describing the vagaries of the nursery, used to call "a limb of Satan." +Tristram Shandy, in his light-hearted way, declared that "there's not so +much difference between good and evil as the world is apt to imagine." +No doubt that is so, but the world does not like its preachers to play +fast and loose with moral definitions. + +The famous sensibility of Sterne was a reaction against the seriousness, +the ponderosity, of previous prose literature in England. We talk of the +heaviness of the eighteenth century, but the periods of even such +masters of solid rhetoric as Johnson and Gibbon are light as thistledown +in comparison with the academic prose of the seventeenth century. Before +the eighteenth century is called lumbering, let us set a page of Hume +against a page of Hobbes, or a passage out of Berkeley by a passage out +of Selden. Common justice is seldom done to the steady clarification of +English prose between 1660 and 1750, but it was kept within formal lines +until the sensitive recklessness of Sterne broke up the mould, and gave +it the flying forms of a cloud or a wave. He owed this beautiful +inspiration to what Nietzsche calls his "squirrel-soul," which leaped +from bough to bough, and responded without a trace of conventional +restraint to every gust of emotion. Well might Goethe be inspired to +declare that Sterne was the most emancipated spirit of his century. + +His very emancipation gives us the reason why Sterne's admirers nowadays +are often divided in their allegiance to him. A frequent part of his +humour deals very flippantly with subjects that are what we have been +taught to consider indelicate or objectionable. It is worse than useless +to try to explain this foible of his away, because he was aware of it +and did it on purpose. He said that "nothing but the more gross and +carnal parts of a composition will go down." His indecency was objected +to in his own age, but not with any excluding severity. And I would like +to call your attention to the curious conventionality of our views on +this subject. Human nature does not change, but it changes its modes of +expression. In the eighteenth century very grave people, even bishops, +allowed themselves, in their relaxed moments, great licence in jesting. +Yet they would have been scandalised by the tragic treatment of sex by +our more audacious novelists of to-day. We are still interested in these +matters, but we have agreed not to joke about them. I read the other day +a dictum of one of those young gentlemen who act as our moral policemen: +he prophesied that a jest on a sexual subject would, in twenty years, be +not merely reprehensible, as it is now, but unintelligible. Very proper, +no doubt, only do not let us call this morality, it is only a change of +habits. + +Sterne is not suited to readers who are disheartened at irrelevancy. It +is part of his charm, and it is at the same time his most whimsical +habit, never to proceed with his story when you expect him to do so, and +to be reminded by his own divagations of delightful side-issues which +lead you, entranced, whither you had no intention of going. He did not +merely not shun occasions of being irrelevant, but he sought them out +and eagerly cultivated them. Remember that a whole chapter of _Tristram_ +is devoted to the _attitude_ of Corporal Trim as he prepared himself to +read the Sermon. Sterne kept a stable of prancing, plump little +hobby-horses, and he trotted them out upon every occasion. But this is +what makes his books the best conversational writing in the English +language. He writes for all the world exactly as though he were talking +at his ease, and we listen enchanted to the careless, frolicking, idle, +penetrating speaker who builds up for us so nonchalantly, with +persistent but unobtrusive touch upon touch, the immortal figures of Mr. +Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, Yorick, the Widow Wadman, and so many more. + +This, I am inclined to think, in drawing this brief sketch to an end, is +Sterne's main interest for ourselves. He broke up the rhetorical manner +of composition, or, rather, he produced an alternative manner which was +gradually accepted and is in partial favour still. I would ask you to +read for yourselves the scene of the ass who blocked the way for +Tristram at Lyons, and to consider how completely new that method of +describing, of facing a literary problem, was in 1765. I speak here to +an audience of experts, to a company of authors who are accustomed to a +close consideration of the workmanship of their _metier_. I ask them +where, at all events in English, anything like that scene had been found +before the days of Sterne. Since those days we have never been without +it. + +To trace the Shandean influence down English literature for the last +century and a half would take me much too long for your patience. In +Dickens, in Carlyle, even in Ruskin, the Shandean element is often +present and not rarely predominant. None of those great men would have +expressed himself exactly as he does but for Laurence Sterne. And coming +down to our own time, I see the influence of Sterne everywhere. The +pathos of Sir James Barrie is intimately related to that of the creator +of Uncle Toby and Maria of Moulines, while I am not sure that of all the +books which Stevenson read it was not the _Sentimental Journey_ which +made the deepest impression upon him. + +[Footnote 5: Address delivered to the Authors' Club, November 24th, +1913] + + + + +THE CENTENARY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE + + +In the announcements of the approaching celebration of the centenary of +Poe in this country, the fact of his having been a poet was concealed. +Perhaps his admirers hoped that it might be overlooked, as without +importance, or condoned as the result of bad habits. At all events, the +statement that the revels on that occasion would be conducted by Sir +Arthur Conan Doyle was quite enough to prove that it was the prose +writer of "The Black Cat" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and not +the verso writer of "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee" who would be the centre +of attention. On that side of Poe's genius, therefore, although it is +illustrated by such masterpieces of sullen beauty as "The Fall of the +House of Usher" and such triumphs of fantastic ingenuity as "The Gold +Bug," I feel it needless to dwell here, the more as I think the +importance of these tales very slight by the side of that of the best +poems. Edgar Poe was, in my opinion, one of the most significant poetic +artists of a century rich in poetic artists, and I hold it to be for +this reason, and not because he wrote thrilling "detective" stories, +that he deserves persistent commemoration. + +The dominance of Poe as an important poetic factor of the nineteenth +century has not been easily or universally admitted, and it is only +natural to examine both the phenomena and the causes of the objections +so persistently brought against it. In the first instance, if the fame +of Browning and Tennyson advanced slowly, it advanced firmly, and it +was encouraged from the beginning by the experts, by the cultivated +minority. Poe, on the other hand, was challenged, and his credentials +were grudgingly inspected, by those who represented the finest culture +of his own country, and the carpings of New England criticism are not +quite silent yet. When he died, in 1849, the tribunal of American +letters sat at Cambridge, in the neighbourhood of Boston, and it was +ill-prepared to believe that anything poetical could deserve salvation +if it proceeded from a place outside the magic circle. Edgar Poe, the +son of Irish strolling players, called "The Virginia Comedians," settled +in the South and was educated in England. By an odd coincidence, it now +appears that he actually was a native, as it were by accident, of Boston +itself. In the words of the Psalmist, "Lo! there was he born!" This +Gentile poet, such was the then state of American literature, could not +arrive on earth elsewhere than in the Jerusalem of Massachusetts. But +that concession was not known to the high priests, the Lowells, the +Holmeses, the Nortons, to whom Poe seemed a piratical intruder from +Javan or Gadire. + +Nothing is so discouraging to a young poet of originality as to find +himself isolated. Everything new is regarded with suspicion and dislike +by the general world of readers, and usually by the leaders of criticism +as well. Yet the daring prophet feels supported if he has but his Aaron +and his Hur. In the generation that immediately preceded Poe, Wordsworth +and Coleridge had been derided, but they had enjoyed the emphatic +approbation of one another and of Southey. Shelley had been a pariah of +letters, yet he was cordially believed in by Byron and by Peacock. Even +Keats could shrink from the mud-storms of the Scotch reviewers behind +the confident zeal of Leigh Hunt and Reynolds. At a still later moment +Rossetti and Morris would shelter themselves securely, and even +serenely, from the obloquy of criticism, within a slender peel-tower of +the praise of friends. In all these cases there could be set against the +stupidity of the world at large the comfortable cleverness of a few +strong persons of taste, founded, as all good taste must be, upon +principles. The poet could pride himself on his eclecticism, on his +recognition within, as Keats said, "a little clan." But Poe's misfortune +was to have no clan of his own, and to be rejected by precisely those +persons who represented, and on the whole justly represented, good taste +in America. + +His behaviour in this predicament was what might have been expected from +a man whose genius was more considerable than his judgment or his +manners. He tried, at first, to conciliate the New England authorities, +and he flattered not merely the greater planets but some of the very +little stars. He danced, a plaintive Salome, before Christopher P. +Cranch and Nathaniel P. Willis. When he found that his blandishments +were of no avail, he turned savage, and tried to prove that he did not +care, by being rude to Bryant and Longfellow. He called the whole solemn +Sanhedrim a college of Frog-pondian professors. Thus, of course, he +closed upon himself the doors of mercy, since the central aim and object +of the excellent men who at that time ruled American literature was to +prove that, in what this impertinent young man from Virginia called the +Frog Pond, the United States possessed its Athens and its Weimar, its +home of impeccable distinction. Indeed, but for the recognition of +Europe, which began to flow in richly just as Poe ceased to be able to +enjoy it, the prestige of this remarkable poet might have been +successfully annihilated. + +Nor was it only the synod of Boston wits who issued the edict that he +should be ignored, but in England also many good judges of literature, +especially those who belonged to the intellectual rather than the +artistic class, could not away with him. I recollect hearing Leslie +Stephen say, now nearly thirty years ago, that to employ strong terms of +praise for Poe was "simply preposterous." And one whom I admire so +implicitly that I will not mention his name in a context which is not +favourable to his judgment, wrote (in his haste) of Poe's "singularly +valueless verses." + +This opposition, modified, it is true, by the very different attitude +adopted by Tennyson and most subsequent English poets, as well as by +Baudelaire, Mallarme and the whole younger school in France, was +obstinately preserved, and has not wholly subsided. It would be a +tactical mistake for those who wish to insist on Poe's supremacy in his +own line to ignore the serious resistance which has been made to it. In +the canonisation-trial of this whimsical saint, the Devil's advocates, +it may be confessed, are many, and their objections are imposing. It is +possible that local pique and a horror of certain crude surroundings may +have had something to do with the original want of recognition in New +England, but such sources of prejudice would be ephemeral. There +remained, and has continued to remain, in the very essence of Poe's +poetry, something which a great many sincere and penetrating lovers of +verse cannot endure to admit as a dominant characteristic of the art. + +To recognise the nature of this quality is to take the first step +towards discovering the actual essence of Poe's genius. His detractors +have said that his verses are "singularly valueless." It is therefore +necessary to define what it is they mean by "value." If they mean an +inculcation, in beautiful forms, of moral truth; if they mean a +succession of ideas, clothed in exalted and yet definite language; if +they are thinking of what stirs the heart in reading parts of _Hamlet_ +and _Comus_, of what keeps the pulse vibrating after the "Ode to Duty" +has been recited; then the verses of Poe are indeed without value. A +poet less gnomic than Poe, one from whom less, as they say in the +suburbs, "can be learned," is scarcely to be found in the whole range of +literature. His lack of curiosity about moral ideas is so complete that +evil moves him no more than good. There have been writers of eccentric +or perverse morality who have been so much irritated by the preaching of +virtue that they have lent their genius to the recommendation of vice. +This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is +vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as +innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers +than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is +hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any +ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains +of valuable thoughts" must go elsewhere. + +In 1840 they might, in New England, go to Bryant, to Emerson, to +Hawthorne; and it is more than excusable that those who were +endeavouring to refine the very crude community in the midst of which +they were anxiously holding up the agate lamp of Psyche, should see +nothing to applaud in the vague and shadowy rhapsodies then being issued +by a dissipated hack in Philadelphia. What the New England critics +wanted, patriotically as well as personally, was as little like +"Ulalume" as can possibly be conceived. They defined what poetry should +be--there was about that time a mania for defining poetry--and what +their definition was may be seen no less plainly in the American _Fable +for Critics_ than in the preface to the English _Philip van Artevelde_. +It was to be picturesque, intellectual, pleasing; it was to deal, above +all, with moral "truths"; it was to avoid vagueness and to give no +uncertain sound; it was to regard "passion" with alarm, as the siren +which was bound sooner or later to fling a bard upon the rocks. It is +not necessary to treat this conception of poetry with scorn, nor to +reject principles of precise thought and clear, sober language, which +had been illustrated by Wordsworth in the present and by Gray in the +past. The ardent young critics of our own age, having thrown off all +respect for the traditions of literature, speak and write as if to them, +and them alone, had been divinely revealed the secrets of taste. They do +not give themselves time to realise that in Apollo's house there are +many mansions. + +It is sufficient for us to note here that the discomfort of Poe's +position resided in the fact that he was not admitted into so much as +the forecourt of the particular mansion inhabited by Bryant and Lowell. +There is a phrase in one of his own rather vague and "valueless" essays +(for Poe was a poor critic) which, as it were accidentally, describes +his ideal in poetry, although it is not his own verse of which he is +speaking. He described--in 1845, when his ripe genius had just brought +forth "The Raven"--the poetic faculty as producing "a sense of dreamy, +wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight." This +shadowy but absorbing and mastering pleasure impregnated his own best +writings to such a degree that it gives us the measure of his unlikeness +to his contemporaries, and states the claim of his individuality. +Without precisely knowing it or perceiving his revolution, in an age of +intelligent, tame, lucid and cautiously-defined poetry, Edgar Poe +expressed the emotions which surged within him in numbers that were, +even to excess, "dreamy, wild, indefinite and indefinable." + +His early verses are remarkably exempt from the influences which we +might expect to find impressed on them. He imitated, as every man of +genuine originality imitates while he learns his trade, but his models +were not, as might have been anticipated, Coleridge and Shelley; they +were Byron and Scott. In the poetry of Byron and Scott, Poe found +nothing to transfer to his own nature, and the early imitations, +therefore, left no trace on him. Brief as is the volume of his poems, +half of it might be discarded without much regret. Scattered among his +Byron and Scott imitations, however, we find a few pieces which reveal +to us that, while he was still almost a child, the true direction of his +genius was occasionally revealed to him. The lyric "To Helen," which is +said to have been composed in his fourteenth year, is steeped in the +peculiar purity, richness and vagueness which were to characterise his +mature poems:-- + + "On desperate seas long wont to roam, + Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, + Thy Naiad airs have brought me home + To the glory that was Greece, + And the grandeur that was Rome." + +This was not published, however, until the author was two-and-twenty, +and it may have been touched up. Here is a fragment of a suppressed +poem, "Visit of the Dead," which Poe certainly printed in his eighteenth +year:-- + + "The breeze, the breath of God, is still, + And the mist upon the hill, + Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, + Is a symbol and a token; + How it hangs upon the trees, + A mystery of mysteries!" + +This is not so perfect, but it is even more than "To Helen" symptomatic +of Poe's peculiar relation to the poetic faculty as fostering a state of +indefinite and indeed indefinable delight. And from these faint +breathings how direct is the advance to such incomparable specimens of +symbolic fancy as "The City in the Sea," "The Sleeper," and finally +"Ulalume"! + +The determination to celebrate, in a minor key, indefinite and +melancholy symbols of fancy, is a snare than which none more dangerous +can be placed in the path of a feeble foot. But Poe was not feeble, and +he was protected, and permanent value was secured for his poetry, by the +possession of one or two signal gifts to which attention must now be +paid. He cultivated the indefinite, but, happily for us, in language so +definite and pure that when he succeeds it is with a cool fulness, an +absence of all fretting and hissing sound, such as can rarely be +paralleled in English literature. The finest things in Milton's 1645 +volume, Wordsworth at his very best, Tennyson occasionally, Collins in +some of his shorter odes, have reached that perfection of syllabic +sweetness, that clear sound of a wave breaking on the twilight sands, +which Poe contrives to render, without an effort, again and again:-- + + "By a route obscure and lonely, + Haunted by ill angels only, + Where an Eidolon,[6] nam'd Night, + On a black throne reigns upright, + I have reached these lands but newly + From an ultimate dim Thule, + From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime. + Out of space, out of time." + +The present moment is one in which the reaction against plastic beauty +in poetry has reached such a height that it is almost vain to appeal +against it. There is scarcely a single English poet of consequence in +the younger school who does not treat the strings of his lyre as though +he were preluding with a slate-pencil upon a slate. That this is done +purposely, and in accordance with mysterious harmonic laws entirely +beyond the comprehension of ordinary ears, makes the matter worse. There +is no heresiarch so dangerous as the priest of holy and self-abnegating +life, and it is to a poet no less learned than Mr. Robert Bridges, that +the twentieth century seems to owe the existing rage for cacophony. He +holds something of the same place in relation to Swinburne and Poe, that +Donne did to Spenser three hundred years ago. In this condition of +things it may seem useless to found any claim for Poe on the ground of +the exquisite mellifluousness of his versification. We may hope, +however, some day to regain the use of our ears, and to discover once +more that music and metre are utterly distinct arts. When that +re-discovery has been made, Poe will resume his position as one of the +most uniformly melodious of all those who have used the English +language. + +Critics who have admitted the extraordinary perfection of his prosody +have occasionally objected that in the most popular examples of it, "The +Raven" and "The Bells," he obtains his effect by a trick. It might be +objected, with equal force, that Victor Hugo in "Les Djinns" and even +Tennyson in "The Lotus Eaters" made use of "tricks." On the other hand, +if the charge be deserved, it seems odd that in the course of nearly +seventy years no other juggler or conjurer has contrived to repeat the +wonderful experiment. In each poem there are what must be judged +definite errors against taste in detail--Poe's taste was never very +sure--but the skill of the long voluptuous lamentation, broken at equal +intervals by the croak of the raven, and that of the verbal translation, +as if into four tones or languages, of the tintinabulation of the bells, +is so extraordinary, so original, and so closely in keeping with the +personal genius of the writer, that it is surely affectation to deny its +value. + +It is not, however, in "The Bells" or in "The Raven," marvellous as are +these _tours de force_, that we see the essential greatness of Poe +revealed. The best of his poems are those in which he deals less +boisterously with the sentiment of mystery. During the latest months of +his unhappy life, he composed three lyrics which, from a technical +point of view, must be regarded not only as the most interesting, which +he wrote, but as those which have had the most permanent effect upon +subsequent literature, not in England merely, but in France. These are +"Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," "For Annie." One of Poe's greatest inventions +was the liquidation of stanzaic form, by which he was able to mould it +to the movements of emotion without losing its essential structure. Many +poets had done this with the line; it was left for Poe to do it with the +stanza. In the three latest lyrics this stanzaic legerdemain is +practised with an enchanting lightness, an ecstasy of sinuous and +elastic grace. Perhaps, had it been subjected to the poet's latest +revision, "For Annie" would have been the most wonderful of all in the +sensitive response of its metre to the delicate fluctuations of +sentiment. + +We may, then, briefly summarise that Poe's first claim to commemoration +is that he was the pioneer in restoring to the art of poetry a faculty +which it had almost lost in its attempt to compete with science and +philosophy. It had become the aim of the poets to state facts; it was +given to Poe to perceive that no less splendid a future lay before those +who only hinted feelings. He was the earliest modern poet who +substituted the symbol for the exact description of an object or an +event. That "expression directe," about which the French have been +debating for the last quarter of a century, and over which M. Adolphe +Rette and M. Albert Mockel periodically dispute like Fathers of the +Church, was perceived and was deliberately repudiated by Poe eighty +years ago. He was deeply impregnated with the sense that the harmony of +imagination is not destroyed, but developed, by drawing over a subject +veil after veil of suggestion. His native temperament aided him in his +research after the symbol. He was naturally a cultivator of terror, one +who loved to people the world with strange and indefinable powers. His +dreams were innocent and agitating, occupied with supernatural terrors, +weighed upon by the imminence of shadowy presentments. He trembled at he +knew not what; in this he was related to the earliest poets of the +world, and in his perpetual recurrence to symbol he recalls the action +of their alarms. + +The cardinal importance, then, of Poe as a poet is that he restored to +poetry a primitive faculty of which civilisation seemed successfully to +have deprived her. He rejected the doctrinal expression of positive +things, and he insisted upon mystery and symbol. He endeavoured to +clothe unfathomable thoughts and shadowy images in melody that was like +the wind wandering over the strings of an aeolian harp. In other words, +he was the pioneer of a school which has spread its influence to the +confines of the civilised world, and is now revolutionising literature. +He was the discoverer and the founder of Symbolism. + +1909. + +[Footnote 6: A shocking false quantity; but how little that would matter +to Poe] + + + + +THE AUTHOR OF "PELHAM" + + +One hundred and twenty years have nearly passed since the birth of +Bulwer-Lytton, and he continues to be suspended in a dim and ambiguous +position in the history of our literature. He combined extraordinary +qualities with fatal defects. He aimed at the highest eminence, and +failed to reach it, but he was like an explorer, who is diverted from +the main ascent of a mountain, and yet annexes an important table-land +elsewhere. Bulwer-Lytton never secured the ungrudging praise of the best +judges, but he attained great popularity, and has even now not wholly +lost it. He is never quoted as one of our great writers, and yet he +holds a place of his own from which it is improbable that he will ever +be dislodged. Although he stood out prominently among his fellows, and +although his career was tinged with scandal and even with romance, very +little has been known about him. Curiosity has been foiled by the +discretion of one party and the malignity of another. The public has not +been in a position to know the truth, nor to possess the real portrait +of a politician and a man of letters who has been presented as an angel +and as a gargoyle, but never as a human being. Forty years after his +death the candour and the skill of his grandson reveal him to us at last +in a memoir of unusual excellence. + +In no case would Lord Lytton's task have been an easy one, but it must +have been made peculiarly difficult by the work of those who had +preceded him. Of these, the only one who deserves serious attention is +Robert Lytton, who published certain fragments in 1883. That the son +wished to support the memory of his father is unquestionable. But it is +difficult to believe that he intended his contribution to be more than +an aid to some future biographer's labour. He scattered his material +about him in rough heaps. Apart from the "Literary Remains," which +destroyed the continuity of even such brief biography as he gave, Robert +Lytton introduced a number of chapters which are more or less of the +nature of essays, and are often quite foreign to his theme. Moreover, he +dedicated several chapters to literary criticism of his father's works. +It is, in fact, obvious to any one who examines the two volumes of 1883 +which Robert Lytton contrived to fill, that he was careful to contribute +as little as he possibly could to the story which he had started out to +relate. Although there is much that is interesting in the memoirs of +1883, the reader is continually losing the thread of the narrative. The +reason is, no doubt, that Robert Lytton stood too close to his parents, +had seen too much of their disputes, was too much torn by the agonies of +his own stormy youth, and was too sensitively conscious of the scandal, +to tell the story at all. We have the impression that, in order to +forestall any other biography, he pretended himself to write a book +which he was subtle enough to make unintelligible. + +This baffling discretion, this feverish race from hiding-place to +hiding-place, has not only not been repeated by Lord Lytton in the new +_Life_, but the example of his father seems to have positively +emphasised his own determination to be straightforward and lucid. I know +no modern biography in which the writer has kept more rigidly to the +business of his narrative, or has less successfully been decoyed aside +by the sirens of family vanity. It must have been a great difficulty to +the biographer to find his pathway cumbered by the volumes of 1883, set +by his father as a plausible man-trap for future intruders. Lord +Lytton, however, is the one person who is not an intruder, and he was +the only possessor of the key which his father had so diplomatically +hidden. His task, however, was further complicated by the circumstance +that Bulwer-Lytton himself left in MS. an autobiography, dealing very +fully with his own career and character up to the age of twenty-two. The +redundancy of all the Lyttons is amazing. Bulwer-Lytton would not have +been himself if he had not overflowed into reflections which swelled his +valuable account of his childhood into monstrous proportions. Lord +Lytton, who has a pretty humour, tells an anecdote which will be read +with pleasure:-- + + "An old woman, who had once been one of Bulwer-Lytton's trusted + domestic servants, is still living in a cottage at Knebworth. One + day she was talking to me about my grandfather, and inadvertently + used an expression which summed him up more perfectly than any + elaborate description could have done. She was describing his house + at Copped Hall, where she had been employed as caretaker, and + added: 'In one of his attacks of _fluency_, I nursed him there for + many weeks.' 'Pleurisy,' I believe, was what she meant." + +The bacillus of "_fluency_" interpenetrates the Autobiography, the +letters, the documents of every kind, and at any moment this disease +will darken Bulwer-Lytton's brightest hours. But curtailed by his +grandson, and with its floral and heraldic ornaments well pared away, +the Autobiography is a document of considerable value. It is written +with deliberate candour, and recalls the manner of Cobbett, a writer +with whom we should not expect to find Bulwer-Lytton in sympathy. It is +probable that the author of it never saw himself nor those who +surrounded him in precisely their true relation. There was something +radically twisted in his image of life, which always seems to have +passed through a refracting surface on its way to his vision. No doubt +this is more or less true of all experience; no power has given us the +gift "to see ourselves as others see us." But in the case of +Bulwer-Lytton this refractive habit of his imagination produced a +greater swerving aside from positive truth than is usual. The result is +that an air of the fabulous, of the incredible, is given to his +narratives, and often most unfairly. + +A close examination, in fact, of the Autobiography results in confirming +the historic truth of it. What is surprising is not, when we come to +consider them, the incidents themselves, but Bulwer-Lytton's odd way of +narrating them. Lord Lytton, without any comment, provides us with +curious material for the verification of his grandfather's narrative. He +prints, here and there, letters from entirely prosaic persons which +tally, often to a surprising degree, with the extravagant statements of +Bulwer-Lytton. To quote a single instance, of a very remarkable +character, Bulwer-Lytton describes the effect his scholarship produced, +at the age of seventeen, upon sober, elderly people, who were dazzled +with his accomplishments and regarded him as a youthful prodigy. It is +the sort of confession, rather full-blooded and lyrical, which we might +easily set down to that phenomenon of refraction. But Lord Lytton prints +a letter from Dr. Samuel Parr (whom, by the way, he calls "a man of +sixty-four," but Parr, born in 1747, was seventy-four in 1821), which +confirms the autobiographer's account in every particular. The aged Whig +churchman, who boasted a wider knowledge of Greek literature than any +other scholar of his day, and whose peremptory temper was matter of +legend, could write to this Tory boy a long letter of enthusiastic +criticism, and while assuring Bulwer-Lytton that he kept "all the +letters with which you have honoured me," could add: "I am proud of +such a correspondent; and, if we lived nearer to each other, I should +expect to be very happy indeed in such a friend." Letters of this kind, +judiciously printed by Lord Lytton in his notes, serve to call us back +from the nebulous witchcraft in which Bulwer-Lytton was so fond of +wrapping up the truth, and to remind us that, in spite of the +necromancer, the truth is there. + +From the point where the fragment of autobiography closes, although for +some time much the same material is used and some of the same letters +are quoted, as were quoted and used by Robert Lytton, the presentation +of these is so different that the whole effect is practically one of +novelty. But with the year 1826, when Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at the age +of three-and-twenty, became engaged to Rosina Doyle Wheeler, all is +positively new. The story of the marriage, separation, and subsequent +relations has never before been presented to the world with any approach +to accuracy or fulness. No biographical notices of Bulwer-Lytton even +touch on this subject, which has been hitherto abandoned to the gossip +of irresponsible contemporaries. It is true that a Miss Devey composed a +"Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," in which the tale was told. This work was +immediately suppressed, and is inaccessible to the public; but the only +person who is known to be familiar with its contents reports that it +"contains fragments of the narrative, obviously biassed, wholly +inaccurate, and evidently misleading." So far as the general public is +concerned, Lord Lytton's impartial history of the relations between his +grandfather and his grandmother is doubtless that portion of his book +which will be regarded as the most important. I may, therefore, dwell +briefly upon his treatment of it. + +The biographer, in dealing with a subject of this incalculable +difficulty, could but lay himself open to the censure of those who +dislike the revelation of the truth on any disagreeable subject. This +lion, however, stood in the middle of his path, and he had either to +wrestle with it or to turn back. Lord Lytton says in his preface that it +was necessary to tell all or nothing of the matrimonial adventures of +his grandparents, but, in reality, this was not quite the alternative, +which was to tell the truth or to withdraw from the task of writing a +Life of Bulwer-Lytton. The marriage and its results were so predominant +in the career of the man, and poisoned it so deeply to the latest hour +of his consciousness, that to attempt a biography of him without clear +reference to them would have been like telling the story of Nessus the +Centaur without mentioning the poisoned arrow of Heracles. But Lord +Lytton shall give his own apology:-- + + "As it was impossible to give a true picture of my grandfather + without referring to events which overshadowed his whole life, and + which were already partially known to the public, I decided to tell + the whole story as fully and as accurately as possible, in the firm + belief that the truth can damage neither the dead nor the living. + The steps which led to the final separation between my + grandparents, and the forces which brought about so disastrous a + conclusion of a marriage of love, apart from their biographical + interest, afford a study of human nature of the utmost value; and + so great are the moral lessons which this story contains, that I + venture to hope that the public may find in much that is tragic and + pitiful much also that is redeeming, and that the ultimate verdict + of posterity may be that these two unfortunate people did not + suffer entirely in vain." + +His story, therefore, is not written with any partiality, and it seems +to be as full and as truthful as the ample materials at the author's +disposal permitted. The reader will conjecture that Lord Lytton could +have given many more details, but apart from the fact that they would +often have been wholly unfit for publication, it is difficult to see +that they would in any degree have altered the balance of the story, or +modified our judgment, which is quite sufficiently enlightened by the +copious letters on both sides which are now for the first time printed. + +Voltaire has remarked of love that it is "de toutes les passions la plus +forte, parce qu'elle attaque, a la fois, la tete, le coeur, le corps." +It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have +been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is true in +measure of every strong juvenile attachment: but it is rarely indeed so +copiously or so fatally true as it was in his case. His existence was +overwhelmed by this event; it was turned topsy-turvey, and it never +regained its equilibrium. In this adventure all was exaggerated; there +was excess of desire, excess of gratification, an intense weariness, a +consuming hatred. + +On the first evening when the lovers met, in April 1826, an observer, +watching them as they talked, reflected that Bulwer's "bearing had that +aristocratic something bordering on _hauteur_" which reminded the +onlooker "of the passage, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou!'" The same +observer, dazzled, like the rest of the world, by the loveliness of Miss +Wheeler, judged that it would be best "to regard her as we do some +beautiful caged wild creature of the woods--at a safe and secure +distance." It would have preserved a chance of happiness for +Bulwer-Lytton to possess something of this stranger's clairvoyance. It +was not strange perhaps, but unfortunate, that he did not notice--or +rather that he was not repelled by, for he did notice--the absence of +moral delicacy in the beautiful creature, the radiant and seductive +Lamia, who responded so instantly to his emotion. He, the most +fastidious of men, was not offended by the vivacity of a young lady who +called attention to the vulgarity of her father's worsted stockings and +had none but words of abuse for her mother. These things, indeed, +disconcerted the young aristocrat, but he put them down to a lack of +training; he persuaded himself that these were superficial blemishes and +could be remedied; and he resigned his senses to the intoxication of +Rosina's beauty. + +At first--and indeed to the last--she stimulated his energy and his +intellect. His love and his hatred alike spurred him to action. In +August 1826, in spite of the violent opposition of his mother, he and +Rosina were betrothed. By October Mrs. Bulwer had so far prevailed that +the engagement was broken off, and Edward tossed in a whirlpool of +anger, love, and despair. It took the form of such an attack of +"fluency" as was never seen before or after. Up to that time he had been +an elegant although feverish idler. Now he plunged into a strenuous life +of public and private engagements. He prepared to enter the House of +Commons; he finished _Falkland_, his first novel; he started the +composition of _Pelham_ and of another "light prose work," which may +have disappeared; he achieved a long narrative in verse, _O'Neill, or +the Rebel_; and he involved himself in literary projects without bound +and without end. The aim of all this energy was money. It is true that +he had broken off his betrothal; but it was at first only a pretence at +estrangement, to hoodwink his mother. He was convinced that he could not +live without possessing Rosina, and as his mother held the strings of +the common purse, he would earn his own income and support a wife. + +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, who had a Roman firmness, was absolutely determined +that her son should not marry "a penniless girl whose education had been +so flagrantly neglected, who was vain and flighty, with a mocking humour +and a conspicuous lack of principle." At this point the story becomes +exceedingly interesting. A Balzac would strip it of its romantic +trappings, and would penetrate into its physiology. Out of Rosina's +sight, and diverted by the excess of his literary labours, Edward's +infatuation began to decline. His mother, whose power of character would +have been really formidable if it had been enforced by sympathy or even +by tact, relaxed her opposition; and instantly her son, himself, no +longer attacked, became calmer and more clear-sighted. Rosina's faults +were patent to his memory; the magic of her beauty less invincible. +Within a month all was changed again. Rosina fretted herself into what +she contrived to have reported to Bulwer-Lytton as an illness. She +begged for an interview, and he went with reluctance to bid her farewell +for ever. It was Bulwer-Lytton's habit to take with him a masterpiece of +literature upon every journey. It seems unfortunate that on this +occasion _The Tempest_ was not his companion, for it might have warned +him, as Prospero warned Ferdinand, against the fever in the blood:-- + + "No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall + To make this contract grow; but barren hate, + Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall bestrew + The union of your bed, with weeds so loathly + That you shall hate it, both." + +When his short interview, which was to have been a final one, was over, +that had happened which made a speedy marriage necessary, whatever the +consequences might be. + +The new conditions were clearly stated to old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, but +that formidable lady belonged to an earlier generation, and saw no +reason for Quixotic behaviour. Her conscience had been trained in the +eighteenth century, and all her blame was for Rosina Wheeler. Torn +between his duty and his filial affection, Bulwer-Lytton now passed +through a period of moral agony. He wrote to his mother: "I am far too +wretched, and have had too severe a contest with myself, not to look to +the future rather with despondency than pleasure, and the view you take +of the matter is quite enough to embitter my peace of mind." Miss +Wheeler, not unnaturally stung to anger, used disrespectful expressions +regarding Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, and these bickerings filled the lover and +son with indignation. His life, between these ladies, grew to be hardly +worth living, and in the midst of one such crisis this brilliant young +dandy of four-and-twenty wrote:--"I feel more broken-hearted, +despondent, and sated than any old valetudinarian who has seen all his +old hopes and friends drop off one by one, and finds himself left for +the rest of his existence to the solitary possession of gloom and gout." +Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton fought fiercely to the last, and Edward determined to +close the matter; on August 29th, 1827, he married Rosina. + +At first, in spite of, and even because of, the wild hostility of his +mother, the marriage seemed successful. The rage of the mother drove the +husband to the wife. Lord Lytton has noted that in later years all that +his grandfather and his grandmother said about one another was +unconsciously biassed by their memory of later complications. Neither +Bulwer-Lytton nor Rosina could give an accurate history of their +relations at the beginning, because the mind of each was prejudiced by +their knowledge of the end. Each sought to justify the hatred which both +had lived to feel, by representing the other as hateful from the first. +But the letters survive, and the recollections of friends, to prove that +this was entirely untrue. It must be admitted that their union was never +based upon esteem, but wholly upon passion, and that from the first they +lacked that coherency of relation, in moral respects, which was needed +to fix their affections. But those who have dimly heard how bitterly +these two unfortunate people hated one another in later life will be +astonished to learn that they spent the two first years together like +infatuated turtle-doves. + +Their existence was romantic and absurd. Cut off from all support by the +implacable anger of old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, they depended on a combined +income of L380 a year and whatever the husband could make to increase +it. Accordingly they took a huge country house, Woodcot in Oxon, and +lived at the rate of several thousands a year. There they basked in an +affluent splendour of bad taste which reminds us of nothing in the world +so much as of those portions of _The Lady Flabella_ which Mrs. +Wititterly was presently to find so soft and so voluptuous. The +following extract from one of Rosina's lively letters-and she was a very +sprightly correspondent--gives an example of her style, of her husband's +Pelhamish extravagance, and of the gaudy recklessness of their manner of +life. They had now been married nearly two years:-- + + "How do you think my audacious husband has spent his time since he + has been in town? Why, he must needs send me down what he termed a + little Christmas box, which was a huge box from Howel and James's, + containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours + not made up, four Gros des Indes, two merino ones, four satin ones, + an amber, a black, a white and a blue, eight pocket handkerchiefs + that look as if they had been spun out of lilies and air and + _brodee_ by the fairies, they are so exquisitely fine and so + beautifully worked. Four pieces (16 yards in each) of beautiful + white blonde, two broad pieces and two less broad, a beautiful and + very large blue real cashmere shawl, a Chantilly veil that would + reach from this to Dublin, and six French long pellerines very + richly embroidered on the finest India muslin, three dozen pair of + white silk stockings, one dozen of black, a most beautiful black + satin cloak with very pretty odd sort of capes and trimmed round + and up the sides with a very broad band of a new kind of figured + plush--I forget what they call it (it came from Paris), and a hat + of the same--such a hat as can only be made in the Rue Vivienne. + You would think that this 'little Christmas box' would have been + enough to have lasted for some time. However, he thought + differently, for on New Year's morning before I was out of bed, + there came a parcel by the mail, which on opening proved to be a + large red Morocco case containing a bright gold chain, a yard and a + half long, with the most beautiful and curious cross to it that I + ever saw--the chain is as thick as my dead gold necklace, and you + may guess what sort of a thing it is when I tell you that I took it + to a jeweller here to have it weighed, and it weighed a pound all + but an ounce. The man said it never was made for less than fifty + guineas, but that he should think it had cost more." + +Rosina, who has only L80 a year of her own, will not be outdone, and +cannot "resist ordering" Edward "a gold toilette, which he has long +wished for.... Round the rim of the basin and the handle of the ewer I +have ordered a wreath of _narcissus_ in dead gold, which, for Mr. +Pelham, you'll own, is not a bad idea." + +It would be expected that all this crazy display would lead the young +couple rapidly and deeply into debt. That it did not do so is the most +curious phase of the story. Bulwer-Lytton immediately, and apparently +without the slightest difficulty, developed a literary industry the +sober record of which approaches the fabulous. Walter Scott alone may be +held to have equalled it. The giants of popular fiction did, indeed, +enjoy larger single successes than Bulwer-Lytton did, but none of them, +not Dickens himself, was so uniformly successful. Everything he wrote +sold as though it were bread displayed to a hungry crowd. Even his +poetry, so laboriously and lifelessly second-hand, always sold. He did +not know what failure was; he made money by _Devereux_; even _The New +Timon_ went into many editions. To earn what was required, however--and +in these early years he seems to have made L3000 his minimum of needful +return--to live in the insane style which his wife and he demanded, an +enormous nervous strain was required. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's temper had +always been warm and eager; it now grew irritable to the highest degree. +His mother continued to exasperate him; his wife suddenly failed to +please him; his health waned; and he became the most miserable of men; +yet without ceasing for a moment to be the most indefatigable of +authors. The reader will follow the evolution of the tragedy, which is +of poignant interest, in Lord Lytton's pages. The whole story is one of +the most extraordinary in the history of literature. + +It has been a feature of Bulwer-Lytton's curious posthumous fortune that +he has seemed solitary in his intellectual if not in his political and +social action. We think of him as one of those morose and lonely bees +that are too busy gathering pollen to join the senate of the hive, and +are dwellers in the holes of the rocks. It is quite true that, with a +painful craving for affection, he had not the genius of friendship. The +general impression given by his biography is one of isolation; in "the +sea of life" he was one of those who are most hopelessly "enisled." +Nothing is sadder than this severance of a delicate and sensitive +temperament from those who surround it closely and to whom it stretches +out its arms in vain. But a careful reading of these interesting volumes +leaves us in no doubt of the cause of this loneliness. Bulwer-Lytton, +with all his ardour and his generosity, was devoid of the gift of +sympathy. In characters of a simpler mould a natural kindliness may take +the place of comprehension. But Bulwer-Lytton had a lively and protean +fancy which perpetually deceived him. In human relations he was always +moving, but always on the wrong track. + +The letters to his mother, to his wife, to his son, exemplify this +unfortunate tendency. They are eloquent, they are even too eloquent, for +Bulwer-Lytton intoxicated himself with his own verbosity; they are meant +to be kind, they are meant to be just, they are meant to be wise and +dignified and tender; but we see, in Lord Lytton's impartial narrative, +that they scarcely ever failed to exasperate the receiver. His dealings +with his son, of whom he was exquisitely proud and sensitively fond, are +of the saddest character, because of the father's want of comprehension, +haste of speech and intolerance of temper. The very fact that a son, a +wife, or a mother could with impunity be addressed in terms of +exaggerated sensibility, because there could be no appeal, was a snare +to the too-ready pen of Bulwer-Lytton, which, poured out its oceans of +ink without reflection and without apprehension. If violent offence were +given, the post went out again later in the day, and equally violent +self-humiliation would restore the emotional balance. But what could not +be restored was the sense of confidence and domestic security. + +In his contact with other literary men of his own age more restraint was +necessary, and we learn from Lord Lytton's pages of valuable and +prolonged acquaintanceships which were sometimes almost friendships. His +company was much sought after, and occasionally by very odd persons. +Lord Lytton prints a series of most diverting letters from the notorious +Harriette Wilson, who, in spite of the terror into which her "Memoirs" +had thrown society, desired to add the author of _Pelham_ to the aviary +of her conquests. But the snare was set in vain before the eyes of so +shrewd a bird as Bulwer-Lytton; he declined to see the lady, but he kept +her amazing letters. This was in 1829, when the novelist seems to have +had no literary or political associates. But by 1831, we find him +editing the _New Monthly Magazine_, and attaching himself to Lord +Melbourne and Lord Durham on the one hand and to Disraeli and Dickens on +the other. When to these we have added Lady Blessington and Letitia +Landon, we have mentioned all those public persons with whom +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have been on terms of intimacy during his early +manhood. All through these years he was an incessant diner-out and +party-goer, and the object of marvellous adulation, but he passed +through all this social parade as though it had been a necessary portion +of the exterior etiquette of life. Why he fatigued himself by these +formal exercises, in which he seems to have found no pleasure, it is +impossible to conceive, but a sense of the necessity of parade was +strangely native to him. + +He had, however, one close and constant friend. John Forster was by far +the most intimate of all his associates throughout his career. +Bulwer-Lytton seems to have met him first about 1834, when he was +twenty-eight and Forster only twenty-two. In spite of this disparity in +age, the younger man almost at once took a tone of authority such as the +elder seldom permitted in an acquaintance. Forster had all the gifts +which make a friend valuable. He was rich in sympathy and resource, his +temper was reasonable, he comprehended a situation, he knew how to hold +his own in argument and yet yield with grace. Lord Lytton prints a very +interesting character-sketch of Forster, which he has found among his +grandfather's MSS. It is a tribute which does equal credit to him who +makes it and to him of whom it is made:-- + + "John Forster.... A most sterling man, with an intellect at once + massive and delicate. Few, indeed, have his strong practical sense + and sound judgment; fewer still unite with such qualities his + exquisite appreciation of latent beauties in literary art. Hence, + in ordinary life, there is no safer adviser about literary work, + especially poetry; no more refined critic. A large heart naturally + accompanies so masculine an understanding. He has the rare capacity + for affection which embraces many friendships without loss of depth + or warmth in one. Most of my literary contemporaries are his + intimate companions, and their jealousies of each other do not + diminish their trust in him. More than any living critic, he has + served to establish reputations. Tennyson and Browning owed him + much in their literary career. Me, I think, he served in that way + less than any of his other friends. But, indeed, I know of no + critic to whom I have been much indebted for any position I hold in + literature. In more private matters I am greatly indebted to his + counsels. His reading is extensive. What faults he has lie on the + surface. He is sometimes bluff to rudeness. But all such faults of + manner (and they are his only ones) are but trifling inequalities + in a nature solid and valuable as a block of gold." + +This was written with full experience, as the names of Tennyson and +Browning will remind us, for Bulwer-Lytton was slow to admit the value +of these younger talents. His relations with Tennyson have always been +known to be unfortunate; as they are revealed in Lord Lytton's biography +they approach the incredible. He met Browning at Covent Garden Theatre +during the Macready "revival" of the poetic stage, but it was not until +after the publication of _Men and Women_ that he became conscious of +Browning's claim, which he then very grudgingly admitted. He was +grateful to Browning for his kindness to Robert Lytton in Italy, but he +never understood his genius or his character. + +What, however, we read with no less pleasure than surprise are the +evidences of Bulwer-Lytton's interest in certain authors of a later +generation, of whom the general public has never suspected him to have +been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867 +between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew +Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds +it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure +those of his immediate contemporaries. The _Essays in Criticism_ and +_The Study of Celtic Literature_ called forth from the author of _My +Novel_ and _The Caxtons_ such eulogy as had never been spared for the +writings of Thackeray or Carlyle. Matthew Arnold appeared to +Bulwer-Lytton to have "brought together all that is most modern in +sentiment, with all that is most scholastic in thought and language." +Arnold was a guest at Knebworth, and brought the Duke of Genoa with him. +He liked Bulwer-Lytton, and their relations became very cordial and +lasted for some years; Arnold has given an amusing, but very +sympathetic, account of the dignified hospitalities of Knebworth. + +No revelation in Lord Lytton's volumes is, however, more pleasing or +more unexpected than his grandfather's correspondence with Swinburne. It +is thought that he heard of him through Monckton Milnes; at all events, +he was an early reader of _Atalanta in Calydon_. When, in 1866, all the +furies of the Press fell shrieking on _Poems and Ballads_, Bulwer-Lytton +took a very generous step. He wrote to Swinburne, expressing his +sympathy and begging him to be calm. The young poet was extremely +touched, and took occasion to beg the elder writer for his advice, the +publisher having, without consulting him, withdrawn his volume from +sale. Bulwer-Lytton's reply was a most cordial invitation to stay with +him at Knebworth and talk the matter over. Swinburne gratefully +accepted, and John Forster was asked to meet him. It was Bulwer-Lytton, +it appears, who found another publisher for the outraged volume, and +helped Swinburne out of the scrape. He was always kindness itself if an +appeal was made to his protection, and to his sense of justice. However, +pleasant as the visit to Knebworth was, there is no evidence that it was +repeated. Bulwer-Lytton considered Swinburne's opinions preposterous, +and indeed if he told Swinburne, as in 1869 he told his son Robert, that +Victor Hugo was "but an epileptic dwarf in a state of galvanism," there +must have been wigs on the green at Knebworth. + +The student of the biography, if he is already familiar with the more +characteristic works of Bulwer-Lytton, will find himself for the first +time provided with a key to much that has puzzled him in the nature of +that author. The story itself, apart from the tragic matrimonial trouble +which runs through it like a blood-red cord, is of unusual interest. It +is a story of strife, without repose, without enjoyment, but with a good +deal of splendour and satisfaction. Almost to the end Bulwer-Lytton was +engaged in struggle. As an ambitious social being he was fighting the +world; as an author he was battling with his critics; as a statesman he +was always in the wild storm of party politics. As a private individual +he was all the time keeping his head up against the tide of social +scandal which attacked him when he least expected it, and often +threatened to drown him altogether. This turmoil contrasts with the calm +of the evening years, after the peerage had been won, the ambition +satisfied, the literary reputation secured. + +Few writers have encountered, in their own time and after their death, +so much adverse criticism, and yet have partly survived it. It is hardly +realised, even perhaps by Lord Lytton, how unwilling the reviewers were +to give credit to his grandfather. He never found favour in their eyes, +and it was a matter of constant resentment with him that they did him, +as he thought, injustice. The evidence of his wounded feelings is +constant in his letters. The Quarterly Review never mentioned him +without contempt until 1865, when the publication of his works, in +forty-three volumes, forced it to consider this indefatigable and +popular writer with a measure of respect. Sir Walter Scott, with his +universal geniality, read _Pelham_ in 1828 and "found it very +interesting: the light is easy and gentlemanlike, the dark very grand +and sombrous." He asked who was the author, and he tried to interest his +son-in-law in the novel. But Lockhart was implacable: "_Pelham_," he +replied, "is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I +have not read the book, from disliking the author." Lockhart, however, +did read _Devereux_, and three years afterwards, when reviewing some +other novel, he said of the historical characters in that romance: "It +seems hard to disquiet so many bright spirits for the sole purpose of +showing that they _could_ be dull." That was the attitude of the higher +criticism to Bulwer-Lytton from, let us say, 1830 to 1860; he was "a +horrid puppy" and he was also "dull." + +But this was far from being the opinion of the reading public. We have +seen that he never failed, and sometimes he soared into the very +empyrean of popularity. In 1834, when he published _The Last Days of +Pompeii_, again in 1837 when he published _Ernest Maltravers_, the +ecstasy of his adorers discovered their favourite in a moment under the +mask of anonymity which he chose to assume. This was just before the +outburst of the great school of Victorian novelists; Bulwer had as yet +practically no one but Disraeli to compete with. These two, the author +of _Pelham_ and the author of _Vivian Grey_, raced neck and neck at the +head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them +forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted +personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm" +was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest +and most powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so +shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until +Bulwer-Lytton adopted his _Caxtons_ manner in the middle of the century. +As always in Byronic periods, the portrait of the author himself was +searched for among his most fatal conceptions. To the young library +subscriber the stoical, solitary figure of Mordaunt, in _The Disowned_, +was exactly what was wanted as a representation of the mysterious +novelist himself. Pelham was the apotheosis of the man of fashion, and +it is amusing to read how, when the Bulwer-Lyttons travelled, they were +gazed at in reverence as the Pelham and the Pelhamess. + +It would be difficult to improve upon the language used so early as 1832 +by one of the very few critics who attempted to do justice to +Bulwer-Lytton's merits. The _Edinburgh Review_ found in him "a style +vigorous and pliable, sometimes strangely incorrect, but often rising +into a touching eloquence." Ten years later such was the private opinion +of D.G. Rossetti, who was "inspired by reading _Rienzi_ and _Ernest +Maltravers_, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at +Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more +justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one +thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we +must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his +own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful +ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of +Continental history, he made realistic and humorous studies of +middle-class life, he engaged in vehement controversy on topics of the +hour, he prophesied of the order of the future, he wrote comedies and +tragedies, epics and epistles, satires and lyrics. His canvasses were +myriad and he crowded every one of them with figures. At his most +Byronic moment he flung his dark cloak aside, and danced in motley +through _Paul Clifford_, with its outrageous caricature of George IV. +and his Ministers as a gang of Hounslow highwaymen. Perhaps his best +claim to regard is the insatiability of his human curiosity, evinced in +the almost infinite variety of his compositions. + +The singular being who wrote so large a library of works and whose +actual features have so carefully been concealed from the public, will +be known at last. The piety of his grandson has presented him to us with +no reservations and no false lights. Here he stands, this half-fabulous +being, not sheathed in sham armour and padding the stage in buskins, but +a real personality at length, "with all his weaknesses and faults, his +prejudices, affectations, vanities, susceptibilities, and +eccentricities, and also with all his great qualities of industry, +courage, kindness of heart; sound judgment, patience, and perseverance." +Lord Lytton has carried through to the close a biographical enterprise +of unusual difficulty, and he deserves the thanks of all students of +English literature. + + + + +THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRONTES[7] + + +Although I possess in no degree the advantage which so many of the +members of your society enjoy in being personally connected with the +scenes and even, perhaps, with the characters associated with the Bronte +family, I cannot begin my little address to you to-day without some +invocation of the genius of the place. We meet at Dewsbury because the +immortal sisters were identified with Dewsbury. Is it then not +imperative that for whatever picture of them I may endeavour to present +before you this afternoon, Dewsbury should form the background? +Unfortunately, however, although in the hands of a skilful painter the +figures of the ladies may glow forth, I fear that in the matter of +taking Dewsbury as the background some vagueness and some darkness are +inevitable. In the biographies of Mrs. Gaskell and of Mr. Clement +Shorter, as well as in the proceedings of your society, I have searched +for evidences of the place Dewsbury took in the lives of the Brontes. +What I find--I expect you to tell me that it is not exhaustive--is this. +Their father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, was curate here from 1809 to +1811. In 1836, when Charlotte was twenty, Miss Wooler transferred her +school from Roe Head to Heald's House at the top of Dewsbury Moor. In +this school, where Charlotte had been a pupil since 1831, she was now a +governess, and a governess she remained until early in 1838. In April of +that year Miss Wooler was taken ill and Charlotte was for a little while +in charge. Then there was an explosion of temper, of some kind, and +Charlotte went back to Haworth. + +That, then, in the main, is the limit of what the scrupulous Muse of +history vouchsafes to tell us about Charlotte Bronte's relation to +Dewsbury. But it also supplies us with one or two phrases which I cannot +bring myself to spare you. In January 1838, Charlotte reviews her +experience at Dewsbury Moor; "I feel," she says, "in nothing better, +nothing humbler nor purer." Again, in 1841, after there had passed time +enough to mellow her exacerbations, she continues to express herself +with vigour. Miss Wooler is making overtures to Charlotte and Emily to +take over the school at Heald's House; perhaps a place might be found +for Anne as well. Miss Wooler, one of the kindest of women, is most +thoughtful, most conciliatory. Charlotte will have none of the idea; she +puts it roughly from her. Of Dewsbury she has nothing to say but that +"it is a poisoned place for me." This is all we know of Charlotte's +relation to Dewsbury, yet nothing, you will tell me, in Froude's phrase, +to what the angels know. Well, I must be frank with you and say that I +am afraid the angels have been inclined to record exceedingly little of +Charlotte Bronte's residence in your inoffensive neighbourhood. I have +to paint a background to my picture, and I find none but the gloomiest +colours. They have to be what the art-critics of the eighteenth century +called "sub-fusc." But it is not the fault of Dewsbury, it is the fault, +or the misfortune, of our remarkable little genius. She was here, in +this wholesome and hospitable vicinity, for several months, during which +time "she felt in nothing better, neither humbler nor purer," and +looking back upon it, she had to admit that it was "a poisoned place" +to her. + +I cannot help fancying that you will agree with me, that on such an +occasion as the present, and especially when dealing with a group of +writers about whom so much as has been said as about the Brontes, it is +wise not to cover too wide a ground, but to take, and keep to, one +aspect of the subject. Our little excursion into the history seems to +have given us, under the heading "Dewsbury," a rather grim text, from +which, nevertheless, we may perhaps extract some final consolation. Let +me say at the outset that for the grimness, for the harshness, Dewsbury +is not at all to blame. I fancy that if, in the years from 1836 to 1838, +the Bronte girls had been visitors to Kubla Khan, and had been fed on +honey by his myrmidons at Xanadu, that pleasure-dome would yet have been +"poisoned" to them. It was not poverty, and cold, and the disagreeable +position of a governess, it was not the rough landscape of your moors, +nor its lack of southern amenity which made Charlotte wretched here. It +was not in good Miss Wooler, nor in the pupils, nor in the visitors at +Heald's House that the mischief lay, it was in the closed and patient +crater of Charlotte's own bosom. And I am almost persuaded that, if you +had lived in Dewsbury sixty-five years ago, you would have heard on very +quiet days a faint subterranean sound which you would never have been +able to guess was really the passion, furiously panting, shut up in the +heart of a small, pale governess in Heald's House schoolroom. + +If you accuse me of fatalism, I am helpless in your hands, for I confess +I do not see how it could be otherwise, and do scarcely wish that it +could have been. Let us not be too sentimental in this matter. Figures +in literature are notable and valuable to us for what they give us. The +more personal and intense and definite that is, the greater the gift, +the more strenuous the toil and the more severe the initiation which +lead to its expression. The Brontes had a certain thing to learn to +give; what that was we shall presently try to note. But whatever we find +it to be, we start with allowing that it was extremely and boldly +original. It was not to be mastered by lying upon padded sofas and +toying with a little Berlin wool-work. It involved pain, resistance, a +stern revision of things hitherto taken for granted. The secrets which +they designed to wring from nature and from life were not likely to be +revealed to the self-indulgent and the dilettante. The sisters had a +message from the sphere of indignation and revolt. In order that they +should learn it as well as teach it, it was necessary that they should +arrive on the scene at an evil hour for their own happiness. _Jane Eyre_ +and _Shirley_ and _Villette_ could not have been written unless, for +long years, the world had been "a poisoned place" for Charlotte Bronte. + +It has been excellently said by Mrs. Humphry Ward that in many respects, +and to the very last, the Brontes challenge no less than they attract +us. This is an aspect which, in the midst of rapturous modern +heroine-worship, we are apt to forget. Thackeray, who respected the +genius of the family, and was immensely kind to the author of _Jane +Eyre_, never really felt comfortable in her company. We know how he +stole out of his own front-door, and slipped away into the night to +escape her. "A very austere little person," he called her, and we may +put what emphasis on the austerity we will. I feel sure that any +maladroit "white-washing of Charlotte" will tend, sooner or later, +good-natured though it may be, in a failure to comprehend what she +really was, in what her merit consisted, what the element in her was +that, for instance, calls us here together nearly half a century after +she completed her work and passed away. Young persons of genius very +commonly write depressing books; since, the more vivid an unripe +creature's impression of life is, the more acute is its distress. It is +only extremely stupid Sunday-school children who shout in chorus, "We +are so happy, happy, happy!" Genius thrown naked, with exposed nerves, +on a hard indifferent world, is never "happy" at first. Earth is a +"poisoned place" to it, until it has won its way and woven its garments +and discovered its food. + +But in the case of Charlotte Bronte, unhappiness was more than juvenile +fretfulness. All her career was a revolt against conventionality, +against isolation, against irresistible natural forces, such as climate +and ill-health and physical insignificance. Would this insubmissive +spirit have passed out of her writings, as it passed, for instance, out +of those of George Sand? I am not sure, for we see it as strongly, +though more gracefully and skilfully expressed, in _Villette_ as in the +early letters which her biographers have printed. Her hatred of what was +commonplace and narrow and obvious flung her against a wall of +prejudice, which she could not break down. She could only point to it by +her exhausting efforts; she could only invite the generation which +succeeded her to bring their pickaxes to bear upon it. Hence, to the +very last, she seems, more than any other figure in our literature, to +be forever ruffled in temper, for ever angry and wounded and indignant, +rejecting consolation, crouched like a sick animal in the cavern of her +own quenchless pride. This is not an amiable attitude, nor is it +historically true that this was Charlotte Bronte's constant aspect. But +I will venture to say that her amiabilities, her yielding moods, are +really the unessential parts of her disposition, and that a certain +admirable ferocity is the notable feature of her intellectual character. + +Her great heart was always bleeding. Here at Dewsbury, in the years we +are contemplating, the hemorrhage was of the most doleful kind, for it +was concealed, suppressed, it was an inward flow. When once she became +an author the pain of her soul was relieved. She said, in 1850, looking +back on the publication of the hapless first volume of poems, "The mere +effort to succeed gave a wonderful zest to existence." Then, a little +later, when no one had paid the slightest attention to the slender trio +of maiden voices, "Something like the chill of despair began to invade +their hearts." With a less powerful inspiration, they must have ceased +to make the effort; they must have succumbed in a melancholy oblivion. +But they were saved by the instinct of a mission. It was not their +private grief which primarily stirred them. What urged them on was the +dim consciousness that they gave voice to a dumb sense of the suffering +of all the world. They had to go on working; they had to pursue their +course, though it might seem sinister or fatal; their business was to +move mankind, not to indulge or please it. They "must be honest; they +must not varnish, soften, or conceal." + +What Charlotte Bronte was learning to do in her grim and, let us admit +it, her unlovely probation on Dewsbury Moor, was to introduce a fresh +aspect of the relations of literature to life. Every great writer has a +new note; hers was--defiance. All the aspects in which life presented +itself to her were distressing, not so much in themselves as in herself. +She rebelled against the outrages of poverty, and she drank to its dregs +the cup of straitened circumstances. She was proud, as proud as Lucifer, +and she was forced into positions which suppleness and cheerfulness +might have made tolerable, if not agreeable. She wrung from these +positions their last drop of bitterness. A very remarkable instance of +this may be found in her relation to the Sidgwick family, who, by +universal report, were generous, genial, and unassuming. To Charlotte +Bronte these kindly, if somewhat commonplace folk, grew to seem what a +Turkish pasha seems to the inhabitants of a Macedonian village. It was +not merely the surroundings of her life--it was life itself, in its +general mundane arrangements, which was intolerable to her. She fretted +in it, she beat her wings against its bars, and she would have done the +same if those bars had been of gold, and if the fruits of paradise had +been pushed to her between them. This, I think, is why the expression of +her anger seems too often disproportionate, and why her irony is so apt +to be preposterous. She was born to resist being caged in any form. Her +defiance was universal, and often it was almost indiscriminate. + +Do not let us presume to blame this insubmission. Still less let us +commit the folly of minimising it. A good cheerful little Charlotte +Bronte, who thought the best of everybody, who gaily took her place +without a grudging sigh, whose first aim was to make those about her +happy and to minister to their illusions, would have been a much more +welcome inmate of Miss Wooler's household than the cantankerous +governess whom nobody could please, whose susceptibilities were always +on edge, whose lonely arrogance made her feared by all but one or two +who timidly persisted in loving her. But such a paragon of the obvious +virtues would have passed as the birds pass and as the flowers. She +would have left no mark behind. She would never have enriched the +literature of England by one of its master-evidences of the force of +human will. She would never have stirred hundreds of thousands of +consciences to a wholesome questioning of fate and their own souls. + +Let us endeavour to pursue the inquiry a few steps further. It is +impossible to separate the ethical conditions of an author's mind from +the work that he produces. The flower requires the soil; it betrays in +its colour and its perfume the environment of its root. The moral +constitution of the writer is reflected in the influence of the written +page. This is the incessant contention; on one hand the independence of +art asserts itself; on the other, it is impossible to escape from the +implicit influence of conduct upon art. There have been few writers of +any age in whom this battle raged more fiercely than it did in Charlotte +Bronte. Her books, and those of her sisters, seem anodyne enough to-day; +to readers of a sensitive species they seemed, when they were published, +as dangerous as _Werther_ had been, as seductive as the _Nouvelle +Heloise_. The reason of this was, in the main, the spirit of revolt +which inspired them. There was something harsh and glaring in their +landscape; there was that touch of Salvator Rosa which one of their +earliest critics observed in them. But more essential was the +stubbornness, the unflinching determination to revise all accepted +formulas of conduct, to do this or that, not because it was usual to do +it, but because it was rational, and in harmony with human nature. + +Into an age which had become almost exclusively utilitarian, and in +which the exercise of the imagination, in its real forms, was sedulously +discountenanced, Charlotte Bronte introduced passion in the sphere of +prose fiction, as Byron had introduced it in the sphere of verse thirty +years earlier. It was an inestimable gift; it had to come to us, from +Charlotte Bronte or another, to save our literature from a decline into +triviality and pretension. But she suffered, as Byron had suffered, in +the direct ratio of her originality. If a writer employs passion in an +age which has ceased to recognise it as one of the necessities of +literary vitality he is safe to be accused of perverting his readers. +Balzac says, "When nothing else can be charged against an author, the +reproach of immorality is thrown at his head." When we study the record +of the grim life of the sisters at Haworth, like that of three young +soldiers round a camp-fire with the unseen enemy prowling in the +darkness just out of their sight--when we think of the strenuous vigil, +the intractable and indomitable persistence, the splendour of the +artistic result--we may console ourselves in our anger at the insults +they endured, by reflecting how little they cared. And their noble +indifference to opinion further endears them to us. We may repeat of +them all what Charlotte in a letter once said of Emily, "A certain +harshness in her powerful and peculiar character only makes me cling to +her more." + +This insubmissiveness, which was the unconscious armour given to protect +her against the inevitable attacks of fortune, while, on the other hand, +it was the very sign-manual of Charlotte's genius, was, on the other, a +drawback from which she did not live long enough to emancipate her +nature. It is responsible for her lack of interest in what is delicate +and complex; it excused to herself a narrowness of vision which we are +sometimes tempted to find quite distressing. It is probably the cause of +a fault that never quits her for long, a tendency to make her characters +express themselves with a lyrical extravagance which sometimes comes +close to the confines of rodomontade. Charlotte Bronte never arrives at +that mastery of her material which permits the writer to stand apart +from his work, and sway the reader with successive tides of emotion +while remaining perfectly calm himself. Nor is she one of those whose +visible emotion is nevertheless fugitive, like an odour, and evaporates, +leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. On +the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her +sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with +serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager +spirit, immortal in its active force, seems to throb beside it. + +The aspect of Charlotte Bronte which I have tried to indicate to you +to-day, and which I have sketched thus hastily and slightly against the +background of her almost voiceless residence in Dewsbury, is far from +being a complete or unique one. I offer it to you only as a single facet +of her wonderful temperament, of the rich spectacle of her talent. I +have ventured to propose it, because, in the multiplication of honours +and attentions, the tendency to deify the human, to remove those +phenomena of irregularity which are the evidence of mortal strength, +grows irresistible, and we find ourselves, unconsciously, substituting a +waxen bust, with azure eyes and golden hair, for the homely features +which (if we could but admit it) so infinitely better match the honest +stories. Let us not busy ourselves to make excuse for our austere little +genius of the moors. Let us be content to take her exactly as she was, +with her rebellion and her narrowness, her angers and her urgencies, +perceiving that she had to be this sorrowful offspring of a poisoned +world in order to clear the wells of feeling for others, and to win from +emancipated generations of free souls the gratitude which is due to a +precursor. + +[Footnote 7: Address delivered before the Bronte Society in the Town +Hall of Dewsbury, March 28th, 1903.] + + + + +THE NOVELS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI + + +It is not easy for a man whose sovereign ambition is seen to be leading +him with great success in a particular direction to obtain due credit +for what he accomplishes with less manifest success in another. There is +no doubt that Disraeli as an author has, at all events until very +lately, suffered from the splendour of his fame as a politician. But he +was an author long before he became a statesman, and it certainly is a +little curious that even in his youth, although he was always +commercially successful with his books, they were never, as we say, +"taken seriously" by the critics. His earliest novels were largely +bought, and produced a wide sensation, but they were barely accepted as +contributions to literature. If we look back to the current criticism of +those times, we find such a book as _Dacre_, a romance by the Countess +of Morley, which is now absolutely forgotten, treated with a dignity and +a consideration never accorded to _The Young Duke_ or to _Henrietta +Temple_. Even Disraeli's satiric squibs, in the manner of Lucian and +Swift, which seem to us among the most durable ornaments of light +literature in the days of William IV., were read and were laughed at, +but were not critically appraised. + +So, too, at the middle period of Disraeli's literary life, such books as +_Coningsby_ and _Tancred_ were looked upon as amusing commentaries on +the progress of a strenuous politician, not by any means, or by any +responsible person, as possible minor classics of our language. And at +his third period, the ruling criticism of the hour was aghast at faults +which now entertain us, and was blind to sterling merits which we are +now ready to acknowledge. Shortly after his death, perhaps his most +brilliant apologist was fain to admit that if Disraeli had been +undistinguished as a speaker, his novels would have been "as the flowers +of the field, charming for the day which was passing over them, and then +forgotten." It is only since the beginning of the present century that a +conviction has been gaining ground that some of these books were in +themselves durable, not because they were the work of a man who became +Prime Minister of England and made his sovereign Empress of India, but +as much or as little as if they had been composed by a recluse in a +hermitage. This impression has now become so general with enlightened +critics that the danger seems to be that we should underrate certain +excesses of rhetoric and the Corinthian mode the errors of which used to +be over-emphasised, but should not, in a comparative survey of Victorian +literature, be neglected as serious drawbacks to our perfect enjoyment +of the high-spirited, eloquent, and ardent writings of Benjamin +Disraeli. It is in this spirit of moderation that I now attempt a rapid +sketch of his value as an English author. + + +I + +There is, perhaps, no second example of a writer whose work is divided, +as is that of Disraeli, into three totally distinct periods. Other +authors, as for example, the poet Crabbe, and in a less marked degree +Rogers, have abandoned the practice of writing for a considerable number +of years, and then have resumed it. But the case of Disraeli seems to be +unique as that of a man who pursued the writing, of books with great +ardour during three brief and independent spaces of time. We have his +first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with _Vivian Grey_ +(1826) and closed with _Venetia_ (1837). We have a second epoch, opening +with _Coningsby_ (1844) and ending with _Tancred_ (1847), during which +time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels +which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. +Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, +but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted +for. It will, therefore, be convenient to treat them successively. + +As oblivion scatters its poppy over the prose fiction of the reigns of +George IV. and William IV., it becomes in creasingly dangerous that +criticism should take the early "fashionable" novels of Disraeli as +solitary representations of literary satire or observation. It is true +that to readers of to-day this class of romance is exclusively +suggestive of _Vivian Grey_ and its fellows, with perhaps the _Pelham_ +of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of +these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary +in their treatment of society. In the course of _The Young Duke_, +written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances +"written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had +only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as +it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of _Tremaine_ +(1825) and _De Vere_ (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English +gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough. +But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold +the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they +lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the +age. + +The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing +years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were +welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books +as _Granby_ and _Dacre_. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli +belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned. +They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge +flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in +general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a +sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded +innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who +think of _Vivian Grey_ as a work of amazing novelty, to the fact that +the _genre_ it represents to us was one which had been lifted into high +credit the year before by the consecrated success of _Tremaine_, and was +at that moment cultivated by a multitude of minor novelists. + +There was, however, a distinction, and it lay in the greater fund of +animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. _Vivian Grey_ was +absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the +opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent +young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid +for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to +be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." _Vivian +Grey_ is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli +himself called it "a hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he +had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing +lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has +exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the +impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has +always been a tendency to exalt _Vivian Grey_ at the expense of _The +Young Duke_ (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the +former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in +this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be +supposed. In _The Young Duke_ the manner is not so burlesque, but there +is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and +fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to +our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the +existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron +Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche? +The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is +particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always +hovering between sublimity and a giggle. + +But here is an example, from _Vivian Grey_, of Disraeli's earliest +manner:-- + + "After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice, + and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke + of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured + views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes, + his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in + his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of + human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which + now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon + his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet! + my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been + imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!' + + "She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head + still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her + off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive + her. But when he tried to lay her a moment on the bank, she clung + to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He + leant over her; he did not attempt to disengage her arms; and, by + degrees, by very slow degrees, her grasp loosened. At last her arms + gave way and fell by her side, and her eyes partly opened. + + "'Thank God! Violet, my own, my beloved, say you are better!' + + "She answered not, evidently she did not know him, evidently she + did not see him. A film was on her sight, and her eye was glassy. + He rushed to the water-side, and in a moment he had sprinkled her + temples, now covered with a cold dew. Her pulse beat not, her + circulation seemed suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he + covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the + bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No + one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he + shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no + answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not + leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were + still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her + hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the + warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he + prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting + like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the + screech of an owl! + + "Once more at the river-side, once more bending over her with + starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the + soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have + given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her + position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was + a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite + cold, her limbs stiffened. He gazed, and gazed, and gazed. He bent + over her with stupor rather than grief stamped on his features. It + was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind, very + slowly that the horrible truth seized upon his soul. He gave a loud + shriek, and fell on the lifeless body of VIOLET FANE!" + +A line in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of _Alarcos_ pathetically +admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli +was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased +should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his +writings. _Henrietta Temple_ is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell +a great consecutive story of passion, and no doubt there have been those +who have palpitated over the love-at-first-sight of Ferdinand Armine and +Henrietta Temple. But Disraeli's serious vein is here over-luscious; the +love-passages are too emphatic and too sweet. An early critic spoke of +this _dulcia vitia_ of style which we meet with even in _Contarini +Fleming_ as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His +attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often +deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine +against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn +who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or +murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy +nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry +us over such marshlands of cold style. + +Of these imperfections, fewer are to be found in _Venetia_ and fewest in +_Contarini Fleming_. This beautiful romance is by far the best of +Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can +be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is +thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any direct sense an +autobiography, and yet the mental and moral experiences of the author +animate every chapter of it. This novel is written with far more ease +and grace than any previous book of the author's, and Contarini gives a +reason which explains the improvement in his creator's manner when he +remarks: "I wrote with greater facility than before, because my +experience of life was so much increased that I had no difficulty in +making my characters think and act." _Contarini Fleming_ belongs to +1831, when its writer, at the comparatively ripe age of twenty-seven, +had already seen a vast deal of man and of the world of Europe. + +We are not to believe the preposterous account that Contarini-Disraeli +gives of his methods of composition:-- + + "My thoughts, my passion, the rush of my invention, were too quick + for my pen. Page followed page; as a sheet was finished I threw it + on the floor; I was amazed at the rapid and prolific production, + yet I could not stop to wonder. In half a dozen hours I sank back + exhausted, with an aching frame. I rang the bell, ordered some + refreshment, and walked about the room. The wine invigorated me and + warmed up my sinking fancy, which, however, required little fuel. I + set to it again, and it was midnight before I retired to bed." + +At this rate we may easily compute that the longest of his novels would +be finished in a week. _Contarini Fleming_ seems to have occupied him +the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him, +exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes, +flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a +matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts of +composition. + +It is to be noted that the whole tone of _Contarini Fleming_ is +intensely literary. The appeal to the intellectual, to the fastidious +reader is incessant. This is an attitude always rare in English fiction, +but at that epoch almost unknown, and its presence in the writings of +Disraeli gives them a cachet. Under all the preposterous conversation, +all the unruly turmoil of description, there runs a strong thread of +entirely sober, political, and philosophical ambition. Disraeli striving +with all his might to be a great poet, of the class of Byron and Goethe, +a poet who is also a great mover and master of men--this is what is +manifest to us throughout _Contarini Fleming_. It is almost pathetically +manifest, because Disraeli--whatever else he grew to be--never became a +poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over +the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never +persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a +poet. + +A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial +one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his +serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the +mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in +verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain +buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome, +in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had +been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he +had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding +admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who +complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna +insupportable and the _naivete_ of Christiana mawkish. There are pages +in _Alroy_ that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how +much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been +conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous gravity +of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his +earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired, +especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift. + +But in _Contarini Fleming_ we detect a new flavour, and it is a very +fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with +the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of +reading _Zadig_ and _Candide_ was the completion of the style of +Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth" +which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic _contes_ +of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does +not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a +tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de +Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the +old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the +startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those +which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in +Parliament. + +In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of _Contarini +Fleming_ cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and +Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is +a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with +Alceste Contarini is plainly borrowed from _Epiphsychidion_. Disraeli +does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his +voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is +bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through +it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the +extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as _Contarini +Fleming_ are borrowed from no exotic source. + +It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice exercises +over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to +indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's _Life +and Letters_ and the completion of Rogers' _Italy_ with Turner's +paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic +interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city." +Whenever Disraeli reaches Venice his style improves, and if he mourns +over her decay, his spirits rise when he has to describe her +enchantments by moonlight. He reserves his most delicate effects for +Greece and Venice:-- + + "A Grecian sunset! The sky is like the neck of a dove! the rocks + and waters are bathed with a violet light. Each moment it changes; + each moment it shifts into more graceful and more gleaming shadows. + And the thin white moon is above all; the thin white moon, followed + by a single star, like a lady by a page." + +There are many passages as sumptuous as this in _Venetia_, the romance +about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in +publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia +is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron +(Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the +indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which +the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord +Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and refined spirits that have +adorned these our latter days" is highly characteristic of Disraeli. The +reception of Lord Cadurcis in the House of Peers and the subsequent riot +in Palace Yard mark, perhaps, the highest point in direct narrative +power which the novelist had yet reached; but _Venetia_ was not liked, +and Disraeli withdrew from literature into public life. + + +II + +When Disraeli resumed the art of the novelist, he was no longer talking +of what lay outside his experience when he touched on politics. In 1837 +he had entered the House at last, as Member for Maidstone, and although +his enemies roared him down on the first occasion of his rising to +speak, he soon learned how to impose his voice on Parliament. In 1839 +his declaration that "the rights of labour are as sacred as the rights +of property" made him famous, and in 1841 he was one of Sir Robert +Peel's Conservative army in the House. Then followed the formation of +the Young England Party, with Disraeli as one of its leaders; these men +broke away from Peel, and held that the Tory Party required stringent +reform from within. It was in 1843 that Henry Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, +urged, at a meeting of the Young Englanders, the expediency of +Disraeli's "treating in a literary form those views and subjects which +were the matter of their frequent conversations." Disraeli instantly +returned to literary composition, and produced in quick succession the +four books which form the second section of his work as an author; these +are _Coningsby_, _Sybil_, _Tancred_, and the _Life of Lord George +Bentinck_. + +In this group of books we observe, in the first place, a great advance +in vitality and credibility over the novels of the earlier period. +Disraeli is now describing what he knows, no longer what he hopes in +process of time to know. He writes from within, no longer from without +the world of political action. These three novels and a biography are +curiously like one another in form, and all equally make a claim to be +considered not mere works of entertainment, but serious contributions to +political philosophy. The assumption is borne out by the character of +the books, each of which had a definite aim and purpose. _Coningsby_ +was designed to make room for new talent in the Tory Party by an +unflinching attack on the "mediocrities." In _Sybil_ the heartless abuse +of capital and the vices of class distinction are exposed. _Tancred_ is +a vision of better things to follow upon the reforms already indicated. +In _Lord George Bentinck_, under the guise of a record of the struggle +between Protection and Free Trade, we have a manual of personal conduct +as applied to practical politics. + +In all these works narrative pure and simple inclines to take a +secondary place. It does so least in _Coningsby_ which, as a story, is +the most attractive book of Disraeli's middle period, and one of the +most brilliant studies of political character ever published. The tale +is interspersed with historical essays, which impede its progress but +add to its weight and value. Where, however, the author throws himself +into his narrative, the advance he has made in power, and particularly +in truth of presentment, is very remarkable. In the early group of his +novels he had felt a great difficulty in transcribing conversations so +as to produce a natural and easy effect. He no longer, in _Coningsby_, +is confronted by this artificiality. His dialogues are now generally +remarkable for their ease and nature. The speeches of Rigby (who +represents John Wilson Croker), of Lord Monmouth (who stands for Lord +Hertford), of the Young Englanders themselves, of the laughable chorus +of Taper and Tadpole, who never "despaired of the Commonwealth," are +often extremely amusing. In _Coningsby_ we have risen out of the +rose-coloured mist of unreality which hung over books like _The Young +Duke_ and _Henrietta Temple_. The agitated gentleman whose peerage hangs +in the balance, and who on hearing that the Duke of Wellington is with +the King breathes out in a sigh of relief "Then there _is_ a +Providence," is a type of the subsidiary figure which Disraeli had now +learned to introduce with infinite lightness of irony. + +Disraeli had a passion for early youth, and in almost all his books he +dwells lovingly upon its characteristics. It is particularly in +_Contarini Fleming_ and in _Coningsby_--that is to say, in the best +novels of his first and of his second period--that he lingers over the +picture of schoolboy life with tenderness and sympathy. We have only to +compare them, however, to see how great an advance he had made in ten +years in his power of depicting such scenes. The childish dreams of +Contarini are unchecked romance, and though the friendship with Musaeus +is drawn with delicacy and insight, and though that is an extremely +pretty scene where Christiana soothes the pride of Contarini, yet a +manliness and a reality are missing which we find in the wonderful Eton +scenes of _Coningsby_. + +Disraeli's comprehension of the feelings of half-grown ambitious boys of +good family was extraordinary, and when we consider that he had never +been to a public school, his picture of the life and conversation at +Eton is remarkable for its fidelity to nature. The relation of the elder +schoolboys to one another--a theme to which he was fond of recurring--is +treated in a very adroit and natural spirit, not without a certain +Dorian beauty. This preoccupation with the sentiments and passions of +schoolboys was rather crudely found fault with at the time. We need have +no difficulty in comprehending the pleasure he felt in watching the +expansion of those youthful minds from whom he hoped for all that was to +make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at +Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed, +and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour--an act +of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of--is +justified by the dignified success of a very dangerous experiment. + +The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest +good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the +most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the +caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's +poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as +Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he +was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just +scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might +want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who "might have +acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so +many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely +have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all +the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale +stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the +forest, over the celebrated dish of "still-hissing bacon and eggs that +looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur, +and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli +himself. + +When we pass from _Coningsby_ to _Sybil_ we find the purely narrative +interest considerably reduced in the pursuit of a scheme of political +philosophy. This is of all Disraeli's novels the one which most +resembles a pamphlet on a serious topic. For this reason it has never +been a favourite among his works, and his lighter readers have passed it +over with a glance. _Sybil_, however, is best not read at all if it is +not carefully studied. In the course of _Coningsby_, that young hero had +found his way to Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world, +"poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and +feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in +our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the +portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But +it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the +working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract +his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious +and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear +witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied +Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that +he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he +was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers. + +All this is reflected on the surface of _Sybil_, and, notwithstanding +curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and +true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted +than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard, +the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his +daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell +you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant +answer, "You _are_ a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You +are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town." +This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations +among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave _Sybil_ no +chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the +depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to +produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories, +which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier +simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given +fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of +Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not +blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures +of human suffering in _Sybil_. + +Then followed _Tancred_, which, as it has always been reported, +continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary +offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties +which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he +became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began +to despair of discovering any cure for it. In _Tancred_ he laid aside in +great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book +is steeped in the colours of poetry--of poetry, that is to say, as the +florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens--as all his books love to +open--with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is +commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type +of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a +flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative. +Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely +picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream. + +The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in +_Coningsby_, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central +theme of the story in _Tancred_. This novel is inspired by an outspoken +and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its +future. In the presence of the mighty monuments of Jerusalem, Disraeli +forgets that he is a Christian and an ambitious member of the English +Parliament. His only solicitude is to recover his privileges as a Jew, +and to recollect that he stands in the majestic cradle of his race. He +becomes interpenetrated with solemn mysticism; a wind of faith blows in +his hair. He cries, "God never spoke except to an Arab," and we are +therefore not surprised to find an actual Divine message presently +pronounced in Tancred's ears as he stands on the summit of Mount Sinai. +This is, perhaps, the boldest flight of imagination which occurs in the +writings of Disraeli. Tancred endeavours to counteract the purely +Hebraic influences of Palestine by making a journey of homage to +Astarte, a mysterious and beautiful Pagan queen--an "Aryan," as he loves +to put it--who reigns in the mountains of Syria. But even she does not +encourage him to put his trust in the progress of Western Europe. + +_Tancred_ is written in Disraeli's best middle style, full, sonorous, +daring, and rarely swelling into bombast. It would even be too uniformly +grave if the fantastic character of Facredeen did not relieve the +solemnity of the discourse with his amusing tirades. Like that of all +Disraeli's novels, the close of this one is dim and unsatisfactory. If +there is anything that the patient reader wants to know it is how the +Duke and Duchess of Bellemont behaved to the Lady of Bethany when they +arrived at Jerusalem and found their son in the kiosk under her +palm-tree. But this is curiosity of a class which Disraeli is not +unwilling to awaken, but which he never cares to satisfy. He places the +problems in a heap before us, and he leaves us to untie the knots. It is +a highly characteristic trait of his mind as a writer that he is for +ever preoccupied with the beginnings of things, and as little as +possible with their endings. + +It is not, however, from _Tancred_ but from _Coningsby_, that we take +our example of Disraeli's second manner:-- + + "Even to catch Lord Monmouth's glance was not an easy affair; he + was much occupied on one side by the great lady, on the other were + several gentlemen who occasionally joined in the conversation. But + something must be done. + + "There ran through Coningsby's character, as we have before + mentioned, a vein of simplicity which was not its least charm. It + resulted, no doubt, in a great degree from the earnestness of his + nature. There never was a boy so totally devoid of affectation, + which was remarkable, for he had a brilliant imagination, a quality + that, from its fantasies, and the vague and indefinite desires it + engenders, generally makes those whose characters are not formed, + affected. The Duchess, who was a fine judge of character, and who + greatly regarded Coningsby, often mentioned this trait as one + which, combined with his great abilities and acquirements so + unusual at his age, rendered him very interesting. In the present + instance it happened that, while Coningsby was watching his + grandfather, he observed a gentleman advance, make his bow, say and + receive a few words and retire. This little incident, however, made + a momentary diversion in the immediate circle of Lord Monmouth, and + before they could all resume their former talk and fall into their + previous positions, an impulse sent forth Coningsby, who walked up + to Lord Monmouth, and standing before him, said, + + "'How do you do, grandpapa?' + + "Lord Monmouth beheld his grandson. His comprehensive and + penetrating glance took in every point with a flash. There stood + before him one of the handsomest youths he had ever seen, with a + mien as graceful as his countenance was captivating; and his whole + air breathing that freshness and ingenuousness which none so much + appreciates as the used man of the world. And this was his child; + the only one of his blood to whom he had been kind. It would be an + exaggeration to say that Lord Monmouth's heart was touched; but his + good-nature effervesced, and his fine taste was deeply gratified. + He perceived in an instant such a relation might be a valuable + adherent; an irresistible candidate for future elections: a + brilliant tool to work out the Dukedom. All these impressions and + ideas, and many more, passed through the quick brain of Lord + Monmouth ere the sound of Coningsby's words had seemed to cease, + and long before the surrounding guests had recovered from the + surprise which they had occasioned them, and which did not + diminish, when Lord Monmouth, advancing, placed his arms round + Coningsby with a dignity of affection that would have become Louis + XIV., and then, in the high manner of the old Court, kissed him on + each cheek. + + "'Welcome to your home,' said Lord Monmouth. 'You have grown a + great deal.' + + "Then Lord Monmouth led the agitated Coningsby to the great lady, + who was a Princess and an Ambassadress, and then, placing his arm + gracefully in that of his grandson, he led him across the room, and + presented him in due form to some royal blood that was his guest, + in the shape of a Russian Grand Duke. His Imperial Highness + received our hero as graciously as the grandson of Lord Monmouth + might expect; but no greeting can be imagined warmer than the one + he received from the lady with whom the Grand Duke was conversing. + She was a dame whose beauty was mature, but still radiant. Her + figure was superb; her dark hair crowned with a tiara of curious + workmanship. Her rounded arm was covered with costly bracelets, but + not a jewel on her finely-formed bust, and the least possible rouge + on her still oval cheek. Madame Colonna retained her charms." + + +III + +Nearly a quarter of a century passed, during which Disraeli slowly rose +to the highest honours in the State. Lord Derby died, and the novelist, +already Leader of the House of Commons, found himself called to be Prime +Minister of England. His first administration, however, was brief, and +in the last days of 1868 he resigned in favour of Mr. Gladstone. The +Liberals were in for five years, and Disraeli, in opposition, found a +sort of tableland stretch in front of him after so much arduous +climbing. It was at this moment, shortly after the resignation of the +Tory Minister, that the publisher of a magazine approached him with the +request that he would write a novel to appear in its pages. He was +offered, it is said, a sum of money far in excess of what any one, at +that time, had ever received for "serial rights." Disraeli refused the +offer, but it may have drawn his thoughts back to literature, and in the +course of 1869, after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was +completed, he found time to write what is unquestionably the greatest of +his literary works--the superb ironic romance of _Lothair_. + +Eminent as he was and eminently successful, Disraeli was far, in 1870, +from having conquered public opinion in England. The reception of his +new novel was noisy, and enjoyed to the full the clamours of +advertisement, but it was not favourable. The critics laughed it to +scorn, and called it a farce and a failure. The _Quarterly Review_, in +the course of a savage diatribe, declared that it was "as dull as +ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it +as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the +criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as +Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to +kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit +that if the stormy Parliamentarian life Disraeli had led so long had +given him immense personal advantages, it had also developed some +defects. It had taught him boundless independence and courage, it had +given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his +satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had +encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the +bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of _Coningsby_ and +of _Tancred_ he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But +_Lothair_, even in its corrected form--and the first edition is a +miracle of laxity--is curiously incorrect. It reads as though it were +taken down from the flowing speech of a fine orator, not as though it +were painfully composed in a study; it contains surprising ellipses, +strange freaks of grammar. There was all this, and more, to encourage +the critics, whom Disraeli had gone out of his way to affront in a +violent epigram, to attack _Lothair_ with contempt and resentment. + +The critics took irony for timidity; they thought that the sardonic +novelist was the dupe of the splendours which he invented and gloated +over. But if one thing is more evident than another to-day it is that +this gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl +and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an +immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in +another sense, the keynote of _Lothair_ is "mockery blended with Ionian +splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been +more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise +that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life, +and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous, +but he let himself go in _Lothair_; all is like the dream of a Lorenzo +dei Medicis or an Aurungzebe. Nothing is done by halves. Muriel Towers +was set on "the largest natural lake that inland England boasts"--some +lake far larger than Windermere and entirely unsuspected by geographers. +This piece of water is studded with "green islands," which is natural. +But the author cannot stay his hand: this largest of the English lakes +is also alive with "golden gondolas," which are rarer objects. In one of +the odd little flashes of self-criticism which illuminate the book +Lothair says of a certain northern garden, with its fanes and its +fountains, its glittering statues and its Babylonian terraces, that +there are "perhaps too many temples." + +There are perhaps too many temples in the landscape of _Lothair_, but +they were put in on purpose. The splendour is part of the satire. When +the hero has ordered an architect to make some plans for a building, the +door opens and servants enter bearing "a large and magnificent portfolio +of morocco, made of prelatial purple with broad bands of gold and +alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet." It is the sort of +portfolio that Belshazzar might have used, but no English master-builder +since time began ever launched forth into such splendour. This is +characteristic of Disraeli and of his book; it pleased him to wrap all +his fancies in jewelled cloth of gold. He chose that the world should +consist of nothing but Tudor palaces in colossal parks, and that time +should be no other than a perpetual Holy Week of golden ceremonial. He +knew his public, and that it adored these follies. He spoke to them in +the language that they loved, but in a tone of the most seraphical +disdain and irony. + +What marks the whole of Disraeli's writings more than any other quality +is the buoyant and radiant temperament of their author. In _Lothair_ he +is like an inspired and enfranchised boy, set free from all the trammels +of reality, and yet bringing to the service of his theme the results of +an extraordinary inherited experience. If the picture is not real, we +may take courage to say that it is far better than reality--more rich, +more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly +written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and +when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a +mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is +seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of _Lothair_, and have become +part of our habitual speech--the phrase about eating "a little fruit on +a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the +gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that +Disraeli is one of those who have felt most vividly and expressed most +gaily the peculiar physical beauty of London. He saw the Park as the +true Londoner sees it--when "the chestnuts are in silver bloom, and the +pink may has flushed the thorns, and banks of sloping turf are radiant +with plots of gorgeous flowers; when the water glitters in the sun, and +the air is fragrant with that spell which only can be found in +metropolitan mignonette." He describes as no one else has ever done with +equal mastery a stately and successful house-party in a great country +mansion. He had developed, when he composed _Lothair_, a fuller sense of +beauty than he had ever possessed before, but it revelled in forms that +were partly artificial and partly fabulous. An example of these forms +may now be welcome:-- + + "Mr. Giles took an early easy opportunity of apprising Lady + Farringford that she had nearly met Cardinal Grandison at dinner, + and that his Eminence would certainly pay his respects to Mrs. + Putney Giles in the evening. As Lady Farringford was at present a + high ritualist, and had even been talked of as 'going to Rome,' + this intelligence was stunning, and it was observed that her + Ladyship was unusually subdued during the whole of the second + course. + + "On the right of Lothair sate the wife of a Vice-Chancellor, a + quiet and pleasing lady, to whom Lothair, with natural good + breeding, paid snatches of happy attention, when he could for a + moment with propriety withdraw himself from the blaze of + Apollonia's coruscating conversation. Then there was a rather + fierce-looking Red Ribbon, medalled as well as be-starred, and the + Red Ribbon's wife, with a blushing daughter, in spite of her + parentage not yet accustomed to stand fire. A partner and his + unusually numerous family had the pleasure also of seeing Lothair + for the first time, and there were no less than four M.P.'s, one of + whom was even in office. + + "Apollonia was stating to Lothair, with brilliant perspicuity, the + reasons which quite induced her to believe that the Gulf Stream had + changed its course, and the political and social consequences that + might accrue. + + "'The religious sentiment of the Southern races must be wonderfully + affected by a more rigorous climate,' said Apollonia. 'I cannot + doubt,' she continued, 'that a series of severe winters at Rome + might put an end to Romanism. + + "'But is there any fear that a reciprocal influence might be + exercised on the Northern nations?' inquired Lothair. 'Would there + be any apprehension of our Protestantism becoming proportionately + relaxed?' + + "'Of course not,' said Apollonia. 'Truth cannot be affected by + climate. Truth is truth alike in Palestine and Scandinavia.' + + "'I wonder what the Cardinal would think of this,' said Lothair, + 'who, you tell me, is coming to you this evening.' + + "'Yes, I am most interested to see him, though he is the most + puissant of our foes. Of course he would take refuge in sophistry; + and science, you know, they deny.' + + "'Cardinal Grandison is giving some lectures on science,' said the + Vice-Chancellor's lady, quietly. + + "'It is remorse,' said Apollonia. 'Their clever men can never + forget that unfortunate affair of Galileo, and think they can + divert the indignation of the nineteenth century by mock zeal about + red sandstone or the origin of species.' + + "'And are you afraid of the Gulf Stream?' inquired Lothair of his + calmer neighbour. + + "'I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor + and I went down to a place we have near town on Saturday, where + there is a very nice piece of water; indeed, some people call it a + lake; it was quite frozen, and my boys wanted to skate, but that I + would not permit.' + + "'You believe in the Gulf Stream to that extent,' said Lothair; 'no + skating.' + + "The Cardinal came early; the ladies had not long left the + dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even + Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the + inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence with + Caprera. + + "Nothing could exceed the simple suavity with which the Cardinal + appeared, approached, and greeted them. He thanked Apollonia for + her permission to pay his respects to her, which he had long + wished to do; and then they were all presented, and he said exactly + the right thing to every one." + +Disraeli began his career, as I have pointed out in the earlier part of +this essay, as a purveyor of entertainment to the public in a popular +and not very dignified kind. He contended with the crowd of fashionable +novelists whose books consoled the leisure of Mrs. Wititterly as she +reclined on the drawing-room sofa. He found rivals in Bulwer and Mrs. +Gore, and a master in Plumer Ward. His brilliant stories sold, but at +first they won him little advantage. Slowly, by dint of his inherent +force of genius, his books have not merely survived their innumerable +fellows, but they have come to represent to us the form and character of +a whole school; nay, more, they have come to take the place in our +memories of a school which, but for them, would have utterly passed away +and been forgotten. Disraeli, accordingly, is unique, not merely because +his are the only fashionable novels of the pre-Victorian era which any +one ever reads nowadays, but because in his person that ineffable manner +of the "thirties" reaches an isolated sublimity and finds a permanent +place in literature. But if we take a still wider view of the literary +career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the +interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence +their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do +what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and +Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite +resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices +of convention, and trod English society beneath his foot in the +triumphant irony of success. It is the living Disraeli who is always +more salient than the most fascinating of his printed pages. + + + + +THREE EXPERIMENTS IN PORTRAITURE + + +I + +LADY DOROTHY NEVILL + +AN OPEN LETTER + + Dear Lady Burghclere, + + When we met for the first time after the death of our friend, you + desired me to produce what you were kind enough to call "one of my + portraits." But the art of the portrait-writer is capricious, and + at that time I felt wholly disinclined for the adventure. I excused + myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her + reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected, + though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the + evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy were insuperable. + I partly think so still, but your command has lingered in my memory + all these months, and I have determined to attempt to obey you, + although what I send you can be no "portrait," but a few leaves + torn out of a painter-writer's sketch-book. + + The existence of the three published volumes does, after all, not + preclude a more intimate study, because they are confessedly + exterior. They represent what she saw and heard, not what others + perceived in her. In the first place, they are very much better + written than she would have written them herself. I must dwell + presently on the curious fact that, with all her wit, she + possessed no power of sustained literary expression. Her Memoirs + were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised + writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public. + On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all + the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has + been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better + part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he + extracted these old anecdotes of my early years." This is as + bravely characteristic of her modesty as it is of her candour, but + I think it shows that there is still room for some record of the + more intimate features of her charming and elusive character. I + take up my pencil, but with little hope of success, since no more + formidable task could be set me. I will at least try to be, as she + would have scorned me for not being, sincere. + + My friendship with Lady Dorothy Nevill occupied more than a quarter + of a century. I met her first in the house of Sir Redvers and Lady + Audrey Buller in the winter of 1887, soon after their return from + Ireland. She had done me the great honour of desiring that I should + be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the + zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in + years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked + together on that first occasion for hours, and it seems to me that + I was lifted, without preliminaries, into her intimacy. From that + afternoon, until I drank tea with her for the last time, ten days + before her death, the precious link was never loosened. + + In 1887, her great social popularity had not begun. She was, I now + know, already near sixty, but it never occurred to me to consider + her age. She possessed a curious static quality, a perennial + youthfulness. Every one must have observed how like Watts' picture + of her at twenty she still was at eighty-six. This was not + preserved by any arts or fictile graces. She rather affected, + prematurely, the dress and appearance of an elderly woman. I + remember her as always the same, very small and neat, very pretty + with her chiselled nose, the fair oval of her features, the + slightly ironic, slightly meditative smile, the fascinating colour + of the steady eyes, beautifully set in the head, with the eyebrows + rather lifted as in a perpetual amusement of curiosity. Her head, + slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little + sideways, like a bird's that contemplates a hemp-seed. She had no + quick movements, no gestures; she held herself very still. It + always appeared to me that, in face of her indomitable energy and + love of observation, this was an unconscious economy of force. It + gave her a very peculiar aspect; I remember once frivolously saying + to her that she looked as though she were going to "pounce" at me; + but she never pounced. When she had to move, she rose energetically + and moved with determination, but she never wasted a movement. Her + physical strength--and she such a tiny creature--seemed to be + wonderful. She was seldom unwell, although, like most very healthy + people, she bewailed herself with exaggerated lamentations whenever + anything was the matter with her. But even on these occasions she + defied what she called "coddling." Once I found her suffering from + a cold, on a very chilly day, without a fire, and I expostulated. + She replied, with a sort of incongruity very characteristic of her, + "Oh! none of your hot bottles for me!" In her last hours of + consciousness she battled with the doctor's insistence that she + must have a fire in her bedroom, and her children had to conceal + the flame behind screens because she threatened to get out of bed + and put it out. Her marvellous physical force has to be insisted + on, for it was the very basis of her character. + + Her humorous petulance, her little sharp changes of voice, the + malice of her downcast eyes, the calmness of her demure and easy + smile--how is any impression to be given of things so fugitive? + Her life, which had not been without its troubles and anxieties, + became one of prolonged and intense enjoyment. I think that this + was the main reason of the delight which her company gave to almost + every one. She was like a household blaze upon a rainy day, one + stretched out one's hands to be warmed. She guarded herself against + the charge of being amiable. "It would be horrid to be amiable," + she used to say, and, indeed, there was always a touch of sharpness + about her. She was amused once because I told her she was like an + acidulated drop, half sweet and half sour. "Oh! any stupid woman + can be sweet," she said, "it's often another name for imbecile." + + She had curious little prejudices and antipathies. I never fathomed + the reason of her fantastic horror of the feasts of the Church, + particularly of Christmas. She always became curiously agitated as + the month of December waned. In her notes she inveighed, in quaint + alarm, against the impending "Christmas pains and penalties." I + think she disliked the disturbance of social arrangements which + these festivals entailed. But there was more than that. She was + certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century + sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly + said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after any project, + even of the most frivolous kind. The idea was that one should be + polite all round, in case of any contingency. When she was in the + Riviera, she was much interested to hear that the Prince of Monaco + had built and endowed a handsome church at Monte Carlo. "Very + clever of him," she said, "for you never can tell." + + Lady Dorothy's entire absence of affectation was eminently + attractive. She would be mistress of herself, though China fell. + Her strange little activities, her needlework, her paperwork, her + collections, were the wonder of everybody, but she did not require + approval; she adopted them, in the light of day, for her own + amusement. She never pushed her peculiarities on the notice of + visitors, but, at the same time, if discovered in the act of some + incredible industry, she went on with it calmly. When she was in + Heidelberg in 1892 and successive years, what interested her was + the oddity of the students' life; she expatiated to me on their + beer and their sabre-cuts. Whenever I went abroad of late years, I + was exhorted to send her picture post-cards from out-of-the-way + places, and "Remember that I like vulgar ones best," she added + imperturbably. The story is perhaps known to you of how, in a + circle of superfine ladies, the conversation turned to food, and + the company outdid one another in protestations of delicacy. This + one could only touch a little fruit, and that one was practically + confined to a cup of tea. Lady Dorothy, who had remained silent and + detached, was appealed to as to her opinion. In a sort of loud + cackling--a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted--she replied, + "Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of + the _precieuses_. She had a wholesome respect for food, quite + orthodox and old-fashioned, although I think she ate rather + markedly little. But she liked that little good. She wrote to me + once from Cannes, "This is not an intellectual place, but then the + body rejoices in the cooking, and thanks God for that." She liked + to experiment in foods, and her guests sometimes underwent strange + surprises. One day she persuaded old Lord Wharncliffe, who was a + great friend of hers, to send her a basket of guinea-pig, and she + entertained a very distinguished company on a fricassee of this + unusual game. She refused to say what the dish was until every one + had heartily partaken, and then Mr. George Russell turned suddenly + pale and fled from the room. "Nothing but fancy," remarked the + hostess, composedly. When several years ago there was a proposal + that we should feed upon horse-flesh, and a purveyor of that dainty + opened a shop in Mayfair, Lady Dorothy was one of the first of his + customers. She sallied forth in person, followed by a footman with + a basket, and bought a joint in the presence of a jeering populace. + + She had complete courage and absolute tolerance. Sometimes she + pretended to be timid or fanatical, but that was only her fun. Her + toleration and courage would have given her a foremost place among + philanthropists or social reformers, if her tendencies had been + humanitarian. She might have been another Elizabeth Fry, another + Florence Nightingale. But she had no impulse whatever towards + active benevolence, nor any interest in masses of men and women. + And, above all, she was not an actor, but a spectator in life, and + she evaded, often with droll agility, all the efforts which people + made to drag her into propagandas of various kinds. She listened to + what they had to say, and she begged for the particulars of + specially awful examples of the abuses they set out to remedy. She + was all sympathy and interest, and the propagandist started with + this glittering ally in tow; but he turned, and where was she? She + had slipped off, and was in contemplation of some other scheme of + experience. + + She described her life to me, in 1901, as a "treadmill of + friendship, perpetually on the go"; and later she wrote: "I am + hampered by perpetual outbursts of hospitality in every shape." + Life was a spectacle to her, and society a congeries of little + _guignols_, at all of which she would fain be seated, in a front + stall. If she complained that hospitality "hampered" her, it was + not that it interfered with any occupation or duty, but simply that + she could not eat luncheon at three different houses at once. I + remember being greatly amused when I congratulated her on having + enjoyed some eminent public funeral, by her replying, grudgingly: + "Yes--but I lost another most interesting ceremony through its + being at the same hour." She grumbled: "People are tugging me to + go and see things," not from any shyness of the hermit or + reluctance to leave her home, but simply because she would gladly + have yielded to them all. "Such a nuisance one can't be in two + places at once, like a bird!" she remarked to me. + + In this relation, her attitude to country life was droll. After + long indulgence in her amazing social energy in London, she would + suddenly become tired. The phenomenon never ceased to surprise her; + she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this + must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to + Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the + soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss + of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the + future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short + while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, D.N.," would show the + dawn of a return to nature. Then _boutades_ of increasing vehemence + would mark the rising impatience. Sept 12: "How dreadful it is that + the country is so full of ladies." Sept. 15: "I am surrounded by + tall women and short women, all very tiresome." Sept. 20: "So dull + here, except for one pleasant episode of a drunken housemaid." + Sept. 23: "Oh! I am so longing for the flesh-pots of dear dirty old + London"; and then one knew that her return to Charles Street would + not be long delayed. She was very fond indeed of country life, for + a short time, and she was interested in gardens, but she really + preferred streets. "Eridge is such a paradise--especially the + quadrupeds," she once wrote to me from a house in which she found + peculiar happiness. But she liked bipeds best. + + However one may postpone the question, sooner or later it is + necessary to consider the quality of Lady Dorothy Nevill's wit, + since all things converge in her to that. But her wit is so + difficult to define that it is not surprising that one avoids, as + long as possible, coming actually to grips with it. We may lay the + foundation of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound + of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality of speech. + The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly + intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of + such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who + enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with + annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did + not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of + solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right + and sane; it was exhilarating to a high degree; it was lighted up + by merriment, and piquancy, and salt; but it was the result of a + kind of magic which needed the wand of the magician; it could not + be reproduced by an imitator. It is very unfortunate, but the fact + has to be faced. When we tell our grandchildren that Lady Dorothy + Nevill was the finest female wit of her age, they will ask us for + examples of her talent, and we shall have very few to give. + + She liked to discuss people better than books or politics or + principles, although she never shrank from these. But it was what + she said about human beings that kept her interlocutors hanging on + her lips. She made extraordinarily searching strictures on persons, + without malice, but without nonsense of any kind. Her own + favourites were treated with reserve in this respect: it was as + though they were put in a pen by themselves, not to be criticised + so long as they remained in favour; and she was not capricious, + was, on the contrary, conspicuously loyal. But they always had the + impression that it was only by special licence that they escaped + the criticism that every one else was subjected to. Lady Dorothy + Nevill was a stringent observer, and no respecter of persons. She + carried a bow, and shot at folly as it flew. But I particularly + wish to insist on the fact that her arrows, though they were + feathered, were not poisoned. + + Light was thrown on the nature of Lady Dorothy's wit by her + correspondence. She could in no accepted sense be called a good + letter-writer, although every now and then brilliantly amusing + phrases occurred in her letters. I doubt whether she ever wrote one + complete epistle; her correspondence consisted of tumultuous, + reckless, sometimes extremely confused and incorrect notes, which, + however, repeated--for those who knew how to interpret her + language--the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with + her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary + value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, + and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was + generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what + stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She once wrote to me: "I + should like to tell you all about it, but alas! old Horace + Walpole's talent has not descended on me." Unfortunately, that was + true; so far as literary expression and the construction of + sentences went, it had not. Her correspondence could never be given + to the world, because it would need to be so much revised and + expanded and smoothed out that it would no longer be hers at all. + + Nevertheless, her reckless notes were always delightful to receive, + because they gave the person to whom they were addressed a + reflection of the writer's mood at the moment. They were ardent and + personal, in their torrent of broken sentences, initials, mis-spelt + names and nouns that had dropped their verbs. They were not so good + as her talk, but they were like enough to it to be highly + stimulating and entertaining; and in the course of them phrases + would be struck out, like sparks from flint, which were nearly as + good, and of the very same quality, as the things she used to say. + She wrote her letters on a fantastic variety of strangely coloured + paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey, + paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or frilled like + a lace handkerchief, or embossed with forget-me-nots like a child's + valentine. She had tricks of time-saving; always put "I" for "one," + and "x" for "cross," a word which she, who was never cross, loved + to use. "I did not care for any of the guests; we seemed to live in + a storm of x questions and crooked answers," she would write, or "I + am afraid my last letter was rather x." + + Lady Dorothy, as a letter-writer, had no superstitious reverence + for the parts of speech. Like M. Bergeret, she "se moquait de + l'orthographie comme une chose meprisable." The spelling in her + tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the + seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of + her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected + her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering + denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns + and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to + 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most + of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to + him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.," + she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from + "Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she + had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to + recognise the author of _English Monastic Life_. She would laugh + herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her + about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be + a bright specimen--like you!" When she made arrangements to come to + see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always + wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle. + + One curious observation which the recipient of hundreds of her + notes is bound to make, is the remarkable contrast between the + general tone of them and the real disposition of their writer. Lady + Dorothy Nevill in person was placid, indulgent, and calm; she never + raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her + individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the + amused and attentive spectator in the theatre of life. But in her + letters she pretended to be, or supposed herself called upon to + seem, passionate and distracted. They are all twinkling with + humorous or petulant exaggeration. She happens to forget an + engagement, which was of no sort of importance, and this is how she + apologises:-- + + "To think that every hour since you said you would come I have + repeated to myself--Gosse at 5, Gosse at 5, and then after all to + go meandering off and leaving you to cuss and swear on the + doorstep, and you will never come again now, really. No punishment + here or hereafter will be too much for me. Lead me to the Red Hill + Asylum, and leave me there." + + This was written nearly twenty years ago, and she was not less + vivacious until the end. Lord Lansdowne tells me of an anonymous + letter which he once received, to which she afterwards pleaded + guilty. A cow used to be kept at the back of Lansdowne House, and + the animal, no doubt feeling lonely, was in the habit of lowing at + all sorts of hours. The letter, which was supposed to voice the + complaint of the neighbours in Charles Street, was couched in the + broadest Wiltshire dialect, and ended with the postscript: "Dang + 'un, there 'ee goes again!" As a matter of fact, her letters, about + which she had no species of vanity or self-consciousness, were to + her merely instruments of friendship. There was an odd mingling of + affection and stiffness in them. She marshalled her acquaintances + with them, and almost invariably they were concerned with + arrangements for meeting or explanations of absence. In my own + experience, I must add that she made an exception when her friends + were abroad, when she took considerable pains to tell them the + gossip, often in surprising terms. I was once regaled with her + experiences as the neighbour of a famous African magnate, and with + the remark, "Mrs. ----," a London fine lady of repute, "has been + here, and has scraped the whole inside out of Mr. ----, and gone + her way rejoicing." Nor did she spare the correspondent himself:-- + + "Old Dr. ---- has been here, and tells me he admires you very much; + but I believe he has lost his memory, and he never had good taste + at any time." + + This was not a tribute which self-esteem could hug to its bosom. Of + a very notorious individual she wrote to me:-- + + "I thought I should never be introduced to him, and I had to wait + 100 years, but everything is possible in the best of worlds, and he + was very satisfactory at last." Satisfactory! No word could be more + characteristic on the pen of Lady Dorothy. To be "satisfactory," + whether you were the President of the French Republic or Lord + Wolseley or the Human Elephant (a pathetic freak in whom she took a + great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her + unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by + Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he + did his job thoroughly. The only entirely unsatisfactory people + were those who were insipid, conventional, and empty. "The first + principle of society should be to extinguish the bores," she once + said. I remember going with her to the Zoo in 1898, and being + struck with a remark which she made, not because it was important, + but because it was characteristic. We were looking at the wolves + which she liked; and then, close by, she noticed some kind of + Indian cow. "What a bore for the wolves to have to live opposite a + cow!" and then, as if talking to herself, "I do hate a ruminant!" + + Her relations to literature, art, and science were spectacular + also. She was a sympathetic and friendly onlooker, always on the + side of those things against the Philistines, but not affecting + special knowledge herself. She was something of a virtuoso. She + once said, "I have a passion for reading, but on subjects which + nobody else will touch," and this indicated the independence of her + mind. She read to please herself, and to satisfy her thirst for + experience. When our friendship began, Zola was in the act of + producing the tremendous series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. It + was one of our early themes of conversation. Zola was then an + object of shuddering horror to the ordinary English reader. Lady + Dorothy had already read _L'Assommoir_, and had not shrunk from it; + so I ventured to tell her of _La Terre_, which was just appearing. + She wrote to me about it: "I have been reading Zola. He takes the + varnish off rural life, I must say. Oh! these horrid demons of + Frenchmen know how to write. Even the most disgusting things they + know how to describe poetically. I wish Zola could describe + Haslemere with all the shops shut, rain falling, and most of the + inhabitants in their cups." She told me later--for we followed our + Zola to _Lourdes_ and _Paris_--that some young Oxford prig saw _La + Bete Humaine_ lying on the table at Charles Street, and remarked + that Lady Dorothy could surely not be aware that that was "no book + for a lady." She said, "I told him it was just the book for me!" + + She read Disraeli's novels over again, from time to time, with a + renewal of sentiment. "I am dedicating my leisure hours to + _Endymion_. What a charm after the beef and mutton of ordinary + novels!" She gradually developed a cult for Swinburne, whom she had + once scorned; in her repentance after his death, she wrote: "I + never hear enough about that genius Swinburne! My heart warms when + I think of him and read his poems." I think she was very much + annoyed that he had never been a visitor at Charles Street. When + Verlaine was in England, to deliver a lecture, in 1894, Lady + Dorothy was insistent that, as I was seeing him frequently, I + should bring the author of _Parallelement_ to visit her. She + said--I think under some illusion--"Verlaine is one of my pet + poets, though," she added, "not of this world." I was obliged to + tell her that neither Verlaine's clothes, nor his person, nor his + habits, admitted of his being presented in Mayfair, and that, + indeed, it was difficult to find a little French eating-house in + Soho where he could be at home. She then said: "Why can't you take + me to see him in this eating-house?" I had to explain that of the + alternatives that was really the least possible. She was not + pleased. + + Nor am I pleased with this attempt of mine to draw the features of + our wonderful fairy friend. However I may sharpen the pencil, the + line it makes is still too heavy. I feel that these anecdotes seem + to belie her exquisite refinement, the rapidity and delicacy of her + mental movement. To tell them is like stroking the wings of a moth. + Above all, it is a matter of despair to attempt to define her + emotional nature. Lady Dorothy Nevill was possessed neither of + gravity nor of pathos; she was totally devoid of sentimentality. + This made it easy for a superficial observer to refuse to believe + that the author of so many pungent observations and such apparently + volatile cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in + company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, + and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was + shown, with great fidelity, to those whom she really honoured with + her favour. I do not know whether it would be strictly correct to + say that she had the genius of friendship, because that supposes a + certain initiative and action which were foreign to Lady Dorothy's + habits. But she possessed, to a high degree, the genius of + comradeship. She held the reins very tightly, and she let no one + escape whom she wished to retain. She took immense pains to + preserve her friendships, and indeed became, dear creature, a + little bit tyrannical at last. Her notes grew to be excessively + emphatic. She would begin a letter quite cheerfully with "Oh, you + demon!" or complain of "total and terrible neglect of an old + friend; I could fill this sheet of paper with an account of your + misdeeds!" She was ingenious in reproach: "I cannot afford to waste + penny after penny, and no assets forthcoming," or "I have only two + correspondents, and one of them is a traitor; I therefore cease to + write to you for ever!" This might sound formidable, but it was + only one of the constant surprises of her humour, and would be + followed next day by the most placable of notelets. + + Her curiosity with regard to life spread to her benevolences, which + often took somewhat the form of voyages of discovery. Among these + her weekly excursion to the London Hospital, in all weathers and in + every kind of cheap conveyance, was prominent. I have to confess + that I preferred that a visit to her should not be immediately + prefaced by one of these adventures among the "pore dear things" at + the hospital, because that was sure to mean the recital of some + gruesome operation she had heard of, or the details of some almost + equally gruesome cure. She enjoyed the whole experience in a way + which is blank to the professional humanitarian, but I suspect the + "pore dear things" appreciated her listening smile and sympathetic + worldliness much more than they would have done the admonitions of + a more conscious philanthropist. + + And, indeed, in retrospect, it is her kindliness that shines forth. + She followed all that her friends did, everything that happened to + those who were close to them. She liked always to receive the + tribute of what she called my "literary efforts," and was + ruthlessly sharp in observing announcements of them: "Publishing + again, and of course no copy for poor old me," when not a volume + had yet left the binders. She took up absurd little phrases with + delightful _camaraderie_; I have forgotten why at one time she + took to signing herself "Your Koh-i-Noor," and wrote: "If I can + hope to be the Koh-i-Noor of Mrs. Gosse's party, I shall be sure to + come on Monday." One might go on indefinitely reviving these + memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close + on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She + had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the + tone of her persiflage rather excessive; a few hours later came a + second note, which began: "You have made my life happier for me + these last years--you, and Lady Airlie, and dearest Winifred." From + her who never gave way to sentimentality in any form, and who + prided herself on being as rigid as a nut-cracker, this was worth + all the protestations of some more ebullient being. And there, dear + Lady Burghclere, I must leave this poor sketch for such approval as + you can bring yourself to give it. + + Very faithfully yours, + EDMUND GOSSE. + _January 1914._ + + +II + +LORD CROMER AS A MAN OF LETTERS + +In the obituary notices which attended the death of Lord Cromer, it was +necessary and proper that almost the whole space at the command of the +writers should be taken up by a sketch of his magnificent work as an +administrator, or, as the cant phrase goes, "an empire-builder." For +thirty years, during which time he advanced to be one of the most +powerful and efficient of proconsuls, he held a place in the political +world which arrested the popular imagination, and must continue to +outweigh all other aspects of his character. Of this side of Lord +Cromer's splendid career I am not competent to say a word. But there +was another facet of it, one more private and individual, which became +prominent after his retirement, I mean his intellectual and literary +activity, which I had the privilege of observing. It would be a pity, +perhaps, to let this be wholly submerged, and I propose to give, from my +own recollection, some features of it. Lord Cromer was the author of six +or seven published volumes, but these are before the public, and it is +needless to speak much about them. What may be found more interesting +are a few impressions of his attitude towards books and towards ideas. + +On the first occasion on which I met him, he was characteristic. It was +some fifteen years ago, at the time when the brilliant young politicians +who called themselves (or were rather ineptly called) the Hooligans had +the graceful habit of asking some of their elders to dine with them in a +private room of the House of Commons. At one of these little dinners the +only guests were Lord Cromer and myself. I had never seen him before, +and I regarded him with some awe and apprehension, but no words had +passed between us, when the division-bell rang, and our youthful hosts +darted from the room. + +The moment we were left alone, Lord Cromer looked across the deserted +tablecloth and said quietly, as though he were asking me to pass the +salt, "Where is Bipontium?" I was driven by sheer fright into an +exercise of intelligence, and answered at once, "I should think it must +be the Latin for Zweibruecken. Why?" "Oh! I saw this afternoon that my +edition of Diodorus Siculus was printed _ex typographia societatis +Bipontinae_, and I couldn't imagine for the life of me what 'Bipontium' +was. No doubt you're quite right." Nothing could be more characteristic +of Lord Cromer's habit of mind than this sudden revulsion of ideas. His +active brain needed no preparation to turn from subject to subject, but +seemed to be always ready, at a moment's notice, to take up a fresh +line of thought with ardour. What it could not endure was to be left +stranded with no theme on which to expatiate. In succeeding years, when +it was often my daily enjoyment to listen to Lord Cromer's desultory +conversation, as it leaped from subject to subject, I often thought of +the alarming way in which "Bipontium" had pounced upon me at the +dinner-table in the House of Commons. + +Some years passed before I had the privilege of renewing my experience +of that evening. It was not until after his retirement from Egypt in the +autumn of 1907 that I saw him again, and not then for some months. He +returned, it will be remembered, in broken health. He used to say that +when King Edward VII. wrote out to Cairo, strongly pressing him to stay, +he had replied, in the words of Herodotus, "I am too old, oh King, and +too inactive; so bid thou one of the younger men here to do these +things." He very soon, however, recovered elasticity of mind and body +when the load of office was removed from his shoulders, and "inactive" +was the last epithet which could ever be applied to Lord Cromer. He +began to attend the House of Lords, but, like a wise man, he was in no +hurry to speak there till he had grown accustomed to the tone of the +place. His earliest utterance (I may note the date, February 6th, 1908) +we listened to with equal respect and curiosity; this was a new element +from which much enjoyment might be expected. + +This maiden speech was not long, but it produced a very happy +impression. The subject was the Anglo-Russian Convention, of which the +orator cordially approved, and I recall that a certain sensation was +caused by Lord Cromer's dwelling on the dangers of the Pan-Islamite +intrigues in Egypt. This is the sort of thing that the House of Lords +enjoys--a man of special knowledge speaking, almost confidentially, of +matters within his professional competency. During that year and the +next Lord Cromer spoke with increasing frequency. There were great +differences of opinion with regard to his efficiency in Parliament. I +may acknowledge that I was not an unmeasured admirer of his oratory. +When he rose from his seat on the Cross-bench, and advanced towards the +table, with a fine gesture of his leonine head, sympathy was always +mingled with respect. His independence and his honesty were patent, and +his slight air of authority satisfactory. His public voice was not +unpleasing, but when he was tired it became a little veiled, and he had +the sad trick of dropping it at the end of his sentences. I confess that +I sometimes found it difficult to follow what he was saying, and I do +not think that he understood how to fill a large space with his voice. +He spoke as a man accustomed to wind up the debates of a council sitting +round a table, rather than as a senator addressing the benches of +Parliament. + +He was interested in the art of eloquence, and fond of criticising in +private the methods of other speakers. He had a poor opinion of much +studied oratory, and used to declare that no one had ever convinced him +by merely felicitous diction. Perhaps he did not sufficiently realise +that his own strength of purpose offered rather a granitic surface to +persuasion. But no doubt he was right in saying that, coming as he did +from the florid East, he found English eloquence more plain and +businesslike than he left it. He used to declare that he never spoke +impromptu if he could possibly help doing so, and he made great fun of +the statesmen who say, "Little did I think when I came down to this +House to-day that I should be called upon to speak," and then pour out +by heart a Corinthian discourse. Lord Cromer always openly and frankly +prepared his speeches, and I have seen him entranced in the process. As +he always had a classical reference for everything he did, he was in the +habit of mentioning that Demosthenes also was unwilling to "put his +faculty at the mercy of Fortune." + +He became an habitual attendant at the House of Lords, and, while it was +sitting, he usually appeared in the Library about an hour before the +House met. He took a very lively interest in what was going on, +examining new books, and making a thousand suggestions. If the Lords' +Library contains to-day one of the most complete collections of Latin +and Greek literature in the country, this is largely due to the zeal of +Lord Cromer, who was always egging me on to the purchase of fresh +rarities. He was indefatigable in kindness, sending me booksellers' +catalogues in which curious texts were recorded, and scouring even Paris +and Leipzig in our behalf. When I entered into this sport so heartily as +to provide the Greek and Latin Fathers also for their Lordships, Lord +Cromer became unsympathetic. He had no interest whatever in Origen or +Tertullian, and I think it rather annoyed him to recall that several of +these oracles of the early Church had written in Greek. Nothing in +history or philosophy or poetry which the ancient world had handed down +to us came amiss to Lord Cromer, but I think he considered it rather +impertinent of the Fathers to have presumed to use the language of +Attica. He had not an ecclesiastical mind. + +Lord Cromer's familiar preoccupation with the classics was a point in +his mental habits which deserves particular attention. I have always +supposed that he inherited it from his mother, the Hon. Mrs. Baring, who +was a Windham. She was a woman of learning; and she is said to have +discomfited Sir William Harcourt at a dinner-table by quoting Lucan in +direct disproof of a statement about the Druids which he had been rash +enough to advance. She sang the odes of Anacreon to her son in his +infancy, and we may conjecture that she sowed in his bosom the seeds of +his love of antiquity. Lord Cromer made no pretension to be what is +called an "exact" scholar, but I think it is a mistake to say, as has +been alleged, that he did not take up the study of Latin and Greek until +middle life. It is true that he enjoyed no species of university +training, but passed from Woolwich straight into the diplomatic service. +In 1861, at the age of twenty, he was appointed A.D.C. to Sir Henry +Storks in the Ionian Islands, and I believe that one of the first things +he did was to look about for an instructor in ancient Greek. He found +one in a certain Levantine in Corfu, whose name was Romano, and their +studies opened with the odes of Anacreon. Whether this was a +coincidence, or a compliment to Mrs. Baring, I do not know. This is a +rather different account from what Lord Cromer gave in the preface to +his _Paraphrases_, but I report it on his own later authority. + +If his scholarship was not professorial, it was at least founded upon a +genuine and enduring love of the ancient world. I suppose that for fifty +years, after the episode in Corfu, however busy he was, however immersed +in Imperial policy, he rarely spent a day without some communing with +antiquity. He read Latin, and still more Greek, not in the spirit of a +pedant or a pedagogue, but genuinely for pleasure and refreshment. He +had no vanity about it, and if he had any doubt as to the meaning of a +passage he would "consult the crib," as he used to say. We may +conjecture further that he did not allow his curiosity to be balked by +the barrier of a hopelessly obscure passage, but leaped over it, and +went on. He always came back to Homer, whom he loved more than any other +writer of the world, and particularly to the _Iliad_, which I think he +knew nearly by heart. But he did not, as some pundits consider dignified +and necessary, confine himself to the reading of the principal classics +in order to preserve a pure taste. On the contrary, Lord Cromer, +especially towards the close of his life, pushed up into all the byways +of the Silver Age. As he invariably talked about the books he happened +to be reading, it was easy to trace his footsteps. Eight or nine years +ago he had a sudden passion for Empedocles, whose fragments he had found +collected and translated by Mr. Leonard, an American. Lord Cromer used +to march into the Library, and greet me by calling out, "Do you know? +Empedocles says" something or other, probably some parallelism with a +modern phrase, the detection of which always particularly amused Lord +Cromer. + +In 1908 he took a fancy to Theognis, whose works I procured for him at +the House of Lords, since he happened not to possess that writer at 36 +Wimpole Street. He would settle himself in an armchair in the +smoking-room, his eyes close to the book, and plunge into those dark +waters of the gnomic elegist. He loved maxims and the expression of +principles, and above all, as I have said, the discovery of identities +of thought between the modern and the ancient world. He was delighted +when he found in Theognis the proverb about having an ox on the tongue. +I suppose this was quite well known to the learned, but the charm of the +matter for Lord Cromer was that he was not deterred by any fear of +academic criticism, and found out these things for himself. He read +Theognis as other people read Rudyard Kipling, for stimulus and +pleasure. He swept merely "scholarly" questions aside. He read his +_Iliad_ like a love-letter, but he was bored to death by discussions +about the authorship of the Homeric epics. + +In one matter, the serene good sense which was so prominently +characteristic of Lord Cromer tinged his attitude towards the classics. +He was not at all like Thomas Love Peacock, who entreated his friends to +desist from mentioning anything that had happened in the world for the +last 2,000 years. On the contrary, Lord Cromer was always bent on +binding the old and the new together. It was very noticeable in his +conversation that he was fond of setting classic instances side by side +with modern ones. If books dealt with this parallelism, they exercised a +charm over Lord Cramer's imagination which may sometimes have led him a +little astray about their positive value. I recall a moment when he was +completely under the sway of M. Ferrero's _Greatness and Decline of +Rome_, largely because of the pertinacity with which the Italian +historian compares Roman institutions with modern social arrangements. +It was interesting to the great retired proconsul to discover that +Augustus "considered that in the majority of cases subject peoples had +to be governed through their own national institutions." It is scarcely +necessary to point out that these analogies form the basis of what is, +perhaps, Lord Cromer's most important late essay, his _Ancient and +Modern Imperialism_. + +In a practical administration of India and Egypt, those oceans of +unplumbed antiquity, the ordinary British official has neither time nor +taste to do more than skim the surface of momentary experience. But Lord +Cromer had always been acutely aware of the mystery of the East, and +always looked back into the past with deep curiosity. Sometimes the +modern life in Egypt, exciting as it was, almost seemed to him a +phantasmagoria dancing across the real world of Rameses. This tendency +of thought coloured one branch of his reading; he could not bear to miss +a book which threw any light on the social and political manners of +antiquity. Works like Fowler's _Social Life at Rome_ or Marquardt's _Le +Culte chez les Romains_ thrilled him with excitement and animated his +conversation for days. He wanted, above all things, to realise how the +ancients lived and what, feelings actuated their behaviour. On one +occasion, in a fit of gaiety, I ventured to tell him that he reminded me +of Mrs. Blimber (in _Dombey and Son_), who could have died contented had +she visited Cicero in his retirement at beautiful Tusculum. "Well!" +replied Lord Cromer, laughing, "and a very delightful visit that would +be." + +In the admirable appreciation contributed to the _Times_ by "C." (our +other proconsular "C."!) it was remarked that the "quality of mental +balance is visible in all that Lord Cromer wrote, whether, in his +official despatches, his published books, or his private +correspondence." It was audible, too, in his delightful conversation, +which was vivid, active, and yet never oppressive. He spoke with the +firm accent of one accustomed to govern, but never dictatorially. His +voice was a very agreeable one, supple and various in its tones, neither +loud nor low. Although he had formed the life-long habit of expressing +his opinions with directness, he never imposed them unfairly, or took +advantage of his authority. On the contrary, there was something +extremely winning in his eagerness to hear the reply of his +interlocutor. "Well, there's a great deal in that," he would graciously +and cordially say, and proceed to give the opposing statement what +benefit he thought it deserved. He could be very trenchant, but I do not +think that any one whom he had advanced to the privilege of his +confidence can remember that he was so to a friend. + +The attitude of Lord Cromer to life and letters--I speak, of course, +only of what I saw in the years of his retirement from office--was not +exactly representative of our own or even of the last century. He would +have been at home in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, +before the French Revolution. I judge him to have been born with an +inflexible and commanding character, which in the person of many men +exposed to such dangerous successes as he enjoyed might have degenerated +into tyranny. On Lord Cromer, on the other hand, time produced a +humanising and mellowing effect. It may very well prove that he has +stamped his mark on the East of the twentieth century, as Turgot did his +on the West of the nineteenth century; but without straying into the +perilous fields of prophecy we are safe in recording the impression that +Lord Cromer was not altogether a man of to-day; he looked forward and he +looked backward. Probably the nearest counterpart to his manner of mind +and conversation may be found in the circle of whom we read in the +_Diary_ of Fanny Burney. We can conceive Lord Cromer leaning against the +Committee Box in earnest conversation with Mr. Windham and Mr. Burke at +Warren Hastings' trial. We can restore the half-disdainful gesture with +which he would drop an epigram ("from the Greek") into the Bath Easton +Vase. His politeness and precision, his classical quotations, his +humour, his predilections in literature and art, were those of the inner +circle of Whigs nearly a century and a half ago, and I imagine that +their talk was very much like his. + +He was fond of repeating Bagehot's description of the Whigs, and it +seems to me to apply so exactly to himself that I will quote part of +it:-- + + "Perhaps as long as there has been a political history in this + country there have been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute + firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little prone to + enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and + speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of + the next step, and a wise intention to take it; a strong conviction + that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief that + the present would, can, and should be quietly improved." + +In a full analysis of Lord Cromer's character, I think that every clause +of this description might be expanded with illustrations. In the +intellectual domain, Bagehot's words, "little prone to enthusiastic +sentiment," seem made to fit Lord Cromer's detachment from all the +tendencies of romanticism. His literary tastes were highly developed +and eagerly indulged, but they were all in their essence +pre-Revolutionary. Those who are familiar with a book once famous, the +_Diary of a Lover of Literature_ of Thomas Green, written down to the +very end of the eighteenth century, have in their hands a volume in +which the very accents of Lord Cromer may seem to be heard. Isaac +d'Israeli said that Green had humbled all modern authors in the dust; +Lord Cromer had a short way with many of the writers most fashionable at +this moment. When he was most occupied with the resuscitations of +ancient manners, of which I have already spoken, I found to my surprise +that he had never read _Marius the Epicurean_. I recommended it to him, +and with his usual instant response to suggestion, he got it at once and +began reading it. But I could not persuade him to share my enthusiasm, +and, what was not like him, he did not read _Marius_ to the end. The +richness and complication of Pater's style annoyed him. He liked prose +to be clear and stately; he liked it, in English, to be Addisonian. Even +Gibbon-though he read _The Decline and Fall_ over again, very carefully, +so late as 1913--was not entirely to his taste. He enjoyed the limpidity +and the irony, but the sustained roll of Gibbon's antitheses vexed him a +little. He liked prose to be quite simple. + +In many ways, Lord Cromer, during those long and desultory conversations +about literature which will be so perennial a delight to look back upon, +betrayed his constitutional detestation of the Romantic attitude. He +believed himself to be perfectly catholic in his tastes, and resented +the charge of prejudice. But he was, in fact, irritated by the excesses +and obscurities of much that is fashionable to-day in the world of +letters, and he refused his tribute of incense to several popular idols. +He thought that, during the course of the nineteenth century, German +influences had seriously perturbed the balance of taste in Europe. I do +not know that Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or +that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was +very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always +found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical +order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as +he should not be drawn to the pathetic figure of Pascal, but he was +puzzled by him. He described him as "manifestly a man full of contrasts, +difficult to understand, and as many-sided as Odysseus." On another +occasion, losing patience with Pascal, he called him "a half-lunatic man +of genius." Fenelon annoyed him still more; the spiritual experiences of +the Archbishop of Cambrai he found "almost incomprehensible." His +surprising, but after all perfectly consistent, comment on both Fenelon +and Pascal was, "How much more easy Buffon is to understand!" + +He recommended all young men who intend to take a part in politics +carefully to study pre-Revolutionary history, and one of his objections +to the romantic literature of Rousseau downwards was that it did not +help such study. It was too individualistic in its direction. It tended, +moreover, Lord Cromer thought, to disturb the balance of judgment, that +"level-headedness" which he valued so highly, and had exercised with +such magnificent authority. He disliked the idea that genius involved a +lack of sanity, or, in other words, of self-command. He regretted that +Dryden had given general currency to this idea by his famous lines in +_Absalom and Achitophel_:-- + + "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, + And thin partitions do their bounds divide;" + +but Lord Cromer was himself, perhaps, too ready to account by insanity +for every odd or confused expression in literature. He had nothing to +say about Mazzini, whom he swept aside impatiently, except that he "was +a semi-lunatic," and I have heard him declare of Chatterton and +Verlaine--a strange couple--that they were a pair of madmen. He objected +violently to Baudelaire, but I think he knew very little about that +poet's works. + +If I mention these things, it is because they seem to be necessary to +give human character to any sketch of the mind of Lord Cromer. He +himself hated mere eulogy, which he said had ruined most of the +biographies of the world. The official lives of Disraeli and Gladstone +did not escape a measure of his blame in this respect, and it will be +recalled that resentment against what he thought a shadowless portrait +led to his own very vivacious paper on Disraeli, which he afterwards +issued as a pamphlet. He was an avid reader of memoirs, and of political +memoirs in particular, but he almost always passed upon them the same +criticism--that they were too _public_. "I don't want Mr. ----," he +would say, "to tell me what I can learn for myself by turning up the +file of the _Morning Post_. I want him to tell me what I can't find out +elsewhere. And he need not be so very much afraid of hinting that his +hero had faults, for if he had not had defects we should never have +heard of his qualities. We are none of us perfect, and we don't want a +priggish biographer to pretend that we are." He was speaking here mainly +of political matters; but Lord Cromer's training and experience had a +strong bearing on his literary tastes. With him politics reacted on +literature, although he liked to fancy that he kept them wholly apart. + +No doubt a selection from his correspondence will one day be given to +the world, for he was a vivid, copious, and daring letter-writer. I +suppose that he wrote to each of his friends mainly on the subject which +absorbed that friend most, and as his own range of sympathies and +interests was very wide, it is probable that his letters will prove +excellent general reading. As in so many other of the departments of +life, Lord Cromer did not think letter-writing a matter to be lightly +regarded or approached without responsibility. He said:-- + + "There are two habits which I have contracted, and which I have + endeavoured to pass on to my children, as I have found them useful. + One is to shut the door after me when I leave the room, and the + other is always to affix the day of the month and the year to every + document, however unimportant, that I sign. I have received numbers + of letters, not only from women, one of whose numerous privileges + it is to be vague, but also from men in high official positions, + dated with the day of the week only. When the document is + important, such a proceeding is a fraud on posterity." + +He often, both in conversation and in letters, took up one of his +favourite classic tags, and wove a shrewd modern reflection round it. +For instance, a couple of years before the war, a phrase of Aristotle +recommending a ruthless egotism in the conduct of war, led him to say:-- + + "I think that at times almost every modern nation has acted on this + principle, though they gloss it over with fine words. Its principal + exponents of late have unquestionably been the Hohenzollerns." + +And, in connection with the axiom of Thucydides that war educates +through violence, he wrote, about the same time:-- + + "The Germans, who, in spite of their culture, preserve a strain of + barbarism in their characters, are the modern representatives of + this view. There is just this amount of truth in it--that at the + cost of undue and appalling sacrifices, war brings out certain + fine qualities in individuals, and sometimes in nations." + +This may, surely, be taken as a direct prophecy of the magnificent +effort of France. Lord Cromer's reflections, thrown off in the warmth of +personal contact, often had a pregnant directness. For instance, how +good this is:-- + + "The prejudice against the Boeotians was probably in a large + measure due to the fact that, as the late Lord Salisbury might have + said, they 'put their money on the wrong horse' during the Persian + war. So also, it may be observed, did the oracle at Delphi." + +Lord Cromer's public speeches and published writings scarcely give a +hint of his humour, which was lambent and sometimes almost boyish. He +loved to be amused, and he repaid his entertainer by being amusing. I +suppose that after his return from Cairo he allowed this feature of his +character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked +upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was +not the man, we may be sure, to be funny with a Young Turk, or to crack +needless jokes with a recalcitrant Khedive. But retirement softened him, +and the real nature of Lord Cromer, with its elements of geniality and +sportiveness, came into full play. + +Eight years ago, I regret to admit, Mr. Lloyd George was not the +universal favourite in the House of Lords that he has since become. Lord +Cromer was one of those who were not entirely reconciled to the +financial projects of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. He compared +the Chancellor with Pescennius Niger, + + "who aspired to be Emperor after the death of Pertinax, and was + already Governor of Syria. On being asked by the inhabitants of + that province to diminish the land tax, he replied that, so far as + he was concerned, not only would he effect no diminution, but he + regretted that he could not tax the air which they breathed." + +The strained relations between Mr. Lloyd George and the House of Lords +inspired Lord Cromer with a really delightful parallel from Dryden's +_Absalom and Achitophel_ (which, by the way, was one of his favourite +poems):-- + + "Thus, worn or weakened, well or ill content, + Submit they must to DAVID'S government; + Impoverished and deprived of all command, + Their taxes doubled as they lost their land; + And--what was harder yet to flesh and blood, + Their gods disgraced, and burnt like common wood." + +When he pointed this out to me, I entreated him to introduce it into a +speech on the Budget. But he said that he was not sure of his audience, +and then it was most painful to an orator to make a literary reference +which was not taken up. Once at Sheffield, when he was urging the +necessity of a strong Navy upon a large public meeting, he quoted +Swinburne's splendid lines:-- + + "All our past comes wailing in the wind, + And all our future thunders on the sea," + +without producing any effect at all. But the House of Lords is not an +illiterate audience, and I recollect that on one occasion, when Lord +Cromer himself was speaking on preferential treatment for the Colonies, +and quoted Prior:-- + + "Euphemia (that is Preference) serves to grace my measure, + But Chloe (that is Protection) is my real flame," + +the Peers received the couplet with hilarious appreciation. + +He was very entertaining about the oddities of his life in the East, and +his stories were numberless. One was of a petition which he once +received from a young Egyptian with a grievance, which opened with these +words:-- + + "O Hell! Lordship's face grow red when he hear quite ghastly + behaviour of Public Works Department towards our humble servant." + +He used to repeat these things with an inimitable chuckle of enjoyment. + +We have been told that he who blows through bronze may breathe through +silver. The severe preoccupations of Lord Cromer's public life did not +prevent him from sedulously cultivating the art of verse. In 1903, +before his retirement from Egypt, he published a volume of _Paraphrases +and Translations from the Greek_, in the preparation or selection of +which I believe that he enjoyed the advice of Mr. Mackail. It was rather +unlucky that, with a view to propitiate the angry critics, Lord Cromer +prefixed to this little book a preface needlessly modest. He had no +cause to apologise so deeply for exercises which were both elegant and +learned. It is a curious fact that, in this collection of paraphrases, +the translator did not touch the Attic authors whom he knew so well--he +used to copy out pages of AEschylus and Sophocles in his loose Greek +script, with notes of his own--but dealt entirely with lyric and +epigrammatic poets of the Alexandrian age. Perhaps it seemed to him less +daring to touch them than to affront AEschylus. He was not quite sure +about these verses of his; he liked them, and then he was afraid that +they were unworthy of the original. Out in Cairo it was so difficult, he +said, to get a critical opinion. + +Among his unpublished translations there is one, from a fragment of +Euripides, which should not be lost, if only because Lord Cromer himself +liked it better than any other of his versions. It runs:-- + + "I learn what may be taught; + I seek what may be sought; + My other wants I dare + To ask from Heaven in prayer." + +Of his satirical _vers-de-societe_, which it amused him to distribute in +private, he never, I believe, gave any to the world, but they deserve +preservation. Some serious reflections on the advantages of the British +occupation of Egypt close with the quotation:-- + + "Let them suffice for Britain's need-- + No nobler prize was ever won-- + The blessings of a people freed, + The consciousness of duty done." + +These were, in a high degree, the rewards of Lord Cromer himself. + +After his settlement in London, Mr. T.E. Page sent him a book, called +_Between Whiles_, of English verse translated into Latin and Greek. Lord +Cromer was delighted with this, and the desire to write in metre +returned to him. He used to send his friends, in letters, little +triolets and epigrams, generally in English, but sometimes in Greek. But +he was more ambitious than this. So lately as February 1911, during the +course of one of our long conversations upon literature, he asked me to +suggest a task of translation on which he could engage. It was just the +moment when he was particularly busy with Constitutional Free Trade and +Woman Suffrage and other public topics, but that made no difference. It +had always seemed to me that he had been most happy in his versions of +the Bucolic poets, and so I urged him to continue his translations by +attempting the _Europa_ of Moschus. He looked at it, and pronounced it +unattractive. I was therefore not a little surprised to receive a +letter, on March 25th, in which he said:-- + + "Not sleeping very well last night, I composed in my head these few + lines merely as a specimen to begin _Europa_:-- + + "When dawn is nigh, at the third watch of night, + What time, more sweet than honey of the bee, + Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, + To lift the veil which hides futurity, + Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar + The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes + Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, + And she, Europa, was the victor's prize." + + "They are, of course, only a first attempt, and I do not think much + of them myself. But do you think the sort of style and metre + suitable?" + +He went steadily on till he completed the poem, and on April 27th I +received a packet endorsed "Patched-up Moschus returned herewith." So +far as I know, this version of the _Europa_, conducted with great spirit +in his seventieth year, has never been published. It is the longest and +most ambitious of all his poetical experiments. + +Lord Cromer was fond of saying that he considered the main beauty of +Greek poetry to reside in its simplicity. In all his verses he aimed at +limpidity and ease. He praised the Greek poets for not rhapsodising +about the beauties of nature, and this was very characteristic of his +own eighteenth-century habit of mind. His general attitude to poetry, +which he read incessantly and in four languages, was a little difficult +to define. He was ready to give lists of his life-long prime favourites, +and, as was very natural, these differed from time to time. But one list +of the books he had "read more frequently than any other" consisted of +the _Iliad_, the Book of Job, _Tristram Shandy_, and _Pickwick_, to +which he added _Lycidas_ and the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It would +require a good deal of ingenuity to bring these six masterpieces into +line. He was consistent in declaring that the 28th chapter of Job was +"the finest bit of poetry ever written." + +He was violently carried away in 1912 by reading Mr. Livingstone's book +on _The Greek Genius_. It made him a little regret the pains he had +expended on the Hymns of Callimachus and the Bucolics of Theocritus, +and he thought that perhaps he ought to have confined himself to the +severer and earlier classics. But surely he had followed his instinct, +and it would have been a pity if he had narrowed his range. It was the +modernness of the Alexandrian authors, and perhaps their Egyptian +flavour, which had justly attracted him. He did not care very much for +an antiquity which he could not revivify for his own vision. I urged him +to read a book which had fascinated me, _The Religion of Numa_, by a +learned American, the late Mr. Jesse Carter. Lord Cromer read it with +respect, but he admitted that those earliest Roman ages were too remote +and cold for him. + +Lord Cromer was very much annoyed with Napoleon for having laid it down +that _apres soixante ans, un homme ne vaut rien_. The rash dictum had +certainly no application to himself. It is true that, under the strain +of the long tropical years, his bodily health declined as he approached +the age of sixty. But his mental activity, his marvellous receptivity, +were not merely maintained, but seemed steadily to advance. He continued +to be consumed by that lust for knowledge, _libido sciendi_, which he +admired in the ancient Greeks. When the physicians forbade him, four +years ago, to expend his failing strength any longer on political and +social propaganda, instead of retiring, as most men of his age would +have done, to dream in the recesses of his library, he plunged with +renewed ardour into the one occupation still permitted to him: +literature. The accident of his publishing a criticism which excited +wide popular attention led to his becoming, when past his seventieth +birthday, a "regular reviewer" for the _Spectator_, where the very +frequent papers signed "C." became a prominent feature. Those articles +were, perhaps, most remarkable for the light they threw on the writer's +own temperament, on his insatiable desire for knowledge. Lord Cromer's +curiosity in all intellectual directions was, to the last, like that of +a young man beginning his mental career; and when he adopted the +position, so uncommon in a man of his experience and authority, of a +reviewer of current books, it was because he wished to share with others +the excitement he himself enjoyed in the tapping of fresh sources of +information. + + +III + +THE LAST DAYS OF LORD REDESDALE + +The publication of Lord Redesdale's _Memories_--which was one of the +most successful autobiographies of recent times--familiarised thousands +of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but, +when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his taste +and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his +earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one. He +took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become a +classic--_Tales of Old Japan_. He did not immediately pursue this +success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which +distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out _The +Bamboo Garden_, and from that time--until, in his eightieth year, he +died in full intellectual energy--he constantly devoted himself to the +art of writing. His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was +impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and +that zeal suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his +life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He +retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain +stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself was always acutely +conscious. + +This did not interfere with the direct and sincere appeal made to +general attention by the 1915 _Memories_, a book so full of geniality +and variety, so independent in its judgments and so winning in its +ingenuousness, that its wider popularity could be the object of no +surprise. But, to those who knew Lord Redesdale intimately, it must +always appear that his autobiography fails to explain him from what we +may call the subjective point of view. It tells us of his adventures and +his friendships, of the strange lands he visited and of the unexpected +confidences he received, but it does not reveal very distinctly the +character of the writer. There is far more of his intellectual +constitution, of his personal tastes and mental habits, in the volume of +essays of 1912, called _A Tragedy in Stone_, but even here much is left +unsaid and even unsuggested. + +Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Lord Redesdale was the redundant +vitality of his character. His nature swarmed with life, like a drop of +pond-water under a microscope. There cannot be found room in any one +nature for all the qualities, and what he lacked in some degree was +concentration. But very few men who have lived in our complicated age +have done well in so many directions as he, or, aiming widely, have +failed in so few. He shrank from no labour and hesitated before no +difficulty, but pushed on with an extraordinary energy along many +various lines of activity. But the two lines in which he most desired +and most determined to excel, gardening and authorship, are scarcely to +be discerned, except below the surface, in his _Memories_. Next to his +books, what he regarded with most satisfaction was his wonderful garden +at Batsford, and of this there is scarcely a word of record in the +autobiography. He had always intended to celebrate this garden, and when +he was preparing to return to Batsford in 1915 he wrote to me that he +was going to write an _Apologia pro Horto meo_, as long before he had +composed one _pro Banibusis meis_. A book which should combine with the +freest fancies of his intellect a picture of the exotic groves of +Batsford was what was required to round off Lord Redesdale's literary +adventures. It will be seen that he very nearly succeeded in thus +setting the top-stone on his literary edifice. + +One reason, perhaps, why Batsford, which was ever present to his +thoughts, is so very slightly and vaguely mentioned in Lord Redesdale's +_Memories_, may be the fact that from 1910 onwards he was not living in +it himself, and that it was irksome to him to magnify in print +horticultural beauties which were for the time being in the possession +of others. The outbreak of the war, in which all his five sons were +instantly engaged, was the earliest of a series of changes which +completely altered the surface of Lord Redesdale's life. Batsford came +once more into his personal occupation, and at the same time it became +convenient to give up his London house in Kensington Court. Many things +combined to transform his life in the early summer of 1915. His eldest +son, Major the Hon. Clement Mitford, after brilliantly distinguishing +himself in battle, was received by the King and decorated, to the +rapturous exultation of his father. Major Mitford returned to the French +front, only to fall on May 13th, 1915. + +At this time I was seeing Lord Redesdale very frequently, and I could +not but be struck by the effect of this blow upon his temperament. After +the first shock of sorrow, I observed in him the determination not to +allow himself to be crushed. His dominant vitality asserted itself +almost with violence, and he seemed to clench his tooth in defiance of +the assault on his individuality. It required on the part of so old a +man no little fortitude, for it is easier to bear a great and heroic +bereavement than to resist the wearing vexation of seeing one's system +of daily occupation crumbling away. Lord Redesdale was pleased to be +going again to Batsford, which had supplied him in years past with so +much sumptuous and varied entertainment, but it was a matter of alarm +with him to give up all, or almost all, the various ties with London +which had meant so much to his vividly social nature. + +Meanwhile, during the early months of 1915 in London, he had plenty of +employment in finishing and revising his _Memories_, which it had taken +him two years to write. This was an occupation which bridged over the +horrid chasm between his old active life in London, with its thousand +interests, and the uncertain and partly dreaded prospect of exile in the +bamboo-gardens of a remote corner of Gloucestershire, where he foresaw +that deafness must needs exclude him from the old activities of local +life. + +He finished revising the manuscript of his _Memories_ in July, and then +went down, while the actual transference of his home was taking place, +to the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, Cowes, where he had been accustomed +to spend some of the most enjoyable hours of his life. But this scene, +habitually thronged with people, and palpitating with gaiety, in the +midst of which Lord Redesdale found himself so singularly at home, was +now, more than perhaps any other haunt of the English sportsman, in +complete eclipse. The weather was lovely, but there were no yachts, no +old chums, no charming ladies. "It is very dull," he wrote; "the sole +inhabitant of the Club besides myself was Lord Falkland, and now he is +gone." In these conditions Lord Redesdale became suddenly conscious that +the activity of the last two or three years was over, that the aspect of +his world had changed, and that he was in danger of losing that hold +upon life to which he so resolutely clung. In conditions of this kind he +always turned to seek for something mentally "craggy," as Byron said, +and at Cowes he wonderfully found the writings of Nietzsche. The result +is described in a remarkable letter to myself (July 28th, 1915), which +I quote because it marks the earliest stage in the composition of his +last unfinished book:-- + + "I have been trying to occupy myself with Nietzsche, on the theory + that there must be something great about a man who exercised the + immense influence that he did. But I confess I am no convert to any + of his various moods. Here and there I find gems of thought, but + one has to wade through a morass of blue mud to get at them. Here + is a capital saying of his which may be new to you--in a letter to + his friend Rohde he writes: 'Eternally we need midwives in order to + be delivered of our thoughts,' We cannot work in solitude. 'Woe to + us who lack the sunlight of a friend's presence.' + + "How true that is! When I come down here, I think that with so much + time on my hands I shall be able to get through a pile of work. Not + a bit of it! I find it difficult even to write a note. To me it is + an imperative necessity to have the sympathetic counsel of a + friend." + +The letter continued with an impassioned appeal to his correspondent to +find some definite intellectual work for him to undertake. "You make me +dare, and that is much towards winning a game. You must sharpen my wits, +which are blunt enough just now." In short, it was a cry from the island +of boredom to come over the water and administer first-aid. + +Accordingly, I started for Cowes, and was welcomed at the pier with all +my host's habitual and vivacious hospitality. Scarcely were we seated in +our wicker-chairs in face of the Solent, not twinkling as usual with +pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than +he began the attack. "What am I to do with myself?" was the instant +question; "what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of +leisure?" To which the obvious reply was: "First of all, you must +exhibit to me the famous attractions of Cowes!" "There are none," he +replied in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit, +which extended over several radiant days of a perfect August, was +diversified with walks and excursions by land and water, in which my +companion was as active and as ardent as though he had been nineteen +instead of seventy-nine. In a suit picturesquely marine, with his +beautiful silver hair escaping from a jaunty yachting cap, he was the +last expression of vivacity and gaiety. + +The question of his intellectual occupation in the future came, however, +incessantly to the front; and our long talks in the strange and uncanny +solitude of the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle always came to this: What +task was he to take up next? His large autobiography was now coming back +to him from the printers in packets of proof, with which he was closeted +night and morning; and I suggested that while this was going on there +was no need for him to think about future enterprises. To tell the +truth, I had regarded the _Memories_ as likely to be the final labour of +Lord Redesdale's busy life. It seemed to me that at his advanced age he +might now well withdraw into dignified repose. I even hinted so much in +terms as delicate as I could make them, but the suggestion was not well +received. I became conscious that there was nothing he was so little +prepared to welcome as "repose"; that, in fact, the terror which +possessed him was precisely the dread of having to withdraw from the +stage of life. His deafness, which now began to be excessive, closed to +his eager spirit so many of the avenues of experience, that he was more +than ever anxious to keep clear those that remained to him, and of +these, literary expression came to be almost the only one left. In the +absence of a definite task his path in this direction led through +darkness. + +But it was not until after several suggestions and many conversations +that light was found. The friend so pressingly appealed to returned to +London, where he was stern in rejecting several projects, hotly flung at +his head and then coldly abandoned. A study of the Empress Maria +Theresa, suggested by a feverish perusal of Pechler, was the latest and +least attractive of these. Lord Redesdale then frankly demanded that a +subject should be found for him. "You have brought this upon yourself," +he said, "by encouraging me to write." What might prove the scheme of a +very pleasant book then occurred to me, and I suggested to the fiery and +impatient author, who had by this time retired for good to Batsford, +that he should compose a volume of essays dealing with things in +general, but bound together by a constantly repeated reference to his +wild garden of bamboos and the Buddha in his secret grove. The author +was to suppose himself seated with a friend on the terrace at the top of +the garden, and to let the idea of the bamboo run through the whole +tissue of reflections and reminiscences like an emerald thread. Lord +Redesdale was enchanted, and the idea took fire at once. He replied:-- + + "You are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones! I + shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now proceeding to + my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try to make a picture of + the VELUVANA, the bamboo-garden which was the first Vikara or + monastery of Buddha and his disciples. There I will sit, and, + looking on the great statue of Buddha in meditation, I shall begin + to arrange all sorts of wild imaginings which may come into my + crazy brain." + +In this way was started the book, of which, alas! only such fragments +were composed as form the earlier part of the volume published after his +death. It is, however, right to point out that for the too-brief +remainder of his life Lord Redesdale was eagerly set on the scheme of +which a hint has just been given. The _Veluvana_ was to be the crowning +production of his literary life, and it was to sum up the wisdom of the +East and the gaiety of the West. He spoke of it incessantly, in letters +and conversation. "That will do to go into _Veluvana_," was his cry when +he met with anything rare or strange. For instance, on September 15th, +1915, he wrote to me:-- + + "To-day, all of a sudden I was struck by the idea that plants, + having many human qualities, may also in some degree have human + motives--that they are not altogether mere automata--and as I + thought, I began to imagine that I could detect something + resembling purpose in the movements of certain plants. I have + jotted down a few notes, and you will see when I expand them that + at any rate the idea calls attention to the movements themselves, + some of which seem never to have been noticed at all, or certainly + at best very inadequately. You will see that this brings in the + bamboo-garden and Buddha, and so keeps to the scheme of + _Veluvana_." + +The monasteries of twelfth-century Japanese Buddhism, which he had +visited long before in the neighbourhood of Kioto, now recurred to his +memory, and he proposed to describe in what a monk of Hiyeisan differed +from an Indian Buddhist monk. This was a theme of extraordinary +interest, and wholly germane to his purpose. It drove him back to his +Japanese books, and to his friend Sir Ernest Satow's famous dictionary. +He wrote to me:-- + + "No praise can be too high for the work which Satow did in the + early days of our intercourse with Japan. He was a valuable asset + to England, and to Sir Harry Parkes, who, with all his energy and + force of character, would never have succeeded as he did without + Satow. Aston was another very strong man." + +These reveries were strictly in accordance with the spirit of +_Veluvana_, but unfortunately what Lord Redesdale wrote in this +direction proved to be too slight for publication. He met with some +expressions of extremely modern Japanese opinion which annoyed him, and +to which he was tempted to give more attention than they deserve. It +began to be obvious that the enterprise was one for which great +concentration of effort, and a certain serenity of purpose which was not +to be secured at will, were imperatively needed. In leaving London, he +was not content, and no one could have wished him to be willing, to +break abruptly all the cords of his past life. He was still a Trustee of +the National Gallery, still chairman of the Marlborough Club, still +occupied with the administration of the Wallace Collection, and he did +not abate his interest in these directions. They made it necessary that +he should come up to town every other week. This made up in some measure +for the inevitable disappointment of finding that in Gloucestershire his +deafness now completely cut him off from all the neighbourly duties +which had in earlier years diversified and entertained his country life. +He had been a great figure among the squires and farmers of the +Cotswolds, but all this was now at an end, paralysed by the hopeless +decay of his hearing. It grieved him, too, that he was unable to do any +useful war-work in the county, and he was forced to depend upon his pen +and his flying visits to London for refreshment. He was a remarkably +good letter-writer, and he now demanded almost pathetically to be fed +with the apples of correspondence. He wrote (November 26th, 1915):-- + + "Your letters are a consolation for being deprived of taking a part + any longer in the doings of the great world. The Country + Mouse--even if the creature were able to scuttle back into the + cellars of the great--would still be out of all communion with the + mighty, owing to physical infirmity. And now comes the kind Town + Mouse and tells him all that he most cares to know." + +He had books and his garden to enjoy, and he made the most of both. "I +hate the autumn," he said, "for it means the death of the year, but I +try to make the death of the garden as beautiful as possible." Among his +plants, and up and down the high places of his bamboo-feathered +rockeries, where little cascades fell with a music which he could no +longer hear into small dark pools full of many-coloured water-lilies, +his activity was like that of a boy. He had the appearance, the tastes, +the instincts of vigorous manhood prolonged far beyond the usual limit +of such gifts, and yet all were marred and rendered bankrupt for him by +the one intolerable defect, the deafness which had by this time become +almost impenetrable to sound. + +Yet it seemed as though this disability actually quickened his mental +force. With the arrival of his eightieth year, his activity and +curiosity of intellect were certainly rather increased than abated. He +wrote to me from Batsford (December 28th, 1915):-- + + "I have been busy for the last two months making a close study of + Dante. I have read all the _Inferno_ and half of the _Purgatorio_. + It is hard work, but the 'readings' of my old schoolfellow, W.W. + Vernon, are an incalculable help, and now within the last week or + two has appeared Hoare's Italian Dictionary, published by the + Cambridge University Press. A much-needed book, for the previous + dictionaries were practically useless except for courier's work. + How splendid Dante is! But how sickening are the Commentators, + Benvenuto da Imola, Schartazzini and the rest of them! They won't + let the poet say that the sun shone or the night was dark without + seeing some hidden and mystic meaning in it. They always seem to + _chercher midi a quatorze heures_, and irritate me beyond measure. + There is invention enough in Dante without all their embroidery. + But this grubbing and grouting seems to be infectious among Dante + scholars--they all catch the disease." + +He flung himself into these Italian studies with all his accustomed +ardour. He corresponded with the eminent veteran of Dante scholarship, +the Honourable W.W. Vernon, whom he mentions in the passage just quoted, +and Mr. Vernon's letters gave him great delight. He wrote to me again:-- + + "This new object in life gives me huge pleasure. Of course, I knew + the catch quotations in Dante, but I never before attempted to read + him. The difficulty scared me." + +Now, on the contrary, the difficulty was an attraction. He worked away +for hours at a time, braving the monotonies of the _Purgatorio_ without +flagging, but he broke down early in the _Paradiso_. He had no sympathy +whatever with what is mystic and spiritual, and he was extremely bored +by the Beatific Vision and the Rose of the Empyrean. I confess I took +advantage of this to recall his attention to _Veluvana_, for which it +was no longer possible to hope that the author would collect any +material out of Dante. + +An invitation from Cambridge to lecture there on Russian history during +the Long Vacation of 1916 was a compliment to the value of the Russian +chapters of his _Memories_, but it was another distraction. It took his +thoughts away from _Veluvana_, although he protested to me that he +could prepare his Cambridge address, and yet continue to marshal his +fancies for the book. Perhaps I doubted it, and dared to disapprove, for +he wrote (March 17th, 1916):-- + + "You scold me for writing too much. That is the least of my + troubles! You must remember that debarred as I am from taking part + in society, the Three R's alone remain to me, and, indeed, of those + only two--for owing to my having enjoyed an Eton education in days + when arithmetic was deemed to be no part of the intellectual + panoply of a gentleman, I can neither add, subtract, nor divide! I + am a gluttonous reader, and only write from time to time." + +He was really composing more actively than he himself realised. About +this time he wrote:-- + + "Just now I am busy trying to whitewash Lord Hertford--not the + Marquess of Steyne, that would be impossible--but the unhappy + hypochondriac recluse of the Rue Lafitte, who I believe has been + most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in + Paris--all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even + hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look + upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to + be told that he had many admirable points." + +At the beginning of last year the aspect of Lord Redesdale was very +remarkable. He had settled down into his life at Batsford, diversified +by the frequent dashes to London. His years seemed to sit upon him more +lightly than ever. His azure eyes, his curled white head thrown back, +the almost jaunty carriage of his well-kept figure, were the external +symbols of an inner man perpetually fresh, ready for adventure and +delighted with the pageant of existence. He found no fault at all with +life, save that it must leave him, and he had squared his shoulders not +to give way to weakness. Perhaps the only sign of weakness was just that +visible determination to be strong. But the features of his character +had none of those mental wrinkles, those "rides de l'esprit," which +Montaigne describes as proper to old age. Lord Redesdale was guiltless +of the old man's self-absorption or exclusive interest in the past. His +curiosity and sympathy were vividly exhibited to his friends, and so, in +spite of his amusing violence in denouncing his own forgetfulness, was +his memory of passing events. In the petulance of his optimism he was +like a lad. + +There was no change in the early part of last year, although it was +manifest that the incessant journeying between Batsford and London +exhausted him. The garden occupied him more and more, and he was +distracted by the great storm of the end of March, which blew down and +destroyed at the head of the bridge the wonderful group of cypresses, +which he called "the pride of my old age." But, after a gesture of +despair, he set himself energetically to repair the damage. He was in +his usual buoyant health when the very hot spell in May tempted him out +on May 18th, with his agent, Mr. Kennedy, to fish at Swinbrook, a +beautiful village on his Oxfordshire property, of which he was +particularly fond. He was not successful, and in a splenetic mood he +flung himself at full length upon a bank of wet grass. He was not +allowed to remain there long, but the mischief was done, and in a few +hours he was suffering from a bad cold. Even now, the result might not +have been serious had it not been that in a few days' time he was due to +fulfil certain engagements in town. Nothing vexed Lord Redesdale more +than not to keep a pledge. In all such matters he prided himself on +being punctual and trustworthy, and he refused to change his plans by +staying at home. + +Accordingly, on May 23rd he came to London to transact some business, +and to take the chair next day at a meeting of the Royal Society of +Literature, of which he was a vice-president. This meeting took place in +the afternoon, and he addressed a crowded assembly, which greeted him +with great warmth. Those who were present, and saw his bright eyes and +heard his ringing voice, could have no suspicion that they would see him +again no more. His intimate friends alone perceived that he was making a +superlative effort. There followed a very bad night, and he went down to +Batsford next day, going straight to his bed, from which he never rose +again. His condition, at first, gave rise to little alarm. The disease, +which proved to be catarrhal jaundice, took its course; but for a long +time his spirit and his unconsciousness of danger sustained him and +filled those around him with hope. There was no disturbance of mind to +the very last. In a shaky hand, with his stylograph, he continued to +correspond with certain friends, about politics, and books, and even +about Veluvana. In the beginning of August there seemed to be symptoms +of improvement, but these were soon followed by a sudden and final +relapse. Even after this, Lord Redesdale's interest and curiosity were +sustained. In his very last letter to myself, painfully scrawled only +one week before his death, he wrote:-- + + "Have you seen Ernest Daudet's book just published, _Les auteurs de + la guerre de_ 1914? Bismarck is the subject of the first volume; + the second will deal with the Kaiser and the Emperor Joseph; and + the third with _leurs complices_. I know E.D., he is a brother of + Alphonse, and is a competent historian. His book is most + illuminating. Of course there are exaggerations, but he is always + well _documente_, and there is much in his work that is new. I + don't admire his style. The abuse of the historic present is bad + enough, but what can be said in favour of the historic future with + which we meet at every step? It sets my teeth on edge." + +But he grew physically weaker, and seven days later he passed into an +unconscious state, dying peacefully at noon on August 17th, 1916. He was +saved, as he had wished to be, from all consciousness of decrepitude. + + + + +THE LYRICAL POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY + + +When, about Christmas time in 1898, Mr. Hardy's admirers, who were +expecting from him a new novel, received instead a thick volume of +verse, there was mingled with their sympathy and respect a little +disappointment and a great failure in apprehension. Those who were not +rude enough to suggest that a cobbler should stick to his last, reminded +one another that many novelists had sought relaxation by trifling with +the Muses. Thackeray had published _Ballads_, and George Eliot had +expatiated in a _Legend of Jubal_. No one thought the worse of +_Coningsby_ because its author had produced a _Revolutionary Epic_. It +took some time for even intelligent criticism to see that the new +_Wessex Poems_ did not fall into this accidental category, and still, +after twenty years, there survives a tendency to take the verse of Mr. +Hardy, abundant and solid as it has become, as a mere subsidiary and +ornamental appendage to his novels. It is still necessary to insist on +the complete independence of his career as a poet, and to point out that +if he had never published a page of prose he would deserve to rank high +among the writers of his country on the score of the eight volumes of +his verse. It is as a lyrical poet, and solely as a lyrical poet, that I +propose to speak of him to-day. + +It has been thought extraordinary that Cowper was over fifty when he +published his first secular verses, but Mr. Hardy was approaching his +sixtieth year when he sent _Wessex Poems_ to the press. Such +self-restraint--"none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with +more unwearied spirit none shall"--has always fascinated the genuine +artist, but few have practised it with so much tenacity. When the work +of Mr. Hardy is completed, nothing, it is probable, will more strike +posterity than its unity, its consistency. He has given proof, as scarce +any other modern writer has done, of tireless constancy of resolve. His +novels formed an unbroken series from the _Desperate Remedies_ of 1871 +to _The Well-Beloved_ of 1897. In the fulness of his success, and +unseduced by all temptation, he closed that chapter of his career, and +has kept it closed. Since 1898 he has been, persistently and +periodically, a poet and nothing else. That he determined, for reasons +best left to his own judgment, to defer the exhibition of his verse +until he had completed his work in prose, ought not to prejudice +criticism in its analysis of the lyrics and the colossal dramatic +panorama. Mr. Hardy, exclusively as a poet, demands our undivided +attention. + +It is legitimate to speculate on other probable causes of Mr. Hardy's +delay. From such information as lies scattered before us, we gather that +it was from 1865 to 1867 that he originally took poetry to be his +vocation. The dated pieces in the volume of 1898 help us to form an idea +of the original character of his utterance. On the whole it was very +much what it remains in the pieces composed after a lapse of half a +century. Already, as a very young man, Mr. Hardy possessed his +extraordinary insight into the movements of human character, and his +eloquence in translating what he had observed of the tragedy and pain of +rustic lives. No one, for sixty years, had taken so closely to heart the +admonitions of Wordsworth in his famous Preface to the 1800 edition of +_Lyrical Ballads_ to seek for inspiration in that condition where "the +passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful forms of nature." +But it may well be doubted whether Mr. Hardy's poems would have been +received in the mid-Victorian age with favour, or even have been +comprehended. Fifty years ahead of his time, he was asking in 1866 for +novelty of ideas, and he must have been conscious that his questioning +would seem inopportune. He needed a different atmosphere, and he left +the task of revolt to another, and, at first sight, a very unrelated +force, that of the _Poems and Ballads_ of the same year. But Swinburne +succeeded in his revolution, and although he approached the art from an +opposite direction, he prepared the way for an ultimate appreciation of +Mr. Hardy. + +We should therefore regard the latter, in spite of his silence of forty +years, as a poet who laboured, like Swinburne, at a revolution against +the optimism and superficial sweetness of his age. Swinburne, it is +true, tended to accentuate the poetic side of poetry, while Mr. Hardy +drew verse, in some verbal respects, nearer to prose. This does not +affect their common attitude, and the sympathy of these great artists +for one another's work has already been revealed, and will be still more +clearly exposed. But they were unknown to each other in 1866, when to +both of them the cheap philosophy of the moment, the glittering +femininity of the "jewelled line," the intense respect for Mrs. Grundy +in her Sunday satin, appeared trumpery, hateful, and to be trampled +upon. We find in Mr. Hardy's earliest verse no echo of the passionate +belief in personal immortality which was professed by Ruskin and +Browning. He opposed the Victorian theory of human "progress"; the +Tennysonian beatific Vision seemed to him ridiculous. He rejected the +idea of the sympathy and goodness of Nature, and was in revolt against +the self-centredness of the Romantics. We may conjecture that he +combined a great reverence for _The Book of Job_ with a considerable +contempt for _In Memoriam_. + +This was not a mere rebellious fancy which passed off; it was something +inherent that remained, and gives to-day their peculiar character to Mr. +Hardy's latest lyrics. But before we examine the features of this +personal mode of interpreting poetry to the world, we may collect what +little light we can on the historic development of it. In the pieces +dated between 1865 and 1867 we find the germ of almost everything which +has since characterised the poet. In "Amabel" the ruinous passage of +years, which has continued to be an obsession with Mr. Hardy, is already +crudely dealt with. The habit of taking poetical negatives of small +scenes--"your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, and a pond edged +with grayish leaves" ("Neutral Times")--which had not existed in English +verse since the days of Crabbe, reappears. There is marked already a +sense of terror and resentment against the blind motions of chance--In +"Hap" the author would positively welcome a certainty of divine hatred +as a relief from the strain of depending upon "crass casualty." Here and +there in these earliest pieces an extreme difficulty of utterance is +remarkable in the face of the ease which the poet attained afterwards in +the expression of his most strange images and fantastic revelations. We +read in "At a Bridal":-- + + "Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree, + And each thus found apart, of false desire + A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire + As had fired ours could ever have mingled we!" + +This, although perfectly reducible, takes time to think out, and at a +hasty glance seems muffled up in obscurity beyond the darkness of Donne; +moreover, it is scarcely worthy in form of the virtuoso which Mr. Hardy +was presently to become. Perhaps of the poems certainly attributable to +this earliest period, the little cycle of sonnets called "She to Him" +gives clearest promise of what was coming. The sentiment is that of +Ronsard's famous "Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la +chandelle," but turned round, as Mr. Hardy loves to do, from the man to +the woman, and embroidered with ingenuities, such as where the latter +says that as her temperament dies down the habit of loving will remain, +and she be + + "Numb as a vane that cankers on its point, + True to the wind that kissed ere canker came," + +which attest a complexity of mind that Ronsard's society knew nothing +of. + +On the whole, we may perhaps be safe in conjecturing that whatever the +cause, the definite dedication to verse was now postponed. Meanwhile, +the writing of novels had become the business of Mr. Hardy's life, and +ten years go by before we trace a poet in that life again. But it is +interesting to find that when the great success of _Far from the Madding +Crowd_ had introduced him to a circle of the best readers, there +followed an effect which again disturbed his ambition for the moment. +Mr. Hardy was once more tempted to change the form of his work. He +wished "to get back to verse," but was dissuaded by Leslie Stephen, who +induced him to start writing _The Return of the Native_ instead. On +March 29th, 1875, Coventry Patmore, then a complete stranger, wrote to +express his regret that "such almost unequalled beauty and power as +appeared in the novels should not have assured themselves the +immortality which would have been conferred upon them by the form of +verse." This was just at the moment when we find Mr. Hardy's +conversations with "long Leslie Stephen in the velveteen coat" +obstinately turning upon "theologies decayed and defunct, the origin of +things, the constitution of matter, and the unreality of time." To this +period belongs also the earliest conception of _The Dynasts_, an old +note-book containing, under the date June 20th, 1875, the suggestion +that the author should attempt "An Iliad of Europe from 1789 to 1815." + +To this time also seems to belong the execution of what has proved the +most attractive section of Mr. Hardy's poetry, the narratives, or short +Wessex ballads. The method in which these came into the world is very +curious. Many of these stories were jotted down to the extent of a +stanza or two when the subject first occurred to the author. For +instance, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," first published by Lionel +Johnson in 1894, had been begun as early as 1867, and was finished ten +years later. The long ballad of "Leipzig" and the savage "San +Sebastian," both highly characteristic, were also conceived and a few +lines of each noted down long before their completion. "Valenciennes," +however, belongs to 1878, and the "Dance at the Phoenix," of which the +stanza beginning "'Twas Christmas" alone had been written years before, +seems to have been finished about the same time. What evidence is before +us goes to prove that in the 'seventies Mr. Hardy became a complete +master of the art of verse, and that his poetic style was by this time +fixed. He still kept poetry out of public sight, but he wrote during the +next twenty years, as though in a backwater off the stream of his +novels, the poems which form the greater part of the volume of 1898. If +no other collection of his lyrical verse existed, we should miss a +multitude of fine things, but our general conception of his genius would +be little modified. + +We should judge carelessly, however, if we treated the subsequent +volumes as mere repetitions of the original _Wessex Poems_. They present +interesting differences, which I may rapidly note before I touch on the +features which characterise the whole body of Mr. Hardy's verse. _Poems +of the Past and Present_, which came out in the first days of 1902, +could not but be in a certain measure disappointing, in so far as it +paralleled its three years' product with that of the thirty years of +_Wessex Poems_. Old pieces were published in it, and it was obvious that +in 1898 Mr. Hardy might be expected to have chosen from what used to be +called his "portfolio" those specimens which he thought to be most +attractive. But on further inspection this did not prove to be quite the +case. After pondering for twelve years on the era of Napoleon, his +preoccupation began in 1887 to drive him into song:-- + + "Must I pipe a palinody, + Or be silent thereupon?" + +He decides that silence has become impossible:-- + + "Nay; I'll sing 'The Bridge of Lodi'-- + That long-loved, romantic thing, + Though none show by smile or nod, he + Guesses why and what I sing!" + +Here is the germ of _The Dynasts_. But in the meantime the crisis of the +Boer War had cut across the poet's dream of Europe a hundred years ago, +and a group of records of the Dorsetshire elements of the British army +at the close of 1899 showed in Mr. Hardy's poetry what had not been +suspected there--a military talent of a most remarkable kind. Another +set of pieces composed in Rome were not so interesting; Mr. Hardy always +seems a little languid when he leaves the confines of his native Wessex. +Another section of _Poems of the Past and Present_ is severely, almost +didactically, metaphysical, and expands in varied language the daring +thought, so constantly present in Mr. Hardy's reverie, that God Himself +has forgotten the existence of earth, this "tiny sphere," this "tainted +ball," "so poor a thing," and has left all human life to be the +plaything of blind chance. This sad conviction is hardly ruffled by "The +Darkling Thrush," which goes as far towards optimism as Mr. Hardy can +let himself be drawn, or by such reflections as those in "On a Fine +Morning":-- + + "Whence comes Solace? Not from seeing + What is doing, suffering, being; + Not from noting Life's conditions, + Not from heeding Time's monitions; + But in cleaving to the Dream, + And in gazing on the gleam + Whereby gray things golden seem." + +Eight years more passed, years marked by the stupendous effort of _The +Dynasts_, before Mr. Hardy put forth another collection of lyrical +poems. _Time's Laughingstocks_ confirmed, and more than confirmed, the +high promise of _Wessex Poems_. The author, in one of his modest +prefaces, where he seems to whisper while we bend forward in our anxiety +not to miss one thrifty sentence, expresses the hope that _Time's +Laughingstocks_ will, as a whole, take the "reader forward, even if not +far, rather than backward." + +The book, indeed, does not take us "far" forward, simply because the +writer's style and scope were definitely exposed to us already, and yet +it does take us "forward," because the hand of the master is +conspicuously firmer and his touch more daring. The _Laughingstocks_ +themselves are fifteen in number, tragical stories of division and +isolation, of failures in passion, of the treason of physical decay. No +landscape of Mr. Hardy's had been more vivid than the night-pictures in +"The Revisitation," where the old soldier in barracks creeps out on to +the gaunt down, and meets (by one of Mr. Hardy's coincidences) his +ancient mistress, and no picture more terrible than the revelation of +each to the other in a blaze of sunrise. What a document for the future +is "Reminiscences of a Dancing Man"? If only Shakespeare could have left +us such a song of the London in 1585! But the power of the poet +culminates in the pathos of "The Tramp Woman"--perhaps the greatest of +all Mr. Hardy's lyrical poems--and in the horror of "A Sunday Morning's +Tragedy." + +It is noticeable that _Time's Laughingstocks_ is, in some respects, a +more daring collection than its predecessors. We find the poet here +entirely emancipated from convention, and guided both in religion and +morals exclusively by the inner light of his reflection. His energy now +interacts on his clairvoyance with a completeness which he had never +quite displayed before, and it is here that we find Mr. Hardy's +utterance peculiarly a quintessence of himself. Especially in the +narrative pieces--which are often Wessex novels distilled into a +wine-glass, such as "Rose-Ann," and "The Vampirine Fair"--he allows no +considerations of what the reader may think "nice" or "pleasant" to +shackle his sincerity or his determination; and it is therefore to +_Time's Laughingstocks_ that the reader who wishes to become intimately +acquainted with Mr. Hardy as a moralist most frequently recurs. We +notice here more than elsewhere in his poems Mr. Hardy's sympathy with +the local music of Wessex, and especially with its expression by the +village choir, which he uses as a spiritual symbol. Quite a large +section of _Time's Laughingstocks_ takes us to the old-fashioned gallery +of some church, where the minstrels are bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount +Ephraim," or to a later scene where the ghosts, in whose melancholy +apparition Mr. Hardy takes such pleasure, chant their goblin melodies +and strum "the viols of the dead" in the moonlit churchyard. The very +essence of Mr. Hardy's reverie at this moment of his career is to be +found, for instance, in "The Dead Quire," where the ancient +phantom-minstrels revenge themselves on their gross grandsons outside +the alehouse. + +Almost immediately after the outbreak of the present war Mr. Hardy +presented to a somewhat distraught and inattentive public another +collection of his poems. It cannot be said that _Satires of +Circumstance_ is the most satisfactory of those volumes; it is, perhaps, +that which we could with the least discomposure persuade ourselves to +overlook. Such a statement refers more to the high quality of other +pages than to any positive decay of power or finish here. There is no +less adroitness of touch and penetration of view in this book than +elsewhere, and the poet awakens once more our admiration by his skill in +giving poetic value to minute conditions of life which have escaped less +careful observers. But in _Satires of Circumstance_ the ugliness of +experience is more accentuated than it is elsewhere, and is flung in our +face with less compunction. The pieces which give name to the volume are +only fifteen in number, but the spirit which inspires them is very +frequently repeated in other parts of the collection. That spirit is one +of mocking sarcasm, and it acts in every case by presenting a +beautifully draped figure of illusion, from which the poet, like a +sardonic showman, twitches away the robe that he may display a skeleton +beneath it. We can with little danger assume, as we read the _Satires of +Circumstance_, hard and cruel shafts of searchlight as they seem, that +Mr. Hardy was passing through a mental crisis when he wrote them. This +seems to be the _Troilus and Cressida_ of his life's work, the book in +which he is revealed most distracted by conjecture and most overwhelmed +by the miscarriage of everything. The wells of human hope have been +poisoned for him by some condition of which we know nothing, and even +the picturesque features of Dorsetshire landscape, that have always +before dispersed his melancholy, fail to win his attention:-- + + "Bright yellowhammers + Made mirthful clamours, + And billed long straws with a bustling air, + And bearing their load, + Flew up the road + That he followed alone, without interest there." + +The strongest of the poems of disillusion which are the outcome of this +mood, is "The Newcomer's Wife," with the terrible abruptness of its last +stanza. It is not for criticism to find fault with the theme of a work +of art, but only to comment upon its execution. Of the merit of these +monotonously sinister _Satires of Circumstance_ there can be no +question; whether the poet's indulgence in the mood which gave birth to +them does not tend to lower our moral temperature and to lessen the +rebound of our energy, is another matter. At all events, every one must +welcome a postscript in which a blast on the bugle of war seemed to have +wakened the poet from his dark brooding to the sense of a new chapter in +history. + +In the fourth year of the war the veteran poet published _Moments of +Vision_. These show a remarkable recovery of spirit, and an ingenuity +never before excelled. With the passage of years Mr. Hardy, observing +everything in the little world of Wessex, and forgetting nothing, has +become almost preternaturally wise, and, if it may be said so, +"knowing," with a sort of magic, like that of a wizard. He has learned +to track the windings of the human heart with the familiarity of a +gamekeeper who finds plenty of vermin in the woods, and who nails what +he finds, be it stoat or squirrel, to the barn-door of his poetry. But +there is also in these last-fruits of Mr. Hardy's mossed tree much that +is wholly detached from the bitterness of satire, much that simply +records, with an infinite delicacy of pathos, little incidents of the +personal life of long ago, bestowing the immortality of art on these +fugitive fancies in the spirit of the Japanese sculptor when he chisels +the melting of a cloud or the flight of an insect on his sword hilt:-- + + "I idly cut a parsley stalk + And blew therein towards the moon; + I had not thought what ghosts would walk + With shivering footsteps to my tune. + + "I went and knelt, and scooped my hand + As if to drink, into the brook, + And a faint figure seemed to stand + Above me, with the bye-gone look. + + "I lipped rough rhymes of chance not choice, + I thought not what my words might be; + There came into my ear a voice + That turned a tenderer verse for me." + +We have now in brief historic survey marshalled before us the various +volumes in which Mr. Hardy's lyrical poetry was originally collected. +Before we examine its general character more closely, it may be well to +call attention to its technical quality, which was singularly +misunderstood at first, and which has never, we believe, been boldly +faced. In 1898, and later, when a melodious _falsetto_ was much in +fashion amongst us, the reviewers found great fault with Mr. Hardy's +prosody; they judged him as a versifier to be rude and incorrect. As +regards the single line, it may be confessed that Mr. Hardy, in his +anxiety to present his thought in an undiluted form, is not infrequently +clogged and hard. Such a line as + + "Fused from its separateness by ecstasy" + +hisses at us like a snake, and crawls like a wounded one. Mr. Hardy is +apt to clog his lines with consonants, and he seems indifferent to the +stiffness which is the consequence of this neglect. Ben Jonson said that +"Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; perhaps we may go +so far as to say that Mr. Hardy, for his indifference to a mellifluous +run lays himself open to a mild rebuke. He is negligent of that eternal +ornament of English verse, audible intricacy, probably because of +Swinburne's abuse of it. But most of what is called his harshness should +rather be called bareness, and is the result of a revolt, conscious or +unconscious, against Keats' prescription of "loading the rifts with +ore." + +In saying this, all has been said that an enemy could in justice say in +blame of his metrical peculiarities. Unquestionably he does +occasionally, like Robert Browning, err in the direction of cacophony. +But when we turn to the broader part of prosody, we must perceive that +Mr. Hardy is not only a very ingenious, but a very correct and admirable +metricist. His stanzaic invention is abundant; no other Victorian poet, +not even Swinburne, has employed so many forms, mostly of his own +invention, and employed them so appropriately, that is to say, in so +close harmony with the subject or story enshrined in them. To take an +example from his pure lyrics of reflection first, from "The +Bullfinches":-- + + "Brother Bulleys, let us sing + From the dawn till evening! + For we know not that we go not + When the day's pale visions fold + Unto those who sang of old," + +in the exquisite fineness and sadness of the stanza we seem to hear the +very voices of the birds warbling faintly in the sunset. Again, the +hurried, timid irresolution of a lover always too late is marvellously +rendered in the form of "Lizbie Browne":-- + + "And Lizbie Browne, + Who else had hair + Bay-red as yours, + Or flesh so fair + Bred out of doors, + Sweet Lizbie Browne?" + +On the other hand, the fierceness of "I said to Love" is interpreted in +a stanza that suits the mood of denunciation, while "Tess's Lament" +wails in a metre which seems to rock like an ageing woman seated alone +before the fire, with an infinite haunting sadness. + +It is, however, in the narrative pieces, the little _Wessex Tales_, +that Mr. Hardy's metrical imagination is most triumphant. No two of +these are identical in form, and for each he selects, or more often +invents, a wholly appropriate stanza. He makes many experiments, one of +the strangest being the introduction of rhymeless lines at regular +intervals. Of this, "Cicely" is an example which repays attention:-- + + "And still sadly onward I followed, + That Highway the Icen + Which trails its pale riband down Wessex + O'er lynchet and lea. + + "Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, + Where legions had wayfared, + And where the slow river up-glasses + Its green canopy"; + +and one still more remarkable is the enchanting "Friends Beyond," to +which we shall presently recur. The drawling voice of a weary old +campaigner is wonderfully rendered in the stanza of "Valenciennes":-- + + "Well: Heaven wi' its jasper halls + Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. + Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls + As we did Valencieen!" + +whereas for long Napoleonic stories like "Leipzig" and "The Peasant's +Confession," a ballad-measure which contemporaries such as Southey or +Campbell might have used is artfully chosen. In striking contrast we +have the elaborate verse-form of "The Souls of the Slain," in which the +throbbing stanza seems to dilate and withdraw like the very cloud of +moth-like phantoms which it describes. It is difficult to follow out +this theme without more frequent quotation than I have space, for here, +but the reader who pursues it carefully will not repeat the rumour that +Mr. Hardy is a careless or "incorrect" metricist. He is, on the +contrary, a metrical artist of great accomplishment. + +The conception of life revealed in his verses by this careful artist is +one which displays very exactly the bent of his temperament. During the +whole of his long career Mr. Hardy has not budged an inch from his +original line of direction. He holds that, abandoned by God, treated +with scorn by Nature, man lies helpless at the mercy of "those purblind +Doomsters," accident, chance, and time, from whom he has had to endure +injury and insult from the cradle to the grave. This is stating the +Hardy doctrine in its extreme form, but it is not stating it too +strongly. This has been called his "pessimism," a phrase to which some +admirers, unwilling to give things their true name, have objected. But, +of course, Mr. Hardy is a pessimist, just as Browning is an optimist, +just as white is not black, and day is not night. Our juggling with +words in paradox is too often apt to disguise a want of decision in +thought. Let us admit that Mr. Hardy's conception of the fatal forces +which beleaguer human life is a "pessimistic" one, or else words have no +meaning. + +Yet it is needful to define in what this pessimism consists. It is not +the egotism of Byron or the morbid melancholy of Chateaubriand. It is +directed towards an observation of others, not towards an analysis of +self, and this gives it more philosophical importance, because although +romantic peevishness is very common among modern poets, and although +ennui inspires a multitude of sonnets, a deliberate and imaginative +study of useless suffering in the world around us is rare indeed among +the poets. It is particularly to be noted that Mr. Hardy, although one +of the most profoundly tragic of all modern writers, is neither +effeminate nor sickly. His melancholy could never have dictated the +third stanza of Shelley's "Lines written in Dejection in the Bay of +Naples." His pessimism is involuntary, forced from him by his experience +and his constitution, and no analysis could give a better definition of +what divides him from the petulant despair of a poet like Leopardi than +the lines "To Life":-- + + "O life, with the sad scared face, + I weary of seeing thee, + And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, + And thy too-forced pleasantry! + + "I know what thou would'st tell + Of Death, Time, Destiny-- + I have known it long, and know, too, well + What it all means for me. + + "But canst thou not array + Thyself in rare disguise, + And feign like truth, for one mad day, + That Earth is Paradise? + + "I'll tune me to the mood, + And mumm with thee till eve, + And maybe what as interlude + I feign, I shall believe!" + +But the mumming goes no deeper than it does in the exquisite poem of +"The Darkling Thrush," where the carolings of an aged bird, on a frosty +evening, are so ecstatic that they waken a vague hope in the listener's +mind that the thrush may possibly know of "some blessed hope" of which +the poet is "unaware." This is as far as Mr. Hardy ever gets on the +blest Victorian pathway of satisfaction. + +There are certain aspects in which it is not unnatural to see a parallel +between Mr. Hardy and George Crabbe. Each is the spokesman of a +district, each has a passion for the study of mankind, each has gained +by long years of observation a profound knowledge of local human +character, and each has plucked on the open moor, and wears in his coat, +the hueless flower of disillusion. But there is a great distinction in +the aim of the two poets. Crabbe, as he describes himself in _The Parish +Register_, was "the true physician" who "walks the foulest ward." He was +utilitarian in his morality; he exposed the pathos of tragedy by +dwelling on the faults which led to it, forgetful of the fatality which +in more consistent moments he acknowledged. Crabbe was realistic with a +moral design, even in the _Tales of the Hall_, where he made a gallant +effort at last to arrive at a detachment of spirit. No such effort is +needed by Mr. Hardy, who has none of the instinct of a preacher, and who +considers moral improvement outside his responsibility. He admits, with +his great French contemporary, that + + "Tout desir est menteur, toute joie ephemere, + Toute liqueur au fond de la coupe est amere," + +but he is bent on discovering the cause of this devastation, and not +disposed to waste time over its consequences. At the end he produces a +panacea which neither Crabbe nor Byron dreamed of--resignation. + +But the poet has not reached the end of his disillusion. He thinks to +secure repose on the breast of Nature, the _alma mater_, to whom Goethe +and Wordsworth and Browning each in his own way turned, and were +rewarded by consolation and refreshment. We should be prepared to find +Mr. Hardy, with his remarkable aptitude for the perception of natural +forms, easily consoled by the influences of landscape and the inanimate +world. His range of vision is wide and extremely exact; he has the gift +of reproducing before us scenes of various character with a vividness +which is sometimes startling. But Mr. Hardy's disdain of sentimentality, +and his vigorous analysis of the facts of life, render him insensible +not indeed to the mystery nor to the beauty, but to the imagined +sympathy, of Nature. He has no more confidence in the visible earth than +in the invisible heavens, and neither here nor there is he able to +persuade himself to discover a counsellor or a friend. In this +connection, we do well to follow the poet's train of thought in the +lyric called "In a Wood," where he enters a copse dreaming that, in that +realm of "sylvan peace," Nature would offer "a soft release from man's +unrest." He immediately observes that the pine and the beech are +struggling for existence, and trying to blight each other with dripping +poison. He sees the ivy eager to strangle the elm, and the hawthorns +choking the hollies. Even the poplars sulk and turn black under the +shadow of a rival. In the end, filled with horror at all these crimes of +Nature, the poet flees from the copse as from an accursed place, and he +determines that life offers him no consolation except the company of +those human beings who are as beleaguered as himself:-- + + "Since, then, no grace I find + Taught me of trees, + Turn I back to my kind + Worthy as these. + There at least smiles abound, + There discourse trills around, + There, now and then, are found, + Life-loyalties." + +It is absurd, he decides, to love Nature, which has either no response +to give, or answers in irony. Let us even avoid, as much as we can, deep +concentration of thought upon the mysteries of Nature, lest we become +demoralised by contemplating her negligence, her blindness, her +implacability. We find here a violent reaction against the poetry of +egotistic optimism which had ruled the romantic school in England for +more than a hundred years, and we recognise a branch of Mr. Hardy's +originality. He has lifted the veil of Isis, and he finds beneath it, +not a benevolent mother of men, but the tomb of an illusion. One short +lyric, "Yell'ham-Wood's Story," puts this, again with a sylvan setting, +in its unflinching crudity:-- + + "Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan, + And Clyffe-hill Clump says 'Yea!' + But Yell'ham says a thing of its own: + It's not, 'Gray, gray, + Is Life alway!' + That Yell'ham says, + Nor that Life is for ends unknown. + + "It says that Life would signify + A thwarted purposing: + That we come to live, and are called to die. + Yes, that's the thing + In fall, in spring, + That Yell'ham says:-- + Life offers--to deny!'" + +It is therefore almost exclusively to the obscure history of those who +suffer and stumble around him, victims of the universal disillusion, men +and women "come to live but called to die," that Mr. Hardy dedicates his +poetic function. "Lizbie Browne" appeals to us as a typical instance of +his rustic pathos, his direct and poignant tenderness, and if we compare +it with such poems of Wordsworth's as "Lucy Gray" or "Alice Fell" we see +that he starts by standing much closer to the level of the subject than +his great predecessor does. Wordsworth is the benevolent philosopher +sitting in a post-chaise or crossing the "wide moor" in meditation. Mr. +Hardy is the familiar neighbour, the shy mourner at the grave; his +relation is a more intimate one: he is patient, humble, un-upbraiding. +Sometimes, as in the remarkable colloquy called "The Ruined Maid," his +sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the +system of Victorian morality. Mr. Hardy, indeed, is not concerned with +sentimental morals, but with the primitive instincts of the soul, +applauding them, or at least recording them with complacency, even when +they outrage ethical tradition, as they do in the lyric narrative called +"A Wife and Another." The stanzas "To an Unborn Pauper Child" sum up +what is sinister and what is genial in Mr. Hardy's attitude to the +unambitious forms of life which he loves to contemplate. + +His temperature is not always so low as it is in the class of poems to +which we have just referred, but his ultimate view is never more +sanguine. He is pleased sometimes to act as the fiddler at a dance, +surveying the hot-blooded couples, and urging them on by the lilt of +his instrument, but he is always perfectly aware that they will have "to +pay high for their prancing" at the end of all. No instance of this is +more remarkable than the poem called "Julie-Jane," a perfect example of +Mr. Hardy's metrical ingenuity and skill, which begins thus:-- + + "Sing; how 'a would sing! + How 'a would raise the tune + When we rode in the waggon from harvesting + By the light o' the moon! + + "Dance; how 'a would dance! + If a fiddlestring did but sound + She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance, + And go round and round. + + "Laugh; how 'a would laugh! + Her peony lips would part + As if none such a place for a lover to quaff + At the deeps of a heart," + +and which then turns to the most plaintive and the most irreparable +tragedy, woven, as a black design on to a background of gold, upon this +basis of temperamental joyousness. + +Alphonse Daudet once said that the great gift of Edmond de Goncourt was +to, "_rendre l'irrendable_." This is much more true of Mr. Hardy than it +was of Goncourt, and more true than it is of any other English poet +except Donne. There is absolutely no observation too minute, no flutter +of reminiscence too faint, for Mr. Hardy to adopt as the subject of a +metaphysical lyric, and his skill in this direction has grown upon him; +it is nowhere so remarkable as in his latest volume, aptly termed +_Moments of Vision_. Everything in village life is grist to his mill; he +seems to make no selection, and his field is modest to humility and yet +practically boundless. We have a poem on the attitude of two people with +nothing to do and no book to read, waiting in the parlour of an hotel +for the rain to stop, a recollection after more than forty years. That +the poet once dropped a pencil into the cranny of an old church where he +was sketching inspires an elaborate lyric. The disappearance of a rotted +summer-house, the look of a row of silver drops of fog condensed on the +bar of a gate, the effect of candlelight years and years ago on a +woman's neck and hair, the vision of a giant at a fair, led by a dwarf +with a red string--such are amongst the subjects which awaken in Mr. +Hardy thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears, and call for +interpretation in verse. The skeleton of a lady's sunshade, picked up on +Swanage Cliffs, the pages of a fly-blown Testament lying in a railway +waiting-room, a journeying boy in a third-class carriage, with his +ticket stuck in the band of his hat--such are among the themes which +awake in Mr. Hardy's imagination reveries which are always wholly +serious and usually deeply tragic. + +Mr. Hardy's notation of human touches hitherto excluded from the realm +of poetry is one of the most notable features of his originality. It +marked his work from the beginning, as in the early ballad of "The +Widow," where the sudden damping of the wooer's amatory ardour in +consequence of his jealousy of the child is rendered with extraordinary +refinement. The difficulty of course is to know when to stop. There is +always a danger that a poet, in his search after the infinitely +ingenious, may lapse into _amphigory_, into sheer absurdity and +triviality, which Cowper, in spite of his elegant lightness, does not +always escape. Wordsworth, more serious in his intent, fell headlong in +parts of _Peter Bell_, and in such ballads as "Betty Foy." Mr. Hardy, +whatever the poverty of his incident, commonly redeems it by the oddity +of his observation; as in "The Pedigree":-- + + "I bent in the deep of night + Over a pedigree the chronicler gave + As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, + The uncurtained panes of my window-square + Let in the watery light + Of the moon in its old age: + And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past + Where mute and cold it globed + Like a dying dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave." + +Mr. Hardy's love of strange experiences, and of adventures founded on a +balance of conscience and instinct, is constantly exemplified in those +ballads and verse-anecdotes which form the section of his poetry most +appreciated by the general public. Among these, extraordinarily +representative of the poet's habit of mind, is "My Cicely," a tale of +the eighteenth century, where a man impetuously rides from London +through Wessex to be present at the funeral of the wrong woman; as he +returns, by a coincidence, he meets the right woman, whom he used to +love, and is horrified at "her liquor-fired face, her thick accents." He +determines that by an effort of will the dead woman (whom he never saw) +shall remain, what she seemed during his wild ride, "_my_ Cicely," and +the living woman be expunged from memory. A similar deliberate electing +that the dream shall hold the place of the fact is the motive of "The +Well-Beloved." The ghastly humour of "The Curate's Kindness" is a sort +of reverse action of the same mental subtlety. Misunderstanding takes a +very prominent place in Mr. Hardy's irony of circumstance; as, almost +too painfully, in "The Rash Bride," a hideous tale of suicide following +on the duplicity of a tender and innocent widow. + +The grandmother of Mr. Hardy was born in 1772, and survived until 1857. +From her lips he heard many an obscure old legend of the life of Wessex +in the eighteenth century. Was it she who told him the terrible Exmoor +story of "The Sacrilege;" the early tale of "The Two Men," which might +be the skeleton-scenario for a whole elaborate novel; or that +incomparable comedy in verse, "The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's," with its +splendid human touch at the very end? We suspect that it was; and +perhaps at the same source he acquired his dangerous insight into the +female heart, whether exquisitely feeble as in "The Home-coming" with +its delicate and ironic surprise, or treacherous, as in the desolating +ballad of "Rose-Ann." No one, in prose or verse, has expatiated more +poignantly than Mr. Hardy on what our forefathers used to call "cases of +conscience." He seems to have shared the experiences of souls to whom +life was "a wood before your doors, and a labyrinth within the wood, and +locks and bars to every door within that labyrinth," as Jeremy Taylor +describes that of the anxious penitents who came to him to confession. +The probably very early story of "The Casterbridge Captains" is a +delicate study in compunction, and a still more important example is +"The Alarm," where the balance of conscience and instinct gives to what +in coarser hands might seem the most trivial of actions a momentous +character of tragedy. + +This is one of Mr. Hardy's studies in military history, where he is +almost always singularly happy. His portraits of the non-commissioned +officer of the old service are as excellent in verse as they are in the +prose of _The Trumpet-Major_ or _The Melancholy Hussar_. The reader of +the novels will not have to be reminded that "Valenciennes" and the +other ballads have their prose-parallel in Simon Burden's reminiscences +of Minden. Mr. Hardy, with a great curiosity about the science of war +and a close acquaintance with the mind of the common soldier, has +pondered on the philosophy of fighting. "The Man he Killed," written in +1902, expresses the wonder of the rifleman who is called upon to shoot +his brother-in-arms, although + + "Had he and I but met, + By some old ancient inn, + We should have set us down to wet + Right many a nipperkin." + +In this connection the _Poems of War and Patriotism_, which form an +important part of the volume of 1918, should be carefully examined by +those who meditate on the tremendous problems of the moment. + +A poet so profoundly absorbed in the study of life could not fail to +speculate on the probabilities of immortality. Here Mr. Hardy presents +to us his habitual serenity in negation. He sees the beautiful human +body "lined by tool of time," and he asks what becomes of it when its +dissolution is complete. He sees no evidence of a conscious state after +death, of what would have to be, in the case of aged or exhausted +persons, a revival of spiritual force, and on the whole he is +disinclined to cling to the faith in a future life. He holds that the +immortality of a dead man resides in the memory of the living, his +"finer part shining within ever-faithful hearts of those bereft." He +pursues this theme in a large number of his most serious and affecting +lyrics, most gravely perhaps in "The To-be-Forgotten" and in "The +Superseded." This sense of the forlorn condition of the dead, surviving +only in the dwindling memory of the living, inspires what has some +claims to be considered the loveliest of all Mr. Hardy's poems, "Friends +Beyond," which in its tenderness, its humour, and its pathos contains in +a few pages every characteristic of his genius. + +His speculation perceives the dead as a crowd of slowly vanishing +phantoms, clustering in their ineffectual longing round the footsteps of +those through whom alone they continue to exist. This conception has +inspired Mr. Hardy with several wonderful visions, among which the +spectacle of "The Souls of the Slain" in the Boer War, alighting, like +vast flights of moths, over Portland Bill at night, is the most +remarkable. It has the sublimity and much of the character of some +apocalyptic design by Blake. The volume of 1902 contains a whole group +of phantasmal pieces of this kind, where there is frequent mention of +spectres, who address the poet in the accents of nature, as in the +unrhymed ode called "The Mother Mourns." The obsession of old age, with +its physical decay ("I look into my glass"), the inevitable division +which leads to that isolation which the poet regards as the greatest of +adversities ("The Impercipient"), the tragedies of moral indecision, the +contrast between the tangible earth and the bodyless ghosts, and endless +repetition of the cry, "Why find we us here?" and of the question "Has +some Vast Imbecility framed us in jest, and left us now to +hazardry?"--all start from the overwhelming love of physical life and +acquaintance with its possibilities, which Mr. Hardy possesses to an +inordinate degree. + +It would be ridiculous at the close of an essay to attempt any +discussion of the huge dramatic panorama which many believe to be Mr. +Hardy's most weighty contribution to English literature. The spacious +theatre of _The Dynasts_ with its comprehensive and yet concise +realisations of vast passages of human history, is a work which calls +for a commentary as lengthy as itself, and yet needs no commentary at +all. No work of the imagination is more its own interpreter than this +sublime historic peep-show, this rolling vision of the Napoleonic +chronicle drawn on the broadest lines, and yet in detail made up of +intensely concentrated and vivid glimpses of reality. But the subject of +my present study, the lyrical poetry of Mr. Hardy, is not largely +illustrated in _The Dynasts_, except by the choral interludes of the +phantom intelligences, which have great lyrical value, and by three or +four admirable songs. + +When we resume the effect which the poetry of Mr. Hardy makes upon the +careful reader, we note, as I have indicated already, a sense of unity +of direction throughout. Mr. Hardy has expressed himself in a thousand +ways, but has never altered his vision. From 1867 to 1917, through half +a century of imaginative creation, he has not modified the large +outlines of his art in the smallest degree. To early readers of his +poems, before the full meaning of them became evident, his voice sounded +inharmonious, because it did not fit in with the exquisite melodies of +the later Victorian age. But Mr. Hardy, with characteristic pertinacity, +did not attempt to alter his utterance in the least, and now we can all +perceive, if we take the trouble to do so, that what seemed harsh in his +poetry was his peculiar and personal mode of interpreting his thoughts +to the world. + +As in his novels so in his poems, Mr. Hardy has chosen to remain local, +to be the interpreter for present and future times of one rich and +neglected province of the British realm. From his standpoint there he +contemplates the wide aspect of life, but it seems huge and misty to +him, and he broods over the tiny incidents of Wessex idiosyncracy. His +irony is audacious and even sardonic, and few poets have been less +solicitous to please their weaker brethren. But no poet of modern times +has been more careful to avoid the abstract and to touch upon the real. + + + + +SOME SOLDIER POETS + + +The two years which preceded the outbreak of the war were marked in this +country by a revival of public interest in the art of poetry. To this +movement coherence was given and organisation introduced by Mr. Edward +Marsh's now-famous volume entitled _Georgian Poetry_. The effect of this +collection--for it is hardly correct to call it an anthology--of the +best poems written by the youngest poets since 1911 was two-fold; it +acquainted readers with work few had "the leisure or the zeal to +investigate," and it brought the writers themselves together in a +corporate and selected relation. I do not recollect that this had been +done--except prematurely and partially by _The Germ_ of 1850--since the +_England's Parnassus_ and _England's Helicon_ of 1600. In point of fact +the only real precursor of Mr. Marsh's venture in our whole literature +is the _Songs and Sonnettes_ of 1557, commonly known as _Tottel's +Miscellany_. Tottel brought together, for the first time, the lyrics of +Wyatt, Surrey, Churchyard, Vaux, and Bryan, exactly as Mr. Marsh called +public attention to Rupert Brooke, James Elroy Flecker and the rest of +the Georgians, and he thereby fixed the names of those poets, as Mr. +Marsh has fixed those of our youngest fledglings, on the roll of English +literature. + +The general tone of the latest poetry, up to the moment of the outbreak +of hostilities, was pensive, instinct with natural piety, given somewhat +in excess to description of landscape, tender in feeling, essentially +unaggressive except towards the clergy and towards other versifiers of +an earlier generation. There was absolutely not a trace in any one of +the young poets of that arrogance and vociferous defiance which marked +German verse during the same years. These English shepherds might hit at +their elders with their staves, but they had turned their swords into +pruning-hooks and had no scabbards to rattle. This is a point which +might have attracted notice, if we had not all been too drowsy in the +lap of our imperial prosperity to observe the signs of the times in +Berlin. Why did no one call our attention to the beating of the big drum +which was going on so briskly on the Teutonic Parnassus? At all events, +there was no echo of such a noise in the "chambers of imagery" which +contained Mr. Gordon Bottomley, or in Mr. W.H. Davies' wandering "songs +of joy," or on "the great hills and solemn chanting seas" where Mr. John +Drinkwater waited for the advent of beauty. And the guns of August 1914 +found Mr. W.W. Gibson encompassed by "one dim, blue infinity of starry +peace." There is a sort of German _Georgian Poetry_ in existence; in +time to come a comparison of its pages with those of Mr. Marsh may throw +a side-light on the question, Who prepared the War? + +The youngest poets were more completely taken by surprise in August 1914 +than their elders. The earliest expressions of lyric military feeling +came from veteran voices. It was only proper that the earliest of all +should be the Poet Laureate's address to England, ending with the +prophecy:-- + + "Much suffering shall cleanse thee! + But thou through the flood + Shalt win to Salvation, + To Beauty through blood." + +As sensation, however, followed sensation in those first terrific and +bewildering weeks, much was happening that called forth with the utmost +exuberance the primal emotions of mankind; there was full occasion for + + "exultations, agonies, + And love, and man's unconquerable mind." + +By September a full chorus was vocal, led by our national veteran, Mr. +Thomas Hardy, with his _Song of the Soldiers_:-- + + "What of the faith and fire within us, + Men who march away + Ere the barn-cocks say + Night is growing gray, + To hazards whence no tears can win us; + What of the faith and fire within us, + Men who march away?" + +Already, before the close of the autumn of 1914, four or five +anthologies of war-poems were in the press, and the desire of the +general public to be fed with patriotic and emotional verse was +manifested in unmistakable ways. We had been accustomed for some time +past to the issue of a multitude of little pamphlets of verse, often +very carefully written, and these the critics had treated with an +indulgence which would have whitened the hair of the stern reviewers of +forty years ago. The youthful poets, almost a trade-union in themselves, +protected one another by their sedulous generosity. It was very unusual +to see anything criticised, much less "slated"; the balms of praise were +poured over every rising head, and immortalities were predicted by the +dozen. Yet, as a rule, the sale of these little poetic pamphlets had +been small, and they had been read only by those who had a definite +object in doing so. + +The immediate success of the anthologies, however, proved that the war +had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse, an attention +anxious to be stirred or soothed by the assiduous company of poets who +had been ripening their talents in a little clan. These had now an +eager world ready to listen to them. The result was surprising; we may +even, without exaggeration, call it unparalleled. There had never +before, in the world's history, been an epoch which had tolerated and +even welcomed such a flood of verse as was poured forth over Great +Britain during the first three years of the war. Those years saw the +publication, as I am credibly informed, of more than five hundred +volumes of new and original poetry. It would be the silliest +complaisance to pretend that all of this, or much of it, or any but a +very little of it, has been of permanent value. Much of it was windy and +superficial, striving in wild vague terms to express great agitations +which were obscurely felt by the poet. There was too much of the bathos +of rhetoric, especially at first; too much addressing the German as +"thou fell, bloody brute," and the like, which broke no bones and took +no trenches. + +When once it was understood that, as a cancelled line in Tennyson's +_Maud_ has it, + + "The long, long canker of peace was over and done," + +the sentiments of indignation and horror made themselves felt with +considerable vivacity. In this direction, however, none of the youngest +poets approached Sir Owen Seaman in the vigour of their invective. Most +of them seemed to be overpowered by the political situation, and few +could free themselves from their inured pacific habit of speech. Even +when they wrote of Belgium, the Muse seemed rather to weep than to +curse. Looking back to the winter of 1914, it is almost pathetic to +observe how difficult it was for our easy-going British bards to hate +the Germans. There was a good deal of ineffective violence, and +considerable misuse of technical terms, caused, in many cases, by a too +hasty reference to newspaper reports of gallantry under danger, in the +course of which the more or less obscure verbiage of military science +was picturesquely and inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious +reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he +cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a +family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from +another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British +prejudice, and to a horrible confidence in England's power of "muddling +through," which look rather ghastly in the light of subsequent +struggles. + +There was, however, a new spirit presently apparent, and a much +healthier one. The bards became soldiers, and in crossing over to France +and Flanders, each had packed his flute in his kit. They began to send +home verses in which they translated into music their actual experiences +and their authentic emotions. We found ourselves listening to young men +who had something new, and what was better, something noble to say to +us, and we returned to the national spirit which inspired the Chansons +de Geste in the eleventh century. To the spirit--but not in the least to +the form, since it is curious that the war-poetry of 1914-17 was, even +in the most skilful hands, poetry on a small scale. The two greatest of +the primal species of verse, the Epic and the Ode, were entirely +neglected, except, as will later be observed, in one notable instance by +Major Maurice Baring. As a rule, the poets constrained themselves to +observe the discipline of a rather confined lyrical analysis in forms of +the simplest character. Although particular examples showed a rare +felicity of touch, and although the sincerity of the reflection in many +cases hit upon very happy forms of expression, it is impossible to +overlook the general monotony. There used to be a story that the +Japanese Government sent a committee of its best art-critics to study +the relative merits of the modern European painters, and that they +returned with the bewildered statement that they could make no report, +because all European pictures were exactly alike. A student from +Patagonia might conceivably argue that he could discover no difference +whatever between our various poets of the war. + +This would be unjust, but it is perhaps not unfair to suggest that the +determined resistance to all restraint, which has marked the latest +school, is not really favourable to individuality. There has been a very +general, almost a universal tendency to throw off the shackles of poetic +form. It has been supposed that by abandoning the normal restraints, or +artificialities, of metre and rhyme, a greater directness and fidelity +would be secured. Of course, if an intensified journalistic impression +is all that is desired, "prose cut up into lengths" is the readiest +by-way to effect. But if the poets desire--and they all do desire--to +speak to ages yet unborn, they should not forget that all the experience +of history goes to prove discipline not unfavourable to poetic +sincerity, while, on the other hand, the absence of all restraint is +fatal to it. Inspiration does not willingly attend upon flagging metre +and discordant rhyme, and never in the whole choral progress from Pindar +down to Swinburne has a great master been found who did not exult in the +stubbornness of "dancing words and speaking strings," or who did not +find his joy in reducing them to harmony. The artist who avoids all +difficulties may be pleased with the rapidity of his effect, but he will +have the vexation of finding his success an ephemeral one. The old +advice to the poet, in preparing the rich chariot of the Muse, still +holds good:-- + + "Let the postillion, Nature, mount, but let + The coachman, Art, be set." + +Too many of our recent rebellious bards fancy that the coach will drive +itself, if only the post-boy sticks his heels hard into Pegasus. + +It is not, however, the object of this essay to review all the poetry +which was written about the war, nor even that part of it which owed its +existence to the strong feeling of non-combatants at home. I propose to +fix our attention on what was written by the young soldiers themselves +in their beautiful gallantry, verse which comes to us hallowed by the +glorious effort of battle, and in too many poignant cases by the +ultimate sacrifice of life itself. The poet achieves his highest meed of +contemporary glory, if + + "some brave young man's untimely fate + In words worth, dying for he celebrate," + +and when he is himself a young man striving for the same deathless +honour on the same field of blood it is difficult to conceive of +circumstances more poignant than those which surround his effort. On +many of these poets a death of the highest nobility set the seal of +eternal life. They were simple and passionate, radiant and calm, they +fought for their country, and they have entered into glory. This alone +might be enough to say in their praise, but star differeth from star in +brightness, and from the constellation I propose to select half a dozen +of the clearest luminaries. What is said in honest praise of these may +be said, with due modification, of many others who miss merely the +polish of their accomplishment. It is perhaps worth noticing, in +passing, that most of the poets are men of university training, and that +certain literary strains are common to the rank and file of them. The +influence of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and Rossetti is almost +entirely absent. The only one of the great Victorians whom they seem to +have read is Matthew Arnold, but it is impossible to help observing that +the _Shropshire Lad_ of Mr. A.E. Housman was in the tunic-pocket of +every one of them. Among the English poets of the past, it is mainly the +so-called "metaphysical" writers in the seventeenth century whom they +studied; Donne seems to have been a favourite with them all, and Vaughan +and Treherne were not far behind. + +The spontaneous instinct of readers has taken the name of Rupert Brooke +to illustrate the poetic spirit of the great war in a superlative +degree. His posthumous volume, brought out in May 1915, a few weeks +after his death, has enjoyed a success which is greater, perhaps, than +that of all the other poems of the war put together. He has become a +sort of symbol, even a sort of fetish, and he is to English sentiment +what Charles Peguy is to France, an oriflamme of the chivalry of his +country. It is curious, in this connection, that neither Peguy nor +Brooke had the opportunity of fighting much in the cause; they fell, as +it seemed for the moment, obscurely. Rupert Brooke was a pawn in the +dark and dolorous flight from Antwerp. He died in the AEgean, between +Egypt and Gallipoli, having never seen a Turkish enemy. So Peguy faded +out of sight on the very opening day of the battle of the Marne, yet +each of these young men was immediately perceived to have embodied the +gallantry of his country. The extraordinary popularity of Rupert Brooke +is due to the excellence of his verse, to the tact with which it was +presented to the public, but also to a vague perception of his +representative nature. He was the finest specimen of a certain type +produced at the universities, and then sacrificed to our national +necessity. + +It is needless to describe the verses of Rupert Brooke, which have +attained a circulation which any poet might envy. They are comprised in +two slender volumes, that above mentioned, and one of 1911, published +while he was still at Cambridge. He was born in 1887, and when he died +off Skyros, in circumstances of the most romantic pathos, he had not +completed his twenty-eighth year. He was, unlike the majority of his +contemporaries, a meticulous and reserved writer, little inclined to be +pleased with his work, and cautious to avoid the snare of improvisation. +Hence, though he lived to be older than did Keats or Fergusson, he left +a very slender garland of verse behind him, in which there is scarcely a +petal which is not of some permanent value. For instance, in the volume +of 1911 we found not a few pieces which then seemed crude in taste and +petulant in temper; but even these now illustrate a most interesting +character of which time has rounded the angles, and we would not have +otherwise what illustrates so luminously--and so divertingly--that +precious object, the mind of Rupert Brooke. + +Yet there is a danger that this mind and character may be +misinterpreted, even by those who contemplate the poet's memory with +idolatry. There is some evidence of a Rupert Brooke legend in the +process of formation, which deserves to be guarded against not less +jealously than the R.L. Stevenson legend of a few years ago. We know +that for some people gold and lilies are not properly honoured until +they are gilded and painted. Rupert Brooke was far from being either a +plaster saint or a vivid public witness. He was neither a trumpet nor a +torch. He lives in the memory of those who knew him as a smiling and +attentive spectator, eager to watch every flourish of the pageantry of +life. Existence was a wonderful harmony to Rupert Brooke, who was +determined to lose no tone of it by making too much noise himself. In +company he was not a great talker, but loved to listen, with sparkling +deference, to people less gifted than himself if only they had +experience to impart. He lived in a fascinated state, bewitched with +wonder and appreciation. His very fine appearance, which seemed to glow +with dormant vitality, his beautiful manners, the quickness of his +intelligence, his humour, were combined under the spell of a curious +magnetism, difficult to analyse. When he entered a room, he seemed to +bring sunshine with him, although he was usually rather silent, and +pointedly immobile. I do not think it would be easy to recollect any +utterance of his which was very remarkable, but all he said and did +added to the harmonious, ardent, and simple effect. + +There is very little of the poetry of Rupert Brooke which can be +definitely identified with the war. The last six months of his life, +spent in conditions for which nothing in his previous existence in +Cambridge or Berlin, in Grantchester or Tahiti, had in the least +prepared him, were devoted--for we must not say wasted--to breaking up +the _cliche_ of civilised habits. But of this harassed time there remain +to us the five immortal Sonnets, which form the crown of Rupert Brooke's +verse, and his principal legacy to English literature. Our record would +be imperfect without the citation of one, perhaps the least hackneyed of +these:-- + + "Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! + There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, + But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. + These laid the world away; poured out the red + Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be + Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, + That men call age; and those who would have been, + Their sons, they gave, their immortality. + + "Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, + Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain. + Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, + And paid his subjects with a royal wage; + And Nobleness walks in our ways again; + And we have come into our heritage." + +If the fortune of his country had not disturbed his plans, it is more +than probable that Rupert Brooke would have become an enlightened and +enthusiastic professor. Of the poet who detains us next it may be said +that there was hardly any walk of life, except precisely this, which he +could not have adorned. Julian Grenfell, who was a poet almost by +accident, resembled the most enlightened of the young Italian noblemen +of the Renaissance, who gave themselves with violence to a surfeit of +knowledge and a riot of action. He was a humanist of the type of the +fifteenth century, soldier, scholar, and man of pleasure, such as we +read of in Vespasiano's famous book. Everything he did was done in the +service of St. Epicurus, it was done to _darsi buon tempo_, as the +Tuscans used to say. But this was only the superficial direction taken +by his energy; if he was imperious in his pleasures, he was earnest in +his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of +the physical, intellectual, and emotional faculties at his disposal. +Julian Grenfell was a master of the body and of the mind, an unrivalled +boxer, a pertinacious hunter, skilled in swimming and polo, a splendid +shot, a swift runner, and an unwearying student. That an athlete so +accomplished should have had time left for intellectual endowments is +amazing, but his natural pugnacity led him to fight lexicons as he +fought the wild boar, and with as complete success. + +The record of the brief and shining life of Julian Grenfell has been +told in an anonymous record of family life which is destined to +reverberate far beyond the discreet circle of friends to which it is +provisionally addressed. It is a document of extraordinary candour, +tact, and fidelity, and it is difficult to say whether humour or courage +is the quality which illuminates it most. It will be referred to by +future historians of our race as the most vivid record which has been +preserved of the red-blooded activity of a spirited patrician family at +the opening of the twentieth century. It is partly through his place at +the centre of this record that, as one of the most gifted of his elder +friends has said, the name of Julian Grenfell will be linked "with all +that is swift and chivalrous, lovely and courageous," but it is also +through his rare and careless verses. + +Julian Grenfell, who was born to excel with an enviable ease, was not a +poet by determination. In a family where everything has been preserved, +no verses of his that are not the merest boyish exercises are known to +exist previous to the war. He was born in 1888, and he became a +professional soldier in India in 1911. He was on his way home from South +Africa when hostilities broke out, and he was already fighting in +Flanders in October 1914. After a very brilliant campaign, in the course +of which he won the D.S.O. and was twice mentioned in despatches, he was +shot in the head near Ypres and died of his wounds at Boulogne on May +26th, 1915. During these months in France, by the testimony of all who +saw him and of all to whom he wrote, his character received its final +touch of ripeness. Among his other attainments he abruptly discovered +the gift of noble gnomic verse. On receiving news of the death of Rupert +Brooke, and a month before his own death, Julian Grenfell wrote the +verses called "Into Battle," which contain the unforgettable stanzas:-- + + "The fighting man shall from the sun + Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; + Speed with the light-foot winds to run, + And with the trees to newer birth.... + + "The woodland trees that stand together, + They stand to him each one a friend; + They gently speak in the windy weather; + They guide to valley and ridge's end. + + "The kestrel hovering by day, + And the little owls that call by night, + Bid him be swift and keen as they, + As keen of ear, as swift of sight. + + "The blackbird sings to him 'Brother, brother, + If this be the last song you shall sing, + Sing well, for you may not sing another, + Brother, sing.'" + +The whole of this poem is memorable, down to its final prophetic +quatrain:-- + + "The thundering line of battle stands, + And in the air Death moans and sings; + But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, + And Night shall fold him in soft wings." + +"Could any other man in the British Army have knocked out a heavy-weight +champion one week and written that poem the next?" a brother officer +asked. "Into Battle" remains, and will probably continue to remain, the +clearest lyrical expression of the fighting spirit of England in which +the war has found words. It is a poem for soldiers, and it gives noble +form to their most splendid aspirations. Julian Grenfell wrote, as he +boxed and rode, as he fought in the mud of Flanders, as the ideal +sporting Englishman of our old, heroic type. + +The ancient mystery of verse is so deeply based on tradition that it is +not surprising that all the strange contrivances of twentieth-century +warfare have been found too crabbed for our poets to use. When great +Marlborough, as Addison puts it, "examin'd all the dreadful scenes of +war" at Blenheim, he was really in closer touch with Marathon than with +the tanks and gas of Ypres. But there is one military implement so +beautiful in itself, and so magical in the nature of its service, that +it is bound to conquer a place in poetry. The air-machine, to quote _The +Campaign_ once more, "rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." But +the poets are still shy of it. In French it has, as yet, inspired but +one good poem, the "Plus haut toujours!" of Jean Allard-Meeus, a hymn of +real aerial majesty. In English Major Maurice Baring's ode "In Memoriam: +A.H." is equally unique, and, in its complete diversity from +Allard-Meeus' rhapsody, suggests that the aeroplane has a wide field +before it in the realms of imaginative writing. Major Baring's subject +is the death of Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas, who was killed on November +3rd, 1916. This distinguished young statesman and soldier had just been +promoted, after a career of prolonged gallantry in the air, and would +have flown no more, if he had returned in safety to our front on that +fatal day. + +Major Baring has long been known as an excellent composer of sonnets and +other short pieces. But "In Memoriam: A.H." lifts him to a position +among our living poets to which he had hardly a pretension. In a long +irregular threnody or funeral ode, the great technical difficulty is to +support lyrical emotion throughout. No form of verse is more liable to +lapses of dignity, to dull and flagging passages. Even Dryden in _Anne +Killigrew_, even Coleridge in the _Departing Year_, have not been able +to avoid those languors. Many poets attempt to escape them by a use of +swollen and pompous language. I will not say that Major Baring has been +universally successful, where the success of the great masters is only +relative, but he has produced a poem of great beauty and originality, +which interprets an emotion and illustrates an incident the poignancy of +which could scarcely be exaggerated. I have no hesitation in asserting +that "A.H." is one of the few durable contributions to the literature of +the present war. + +It is difficult to quote effectively from a poem which is constructed +with great care on a complicated plan, but a fragment of Major Baring's +elegy may lead readers to the original:-- + + "God, Who had made you valiant, strong and swift + And maimed you with a bullet long ago, + And cleft your riotous ardour with a rift, + And checked your youth's tumultuous overflow, + Gave back your youth to you, + And packed in moments rare and few + Achievements manifold + And happiness untold, + And bade you spring to Death as to a bride, + In manhood's ripeness, power and pride, + And on your sandals the strong wings of youth." + +There is no rhetoric here, no empty piling up of fine words; it is a +closely followed study in poetical biography. + +The water has its marvels like the air, but they also have hardly yet +secured the attention of the poets. In _A Naval Motley_, by Lieut. +N.M.F. Corbett, published in June 1916, we encounter the submarine:-- + + "Not yours to know delight + In the keen hard-fought fight, + The shock of battle and the battle's thunder; + But suddenly to feel + Deep, deep beneath the keel + The vital blow that rives the ship asunder!" + +A section of the new war-poetry which is particularly pathetic is that +which is inspired by the nostalgia of home, by the longing in the midst +of the guns and the dust and the lice for the silent woodlands and cool +waters of England. When this is combined with the sense of extreme +youth, and of a certain brave and beautiful innocence, the poignancy of +it is almost more than can be borne. The judgment is hampered, and one +doubts whether one's critical feeling can be trusted. This particular +species of emotion is awakened by no volume more than by the slender +_Worple Flit_ of E. Wyndham Tennant, who died on the Somme in September +1916. He was only nineteen when he fell, at an age when, on the one +hand, more precocious verse than his has been written, and when yet, on +the other, some of the greatest poets had not achieved a mastery of +words equal to that already possessed by this young Wykehamist. The +voice is faltering, and there is a want of sureness in the touch; the +metrical hammer does not always tap the centre of the nail's head. But +what pathos in the sentiment, what tenderness in the devotion to beauty! +Tennant had, we may suppose, read Flecker before he wrote "How shall I +tell you of the roads that stretch away?"; or was it merely the family +likeness in the generation? But I know not what but his own genius can +have inspired the "Home Thoughts in Laventie," a poem about a little +garden left unravished among the rubble of the wrecked village, a poem +which ends thus:-- + + "I saw green banks of daffodil, + Slim poplars in the breeze, + Great tan-brown hares in gusty March + A-courting on the leas. + And meadows, with their glittering streams--and silver-scurrying dace-- + Home, what a perfect place." + +Among these boy-poets, so cruelly and prematurely snatched from the +paternal earth, Tennant suggests to us the possibility that a talent of +very high order was quenched by death, because in few of them do we find +so much evidence of that "perception and awe of Beauty" which Plotinus +held to be the upward path to God. + +In June 1917 there was published a slender volume which is in several +ways the most puzzling and the most interesting of all that lie upon my +table to-day. This is the _Ardours and Endurances_ of Lieut. Robert +Nichols. I knew nothing of the author save what I learned from his +writings, that he is very young, that he went out from Oxford early in +the war, that he was fighting in Flanders before the end of 1914, that +he was wounded, perhaps at Loos, in 1915, and that he was long in +hospital. I felt the hope, which later information has confirmed, that +he was still alive and on the road to recovery. Before _Ardours and +Endurances_ reached me, I had met with _Invocation_, a smaller volume +published by Lieut. Nichols in December 1915. There has rarely been a +more radical change in the character of an artist than is displayed by a +comparison of these two collections. _Invocation_, in which the war +takes a small and unconvincing place, is creditable, though rather +uncertain, in workmanship, and displays a tendency towards experiment in +rich fancy and vague ornament. In _Ardours and Endurances_ the same +accents are scarcely to be detected; the pleasant boy has grown into a +warworn man; while the mastery over the material of poetic art has +become so remarkable as to make the epithet "promising" otiose. There is +no "promise" here; there is high performance. + +Alone among the poets before me, Lieut. Nichols has set down a reasoned +sequence of war impressions. The opening Third of his book, and by far +its most interesting section, consists of a cycle of pieces in which the +personal experience of fighting is minutely reported, stage by stage. We +have "The Summons," the reluctant but unhesitating answer to the call in +England, the break-up of plans; then the farewell to home, "the place of +comfort." "The Approach," in three successive lyrics, describes the +arrival at the Front. "Battle," in eleven sections, reproduces the +mental and physical phenomena of the attack. "The Dead," in four +instalments, tells the tale of grief. "The Aftermath," with +extraordinary skill, records in eight stages the gradual recovery of +nerve-power after the shattering emotions of the right. The first +section of "Battle," as being shorter than the rest, may be quoted in +full as an example of Lieut. Nichols's method:-- + + "It is mid-day: the deep trench glares-- + A buzz and blaze of flies-- + The hot wind puffs the giddy airs, + The great sun rakes the skies, + + "No sound in all the stagnant trench + Where forty standing men + Endure the sweat and grit and stench, + Like cattle in a pen. + + "Sometimes a sniper's bullet whirs + Or twangs the whining wire; + Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs + As in hell's forging fire. + + "From out a high cool cloud descends + An aeroplane's far moan; + The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends, + The black speck travels on. + + "And sweating, dizzied, isolate + In the hot trench beneath, + We bide the next shrewd move of fate + Be it of life or death." + +This is painfully vivid, but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what +follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from +the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the +hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken +melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section of +_Ardours and Endurances_:-- + + "In a far field, away from England, lies + A Boy I friended with a care like love; + All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries, + The melancholy clouds drive on above. + + "There, separate from him by a little span, + Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free, + Two Grenfells, lie, and my Boy is made man, + One with these elder knights of chivalry." + +It is difficult to qualify, it seems almost indelicate to intrude upon, +such passionate grief. These poems form a revelation of the agony of a +spirit of superabundant refinement and native sensuousness suddenly +stunned, and as it were momentarily petrified, by horrible spiritual +anguish. If the strain were not relieved by the final numbers of +"Aftermath," where the pain of the soul is abated, and where the poet, +scarred and shattered, but "free at last," snaps the chain of despair, +these poems would be positively intolerable. + +In the closeness of his analysis and in the accurate heaping up of exact +and pregnant observations, Lieut. Nichols comes closer than any other of +these English poets to the best of the French paladins, of whom I wrote +in _Three French Moralists_. One peculiarity which he shares with them +is his seriousness: there is no trace in him of the English cheerfulness +and levity. Most of our war-writers are incorrigible Mark Tapleys. But +Lieut. Nichols, even when he uses colloquial phrases--and he introduces +them with great effect--never smiles. He is most unlike the French, on +the other hand, in his general attitude towards the war. He has no +military enthusiasm, no aspiration after _gloire_. Indeed, the most +curious feature of his poetry is that its range is concentrated on the +few yards about the trench in which he stands. He seems to have no +national view of the purpose of the war, no enthusiasm for the cause, no +anger against the enemy. There is but a single mention of the Germans +from beginning to end; the poet does not seem to know of their +existence. His experiences, his agonies, his despair, are what a purely +natural phenomenon, such as the eruption of a volcano or the chaos of an +earthquake, might cause. We might read his poems over and over again +without forming the slightest idea of what all the distress was about, +or who was guilty, or what was being defended. This is a mark of great +artistic sincerity; but it also points to a certain moral narrowness. +Lieut. Robert Nichols' "endurances" are magnificently described, but we +are left in the dark regarding his "ardours." We are sure of one thing, +however, that none of us may guess what such a talent, in one still so +young, may have in store for us; and we may hope for broader views +expressed in no less burning accents. + +There could hardly be a more vivid contrast than exists between the +melancholy passion of Lieut. Nichols and the fantastic high spirits of +Captain Robert Graves. He again is evidently a very young man, who was +but yester-year a jolly boy at the Charterhouse. He has always meant to +be a poet; he is not one of those who have been driven into verse by the +strenuous emotion of the war. In some diverting prefatory lines to _Over +the Brazier_ he gives us a picture of the nursery-scene when a bright +green-covered book bewitched him by its "metre twisting like a chain of +daisies, with great big splendid words." He has still a wholesome hunger +for splendid words; he has kept more deliberately than most of his +compeers a poetical vocation steadily before him. He has his moments of +dejection when the first battle faces him:-- + + "Here's an end to my art! + I must die and I know it, + With battle-murder at my heart-- + Sad death, for a poet! + + "Oh, my songs never sung, + And my plays to darkness blown! + I am still so young, so young, + And life was my own." + +But this mood soon passes, and is merged in the humoristic and fantastic +elation characteristic of this buoyant writer, whose whim it is to meet +the tragedy not mournfully but boisterously. Where by most of the +soldier-bards the subjective manner is a little over-done, it is +impossible not to welcome so objective a writer as Captain Graves, from +whose observations of the battle of La Bassee I quote an episode:-- + +THE DEAD FOX HUNTER + + "We found the little captain at the head; + His men lay well aligned. + We touched his hand, stone-cold, and he was dead, + And they, all dead behind, + Had never reached their goal, but they died well; + They charged in line, and in the same line fell. + + "The well-known rosy colours of his face + Were almost lost in grey. + We saw that, dying and in hopeless case, + For others' sake that day + He'd smothered all rebellious groans: in death + His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth. + + "For those who live uprightly and die true + Heaven has no bars or locks, + And serves all taste.... Or what's for him to do + Up there, but hunt the fox? + Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide + For one who rode straight and at hunting died. + + "So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came, + Why, it must find one now: + If any shirk and doubt they know the game, + There's one to teach them how: + And the whole host of Seraphim complete + Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet." + +I have a notion that this is a gallant poem which Englishmen will not +allow to be forgotten. The great quality of Captain Graves' verse at +present is its elated vivacity, which neither fire, nor pain, nor grief +can long subdue. Acutely sensitive to all these depressing elements, his +animal spirits lift him like an aeroplane, and he is above us in a +moment, soaring through clouds of nonsense under a sky of unruffled +gaiety. In our old literature, of which he is plainly a student, he has +found a neglected author who is wholly to his taste. This is Skelton, +Henry VIII's Rabelaisian laureate. Captain Graves imitates, with a great +deal of bravado, those breathless absurdities, _The Tunning of Elinore +Rummyng_ and _Colin Clout_. He likes rough metre, bad rhymes and squalid +images: we suspect him of an inclination to be rude to his immediate +predecessors. But his extreme modernness--"Life is a cliche--I would +find a gesture of my own"--is, in the case of so lively a songster, an +evidence of vitality. He promises a new volume, to be called _Fairies +and Fusiliers_, and it will be looked forward to with anticipation. + +All these poets seem to be drawn into relation to one another. Robert +Graves and Siegfried Sassoon are both Fusiliers, and they publish a +[Greek: stichomythia] "on Nonsense," just as Cowley and Crashaw did "on +Hope" two centuries and a half ago. Lieut. Sassoon's own volume is later +than those which we have hitherto examined, and bears a somewhat +different character. The gallantry of 1915 and the optimism of 1916 have +passed away, and in Lieut. Sassoon's poems their place is taken by a +sense of intolerable weariness and impatience: "How long, O Lord, how +long?" The name-piece of the volume, and perhaps its first in execution, +is a monologue by an ignorant and shrewd old huntsman, who looks back +over his life with philosophy and regret. Like Captain Graves, he is +haunted with the idea that there must be fox-hounds in Heaven. All +Lieut. Sassoon's poems about horses and hunting and country life +generally betray his tastes and habits. This particular poem hardly +touches on the war, but those which follow are absorbed by the ugliness, +lassitude, and horror of fighting. Lieut. Sassoon's verse has not yet +secured the quality of perfection; he is not sufficiently alive to the +importance of always hitting upon the best and only word. He is +essentially a satirist, and sometimes a very bold one, as in "The Hero," +where the death of a soldier is announced home in "gallant lies," so +that his mother brags to her neighbours of the courage of her dead son. +At the close of all this pious make-believe, the Colonel + + "thought how 'Jack,' cold-footed, useless swine, + Had panicked down the trench that night the mine + Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried + To get sent home; and how, at last, he died, + Blown to small bits"; + +or, again, as in "Blighters," where the sentimentality of London is +contrasted with the reality in Flanders: + + "The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin + And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks + Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din, + 'We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks! + + "I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls, + Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home!'-- + And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls + To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume." + +It is this note of bitter anger, miles away from the serenity of Rupert +Brooke, the lion-heart of Julian Grenfell, the mournful passion of +Robert Nichols, which differentiates Lieut. Sassoon from his fellows. +They accept the war, with gallantry or with resignation; he detests it +with wrathful impatience. He has much to learn as an artist, for his +diction is often hard, and he does not always remember that Horace, +"when he writ on vulgar subjects, yet writ not vulgarly." But he has +force, sincerity, and a line of his own in thought and fancy. A +considerable section of his poetry is occupied with studies of men he +has observed at the Front, a subaltern, a private of the Lancashires, +conscripts, the dross of a battle-field, the one-legged man ("Thank God, +they had to amputate!"), the sniper who goes crazy--savage, +disconcerting silhouettes drawn roughly against a lurid background. + +The bitterness of Lieut. Sassoon is not cynical, it is the rage of +disenchantment, the violence of a young man eager to pursue other aims, +who, finding the age out of joint, resents being called upon to help to +mend it. His temper is not altogether to be applauded, for such +sentiments must tend to relax the effort of the struggle, yet they can +hardly be reproved when conducted with so much honesty and courage. +Lieut. Sassoon, who, as we learn, has twice been severely wounded and +has been in the very furnace of the fighting, has reflected, more +perhaps than his fellow-singers, about the causes and conditions of the +war. He may not always have thought correctly, nor have recorded his +impressions with proper circumspection, but his honesty must be +respectfully acknowledged. + +I have now called attention to those soldier-writers of verse who, in my +judgment, expressed themselves with most originality during the war. +There is a temptation to continue the inquiry, and to expatiate on +others of only less merit and promise. Much could be said of Charles +Hamilton Sorley, who gave evidence of precocious literary talent, though +less, I think, in verse, since the unmistakable singing faculty is +absent in _Marlborough_ (Cambridge University Press, 1916), than in +prose, a form in which he already excelled. Sorley must have shown +military gifts as well as a fine courage, for when he was killed in +action in October 1915, although he was but twenty years of age, he had +been promoted captain. In the universal sorrow, few figures awaken more +regret, than his. Something, too, had I space, should be said about the +minstrels who have been less concerned with the delicacies of +workmanship than with stirring the pulses of their auditors. In this +kind of lyric "A Leaping Wind from England" will long keep fresh the +name of W.N. Hodgson, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. His +verses were collected in November 1916. The strange rough drum-taps of +Mr. Henry Lawson, published in Sydney at the close of 1915, and those of +Mr. Lawrence Rentoul, testify to Australian enthusiasm. Most of the +soldier-poets were quite youthful; an exception was R.E. Vernede, whose +_War Poems_ (W. Heinemann, 1917) show the vigour of moral experience. He +was killed in the attack on Harrincourt, in April 1917, having nearly +closed his forty-second year. To pursue the list would only be to make +my omissions more invidious. + +There can be no healthy criticism where the principle of selection is +neglected, and I regret that patriotism or indulgence has tempted so +many of those who have spoken of the war-poets of the day to plaster +them with indiscriminate praise. I have here mentioned a few, in whose +honour even a little excess of laudation may not be out of place. But +these are the exceptions, in a mass of standardised poetry made to +pattern, loosely versified, respectable in sentiment, uniformly +meditative, and entirely without individual character. The reviewers who +applaud all these ephemeral efforts with a like acclaim, and who say +that there are hundreds of poets now writing who equal if they do not +excel the great masters of the past, talk nonsense; they talk nonsense, +and they know it. They lavish their flatteries in order to widen the +circle of their audience. They are like the prophets of Samaria, who +declared good unto the King of Israel with one mouth; and we need a +Micaiah to clear the scene of all such flatulent Zedekiahs. It is not +true that the poets of the youngest generation are a myriad Shelleys and +Burnses and Berangers rolled into one. But it is true that they carry on +the great tradition of poetry with enthusiasm, and a few of them with +high accomplishment. + +1917. + + + + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY[8] + + "J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or, + Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor, + Verdoyant a jamais, hier comme aujourd'hui, + Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit." + +HENRI DE REGNIER. + + +In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen +to those whose positive authority is universally recognised, and in +taking for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its +definitions or consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I +perform what you may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy +audacity. My subject is chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures +which you may well believe yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to +propound. Nevertheless, and in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite +you to join with me in some reflections on what is the probable course +of English poetry during, let us say, the next hundred years. If I +happen to be right, I hope some of the youngest persons present will +say, when I am long turned to dust, what an illuminating prophet I was. +If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will remember anything at all about +the matter. In any case we may possibly be rewarded this afternoon by +some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation of some pleasant +analogies. + +Our title takes for granted that English poetry will continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as +an art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which +is fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and +another, in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in +the history of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of +writing verse was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three +Scandinavian countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no +poetry, in our sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost +died out here in England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran +very low in France at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these +instances, whether ancient or modern, of the attempt to prove prose a +sufficing medium for all expression of human thought have hitherto +failed, and it is now almost certain that they will more and more +languidly be revived, and with less and less conviction. + +It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his _Epistle to the Reverend Divine_ +(1574) that "It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not +only permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing." +Poetry has occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and +you will remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his +philosophical Utopia, was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical +verse himself. So, to come down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry +out of the living language of his country, had been one of the most +skilful of prosodical proficients. Such instances may allay our alarm. +There cannot be any lasting force in arguments which remind us of the +pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. It needs more than the zeal of +a turncoat to drive Apollo out of Parnassus. + +There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of +it? There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious +water-colour painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It +is very fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, +the horse of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his +wings, against a sky so dark that it must symbolise the obscure +discourse of those who write in prose. You are left quite doubtful +whether he will strike the rocky terrace in the foreground with his +slender, silver hooves, or will swoop down into the valley below, or +will soar to heaven and out of sight. You are left by the painter in a +pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may break out anywhere, and of the +vivacious courser himself all that we can be sure of is that we are +certain to see him alighting before us when we least expect him. + +We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his +apparently aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical +spirit, and yet acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of +believing that verse will continue to be written in the English language +for a quite indefinite period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of +these difficulties at once. The principal danger, then, to the future of +poetry seems to me to rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. +Every school of verse is a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because +its leaders have become capable of new forms of attractive expression; +its crest is some writer, or several writers, of genius, who combine +skill and fire and luck at a moment of extreme opportuneness; and then +the wave breaks, because later writers cannot support the ecstasy, and +merely repeat formulas which have lost their attractiveness. Shirley +would have been a portent, if he had flourished in 1595 and had written +then as he did in 1645. Erasmus Darwin would be one of the miracles of +prosody if _The Loves of the Plants_ could be dated 1689 instead of +1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this rise and fall in +value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the trough of the +last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. _Cantate +Domino_ is the cry of youth, sing a _new_ song unto the Lord. + +But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray's +_Elegy_, and much of _Hamlet_, and some of Burns's songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are +like rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the +script of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who +wish to speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In +several of the literatures of modern Europe--those which began late, or +struggled long against great disadvantages--it is still possible to +produce pleasure by poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly +limpid language. But with us in England, I confess that it seems to me +certain that whatever we retain, we can never any more have patience to +listen to a new shepherd piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation +is likely to be more acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire +for novelty of expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which +is so fervently demanded from every new school of writers, will force +the poets of the future to sweep away all recognised impressions. The +consequence must be, I think--I confess so far as language is concerned +that I see no escape from this--that the natural uses of English and the +obvious forms of our speech will be driven from our national poetry, as +they are even now so generally being driven. + +No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. +The poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that "Qui saura penser de +lui-meme et former de nobles idees, qu'il prenne, s'il pent, la maniere +et le tour eleve des maitres." These are words which should inspire +every new aspirant to the laurel. "S'il peut"; you see that Vauvenargues +puts it so, because he does not wish that we should think that such +victories as these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce +them. They are not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the +rubbed-out, conventionalised coinage of our language. + +In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has +recently been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular +poets, has never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am +debarred by what Keats called "giant ignorance" from expressing an +opinion on the subject, but I presume that in Welsh the resources of +language are far from being so seriously exhausted as we have seen that +they are in our own complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the +higher forms of poetic diction through five centuries has made simple +expression extremely difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in +Welsh, as in Gaelic and in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of +lyric, epic, and dramatic art untilled. We have seen, in the latter half +of the nineteenth century, Provencal poets capable of producing simple +and thrilling numbers which are out of the reach of their sophisticated +brethren who employ the worn locutions of the French language. + +In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not +any longer satisfy to write + + "The rose is red, the violet blue, + And both are sweet, and so are you." + +Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were +so still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is +quite impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will +seek to analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their _naivetes_ lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school. + +We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that +Pegasus, with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue +to accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will +only be at the cost of much that we at present admire and enjoy that the +continuity of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly +present to you some characteristic passages of the best English poetry +of 1963, I doubt extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of +their merit. I am not sure that you would understand what the poet +intended to convey, any more than the Earl of Surrey would have +understood the satires of Donne, or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of +George Meredith. Young minds invariably display their vitality by +attacking the accepted forms of expression, and then they look about +for novelties, which they cultivate with what seems to their elders to +be extravagance. Before we attempt to form an idea, however shadowy, of +what poetry will be in the future, we must disabuse ourselves of the +delusion that it will be a repetition of what is now produced and +accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of philosophy to do away with +the embarrassing and painful, but after all perhaps healthful antagonism +between those who look forward and those who live in the past. The +earnestness expended on new work will always render young men incapable +of doing justice to what is a very little older than themselves; and the +piety with which the elderly regard what gave them full satisfaction in +their days of emotional freshness will always make it difficult for them +to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what they loved. + +If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in +our vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must +follow on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find +the modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing +symbolic subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are +still unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That +is to say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had +been said before him, and in his horror of the trite and the +superficial, he will achieve effect and attach interest _obscuris vera +involvens_--wrapping the truth in darkness. The "darkness" will be +relative, as his own contemporaries, being more instructed and +sophisticated than we are, will find those things transparent, or at +least translucent, which remain opaque enough to us. And, of course, as +epithets and adjectives that seem fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn +to him, he will have to exert his ingenuity to find parallel +expressions which would startle us by their oddity if we met with them +now. + +A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognised +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never +fail to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We +may instructively examine the history of literature with special +attention to this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. +It was fatal to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in +an obscurity to which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given +from the name of its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several +highly-gifted writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who +endeavoured to give freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I +need only remind you of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril +Tourneur, called _The Transform'd Metamorphosis_, and of the cryptic +rhymed dramas of Lord Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think +desperately perilous to a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable +Stephane Mallarme. Nothing, I feel, is more dangerous to the health of +poetry than the praise given by a group of irresponsible disciples to +verse which transfers commonplace thought to an exaggerated, violent, +and involved scheme of diction, and I confess that I should regard the +future of poetry in this country with much more apprehension than I do, +if I believed that the purely learned poet, the prosodical pedant, was +destined to become paramount amongst us. That would, indeed, threaten +the permanence of the art; and it is for this reason that I look with a +certain measure of alarm on the excess of verbiage about versification +which attends not merely criticism--for that matters little--but the +actual production and creation. I am confident, however, that the common +sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in favour of sanity +and lucidity. + +One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what +the French call "la vraie hauteur." This elevation of style, this +dignity, is foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the +rude air of modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe saw it +degenerate for a century and a half, into pomposity relieved by +flatness. It is apt to become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of +empty fine phrases. If we examine the serious poetry of the end of the +seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century--especially +in the other countries of Europe, for England was never without some dew +on the threshing-floor--if we examine it in France, for instance, +between Racine and Andre Chenier, we are obliged to recognise that it +was very rarely both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, +which we are beginning ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to +poetry the sense of a genuine stateliness of expression, which once more +gave it the requisite dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and +the noble sentiments of humanity. + +Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the +subjects with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. +Here we are confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of +history, we see that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed +by the incursions of a more and more powerful and wide embracing prose. +At the dawn of civilisation poetry had it all its own way. If +instruction was desired upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, +the bard produced it in a prosodical shape, combining with the dignity +of form the aid which the memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus +you conceive of a Hesiod before you think of a Homer, and the earliest +poetry was probably of a purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, +with its exact pedestrian method, took over more and more completely the +whole province of information, but it was not until the nineteenth +century that the last strongholds of the poetry of instruction were +stormed. I will, if you please, bring this home to you by an example +which may surprise you. + +The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But +it was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a +hundred years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable +passage in which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of +1800:-- + + "If the labours of men of science,--Wordsworth said,--should ever + create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our + condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the + Poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to + follow the steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general + indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation + into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest + discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be + as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be + employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be + familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated + by the followers of these respective sciences, thus familiarised + to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and + blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the + transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a + dear and genuine inmate of the household of man." + +It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same +spirit as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to +assure us of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of +one so sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. +The belief of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, +in some vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But +when we look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our +national poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany +or chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an +effort made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. +Perhaps the nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable +was attempted by Tennyson, particularly in those parts of _In Memoriam_ +where he dragged in analogies to geological discoveries and the +biological theories of his time. Well, these are just those parts of +Tennyson which are now most universally repudiated as lifeless and +jejune. + +Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would +"bind together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human +society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time." I +suppose that in composing those huge works, so full of scattered +beauties, but in their entirety so dry and solid, _The Excursion_ and +_The Prelude_, he was consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme +of a wide and all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts +of this kind will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in +whom the memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the +imagination, employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social +poetry the elements of which, prima facie, should be deeply attractive +to us all. But I do not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard +Kipling, brilliant as they are, are calculated to encourage the poets of +the future to pursue their lyric celebration of machinery and sociology +and the mysteries of natural religion. Already is it not that portion of +his work which we approach with most languor, in spite of its +originality and its outlook upon "the vast empire of human society"? And +lesser poets than he who seek for popularity by such violent means are +not, I think, rewarded by the distinguished loyalty of the best readers. +We are startled by their novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but +when, a few years later, we return to them, we are apt to observe with +distress how + + "their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw." + +If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater +prophets, my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy +of future poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid +social character, but that as civilisation more and more tightly lays +hold upon literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one +province after another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more +and more what Hazlitt calls "a mere effusion of natural sensibility." +Hazlitt used the phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and +not shrink from adopting it. In most public remarks about current and +coming literature in the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which +it is taken for granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers +of the imagination is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to +embrace the world, to take part in a universal scheme of pacification, +to immortalise imperial events, to be as public as possible. But surely +it is more and more clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for +such grandiose themes as these. Within the last year our minds have been +galvanised into collective sympathy by two great sensations of +catastrophe, each case wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can +take in the revolt of nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I +suppose we may consider the destruction of the Titanic and the loss of +Captain Scott's expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is +thought by journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common +consent, these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to +any really remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody +could equal in vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These +are matters in which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose +does not require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. +The impact of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and +forcible. + +My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming +poets will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should +define it as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which +are of collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the +intense cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical +observation of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the +future poet. I will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of +his principal preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery +piece of mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of +me alike. The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn +writers of the imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is +the only safeguard against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But +although the ivory tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although +the poets may be strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_ +there, it should not be the year-long habitation of any healthy +intelligence. + +I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an "effusion of +natural sensibility," will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be +tempted, in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to +draw farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap +his singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat +his readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our +successors must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not +merely sees nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I +am not concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; +the moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that +this unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on +the positive value of his verse. + +The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries--it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the +misanthropy of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the +rowdiness of Marlowe?--the higher the note of the lyre, the more +ridiculous is the attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds +the violence of Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with +a greater pride than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude +of the sacred bard, maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and +hollowed out and made haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will +have to be abandoned as a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it +is preserved by the poets of the future it will be peculiar to those +monasteries of song, those "little clans," of which I am now about to +speak as likely more and more to prevail. + +In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of +these bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is +perhaps instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de +Creteil, which was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was +founded in October 1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal +dissensions in January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance +of the public, in contemptuous disregard of established "literary +opinion," a sort of prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be +the active centre of energy for a new generation, and there were five +founders, each of whom was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in +verse. At Creteil there was a printing-press in a great park, so that +the members should be altogether independent of the outside world. The +poets were to cultivate the garden and keep house with the sale of the +produce. When not at work, there were recitations, discussions, +exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up with the latest vagaries +of the Cubists and Post-impressionists. + +This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one +among the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any +measure of talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in +vague and nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call +charlatans, the refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider +that it is interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a +sense correct when they announced that they were performing "a heroic +act," an act symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future +disdainfully protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the +dreadful impact of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you +wish to pursue the subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your +eye on this tendency to a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed +much evidence of it yet in England, but it is beginning to stir a good +deal in France and Italy. After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious +thing, like the practices of the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was +said, "Our House of the Holy Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should +have looked upon it, is yet doomed to remain untouched, imperturbable, +out of sight, and unrevealed to the whole godless world for ever." If I +am sure of anything, it is that the Poets of the Future will look upon +massive schemes of universal technical education, and such democratic +reforms as those which are now occupying the enthusiasm and energy of +Lord Haldane, as peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a +godless world. + +To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me possible that +sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical poetry +of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort +of obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other +phenomenon worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with +the various tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was +the mark of the sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and +craftily exhibited, but often, as in foreign examples which will easily +occur to your memory, rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a +slightly stale perfume, an irritating odour of last night's opopanax or +vervain. And this is the one point, almost I think the only point, in +which the rather absurd and certainly very noisy and hoydenish +manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, led by M. Marinetti and his crew +of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious attention. It is a plank in +their platform to banish eroticism, of the good kind and of the bad, +from the poetic practice of the future. I do not, to say the truth, find +much help for the inquiry we have taken up to-day, in the manifestoes of +these raucous young gentlemen, who, when they have succeeded in flinging +the ruins of the architecture of Venice into its small stinking canals, +will find themselves hard put to it to build anything beautiful in the +place of them. But in their reaction against "the eternal feminine," +they may, I think, very possibly be followed by the serious poets of the +future. + +Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry +in England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in +the direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is +known as pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to +listening audiences behind the footlights, but in the increased study of +life in its exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with +the tendency, of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world +itself, either into an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered +association of more or less independent figures united only in a +rebellious and contemptuous disdain of public opinion. But the +inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well +happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped +social surfaces of life, the ignorance--really, the happy and hieratic +ignorance--of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be +saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and +penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and +permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I +think it not improbable that the poetry of the future may become more +and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series of acts of definite +creation, rather than as the result of observation, which will be left +to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant masters of our prose. + +As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for +mankind than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an +excessive observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate +to the violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general +exaggeration of the darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of +what was called the "sub-fusc" colours which art-critics of a century +ago judged essential to sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, +and particularly in the very latest Russian drama, this determination to +see blackness and blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of +existence as a Valley of the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully +frequent. In England we had a poet of considerable power, whose tragic +figure crossed me in my youth, in whose work there is not a single gleam +of hope or dignity for man;--I mean the unfortunate James Thomson, +author of _The City of Dreadful Night_. I cannot but believe that the +poetry of the future, being more deeply instructed, will insist less +emphatically upon human failure and less savagely upon the revolt of +man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an earnestness, a fullness +of tribute to the noble passion of life, an utterance simple and direct. +I believe that it will take as its theme the magnificence of the +spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not the grotesque and +squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat. + +It has been admirably said, in a charming essay, that "History may be +abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be purely formal; +but poetry must be full of human life." This consideration, I think, may +make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance of poetic +expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever changes may be +introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may occur in +religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification of +composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action +possible as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the +hopes and fears, of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic +imagination will be found to insist on expression in the mode of formal +art. It is quite possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of +the democratic instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such +as was presented in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank +verse lyrics in _The Princess_, by Browning in the more brilliant parts +of _One Word More_, by Swinburne in his fulminating _Sapphics_, may be +as little repeated as the analogous hardness of Dryden in _MacFlecknoe_ +or the lapidary splendour of Gray in his _Odes_. I should rather look, +at least in the immediate future, for a revival of the liquid ease of +Chaucer or the soft redundancies of _The Faerie Queene_. The remarkable +experiments of the Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon +the whole body of French verse, leads me to expect a continuous movement +in that direction. + +It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal--perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognised their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of +it in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, +which at once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or +imminent service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of +poetry is not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and +only partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will +consider it, all that the Symbolists have been saying is involved in +Bacon's phrase that "poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires +of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things." There +could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up with a +rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that which I +have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope that you +will not think that your time has been wasted while we have touched, +lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the probable +or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, or I, or +the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn poets, +we may be certain that there will + + "hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue" + +of ours can "digest." I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on +any expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest +our only sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable +arrival, ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon +as ever they bubble from the blow of his hoof. + +[Footnote 8: Address delivered before the English Association, May 30, +1913.] + + + + +THE AGONY OF THE VICTORIAN AGE + + +For a considerable time past everybody must have noticed, especially in +private conversation, a growing tendency to disparagement and even +ridicule of all men and things, and aspects of things, which can be +defined as "Victorian." Faded habits of mind are lightly dismissed as +typical of the Victorian Age, and old favourite poets, painters, and +musicians are treated with the same scorn as the glued chairs and glass +bowls of wax flowers of sixty years ago. The new generation are hardly +willing to distinguish what was good from what was bad in the time of +their grandmothers. With increasing audacity they repudiate the +Victorian Age as a _saeclum insipiens et infacetum_, and we meet +everywhere with the exact opposite of Montaigne's "Je les approuve tous +Tun apres l'autre, quoi qu'ils disent." Our younger contemporaries are +slipping into the habit of approving of nothing from the moment that +they are told it is Victorian. + +This may almost be described as an intellectual and moral revolution. +Every such revolution means some liberation of the intellect from +bondage, and shows itself first of all in a temper of irreverence; the +formulas of the old faith are no longer treated with respect and +presently they are even ridiculed. It is useless to close our eyes to +the fact that a spirit of this kind is at work amongst us, undermining +the dignity and authority of objects and opinions and men that seemed +half a century ago to be more perennial than bronze. Successive orators +and writers have put the public in possession of arguments, and +especially have sparkled in pleasantries, which have sapped the very +foundations of the faith of 1850. The infection has attacked us all, and +there is probably no one who is not surprised, if he seriously reflects, +to realise that he once implicitly took his ideas of art from Ruskin and +of philosophy from Herbert Spencer. These great men are no longer +regarded by anybody with the old credulity; their theories and their +dogmas are mined, as were those of the early eighteenth century in +France by the Encyclopaedists, by a select class of destructive critics, +in whose wake the whole public irregularly follows. The ordinary +unthinking man accepts the change with exhilaration, since in this +country the majority have always enjoyed seeing noses knocked off +statues. But if we are to rejoice in liberation from the bondage of the +Victorian Age we ought to know what those bonds were. + +The phenomena of the decadence of an age are never similar to those of +its rise. This is a fact which is commonly overlooked by the opponents +of a particular section of social and intellectual history. In the +initial stages of a "period" we look for audacity, fire, freshness, +passion. We look for men of strong character who will hew a channel +along which the torrent of new ideals and subversive sentiments can +rush. But this violence cannot be expected to last, and it would lead to +anarchy if it did. Slowly the impetus of the stream diminishes, the +river widens, and its waters reach a point where there seems to be no +further movement in their expanse. No age contains in itself the +elements of endless progress; it starts in fury, and little by little +the force of it declines. Its decline is patent--but not until long +afterwards--in a deadening of effort, in a hardening of style. Dryden +leads on to Pope, Pope points down to Erasmus Darwin, after whom the +world can but reject the whole classical system. The hungry sheep of a +new generation look up and are not fed, and this is the vision which +seems to face us in the last adventures of the schools of yesterday. + +But what is, or was, the Victorian Age? The world speaks glibly of it as +though it were a province of history no less exactly defined than the +career of a human being from birth to death; but in practice no one +seems in a hurry to mark out its frontiers. Indeed, to do so is an +intrepid act. If the attempt is to be made at all, then 1840, the year +of Queen Victoria's marriage with Prince Albert, may be suggested as the +starting-point, and 1890 (between the death-dates of Browning, Newman, +and Tennyson) as the year in which the Victorian Age is seen sinking +into the sands. Nothing could be vaguer, or more open to contention in +detail, than this delineation, but at all events it gives our +deliberations a frame. It excludes _Pickwick_, which is the typical +picture of English life under William IV., and _Sartor Resartus_, which +was the tossing of the bound giant in his sleep; but it includes the +two-volume Tennyson, "chiefly lyrical," the stir of the Corn Law +agitation, the Tractarian Crisis of 1841, and the _History of the French +Revolution and Past and Present_, when the giant opened his eyes and +fought with his chains. Darwin was slowly putting together the notes he +had made on the Beagle, and Hugh Miller was disturbing convention by his +explorations of the Old Red Sandstone. Most of all, the discussion of +permanent and transient elements in Christianity was taking a foremost +place in all strata of society, not merely in the form of the contest +around _Tract 90_, but in the divergent directions of Colenso, the +Simeon Evangelicals, and Maurice. + +The Victorian Age began in rancour and turmoil. This is an element which +we must not overlook, although it was in a measure superficial. A series +of storms, rattling and recurrent tempests of thunder and lightning, +swept over public opinion, which had been so calm under George IV. and +so dull under William IV. Nothing could exceed the discord of +vituperation, the Hebraism of Carlyle denouncing the Vaticanism of +Wiseman, "Free Kirk and other rubbish" pitted against "Comtism, +ghastliest of algebraic spectralities." This theological tension marks +the first twenty years and then slowly dies down, after the passion +expended over _Essays and Reviews_. It was in 1840 that we find +Macaulay, anxious to start a scheme of Whig reform and to cut a +respectable figure as Secretary of State for War, unable to get to +business because of the stumbling-block of religious controversy. +Everything in heaven and earth was turned into "a theological treatise," +and all that people cared about was "the nature of the sacraments, the +operation of holy orders, the visibility of the Church and baptismal +regeneration." The sitting member goes down to Edinburgh to talk to his +constituents about Corn Laws and Sugar Duties and the Eastern Question; +he is met by "a din" of such objections as "Yes, Mr. Macaulay, that is +all very well for a statesman, but what becomes of the headship of our +Lord Jesus Christ?" + +If the Victorian Age opened in a tempest of theology, it was only +natural that it should cultivate a withering disdain for those who had +attempted to reform society on a non-theological basis. In sharp +contradistinction to the indulgence of the Georgian period for +philosophic speculation, England's interest in which not even her long +continental wars had been able to quench, we find with the accession of +Victoria the credit of the French thinkers almost abruptly falling. +Voltaire, never very popular in England, becomes "as mischievous a +monkey as any of them"; the enthusiasm for Rousseau, which had reached +extravagant proportions, completely disappears, and he is merely the +slanderous sceptic, who, after soaking other people's waistcoats with +his tears, sent his own babies to the Foundling Hospital. The influence +of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was +first combated and then baldly denied. The premier journalist of the age +declared, with the satisfaction of a turkey-cock strutting round his +yard, that no trace of the lowest level of what could be called +popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt +himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a +French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the +Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious +taint. + +Notwithstanding, or perhaps we ought to say inevitably conducted by +these elements of passion and disdain, the infant Victorian Age passed +rapidly into the great political whirlpool of 1846, with its violent +concentration of enthusiasm on the social questions which affected the +welfare of the masses, with, in short, its tremendous upheaval of a +practical radicalism. From that time forth its development baffles +analysis. Whatever its present enemies may allege to its discredit, they +cannot pretend that it was languid or monotonous. No Age hitherto lived +out upon the world's surface has been so multiform or so busy; none +defies the art of the historian to such a bewildering degree. Its latest +critic does not exaggerate when he says that our fathers and our +grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of +information concerning it "that the industry of a Ranke would be +submerged by it and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it." +This is manifestly true, and it is evident that an encyclopaedia would be +required to discuss all the divisions of so tremendous a subject. If we +look over too wide a horizon we lose our bearings altogether. We get a +hopelessly confused notion of the course of progress; we see +experiments, criticisms, failures, but who is to assure us what was the +tendency of evolution? + +Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians" has arrived at the very +moment when all readers are prepared to discuss the age he deals with, +and when public opinion is aware of the impatience which has been +"rising in the bosom of a man like smoke" under the pressure of the +insistent praise of famous men. The book has attracted a very remarkable +degree of notice; it has been talked about wherever people have met +together; and has received the compliment of being seriously displayed +before the University of Oxford by one of the most eminent of the +Victorian statesmen whom Oxford has produced. If we look into the causes +of this success, enjoyed by the earliest extended book of a writer +almost unknown, a book, too, which pretends to no novelty of matter or +mystery of investigation, we find them partly in the preparedness of the +public mind for something in the way of this exposure, but partly also +in the skill of the writer. Whatever else may be said of Mr. Lytton +Strachey, no one can deny that he is very adroit, or that he possesses +the art of arresting attention. + +It is part of this adroitness that he contrives to modify, and for a +long time even to conceal the fact that his purpose is to damage and +discredit the Victorian Age. He is so ceremonious in his approach, so +careful to avoid all brusqueness and coarseness, that his real aim may +be for awhile unobserved. He even professes to speak "dispassionately, +impartially, and without ulterior intentions." We may admit the want of +passion and perhaps the want of partiality, but we cannot avoid seeing +the ulterior intention, which is to undermine and belittle the +reputation of the great figures of the Victorian Age. When the +prodigious Signor Marinetti proposes to hurl the "leprous palaces" of +his native city into her "fetid canals," and to build in their place +warehouses and railway stations, he does not differ in essential +attitude from Mr. Lytton Strachey, delicately "laying bare the facts of +some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the +greater knowledge of history--in short, the superior equipment of the +English iconoclast. Each of them--and all the troop of opponents who +grumble and mutter between their extremes--each of them is roused by an +intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they +have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a +virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an exasperating monotony +of effect. + +Mr. Strachey has conducted his attack from the point of view of +biography. He realises the hopelessness of writing a history of the +Victorian Age; it can only be dealt with in detail; it must be nibbled +into here and there; discredited piecemeal; subjected to the ravages of +the white ant. He has seen that the lives of the great Victorians lend +themselves to this insidious kind of examination, because what was worst +in the pretentiousness of their age is to be found enshrined in the +Standard Biographies (in two volumes, post octavo) under which most of +them are buried. Mr. Strachey has some criticism of these monsters which +could hardly be bettered: + + "Those two fat volumes, with which it is our custom to commemorate + the dead--who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of + material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, + their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design? They + are as familiar as the cortege of the undertaker, and bear the same + air of slow, funereal barbarism." + +It is impossible not to agree with this pungent criticism. Every candid +reader could point to a dozen Victorian biographies which deserve Mr. +Strachey's condemnation. For instance, instead of taking up any of the +specimens which he has chosen for illustration, we need only refer the +reader's memory to the appendix of "Impressions," by a series of elderly +friends, which closes the official _Life of Tennyson_, published in +1897. He will find there an expression of the purest Victorian optimism. +The great object being to foist on the public a false and superhuman +picture of the deceased, a set of illustrious contemporaries--who +themselves expected to be, when they died, transfigured in like +manner--form a bodyguard around the corpse of the poet and emit their +"tedious panegyric." In this case, more even than in any of the +instances which Mr. Strachey has taken, the contrast between the real +man and the funereal image is positively grotesque. + +Without question this contrast is not a little responsible for the +discredit into which the name of Tennyson has fallen. Lord Selborne +found nothing in Tennyson "inconsistent with the finest courtesy and the +gentlest heart." Dr. Jowett had preserved through forty years "an +ever-increasing wonder at the depth of his thought," and emphatically +stated that he "was above such feelings as a desire of praise, or fear +of blame." (Tennyson, who was thirsty for ceaseless laudation, and to +whom a hint of censure was like the bite of a mosquito!) Frederick Myers +ejaculated, "How august, how limitless a thing was Tennyson's own +spirit's upward flight!" The Duke of Argyll, again, during the space of +forty years, had found him "always reverent, hating all levity or +flippancy," and was struck by his possessing "the noblest humility I +have ever known." Lord Macaulay, who "had stood absolutely aloof," once +having been permitted to glance at the proof-sheets of _Guenevere_, was +"absolutely subdued" to "unfeigned and reverent admiration." The duke +was the glad emissary who was "the medium of introduction," and he +recognised in Macaulay's subjugation "a premonition" of Tennyson's +complete "conquest over the living world and over the generations that +are to come." + +Thus the priesthood circled round their idol, waving their censers and +shouting their hymns of praise, while their ample draperies effectively +hid from the public eye the object which was really in the centre of +their throng, namely, a gaunt, black, touzled man, rough in speech, +brooding like an old gipsy over his inch of clay pipe stuffed with shag, +and sucking in port wine with gusto--"so long as it is black and sweet +and strong, I care not!" Their fault lay, not in their praise, which was +much of it deserved, but in their deliberate attempt in the interests of +what was Nice and Proper--gods of the Victorian Age--to conceal what any +conventional person might think not quite becoming. There were to be no +shadows in the picture, no stains or rugosities on the smooth bust of +rosy wax. + +On the pretext, therefore, of supplying a brief and above all a +complimentary set of portraits, Mr. Strachey takes the biography of an +ecclesiastic, an educational authority, a woman of action, and a man of +adventure, and tells them over again in his own way. The four figures he +chooses are all contemporary, and yet, so implacably does time hurry us +along, all would be very old if they still survived. Three of them could +hardly survive, for Cardinal Manning and Dr. Arnold would be far over a +hundred, and Florence Nightingale in her ninety-ninth year; the fourth, +General Gordon, would be eighty-five. The motto of Mr. Strachey is "Put +not your trust in the intellectual princes of the Victorian Age," or, at +least, in what their biographers have reported of them; they were not +demi-gods in any sense, but eccentric and forceful figures working dimly +towards aims which they only understood in measure, and which very +often were not worth the energy which they expended on them. This +attitude alone would be enough to distinguish Mr. Strachey from the +purveyors of indiscriminate praise, and in adopting it he emphasises his +deliberate break with the age of which they were the envy and the +ornament. Given his 1918 frame of mind, no blame can attach to him for +adopting this gesture. At moments when the tradition of a people has +been violently challenged there have always ensued these abrupt acts of +what to the old school seems injustice. If Mr. Lytton Strachey is +reproached with lack of respect, he might reply: In the midst of a +revolution, who is called on to be respectful to the fallen monarch? +Extreme admiration for this or that particular leader, the principle of +Victorian hero-worship, is the very heresy, he might say, which I have +set out to refute. + +When St. John the Divine addressed his Apocalypse to the Angels of the +Seven Churches, he invented a system of criticism which is worthy of all +acceptation. He dwelt first upon the merits of each individual church; +not till he had exhausted them did he present the reverse of the coin. +In the same spirit, critics who, in the apostle's phrase, have +"something against" Mr. Lytton Strachey, will do well to begin by +acknowledging what is in his favour. In the first place, he writes +sensibly, rapidly, and lucidly--without false ornament of any kind. Some +of his pages might, with advantage, be pinned up opposite the +writing-tables of our current authors of detestable pseudo-Meredithian +and decayed Paterese. His narrative style is concise and brisk. His book +may undoubtedly best be compared among English classics with _Whiggism +in its Relations to Literature_, although it is less discursive and does +not possess the personal element of that vivacious piece of polemic. In +this recurrence of Mr. Strachey to a pellucid stream of prose we see an +argument against his own theory of revolt. The procedure of the arts, +the mechanical tricks of the trade, do they really improve or decline +from age to age? Are they not, in fact, much more the result of +individual taste than of fashion? There seems to be no radical change in +the methods of style. The extravagant romanticism of rebellion against +the leaders of the Victorian Age finds at length an exponent, and behold +he writes as soberly as Lord Morley, or as Newman himself! + +The longest of these biographies is that of Cardinal Manning, and it is +the one with which Mr. Lytton Strachey has taken most pains. Briefer +than the briefest of the _English Men of Letters_ series of biographies, +it is yet conducted with so artful an economy as to give the impression, +to an uninstructed reader, that nothing essential about the career of +Manning has been omitted. To produce this impression gifts of a very +unusual order were required, since the writer, pressed on all sides by a +plethora of information, instead of being incommoded by it, had to seem +to be moving smoothly in an atmosphere of his own choosing, and to be +completely unembarrassed by his material. He must have the air of +saying, in Froude's famous impertinence, "This is all we know, and more +than all, yet nothing to what the angels know." In the face of a whole +literature of controversy and correspondence, after a storm of Purcell +and Hutton, Ward and Mozley and Liddon tearing at one another's throats, +Mr. Lytton Strachey steps delicately on to the stage and says, in a low +voice, "Come here and I will tell you all about a funny ecclesiastic who +had a Hat, and whose name was Henry Edward Manning. It will not take us +long, and ever afterwards, if you hear that name mentioned, you will +know everything about him which you need to remember." It is audacious, +and to many people will seem shocking, but it is very cleverly done. + +The study of Florence Nightingale is an even better example of Mr. +Strachey's method, since she is the one of his four subjects for whom he +betrays some partiality. "The Miss Nightingale of fact was not as facile +fancy painted her," and it has greatly entertained Mr. Strachey to chip +the Victorian varnish off and reveal the iron will beneath. His first +chapter puts it in one of his effective endings:-- + + "Her mother was still not quite resigned; surely Florence might at + least spend the summer in the country. At this, indeed, among her + intimates, Mrs. Nightingale almost wept. 'We are ducks,' she said + with tears in her eyes, 'who have hatched a wild swan.' But the + poor lady was wrong; it was not a swan that they had hatched, it + was an eagle." + +It is therefore as an eagle, black, rapacious, with hooked bill and +crooked talons, that he paints Miss Nightingale; and the Swan of +Scutari, the delicate Lady with the Lamp, fades into a fable. Mr. +Strachey glorifies the demon that possessed this pitiless, rushing +spirit of philanthropy. He gloats over its ravages; its irresistible +violence of purpose. It is an evident pleasure to him to be able to +detach so wild a figure from the tameness of the circumambient scene, +and all his enmity to the period comes out in the closing pages, in +which he describes how the fierce philanthropist lived so long that the +Victorian Age had its revenge upon her, and reduced her, a smiling, fat +old woman, to "compliance and complacency." It is a picture which will +give much offence, but it is certainly extremely striking, and Mr. +Strachey can hardly be accused of having done more than deepen the +shadows which previous biographers had almost entirely omitted. + +In this study, if the author is unusually indulgent to his subject, he +is relatively severer than usual to the surrounding figures. To some of +them, notably to Arthur Hugh Clough, he seems to be intolerably unjust. +On the other hand, to most of those public men who resisted the work of +Florence Nightingale it is difficult to show mercy. Mr. Strachey is so +contemptuous, almost so vindictive, in his attitude to Lord Panmure, +that the reader is tempted to take up the cudgels in defence of an +official so rudely flouted. But, on reflection, what is there that can +be said in palliation of Lord Panmure? He was the son of a man of whom +his own biographer has admitted that "he preserved late into the +[nineteenth] century the habits and passions--scandalous and +unconcealed--which had, except in his case, passed away. He was devoted +to his friends so long as they remained complaisant, and violent and +implacable to all who thwarted him.--His uncontrollable temper alienated +him from nearly all his family in his latter years. In private life he +was an immovable despot." + +This was the father of Fox Maule, second Baron Panmure, of whom Mr. +Strachey has so much to say. Evidently he was a Regency type, as the son +was a Victorian. Determined not to resemble his father, Fox Maule early +became a settled and industrious M.P., and in 1846 Lord John Russell +made him Secretary of War. He held the same post under Lord Palmerston +from 1855 to 1858. Nothing could dislodge him from office; not even the +famous despatch "Take care of Dawb" could stir him. In 1860 he became +eleventh Earl of Dalhousie. He died two years later, having enjoyed +every distinction, even that of President of the Royal Military Asylum. +He was "unco guid," as pious as his father had been profane, but he had +no social or political or intellectual merit of any kind which can at +this distance of time be discerned. Florence Nightingale called him the +Bison, and his life's energy seems to have been expended in trying, +often with success, to frustrate every single practical reform which +she suggested. To the objection that Mr. Strachey has depicted the +heroine as "an ill-tempered, importunate spinster, who drove a statesman +to his death," he might conceivably reply that if history, grown calm +with the passage of years, does so reveal her, it is rather absurd to go +on idealising her. Why not study the real Eagle in place of the fabulous +Swan? It is difficult to condemn Mr. Strachey along this line of +argument. + +The early Victorians liked what was definable and tangible; they were +"ponderous mechanists of style." Even in their suggestions of change +they preserved an impenetrable decorum of demeanour, a studied progress, +a deep consciousness of the guiding restraint of tradition upon +character. Their preoccupation with moral ideas tinged the whole of +their surroundings, their literature, their art, their outlook upon +life. That the works of Mr. Charles Dickens, so excruciatingly funny, +should have been produced and appreciated in the midst of this intense +epoch of exhortation seems a paradox, till we recollect how careful +Dickens is, when his laughter is loudest, never to tamper with "the deep +sense of moral evil." This apprehension of the rising immorality of the +world, against which the only rampart was the education of "a thorough +English gentleman, Christian, manly and enlightened" was dominant in no +spirit more than in that of Mr. Thomas Arnold, of whom Mr. Strachey +gives a somewhat deterrent portrait. It is deterrent, because we have +passed, in three-quarters of a century, completely out of the atmosphere +in which Dr. Arnold moved and breathed. We are not sure that Mr. +Strachey acted very wisely in selecting Dr. Arnold for one of his four +subjects, since the great schoolmaster was hardly a Victorian at all. +When he entered the Church George III. was on the throne; his +accomplishment at Rugby was started under George IV.; he died when the +Victorian Age was just beginning. He was a forerunner, but hardly a +contemporary. + +Although in his attitude to the great Rugby schoolmaster Mr. Strachey +shows more approbation than usual, this portrait has not given universal +satisfaction. It has rather surprisingly called forth an indignant +protest from Dr. Arnold's granddaughter. Yet such is the perversity of +the human mind that the mode in which Mrs. Humphry Ward "perstringes" +the biographer brings us round to that biographer's side. For Mrs. Ward +has positively the indiscretion, astounding in a writer of her learning +and experience, to demand the exclusion of irony from the legitimate +weapons of the literary combatant. This is to stoop to sharing one of +the meanest prejudices of the English commonplace mind, which has always +resented the use of that delicate and pointed weapon. Moreover, Mrs. +Ward does not merely adopt the plebeian attitude, but she delivers +herself bound hand and foot to the enemy by declaring the use of irony +to be "unintelligent." In support of this amazing statement she quotes +some wandering phrase of Sainte-Beuve. By the light of recent +revelations, whether Sainte-Beuve was ironical or not, he was certainly +perfidious. But, to waive that matter, does Mrs. Humphry Ward consider +that Swift and Lucian and Machiavelli were, as she puts it, "doomed to +failure" because they used irony as a weapon? Was Heine and is Anatole +France conspicuous for want of intelligence? And, after all, ought not +Mrs. Ward to remember that if she had a very serious grandfather, she +had a still more celebrated uncle, who wrote _Friendship's Garland_? + +While no one else will seriously blame Mr. Strachey for employing irony +in his investigation of character, the subject leads on to what may be +regarded as a definite fault in his method. A biographer should be +sympathetic; not blind, not indulgent, but _sympathetic_. He should be +able to enter into the feelings of his subjects, and be anxious to do +so. It is in sympathy, in imaginative insight, that Mr. Strachey fails. +His personages are like puppets observed from a great height by an +amiable but entirely superior intelligence. The peculiar aim of Mr. +Strachey, his desire to lower our general conception of the Victorian +Age, tempts him to exaggerate this tendency, and he succumbs to the +temptation. His description of Lord Acton at Rome in 1870--"he despised +Lord Acton almost as much as he disliked him"--is not ironic, it is +contemptuous. Arthur Hugh Clough presents no aspect to Mr. Strachey but +that of a timid and blundering packer-up of parcels; one might conceive +that the biographer had never contemplated the poet in any other +capacity than, with sealing-wax in his hand and string between his lips, +shuddering under the eye of Miss Nightingale. The occasional references +to Lord Wolseley suggest an unaccountable hurrying figure of pygmy size, +which Mr. Strachey can only just discern. This attitude of hovering +superiority is annoying. + +But it reaches a more dangerous importance when it affects spiritual +matters. The author interests himself, from his great height, in the +movements of his Victorian dwarfs, and notices that they are +particularly active, and prone to unusual oddity of movement, when they +are inspired by religious and moral passion. Their motions attract his +attention, and he describes them with gusto and often with wit. His +sketch of Rome before the Oecumenical Council is an admirably studied +page. Miss Nightingale's ferocity when the War Office phalanx closed its +ranks is depicted in the highest of spirits; it is impossible not to be +riveted by the scene round Cardinal Manning's death-bed; but what did +those manifestations mean? To Mr. Strachey it is evident that the fun of +the whole thing is that they meant nothing at all; they were only part +of the Victorian absurdity. It is obvious that religious enthusiasm, as +a personal matter, means nothing to him. He investigates the feelings +of Newman or Keble as a naturalist might the contortions of an insect. +The ceremonies and rites of the Church are objects of subdued hilarity +to him, and in their presence, if he suppresses his laughter, it is +solely to prevent his missing any detail precious to his curiosity. When +the subject of Baptismal Regeneration agitates the whole pious world of +England Mr. Strachey seems to say, looking down with exhilaration on the +anthill beneath him, "The questions at issue are being taken very +seriously by a large number of persons. How Early Victorian of them!" +Mr. Strachey has yet to learn that questions of this kind are "taken +seriously" by serious people, and that their emotion is both genuine and +deep. He sees nothing but alcoholic eccentricity in the mysticism of +Gordon. His cynicism sometimes carries him beyond the confines of good +taste, as in the passage where he refers to the large and dirty ears of +the Roman cardinals. Still worse is the query as to what became of the +soul of Pope Pius IX. after his death. + +These are errors in discretion. A fault in art is the want of care which +the author takes in delineating his minor or subordinate figures. He +gives remarkable pains, for example, to his study of General Gordon, but +he is indifferent to accuracy in his sketches of the persons who came +into contact, and often into collision, with Gordon. In this he +resembles those French painters, such as Bastien Lepage, who focus their +eye on one portion of their canvas, and work that up to a high +perfection, while leaving the rest of the picture misty and vague. Even +in that case the subordinate figures, if subdued in fogginess, should +not be falsely drawn, but Mr. Strachey, intent upon the violent portrait +of Gordon, is willing to leave his Baring and Hartington and Wolseley +inexact as well as shadowy. The essay on General Gordon, indeed, is the +least successful of the four monographs. Dexterous as he is, Mr. +Strachey has not had the material to work upon which now exists to +elucidate his other and earlier subjects. But it is difficult to account +for his apparently not having read Mr. Bernard Holland's life of the +Duke of Devonshire, which throws much light, evidently unknown to Mr. +Strachey, on the Gordon relief expedition. He ought to know that Sir +Evelyn Baring urged the expedition, while Chamberlain was one of its +opponents. Mr. Strachey does not seem to have noticed how much the issue +was confused by conflicting opinions as to whether the route to be taken +should be by Suakin or up the Nile. + +No part of his book is more vigorous or picturesque than the chapter +dealing with the proclamation of Papal Infallibility. But here again one +is annoyed by the glibness with which Mr. Strachey smoothly asserts what +are only his conjectures. + +In his account of Manning's reception in Rome--and this is of central +importance in his picture of Manning's whole career--he exaggerates the +personal policy of Pio Nono, whom he represents as more independent of +the staff of the Curia than was possible. Rome has never acknowledged +the right of the individual, even though that individual be the Pope, to +an independent authority. Mr. Odo Russell was resident secretary in Rome +from 1858 to 1870, and his period of office was drawing to a close when +Manning arrived; he was shortly afterwards removed to become Assistant +Under Secretary of State at our Foreign Office. The author of _Eminent +Victorians_ is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better +than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging +diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes +that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by +no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced +when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for +stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the government, that the +Black Sea question was one on which Great Britain might be compelled to +go to war with or without allies. Lord Morley's _Life of Gladstone_ +(vol. ii., p. 354) is explicit on this interesting point. The +information which, by special permission of the Pope, Cardinal Manning +was able to give to him on all that was going on in the Council was, of +course, of great value to Odo Russell, but his views on other aspects of +the question were derived from quite different sources. + +In this respect he had the advantage of the Cardinal, both on account of +his diplomatic position and of his long and intimate knowledge both of +Vatican policy and of the forces which the Curia has at its command. On +the strength of those forces, and on the small amount of effective +support which British opposition to the Decree of Infallibility was +likely to receive from the Catholic Powers, he no doubt held strong +opinions. Some years later he did not conceal his conviction that Prince +Bismarck would be worsted in his conflict with Rome on the Education +Laws, and the event proved his forecast to be perfectly correct. This is +an example of the dangers which beset a too glib and superficial +treatment of political events which were conducted in secret, and with +every circumstance of mystery. + +Several of the characteristics which diversify Mr. Strachey's remarkable +volume are exemplified in the following quotation. It deals with the +funeral of Cardinal Manning:-- + + "The route of the procession was lined by vast crowds of working + people, whose imaginations, in some instinctive manner, had been + touched. Many who had hardly seen him declared that in Cardinal + Manning they had lost their best friend. Was it the magnetic vigour + of the dead man's spirit that moved them? Or was it his valiant + disregard of common custom and those conventional reserves and + poor punctilios, which are wont to hem about the great? Or was it + something untameable in his glances and in his gestures? Or was it, + perhaps, the mysterious glamour lingering about him of the antique + organisation of Rome? For whatever cause, the mind of the people + had been impressed; and yet, after all, the impression was more + acute than lasting. The Cardinal's memory is a dim thing to-day. + And he who descends into the crypt of that Cathedral which Manning + never lived to see, will observe, in the quiet niche with the + sepulchral monument, that the dust lies thick on the strange, the + incongruous, the almost impossible object which, with its + elaborations of dependent tassels, hangs down from the dim vault + like some forlorn and forgotten trophy, the Hat." + +Longinus tells us that "a just judgment of style is the final fruit of +long experience." In the measured utterances of Mr. Asquith we recognise +the speech of a man to whom all that is old and good is familiar, and in +whom the art of finished expression has become a habit. No more +elegantly balanced, no more delicately perceptive mind than his has +appeared of recent times in our midst, and there is something in the +equipoise of his own genius which points Mr. Asquith out as a judge +peculiarly well fitted to sit in judgment upon rival ages. In his +Romanes lecture there was but one thing to be regretted: the restricted +space which it offered for the full expansion of the theme. Mr. Asquith +excels in swift and rapid flights, but even for him the Victorian Age is +too broad a province to be explored within one hour. He endeavoured to +lighten his task by excluding theology and politics, and indeed but for +such self-denial he could scarcely have moved at all in so dense an air. +He was able, however, having thrown out so much formidable ballast, to +rise above his subject, and gazing at the Victorian Age, as it recedes, +he declared it to have been very good. The young men who despise and +attack that Age receive no support in any particular from Mr. Asquith. + +He dwells on the fecundity of the literature of the Victorian Age in its +middle period, and especially on the publications which adorned the +decade from 1850 to 1859. He calls those years, very justly, "marvellous +and almost unexampled" in their rich profusion. I may suggest that the +only rival to them in our history is the period from 1590 to 1600, which +saw the early plays of Shakespeare, the _Faerie Queene_, the _Arcadia_, +the _Ecclesiastical Polity_, _Tamburlaine_, _The Discovery of Guiana_, +and Bacon's _Essays_. If the works catalogued by Mr. Asquith do not +equal these in intensity, they excel them by the breadth of the ground +they cover, extending from Browning to Darwin and from Thackeray to +Ruskin. Moreover, the Oxford list might have included _Lavengro_ and +Newman's _Lectures_, and Herbert Spencer's _Social Statics_. The only +third decade worthy to be named with those of 1590 and 1850 is that +which opens in 1705, and is illuminated by the names of Pope, +Shaftesbury, Swift, Arbuthnot, Defoe, Steele, Addison, and Berkeley. It +is pleasant to compare these three magnificently flowering epochs, but +not profitable if we attempt to weigh one against the other. They are +comparable only in the splendour of their accomplishment. + +It is more difficult to fit science into our scheme of the Victorian Age +than to find places there for Art and Literature. Perhaps the reason of +this is that the latter were national in their character, whereas +scientific inquiry, throughout the nineteenth century, was carried on +upon international lines, or, at least, in a spirit unprecedentedly +non-provincial. The vast achievements of science, practical and +theoretical, were produced for the world, not for a race. Mr. Asquith +speaks with justice and eloquence of the appearance of Darwin's _Origin +of Species_ which he distinguishes as being "if not actually the most +important, certainly the most interesting event of the Age," and his +remarks on the fortune of that book are excellent. No one can +over-estimate the value of what we owe to Darwin. But perhaps a +Frenchman might speak in almost the same terms of Claude Bernard, whose +life and work ran parallel with Darwin's. If the _Origin of Species_ +made an epoch in 1859, the _Introduction a la medicine experimental_ +made another in 1865. Both these books, as channels by which the +experimental labours of each investigator reached the prepared and +instructed public, exercised at once, and have continued ever since to +exercise, an enormous effect on thought as well as on knowledge. They +transformed the methods by which man approaches scientific +investigation, and while they instructed they stimulated a new ardour +for instruction. In each case the value of the discovery lay in the +value of the idea which led to the discovery, and, as some one has said +in the case of Claude Bernard, they combined for the first time the +operations of science and philosophy. The parallel between these two +contemporaries extends, in a measure, to their disciples and successors, +and seems to suggest that Mr. Asquith in his generous and difficult +estimate may have exaggerated the purely Victorian element in the +science of the age of Darwin. This only accentuates the difficulty, and +he may perhaps retort that there is an extreme danger in suggesting what +does and what does not form a part of so huge a system. + +Justifiably Mr. Asquith takes it for granted that the performance of the +central years of the Victorian Age was splendid. With those who deny +merit to the writers and artists of the last half century it is +difficult to reach a common ground for argument. What is to be the +criterion of taste if all the multiform exhibitions of it which passed +muster from 1840 to 1890 are now to be swept away with contumely? +Perhaps indeed it is only among those extravagant romanticists who are +trying to raise entirely new ideals, unrelated to any existing forms of +art and literature, that we find a denial of all merit to the Victorian +masters. Against this caricature of criticism, this Bolshevism, it would +be hopeless to contend. But there is a large and growing class of more +moderate thinkers who hold, in the first place, that the merit of the +leading Victorian writers has been persistently over-estimated, and that +since its culmination the Victorian spirit has not ceased to decay, +arriving at length at the state of timidity and repetition which +encourages what is ugly, narrow, and vulgar, and demands nothing better +than a swift dismissal to the dust-bin. + +Every stratum of society, particularly if it is at all sophisticated, +contains a body of barbarians who are usually silent from lack of +occasion to express themselves, but who are always ready to seize an +opportunity to suppress a movement of idealism. We accustom ourselves to +the idea that certain broad principles of taste are universally +accepted, and our respectable newspapers foster this benevolent delusion +by talking habitually "over the heads," as we say, of the majority of +their readers. They make "great music for a little clan," and nothing +can be more praiseworthy than their effort, but, as a matter of fact, +with or without the aid of the newspapers, the people who really care +for literature or art, or for strenuous mental exercise of any kind, are +relatively few. If we could procure a completely confidential statement +of the number of persons to whom the names of Charles Lamb and +Gainsborough have a distinct meaning, and still more of those who can +summon up an impression of the essays of the one and of the pictures of +the other, we should in all probability be painfully startled. Yet since +these names enjoy what we call a universal celebrity, what must be the +popular relation to figures much less prominent? + +The result of this tyranny of fame, for so it must appear to all those +who are inconvenienced by the expression of it, is to rouse a sullen +tendency to attack the figures of art and literature whenever there +arrives a chance of doing that successfully. Popular audiences can +always be depended upon to cheer the statement of "a plain man" that he +is not "clever" enough to understand Browning or Meredith. An assurance +that life is too short to be troubled with Henry James wakes the lower +middle class to ecstasy. An opportunity for such protests is provided by +our English lack of critical tradition, by our accepted habit of saying, +"I do hate" or "I must say I rather like" this or that without reference +to any species of authority. This seems to have grown with dangerous +rapidity of late years. It was not tolerated among the Victorians, who +carried admiration to the highest pitch. They marshalled it, they +defined it, they turned it from a virtue into a religion, and called it +Hero Worship. Even their abuse was a kind of admiration turned inside +out, as in Swinburne's diatribes against Carlyle, who himself fought +against the theory of Darwin, not philosophically, but as though it were +a personal insult to himself. Such violence of taste is now gone out of +fashion; every scribbler and dauber likes to believe himself on a level +with the best, and the positive criterion of value which sincere +admiration gave is lost to us. Hence the success of Mr. Lytton Strachey. + +But the decline of ardour does not explain the whole position, which we +have to face with firmness. Epochs come to an end, and before they have +their place finally awarded to them in history they are bound to endure +much vicissitude of fortune. No amount of sarcasm or of indignant +protest will avail to conceal the fact that we stand to-day at the +porch, that much more probably we have already penetrated far into the +vestibule, of a new age. What its character will be, or what its +principal products, it is absolutely impossible for us as yet to +conjecture. Meanwhile the Victorian Age recedes, and it loses size and +lustre as we get further and further away from it. When what was called +"Symbolism" began to act in urgent and direct reaction to the aims of +those still in authority, the old order received its notice to quit, but +that was at least five and twenty years ago, and the change is not +complete. Ages so multiform and redundant and full of blood as the +Victorian take a long time to die; they have their surprising recoveries +and their uncovenanted convalescences. But even they give up the ghost +at length, and are buried hastily with scant reverence. The time has +doubtless come when aged mourners must prepare themselves to attend the +obsequies of the Victorian Age with as much decency as they can muster. + +1918. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abbaye de Creteil, 303-4 +Acton, Lord, 328 +Addison, J., relation of, to Romanticists, 70-1; 68, 76, 82 +_Agnes de Castro_, by Catharine Trotter, 43-5 +Akenside, 74 +Allard-Meeus, J., 273 +_Alroy_, by B. Disraeli, 161 +American criticism, and Edgar Allan Poe, 104, 105 +Anne, Queen, 58 +_Annabel Lee_, by E.A. Poe, 103, 112 +Argyll, Duke of, 320 +Ariosto, 84, 85 +Arnauld, Angelique, 39 +Arnold, M., 3, 68, 71, 133, 267 +Arnold, Dr. T., Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 326-7 +Asquith, Mr., Romanes lecture of, 332-5 + +Bacon, 17 +Bagehot, W., 96 +Balfour, A.J., _re_ standards of taste, 4, 5, 10 +Ballenden, Sarah, 40 +Baring, M., poems of, 265, 273-5 +Barrie, Sir J., 100 +Barry, Mrs., 57 +Batsford, Lord Redesdale at, 217-8, 222, 224-8, 229 +Baudelaire, 106 +Bayle, 59 +Behn, Aphra, 39 +Bell, T., of Selborne, 182 +Berkeley, 98 +Betterton, 48, 57 +Birch, Rev. Dr., 61 +Blake, W., 5, 90 +Blessington, Lady, 131 +Boileau, 70, 77, 82 +Booth, 57 +Bottomley, G., 262 +Bridges, R., War poetry of, 161; 110 +de Brillac, Mlle., 44 +Bronte, Charlotte, dislike of Dewsbury, 142-3; + message of, arose from pain and resistance, 144; + her unhappiness, its causes, 145-6; + defiance the note of her writings, 146-50 +Bronte, Emily, 149 +Brontes, The Challenge of the, address delivered on, 141-50; + their connexion with Dewsbury, 141-2 +Brooke, Rupert, poems of, 268-70 +Browning, R., 9, 81, 132 +Brunetiere, 7 +Bruxambille, 95 +Bryant, 107, 108 +Bulwer-Lytton, E., ambiguity of his position in literature, 117; + R. Lytton's biography, 118, 121; + Lord Lytton's biography, 117, 118-9, 120, 122, 129, 130, 131, 133, 137; + autobiography, 119-20; + story of matrimonial troubles, 121-9; + character, 129-30; + acquaintances and friends, 130-2; + relations with contemporary writers and poets, 132-4; + stormy life, 134; + unfavourable attitude of critics towards, 134-5; + popularity of his writings, 135-6; + versatility and merits, 136-7; 178 +Bulwer-Lytton, Mrs., opposition to Bulwer-Lytton's marriage, 124-7 +Burghclere, Lady, open letter to, on Lady D. Nevill, 181-96 +Burnet, George, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60 +Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, patron of the Trotters, 41, 52, 53 +Burnet, Mrs., 52, 53 +Burney, Dr., 33 +Burton, 96 +Byron, 76, 104, 108, 148, 161-2 + +Carlyle, 100 +Carlyle, Mrs., her opinion of Keats, 9 +Catullus, 84 +Charles II, 40, 41 +Chateaubriand, 74 +Chatterton, 87 +Cibber, Colley, 44 +Classic poetry, Romanticists' revolt against principles of, 70-90 +Clough, A.H., 325, 328 +Cockburn, Mr., 60, 61 +Coleridge, 104, 108, 274 +Collier, Jeremy, attack on stage immorality, 47 +Collins, 86, 110 +Colonisation, England's debt to Walter Raleigh, 24-5 +Congreve, Catherine Trotter's relations with, 43, 47, 48, 50; 57, 58 +_Coningsby_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 164, 165-6, 169, 170-2, 173 +_Contarini Fleming_, by B. Disraeli, 159-61, 162 +Corbett, N.M.F., poems of, 275 +Cowes in war time, 219-21 +Cowley, 82 +Cowper, 253 +Crabbe, G., Hardy compared with, 248 +Cranch, C.P., 105 +Cromer, Lord, essay on, 196-216; + intellectual and literary activity, 197-8; + as a speaker, 198-200; + interest in House of Lords Library, 200; + classical tastes, 200-203; + conversation, attitude to life and letters, 204-8; + correspondence and reflections, 208-10; + humour, 210-12; + verse, 212-15; + literary activities, 215-16 + +Dacier, Mme., 52 +_Dacre_, by Countess of Morley, 153, 156 +Dante, 225-6 +Dartmouth, George, Earl of, 40, 42 +D'Aubigne, 78 +Daudet, A., 252 +Daudet, E., 229-30 +Davies, W.H., 262 +De Vere, Mrs., 59 +Devey, Miss, "Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton," by, 121 +Dewsbury, the Brontes' connexion with, 141-2 +Dickens, C, 100, 128, 131 +Disraeli, B., novels of, address, 153-78; + not taken seriously as an author, 153-4; + three periods of writing, 154-5; + contemporary fiction, 155-6; + _Vivian Grey_, 156-9; + _The Young Duke_, 157; + _Henrietta Temple_, 159; + _Contarini Fleming_, 159-60; + Byron's influence on, 161; + Voltaire's influence on, 162; + fascinated by Venice, 163; + _Venetia_, 163; + Parliamentary experience and literary results, 164; + _Coningsby_, 165-6; + _Sybil_, 167-8; + _Tancred_, 169-72; + Prime Minister, 172; + _Lothair_, 173-8; 131, 135 +Donne, J., 78, 111, 236, 244, 252 +Dorset, Charles, Earl of, 43 +Dowden, 34 +Doyle, Sir A.C., 103 +Dryden, 34, 49, 50, 70, 82, 274 +Du Bos, Abbe, 90 +Durham, Lord, 131 +Dyer, 70 + +Elizabeth, Queen, sympathy between Raleigh and, 18 +_Eloisa to Abelard_, by Pope, its appeal to Romanticists, 83-4 +Emerson, 107 +_Eminent Victorians_, by Lytton Strachey, review of, 318-32 +English Poetry, The Future of, 289-309; + instances of national lapses in poetic output, 290; + necessity of novelty of expression and difficulties arising, 291-2; + advantages of vernacular poetry, 293; + future poetry bound to dispense with obvious description and + reflection and to take on greater subtlety of expression, 294-7; + Wordsworth's speculations concerning nineteenth-century poetry, 298-9; + prospect of social poetry, 299-301; + "effusion of natural sensibility" more probable, 302-3; + French experiments, 303-4; + as to disappearance of erotic poetry, 305-6; + dramatic poetry and symbolism, 306-9 +_Essay on Criticism_, by Pope, Romanticists' attack upon, 71-4 +_Essay on Genius of Pope_, by J. Warton, 80-3 + +Farquhar, 48 +_Fatal Friendship_, by C. Trotter, 47-8 +Fawcett, Rev. J., 97 +Fenn, Mr., 60 +Fletcher, John, songs of, 35 +_For Annie_, by E.A. Poe, 112 +Ford, songs of, 35 +Forster, John, 131-2, 133 +France, Anatole, 7 + +Gaskell, Mrs., 141 +Gautier, T., 6, 10 +Genoa, Duke of, 133 +Georgian poetry, its pre-war characteristics, 261-2 +Gibbon, 98 +Gibson, W.W., 262 +Gilbert, Sir H., 25 +Gilpin, 87 +Godolphin, Henrietta, 58 +Goethe, 161 +de Goncourt, E., 252 +Gongora, 78 +Gordon, General, 15; + Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 329-30 +Gore, Mrs., 178 +de Gourmont, Remy, his opinion of Sully-Prudhomme, 9, 10 +de Gournay, Mlle., 39 +Granville, 47 +Graves, R., poetry of, 280-1 +Gray, 89, 108 +Greene, 32 +Grenfell, J., poems of, 271-3 +Guiana, Raleigh's "gold mine" in, 20 + +Halifax, Lord, 50 +Handel, 80 +Harcourt, Mrs., 57 +Hardy, Thomas, lyrical poetry of, 233-58; + independence of his career as a poet, 233-4; + unity and consistence of his poetry, 234; + sympathy with Swinburne, 235; + historic development of lyrics, 236; + novel writing interfering with, 237-8; + place of poetry in his literary career, 238; + "Wessex Ballads" and "Poems of Past and Present," 238-40; + "The Dynasts" and "Times' Laughing Stocks," 240-2; + "Satires of Circumstance," 242-3; + "Moments of Vision," 243-4; + technical quality of his poetry, 244; + metrical forms, 245-6; + pessimistic conception of life, 247-8; + compared with Crabbe, 248; + consolation found by, 249-51; + compared with Wordsworth, 251; + human sympathy, 251; + range of subjects, 252-5; + speculations on immortality, 256; + "The Dynasts," 68, 257; + unchangeableness of his art, 257-8; + "Song of the Soldiers," 263 +Hawthorne, 107 +Hayley, 5 +Hazlitt, 301 +_Henrietta Temple_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 159 +Heywood, songs of, 35 +Higgons, Bevil, 43 +Hobbes, 98 +Hodgson, W.N., 284 +Homer, 12 +Hooker, 17 +Hope, H.T., 164 +Housman, A.E., 268 +Hugo, V., 6, 12, 111, 134 +Hume, 98 +Hunt, Leigh, 104 + +Inglis, Dr., 51, 58 +Ireland, Raleigh in, 23 + +James I, distrust and treatment of Raleigh, 19, 20, 21 +James II, 42 +Johnson, Dr., his opinion of the Wartons, 86, 98 +Jowett, Dr., 320 + +Keats, Mrs. Carlyle's opinion of, 9; 5, 90, 104, 105 +King, Peter, 53, 59 +Kipling, R., poetry of, 300 + +Landon, Letitia, 131 +Lansdowne, Lord, 191 +Lauderdale, Earl of, 42 +Lauderdale, Maitland, Duke of, 40, 41 +Lawson, H., poems of, 284 +Lee, 50 +Leibnitz, 42, 54, 55, 56, 59 +Lemaitre, J., 7 +Lewis, "Monk," 162 +Locke, Catharine Trotter's defence of, 53-5; + death of, 55; 42 +Lockhart, 135 +Lodge, 32 +_Lothair_, by B. Disraeli, 173-8 +_Love at a Loss_, by Catharine Trotter, 51 +Lowell, 108 +Lucas, Lord, 274 +Lyly, John, 31 +Lytton, Bulwer-, _see_ Bulwer-Lytton. +Lytton, Lord, biography of Bulwer-Lytton, 117, 118-19, 120, 122, 129, + 130, 131, 133, 137 +Lytton, R., biography of Bulwer-Lytton, 118, 121 + +Macaulay, Lord, 320-1 +Macpherson, 86 +Malebranche, 52 +Malherbe, 70, 77 +Mallarme, 77, 106 +Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, 85 +Manley, Mrs., 44, 45, 46, 61 +Manning, Cardinal, Mr. Strachey's portrait of, 323, 330-2 +Manoa, 19 +Mant, 73 +Marinetti, M., 305, 318 +Marini, 78 +Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, 57 +Marlborough, Duke of, Catharine Trotter's poem of welcome to, 58 +Marlowe, songs of, 34 +Marsh, E., 261 +Masham, Lady, 55, 56, 59 +Massinger, 35 +Melbourne, Lord, 131 +_Memories_, by Lord Redesdale, 216, 217, 219, 221 +Milton, influence upon eighteenth-century poetry, 79; 82, 110 +Mitford, Major Hon. C, 218 +Mockel, A., 112 +_Moments of Vision_, by T. Hardy, 243-4 +Monckton-Milnes, Sir R., 133 +Morris, 104 +Myers, F., 320 + +Nevill, Lady Dorothy, Open Letter to Lady Burghclere on, 181-96; + memoirs of, 181-2; + writer's friendship with, 152; + appearance and physical strength, 183-4; + characteristics, 184-5; + a spectator of life, 186-7; + attitude to the country, 187; + wit, conversation and correspondence, 187-92; + relation to literature and art, 192-4; + emotional nature, 194-6 +Nevill, Ralph, Memoirs of Lady D. Nevill by, 181-2 +Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of, 39 +Nichols, R., poetry of, 276-80 +Nietzsche, 219-20 +Nightingale, Florence, Mr. Strachey's Life of, 324 +Norris, John, 52, 53 + +Obermann, 76 +_Observations on the Faerie Queene_, by T. Warton, 84-6 +_Ode on the Approach of Summer_, by T. Warton, 79 +_Odes_, by J. Warton, 69, 75, 80 +Otway, 50 + +Panmure, Lord, 325-6 +Paris, Gaston, 7, 8 +Parnell, 76 +Parr, Dr. S., 120 +Pater, W., 71 +Patmore, C., 237 +Peacock, 104 +Peele, 32 +Peguy, C., 268 +_Pelham_, by Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, the author of, 117-37; 135, 155 +Pepys, S., 27 +Perth, 4th Earl of, 40, 42 +_Philip van Artevelde_, by H. Taylor, 107 +Piers, Lady, 50, 51 +Piers, Sir G., 50 +Pix, Mrs. Mary, 45, 46, 61 +Poe, E.A., centenary of, address on, 103-13; + importance as a poet ignored, 103; + original want of recognition of, 104-5; + his reaction to unfriendly criticism, 105-6; + essential qualities of his genius, 106-7; + contemporary conception of poetry, 107-8; + his ideal of poetry, 108; + influences upon, 108-9; + early verses, poetic genius in, 109; + melodiousness of, 110-11; + symbolism of, 112-13 +_Poems and Ballads_, by A.C. Swinburne, Bulwer-Lytton's support of, 133-4 +_Poems of Past and Present_, by T. Hardy, 238-40 +Pope, Romanticists' revolt against classicism of, 70-90; 68 +Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, Queen of, 58 + +Rabelais, 90 +Radcliffe, Mrs., 85, 162 +Raleigh, North Carolina, foundation of, 25-6 +Raleigh, W., junr., 20 +Raleigh, Sir W., address delivered on Tercentenary celebration of, 15-27; + patriotism and hatred of Spain, 15-17, 21-2; + character, 18; + adventurous nature, 18-19; + James I and, 19-20; + his El Dorado dreams, 20; + fall and trial, 21; + savage aspects of, 23; + as a naval strategist, 23-4; + genius as coloniser, 24-5; + imprisonment and execution, 26-7 +Ramsay, Allan, 70 +Redesdale, Lord, last days of, 216-30; + literary career, 216-7; + vitality: pride in authorship and garden, 217-8; + death of son, 218; + "Memories," 219; + loneliness and problem of occupying his time, 219-22; + origin of last book, its theme, 222-4; + last days, 224-30 +Rene, 76 +Rentoul, L., poems of, 284 +Rette, A., 112 +Reynolds, 104 +Ritson, Joseph, attack upon T. Warton, 88-9 +Roanoke, Virginia, British settlement in, 25 +Roche, Lord and Lady, 23 +Romanticism, Two Pioneers of, Joseph and Thomas Warton, address on, 65-90 +Romantic movement, features of, 71-90 +Rossetti, D.G., 104, 136 +Rousseau, J.J., English Romanticists' relation to, 68, 68, 75 +Ruskin, 100 +Russell, Odo, 330 + +Sainte-Beuve, 6 +Sappho, 84 +Sassoon, S., poems of, 282-4 +_Satires of Circumstance_, by T. Hardy, 242-3 +Satow, Sir E., 223 +Scott, Sir W., 108, 128, 135 +Scudery, M. de, 39 +Seaman, Sir G., war invective of, 264 +Selbourne, Lord, 320 +Selden, 98 +Senancour, 74 +_Sentimental Journey_, The, by L. Sterne, 96, 100 +Seventeenth century, English women writers of, 39 +Shakespeare, the Songs of, 31-5; + their dramatic value, 31-3; + lyrical qualities, 33-5; + comparison with contemporary lyricists, 35; 17, 82 +Shelley, 74, 104, 108, 162 +Shenstone, 70 +_Shepherd of the Ocean, The_, 15-27 +Shorter, C., 141 +Some Soldier Poets, 261-85; + outbreak of war poetry, 262-3; + mildness of British Hymns of Hate, 264-5; + military influence upon poetic feeling, 265-6; + tendency to dispense with form, 266; + common literary influences, 267-8; + Rupert Brooke, 268-70; + J. Grenfell, 271-3; + M. Baring, 273-5; + N.M.F. Corbett, 275; + E.W. Tennant, 275; + R. Nichols, 276-80; + R. Graves, 280-1; + S. Sassoon, 282-4; + C.H. Sorley, W.N. Hodgson, K. Lawson, L. Rentoul, R.E. Vernede, 284 +Sorley, C.H., poems of, 284 +Southey, 5, 104 +Spain, Anglo-Spanish rivalry in days of Walter Raleigh, 16-17, 21-3, 24 +Spenser, 17, 82, 84, 111 +Stephen, Sir Leslie, 106, 237 +Sterne, Laurence, Essay on the Charm of, 93-100; + birth and childhood, 93-4; + temperament, 94-5; + intellectual development, 95-6; + alternation of feeling about, 97; + English literature's debt to, 98; + his "indelicacy," 99; + irrelevancy, 99; + Shandean influences upon literature, 100 +Sterne, Mrs., 93 +Sterne, Roger, 93 +Stevenson, R.L., 100 +Strachey, Lytton, "Eminent Victorians" by, review of, 318-32 +Stukeley, Sir L., 21 +Sully-Prudhomme, fluctuations in taste as regards, 5-9 +Sumners, Montagu, 39 +Swinburne, A. C, Bulwer-Lytton and, 133-4; + Hardy's sympathy with, 235; 68, 81, 111 +Symbolism and poetry, 308-9 + +_Tales of Old Japan_, by Lord Redesdale, 216 +_Tancred_, by B. Disraeli, 153 +Taste, fluctuations in, 3-12; + regarding Wordsworth, 3-4; + Mr. Balfour's conclusions, 4-5, 10; + volte-face concerning Sully-Prudhomme, 5-10 +_Tea-Table Miscellany_, 70 +Temple, Mrs., 45 +Tennant, E.W., poetry of, 275 +Tennyson, Victorian opinion of, 320-1; 7, 12, 81, 106, 116, 132, 299 +Thackeray, 144 +_The Bamboo Garden_, by Lord Redesdale, 216 +_The Bells_, by E.A. Poe, 111 +_The Dynasts_, by T. Hardy, 240, 257 +_The Enthusiast_, by Joseph Warton, importance of, 69, 73 +_The Female Wits_, by Catharine Trotter, 45-6 +_The Raven_, by E.A. Poe, 108, 111 +_The Revolution in Sweden_, by Catharine Trotter, 57-8 +_The Unhappy Penitent_, by Catharine Trotter, 50-1 +_The Young Duke_, by B. Disraeli, 153, 157 +Thomson, James, 78, 307 +Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_, 68 +_Times' Laughing Stocks_, by T. Hardy, 240-2 +Tottel's Miscellany, 261 +_Tristram Shandy_, by L. Sterne, 94, 96, 98, 99, 100 +Trotter, Capt. D., R.N., 40 +Trotter, Catharine, 39-62; + precocity, 39, 42; + parentage, 40; + poverty, 41-2; + early verses, 43; + correspondence with celebrated people, 43; + _Agnes de Castro_, 43-5; + _The Female Wits_, 45-6; + _Fatal Friendship_, 47-9; + elegy on Dryden's death, 49-50; + _The Unhappy Penitent_, 50-1; + _Love at a Loss_, 51; + friendship with the Burnets, 52; + philosophical studies, 42, 52-3; + enthusiasm for Locke, 53, 55; + _The Revolution in Sweden_, 54, 57; + correspondence with Leibnitz, 55; + indignation at aspersions on feminine intellectuality, 56-7; + poem of welcome to Marlborough, 58; + attachment to G. Burnet, 59-60; + marriage with Mr. Cockburn, 60; + later life, 60-1 +Trotter, Mrs., poverty of, 41 +Tupper, 5 +Turkey Company, 40 + +_Ulalume_, by E.A. Poe, 103, 107, 109, 112 +Upchear, Henry, 31 + +_Veluvana_, by Lord Redesdale, theme of, 222-4, 226 +_Venetia_, by B. Disraeli, 163 +Venice, its fascination for Disraeli, 163 +Verbruggen, Mrs., 45 +Verlaine, Paul, 7 +Vernede, R.E., poems of, 284 +de Verville, B., 95, 95, 96 +Victorian Age, the Agony of, 313-37 +Virgil, 12 +_Vivian Grey_, by B. Disraeli, 155, 156, 157-9 +Voltaire, 3, 162 + +Waller, 82 +Warburton, Dr., 33, 81, 97 +Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, 144, 327 +Ward, Plumer, novels of, 155, 156, 178 +Warton, Joseph and Thomas; Two Pioneers of Romanticism, address + on, 65-90; + parentage and early habits, 66-7; + heralds of romantic movement, 67; + literary contemporaries and atmosphere, 68; + Joseph, the leading spirit, 68-9; + _The Enthusiast_, its romantic qualities, 69; + their revolt against principles of classic poetry, 70-4; + characteristic features of early Romanticism, 74-9; + Miltonic influence, 79-80; + _Essay on the Genius of Pope_, 80-4; + _Observations on the Faerie Queene_, 84-6; + Johnson's criticism of, 86-7; + Ritson's attack upon Thomas, 88; + defects of, 89-90 +Webster's _White Devil_, 34 +_Wessex Ballads_, by T. Hardy, 238-40 +Wheeler, R.D. (Lady Lytton), Miss Devey's Life of, 121; + story of marriage with Bulwer-Lytton, 121-9 +Whitehead, 74 +William III, 41 +Willis, N.P., 105 +Wilson, Harriette, 130-1 +Wolseley, Lord, 328 +Wooler, Miss, 141, 142, 143 +Wordsworth, Hardy compared with, 251; + speculations concerning future poetry, 298-9; 3, 4, 10, 74, 78, 90, + 104, 107, 108, 110, 253 +Wycherley, 44 + +Yeats, 70 +Young, 68, 69, 81 + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED +BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by +Edmund William Gosse + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME DIVERSIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 18649.txt or 18649.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/4/18649/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Taavi Kalju and the Online +Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.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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