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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old Familiar Faces, by Theodore Watts-Dunton
+
+
+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: Old Familiar Faces
+
+
+Author: Theodore Watts-Dunton
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 25, 2008  [eBook #27025]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FAMILIAR FACES***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1916 E. P. Dutton and Company edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org.  Many thanks to Kensington Central
+Library (http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/libraries/) for providing the copy
+from which the illustrations are taken.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   OLD
+                                 FAMILIAR
+                                  FACES
+
+
+                                    BY
+                                 THEODORE
+                               WATTS-DUNTON
+
+                                AUTHOR OF
+                                 “AYLWIN”
+
+                                 NEW YORK
+                         E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
+                                  MCMXVI
+
+                   THE ATHENÆUM PRESS, LONDON, ENGLAND.
+
+  [Picture: Mrs. William Morris.  “She was the most lovely woman I have
+      ever known, her beauty was incredible.”—Theodore Watts-Dunton]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+For some years before his death it was the intention of Theodore
+Watts-Dunton to publish in volume form under the title of ‘Old Familiar
+Faces,’ the recollections of his friends that he had from time to time
+contributed to _The Athenæum_.  Had his range of interests been less wide
+he might have found the time in which to further this and many other
+literary projects he had formed; but he was, unfortunately, very slow to
+write, and slower still to publish.  His long life produced in published
+works a number of critical and biographical essays contributed to
+periodicals and encyclopædias, a romance (‘Aylwin’), a sheaf of poems
+(‘The Coming of Love’), two of the most stimulating critical
+pronouncements that his century produced (‘Poetry’ and ‘The Renascence of
+Wonder’), a handful of introductions to classics—and that is all.
+
+Only those who were frequent visitors at “The Pines” can form any idea of
+his keen interest in life and affairs, which seemed to grow rather than
+to diminish with the passage of each year, even when 81 had passed him
+by.  At his charmingly situated house at the foot of Putney Hill, he
+lived a life of as little seclusion as he would have lived in Fleet
+Street.  Here he received his friends and acquaintances, and there was
+little happening in the world outside with which he was unacquainted.
+
+He was a tremendous worker, and only a few months before his death he
+wrote of “the enormous pressure of work” that was upon him, telling his
+correspondent that he had “no idea, no one can have any idea, what it is.
+I am an early riser and breakfast at seven, and from that hour until
+seven in the evening, I am in full swing of my labours with the aid of
+two most intelligent secretaries.”
+
+To outlive his generation is, perhaps, the worst fate that can befall a
+man; but this cannot truly be said of Theodore Watts-Dunton, who seemed
+to be of no generation in particular.  His interest in the life of the
+twentieth century, a life so different from that of his own youth and
+early manhood, was strangely keen and insistent.  Sometimes in talking of
+his great contemporaries, Tennyson, Meredith, Swinburne, Rossetti,
+Morris, Matthew Arnold, Borrow, there would creep into his voice a note
+of reminiscent sadness; but it always seemed poetic rather than personal.
+It may be said that he never really grew up, that his spirit never tired.
+His laugh was as youthful as the hearty “My dear fellow,” with which he
+would address his friends.
+
+His most remarkable quality was his youth.  His body had aged, his voice
+had shrunk; but once launched into the subject of literature, Greek verse
+in particular (he regarded the Attic tongue as the peculiar vehicle for
+poetic expression), he seemed immediately to become a young man.  When
+quoting his favourite passage from Keats, his voice would falter with
+emotion.
+
+    Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
+    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
+
+These lines he regarded as the finest in English poetry.
+
+He possessed the great gift of conversation.  Every subject seemed to
+develope quite naturally out of that which had preceded it, and although
+in a single hour he would have passed from Æschylus and Sophocles to
+twentieth-century publishers, there was never any break or suspicion of a
+change of topic.  Seated on the sofa in the middle of his study, with
+reminders of his friendship with Rossetti gazing down upon him from the
+walls, he welcomed his friends with that almost boyish cordiality that so
+endeared him to their hearts.  If they had been doing anything of which
+the world knew, he would be sure to have heard all about it.  His mind
+was as alert as his memory was remarkable; but above all he was possessed
+of a very real charm, a charm that did not vanish before the on-coming
+years.  It was this quality of interesting himself in the doings of
+others that retained for him the friendships that his personality and
+cordiality had created.
+
+Few men have been so richly endowed with great friendships as Theodore
+Watts-Dunton: Swinburne, the Rossettis, William Morris, Matthew Arnold,
+Tennyson, Borrow, Lowell, Latham, men of vastly dissimilar temperaments;
+yet he was on terms of intimacy with them all, and as they one by one
+passed away, to him was left the sad duty of giving to the world by far
+the most intimate picture of their various personalities.  There was
+obviously some subtle quality in Watts-Dunton’s nature that not only
+attracted to him great minds in the world of art and letters; but which
+seemed to hold captive their affection for a lifetime.  Even an
+instinctive recluse such as Borrow, a man almost too sensitive for
+friendship, found in Watts-Dunton one whose capacity for friendship was
+so great as to override all other considerations.  Watts-Dunton was “the
+friend of friends” to Rossetti, who wished to make him his heir, and was
+dissuaded only when he saw that to do so would pain his friend, who
+regarded it as an act of injustice to Rossetti’s own family.  During his
+lifetime Swinburne desired to make over to him his entire fortune.  The
+man to whom these tributes were paid was undoubtedly possessed of some
+rare and strange gift.
+
+                  [Picture: Algernon Charles Swinburne]
+
+The greatest among his many great friendships was with Swinburne.  For
+thirty years they lived together at “The Pines” in the closest unity and
+accord.  They would take their walks together, discuss the hundred and
+one things in which they were both interested, living, not as great men
+sometimes live, a frigid existence of intellectual loneliness; but
+showing the keenest interest in the affairs of the everyday, as well as
+of the literary, world.  When death at last severed the link that it had
+taken upwards of thirty years to forge, it is not strange that there
+should be no reminiscences written of the man who had been to
+Watts-Dunton more than a brother.
+
+It was not always easy to get Watts-Dunton to talk of those he had known
+so intimately; but when he did so it was frankly and freely.  Once when
+telling of some characteristic act of generosity on the part of that
+strangely composite being, half genius, half schoolboy, William Morris,
+he remarked, “Yes, Morris was a very dear friend of mine; but he had
+strange limitations.  Swinburne had the utmost contempt for the
+narrowness of his outlook.  It was incredible!  Outside his own domain he
+was unintelligent in his narrowness, and frequently bored and irritated
+his friends.”
+
+As artist, poet, and craftsman, however, Watts-Dunton spoke with
+enthusiasm of Morris; but intellectually he regarded him as inferior to
+Mrs. Morris.  On the day following the announcement of her death, the
+present writer happened to be taking tea at “The Pines,” and the
+conversation not unnaturally turned upon the Morrises.  Watts-Dunton
+called attention to the large number of magnificent Rossetti portraits of
+her that hung from the walls of his study.  “A remarkable woman,” he
+said, “a most remarkable woman; superior to Morris intellectually, she
+reached a greater mental height than he was capable of, yet few knew it.”
+Then he proceeded to tell how she had acquired French and Italian with
+the greatest ease and facility.  When Morris had met her she possessed
+very few educational advantages; yet she very quickly made good her
+shortcomings.  When reminded that Mr. H. Buxton Forman had recently
+written that he had seen beautiful women in all quarters of the globe,
+“but never one so strangely lovely and majestic as Mrs. Morris,”
+Watts-Dunton remarked, “She was the most lovely woman I have ever known,
+her beauty was incredible.”
+
+In answer to a question he went on to say that Rossetti painted her lips
+with the utmost faithfulness.  In spite of her beauty and her high mental
+qualities, she was very shy and retiring, almost fearful, in her attitude
+towards others.
+
+In literature and criticism Watts-Dunton stood for enthusiasm.  His
+gospel as a critic was to seek for the good that is to be found in most
+things, literary or otherwise; and what is, perhaps, most remarkable in
+one who has known so many great men, he never seemed to draw invidious
+comparisons between the writers and artists of to-day and those of the
+great Victorian Era.
+
+Life at “The Pines” was as bright as naturally cheerful and bright people
+could make it, people who were not only attracted to and interested in
+each other; but found the world an exceedingly good place in which to
+live.  The home circle was composed of Swinburne, Watts-Dunton, his two
+sisters, Miss Watts and Mrs. Mason.  To these must be added Mr. Thomas
+Hake, for many years Watts-Dunton’s friend and secretary, who was in
+daily attendance.  Later the circle was enlarged by the entry into it of
+the young and accomplished bride, the present Mrs. Watts-Dunton.
+
+“The Pines” would have seemed a strange place without “the Colonel,” as
+Watts-Dunton always called Mr. Hake, adopting a family name given to him
+when a boy on account of his likeness to his cousin, General, then
+Colonel, Gordon.  Nothing amused Watts-Dunton more than for some caller
+to start discussing army matters with the supposed ex-officer.  He would
+watch with a mischievous glee Mr. Hake’s endeavours to carry on a
+conversation in which he had no special interest.  Watts-Dunton never
+informed callers of their mistake, and to this day there is one friend of
+twenty-five years’ standing, a man keenly interested in National Defence,
+who regards Mr. Hake as an authority upon army matters.
+
+“No living man knew Borrow so well as Thomas Hake,” Watts-Dunton once
+remarked to a friend.  To the young Hakes Lavengro was a great joy, and
+they would often accompany him part of his way home from Coombe End.  On
+one occasion Borrow said to the youngest boy, “Do you know how to fight a
+man bigger than yourself?”  The lad confessed that he did not.  “Well,”
+said Borrow, “You challenge him to fight, and when he is taking off his
+coat, you hit him in the stomach as hard as you can and run for your
+life.”
+
+Swinburne and Watts-Dunton had first met in 1872.  In 1879 they went to
+live together at “The Pines,” and from that date were never parted until
+Swinburne’s death thirty years’ later.  In no literary friendship has the
+bond been closer.  Watts-Dunton’s first act each morning was to visit
+Swinburne in his own room, where the poet breakfasted alone with the
+morning newspapers.  During the morning the two would take their daily
+walk together, a practice continued for many years.  “There is no time
+like the morning for a walk,” Swinburne would say, “The sparkle, the
+exhilaration of it.  I walk every morning of my life, no matter what the
+weather, pelting along all the time as fast as I can go.”  His perfect
+health he attributed entirely to this habit.
+
+In later years he would take his walks alone.  It was during one of these
+that he met with an adventure that seemed to cause him some irritation.
+A young artist hearing that “the master” walked each day up Putney Hill
+lay in wait for him.  After several unsuccessful ventures he at length
+saw a figure approaching which he instantly recognized.  Crossing the
+road the youth went boldly up and said:—
+
+“If you are Mr. Swinburne, may I shake hands with you?”
+
+“Eh?” remarked the astonished poet.
+
+The young man repeated his request in a louder voice, remembering
+Swinburne’s deafness, adding:—
+
+“It is my ambition to shake hands with you, sir.”
+
+“Oh! very well,” was the response, as Swinburne half-heartedly extended
+his hand, “I’m not accustomed to this sort of thing.”
+
+Meal times at “The Pines” were occasions when there was much talk and
+laughter; for in both Swinburne and Watts-Dunton the mischievous spirit
+of boyhood had not been entirely disciplined by life, and in the other
+members of the household the same unconquerable spirit of youth was
+manifest.  Sometimes there were great discussions and arguments.
+Watts-Dunton had more than a passing interest in science, whereas, to
+Swinburne it was anathema, although his father was strongly scientific in
+his learning.  The libraries of the two men clearly showed how different
+were their tastes; for that of Watts-Dunton was all-embracing,
+Swinburne’s was as exclusive as his circle of personal friends.  The one
+was the library of a critic, the other that of a poet.
+
+Swinburne enjoyed nothing better than a discussion, and he was a foe who
+wielded a stout blade.  He fought, however, with scrupulous fairness,
+never interrupting an adversary; but listening to him with a deliberate
+patience that was almost disconcerting.  Then when his turn came he would
+overwhelm his opponent and destroy his most weighty arguments in what a
+friend once described as “a lava torrent of burning words.”  He possessed
+many of the qualities necessary to debate: concentration, the power of
+pouncing upon the weak spot in his adversary’s argument, and above all a
+wonderful memory.  What he lacked was that calm and calculating frigidity
+so necessary to the successful debater.  Instead of freezing his opponent
+to silence with deliberate logic, he would strive rather by the
+tempestuous quality of his rhetoric to hurl him into the next parish.
+
+There were times when he would work himself up into a passion of
+denunciation, when, trembling and quivering in every limb, he would in a
+fine frenzy of scorn annihilate those whom he conceived to be his
+enemies, and in scathing periods pour ridicule upon their works.  But if
+he were merciless in his onslaughts upon his foes, he was correspondingly
+loyal in the defence of his friends.  He seemed as incapable of seeing
+the weakness of a friend as of appreciating the strength of an enemy.
+
+The things and the people who did not interest him he had the fortunate
+capacity of entirely forgetting.  A friend {15} tells of how on one
+occasion he happened to mention in the course of conversation a book by a
+certain author whom he knew had been a visitor at “The Pines” on several
+occasions, and as such was personally known to Swinburne.
+
+“Oh! really,” Swinburne remarked, “Yes, now that you mention it, I
+believe someone of that name has been so good as to come and see us.  I
+seem to recall him, and I seem to remember hearing someone say that he
+had written something, though I don’t remember exactly what.  So he has
+published a book upon the subject of which we are talking.  Really?  I
+did not know.”
+
+All this was said with perfect courtesy and without the least intention
+of administering a snub or belittling the writer in question.  Swinburne
+had merely forgotten because there was nothing in that author’s
+personality that had impressed itself upon him.  On the other hand, he
+would remember the minutest details of conversations in which he had been
+interested.
+
+In spite of his capacity for passionate outbursts and inspired invective,
+Swinburne was a most attentive listener, provided there were things being
+said to which it was worth listening.  At meal times when his attention
+became engaged he would forget everything but the conversation.
+Indifferent as to what stage of the meal he was at, he would turn to
+whoever it might be that had introduced the subject, and would talk or
+listen oblivious of the fact that food might be spoiling.  Fortunately,
+he was a small eater.
+
+On one occasion when lunching at “The Pines” Mr. Coulson Kernahan
+happened to remark that he had in his pocket a copy of Christina
+Rossetti’s then unpublished poem, ‘The Death of a First-born,’ written in
+memory of the Duke of Clarence.  Down went knife and fork as Swinburne
+half rose from his chair to reach across the table for the manuscript.
+“She is as a god to mortals when compared to most other living women
+poets,” he exclaimed.  Then, in his thin-high-pitched, but exquisitely
+modulated voice he half read, half chanted, two stanzas of the poem.
+
+    One young life lost, two happy young lives blighted
+       With earthward eyes we see:
+    With eyes uplifted, keener, farther sighted
+       We look, O Lord to thee.
+
+    Grief hears a funeral knell: hope hears the ringing
+       Of birthday bells on high.
+    Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing,
+       Half carol and half cry.
+
+He stopped abruptly refusing to read the third and last stanza because it
+was unequal, and the poem was stronger and finer by its omission.  Then
+he said in a hushed voice, “For the happy folk who are able to think as
+she thinks, who believe as she believes, the poem is of its kind
+perfect.”
+
+With glowing eyes and with hand that marked time to the music, he read
+once more the second verse, repeating the line, “half carol and half cry”
+three times, lowering his voice with each repetition until it became
+little more than a whisper.  Laying the manuscript reverently beside him,
+he sat perfectly still for a space with brooding eyes, then rising
+silently left the room with short swift strides. {17}
+
+Many of Swinburne’s friends have testified to his personal charm and
+courtliness of bearing.  “Unmistakably an aristocrat, and with all the
+ease and polish which one associates with high breeding, there was, even
+in the cordiality with which he would rise and come forward to welcome a
+visitor a suspicion of the shy nervousness of the introspective man and
+of the recluse on first facing a stranger.”  Mr. Coulson Kernahan has
+said, “I have seen him angry, I have heard him furiously dissent from,
+and even denounce the views put forward by others, but never once was
+what, for want of a better word, I must call his personal deference to
+those others relaxed.
+
+“To no one would he defer quite so graciously and readily, to no one was
+he so scrupulously courtly in bearing as to those who constituted his own
+household.”
+
+If he felt that he had monopolized the conversation he would turn to
+Watts-Dunton and apologize, and for a time become transformed into an
+attentive listener.
+
+Lord Ronald Gower writes of Swinburne’s remarkable powers as a talker.
+Telling of a luncheon at “The Pines” in 1879, he writes:—“Swinburne’s
+talk after luncheon was wonderful . . . What, far beyond the wonderful
+flow of words of the poet, struck me, was his real diffidence and
+modesty; while fully aware of the divine gifts within him, he is as
+simple and unaffected as a child.” {18}
+
+                     [Picture: Theodore Watts-Dunton]
+
+But conversation at “The Pines” was not always of the serious things of
+life.  It very frequently partook of the playful, when the hearers would
+be kept amused with a humour and whimsicality, cauterized now and then
+with some biting touch of satire which showed that neither Swinburne nor
+Watts-Dunton had entirely grown up.
+
+Reading aloud was also a greatly favoured form of entertainment.
+Swinburne was a sympathetic reader, possessed of a voice of remarkable
+quality and power of expression, and he would read for the hour together
+from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade, and Thackeray.  To Mrs. Mason’s little
+boy he was a wizard who could open many magic casements.  He would carry
+off the lad to his own room, and there read to him the stories which
+caused the hour of bedtime to be dreaded.  When the nurse arrived to
+fetch the child to bed he would imperiously wave her away, hoping that
+Swinburne would not notice the action and so bring the evening’s
+entertainment to a close.  On one occasion the child stole down to
+Swinburne’s room after he had been safely put to bed, where the
+interrupted story was renewed.  When eventually discovered both seemed to
+regard the incident as a huge joke, and Swinburne carried the child to
+the nursery and tucked him up for the night.
+
+A great capacity for friendship involves an equally great meed of sorrow.
+At last the hour arrived when the friend who was nearer to him than a
+brother followed those who one by one he had mourned, and of the old
+familiar faces there were left to him only the two sisters, whose love
+and devotion had contributed so much to his domestic happiness, and his
+friend, Mr. Thomas Hake, who for seventeen years had acted as
+confidential secretary.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                                     PAGE.
+
+             INTRODUCTION                                                5
+
+I.           GEORGE BORROW                                              25
+
+II.          DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI                                     69
+
+III.         ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON                                     120
+
+IV.          CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI                               177
+
+V.           DR. GORDON HAKE                                           207
+
+VI.          JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD DE TABLEY                     219
+
+VII.         WILLIAM MORRIS                                            240
+
+VIII.        FRANCIS HINDES GROOME                                     277
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+MRS. WILLIAM MORRIS                                         _Frontispiece_
+
+A. C. SWINBURNE                                             to face page 8
+
+THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON                                                   18
+
+DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI                                                  70
+
+ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, ÆT                                          80, 120
+
+CHRISTINA ROSSETTI                                                     178
+
+MRS. ROSSETTI                                                          182
+
+DR. GORDON HAKE                                                        208
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS                                                         240
+
+FRANCIS HINDES GROOME                                                  278
+
+I.  GEORGE BORROW.
+1803–1881.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+I have been reading those charming reminiscences of George Borrow which
+appeared in _The Athenæum_. {25}  I have been reading them, I may add,
+under the happiest conditions for enjoying them—amid the self-same
+heather and bracken where I have so often listened to Lavengro’s quaint
+talk of all the wondrous things he saw and heard in his wondrous life.
+So graphically has Mr. Hake depicted him, that as I walked and read his
+paper I seemed to hear the fine East-Anglian accent of the
+well-remembered voice—I seemed to see the mighty figure, strengthened by
+the years rather than stricken by them, striding along between the whin
+bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water to pluck the
+wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms perfumed the air as he
+crushed them, now stopping to watch the water-wagtail by the ponds as he
+descanted upon the powers of that enchanted bird—powers, like many human
+endowments, more glorious than pleasant, if it is sober truth, as Borrow
+would gravely tell, that the gipsy lad who knocks a water-wagtail on the
+head with a stone gains for a bride a “ladye from a far countrie,” and
+dazzles with his good luck all the other black-eyed young urchins of the
+dingle.
+
+Though my own intimacy with Borrow did not begin till he was considerably
+advanced in years, and ended on his finally quitting London for Oulton,
+there were circumstances in our intercourse—circumstances, I mean,
+connected partly with temperament and partly with mutual experience—which
+make me doubt whether any one understood him better than I did, or broke
+more thoroughly through that exclusiveness of temper which isolated him
+from all but a few.  However, be this as it may, no one at least realized
+more fully than I how lovable was his nature, with all his
+angularities—how simple and courageous, how manly and noble.  His
+shyness, his apparent coldness, his crotchety obstinacy, repelled people,
+and consequently those who at any time during his life really understood
+him must have been very few.  How was it, then, that such a man wandered
+about over Europe and fraternized so completely with a race so suspicious
+and intractable as the gipsies?  A natural enough question, which I have
+often been asked, and this is my reply:—
+
+Those who know the gipsies will understand me when I say that this
+suspicious and wary race of wanderers—suspicious and wary from an
+instinct transmitted through ages of dire persecutions from the Children
+of the Roof—will readily fraternize with a blunt, single-minded, and shy
+eccentric like Borrow, while perhaps the skilful man of the world may
+find all his tact and _savoir faire_ useless and, indeed, in the way.
+And the reason of this is not far to seek, perhaps.  What a gipsy most
+dislikes is the feeling that his “gorgio” interlocutor is thinking about
+him; for, alas! to be the object of “gorgio” thoughts—has it not been a
+most dangerous and mischievous honour to every gipsy since first his
+mysterious race was driven to accept the grudging hospitality of the
+Western world?  A gipsy hates to be watched, and knows at once when he is
+being watched; for in tremulous delicacy of apprehension his organization
+is far beyond that of an Englishman, or, indeed, of any member of any of
+the thick-fingered races of Europe.  One of the results of this excessive
+delicacy is that a gipsy can always tell to a surety whether a “gorgio”
+companion is thinking about him, or whether the “gorgio’s” thoughts are
+really and genuinely occupied with the fishing rod, the net, the gin, the
+gun, or whatsoever may be the common source of interest that has drawn
+them together.
+
+Now, George Borrow, after the first one or two awkward interviews were
+well over, would lapse into a kind of unconscious ruminating bluntness, a
+pronounced and angular self-dependence, which might well disarm the
+suspiciousness of the most wary gipsy, from the simple fact that it was
+genuine.  Hence, as I say, among the few who understood Borrow his gipsy
+friends very likely stood first—outside, of course, his family circle.
+And surely this is an honour to Borrow; for the gipsies, notwithstanding
+certain undeniable obliquities in matters of morals and cusine, are the
+only people left in the island who are still free from British vulgarity
+(perhaps because they are not British).  It is no less an honour to them,
+for while he lived the island did not contain a nobler English gentleman
+than him they called the “Romany Rye.”
+
+Borrow’s descriptions of gipsy life are, no doubt, too deeply charged
+with the rich lights shed from his own personality entirely to satisfy a
+more matter-of-fact observer, and I am not going to say that he is
+anything like so photographic as F. H. Groome, for instance, or so
+trustworthy.  But then it should never be forgotten that Borrow was,
+before everything else, a poet.  If this statement should be challenged
+by “the present time,” let me tell the present time that by poet I do not
+mean merely a man who is skilled in writing lyrics and sonnets and that
+kind of thing, but primarily a man who has the poetic gift of seeing
+through “the shows of things” and knowing where he is—the gift of
+drinking deeply of the waters of life and of feeling grateful to Nature
+for so sweet a draught; a man who, while acutely feeling the ineffable
+pathos of human life, can also feel how sweet a thing it is to live,
+having so great and rich a queen as Nature for his mother, and for
+companions any number of such amusing creatures as men and women.  In
+this sense I cannot but set Borrow, with his love of nature and his love
+of adventure, very high among poets—as high, perhaps, as I place another
+dweller in tents, Sylvester Boswell himself, “the well-known and
+popalated gipsy of Codling Gap,” who, like Borrow, is famous for “his
+great knowledge in grammaring one of the ancientist langeges on record,”
+and whose touching preference of a gipsy tent to a roof, “on the accent
+of health, sweetness of the air, and for enjoying the pleasure of
+Nature’s life,” is expressed with a poetical feeling such as Chaucer
+might have known had he not, as a court poet, been too genteel.
+“Enjoying the pleasure of Nature’s life!”  That is what Borrow did; and
+how few there are that understand it.
+
+The self-consciousness which in the presence of man produces that kind of
+shyness which was Borrow’s characteristic left him at once when he was
+with Nature alone or in the company of an intimate friend.  At her, no
+man’s gaze was more frank and childlike than his.  Hence the charm of his
+books.  No man’s writing can take you into the country as Borrow’s can:
+it makes you feel the sunshine, see the meadows, smell the flowers, hear
+the skylark sing and the grasshopper chirrup.  Who else can do it?  I
+know of none.  And as to personal intercourse with him, if I were asked
+what was the chief delight of this, I should say that it was the delight
+of bracingness.  A walking tour with a self-conscious lover of the
+picturesque—an “interviewer” of Nature with a note-book—worrying you to
+admire _him_ for admiring Nature so much, is one of those occasional
+calamities of life which a gentleman and a Christian must sometimes
+heroically bear, but the very thought of which will paralyze with fear
+the sturdiest Nature-worshipper, whom no crevasse or avalanche or
+treacherous mist can appal.  But a walk and talk with Borrow as he strode
+through the bracken on an autumn morning had the exhilarating effect upon
+his companion of a draught of the brightest mountain air.  And this was
+the result not, assuredly, of any exuberance of animal spirits (Borrow,
+indeed, was subject to fits of serious depression), but rather of a
+feeling he induced that between himself and all nature, from the clouds
+floating lazily over head to the scented heather, crisp and purple, under
+foot, there was an entire fitness and harmony—a sort of mutual
+understanding, indeed.  There was, I say, something bracing in the very
+look of this silvery-haired giant as he strode along with a kind of easy
+sloping movement, like that of a St. Bernard dog (the most deceptive of
+all movements as regards pace), his beardless face (quite matchless for
+symmetrical beauty) beaded with the healthy perspiration drops of strong
+exercise, and glowing and rosy in the sun.
+
+As a vigorous old man Borrow never had an equal, I think.  There has been
+much talk of the vigour of Shelley’s friend, E. J. Trelawny.  I knew that
+splendid old corsair, and admired his agility of limb and brain; but at
+seventy Borrow could have walked off with Trelawny under his arm.  At
+seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o’clock in Hereford
+Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton,
+roam about Wimbledon and Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds
+with a north-east wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run
+about the grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the
+water-drops, stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for
+twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir Walter
+Scott’s eyes good to see.  Finally, he would walk back to Hereford
+Square, getting home late at night.
+
+And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he
+happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression,
+was still more so.  Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen
+could describe.  There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that
+while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much or more
+to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, and odd as to draw
+them.  This was the humour of Borrow.  His command of facial
+expression—though he seemed to exercise it almost involuntarily and
+unconsciously—had, no doubt, much to do with this charm.  Once, when he
+was talking to me about the men of Charles Lamb’s day—_The London
+Magazine_ set—I asked him what kind of a man was the notorious and
+infamous Griffiths Wainewright. {32}  In a moment Borrow’s face changed:
+his mouth broke into a Carker-like smile, his eyes became elongated to an
+expression that was at once fawning and sinister, as he said,
+“Wainewright!  He used to sit in an armchair close to the fire and
+_smile_ all the evening like _this_.”  He made me see Wainewright and
+hear his voice as plainly as though I had seen him and heard him in the
+publishers’ parlour.
+
+His vocabulary, rich in picturesque words of the high road and dingle,
+his quaint countrified phrases, might also have added to the effect of
+this kind of eccentric humour.  “A duncie book—of course it’s duncie—it’s
+only duncie books that sell nowadays,” he would shout when some new
+“immortal poem” or “greatest work of the age” was mentioned.  Tennyson, I
+fear, was the representative duncie poet of the time; but that was
+because nothing could ever make Borrow realize the fact that Tennyson was
+not the latest juvenile representative of a “duncie” age; for although,
+according to Leland, {33} the author of ‘Sordello’ is (as is natural,
+perhaps) the only bard known in the gipsy tent, it is doubtful whether
+even his name was more than a name to Borrow; indeed, I think that people
+who had no knowledge of Romany, Welsh, and Armenian were all more or less
+“duncie.”  As a trap to catch the “foaming vipers,” his critics, he in
+‘Lavengro’ purposely misspelt certain Armenian and Welsh words, just to
+have the triumph of saying in another volume that they who had attacked
+him on so many points had failed to discover that he had wrongly given
+“zhats” as the nominative of the Armenian noun for bread, while everybody
+in England, especially every critic, ought to know that “zhats” is the
+accusative form.
+
+I will try, however, to give the reader an idea of the whim of Borrow’s
+conversation, by giving it in something like a dramatic form.  Let the
+reader suppose himself on a summer’s evening at that delightful old
+roadside inn the Bald-Faced Stag, in the Roehampton Valley, near Richmond
+Park, where are sitting, over a “cup” (to use Borrow’s word) of foaming
+ale, Lavengro himself, one of his oldest friends, and a new acquaintance,
+a certain student of things in general lately introduced to Borrow and
+nearly, but not quite, admitted behind the hedge of Borrow’s shyness, as
+may be seen by the initiated from a certain rather constrained,
+half-resentful expression on his face.  Jerry Abershaw’s {34} sword (the
+chief trophy of mine host) has been introduced, and Borrow’s old friend
+has been craftily endeavouring to turn the conversation upon that ever
+fresh and fruitful topic, but in vain.  Suddenly the song of a
+nightingale, perched on a tree not far off, rings pleasantly through the
+open window and fills the room with a new atmosphere of poetry and
+romance.  “That nightingale has as fine a voice,” says Borrow, “as though
+he were born and bred in the Eastern Counties.”  Borrow is proud of being
+an East-Anglian, of which the student has already been made aware and
+which he now turns to good account in the important business he has set
+himself, of melting Lavengro’s frost and being admitted a member of the
+Open-Air Club.  “Ah!” says the wily-student, “I know the Eastern
+Counties; no nightingales like those, especially Norfolk nightingales.”
+Borrow’s face begins to brighten slightly, but still he does not direct
+his attention to the stranger, who proceeds to remark that although the
+southern counties are so much warmer than Norfolk, some of them, such as
+Cornwall and Devon, are without nightingales.  Borrow’s face begins to
+get brighter still, and he looks out of the window with a smile, as
+though he were being suddenly carried back to the green lanes of his
+beloved Norfolk.
+
+“From which well-known fact of ornithology,” continues the student, “I am
+driven to infer that in their choice of habitat nightingales are guided
+not so much by considerations of latitude as of good taste.”  Borrow’s
+anger is evidently melting away.  The talk runs still upon nightingales,
+and the student mentions the attempt to settle them in Scotland once made
+by Sir John Sinclair, who introduced nightingales’ eggs from England into
+robins’ nests in Scotland, in the hope that the young nightingales, after
+enjoying a Scotch summer, would return to the place of their birth, after
+the custom of English nightingales.  “And did they return?” says Borrow,
+with as much interest as if the honour of his country were involved in
+the question.  “Return to Scotland?” says the student quietly; “the
+entire animal kingdom are agreed, you know, in never returning to
+Scotland.  Besides, the nightingales’ eggs in question were laid in
+Norfolk.”  Conquered at last, Borrow extends the hand of brotherhood to
+the impudent student (whose own private opinion, no doubt, is that
+Norfolk is more successful in producing Nelsons than nightingales), and
+proceeds without more ado to tell how “poor Jerry Abershaw,” on being
+captured by the Bow Street runners, had left his good sword behind him as
+a memento of highway glories soon to be ended on the gallows tree.
+(By-the-bye, I wonder where that sword is now; it was bought by Mr.
+Adolphus Levy, of Alton Lodge, at the closing of the Bald-Faced Stag.)
+
+From Jerry Abershaw Borrow gets upon other equally interesting topics,
+such as the decadence of beer and pugilism, and the nobility of the now
+neglected British bruiser, as exampled especially in the case of the
+noble Pearce, who lost his life through rushing up a staircase and
+rescuing a woman from a burning house after having on a previous occasion
+rescued another woman by blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had
+been set upon her by some noble lord or another.  Then, while the ale
+sparkles with a richer colour as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk
+gets naturally upon “lords” in general, gentility nonsense, and
+“hoity-toityism” as the canker at the heart of modern civilization.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Borrow could look at Nature without thinking of himself—a rare gift, for
+Nature, as I have said, has been disappointed in man.  Her great desire
+from the first has been to grow an organism so conscious that it can turn
+round and look at her with intelligent eyes.  She has done so at last,
+but the consciousness is so high as to be self-conscious, and man cannot
+for egotism look at his mother after all.  Borrow was a great exception.
+Thoreau’s self-consciousness showed itself in presence of Nature,
+Borrow’s in presence of man.  The very basis of Borrow’s nature was
+reverence.  His unswerving belief in the beneficence of God was most
+beautiful, most touching.  In his life Borrow had suffered much: a
+temperament such as his must needs suffer much—so shy it was, so proud,
+and yet yearning for a close sympathy such as no creature and only
+solitary communing with Nature can give.  Under any circumstances, I say,
+Borrow would have known how sharp and cruel are the flints along the
+road—how tender are a poet’s feet; but _his_ road at one time was rough
+indeed; not when he was with his gipsy friends (for a tent is freer than
+a roof, according to the grammarian of Codling Gap, and roast hedgehog is
+the daintiest of viands), but when he was toiling in London, his fine
+gifts unrecognized and useless—_that_ was when Borrow passed through the
+fire.  Yet every sorrow and every disaster of his life he traced to the
+kindly hand of a benevolent and wise Father, who sometimes will use a
+whip of scorpions, but only to chastise into a right and happy course the
+children he loves.
+
+Apart from the instinctive rectitude of his nature, it was with Borrow a
+deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and never can go, unpunished.
+His doctrine, indeed, was something like the Buddhist doctrine of
+Karma—it was based on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of
+“law” in the most universal acceptation of that word.  Sylvester
+Boswell’s definition of a free man, in that fine, self-respective
+certificate of his, as one who is “free from all cares or fears of law
+that may come against him,” is, indeed, the gospel of every true
+nature-worshipper.  The moment Thoreau spurned the legal tax-gatherer the
+law locked the nature-worshipper in gaol.  To enjoy nature the soul
+_must_ be free—free not only from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every
+wrongful act awakes, out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its
+own peculiar serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry
+and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they
+go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging
+round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling across the brook where the
+wrongdoer would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul
+with the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the
+water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at last, in sheer
+desperation, he must needs stop and turn, and bare his breast to the
+fangs; when, having yielded up to the thing its fill of atoning blood,
+Nature breaks into her old smile again, and he goes on his way in peace.
+
+All this Borrow understood better than any man I have ever met.  Yet even
+into his doctrine of Providence Borrow imported such an element of whim
+that it was impossible to listen to him sometimes without a smile.  For
+instance, having arrived at the conclusion that a certain lieutenant had
+been cruelly ill used by genteel magnates high in office, Borrow
+discovered that since that iniquity Providence had frowned on the British
+arms, and went on to trace the disastrous blunder of Balaklava to this
+cause.  Again, having decided that Sir Walter Scott’s worship of
+gentility and Jacobitism had been the main cause of the revival of
+flunkeyism and Popery in England, Borrow saw in the dreadful monetary
+disasters which overclouded Scott’s last days the hand of God, whose plan
+was to deprive him of the worldly position Scott worshipped at the very
+moment when his literary fame (which he misprized) was dazzling the
+world.
+
+And now as to the gipsy wanderings.  As I have said, no man has been more
+entirely misunderstood than Borrow.  That a man who certainly did (as F.
+H. Groome says) look like a “colossal clergyman” should have joined the
+gipsies, that he should have wandered over England and Europe, content
+often to have the grass for his bed and the sky for his hostry-roof, has
+astonished very much (and I believe scandalized very much) this age.  My
+explanation of the matter is this: Among the myriads of children born
+into a world of brick and mortar there appears now and then one who is
+meant for better things—one who exhibits unmistakable signs that he
+inherits the blood of those remote children of the open air who,
+according to the old Sabæan notion, on the plains of Asia lived with
+Nature, loved Nature and were loved by her, and from whom all men are
+descended.  George Borrow was one of those who show the olden strain.
+Now, for such a man, born in a country like England, where the modern
+fanaticism of house-worship has reached a condition which can only be
+called maniacal, what is there left but to try for a time the gipsy’s
+tent?  On the Continent house-worship is strong enough in all conscience;
+but in France, in Spain, in Italy, even in Germany, people do think of
+something beyond the house.  But here, where there are no romantic
+crimes, to get a genteel house, to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, or to
+pretend to keep (or “run”) a genteel house, is the great first cause of
+almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander up to
+forgery, robbery, and murder.  And yet it is a fact, as Borrow discovered
+(when a mere lad in a solicitor’s office), that to men in health the
+house need not, and should not, be the all-absorbing consideration, but
+should be quite secondary to considerations of honesty and sweet air,
+pure water, clean linen, good manners, freedom to migrate at will, and,
+above all, freedom from “all cares or fears of law” that may come against
+a man in the shape of debts, duns, and tax-gatherers.
+
+Against this folly of softening our bodies by “snugness” and degrading
+our souls by “flunkeyism,” Borrow’s early life was a protest.  He saw
+that if it were really unwholesome for man to be shone upon by the sun,
+blown upon by the winds, and rained upon by the rain, like all the other
+animals, man would never have existed at all, for sun and wind and rain
+have produced him and everything that lives.  He saw that for the
+cultivation of health, honesty, and good behaviour every man born in the
+temperate zone ought, unless King Circumstance says “No,” to spend in the
+open air eight or nine hours at least out of the twenty-four, and ought
+to court rather than to shun Nature’s sweet shower-bath the rain, unless,
+of course, his chest is weak.
+
+The evanescence of literary fame is strikingly illustrated by recalling
+at this moment my first sight of Borrow.  I could not have been much more
+than a boy, for I and a friend had gone down to Yarmouth in March to
+enjoy the luxury of bathing in a Yarmouth sea, and it is certainly a
+“good while”—to use Borrow’s phrase—since I considered _that_ a luxury
+suitable to March.  On the morning after our arrival, having walked some
+distance out of Yarmouth, we threw down our clothes and towels upon the
+sand some few yards from another heap of clothes, which indicated, to our
+surprise, that we were not, after all, the only people in Yarmouth who
+could bathe in a biting wind; and soon we perceived, ducking in an
+immense billow that came curving and curling towards the shore, such a
+pair of shoulders as I had not seen for a long time, crowned by a head
+white and glistening as burnished silver.  (Borrow’s hair was white I
+believe, when he was quite a young man.)  When the wave had broken upon
+the sand, there was the bather wallowing on the top of the water like a
+Polar bear disporting in an Arctic sun.  In swimming Borrow clawed the
+water like a dog.  I had plunged into the surf and got very close to the
+swimmer, whom I perceived to be a man of almost gigantic proportions,
+when suddenly an instinct told me that it was Lavengro himself, who lived
+thereabouts, and the feeling that it was he so entirely stopped the
+action of my heart that I sank for a moment like a stone, soon to rise
+again, however, in glow of pleasure and excitement: so august a presence
+was Lavengro’s then!
+
+I ought to say, however, that Borrow was at that time my hero.  From my
+childhood I had taken the deepest interest in proscribed races such as
+the Cagots, but especially in the persecuted children of Roma.  I had
+read accounts of whole families being executed in past times for no other
+crime than that of their being born gipsies, and tears, childish and yet
+bitter, had I shed over their woes.  Now Borrow was the recognized
+champion of the gipsies—the friend companion, indeed, of the proscribed
+and persecuted races of the world.  Nor was this all: I saw in him more
+of the true Nature instinct than in any other writer—or so, at least, I
+imagined.  To walk out from a snug house at Rydal Mount for the purpose
+of making poetical sketches for publication seemed to me a very different
+thing from having no home but a tent in a dingle, or rather from Borrow’s
+fashion of making all Nature your home.  Although I would have given
+worlds to go up and speak to him as he was tossing his clothes upon his
+back, I could not do it.  Morning after morning did I see him undress,
+wallow in the sea, come out again, give me a somewhat sour look, dress,
+and then stride away inland at a tremendous pace, but never could I speak
+to him; and many years passed before I saw him again.  He was then half
+forgotten.
+
+For an introduction to him at last I was indebted to Dr. Gordon Hake, the
+poet, who had known Borrow for many years, and whose friendship Borrow
+cherished above most things—as was usual, indeed, with the friends of Dr.
+Hake.  This was done with some difficulty, for, in calling at Roehampton
+for a walk through Richmond Park and about the Common, Borrow’s first
+question was always, “Are you alone?” and no persuasion could induce him
+to stay unless it could be satisfactorily shown that he would not be
+“pestered by strangers.”  On a certain morning, however, he called, and
+suddenly coming upon me, there was no retreating, and we were introduced.
+He tried to be as civil as possible, but evidently he was much annoyed.
+Yet there was something in the very tone of his voice that drew my heart
+to him, for to me he was the Lavengro of my boyhood still.  My own
+shyness had been long before fingered off by the rough handling of the
+world, but his retained all the bloom of youth, and a terrible barrier it
+was, yet I attacked it manfully.  I knew that Borrow had read but little
+except in his own out-of-the-way directions; but then unfortunately, like
+all specialists, he considered that in these his own special directions
+lay all the knowledge that was of any value.  Accordingly, what appeared
+to Borrow as the most striking characteristic of the present age was its
+ignorance.
+
+Unfortunately, too, I knew that for strangers to talk of his own
+published books or of gipsies appeared to him to be “prying,” though
+there I should have been quite at home.  I knew, however, that in the
+obscure English pamphlet literature of the last century, recording the
+sayings and doings of eccentric people and strange adventurers, Borrow
+was very learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that
+direction.  I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without effect.
+Borrow evidently considered that every properly educated man was familiar
+with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew in its every detail.  Then I
+touched upon beer, the British bruiser, “gentility-nonsense,” the
+“trumpery great”; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to _toit_, a
+roof,—but only to have my shallow philology dismissed with a withering
+smile.  I tried other subjects in the same direction, but with small
+success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett.
+There is a very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story of
+Ambrose Gwinett, the man who, after having been hanged and gibbeted for
+murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a double-bedded room at a
+seaside inn, revived in the night, escaped from the gibbet irons, went to
+sea as a common sailor, and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the
+very man he had been hanged for murdering.  The truth was that Gwinett’s
+supposed victim, having been attacked on the night in question by a
+violent bleeding at the nose, had risen and left the house for a few
+minutes’ walk in the sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and
+bore him off to sea, where he had been in service ever since.  The story
+is true, and the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on what
+authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett’s dictation for a
+platter of cowheel.
+
+To the bewilderment of Dr. Hake, I introduced the subject of Ambrose
+Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the story of
+“Achilles’ wrath,” and appealed to Dr. Hake (who, of course, had never
+heard of the book or the man) as to whether a certain incident in the
+pamphlet had gained or lost by the dramatist who, at one of the minor
+theatres, had many years ago dramatized the story.  Borrow was caught at
+last.  “What?” said he, “you know that pamphlet about Ambrose Gwinett?”
+“Know it?” said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked me if I knew
+‘Macbeth’; “of course I know Ambrose Gwinett, Mr. Borrow, don’t you?”
+“And you know the play?” said he.  “Of course I do, Mr. Borrow?” I said,
+in a tone that was now a little angry at such an insinuation of crass
+ignorance.  “Why,” said he, “it’s years and years since it was acted; I
+never was much of a theatre man, but I did go to see _that_.”  “Well, I
+should rather think you _did_, Mr. Borrow,” said I.  “But,” said he,
+staring hard at me, “_you_—you were not born!”  “And I was not born,”
+said I, “when the ‘Agamemnon’ was produced, and yet one reads the
+‘Agamemnon,’ Mr. Borrow.  I have read the drama of ‘Ambrose Gwinett.’  I
+have it bound in morocco with some more of Douglas Jerrold’s early
+transpontine plays, and some Æschylean dramas by Mr. Fitzball.  I will
+lend it to you, Mr. Borrow, if you like.”  He was completely conquered.
+“Hake!” he cried, in a loud voice, regardless of my presence.  “Hake!
+your friend knows everything.”  Then he murmured to himself, “Wonderful
+man!  Knows Ambrose Gwinett!”
+
+It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause me to have
+as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for the memory of George
+Borrow.
+
+From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, sometimes at
+Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in London.  I could have seen much
+more of him than I did had not the whirlpool of London, into which I
+plunged for a time, borne me away from this most original of men; and
+this is what I so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it
+was said of a greater man still, that “after Nature made _him_ she
+forthwith broke the mould.”  The last time I ever saw him was shortly
+before he left London to live in the country.  It was, I remember well,
+on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at a sunset of singular
+and striking splendour, whose gorgeous clouds and ruddy mists were
+reeling and boiling over the West-End.  Borrow came up and stood leaning
+over the parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be.  Like most
+people born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets.  Turner
+could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen could not
+describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the sinking sun and had
+lost its dunness, and, reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs,
+steeples, and towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy
+vapour, leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed
+as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a peculiar effect which
+struck Borrow deeply.  I never saw such a sunset before or since, not
+even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its association with “the last of
+Borrow” I shall never forget it.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Students of Borrow will be as much surprised as pleased to find what a
+large collection of documents Dr. Knapp has been able to use in compiling
+this long-expected biography. {50}  Indeed, the collection might have
+been larger and richer still.  For instance, in the original manuscript
+of ‘Zincali’ (in the possession of the present writer) there are some
+variations from the printed text; but, what is of very much more
+importance, the whole—or nearly the whole—of Borrow’s letters to the
+Bible Society, which Dr. Knapp believed to be lost, have been discovered
+in the crypt of the Bible House in which the records of the Society are
+stored.  But even without these materials two massive volumes crammed
+with documents throwing light upon the life and career of a man like
+George Borrow must needs be interesting to the student of English
+literature.  For among all the remarkable characters that during the
+middle of the present century figured in the world of letters, the most
+eccentric, the most whimsical, and in every way the most extraordinary
+was surely the man whom Dr. Knapp calls, appropriately enough, his
+“hero.”
+
+It is no exaggeration to say that there was not a single point in which
+Borrow resembled any other writing man of his time; indeed, we cannot, at
+the moment, recall any really important writer of any period whose
+eccentricity of character can be compared with his.  At the basis of the
+artistic temperament is generally that “sweet reasonableness” the lack of
+which we excuse in Borrow and in almost no one else.  As to literary
+whim, it must not be supposed that this quality is necessarily and always
+the outcome of temperament.  There are some authors of whom it may be
+said that the moment they take pen in hand they pass into their “literary
+mood,” a mood that in their cases does not seem to be born of
+temperament, but to spring from some fantastic movement of the intellect.
+Sterne, for instance, the greatest of all masters of whim (not excluding
+Rabelais), passed when in the act of writing into a literary mood which,
+as “Yorick,” he tried to live up to in his private life—tried in vain.
+With regard to Charles Lamb, his temperament, no doubt, was whimsical
+enough, and yet how many rich and rare passages in his writings are
+informed by a whim of a purely intellectual kind—a whim which could only
+have sprung from that delicious literary mood of his, engendered by much
+study of quaint old writers, into which he passed when at his desk!  But
+whatsoever is whimsical, whatsoever is eccentric and angular, in Borrow’s
+writings is the natural, the inevitable growth of a nature more
+whimsical, more eccentric, more angular still.
+
+That such a man should have had an extraordinary life-experience was to
+be expected.  And an extraordinary life-experience Borrow’s was, to be
+sure!  This alone would lend an especial interest to Borrow’s
+biography—the fact, we mean, of his life having been extraordinary.  For
+in these days no lives, as a rule, are less adventurous, none, as a rule,
+less tinged with romance, than the lives of those who attain eminence in
+the world of letters.  No doubt they nowadays move about from place to
+place a good deal; not a few of them may even be called travellers, or at
+least globe-trotters; but, alas! in globe-trotting who shall hope to meet
+with adventures of a more romantic kind than those connected with a
+railway collision or a storm at sea?  And this was so in days that
+preceded ours.  It was so with Scott, it was so with Dickens, it was so
+with even Dumas, who, chained to his desk for months and months at a
+stretch, could only be seen by his friends during the intervals of work.
+Nay, even with regard to the writing men of the far past, the more time a
+man gave to literary production the less time he had to drink the rich
+wine of life, to see the world, to study nature and nature’s enigma man.
+
+Perhaps one reason why we have almost no record of what the greatest of
+all writing men was doing in the world is that while his friends were
+elbowing the tide of life in the streets of London, or fighting in the
+Low Countries, or carousing at the Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo
+Saloon, he was filling every moment with work—work which enabled him,
+before he reached his fifty-second year, to build up that literary
+monument of his, that edifice which made the monuments of the others, his
+contemporaries, seem like the handiwork of pigmies.  But as regards
+Borrow, student though he was, it is not as an author that we think of
+him; it is as the adventurer, it is as the great Romany Rye, who
+discovered the most interesting people in Europe, and as a brother
+vagabond lived with them—lived with them “on the accont of health,
+sweetness of the air, and for enjoying the pleasure of Nature’s life,” to
+quote the “testimonial” of the prose-poet Sylvester Boswell.
+
+Even by his personal appearance Borrow was marked off from his
+fellow-men.  As a gipsy girl once remarked, “Nobody as ever see’d the
+white-headed Romany Rye ever forgot him.”  Standing considerably above
+six feet in height, he was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his
+practice of athletic exercises gave his every movement the easy
+elasticity of an athlete under training.  As to his countenance, “noble”
+is the only word that can be used to describe it.  The silvery whiteness
+of the thick crop of hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty
+of the hairless face, but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this
+strangeness was intensified by a certain incongruity between the features
+(perfect Roman-Greek in type) and the Scandinavian complexion, luminous
+and sometimes rosy as an English girl’s.  An increased intensity was lent
+by the fair skin to the dark lustre of the eyes.  What struck the
+observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of the man’s
+appearance.  It was not this feature or that which struck the eye, it was
+the expression of the face as a whole.  If it were possible to describe
+this expression in a word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a shy
+self-consciousness.
+
+How did it come about, then, that a man shy, self-conscious, and
+sensitive to the last degree, became the Ulysses of the writing
+fraternity, wandering among strangers all over Europe, and consorting on
+intimate terms with that race who, more than all others, are repelled by
+shy self-consciousness—the gipsies?  This, perhaps, is how the puzzle may
+be explained.  When Borrow was talking to people in his own class of life
+there was always in his bearing a kind of shy, defiant egotism.  What
+Carlyle calls the “armed neutrality” of social intercourse oppressed him.
+He felt himself to be in the enemy’s camp.  In his eyes there was always
+a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking stock of his interlocutor
+and weighing him against himself.  He seemed to be observing what effect
+his words were having, and this attitude repelled people at first.  But
+the moment he approached a gipsy on the heath, or a poor Jew in
+Houndsditch, or a homeless wanderer by the wayside, he became another
+man.  He threw off the burden of restraint.  The feeling of the “armed
+neutrality” was left behind, and he seemed to be at last enjoying the
+only social intercourse that could give him pleasure.  This it was that
+enabled him to make friends so entirely with the gipsies.
+Notwithstanding what is called “Romany guile” (which is the growth of
+ages of oppression), the basis of the Romany character is a joyous
+frankness.  Once let the isolating wall which shuts off the Romany from
+the “Gorgio” be broken through, and the communicativeness of the Romany
+temperament begins to show itself.  The gipsies are extremely close
+observers; they were very quick to notice how different was Borrow’s
+bearing towards themselves from his bearing towards people of his own
+race, and Borrow used to say that “old Mrs. Herne and Leonora were the
+only gipsies who suspected and disliked him.”
+
+Thus it came about that the gipsies and the wanderers generally were
+almost the only people in any country who saw the winsome side of Borrow.
+A truly winsome side he had.  Yes, notwithstanding all that has been said
+about him to the contrary, Borrow was a most interesting and charming
+companion.  We all have our angularities; we all have unpleasant facets
+of character when occasion offers for showing them.  But there are some
+unfortunate people whose angularities are for ever chafing and irritating
+their friends.  Borrow was one of these.  It is very rarely indeed that
+one meets a friend or an acquaintance of Borrow’s who speaks of him with
+the kindness he deserved.  When a friend or an acquaintance relates an
+anecdote of him the asperity with which he does so is really remarkable
+and quite painful.  It was—it must have been—far from Dr. Gordon Hake’s
+wish to speak unkindly of his old friend who remained to the last deeply
+attached to him.  And yet few things have done more to prejudice the
+public against Borrow than the Doctor’s tale of Lavengro’s outrage at
+Rougham Rookery, the residence of the banker Bevan, one of the kindest
+and most benevolent men in Suffolk.
+
+This story, often told by Hake, appeared at last in print in his memoirs.
+Invited to dinner by Mr. Bevan, Borrow accepted the invitation and,
+according to the anecdote, thus behaved: During dinner Mrs. Bevan,
+thinking to please him, said, “Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books
+with so much pleasure!”  On which Borrow exclaimed, “Pray what books do
+you mean, ma’am—do you mean my account books?”  Then, rising from the
+table, he walked up and down among the servants during the whole dinner,
+and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passages till the carriage
+could be ordered for his return home.  A monstrous proceeding truly, and
+not to be condoned by any circumstances.  Yet some part of its violence
+may, perhaps, thus be explained.  Borrow’s loyalty to a friend was
+proverbial—until he and the friend quarrelled.  A man who dared say an
+ungenerous word against a friend of Borrow’s ran the risk of being
+knocked down.  Borrow on this occasion had been driven half mad with
+rage—unreasoning, ignorant rage—against the Bury banking-house, because
+it had “struck the docket” against a friend of Borrow’s, the heir to a
+considerable estate, who had got into difficulties.  What Borrow yearned
+to do was, as he told the present writer, to cane the banker.  He had, as
+far as his own reputation went, far better have done this and taken the
+consequences than have insulted the banker’s wife—one of the most gentle,
+amiable, and unassuming ladies in Suffolk.  Dr. Knapp speaks very sharply
+of Miss Cobb’s remarks upon Borrow, and certainly these remarks are made
+with a great deal too much acidity.  But if the Borrovian is to lose
+temper with every one who girds at Borrow he will lead a not very
+comfortable life.
+
+Dr. Knapp has no doubt whatever that ‘Lavengro’ is in the main an
+autobiography.  We have none.  The only question is how much _Dichtung_
+is mingled with the _Wahrheit_.  Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy
+pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative—such incidents as
+that of his meeting on the road the sailor son of the old apple-woman of
+London Bridge, and the exaggerated description of the man sent to sleep
+by reading Wordsworth—few readers would have doubted the autobiographical
+nature of ‘Lavengro’ and ‘The Romany Rye.’  Such incidents as these shed
+an air of unreality over the whole.
+
+All writers upon Borrow fall into the mistake of considering him to have
+been an East Anglian.  They might as well call Charlotte Brontë a
+Yorkshirewoman as call Borrow an East Anglian.  He was, of course, no
+more an East Anglian than an Irishman born in London is an Englishman.
+He had at bottom no East Anglian characteristics.  He inherited nothing
+from Norfolk save his accent and his love of “leg of mutton and turnips.”
+Yet he is a striking illustration of the way in which the locality that
+has given birth to a man influences him throughout his life.  The fact of
+Borrow’s having been born in East Anglia was the result of accident.  His
+father, a Cornishman of a good middle-class family, had been obliged,
+owing to a youthful escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a
+common soldier.  Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and moved
+about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to another.  It so
+chanced that while staying at East Dereham, in Norfolk, he met and fell
+in love with a lady of French extraction.  Not one drop of East Anglian
+blood was in the veins of Borrow’s father, and very little in the veins
+of his mother.  Borrow’s ancestry was pure Cornish on one side, and on
+the other mainly French.  But such was the sublime egotism of
+Borrow—perhaps we should have said such is the sublime egotism of human
+nature—that the fact of his having been born in East Anglia made him look
+upon that part of the world as the very hub of the universe.
+
+There is, it must be confessed, something to us very agreeable in Dr.
+Knapp’s single-minded hero-worship.  A scholar and a philologist himself,
+he seems to have devoted a large portion of his life to the study of
+Borrow—following in Lavengro’s footsteps from one country to another with
+unflagging enthusiasm.  Now and again, undoubtedly, this hero-worship
+runs to excess: the faults of style and of method in Borrow’s writings
+are condoned or are passed by unobserved by Dr. Knapp, while the most
+unanswerable strictures upon them by others are resented.  For instance,
+at the end of the following extract from the report of the gentleman who
+read ‘Zincali’ for Mr. Murray, he appends a note of exclamation, as
+though he considers the admirable advice given to be eccentric or bad:—
+
+    “The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of the book; but in several
+    of them the tone of the speakers, of those especially who are in
+    humble life, is too correct and elevated, and therefore out of
+    character.  This takes away from their effect.  I think it would be
+    very advisable that Mr. Borrow should go over them with reference to
+    this point, simplifying a few of the terms of expression and
+    introducing a few contractions—_don’ts_, _can’ts_, &c.  This would
+    improve them greatly.”
+
+Now the truth is that Mr. Murray’s reader, whoever he was, {60} pointed
+out the one great blemish in _all_ Borrow’s dramatic pictures of gipsy
+life, wheresoever the scene may be laid.  Take his pictures of English
+gipsies.  The reader has only to compare the dialogue between gipsies
+given in that photographic study of Romany life ‘In Gipsy Tents’ with the
+dialogues in ‘Lavengro’ to see how the illusion in Borrow’s narrative is
+disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers.  After all
+allowance is made for the Romany’s love of high-sounding words, it
+considerably weakens our belief in Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro, Ursula, and
+the rest, to find them using complex sentences and bookish words which,
+even among English people, are rarely heard in conversation.
+
+Dr. Knapp says emphatically that Borrow never created a character, and
+that the originals are easily recognizable to one who thoroughly knows
+the times and Borrow’s writings.  This is true, no doubt, as regards
+people with whom he was brought into contact at Norwich, and, indeed,
+generally before the period of his gipsy wanderings.  It must not be
+supposed, however, that such characters as the man who “touched” to avert
+the evil chance and the man who taught himself Chinese are in any sense
+portraits.  They have so many of Borrow’s own peculiarities that they
+might rather be called portraits of himself.  There was nothing that
+Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious impulse, which he
+seems to have shared with Dr. Johnson, to touch the objects along his
+path in order to save himself from the evil chance.  He never conquered
+the superstition.  In walking through Richmond Park he would step out of
+his way constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the friend he
+was with seemed to observe it.  Many of the peculiarities of the man who
+taught himself Chinese were also Borrow’s own.
+
+“But what about Isopel Berners?” the reader will ask.  “How much of truth
+and how much of fiction went to the presentation of this most interesting
+character?”  Seeing that Dr. Knapp has at his command such an immense
+amount of material in manuscript, the reader will feel some
+disappointment at discovering that the book tells us nothing new about
+her.  The character he names Isopel Berners was just the sort of girl in
+every way to attract Borrow, and if he had had the feeblest spark of the
+love-passion in his constitution one could almost imagine his falling in
+love with her.  Yet even the portrait of Isopel is marred by Borrow’s
+impulse towards exaggeration.  He must needs describe her as being taller
+than himself, and as he certainly stood six feet three Isopel would have
+been far better suited to sit by the side of Borrow’s friend the “Norfolk
+giant,” Hales, in the little London public-house where he latterly
+resided, than to become famous as a fighting woman who could conquer the
+Flaming Tinman.  Few indeed have been the women who could stand up for
+long before a trained boxer, and these must needs be not too tall, and
+moreover they must have their breasts padded after the manner of a
+well-known gipsy girl who excelled in this once fashionable
+accomplishment.  Even then a woman’s instinct impels her to guard her
+chest more carefully than she guards her face, and this leads to
+disaster.  Altogether Borrow, by his wilful exaggeration, makes the
+reader a little sceptical about Isopel, who was really an East Anglian
+road-girl of the finest type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not
+many years ago.  All that Dr. Knapp has derived from the documents in his
+possession concerning her is the following extraordinary passage from the
+original manuscript, which Borrow struck out of ‘Lavengro.’  He says:—
+
+    “As to the remarkable character introduced into ‘Lavengro’ and
+    ‘Romany Rye’ under the name of Isopel Berners, I have no light from
+    the MSS. of George Borrow, save the following fragment, which perhaps
+    I ought to have suppressed.  I am sorry if it dispel any illusions:—
+
+    “(_Loquitur Petulengro_) ‘My mind at present rather inclines towards
+    two wives.  I have heard that King Pharaoh had two, if not more.
+    Now, I think myself as good a man as he; and if he had more wives
+    than one, why should not I, whose name is Petulengro?’
+
+    “‘But what would Mrs. Petulengro say?’
+
+    “‘Why, to tell you the truth, brother, it was she who first put the
+    thought into my mind.  She has always, you know, had strange notions
+    in her head, gorgiko notions, I suppose we may call them, about
+    gentility and the like, and reading and writing.  Now, though she can
+    neither read nor write herself, she thinks that she is lost among our
+    people and that they are no society for her.  So says she to me one
+    day, “Pharaoh,” says she, “I wish you would take another wife, that I
+    might have a little pleasant company.  As for these here, I am their
+    betters.”  “I have no objection,” said I; “who shall it be?  Shall it
+    be a Cooper or a Stanley?”  “A Cooper or a Stanley!” said she, with a
+    toss of her head, “I might as well keep my present company as theirs;
+    none of your rubbish; let it be a _gorgie_, one that I can speak an
+    idea with”—that was her word, I think.  Now I am thinking that this
+    here Bess of yours would be just the kind of person both for my wife
+    and myself.  My wife wants something gorgiko, something genteel.  Now
+    Bess is of blood gorgious; if you doubt it, look in her face, all
+    full of _pawno ratter_, white blood, brother; and as for gentility,
+    nobody can make exceptions to Bess’s gentility, seeing she was born
+    in the workhouse of Melford the Short, where she learned to read and
+    write.  She is no Irish woman, brother, but English pure, and her
+    father was a farmer.
+
+    “‘So much as far as my wife is concerned.  As for myself, I tell you
+    what, brother, I want a strapper; one who can give and take.  The
+    Flying Tinker is abroad, vowing vengeance against us all.  I know
+    what the Flying Tinker is, so does Tawno.  The Flying Tinker came to
+    our camp.  “Damn you all,” says he, “I’ll fight the best of you for
+    nothing.”—“Done!” says Tawno, “I’ll be ready for you in a minute.”
+    So Tawno went into his tent and came out naked.  “Here’s at you,”
+    says Tawno.  Brother, Tawno fought for two hours with the Flying
+    Tinker, for two whole hours, and it’s hard to say which had the best
+    of it or the worst.  I tell you what, brother, I think Tawno had the
+    worst of it.  Night came on.  Tawno went into his tent to dress
+    himself and the Flying Tinker went his way.
+
+    “‘Now suppose, brother, the Flying Tinker comes upon us when Tawno is
+    away.  Who is to fight the Flying Tinker when he says: “D---n you, I
+    will fight the best of you”?  Brother, I will fight the Flying Tinker
+    for five pounds; but I couldn’t for less.  The Flying Tinker is a big
+    man, and though he hasn’t my science, he weighs five stone heavier.
+    It wouldn’t do for me to fight a man like that for nothing.  But
+    there’s Bess, who can afford to fight the Flying Tinker at any time
+    for what he’s got, and that’s three ha’pence.  She can beat him,
+    brother; I bet five pounds that Bess can beat the Flying Tinker.
+    Now, if I marry Bess, I’m quite easy on his score.  He comes to our
+    camp and says his say.  “I won’t dirty my hands with you,” says I,
+    “at least not under five pounds; but here’s Bess who’ll fight you for
+    nothing.”  I tell you what, brother, when he knows that Bess is Mrs.
+    Pharaoh, he’ll fight shy of our camp; he won’t come near it, brother.
+    He knows Bess don’t like him, and what’s more, that she can lick him.
+    He’ll let us alone; at least I think so.  If he does come, I’ll smoke
+    my pipe whilst Bess is beating the Flying Tinker.  Brother, I’m dry,
+    and will now take a cup of ale.’”
+
+Why did Borrow reject this passage?  Was it owing to his dread of
+respectability’s frowns?—or was it not rather because he felt that here
+his exaggeration, his departure from the true in quest of the striking,
+did not recommend itself to his cooler judgment?  For those who know
+anything of the gipsies would say at once that it would have been
+impossible for Mrs. Petulengro to make this suggestion; and that, even if
+she had made it, Mr. Petulengro would not have dared to broach it to any
+English road-girl, least of all to a girl like Isopel Berners.  The
+passage, however, is the most interesting document that Dr. Knapp has
+published.
+
+What may be called the Isopel Berners chapter of Borrow’s life was soon
+to be followed by the “veiled period”—that is to say, the period between
+the point where ends ‘The Romany Rye’ and the point where the Bible
+Society engages Borrow.
+
+Dr. Knapp’s mind seems a good deal exercised concerning this period.
+Borrow having chosen to draw the veil over that period, no one has any
+right to raise it—or, rather, perhaps no one would have had any right to
+do so had not Borrow himself thrown such a needless mystery around it.
+In considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always necessary
+to take into account the secretiveness of his disposition, and also his
+passion for posing.  He had a child’s fondness for the wonderful.  It is
+through his own love of mystification that students like Dr. Knapp must
+needs pry into these matters—must needs ask why Borrow drew the veil over
+seven years—must needs ask whether during the “veiled period” he led a
+life of squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel
+Berners in Mumpers’ Dingle was luxury, or whether he was really
+travelling, as he pretended to have been, over the world.
+
+By yielding to his instinct as a born showman he excites a curiosity
+which would otherwise be unjustifiable.  Even if Dr. Knapp had been able
+to approach Borrow’s stepdaughter—which he seems not to have been able to
+do—it is pretty certain that she could have told him nothing of that
+mysterious seven years.  For about this subject the people to whom Borrow
+seems to have been most reticent were his wife and her daughter.  Indeed,
+it was not until after his wife’s death that he would allude to this
+period even to his most intimate friends.  One of the very few people to
+whom he did latterly talk with anything like frankness about this period
+in his life—Dr. Gordon Hake—is dead; and perhaps there is not more than
+about one other person now living who had anything of his confidence.
+
+With regard to this veiled period, people who read the idyllic pictures
+in ‘Lavengro’ and ‘The Romany Rye’ of the life of a gipsy gentleman
+working as a hedge-smith in the dingle or by the roadside seem to forget
+that Borrow was then working not for amusement, but for bread, and they
+forget how scant the bread must have been that could be bought for the
+odd sixpence or the few coppers that he was able to earn.  To those,
+however, who do not forget this it needs no revelation from documents,
+and none from any surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as
+Borrow was mainly living in England during these seven years (continuing
+for a considerable time his life of a wanderer, and afterwards living as
+an obscure literary struggler in Norwich), his life was during this
+period one of privation, disappointment, and gloom.  It was for him to
+decide what he would give to the public and what he would withhold.
+
+The concluding chapter of Dr. Knapp’s book is not only pathetic—it is
+painful.  In the summer of 1874 Borrow left London, bade adieu to Mr.
+Murray and a few friends, and returned to Oulton—to die.  On the 26th of
+July, 1881, he was found dead in his home at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth
+year.
+
+
+
+
+II.  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI,
+1828–1882.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+At Birchington-on-Sea one of the most rarely gifted men of our time has
+just died [April 9th, 1882] after a lingering illness.  During the time
+that his ‘Ballads and Sonnets’ was passing through the press last autumn
+his health began to give way, and he left London for Cumberland.  A stay
+of a few weeks in the Vale of St. John, however, did nothing to improve
+his health, and he returned much shattered.  After a time a numbness in
+the left arm excited fear of paralysis, and he became dangerously ill.
+It is probable, indeed, that nothing but the skill and unwearied
+attention of Mr. John Marshall saved his life then, as it had done upon
+several previous occasions.  Such of his friends as were then in
+London—W. B. Scott, Burne Jones, Leyland, F. Shields, Mr. Dunn, and
+others—feeling the greatest alarm, showed him every affectionate
+attention, and spared no effort to preserve a life so precious and so
+beloved.  Mr. Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow,
+Birchington-on-Sea, he went thither, accompanied by his mother and sister
+and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but received no benefit from
+the change, and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he
+died on Sunday last at 10 P.M.
+
+    [Picture: Dante Gabriel Rosette.  From a crayon-drawing by himself
+        reproduced by the kind permission of Mrs. W. M. Rossetti]
+
+Were I even competent to enter upon the discussion of Rossetti’s gifts as
+a poet and as a painter, it would not be possible to do so here and at
+this moment.  That the quality of romantic imagination informs with more
+vitality his work than it can be said to inform the work of any of his
+contemporaries was recognized at first by the few, and is now (judging
+from the great popularity of his last volume of poetry) being recognized
+by the many.  And the same, I think, may be said of his painting.  Those
+who had the privilege of a personal acquaintance with him knew how “of
+imagination all compact” he was.  Imagination, indeed, was at once his
+blessing and his bane.  To see too vividly—to love too intensely—to
+suffer and enjoy too acutely—is the doom, no doubt, of all those “lost
+wanderers from Arden” who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the
+world’s songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps, than to most
+poets.  And when we consider that the one quality in all poetry which
+really gives it an endurance outlasting the generation of its birth is
+neither music nor colour, nor even intellectual substance, but the
+clearness of the seeing; the living breath of imagination—the very
+qualities, in short, for which such poems as ‘Sister Helen’ and ‘Rose
+Mary’ are so conspicuous—we are driven to the conclusion that Rossetti’s
+poetry has a long and enduring future before it.
+
+A life more devoted to literature and art than his it is impossible to
+imagine.  Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born at 38, Charlotte
+Street, Portland Place, London, on the 12th of May, 1828.  He was the
+first son and second child of Gabriele Rossetti, the patriotic poet, who,
+born at Vasto in the Abruzzi, settled in Naples, and took an active part
+in extorting from the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I. the constitution
+granted in 1820, which constitution being traitorously cancelled by the
+king in 1821, Rossetti had to escape for his life to Malta with various
+other persecuted constitutionalists.  From Malta Gabriele Rossetti went
+to England about 1823, where he married in 1826 Frances Polidori,
+daughter of Alfieri’s secretary and sister of Byron’s Dr. Polidori.  He
+became Professor of Italian in King’s College, London, became also
+prominent as a commentator on Dante, and died in April, 1854.  His
+children, four in number—Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel, William Michael,
+and Christina Georgina—all turned to literature or to art, or to both,
+and all became famous.  There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Rossetti
+family will hold a position quite unique in the literary and artistic
+annals of our time.
+
+Young Rossetti was first sent to the private school of the Rev. Mr. Paul
+in Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained, however, for only
+three quarters of a year, from the autumn of 1835 to the summer of 1836.
+He next went to King’s College School in the autumn of 1836, where he
+remained till the summer of 1843, having reached the fourth class, then
+conducted by the Rev. Mr. Framley.
+
+Having from early childhood shown a strong propensity for drawing and
+painting, which had thus been always regarded as his future profession,
+he now left school for ever and received no more school learning.  In
+Latin he was already fairly proficient for his age; French he knew well;
+he had spoken Italian from childhood, and had some German lessons about
+1844–5.  On leaving school he went at once to the Art Academy of Cary
+(previously called Sass’s) near Bedford Square, and thence obtained
+admission to the Royal Academy Antique School in 1844 or 1845.  To the
+Royal Academy Life School he never went, and he was a somewhat negligent
+art student, but always regarded as one who had a future before him.
+
+In 1849 Rossetti exhibited ‘The Girlhood of the Virgin’ in the so-called
+Free Exhibition or Portland Gallery.  The artist who had perhaps the
+strongest influence upon Rossetti’s early tastes was Ford Madox Brown,
+who, however, refused from the first to join the Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood on the ground that coteries had in modern art no proper
+function.  Rossetti was deeply impressed with the power and designing
+faculty displayed by Madox Brown’s cartoons exhibited in Westminster
+Hall.  When Rossetti began serious work as a painter he thought of Madox
+Brown as the one man from whom he would willingly receive practical
+guidance, and wrote to him at random.  From this time Madox Brown became
+his intimate friend and artistic monitor.
+
+In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising only half
+his genius.  From his childhood it became evident that he was a poet.  At
+the age of five he wrote a sort of play called ‘The Slave,’ which, as may
+be imagined, showed no noteworthy characteristic save precocity.  This
+was followed by the poem called ‘Sir Hugh Heron,’ which was written about
+1844, and some translations of German poetry.  ‘The Blessed Damozel’ and
+‘Sister Helen’ were produced in their original form so early as 1846 or
+1847.  The latter of these has undergone more modifications than any
+other first-class poem of our time.  To take even the new edition of the
+‘Poems’ which appeared last year [1881], the stanzas introducing the wife
+of the luckless hero appealing to the sorceress for mercy are so
+important in the glamour they shed back over the stanzas that have gone
+before, that their introduction may almost be characterized as a
+rewriting of every previous line.
+
+The translations from the early Italian poets also began as far back as
+1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by 1849.  Rossetti’s
+gifts as a translator were, no doubt, of the highest.  And this arose
+from his deep sympathy with literature as a medium of human expression:
+he could enter into the temperaments of other writers, and by sympathy
+criticize the literary form from the author’s own inner standpoint,
+supposing always that there was a certain racial kinship with the author.
+Many who write well themselves have less sympathy with the expressional
+forms adopted by other writers than is displayed by men who have neither
+the impulse nor the power to write themselves.  But this sympathy
+betrayed him sometimes into a free rendering of locutions such as a
+translator should be chary of indulging in.  Materials for a volume
+accumulated slowly, but all the important portions of the ‘Poems’
+published in 1870 had been in existence some years before that date.  The
+prose story of ‘Hand and Soul’ was also written as early as 1848 or 1849.
+
+In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being
+very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by him.  She had one
+still-born child in 1861, and died in February, 1862.  He felt her death
+very acutely, and for a time ceased to write or to take any interest in
+his own poetry.  Like Prospero, indeed, he literally buried his wand, but
+for a time only.  From this time to his death he continued to produce
+pictures, all of them showing, as far as technical skill goes, an
+unfaltering advance in his art.
+
+Yet wonderful as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was still more
+wonderful, I think, as a man.  The chief characteristic of his
+conversation was an incisiveness so perfect and clear as to have often
+the pleasurable surprise of wit.  It is so well known that Rossetti has
+been for a long time the most retired man of genius of our day, and so
+many absurd causes for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is
+nothing indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who
+of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other person.
+About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic
+temperament—insomnia—attacked him, and one of the most distressing
+effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from personal contact with any
+save a few intimate friends.  This peculiar kind of nervousness may be
+aggravated by the use of sleeping draughts, and in his case was thus
+aggravated.
+
+But, although Rossetti lived thus secluded, he did not lose the
+affectionate regard of the illustrious men with whom he started in his
+artistic life.  Nor, assuredly, did he deserve to lose it, for no man
+ever lived, I think, who was so generous as he in sympathizing with other
+men’s work, save only when the cruel fumes of chloral turned him against
+everything.  And his sympathy was as wide as generous.  It was only
+necessary to mention the name of Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or
+Burne Jones or G. F. Watts, or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to
+get from him a glowing disquisition upon the merits of each—a
+disquisition full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the
+brilliant lights of his matchless fancy.  And it was the same in poetry.
+
+But those who loved Rossetti (that is to say, those who knew him) can
+realize how difficult it is for me, a friend, to pursue just now such
+reminiscences as these.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+In his preface Mr. W. M. Rossetti says:—
+
+    “I have not attempted to write a biographical account of my brother,
+    nor to estimate the range or value of his powers and performances in
+    fine art and in literature.  I agree with those who think that a
+    brother is not the proper person to undertake a work of this sort.
+    An outsider can do it dispassionately, though with imperfect
+    knowledge of the facts; a friend can do it with mastery, and without
+    much undue bias; but a brother, however equitably he may address
+    himself to the task, cannot perform it so as to secure the prompt and
+    cordial assent of his readers.”
+
+These words will serve as a good example of the dignified modesty which
+is a characteristic of Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s, and is one of the best
+features of this volume. {77}  In these days of empty pretence it is
+always refreshing to come upon a page written in the spirit of scholarly
+self-suppression which informs every line this patient and admirable
+critic writes.  And as to the interesting question glanced at in the
+passage above quoted, though the contents of this volume will, no doubt,
+form valuable material for the future biography of Rossetti, we wonder
+whether the time is even yet at hand when that biography, whether written
+by brother, by friend, or by outsider, is needed.  That mysterious entity
+“the public,” would, no doubt, like to get one; but we have always shared
+Rossetti’s own opinion that a man of genius is no more the property of
+the “public” than is any private gentleman; and we have always felt with
+him that the prevalence in our time of the opposite opinion has fashioned
+so intolerable a yoke for the neck of any one who has had the misfortune
+to pass from the sweet paradise of obscurity into the vulgar purgatory of
+Fame, that it almost behoves a man of genius to avoid, if he can, passing
+into that purgatory at all.
+
+Can any biography, by whomsoever written, be other than inchoate and
+illusory—nay, can it fail to be fraught with danger to the memory of the
+dead, with danger to the peace of the living, until years have fully
+calmed the air around the dead man’s grave?  So long as the man to be
+portrayed cannot be separated from his surroundings, so long as his
+portrait cannot be fully and honestly limned without peril to the peace
+of those among whom he moved—in a word, so long as there remains any
+throb of vitality in those delicate filaments of social life by which he
+was enlinked to those with whom he played his part—that brother, or that
+friend, or that outsider who shall attempt the portraiture must feel what
+heavy responsibilities are his—must not forget that with him to trip is
+to sin against the head.  And how shall he decide when the time has at
+last come for making the attempt?  Before the incidents of a man’s life
+can be exploited without any risk of mischief, how much time should
+elapse?  “A month,” say the publishers, each one of whom runs his own
+special “biographical series,” and keeps his own special bevy of
+recording angels writing against time and against each other.  “Thirty
+years,” said one whose life-wisdom was so perfect as to be in a world
+like ours almost an adequate substitute for the morality he
+lacked—Talleyrand.
+
+Of all forms of literary art biography demands from the artist not only
+the greatest courage, but also the happiest combination of the highest
+gifts.  To succeed in painting the portrait of Achilles or of Priam, of
+Hamlet or of Othello, may be difficult, but is it as difficult as to
+succeed in painting the portrait of Browning or Rossetti?  Surely not.
+In the one case an intense dramatic imagination is needed, and nothing
+more.  If Homer’s Achaian and Trojan heroes were falsely limned, not
+they, but Homer’s art, would suffer the injury.  If for the purposes of
+art the poet unduly exalted this one or unduly abased that—if he misread
+one incident in the mythical life of Achilles, and another in the
+mythical life of Hector—he did wrong to his art undoubtedly, but none to
+the memory of a dead man, and none to the peace of a living one.  But
+with him who would paint the portrait of Browning or Rossetti how
+different is the case!  Although he requires the poet’s vision before he
+can paint a living picture of his subject, the task he has set himself to
+do is something more than artistic: before everything else it is
+fiduciary.
+
+A trustee whose trust fund is biographical truth, he has, after
+collecting and marshalling all the facts that come to his hand, to decide
+what is truth as indicated by those generalized facts.  But having done
+this, he has to decide what is the proper time for giving the world the
+truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—what is the proper
+time?  In the biographer’s relation to the dead man on the one-hand and
+to the public on the other should he be so unhappy as to forget that time
+is of the very “essence of the contract”—should he forget that so inwoven
+is human life that truth spoken at the wrong moment may be a greater
+mischief-worker than error—he may, if conscientious, have to remember
+that forgetfulness of his during the remainder of his days.  He who
+thinks that truth may not be sometimes as mischievous as a pestilence
+knows but little of this mysterious and wonderful net of human life.  But
+if this is so with regard to truth, how much more is it so with regard to
+mere matter of fact?  Fact-worship, document-worship, is at once the
+crowning folly and the crowning vice of our time.  To mistake a fact for
+a truth, and to give the world that; to throw facts about and documents
+about heedless of the mischief they may work—wronging the dead and
+wronging the living—this is actually paraded as a virtue in these days.
+
+Here is a case in point.  Down to the very last moment of his life
+Rossetti’s feeling towards his great contemporary Tennyson was that of
+the deepest admiration, and yet what says the documentary evidence as
+given to the world by Rossetti’s brother?  It shows that Rossetti used an
+extremely unpleasant phrase concerning a letter from Tennyson
+acknowledging the receipt of Rossetti’s first volume of poems in 1870.
+Those who have heard Tennyson speak of Rossetti know that to use this
+phrase in relation to any letter of his dealing with Rossetti’s poetry
+was to misunderstand it.  Yet here are the unpleasant words of a hasty
+mood, “rather shabby,” in print.  And why?  Because the public has become
+so demoralized that its feast of facts, its feast of documents it must
+have, come what will.  But even supposing that the public had any rights
+whatsoever in regard to a man of genius, which we deny, what are letters
+as indications of a man’s character?  Of all modes of expression is not
+the epistolary mode that in which man’s instinct for using language “to
+disguise his thought” is most likely to exercise itself?  There is likely
+to be far more deep sincerity in a sonnet than in a letter.  It is no
+exaggeration to say that the common courtesies of life demand a certain
+amount of what is called “blarney” in a letter—especially in an eminent
+man’s letter—which would ruin a sonnet.  And this must be steadily borne
+in mind at a time like ours, when private letters are bought and sold
+like any other article of merchandise, not only immediately after a man’s
+death, but during his lifetime.
+
+With regard to literary men, their letters in former times were simply
+artistic compositions; hence as indications of character they must be
+judged by the same canons as literary essays would be judged.  In both
+cases the writer had full space and full time to qualify his statements
+of opinion; in both cases he was without excuse for throwing out anything
+heedlessly.  Not only in Walpole’s case and Gray’s, but also in Charles
+Lamb’s, we apply the same rules of criticism to the letters as we apply
+to the published utterances that appeared in the writer’s lifetime.  But
+now, when letters are just the hurried expression of the moment, when
+ill-considered things—often rash things—are said which either in literary
+compositions or in conversation would have been, if said at all, greatly
+qualified—the greatest injustice that can be done to a writer is to print
+his letters indiscriminately.  Especially is this the case with Rossetti.
+All who knew him speak of him as being a superb critic, and a superb
+critic he was.  But his printed letters show nothing of the kind.  On
+literary subjects they are often full of over-statement and of biased
+judgment.  Here is the explanation: in conversation he had a way of
+perpetrating a brilliant critical paradox for the very purpose of
+qualifying it, turning it about, colouring it by the lights of his
+wonderful fancy, until at last it became something quite different from
+the original paradox, and full of truth and wisdom.  But when such a
+paradox went off in a letter, there it remained unqualified; and they
+who, not having known him, scoff at his friends who claim for him the
+honours of a great critic, seem to scoff with reason.
+
+No one was more conscious of the treachery of letters than was Rossetti
+himself.  Comparatively late in his life he realized what all eminent men
+would do well to realize, that owing to the degradation of public taste,
+which cries out for more personal gossip and still more every day, the
+time has fully come when every man of mark must consider the rights of
+his friends—when it behoves every man who has had the misfortune to pass
+into fame to burn all letters; and he began the holocaust that duty to
+friendship demanded of him.  But the work of reading through such a
+correspondence as his in order to see what letters must be preserved from
+the burning took more time and more patience than he had contemplated,
+and the destruction did not progress further than to include the letters
+of the early sixties.  Business letters it was, of course, necessary to
+preserve, and very properly it is from these that Mr. W. M. Rossetti has
+mainly quoted.
+
+The volume is divided into two parts: first, documents relating to the
+production of certain of Rossetti’s pictures and poems; and second, a
+prose paraphrase of ‘The House of Life.’
+
+The documents consist of abstracts of and extracts from such portions of
+Rossetti’s correspondence as have fallen into his brother’s hands as
+executor.  Dealing as they necessarily do with those complications of
+prices and those involved commissions for which Rossetti’s artistic
+career was remarkable, there is a commercial air about the first portion
+of the book which some will think out of harmony with their conception of
+the painter, about whom there used to be such a mysterious interest until
+much writing about him had brought him into the light of common day.  In
+future years a summary so accurate and so judicious as this will seem
+better worth making than it, perhaps, seems at the present moment; for
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s love of facts is accompanied by an equally strong
+love of making an honest statement of facts—a tabulated statement, if
+possible; and no one writing of Rossetti need hesitate about following
+his brother to the last letter and to the last figure.
+
+To be precise and perspicuous is, he hints in his preface, better than to
+be graphic and entertaining; and we entirely agree with him, especially
+when the subject discussed is Rossetti, about whom so many fancies that
+are neither precise nor perspicuous are current.  Still, to read about
+this picture being offered to one buyer and that to another, and rejected
+or accepted at a greatly reduced price after much chaffering, is not, we
+will confess, exhilarating reading to those to whom Rossetti’s pictures
+are also poems.  It does not conduce to the happiness of his admirers to
+think of such works being produced under such prosaic conditions.  One
+buyer—a most worthy man, to be sure, and a true friend of Rossetti’s, but
+full of that British superstition about the saving grace of clothes which
+is so wonderful a revelation to the pensive foreigner—had to be humoured
+in his craze against the nude.  After having painted a beautiful
+partly-draped Gretchen (which, we may remark in passing, had no relation,
+as Mr. W. M. Rossetti supposes, to the Marguerite alluded to in a letter
+to Mr. Graham in 1870) from a new model whose characteristics were a
+superb bosom and arms, he, Rossetti, was obliged to consent to conceal
+the best portions of the picture under drapery.
+
+That this was a matter of great and peculiar vexation to him may be
+supposed when it is remembered that unequalled as had been his good
+fortune in finding fine face-models (ladies of position and culture, and
+often of extraordinary beauty), he had in the matter of figure-models
+been most unlucky.  And this, added to his slight knowledge of anatomy,
+made all his nude pictures undesirable save those few painted from the
+beautiful girl who stood for ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and ‘Forced
+Music.’  What his work from the nude suffered from this is incalculable,
+as may be seen in the crayon called ‘Ligeia Siren,’ a naked siren playing
+on a kind of lute, which Rossetti described as “certainly one of his best
+things.”  The beauty and value of a crayon which for weird
+poetry—especially in the eyes—must be among Rossetti’s masterpieces are
+ruined by the drawing of the breasts.
+
+The most interesting feature of the book, however, is not that which
+deals with the prices Rossetti got for his pictures, but that which tells
+the reader the place where and the conditions under which they were
+painted; and no portion of the book is more interesting than that which
+relates to the work done at Kelmscott:—
+
+    “At the beginning of this year 1874 Rossetti was again occupied with
+    the picture which he had commenced in the preceding spring, entitled,
+    ‘The Bower Maiden’—a girl in a room with a pot of marigolds and a
+    black cat.  It was painted from ‘little Annie’ (a cottage-girl and
+    house assistant at Kelmscott), and it ‘goes on’ (to quote the words
+    of one of his letters) ‘like a house on fire.  This is the only kind
+    of picture one ought to do—just copying the materials, and no more:
+    all others are too much trouble.’  It is not difficult to understand
+    that the painter of a ‘Proserpine’ and a ‘Ghirlandata’ would
+    occasionally feel the luxury of a mood intellectually lazy, and would
+    be minded to give voice to it—as in this instance—in terms wilfully
+    extreme; keeping his mental eye none the less steadily directed to a
+    ‘Roman Widow’ or a ‘Blessed Damozel’ in the near future.  As a matter
+    of fact, my brother painted very few things, at any stage of his
+    career, as mere representations of reality, unimbued by some
+    inventive or ideal meaning: in the rare instances when he did so, he
+    naturally felt an indolent comfort, and made no scruple of putting
+    the feeling into words—highly suitable for being taken _cum grano
+    salis_.  Nothing was more alien from his nature or habit than ‘tall
+    talk’ of any kind about his aims, aspirations, or performances.  It
+    was into his work—not into his utterances about his work—that he
+    infused the higher and deeper elements of his spirit.  ‘The Bower
+    Maiden’ was finished early in February, and sold to Mr. Graham for
+    682_l._, after it had been offered to Mr. Leyland at a rather higher
+    figure, and declined.  It has also passed under the names of ‘Fleurs
+    de Marie,’ ‘Marigolds,’ and ‘The Gardener’s Daughter.’  After ‘The
+    Bower Maiden’ had been disposed of, other work was taken up—more
+    especially ‘The Roman Widow,’ bearing the alternative title of ‘Dîs
+    Manibus,’ which was in an advanced stage by the month of May, and was
+    completed in June or July.  It was finished with little or no
+    glazing.  The Roman widow is a lady still youthful, in a grey
+    fawn-tinted drapery, with a musical instrument in each hand; she is
+    in the sepulchral chamber of her husband, whose stone urn appears in
+    the background.  I possess the antique urn which my brother procured,
+    and which he used for the painting.  For graceful simplicity, and for
+    depth of earnest but not strained sentiment, he never, I think,
+    exceeded ‘The Roman Widow.’  The two instruments seem to repeat the
+    two mottoes on the urn, ‘Ave Domine—Vale Domine.’  The head was
+    painted from Miss Wilding, already mentioned; but it seems to me
+    partly associated with the type of Mrs. Stillman’s face as well.
+    There are many roses in this picture—both wild and garden roses; they
+    kept the artist waiting a little after the work was otherwise
+    finished.  ‘I really think it looks well,’ he wrote on one occasion;
+    ‘its fair luminous colour seems to melt into the gold frame (which
+    has only just come) like a part of it.’  He feared that the picture
+    might be ‘too severe and tragic’ for some tastes; but could add (not,
+    perhaps, with undue confidence), ‘I don’t think Géricault or Régnault
+    would have quite scorned it.’”
+
+The magnificent design here alluded to, ‘Dîs Manibus,’ entirely suggested
+by the urn, which had somewhat come into his possession (probably through
+Howell), and also ‘The Bower Maiden,’ suggested by his accidentally
+seeing a pretty cottage-child lifting some marigolds to a shelf, formed
+part of the superb work produced by Rossetti during his long retirement
+at Kelmscott Manor—that period never before recorded, which has at this
+very moment been brought into prominence by his friend Dr. Hake’s
+sonnet-sequence ‘The New Day,’ just published.  As far as literary and
+artistic work goes, it was, perhaps, the richest period of his life; and
+that it was also one of the happiest is clear not only from his own
+words, but also from the following testimony of Dr. Hake, who saw much of
+him there:—
+
+    O, happy days with him who once so loved us!
+       We loved as brothers, with a single heart,
+    The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us
+       From nature to her blazoned shadow—Art.
+    How often did we trace the nestling Thames
+       From humblest waters on his course of might,
+    Down where the weir the bursting current stems—
+       There sat till evening grew to balmy night,
+    Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the Strand
+       Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea,
+    That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned
+       Triumphal labours of the day to be.
+
+It was at Kelmscott, in the famous tapestried room, that besides painting
+the ‘Proserpine,’ ‘The Roman Widow,’ &c., he wrote many of his later
+poems, including ‘Rose Mary.’
+
+Considering how deep is Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s affection for his brother’s
+memory, and how great is his admiration for his brother’s work, it is
+remarkable how judicial is his mind when writing about him.  This is what
+he says about the much discussed ‘Venus Astarte’:—
+
+    “Into the ‘Venus Astarte’ he had put his utmost intensity of
+    thinking, feeling, and method—he had aimed to make it equally strong
+    in abstract sentiment and in physical grandeur—an ideal of the
+    mystery of beauty, offering a sort of combined quintessence of what
+    he had endeavoured in earlier years to embody in the two several
+    types of ‘Sibylla Palmifera’ and ‘Lilith,’ or (as he ultimately named
+    them in the respective sonnets) ‘Soul’s Beauty’ and ‘Body’s Beauty.’
+    It may be well to remark that, by the time when he completed the
+    ‘Venus Astarte,’ or ‘Astarte Syriaca,’ he had got into a more austere
+    feeling than of old with regard to colour and chiaroscuro; and the
+    charm of the picture has, I am aware, been less, to many critics and
+    spectators of the work, than he would have deemed to be its due, as
+    compared with some of his other performances of more obvious and
+    ostensible attraction.”
+
+Though Mr. W. M. Rossetti is right in saying that it was not till the
+beginning of 1877 that this remarkable picture was brought to a
+conclusion, the main portions were done during that long sojourn at
+Bognor in 1876–7, which those who have written about Rossetti have
+hitherto left unrecorded.  Having fallen into ill health after his return
+to London from Kelmscott, he was advised to go to the seaside, and a
+large house at Bognor was finally selected.  No doubt one reason why the
+preference was given to Bognor was the fact that Blake’s cottage at
+Felpham was close by, for businesslike and unbusiness-like qualities were
+strangely mingled in Rossetti’s temperament, and it was generally some
+sentiment or unpractical fancy of this kind that brought about Rossetti’s
+final decision upon anything.  Blake’s name was with him still a word to
+charm with, and he was surprised to find, on the first pilgrimage of
+himself and his friends to the cottage, that scarcely a person in the
+neighbourhood knew what Blake it was that “the Londoners” were inquiring
+about.
+
+To the secluded house at Bognor—a house so surrounded by trees and shrubs
+that the murmur of the waves mingling with the whispers of the leaves
+seemed at one moment the sea’s voice, and at another the voice of the
+earth—Rossetti took not only the cartoon of the ‘Astarte Syriaca,’ but
+also the most peculiar of all his pictures, ‘The Blessed Damozel,’ which
+had long lain in an incomplete state.  But it was not much painting that
+he did at Bognor.  From a cause he tried in vain to understand, and tried
+in vain to conquer, his thoughts ran upon poetry, and refused to fix
+themselves upon art.  Partly this might have been owing to the fact that
+now, comparatively late in life, he to whom, as his brother well says,
+“such words as _sea_, _ship_, and _boat_ were generic terms admitting of
+little specific and still less of any individual and detailed
+distinction,” awoke to the fascination that the sea sooner or later
+exercises upon all truly romantic souls.  For deep as is the poetry of
+the inland woods, the Spirit of Romance, if there at all, is there in
+hiding.  In order for that Spirit to come forth and take captive the soul
+something else is wanted; howsoever thick and green the trees—howsoever
+bright and winding the streams—a magical glimmer of sea-light far or near
+must shine through the branches as they wave.
+
+That this should be a new experience to so fine a poet as Rossetti was no
+doubt strange, but so it chanced to be.  He whose talk at Kelmscott had
+been of ‘Blessed Damozels’ and ‘Roman Widows’ and the like, talked now of
+the wanderings of Ulysses, of ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ of ‘Sir Patrick
+Spens,’ and even of ‘Arthur Gordon Pym’ and ‘Allan Gordon.’  And on
+hearing a friend recite some tentative verses on a great naval battle, he
+looked about for sea subjects too; and it was now, and not later, as is
+generally supposed, that he really thought of the subject of ‘The White
+Ship,’ a subject apparently so alien from his genius.  Every evening he
+used to take walks on the beach for miles and miles, delighted with a
+beauty that before had had no charms for him.  Still, the ‘Astarte
+Syriaca’ did progress, though slowly, and became the masterpiece that Mr.
+W. M. Rossetti sets so high among his brother’s work.
+
+    “From Bognor my brother returned to his house in Cheyne Walk; and in
+    the summer he paid a visit to two of his kindest and most considerate
+    friends, Lord and Lady Mount-Temple, at their seat of Broadlands in
+    Hampshire.  He executed there a portrait in chalks of Lady
+    Mount-Temple.  He went on also with the picture of ‘The Blessed
+    Damozel.’  For the head of an infant angel which appears in the front
+    of this picture he made drawings from two children—one being the baby
+    of the Rev. H. C. Hawtrey, and the other a workhouse infant.  The
+    former sketch was presented to the parents of the child and the
+    latter to Lady Mount-Temple; and the head with its wings, was painted
+    on to the canvas at Broadlands.”
+
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti omits to mention that the landscape which forms the
+predella to ‘The Blessed Damozel,’ a river winding in a peculiarly
+tortuous course through the cedars and other wide-spread trees of an
+English park, was taken from the scenery of Broadlands—that fairyland of
+soft beauty which lived in his memory as it must needs live in the memory
+of every one who has once known it.  But the wonder is that such a mass
+of solid material has been compressed into so small a space.
+
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s paraphrase of ‘The House of Life’—done with so much
+admiration of his brother’s genius and affection for his memory—touches
+upon a question relating to poetic art which has been raised
+before—raised in connexion with prose renderings of Homer, Sophocles, and
+Dante: Are poetry and prose so closely related in method that one can
+ever be adequately turned into the other?  Schiller no doubt wrote his
+dramas in prose and then turned them into rhetorical verse; but then
+there are those who affirm that Schiller’s rhetorical verse is scarcely
+poetry.  The importance of the question will be seen when we call to mind
+that if such a transmutation of form were possible, translations of
+poetry would be possible; for though, owing to the tyrannous demands of
+form, the verse of one language can never be translated into the verse of
+another, it can always be rendered in the prose of another, only it then
+ceases to be poetry.
+
+That the intellectual, and even to some extent the emotional, substance
+of a poem can be seized and covered by a prose translation is seen in
+Prof. Jebb’s rendering of the ‘Œdipus Rex’; but, as we have before
+remarked, the fundamental difference between imaginative prose and poetry
+is that, while the one must be informed with intellectual life and
+emotional life, the other has to be informed with both these kinds of
+life, and with another life beyond these—rhythmic life.  Now, if we
+wished to show that rhythmic life is in poetry the most important of all,
+our example would, we think, be Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s prose paraphrase of
+his brother’s sonnets.  The obstacles against the adequate turning of
+poetry into prose can be best understood by considering the obstacles
+against the adequate turning of prose into poetry.  Prose notes tracing
+out the course of the future poem may, no doubt, be made, and usefully
+made, by the poet (as Wordsworth said in an admirable letter to Gillies),
+unless, indeed, the notes form too elaborate an attempt at a full prose
+expression of the subject-matter, in which case, so soon as the poet
+tries to rise on his winged words, his wingless words are likely to act
+as a dead weight.  For this reason, when Wordsworth said that the prose
+notes should be brief, he might almost as well have gone on to say that
+in expression they should be slovenly.  This at least may be said, that
+the moment the language of the prose note is so “adequate” and rich that
+it seems to be what Wordsworth would call the natural “incarnation of the
+thought,” the poet’s imagination, if it escapes at all from the chains of
+the prose expression, escapes with great difficulty.  An instance of this
+occurred in Rossetti’s own experience.
+
+During one of those seaside rambles alluded to above, while he was
+watching with some friends the billows tumbling in beneath the wintry
+moon, some one, perhaps Rossetti himself, directed attention to the
+peculiar effect of the moon’s disc reflected in the white surf, and
+compared it to fire in snow.  Rossetti, struck with the picturesqueness
+of the comparison, made there and then an elaborate prose note of it in
+one of the diminutive pocket-books that he was in the habit of carrying
+in the capacious pocket of his waistcoat.  Years afterwards—shortly
+before his death, in fact—when he came to write ‘The King’s Tragedy,’
+remembering this note, he thought he could find an excellent place for it
+in the scene where the king meets the Spae wife on the seashore and
+listens to her prophecies of doom.  But he was at once confronted by this
+obstacle: so elaborately had the image of the moon reflected in the surf
+been rendered in the prose note—so entirely did the prose matter seem to
+be the inevitable and the final incarnation of the thought—that it
+appeared impossible to escape from it into the movement and the diction
+proper to poetry.  It was only after much labour—a labour greater than he
+had given to all the previous stanzas combined—that he succeeded in
+freeing himself from the fetters of the prose, and in painting the
+picture in these words:—
+
+    That eve was clenched for a boding storm
+       ’Neath a toilsome moon half seen;
+    The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
+    And where there was a line of sky,
+       Wild wings loomed dark between.
+
+                                   * * * *
+
+    ’Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack
+       On high on her hollow dome;
+    And still as aloft with hoary crest
+       Each clamorous wave rang home,
+    Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
+       Amid the champing foam.
+
+And the remark was then made to him with regard to Coleridge’s
+‘Wanderings of Cain,’ that it is not unlikely the matchless fragment
+given in Coleridge’s poems might have passed nearer towards completion,
+or at least towards the completion of the first part, had it not been for
+those elaborate and beautiful prose notes which he has left behind.
+
+And if the attempt to turn prose into poetry is hopeless, the attempt to
+turn poetry into prose is no less so, and for a like reason—that of the
+immense difficulty of passing from the movement natural to one mood into
+the movement natural to another.  And this criticism applies especially
+to the poetry of Rossetti, which produces so many of its best effects by
+means not of logical statement, but of the music and suggestive richness
+of rhythmical language.  That Rossetti did on some occasions, when told
+that his sonnets were unintelligible, talk about making such a paraphrase
+himself is indisputable, because Mr. Fairfax Murray say that he heard him
+say so.  But indisputable also is many another saying of Rossetti’s,
+equally ill-considered and equally impracticable.  That he ever seriously
+thought of doing so is most unlikely.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+In his memoir of his brother, Mr. William Michael Rossetti thus makes
+mention of a ballad left by the poet which still remains unpublished:—
+
+    “It [the ballad] is most fully worthy of publication, but has not
+    been included in Rossetti’s ‘Collected Works,’ because he gave the
+    MS. to his devoted friend Mr. Theodore Watts, with whom alone now
+    rests the decision of presenting it or not to the public.”
+
+And he afterwards mentions certain sonnets on the Sphinx, also in my
+possession.
+
+With the most generous intentions my dear and loyal friend William
+Rossetti has here brought me into trouble.
+
+Naturally such an announcement as the above has excited great curiosity
+among admirers of Rossetti, and I am frequently receiving letters—some of
+them cordial enough, but others far from cordial—asking, or rather
+demanding, to know the reason why important poems of Rossetti’s have for
+so long a period been withheld from the public.  In order to explain the
+delay I must first give two extracts from Mr. Hall Caine’s picturesque
+‘Recollections of Rossetti,’ published in 1882:—
+
+    “The end was drawing near, and we all knew the fact.  Rossetti had
+    actually taken to poetical composition afresh, and had written a
+    facetious ballad (conceived years before), of the length of ‘The
+    White Ship,’ called ‘Jan Van Hunks,’ embodying an eccentric story of
+    a Dutchman’s wager to smoke against the devil.  This was to appear in
+    a miscellany of stories and poems by himself and Mr. Theodore Watts,
+    a project which had been a favourite one of his for some years, and
+    in which he now, in his last moments, took a revived interest,
+    strange and strong.”
+
+    “On Wednesday morning, April 5th, I went into the bedroom to which he
+    had for some days been confined, and wrote out to his dictation two
+    sonnets which he had composed on a design of his called ‘The Sphinx,’
+    and which he wished to give, together with the drawing and the ballad
+    before described, to Mr. Watts for publication in the volume just
+    mentioned.  On the Thursday morning I found his utterance thick, and
+    his speech from that cause hardly intelligible.”
+
+As the facts in connexion with this project exhibit, with a force that
+not all the words of all his detractors can withstand, the splendid
+generosity of the poet’s nature, I only wish that I had made them public
+years ago, Rossetti (whose power of taking interest in a friend’s work
+Mr. Joseph Knight has commented upon) had for years been urging me to
+publish certain writings of mine with which he was familiar, and for
+years I had declined to do so—declined for two simple reasons: first,
+though I liked writing for its own sake—indulged in it, indeed, as a
+delightful luxury—to enter formally the literary arena, and to go through
+that struggle which, as he himself used to say, “had never yet brought
+comfort to any poet, but only sorrow,” had never been an ambition of
+mine; and, secondly, I was only too conscious how biased must the
+judgment be of a man whose affections were so strong as his when brought
+to bear upon the work of a friend.
+
+In order at last to achieve an end upon which he had set his heart, he
+proposed that he and I should jointly produce the volume to which Mr.
+Hall Caine refers, and that he should enrich it with reproductions of
+certain drawings of his, including the ‘Sphinx’ (now or lately in the
+possession of Mr. William Rossetti) and crayons and pencil drawings in my
+own possession illustrating poems of mine—those drawings, I mean, from
+that new model chosen by me whose head Leighton said must be the
+loveliest ever drawn, who sat for ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow,’ and that
+other design which William Sharp christened ‘Forced Music.’
+
+In order to conquer my most natural reluctance to see a name so unknown
+as mine upon a title-page side by side with a name so illustrious as his,
+he (or else it was his generous sister Christina, I forget which)
+italianized the words Walter Theodore Watts into “Gualtiero Teodoro
+Gualtieri”—a name, I may add in passing, which appears as an inscription
+on one at least of the valuable Christmas presents he made me, a rare old
+Venetian Boccaccio.  My portion of the book was already in existence, but
+that which was to have been the main feature of the volume, a ballad of
+Rossetti’s to be called ‘Michael Scott’s Wooing’ (which had no relation
+to early designs of his bearing that name), hung fire for this reason:
+the story upon which the ballad was to have been based was discovered to
+be not an old legend adapted and varied by the Romanies, as I had
+supposed when I gave it to him, but simply the Ettrick Shepherd’s
+novelette ‘Mary Burnet’; and the project then rested in abeyance until
+that last illness at Birchington painted so graphically and pathetically
+by Mr. Hall Caine.
+
+For some reason quite inscrutable to the late John Marshall, who attended
+him, and to all of us, this old idea seized upon his brain; so much so,
+indeed, that Marshall hailed it as a good omen, and advised us to foster
+it, which we did with excellent results, as will be seen by referring to
+the very last entry in his mother’s touching diary as lately printed by
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti: “March 28, Tuesday.  Mr. Watts came down.  Gabriel
+rallied marvellously.”
+
+Though the ballad, in Rossetti’s own writing, has ever since remained in
+my possession, as have also the two sonnets in the MS. of another friend
+who has since, I am delighted to know, achieved fame for himself, no one
+who enjoyed the intimate friendship of Rossetti need be told that his
+death took from me all heart to publish.
+
+Time, however, is the suzerain before whom every king, even Sorrow
+himself, bows at last.  The rights of Rossetti’s admirers can no longer
+be set at nought, and I am making arrangements to publish within the
+present year ‘Jan Van Hunks’ and the ‘Sphinx Sonnets,’ the former of
+which will show a new and, I think, unexpected side of Rossetti’s genius.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+It is a sweet and comforting thought for every poet that, whether or not
+the public cares during his life to read his verses, it will after his
+death care very much to read his letters to his mistress, to his wife, to
+his relatives, to his friends, to his butcher, and to his baker.  And
+some letters are by that same public held to be more precious than
+others.  If, for instance, it has chanced that during the poet’s life he,
+like Rossetti, had to borrow thirty shillings from a friend, that is a
+circumstance of especial piquancy.  The public likes—or rather it
+demands—to know all about that borrowed cash.  Hence it behoves the
+properly equipped editor who understands his duty to see that not one
+allusion to it in the poet’s correspondence is omitted.  If he can also
+show what caused the poet to borrow those thirty shillings—if he can by
+learned annotations show whether the friend in question lent the sum
+willingly or unwillingly, conveniently or inconveniently—if he can show
+whether the loan was ever repaid, and if repaid when—he will be a happy
+editor indeed.  Then he will find a large and a grateful public to whom
+the mood in which the poet sat down to write ‘The Blessed Damosel’ is of
+far less interest than the mood in which he borrowed thirty shillings.
+
+We do not charge the editor of this volume {104} with exhibiting unusual
+want of taste.  On the whole, he is less irritating to the poetical
+student than those who have laboured in kindred “fields of literature.”
+Indeed, we do not so much blame the editors of such books as we blame the
+public, whose coarse and vulgar mouth is always agape for such pabulum.
+The writer of this review possesses an old circulating-library copy of a
+book containing some letters of Coleridge.  One page, and one only, is
+greatly disfigured by thumb marks.  It is the page on which appears, not
+some precious hint as to the conclusion of ‘Christabel,’ but a domestic
+missive of Coleridge’s ordering broad beans for dinner.
+
+If, then, the name of those readers who take an interest in broad beans
+is legion compared with the name of those who take an interest in ‘Kubla
+Khan,’ is not the wise editor he who gives all due attention to the
+poet’s favourite vegetable?  Those who will read with avidity Rossetti’s
+allusion to his wife’s confinement in the letter in which he tells
+Allingham that “the child had been dead for two or three weeks” will
+laugh to scorn the above remarks, and as they are in the majority the
+laugh is with them.
+
+The editor of this volume laments that Allingham’s letters to Rossetti
+are beyond all editorial reach.  But who has any right to ask for
+Allingham’s private letters?  Rossetti, who was strongly against the
+printing of private letters, had the wholesome practice of burning all
+his correspondence.  This he did at periodical holocausts—memorable
+occasions when the coruscations of the poet’s wit made the sparks from
+the burning paper seem pale and dull.  He died away from home, or not a
+scrap of correspondence would have been left for the publishers.
+Although the “public” acknowledges no duties towards the man of literary
+or artistic genius, but would shrug up its shoulders or look with dismay
+at being asked to give five pounds in order to keep a poet from the
+workhouse, the moment a man of genius becomes famous the public becomes
+aware of certain rights in relation to him.  Strangely enough, these
+rights are recognized more fully in the literary arena than anywhere
+else, and among them the chief appears to be that of reading an author’s
+private letters.  One advantage—and surely it is a very great one—that
+the “writing man” has over the man of action is this: that, while the
+portrait of the man of action has to be painted, if painted at all, by
+the biographer, the writing man paints his own portrait for himself.
+
+And as, in a deep sense, every biographer is an inventor like the
+novelist—as from the few facts that he is able to collect he infers a
+character—the man of action, after he is dead, is at the mercy of every
+man who writes his life.  Is not Alexander the Great no less a figment of
+another man’s brain than Achilles, or Macbeth, or Mr. Pickwick?  But a
+poet, howsoever artistic, howsoever dramatic, the form of his work may
+be, is occupied during his entire life in painting his own portrait.  And
+if it were not for the intervention of the biographer, the reminiscence
+writer, or the collector of letters for publication, our conception of
+every poet would be true and vital according to the intelligence with
+which we read his work.
+
+This is why, of all English poets, Shakespeare is the only one whom we do
+thoroughly know—unless perhaps we should except his two great
+contemporaries Webster and Marlowe.  Steevens did not exaggerate when he
+said that all we know of Shakespeare’s outer life is that he was born at
+Stratford-on-Avon, married, went to London, wrote plays, returned to
+Stratford, and died.  Owing to this circumstance (and a blessed one it
+is) we can commune with the greatest of our poets undisturbed.  We know
+how Shakespeare confronted every circumstance of this mysterious life—we
+know how he confronted the universe, seen and unseen—we know to what
+degree and in what way he felt every human passion.  There is no careless
+letter of his, thank God! to give us a wrong impression of him.  There is
+no record of his talk at the Mermaid, the Falcon, or the Apollo saloon to
+make readers doubtful whether his printed utterances truly represent him.
+Would that the will had been destroyed! then there would have been no
+talk about the “second-best bed” and the like insane gabble.  Suppose, by
+ill chance, a batch of his letters to Anna Hathaway had been preserved.
+Is it not a moral certainty that they would have been as uninteresting as
+the letters of Coleridge, of Scott, of Dickens, of Rossetti, and of
+Rossetti’s sister?
+
+Why are the letters of literary men apt to be so much less interesting
+than those of other people?  Is it not because, the desire to express
+oneself in written language being universal, this desire with people
+outside the literary class has to be of necessity exercised in
+letter-writing?  Is it not because, where there is no other means of
+written expression than that of letter-writing, the best efforts of the
+letter-writer are put into the composition, as the best writing of the
+essayist is put into his essays?  However this might have been in
+Shakespeare’s time, the half-conscious, graphic power of the non-literary
+letter-writer of to-day is often so great that if all the letters written
+in English by non-literary people, especially letters written from abroad
+to friends at home in the year 1897, {108} were collected, and the cream
+of them extracted and printed, the book would be the most precious
+literary production that the year has to show.  If, on the other hand,
+the letters of contemporary English authors were collected in the same
+way, the poverty of the book would be amazing as compared with the
+published writings of the authors.  With regard to Dickens’s letters,
+indeed, the contrast between their commonplace, colourless style and the
+pregnancy of his printed utterances makes the writing in his books seem
+forced, artificial, unnatural.
+
+The same may in some degree be said of such letters of Rossetti as have
+hitherto been published.  The charming family letters printed by his
+brother come, of course, under a different category.  With the exception
+of these, perhaps the letters in the volume before us are the most
+interesting Rossetti letters that have been printed.  Yet it is
+astonishing how feeble they are in giving the reader an idea of Rossetti
+himself.  And this gives birth to the question: Do we not live at a time
+when the unfairness of printing an author’s letters is greater than it
+ever was before?  To go no further back than the early years of the
+present century, the facilities of locomotion were then few, friends were
+necessarily separated from each other by long intervals of time, and
+letters were a very important part of intercommunication, consequently it
+might be expected that even among authors a good deal of a man’s
+individuality would be expressed in his letters.  But even at that period
+it was only a quite exceptional nature like that of Charles Lamb which
+adequately expressed itself in epistolary form.  Keats’s letters, no
+doubt, are full of good sense and good criticism, but taking them as a
+body, including the letters to Fanny Brawne, we think it were better if
+they had been totally destroyed.  As to Byron’s letters, they, of course,
+are admirable in style and full of literary life, but their very
+excellence shows that his natural mode of expression was brilliant,
+slashing prose.  But if it was unfair to publish the letters of Coleridge
+and Keats, what shall we say of the publication of letters written by the
+authors of our own day, when, owing to an entire change in the conditions
+of life, no one dreams of putting into his letters anything of literary
+interest?
+
+When Rossetti died he was, as regards the public, owing to his
+exclusiveness, much in the same position as Shakespeare has always been.
+The picture of Rossetti that lived in the public mind was that of a poet
+and painter of extraordinary imaginative intensity and magic, whose
+personality, as romantic as his work, influenced all who came in contact
+with him.  He was, indeed, the only romantic figure in the imagination of
+the literary and art world of his time.  It seemed as if in his very name
+there was an unaccountable music.  The present writer well remembers
+being at a dinner-party many years ago when the late Lord Leighton was
+talking in his usual delightful way.  His conversation was specially
+attended to only by his interlocutor, until the name of Rossetti fell
+from his lips.  Then the general murmur of tongues ceased.  Everybody
+wanted to hear what was being said about the mysterious poet-painter.
+Thus matters stood when Rossetti died.  Within forty-eight hours of his
+death the many-headed beast clamoured for its rights.  Within forty-eight
+hours of his death there was a leading article in an important newspaper
+on the subject of his suspiciousness as the result of chloral-drinking.
+And from that moment the romance has been rubbed off the picture as
+effectually by many of those who have written about him as the bloom is
+fingered off of a clumsily gathered peach.
+
+But the reader will say, “Truth is great, and must prevail.  The picture
+of Rossetti that now exists in the public mind is the true one.  The
+former picture was a lie.”  But here the reader will be much mistaken.
+The romantic picture which existed in the public mind during Rossetti’s
+life was the true one; the picture that now exists of him is false.
+
+Does any one want to know what kind of a man was the painter of ‘Dante’s
+Dream’ and the poet of ‘The Blessed Damosel,’ let him wipe out of his
+mind most of what has been written about him, let him forget if he can
+most of the Rossetti letters that have been published, and let him read
+the poet’s poems and study the painter’s pictures, and he will know
+Rossetti—not, indeed, so thoroughly as we know Shakespeare and Æschylus
+and Sophocles, but as intimately as it is possible to know any man whose
+biography is written only in his works.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that for those who had a personal knowledge
+of Rossetti some of the letters in this volume will have an interest,
+owing to the evidence they afford of that authorial generosity which was
+one of his most beautiful characteristics.  His disinterested
+appreciation of the work of his contemporaries sets him apart from all
+the other poets of his time and perhaps of any other time.  To wax
+eloquent in praise of this and that illustrious name, and thus to claim a
+kind of kinship with it, is a very different thing from Rossetti’s noble
+championship of a name, whether that of a friend or otherwise, which has
+never emerged from obscurity.  It is perhaps inevitable and in the nature
+of things that most poets are too much absorbed in their own work to have
+time to interest themselves in the doings of their fellow-workers.
+
+But, with regard to Rossetti, he could feel, and often did feel, as deep
+an interest in the work of another man as in his own.  There was no
+trouble he would not take to aid a friend in gaining recognition.  This
+it was more than anything else which endeared him to all his friends, and
+made them condone those faults of his which ever since his death have
+been so freely discussed.  The editor of this volume quotes this sentence
+from Skelton’s ‘Table-Talk of Shirley’:—
+
+    “I have preserved a number of Rossetti’s letters, and there is barely
+    one, I think, which is not mainly devoted to warm commendation of
+    obscure poets and painters—obscure at the time of writing, but of
+    whom more than one has since become famous.”
+
+Nor was his interest in other men’s work confined to that of his personal
+friends.  His discovery of Browning’s ‘Pauline,’ of Charles Wells, and of
+the poems of Ebenezer Jones may be cited as instances of this.  Moreover,
+he was always looking out in magazines—some of them of the most obscure
+kind—for good work.  And if he was rewarded, as he sometimes was, by
+coming upon precious things that might otherwise have been lost, his
+heart was rejoiced.
+
+One day, having turned into a coffee-house in Chancery Lane to get a cup
+of coffee, he came upon a number of _Reynolds’s Miscellany_, and finding
+there a poem called ‘A Lover’s Pastime,’ he saw at once its extraordinary
+beauty, and enclosed it in a letter to Allingham.  In this case, however,
+he unfortunately did not make his usual efforts to discover the
+authorship of a poem that pleased him; and a pity it is, for the poem is
+one of the loveliest lyrics that have been written in modern times.  We
+hope it will find a place in the next anthology of lyrical poetry.
+
+Though his criticisms were not always sure and impeccable, he was of all
+critics the most independent of authority.  Had he chanced to find in the
+poets’ corner of _The Eatanswill Gazette_ a lyric equal to the best of
+Shelley’s, he would have recognized its merits at once and proclaimed
+them; and had he come across a lyric of Shelley’s that had received
+unmerited applause, he would have recognized its demerits for himself,
+and proclaimed them with equal candour and fearlessness.
+
+Again, certain passages in these letters will surprise the reader by
+throwing light upon a side of Rossetti’s life and character which was
+only known to his intimate friends.  Recluse as Rossetti came to be, he
+knew more of “London life” in the true sense of the word than did many of
+those who were supposed to know it well—diners-out like Browning, for
+instance, and Richard Doyle.  That the author of ‘The House of Life’ knew
+London on the side that Dickens knew it better than any other poet of his
+time will no doubt surprise many a reader.  His visits to Jamrach’s mart
+for wild animals led him to explore the wonderful world, that so few
+people ever dream of, which lies around Ratcliffe Highway.  He observed
+with the greatest zest the movements of the East-End swarm.  Moreover,
+his passion for picking up “curios” and antique furniture made him
+familiar with quarters of London that he would otherwise have never
+known.  And not Dickens himself had more of what may be called the
+“Haroun al Raschid passion” for wandering through a city’s streets at
+night.  It was this that kept him in touch on one side with men so unlike
+him as Brough and Sala.
+
+In this volume there is a charming anecdote of his generosity to Brough’s
+family, and Sala always spoke of him as “dear Dante Rossetti.”  The
+transpontine theatre, even the penny gaff of the New Cut, was not quite
+unfamiliar with the face of the poet-painter.  Hence no man was a better
+judge than he of the low-life pictures of a writer like F. W. Robinson,
+whose descriptions of the street arab in ‘Owen, a Waif,’ &c., he would
+read aloud with a dramatic power astonishing to those who associated him
+exclusively with Dante, Beatrice, and mystical passion.
+
+Frequently in these letters an allusion will puzzle the reader who does
+not know of Rossetti’s love of nocturnal rambling, an allusion, however,
+which those who knew him will fully understand.  Here is a sentence of
+the kind:—
+
+    “As I haven’t been outside my door for months in the daytime, I
+    should not have had much opportunity of enjoying pastime and
+    pleasaunces.”
+
+The editor quotes some graphic and interesting words from Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti which explain this passage.
+
+In summer, as in winter, he rose very late in the day and made a
+breakfast, as he used to say, which was to keep him in fuel for something
+under twelve hours.  He would then begin to paint, and scarcely leave his
+work till the daylight waned.  Then he would dine, and afterwards start
+off for a walk through the London streets, which to him, as he used to
+say, put on a magical robe with the lighting of the gas lamps.  After
+walking for miles through the streets, either with a friend or alone,
+loitering at the windows of such shops as still were open, he would turn
+into an oyster shop or late restaurant for supper.  Here his frankness of
+bearing was quite irresistible with strangers whenever it pleased him to
+approach them, as he sometimes did.  The most singular and bizarre
+incidents of his life occurred to him on these occasions—incidents which
+he would relate with a dramatic power that set him at the head of the
+_raconteurs_ of his time.  One of these _rencontres_ in the Haymarket was
+of a quite extraordinary character.
+
+In the latter years of his life, when he lived at Cheyne Walk, he would
+often not begin his perambulations until an hour before midnight.  It
+will be a pity if some one who accompanied him in his nocturnal
+rambles—the most remarkable man of our time—does not furnish the world
+with reminiscences of them.
+
+Another point of interest upon which these letters will throw light is
+that connected with his method of work.  He himself, like Tennyson, used
+to say that those who are the most curious as to the way in which a poem
+was written are precisely those who have the least appreciation of the
+beauties of the poem itself.  If this is true, the time in which we live
+is not remarkable, perhaps, for its appreciation of poetry.  These
+letters, at any rate, will be appreciated, for the light that some of
+them throw upon Rossetti at work is remarkable.  When a subject for a
+poem struck him, it was his way to make a prose note of it, then to
+cartoon it, then to leave it for a time, then to take it up again and
+read it to his friends, and then to finish it.  In a letter to Allingham,
+dated July 18th, 1854, enclosing the first form of the sonnet called
+‘Lost on Both Sides’—which sonnet did not appear in print till
+1881—Rossetti says: “My sonnets are not generally finished till I see
+them again after forgetting them; and this is only two days old.  When
+between the first form of a sonnet and the second an interval of
+twenty-seven years elapses, no student of poetry can fail to compare one
+form with the other.
+
+And so with regard to that poem which is, on the whole, Rossetti’s
+masterpiece—‘Sister Helen’—sent as early as 1854 to Mrs. Howitt for the
+German publication the _Düsseldorf Annual_; the changes in it are
+extremely interesting.  Never did it appear in print without suffering
+some important variation.  Sometimes, indeed, the change of a word or two
+in a line would entirely transfigure the stanza.  As to the new stanzas
+added to the ballad just before Rossetti’s death, these turned the ballad
+from a fine poem into a great one.
+
+Equally striking are the changes in ‘The Blessed Damosel.’  But the most
+notable example of the surety of his hand in revising is seen in regard
+to a poem several times mentioned in this volume, called originally
+‘Bride’s Chamber Talk.’  It was begun as early as ‘Jenny,’ read by
+Allingham in 1860, but not printed till more than a quarter of a century
+later.  The earliest form is still in existence in MS., and although some
+of the lines struck out are as poetry most lovely, the poem on the whole
+is better without them.  It was a theory of Rossetti’s, indeed, that the
+very riches of the English language made it necessary for the poet who
+would achieve excellence to revise and manipulate his lines.  And in
+support of this he would contrast the amazing passion for revision
+disclosed by Dr. Garnett’s ‘Relics of Shelley,’ in which sometimes
+scarcely half a dozen of the original words are left on a page, with
+Scott’s metrical narratives, which were sent to the printer in cantos as
+they were written, like one of the contemporary novels thrown off for the
+serials.  The fact seems to be, however, that the poet’s power of
+reaching, as Scott reached, his own ideal expression _per saltum_, or
+reaching it slowly and tentatively, is simply a matter of temperament.
+For whose verses are more loose-jointed than Byron’s? whose diction is
+more commonplace than his?  And yet this is what the greatest of Byron
+specialists, Mr John Murray, says in his extremely interesting remarks
+upon Byron’s autograph:—
+
+    “If we except Byron’s dramatic pieces and ‘Don Juan,’ the first draft
+    of Byron’s longer poems formed but a nucleus of the work as it was
+    printed.  For example, ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ grew out
+    of the ‘British Bards,’ while ‘The Giaour,’ by constant additions to
+    the manuscript, the proofs, and even to the work after publication,
+    was expanded to nearly twice its original size. . . . When the
+    inspiration was on him, the printer had to be kept at work the
+    greater part of the night, and fresh ‘copy’ and fresh revises were
+    crossing one another hour by hour.”
+
+The conclusion is that poets cannot be classified according to their
+methods of work, but only in relation to the result of those methods, and
+that our two great elaborators, Byron and Rossetti, may still be more
+unlike each other in essentials than are any other two nineteenth-century
+poets.
+
+On the whole, we cannot help closing this book with kindly feelings
+towards the editor, inasmuch as it aids in the good work of restoring the
+true portrait of the man who has suffered more than any other from the
+mischievous malignity of foes and the more mischievous indiscretion of
+certain of his friends.
+
+
+
+
+III.  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
+1809–1892.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Charles Lamb was so paralyzed, it is said, by Coleridge’s death, that for
+weeks after that event, he was heard murmuring often to himself,
+“Coleridge is dead, Coleridge is dead.”  In such a mental condition at
+this moment is an entire country, I think.  “Tennyson is dead!  Tennyson
+is dead!”  It will be some time before England’s loss can really be
+expressed by any words so powerful in pathos and in sorrow as these.  And
+if this is so with regard to English people generally, what of those few
+who knew the man, and knowing him, must needs love him—must needs love
+him above all others?—those, I mean, who, when speaking of him, used to
+talk not so much about the poetry as about the man who wrote it—those who
+now are saying, with a tremor of the voice, and a moistening of the eye:—
+
+    There was none like him—none.
+
+ [Picture: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, æt. 80.  From a photography reproduced
+                 by the kind permission of Lord Tennyson]
+
+To say wherein lies the secret of the charm of anything that lives is
+mostly difficult.  Especially is it so with regard to a man of poetic
+genius.  All are agreed, for instance, that D. G. Rossetti possessed an
+immense charm.  So he did, indeed.  But who has been able to define that
+charm?  I, too, knew Rossetti well, and loved him well.  Sometimes,
+indeed, the egotism of a sorrowing memory makes me think that outside his
+own most affectionate and noble-tempered family, including that old
+friend in art at whose feet he sat as a boy, no man loved Rossetti so
+deeply and so lastingly as I did; unless, perhaps, it was the poor blind
+poet, Philip Marston, who, being so deeply stricken, needed to love and
+to be loved more sorely than I, to whom Fate has been kind.  And yet I
+should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm of Rossetti’s
+chameleon-like personality.  So with other men and women I could name.
+This is not so in regard to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth.
+Nothing is easier than to define the charm of Tennyson.
+
+It lay in a great veracity of soul—in a simple-mindedness so childlike
+that, unless you had known him to be the undoubted author of his
+exquisitely artistic poems, you would have supposed that even the
+subtleties of poetic art must be foreign to a nature so devoid of all
+subtlety as his.  “Homer,” you would have said, “might have been such a
+man as this, for Homer worked in a language which is Poetry’s very voice.
+But Tennyson works in a language which has to be moulded into harmony by
+a myriad subtleties of art.  How can this great inspired child, who yet
+has the simple wisdom of Bragi, the poetry-smith of the Northern Olympus,
+be the delicate-fingered artist of ‘The Princess,’ ‘The Palace of Art,’
+‘The Day-Dream,’ and ‘The Dream of Fair Women’?”
+
+As deeply as some men feel that language was given to men to disguise
+their thoughts did Tennyson feel that language was given to _him_ to
+declare his thoughts without disguise.  He knew of but one justification
+for the thing he said, viz., that it was the thing he thought.  _Arrière
+pensée_ was with him impossible.  But, it may be asked, when a man
+carries out-speaking to such a pass as this, is he not apt to become a
+somewhat troublesome and discordant thread in the complex web of modern
+society?  No doubt any other man than Tennyson would have been so.  But
+the honest ring in the voice—which, by-the-by, was strengthened and
+deepened by the old-fashioned Lincolnshire accent—softened and, to a
+great degree, neutralized the effect of the bluntness.  Moreover, behind
+this uncompromising directness was apparent a noble and a splendid
+courtesy; for, above all things, Tennyson was a great and forthright
+English gentleman.  As he stood at the porch at Aldworth, meeting a guest
+or bidding him good-bye—as he stood there, tall, far beyond the height of
+average men, his naturally fair skin showing dark and tanned by the sun
+and wind—as he stood there no one could mistake him for anything but a
+great gentleman, who was also much more.  Up to the last a man of
+extraordinary presence, he showed, I think, the beauty of old age to a
+degree rarely seen.
+
+A friend of his who, visiting him on his birthday, discovered him thus
+standing at the door to welcome him, has described his unique appearance
+in words which are literally accurate at least:—
+
+    A poet should be limned in youth, they say,
+       Or else in prime, with eyes and forehead beaming
+       Of manhood’s noon—the very body seeming
+    To lend the spirit wings to win the bay;
+    But here stands he whose noontide blooms for aye,
+       Whose eyes, where past and future both are gleaming
+       With lore beyond all youthful poets’ dreaming,
+    Seem lit from shores of some far-glittering day.
+
+    Our master’s prime is now—is ever now;
+       Our star that wastes not in the wastes of night
+       Holds Nature’s dower undimmed in Time’s despite;
+    Those eyes seem Wisdom’s own beneath that brow,
+    Where every furrow Time hath dared to plough
+       Shines a new bar of still diviner light.
+
+This, then, was the secret of Tennyson’s personal charm.  And if the
+reader is sceptical as to its magnetic effect upon his friends, let me
+remind him of the amazing rarity of these great and guileless natures;
+let me remind him also that this world is comprised of two classes of
+people—the bores, whose name is legion, and the interesting people, whose
+name is _not_ legion—the former being those whose natural instinct of
+self-protective mimicry impels them to move about among their fellows
+hiding their features behind a mask of convention, the latter being those
+who move about with uncovered faces just as Nature fashioned them.  If
+guilelessness lends interest to a dullard, it is still more so with the
+really luminous souls.  So infinite is the creative power of nature that
+she makes no two individuals alike.  If we only had the power of
+inquiring into the matter, we should find not only that each individual
+creature that once inhabited one of the minute shells that go to the
+building of England’s fortress walls of chalk was absolutely unlike all
+the others, but that even the poor microbe himself, who in these days is
+so maligned, is also very intensely an individual.
+
+Some time ago the old discussion was revived in _The Athenæum_ as to
+whether the nightingale’s song was joyful or melancholy.  And, perhaps,
+if the poems of the late James Thomson and the poems of Mr. Austin Dobson
+were recited by their authors to a congregation of nightingales, the
+question would at once be debated amongst them, “Is the note of the human
+songster joyful or melancholy?”  The truth is that the humidity or the
+dryness of the atmosphere in the various habitats of the nightingale
+modifies so greatly the _timbre_ of the voice that, while a nightingale
+chorus at Fiesole may seem joyous, a nightingale chorus in the moist
+thickets along the banks of the Ouse may seem melancholy.  Nay, more, as
+I once told Tennyson at Aldworth, I, when a truant boy wandering along
+the banks of the Ouse (where six nightingales’ nests have been found in
+the hedge of a single meadow), got so used to these matters that I had my
+own favourite individuals, and could easily distinguish one from another.
+That rich climacteric swell which is reached just before the “jug, jug,
+jug,” varies amazingly, if the listener will only give the matter
+attention.  And if this infinite variety of individualism is thus seen in
+the lower animals, what must it be in man?
+
+There is, however, in the entire human race, a fatal instinct for marring
+itself.  To break down the exterior signs of this variety of
+individualism in the race by mutual imitation, by all sorts of
+affectations, is the object not only of the civilization of the Western
+world, but of the very negroes on the Gaboon River.  No wonder, then,
+that whensoever we meet, as at rarest interval we do meet, an individual
+who is able to preserve his personality as Nature meant it to live, we
+feel an attraction towards him such as is irresistible.  Now I would
+challenge those who knew him to say whether they ever knew any other man
+so free from this great human infirmity as Tennyson.  The way in which
+his simplicity of nature would manifest itself was, in some instances,
+most remarkable.  Though, of course, he had his share of that egoism of
+the artist without which imaginative genius may become sterile, it seemed
+impossible for him to realize what a transcendent position he took among
+contemporary writers all over the world.  “Poets,” he once said to me,
+“have not had the advantage of being _born_ to the purple.”  Up to the
+last he felt himself to be a poet at struggle more or less with the
+Wilsons and the Crokers who, in his youth, assailed him.  I, and a very
+dear friend of his, a family connexion, tried in vain to make him see
+that when a poet had reached a position such as he had won, no criticism
+could injure him or benefit him one jot.
+
+What has been called his exclusiveness is entirely mythical.  He was the
+most hospitable of men.  It was very rare, indeed, for him to part from a
+friend at his hall door, or at the railway station without urging him to
+return as soon as possible, and generally with the words, “Come whenever
+you like.”  The fact is, however, that for many years the strangest
+notions seem to have got abroad as to the claims of the public upon men
+of genius.  There seems now to be scarcely any one who does not look upon
+every man who has passed into the purgatory of fame as his or her common
+property.  The unlucky victim is to be pestered by letters upon every
+sort of foolish subject, and to be hunted down in his walks and insulted
+by senseless adulation.  Tennyson resented this, and so did Rossetti, and
+so ought every man who has reached eminence and respects his own genius.
+Neither fame nor life itself is worth having on such terms as these.
+
+One day, Tennyson when walking round his garden at Farringford, saw
+perched up in the trees that surrounded it, two men who had been refused
+admittance at the gate—two men dressed like gentlemen.  He very wisely
+gave the public to understand that his fame was not to be taken as an
+abrogation of his rights as a private English gentleman.  For my part,
+whenever I hear any one railing against a man of eminence with whom he
+cannot possibly have been brought into contact, I know at once what it
+means: the railer has been writing an idle letter to the eminent one and
+received no reply.
+
+Tennyson’s knowledge of nature—nature in every aspect—was very great.
+His passion for “star-gazing” has often been commented upon by readers of
+his poetry.  Since Dante no poet in any land has so loved the stars.  He
+had an equal delight in watching the lightning; and I remember being at
+Aldworth once during a thunderstorm, when I was alarmed at the temerity
+with which he persisted, in spite of all remonstrances, in gazing at the
+blinding lightning.  For moonlight effects he had a passion equally
+strong, and it is especially pathetic to those who know this to remember
+that he passed away in the light he so loved—in a room where there was no
+artificial light—nothing to quicken the darkness but the light of the
+full moon (which somehow seems to shine more brightly at Aldworth than
+anywhere else in England); and that on the face of the poet, as he passed
+away, fell that radiance in which he so loved to bathe it when alive.
+
+If it is as easy to describe the personal attraction of Tennyson as it is
+difficult to describe that of any one of his great contemporaries, we do
+not find the same relations existing between him and them as regards his
+place in the firmament of English poetry.  In a country with a composite
+language such as ours, it may be affirmed with special emphasis, that
+there are two kinds of poetry; one appealing to the uncultivated masses,
+whose vocabulary is of the narrowest; the other appealing to the few who,
+partly by temperament, and partly by education, are sensitive to the true
+beauties of poetic art.  While in the one case the appeal is made through
+a free and popular use of words, partly commonplace and partly steeped in
+that literary sentimentalism which in certain stages of an artificial
+society takes the place of the simple utterances of simple passion of
+earlier and simpler times; in the other case the appeal is made very
+largely through what Dante calls the “use of the sieve for noble words.”
+
+Of the one perhaps Byron is the type, the exemplars being such poets as
+those of the Mrs. Hemans school in England, and of the Longfellow school
+in America.  Of the other class of poets, the class typified by Milton,
+the most notable exemplars are Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge.  Wordsworth
+partakes of the qualities of both classes.  The methods of the first of
+these two groups are so cheap—they are so based on the wide severance
+between the popular taste and the poetic temper (which, though in earlier
+times it inspired the people, is now confined to the few)—that one may
+say of the first group that their success in finding and holding an
+audience is almost damnatory to them as poets.  As compared with the
+poets of Greece, however, both groups may be said to have secured only a
+partial success in poetry; for not only Æschylus and Sophocles, but Homer
+too, are as satisfying in the matter of noble words as though they had
+never tried to win that popular success which was their goal.  In this
+respect—as being, I mean, the compeer of the great poets of
+Greece—Shakespeare takes his peculiar place in English poetry.  Of all
+poets he is the most popular, and yet in his use of the “sieve for noble
+words” his skill transcends that of even Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and
+Keats.  His felicities of diction in the great passages seem little short
+of miraculous, and they are so many that it is easy to understand why he
+is so often spoken of as being a kind of inspired improvisatore.  That he
+was _not_ an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will take the
+trouble to compare the first edition of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with the
+received text, the first sketch of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ with the
+play as we now have it, and the ‘Hamlet’ of 1603 with the ‘Hamlet’ of
+1604, and with the still further varied version of the play given by
+Heminge and Condell in the Folio of 1623.  If we take into account,
+moreover, that it is only by the lucky chapter of accidents that we now
+possess the earlier forms of the three plays mentioned above, and that
+most likely the other plays were once in a like condition, we shall come
+to the conclusion that there was no more vigilant worker with Dante’s
+sieve than Shakespeare.  Next to Shakespeare in this great power of
+combining the forces of the two great classes of English poets, appealing
+both to the commonplace sense of a commonplace public and to the artistic
+sense of the few, stands, perhaps, Chaucer; but since Shakespeare’s time
+no one has met with anything like Tennyson’s success in effecting a
+reconciliation between popular and artistic sympathy with poetry in
+England.
+
+The biography of such a poet, one who has had such an immense influence
+upon the literary history of the entire Victorian epoch—indeed, upon the
+nineteenth century, for his work covers two-thirds of the century—will be
+a work of incalculable importance.  There is but one man who is fully
+equipped for such an undertaking, and fortunately that is his own son—a
+man of great ability, of admirable critical acumen, and of quite
+exceptional accomplishments.  His son’s filial affection was so precious
+to Tennyson that, although the poet’s powers remained undimmed to the
+last day of his life, I do not believe that we should have had all the
+splendid work of the last ten years without his affectionate and
+unwearied aid.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+All emotion—that of communities as well as that of individuals—is largely
+governed by the laws of ebb and flow.  It is immediately after a national
+mourning for the loss of a great man that a wave of reaction generally
+sets in.  But the eagerness with which these volumes {132} have been
+awaited shows that Tennyson’s hold upon the British public is as strong
+at this moment as it was on the day of his death.  This very popularity
+of his, however, has sometimes been spoken of by critics as though it
+were an impeachment of him as a poet.  “The English public is
+commonplace,” they say, “and hence the commonplace in poetry suits it.”
+And no doubt this is true as a general saying, otherwise what would
+become of certain English poetasters who are such a joy to the many and
+such a source of laughter to the few?  But a hardy critic would he be who
+should characterize Tennyson’s poetry as commonplace—that very poetry
+which, before it became popular, was decried because it was merely
+“poetry for poets.”  Still that poetry so rich and so rare as his should
+find its way to the heart of a people like the English, who have “not
+sufficient poetic instinct in them to give birth to vernacular poetry,”
+is undoubtedly a striking fact.  With regard to the mass of his work, he
+belonged to those poets whose appeal is as much through their mastery
+over the more subtle beauties of poetic art as through the heat of the
+poetic fire; and such as these must expect to share the fate of
+Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley.  Every true poet must have an individual
+accent of his own—an accent which is, however, recognizable as another
+variation of that large utterance of the early gods common to all true
+poets in all tongues.  Is it not, then, in the nature of things that, in
+England at least, “the fit though few” comprise the audience of such a
+poet until the voice of recognized Authority proclaims him?  But
+Authority moves slowly in these matters; years have to pass before the
+music of the new voice can wind its way through the convolutions of the
+general ear—so many years, indeed, that unless the poet is blessed with
+the sublime self-esteem of Wordsworth he generally has to die in the
+belief that his is another name “written in water.”  And was it always
+so?  Yes, always.
+
+England having, as we have said, no vernacular song, her poetry is
+entirely artistic, even such poetry as ‘The May Queen,’ ‘The Northern
+Farmer,’ and the idyls of William Barnes.  And it would be strange indeed
+if, until Authority spoke out, the beauties of artistic poetry were ever
+apparent to the many.  Is it supposable, for instance, that even the
+voice of Chaucer—is it supposable that even the voice of Shakspeare—would
+have succeeded in winning the contemporary ear had it not been for that
+great mass of legendary and romantic material which each of these found
+ready to his hand, waiting to be moulded into poetic form?  The fate,
+however, of Moore’s poetical narratives (perhaps we might say of Byron’s
+too) shows that if any poetry is to last beyond the generation that
+produced it, there is needed not only the romantic material, but also the
+accent, new and true, of the old poetic voice.  And these volumes show
+why in these late days, when the poet’s inheritance of romantic material
+seemed to have been exhausted, there appeared one poet to whom the
+English public gave an acceptance as wide almost as if he had written in
+the vernacular like Burns or Béranger.
+
+It is long since any book has been so eagerly looked forward to as this.
+The main facts of Tennyson’s life have been matter of familiar knowledge
+for so many years that we do not propose to run over them here once more.
+Nor shall we fill the space at our command with the biographer’s
+interesting personal anecdotes.  So fierce a light had been beating upon
+Aldworth and Farringford that the relations of the present Lord Tennyson
+to his father were pretty generally known.  In the story of English
+poetry these relations held a place that was quite unique.  What the
+biographer says about the poet’s sagacity, judgment, and good
+sense—especially what he says about his insight into the characters of
+those with whom he was brought into contact—will be challenged by no one
+who knew him.  Still, the fact remains that Tennyson’s temperament was
+poetic entirely.  And the more attention the poet pays to his art, the
+more unfitted does he become to pay attention to anything else.  For in
+these days the mechanism of social life moves on grating wheels that need
+no little oiling if the poet is to bring out the very best that is within
+him.  Not that all poets are equally vexed by the special infirmity of
+the poetic temperament.  Poets like Wordsworth, for instance, are
+supported against the world by love of Nature and by that “divine
+arrogance” which is sometimes a characteristic of genius.  Tennyson’s
+case shows that not even love of Nature and intimate communings with her
+are of use in giving a man peace when he has not Wordsworth’s
+temperament.  No adverse criticism could disturb Wordsworth’s sublime
+self-complacency.
+
+“Your father,” writes Jowett, with his usual wisdom, to Lord Tennyson,
+“was very sensitive, and had an honest hatred of being gossiped about.
+He called the malignant critics and chatterers ‘mosquitos.’  He never
+felt any pleasure at praise (except from his friends), but he felt a
+great pain at the injustice of censure.  It never occurred to him that a
+new poet in the days of his youth was sure to provoke dangerous
+hostilities in the ‘genus irritabile vatum’ and in the old-fashioned
+public.”
+
+It might almost be said, indeed, that had it not been for the
+ministrations, first of his beloved wife, and then of his sons,
+Tennyson’s life would have been one long warfare between the attitude of
+his splendid intellect towards the universe and the response of his
+nervous system to human criticism.  From his very childhood he seems to
+have had that instinct for confronting the universe as a whole which,
+except in the case of Shakespeare, is not often seen among poets.
+Star-gazing and speculation as to the meaning of the stars and what was
+going on in them seem to have begun in his childhood.  In his first
+Cambridge letter to his aunt, Mrs. Russell, written from No. 12, Rose
+Crescent, he says, “I am sitting owl-like and solitary in my room,
+nothing between me and the stars but a stratum of tiles.”  And his son
+tells us of a story current in the family that Frederick, when an Eton
+schoolboy, was shy of going to a neighbouring dinner-party to which he
+had been invited.  “Fred,” said his younger brother, “think of Herschel’s
+great star-patches, and you will soon get over all that.”  He had
+Wordsworth’s passion, too, for communing with Nature alone.  He was one
+of Nature’s elect who knew that even the company of a dear and intimate
+friend, howsoever close, is a disturbance of the delight that intercourse
+with her can afford to the true devotee.  In a letter to his future wife,
+written from Mablethorpe in 1839, he says:—
+
+    “I am not so able as in old years to commune _alone_ with Nature . . .
+    Dim mystic sympathies with tree and hill reaching far back into
+    childhood, a known landskip is to me an old friend, that continually
+    talks to me of my own youth and half-forgotten things, and indeed
+    does more for me than many an old friend that I know.  An old park is
+    my delight, and I could tumble about it for ever.”
+
+Moreover, he was always speculating upon the mystery and the wonder of
+the human story.  “The far future,” he says in a letter to Miss Sellwood,
+written from High Beech in Epping Forest, “has been my world always.”
+And yet so powerless is reason in that dire wrestle with temperament
+which most poets know, that with all these causes for despising criticism
+of his work, Tennyson was as sensitive to critical strictures as
+Wordsworth was indifferent.  “He fancied,” says his biographer, “that
+England was an unsympathetic atmosphere, and half resolved to live abroad
+in Jersey, in the South of France, or in Italy.  He was so far persuaded
+that the English people would never care for his poetry, that, had it not
+been for the intervention of his friends, he declared it not unlikely
+that after the death of Hallam he would not have continued to write.”
+And again, in reference to the completion of ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ his
+son says, “He warmed to his work because there had been a favourable
+review of him lately published in far-off Calcutta.”
+
+We dwell upon this weakness of Tennyson’s—a weakness which, in view of
+his immense powers, was certainly a source of wonder to his friends—in
+order to show, once for all, that without the tender care of his son he
+could never in his later years have done the work he did.  This it was
+which caused the relations between Tennyson and the writer of this
+admirable memoir to be those of brother with brother rather than of
+father with son.  And those who have been eagerly looking forward to
+these volumes will not be disappointed.  In writing the life of any man
+there are scores and scores of facts and documents, great and small,
+which only some person closely acquainted with him, either as relative or
+as friend, can bring into their true light; and this it is which makes
+documents so deceptive.  Here is an instance of what we mean.  In writing
+to Thompson, Spedding says of Tennyson on a certain occasion: “I could
+not get Alfred to Rydal Mount.  He would and would not (sulky one!),
+although Wordsworth was hospitably minded towards him.”  This remark
+would inevitably have been construed into another instance of that
+churlishness which is so often said (though quite erroneously) to have
+been one of Tennyson’s infirmities.  But when we read the following
+foot-note by the biographer, “He said he did not wish to intrude himself
+on the great man at Rydal,” we accept the incident as another proof of
+that “humility” which the son alludes to in his preface as being one of
+his father’s characteristics.  And of such evidence that had not the
+poet’s son written his biography the loss to literature would have been
+incalculable the book is full.  Evidence of a fine intellect, a fine
+culture, and a sure judgment is afforded by every page—afforded as much
+by what is left unsaid as by what is said.
+
+The biographer has invited a few of the poet’s friends to furnish their
+impressions of him.  These could not fail to be interesting; it is
+pleasant to know what impression Tennyson made upon men of such diverse
+characters as the Duke of Argyll, Jowett, Tyndall, Froude, and others.
+But so far as a vital portrait of the man is concerned they were not
+needed, so vigorously does the man live in the portrait painted by him
+who knew the poet best of all.
+
+“For my own part,” says the biographer, “I feel strongly that no
+biographer could so truly give him as he gives himself in his own works;
+but this may be because, having lived my life with him, I see him in
+every word which he has written; and it is difficult for me so far to
+detach myself from the home circle as to pourtray him for others.  There
+is also the impossibility of fathoming a great man’s mind; his deeper
+thoughts are hardly ever revealed.  He himself disliked the notion of a
+long, formal biography, for
+
+    None can truly write his single day,
+    And none can write it for him upon earth.
+
+“However, he wished that, if I deemed it better, the incidents of his
+life should be given as shortly as might be without comment, but that my
+notes should be final and full enough to preclude the chance of further
+and unauthentic biographies.
+
+“For those who cared to know about his literary history he wrote ‘Merlin
+and the Gleam.’  From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin—that
+spirit of poetry—which bade him know his power and follow throughout his
+work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a
+desire to ennoble the life of the world, and which helped him through
+doubts and difficulties to ‘endure as seeing Him who is invisible.’
+
+    Great the Master,
+    And sweet the Magic,
+    When over the valley,
+    In early summers,
+    Over the mountain,
+    On human faces,
+    And all around me,
+    Moving to melody,
+    Floated the Gleam.
+
+“In his youth he sang of the brook flowing through his upland valley, of
+the ‘ridged wolds’ that rose above his home, of the mountain-glen and
+snowy summits of his early dreams, and of the beings, heroes and fairies,
+with which his imaginary world was peopled.  Then was heard the ‘croak of
+the raven,’ the harsh voice of those who were unsympathetic—
+
+    The light retreated,
+    The Landskip darken’d,
+    The melody deaden’d,
+    The Master whisper’d,
+    ‘Follow the Gleam.’
+
+“Still the inward voice told him not to be faint-hearted but to follow
+his ideal.  And by the delight in his own romantic fancy, and by the
+harmonies of nature, ‘the warble of water,’ and ‘cataract music of
+falling torrents,’ the inspiration of the poet was renewed.  His Eclogues
+and English Idyls followed, when he sang the songs of country life and
+the joys and griefs of country folk, which he knew through and through,
+
+    Innocent maidens,
+    Garrulous children,
+    Homestead and harvest,
+    Reaper and gleaner,
+    And rough-ruddy faces
+    Of lowly labour.
+
+“By degrees, having learnt somewhat of the real philosophy of life and of
+humanity from his own experience, he rose to a melody ‘stronger and
+statelier.’  He celebrated the glory of ‘human love and of human heroism’
+and of human thought, and began what he had already devised, his epic of
+King Arthur, ‘typifying above all things the life of man,’ wherein he had
+intended to represent some of the great religions of the world.  He had
+purposed that this was to be the chief work of his manhood.  Yet the
+death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, and the consequent darkening of the
+whole world for him made him almost fail in this purpose; nor any longer
+for a while did he rejoice in the splendour of his spiritual visions, nor
+in the Gleam that had ‘waned to a wintry glimmer.’
+
+    Clouds and darkness
+    Closed upon Camelot;
+    Arthur had vanish’d
+    I knew not whither,
+    The King who loved me,
+    And cannot die.
+
+“Here my father united the two Arthurs, the Arthur of the Idylls and the
+Arthur ‘the man he held as half divine.’  He himself had fought with
+death, and had come out victorious to find ‘a stronger faith his own,’
+and a hope for himself, for all those in sorrow and for universal human
+kind, that never forsook him through the future years.
+
+    And broader and brighter
+    The Gleam flying onward,
+    Wed to the melody,
+    Sang thro’ the world.
+
+    * * *
+
+    I saw, wherever
+    In passing it glanced upon
+    Hamlet or city,
+    That under the Crosses
+    The dead man’s garden,
+    The mortal hillock,
+    Would break into blossom;
+    And so to the land’s
+    Last limit I came.
+
+“Up to the end he faced death with the same earnest and unfailing courage
+that he had always shown, but with an added sense of the awe and the
+mystery of the Infinite.
+
+    I can no longer,
+    But die rejoicing,
+    For thro’ the Magic
+    Of Him the Mighty,
+    Who taught me in childhood,
+    There on the border
+    Of boundless Ocean,
+    And all but in Heaven
+    Hovers the Gleam.
+
+“That is the reading of the poet’s riddle as he gave it to me.  He
+thought that ‘Merlin and the Gleam’ would probably be enough of biography
+for those friends who urged him to write about himself.  However, this
+has not been their verdict, and I have tried to do what he said that I
+might do.”
+
+There are many specialists in Tennysonian bibliography who take a pride
+(and a worthy pride) in their knowledge of the master’s poems.  But the
+knowledge of all of these specialists put together is not equal to that
+of him who writes this book.  Not only is every line at his fingers’
+ends, but he knows, either from his own memory or from what his father
+has told him, where and when and why every line was written.  He,
+however, shares, it is evident that dislike—rather let us say that
+passionate hatred—which his father, like so many other poets, had of that
+well-intentioned but vexing being whom Rossetti anathematized as the
+“literary resurrection man.”  Rossetti used to say that “of all signs
+that a man was devoid of poetic instinct and poetic feeling the impulse
+of the literary resurrectionist was the surest.”  Without going so far as
+this we may at least affirm that all poets writing in a language
+requiring, as English does, much manipulation before it can be moulded
+into perfect form must needs revise in the brain before the line is set
+down, or in manuscript, as Shelley did, or partly in manuscript and
+partly in type, as Coleridge did.  But the rakers-up of the “chips of the
+workshop,” to use Tennyson’s own phrase, seem to have been specially
+irritating to him, because he belonged to those poets who cannot really
+revise and complete their work till they see it in type.  “Poetry,” he
+said, “looks better, more convincing in print.”
+
+“From the volume of 1832,” says his son, “he omitted several stanzas of
+‘The Palace of Art’ because he thought that the poem was too full.  ‘The
+artist is known by his self-limitation’ was a favourite adage of his.  He
+allowed me, however, to print some of them in my notes, otherwise I
+should have hesitated to quote without his leave lines that he had
+excised.  He ‘gave the people of his best,’ and he usually wished that
+his best should remain without variorum readings, ‘the chips of the
+workshop,’ as he called them.  The love of bibliomaniacs for first
+editions filled him with horror, for the first editions are obviously in
+many cases the worst editions, and once he said to me: ‘Why do they
+treasure the rubbish I shot from my full-finish’d cantos?’
+
+    νήπιοι ουδε ισασιν οσω πλέον ημισυ παντός.
+
+For himself many passages in Wordsworth and other poets have been
+entirely spoilt by the modern habit of giving every various reading along
+with the text.  Besides, in his case, very often what is published as the
+latest edition has been the original version in his first manuscript, so
+that there is no possibility of really tracing the history of what may
+seem to be a new word or a new passage.  ‘For instance,’ he said, ‘in
+“Maud” a line in the first edition was ‘I will bury myself in _my books_,
+and the Devil may pipe to his own,’ which was afterwards altered to ‘I
+will bury myself _in myself_, &c.’: this was highly commended by the
+critics as an improvement on the _original_ reading—but it was actually
+in the first MS. draft of the poem.”
+
+Again, it is important to get a statement by one entitled to speak with
+authority as to what Tennyson did and what he did not believe upon
+religious matters.  He had in ‘In Memoriam’ and other poems touched with
+a hand so strong and sometimes so daring upon the teaching of modern
+science, and yet he had spoken always so reverently of what modern
+civilization reverences, that the most opposite lessons were read from
+his utterances.  To one thinker it would seem that Tennyson had thrown
+himself boldly upon the very foremost wave of scientific thought.  To
+another it would seem that Wordsworth (although, living and writing when
+he did, before the birth of the new cosmogony, he believed himself to be
+still in trammels of the old) was by temperament far more in touch with
+the new cosmogony than was Tennyson, who studied evolution more ardently
+than any poet since Lucretius.  While Wordsworth, notwithstanding a
+conventional phrase here and there, had an apprehension of Nature without
+the ever-present idea of the Power behind her, Spinosa himself was not so
+“God-intoxicated” a man as Tennyson.  His son sets the question at rest
+in the following pregnant words:—
+
+“Assuredly Religion was no nebulous abstraction for him.  He consistently
+emphasized his own belief in what he called the Eternal Truths; in an
+Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and All-loving God, Who has revealed Himself
+through the human attribute of the highest self-sacrificing love; in the
+freedom of the human will; and in the immortality of the soul.  But he
+asserted that ‘Nothing worthy proving can be proven,’ and that even as to
+the great laws which are the basis of Science, ‘We have but faith, we
+cannot know.’  He dreaded the dogmatism of sects and rash definitions of
+God.  ‘I dare hardly name His Name,’ he would say, and accordingly he
+named Him in ‘The Ancient Sage’ the ‘Nameless.’  ‘But take away belief in
+the self-conscious personality of God,’ he said, ‘and you take away the
+backbone of the world.’  ‘On God and God-like men we build our trust.’  A
+week before his death I was sitting by him, and he talked long of the
+Personality and of the Love of God, ‘That God, Whose eyes consider the
+poor,’ ‘Who catereth, even for the sparrow.’  ‘I should,’ he said,
+‘infinitely rather feel myself the most miserable wretch on the face of
+the earth with a God above, than the highest type of man standing alone.’
+He would allow that God is unknowable in ‘his whole world-self, and
+all-in-all,’ and that, therefore, there was some force in the objection
+made by some people to the word ‘Personality’ as being ‘anthropomorphic,’
+and that, perhaps ‘Self-consciousness’ or ‘Mind’ might be clearer to
+them: but at the same time he insisted that, although ‘man is like a
+thing of nought’ in ‘the boundless plan,’ our highest view of God must be
+more or less anthropomorphic: and that ‘Personality,’ as far as our
+intelligence goes, is the widest definition and includes ‘Mind,’
+‘Self-consciousness,’ ‘Will,’ ‘Love,’ and other attributes of the Real,
+the Supreme, ‘the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, Whose name
+is Holy.’”
+
+And then Lord Tennyson quotes a manuscript note of Jowett’s in which he
+says:—
+
+“Alfred Tennyson thinks it ridiculous to believe in a God and deny his
+consciousness, and was amused at some one who said of him that he had
+versified Hegelianism.”
+
+He notes also an anecdote of Edward Fitzgerald’s which speaks of a week
+with Tennyson, when the poet, picking up a daisy, and looking closely at
+its crimson-tipped leaves, said, “Does not this look like a thinking
+Artificer, one who wishes to ornament?”
+
+Here is a paragraph which will be read with the deepest interest, not
+only by every lover of poetry, but by every man whose heart has been rung
+by the most terrible of all bereavements—the loss of a beloved friend.
+Close as the tie of blood relationship undoubtedly is, it is based upon
+convention as much as upon nature.  It may exist and flourish vigorously
+when there is little or no community of taste or of thought:—
+
+“It may be as well to say here that all the letters from my father to
+Arthur Hallam were destroyed by his father after Arthur’s death: a great
+loss, as these particular letters probably revealed his inner self more
+truly than anything outside his poems.”
+
+We confess to belonging to those who always read with a twinge of remorse
+the private letters of a man in print.  But if there is a case where one
+must needs long to see the letters between two intimate friends, it is
+that of Tennyson and Arthur Hallam.  They would have been only second in
+interest to Shakespeare’s letters to that mysterious “Mr. W. H.” whose
+identity now can never be traced.  For, notwithstanding all that has
+recently been said, and ably said, to the contrary, the man to whom many
+of the sonnets were addressed was he whom “T. T.” addresses as “Mr. W.
+H.”
+
+But for an intimacy to be so strong as that which existed between
+Tennyson and Arthur H. Hallam there must be a kinship of soul so close
+and so rare that the tie of blood relationship seems weak beside it.  It
+is then that friendship may sometimes pass from a sentiment into a
+passion.  It did so in the case of Shakespeare and his mysterious friend,
+as the sonnets in question make manifest; but we are not aware that there
+is in English literature any other instance of friendship as a passion
+until we get to ‘In Memoriam.’  So profound was the effect of Hallam’s
+death upon Tennyson that it was the origin, his son tells us, of ‘The Two
+Voices; or, Thoughts of a Suicide.’  What was the secret of Hallam’s
+influence over Tennyson can never be guessed from anything that he has
+left behind either in prose or verse.  But besides the creative genius of
+the artist there is that genius of personality which is irresistible.
+With a very large gift of this kind of genius Arthur Hallam seems to have
+been endowed.
+
+“In the letters from Arthur Hallam’s friends,” says Lord Tennyson, “there
+was a rare unanimity of opinion about his worth.  Milnes, writing to his
+father, says that he had a ‘very deep respect’ for Hallam, and that
+Thirlwall, in after years the great bishop, for whom Hallam and my father
+had a profound affection, was ‘actually captivated by him.’  When at
+Cambridge with Hallam he had written: ‘He is the only man here of my own
+standing before whom I bow in conscious inferiority in everything.’
+Alford writes: ‘Hallam was a man of wonderful mind and knowledge on all
+subjects, hardly credible at his age. . . .  I long ago set him down for
+the most wonderful person I ever knew.  He was of the most tender,
+affectionate disposition.’”
+
+Lord Tennyson’s remarks upon the ‘Idylls of the King,’ and upon the
+enormous success of the book have a special interest, and serve to
+illustrate our opening remarks upon the popularity of his father’s works.
+Popular as Tennyson had become through ‘The Gardener’s Daughter,’ ‘The
+Miller’s Daughter,’ ‘The May Queen,’ ‘The Lord of Burleigh,’ and scores
+of other poems—endeared to every sorrowing heart as he had become through
+‘In Memoriam’—it was the ‘Idylls of the King’ that secured for him his
+unique place.  Many explanations of the phenomenon of a true poet
+securing the popular suffrages have been offered, one of them being his
+acceptance of the Laureateship.  But Wordsworth, a great poet, also
+accepted it; and he never was and never will be popular.  The wisdom of
+what Goethe says about the enormous importance of “subject” in poetic art
+is illustrated by the story of Tennyson and the ‘Idylls of the King.’
+
+For what was there in the ‘Idylls of the King’ that brought all England
+to Tennyson’s feet—made English people re-read with a new seeing in their
+eyes the poems which they once thought merely beautiful, but now thought
+half divine?  Beautiful these ‘Idylls’ are indeed, but they are not more
+beautiful than work of his that went before.  The rich Klondyke of Malory
+and Geoffrey of Monmouth had not escaped the eyes of previous
+prospectors.  All his life Milton had dreamed of the mines lying
+concealed in the “misty mid-region” of King Arthur and the Round Table,
+but, luckily for Tennyson, was led away from it into other paths.  With
+Milton’s immense power of sensuous expression—a power that impelled him,
+even when dealing with the spirit world, to flash upon our senses
+pictures of the very limbs of angels and fiends at fight—we may imagine
+what an epic of King Arthur he would have produced.  Dryden also
+contemplated working in this mine, but never did; and until Scott came
+with his Lyulph’s Tale in ‘The Bridal of Triermain,’ no one had taken up
+the subject but writers like Blackmore.  Then came Bulwer’s burlesque.
+Now no prospector on the banks of the Yukon has a keener eye for nuggets
+than Tennyson had for poetic ore, and besides ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and
+‘Launcelot and Guinevere,’ he had already printed the grandest of all his
+poems—the ‘Morte d’Arthur.’  It needed only the ‘Idylls of the King,’
+where episode after episode of the Arthurian cycle was rendered in poems
+which could be understood by all—it needed only this for all England to
+be set reading and re-reading all his poems, some of them more precious
+than any of these ‘Idylls’—poems whose familiar beauties shone out now
+with a new light.
+
+Ever since then Tennyson’s hold upon the British public seemed to grow
+stronger and stronger up to the day of his death, when Great Britain,
+and, indeed, the entire English-speaking race, went into mourning for
+him; nor, as we have said, has any weakening of that hold been
+perceptible during the five years that have elapsed since.
+
+The volumes are so crammed with interesting and important matter that to
+discuss them in one article is impossible.  But before concluding these
+remarks we must say that the good fortune which attended Tennyson during
+his life did not end with his death.  Fortunate, indeed, is the famous
+man who escapes the catchpenny biographer.  No man so illustrious as
+Tennyson ever before passed away without his death giving rise to a flood
+of books professing to tell the story of his life.  Yet it chanced that
+for a long time before his death a monograph on Tennyson by Mr. Arthur
+Waugh—which, though of course it is sometimes at fault, was carefully
+prepared and well considered—had been in preparation, as had also a
+second edition of another sketch of the poet’s life by Mr. Henry
+Jennings, written with equal reticence and judgment.  These two books,
+coming out, as far as we remember, in the very week of Tennyson’s
+funeral, did the good service of filling up the gap of five years until
+the appearance of this authorized biography by his son.  Otherwise there
+is no knowing what pseudo-biographies stuffed with what errors and
+nonsense might have flooded the market and vexed the souls of Tennysonian
+students.  For the future such pseudo-biographies will be impossible.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Notwithstanding the apparently fortunate circumstances by which Tennyson
+was surrounded, the record of his early life produces in the reader’s
+mind a sense of unhappiness.  Happiness is an affair of temperament, not
+of outward circumstances.  Happy, in the sense of enjoying the present as
+Wordsworth enjoyed it, Tennyson could never be.  Once, no doubt, Nature’s
+sweetest gift to all living things—the power of enjoying the present—was
+man’s inheritance too.  Some of the human family have not lost it even
+yet; but poets are rarely of these.  Give Wordsworth any pittance, enough
+to satisfy the simplest physical wants—enough to procure him plain living
+and leisure for “high thinking”—and he would be happier than Tennyson
+would have been, cracking the finest “walnuts” and sipping the richest
+“wine” amidst a circle of admiring and powerful friends.  As to opinion,
+as to criticism of his work—what was that to Wordsworth?  Had he not from
+the first the good opinion of her of whom he was the high priest elect.
+Natura Benigna herself?  Nay, had he not from the first the good opinions
+of Wordsworth himself and Dorothy?  Without this faculty of enjoying the
+present, how can a bard be happy?  For the present alone exists.  The
+past is a dream; the future is a dream; the present is the narrow plank
+thrown for an instant from the dream of the past to the dream of the
+future.  And yet it is the poet (who of all men should enjoy the raree
+show hurrying and scrambling along the plank)—it is he who refuses to
+enjoy himself on his own trembling little plank in order to “stare round”
+from side to side.
+
+Spedding, speaking in a letter to Thompson in 1835 of Tennyson’s visit to
+the Lake country, lets fall a few words that describe the poet in the
+period before his marriage more fully than could have been done by a
+volume of subtle analysis:—
+
+“I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than any one would have
+supposed who did not know his own almost personal dislike of the present,
+whatever it might be.”
+
+This is what makes us say that by far the most important thing in
+Tennyson’s life was his marriage.  He began to enjoy the present: “The
+peace of God came into my life before the altar when I wedded her.”  No
+more beautiful words than these were ever uttered by any man concerning
+any woman.  And to say that the words were Tennyson’s is to say that they
+expressed the simple truth, for his definition of human speech as God
+meant it to be would have been “the breath that utters truth.”  It would
+have been wonderful, indeed, if he, whose capacity of loving a friend was
+so great had been without an equal capacity of loving a woman.
+
+“Although as a son,” says the biographer, “I cannot allow myself full
+utterance about her whom I loved as perfect mother and ‘very woman of
+very woman’—‘such a wife’ and true helpmate she proved herself.  It was
+she who became my father’s adviser in literary matters; ‘I am proud of
+her intellect,’ he wrote.  With her he always discussed what he was
+working at; she transcribed his poems: to her and to no one else he
+referred for a final criticism before publishing.  She, with her ‘tender,
+spiritual nature,’ {156} and instinctive nobility of thought, was always
+by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic
+counsellor.  It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the
+annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable
+letters addressed to him from all parts of the world.  By her quiet sense
+of humour, by her selfless devotion, by ‘her faith as clear as the
+heights of the June-blue heaven,’ she helped him also to the utmost in
+the hours of his depression and of his sorrow.”
+
+There are some few people whose natures are so noble or so sweet that how
+rich soever may be their endowment of intellect, or even of genius, we
+seem to remember them mainly by what St. Gregory Nazianzen calls “the
+rhetoric of their lives.”  And surely the knowledge that this is so is
+encouraging to him who would fain believe in the high destiny of
+man—surely it is encouraging to know that, in spite of “the inhuman
+dearth of noble natures,” mankind can still so dearly love moral beauty
+as to hold it more precious than any other human force.  And certainly
+one of those whose intellectual endowments are outdazzled by the beauty
+of their qualities of heart and soul was the sweet lady whose death I am
+recording.
+
+Among those who had the privilege of knowing Lady Tennyson (and they were
+many, and these many were of the best), some are at this moment eloquent
+in talk about the perfect helpmate she was to the great poet, and the
+perfect mother she was to his children, and they quote those lovely lines
+of Tennyson which every one knows by heart:—
+
+    Dear, near and true—no truer Time himself
+    Can prove you, tho’ he make you evermore
+    Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life
+    Shoots to the fall—take this and pray that he
+    Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith to him,
+    May trust himself;—and after praise and scorn,
+    As one who feels the immeasurable world,
+    Attain the wise indifference of the wise;
+    And after autumn past—if left to pass
+    His autumn into seeming leafless days—
+    Draw toward the long frost and longest night,
+    Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
+    Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.
+
+Others dwell on the unique way in which those wistful blue eyes of hers
+and that beautiful face expressed the “tender spiritual nature” described
+by the poet—expressed it, indeed, more and more eloquently with the
+passage of years, and the bereavements the years had brought.  The
+present writer saw her within a few days of her death.  She did not seem
+to him then more fragile than ordinary.  For many years she whose fragile
+frame seemed to be kept alive by the love and sweet movements of the soul
+within had seemed as she lay upon her couch the same as she seemed when
+death was so near—intensely pale, save when a flush as slight as the pink
+on a wild rose told her watchful son that the subject of conversation was
+interesting her more than was well for her.  As a matter of fact,
+however, Lady Tennyson was no less remarkable as an intelligence than as
+the central heart of love and light that illumined one of the most
+beautiful households of our time.
+
+Though her special gift was no doubt music, she had, as Tennyson would
+say with affectionate pride, a “real insight into poetical effects”; and
+those who knew her best shared his opinion in this matter.  Whether, had
+her life not been devoted so entirely to others, she would have been a
+noticeable artistic producer it is hard to guess.  But there is no doubt
+that she was born to hold a high place as a conversationalist, brilliant
+and stimulating.  Notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness of her family
+lest the dinner talk should draw too heavily upon her small stock of
+physical power, the fascination of her conversation, both as to
+subject-matter and manner, was so irresistible that her friends were apt
+to forget how fragile she really was until warned by a sign from her son
+or, daughter-in-law, who adored her, that the conversation should be
+brought to a close.
+
+Her diary, upon which her son has drawn for certain biographical portions
+of his book shows how keen and how persistent was her interest in the
+poetry of her husband; it also shows how thorough was her insight into
+its principles.  As a rule, diaries, professing as they do to give
+portraitures of eminent men, are mostly very much worse than worthless.
+The points seized upon by the diarist are almost never physiognomic, and
+even if the diarist does give some glimpse of the character he professes
+to limn, the picture can only be partially true, inasmuch as it can never
+be toned down by other aspects of the character unseen by the diarist and
+unknown to him.
+
+Very different, however, is the record kept by Lady Tennyson.  As an
+instance of her power of selecting really luminous points for
+preservation in her diary, let me instance this.  Many a student of the
+‘Idylls of the King’ has been struck by a certain difference in the style
+between ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ‘The Passing of Arthur’ and the other
+idylls.  Indeed, more than once this difference has been cited as showing
+Tennyson’s inability to fuse the different portions of a long poem.  This
+fact had not escaped the eye of the loving wife and critic, and two days
+before her death she said to her son, “He said ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and
+‘The Passing of Arthur’ are purposely simpler in style than the other
+idylls as dealing with the awfulness of birth and death,” and wished this
+remark of the poet’s to be put on record in the book.
+
+It is needless to comment on the value of these few words and the light
+they shed upon Tennyson’s method.
+
+Those who saw Lady Tennyson in middle life and in advanced age, and were
+struck by that spiritual beauty of hers which no painter could ever
+render, will not find it difficult to imagine what she was at seventeen,
+when Tennyson suddenly came upon her in the “Fairy Wood,” and exclaimed,
+“Are you an Oread or a Dryad wandering here?”  And yet her beauty was
+only a small part of a charm that was indescribable.  An important event
+for English literature was that meeting in the “Fairy Wood.”  For, from
+the moment of his engagement, “the current of his mind was no longer and
+constantly in the channel of mournful memories and melancholy
+forebodings,” says his son.  And speaking of the year, 1838, the son
+tells us that, on the whole, he was happy in his life.  “When I wrote
+‘The Two Voices,’” he used to say, “I was so utterly miserable, a burden
+to myself and my family, that I said, ‘Is life worth anything?’ and now
+that I am old, I fear that I shall only live a year or two, for I have
+work still to do.”
+
+The hostile manner in which ‘Maud’ was received vexed him, and would,
+before his marriage, have deeply disturbed him.  A right view of this
+fine poem seems to have been taken by George Brimley, an admirable
+critic, who in the ‘Cambridge Essays,’ had already pointed out with great
+acumen many of the more subtle beauties of Tennyson.
+
+There are few more pleasant pages in this book than those which record
+Tennyson’s relations with another poet who was blessed in his
+wife—Browning.  Although the two poets had previously met (notably in
+Paris in 1851), the intimacy between them would seem to have been
+cemented, if not begun, during one of Tennyson’s visits to his and
+Browning’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham Common.
+Here Tennyson read to Browning the ‘Grail’ (which the latter pronounced
+to be Tennyson’s “best and highest”); and here Browning came and read his
+own new poem ‘The Ring and the Book,’ when Tennyson’s verdict on it was,
+“Full of strange vigour and remarkable in many ways, doubtful if it will
+ever be popular.”
+
+The record of his long intimacy with Coventry Patmore and Aubrey de Vere
+takes an important place in the biography, and the reminiscences of
+Tennyson by the latter poet form an interesting feature of the volumes.
+In George Meredith’s first little book Tennyson was delighted by the
+‘Love in a Valley,’ and he had a full appreciation of the great novelist
+all round.  With the three leading poets of a younger generation,
+Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne, he had slight acquaintance.
+Here, however, is an interesting memorandum by Tennyson recording his
+first meeting with Swinburne:
+
+“I may tell you, however, that young Swinburne called here the other day
+with a college friend of his, and we asked him to dinner, and I thought
+him a very modest and intelligent young fellow.  Moreover I read him what
+you vindicated [‘Maud’], but what I particularly admired in him was that
+he did not press upon me any verses of his own.”
+
+Of contemporary novels he seems to have been a voracious and
+indiscriminate reader.  In the long list here given of novelists whose
+books he read—good, bad, and indifferent—it is curious not to find the
+name of Mrs. Humphry Ward.  With Thackeray he was intimate; and he was in
+cordial relations with Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, and George Eliot.  Among
+the poets, besides Edward Fitzgerald and Coventry Patmore, he saw much of
+William Allingham.  Though he admired parts of ‘_Festus_’ greatly, we do
+not gather from these volumes that he met the author.  Dobell he saw much
+of at Malvern in 1846.  The letter-diary from Tennyson during his stay in
+Cornwall with Holman Hunt, Val. Prinsep, Woolner, and Palgrave, shows how
+exhilarated he could be by wind and sea.  The death of Lionel was a sad
+blow to him.  ‘Demeter, and other Poems,’ was dedicated to Lord Dufferin,
+“as a tribute,” says his son, “of affection and of gratitude; for words
+would fail me to tell the unremitting kindness shown by himself and Lady
+Dufferin to my brother Lionel during his fatal illness.”
+
+Tennyson’s critical insight could not fail to be good when exercised upon
+poetry.  Here are one or two of his sayings about Burns, which show in
+what spirit he would have read Henley’s recent utterances about that
+poet:—
+
+“Burns did for the old songs of Scotland almost what Shakespeare had done
+for the English drama that preceded him.”
+
+“Read the exquisite songs of Burns.  In shape each of them has the
+perfection of the berry, in light the radiance of the dew-drop: you
+forget for its sake those stupid things his serious poems.”
+
+Among the reminiscences and impressions of the poet which Lord Tennyson
+has appended to his second volume, it is only fair to specialize the
+admirable paper by F. T. Palgrave, which, long as it is, is not by one
+word too long.  That Jowett would write wisely and well was in the nature
+of things.  The only contribution, however, we can quote here is
+Froude’s, for it is as brief as it is emphatic:—
+
+    “I owe to your father the first serious reflexions upon life and the
+    nature of it which have followed me for more than fifty years.  The
+    same voice speaks to me now as I come near my own end, from beyond
+    the bar.  Of the early poems, ‘Love and Death’ had the deepest effect
+    upon me.  The same thought is in the last lines of the last poems
+    which we shall ever have from him.
+
+    “Your father in my estimate, stands, and will stand far away by the
+    side of Shakespeare above all other English Poets, with this relative
+    superiority even to Shakespeare, that he speaks the thoughts and
+    speaks _to_ the perplexities and misgivings of his own age.
+
+    “He was born at the fit time, before the world had grown inflated
+    with the vanity of Progress, and there was still an atmosphere in
+    which such a soul could grow.  There will be no such others for many
+    a long age.”
+
+                                                        “Yours gratefully,
+                                                           “J. A. FROUDE.”
+
+This letter is striking evidence of the influence Tennyson had upon his
+contemporaries.  Comparisons, however, between Shakespeare and other
+poets can hardly be satisfactory.  A kinship between him and any other
+poet can only be discovered in relation to one of the many sides of the
+“myriad-minded” man.  Where lies Tennyson’s kinship?  Is it on the
+dramatic side?  In a certain sense Tennyson possessed dramatic power
+undoubtedly; for he had a fine imagination of extraordinary vividness,
+and could, as in ‘Rizpah,’ make a character live in an imagined
+situation.  But to write a vital play requires more than this: it
+requires a knowledge—partly instinctive and partly acquired—of men as
+well as of man, and especially of the way in which one individual acts
+and reacts upon another in the complex web of human life.  To depict the
+workings of the soul of man in a given situation is one thing—to depict
+the impact of ego upon ego is another.  When we consider that the more
+poetical a poet is the more oblivious we expect him to be of the
+machinery of social life, it is no wonder that poetical dramatists are so
+rare.  In drama, even poetic drama, the poet must leave the “golden
+clime” in which he was born, must leave those “golden stars above” in
+order to learn this machinery, and not only learn it, but take a pleasure
+in learning it.
+
+In honest admiration of Tennyson’s dramatic work, where it is admirable,
+we yield to none, at the time when ‘The Foresters’ was somewhat coldly
+accepted by the press on account of its “lack of virility,” we considered
+that in the class to which it belonged, the scenic pastoral plays, it
+held a very worthy place.  That Tennyson’s admiration for Shakespeare was
+unbounded is evident enough.
+
+“There was no one,” says Jowett in his recollections of Tennyson, “to
+whom he was so absolutely devoted, no poet of whom he had a more intimate
+knowledge than Shakespeare.  He said to me, and probably to many others,
+that there was one intellectual process in the world of which he could
+not even entertain an apprehension—that was the plays of Shakespeare.  He
+thought that he could instinctively distinguish between the genuine and
+the spurious in them, _e.g._, between those parts of ‘King Henry VIII.,’
+which are generally admitted to be spurious, and those that are genuine.
+The same thought was partly working in his mind on another occasion, when
+he spoke of two things, which he conceived to be beyond the intelligence
+of man, and it was certainly not repeated by him from any irreverence;
+the one, the intellectual genius of Shakespeare—the other, the religious
+genius of Jesus Christ.”
+
+And in the pathetic account of Tennyson’s last moments we find it
+recorded that on the Tuesday before the Wednesday on which he died, he
+called out, “Where is my Shakespeare?  I must have my Shakespeare”; and
+again on the day of his death, when the breath was passing out of his
+body, he asked for his Shakespeare.  All this, however, makes it the more
+remarkable that of poets Shakespeare had the least influence upon
+Tennyson’s art.  There was a fundamental unlikeness between the genius of
+the two men.  The only point in common between them is that each in his
+own way captivated the suffrages both of the many and of the fit though
+few, notwithstanding the fact that their methods of dramatic approach in
+their plays are absolutely and fundamentally different.  Even their very
+methods of writing verse are entirely different.  Tennyson’s blank verse
+seems at its best to combine the beauties of the Miltonic and the
+Wordsworthian line; while nothing is so rare in his work as a
+Shakespearean line.  Now and then such a line as
+
+    Authority forgets a dying king
+
+turns up, but very rarely.  We agree with all Professor Jebb says in
+praise of Tennyson’s blank verse.
+
+“He has known,” says he, “how to modulate it to every theme, and to
+elicit a music appropriate to each; attuning it in turn to a tender and
+homely grace, as in ‘The Gardener’s Daughter ‘; to the severe and ideal
+majesty of the antique, as in ‘Tithonus’; to meditative thought, as in
+‘The Ancient Sage,’ or ‘Akbar’s Dream’; to pathetic or tragic tales of
+contemporary life, as in ‘Aylmer’s Field,’ or ‘Enoch Arden’; or to
+sustained romance narrative, as in the ‘Idylls.’  No English poet has
+used blank verse with such flexible variety, or drawn from it so large a
+compass of tones; nor has any maintained it so equably on a high level of
+excellence.”
+
+But we fail to see where he touched Shakespeare on the dramatic side of
+Shakespeare’s immense genius.
+
+Tennyson had the yearning common to all English poets to write
+Shakespearean plays, and the filial piety with which his son tries to
+uphold his father’s claims as a dramatist is beautiful; indeed, it is
+pathetic.  But the greatest injustice that can be done to a great poet is
+to claim for him honours that do not belong to him.  In his own line
+Tennyson is supreme, and this book makes it necessary to ask once more
+what that line is.  Shakespeare’s stupendous fame has for centuries been
+the candle into which all the various coloured wings of later days have
+flown with more or less of disaster.  Though much was said in praise of
+‘Harold’ by one of the most accomplished critics and scholars of our
+time, Dr. Jebb, {168} the play could not keep the stage, nor does it live
+as a drama as any one of Tennyson’s lyrics can be said to live.
+‘Becket,’ to be sure, was a success on the stage.  A letter to Tennyson
+in 1884 from so competent a student of Shakespeare as Sir Henry Irving
+declares that ‘Becket’ is a finer play than ‘King John.’  Still, the
+‘Morte d’Arthur,’ ‘The Lotos-Eaters,’ ‘The Gardener’s Daughter,’ outweigh
+the five-act tragedy in the world of literary art.  Of acted drama
+Tennyson knew nothing at all.  To him, evidently, the word _act_ in a
+printed play meant _chapter_; the word _scene_ meant _section_.  In his
+early days he had gone occasionally to see a play, and in 1875 he went to
+see Irving in Hamlet and liked him better than Macready, whom he had seen
+in the part.  Still later he went to see Lady Archibald Campbell act when
+‘Becket’ was given “among the glades of oak and fern in the Canizzaro
+Wood at Wimbledon.”  But handicapped as he was by ignorance of drama as a
+stage product how could he write Shakespearean plays?
+
+But let us for a moment consider the difference between the two men as
+poets.  It is hard to imagine the master-dramatist of the world—it is
+hard to imagine the poet who, by setting his foot upon allegory, saved
+our poetry from drying up after the invasion of gongorism, euphuism, and
+allegory—it is, we say, hard to imagine Shakespeare, if he had conceived
+and written such lovely episodes as those of the ‘Idylls of the King,’ so
+full of concrete pictures, setting about to turn his flesh-and-blood
+characters into symbolic abstractions.  There is in these volumes a
+curious document, a memorandum of Tennyson’s presented to Mr. Knowles at
+Aldworth in 1869, in which an elaborate scheme for turning into abstract
+ideas the characters of the Arthurian story is sketched:—
+
+    K.A. Religious Faith.
+
+    King Arthur’s three Guineveres.
+
+    The Lady of the Lake.
+
+    Two Guineveres, ye first prim Christianity.  2d Roman Catholicism: ye
+    first is put away and dwells apart, 2d Guinevere flies.  Arthur takes
+    to the first again, but finds her changed by lapse of Time.
+
+    Modred, the sceptical understanding.  He pulls Guinevere, Arthur’s
+    latest wife, from the throne.
+
+    Merlin Emrys, the Enchanter.  Science.  Marries his daughter to
+    Modred.
+
+    Excalibur, War.
+
+    The Sea, the people / The Saxons, the people } the S. are a
+    sea-people and it is theirs and a type of them.
+
+    The Round Table: liberal institutions.
+
+    Battle of Camlan.
+
+    2d Guinevere with the enchanted book and cup.
+
+And Mr. Knowles in a letter to the biographer says:—
+
+“He encouraged me to write a short paper, in the form of a letter to _The
+Spectator_, on the inner meaning of the whole poem, which I did, simply
+upon the lines he himself indicated.  He often said, however, that an
+allegory should never be pressed too far.”  Are all the lovely passages
+of human passion and human pathos in these ‘Idylls’ allegorical—that is
+to say—make-believe?  The reason why allegorical poetry is always
+second-rate, even at its best, is that it flatters the reader’s intellect
+at the expense of his heart.  Fancy “the allegorical intent” behind the
+parting of Hector and Andromache, and behind the death of Desdemona!
+Thank Heaven, however, Tennyson’s allegorical intent was a destructive
+afterthought.  For, says the biographer, “the allegorical drift here
+marked out was fundamentally changed in the later schemes in the
+‘Idylls.’” According to that delicate critic, Canon Ainger, there is a
+symbolical intent underlying ‘The Lady of Shalott’:—
+
+“The new-born love for something, for some one in the wide world from
+whom she has been so long secluded, takes her out of the region of
+shadows into that of realities.”
+
+But what concerns us here is the fact that when Shakespeare wrote,
+although he yielded too much now and then to the passion for gongorism
+and euphuism which had spread all over Europe, it was against the nature
+of his genius to be influenced by the contemporary passion for allegory.
+That he had a natural dislike of allegorical treatment of a subject is
+evident, not only in his plays, but in his sonnets.  At a time when the
+sonnet was treated as the special vehicle for allegory, Shakespeare’s
+sonnets were the direct outcome of emotion of the most intimate and
+personal kind—a fact which at once destroys the ignorant drivel about the
+Baconian authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, for what Bacon had was fancy,
+not imagination, and Fancy is the mother of Allegory, Imagination is the
+mother of Drama.  The moment that Bacon essayed imaginative work, he
+passed into allegory, as we see in the ‘New Atlantis.’
+
+It might, perhaps, be said that there are three kinds of poetical
+temperament which have never yet been found equally combined in any one
+poet—not even in Shakespeare himself.  There is the lyric temperament, as
+exemplified in writers like Sappho, Shelley, and others; there is the
+meditative temperament—sometimes speculative, but not always accompanied
+by metaphysical dreaming—as exemplified in Lucretius, Wordsworth, and
+others; and there is the dramatic temperament, as exemplified in Homer,
+Æschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare.  In a certain sense the Iliad is
+the most dramatic poem in the world, for the dramatic picture lives
+undisturbed by lyrism or meditation.  In Æschylus and Sophocles we find,
+besides the dramatic temperament, a large amount of the lyrical
+temperament, and a large amount of the meditative, but unaccompanied by
+metaphysical speculation.  In Shakespeare we find, besides the dramatic
+temperament, a large amount of the meditative accompanied by an
+irresistible impulse towards metaphysical speculation, but, on the whole,
+a moderate endowment of the lyrical temperament, judging by the few
+occasions on which he exercised it.  For fine as are such lyrics as
+“Hark, hark, the lark,” “Where the bee sucks,” &c., other poets have
+written lyrics as fine.
+
+In a certain sense no man can be a pure and perfect dramatist.  Every ego
+is a central sun found which the universe revolves, and it must needs
+assert itself.  This is why on a previous occasion, when speaking of the
+way in which thoughts are interjected into drama by the Greek dramatists,
+we said that really and truly no man can paint another, but only himself,
+and what we call character-painting is at the best but a poor mixing of
+painter and painted—a third something between these two, just as what we
+call colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism.
+Very likely this is putting the case too strongly.  But be this as it
+may, it is impossible to open a play of Shakespeare’s without being
+struck with the way in which the meditative side of Shakespeare’s mind
+strove with and sometimes nearly strangled the dramatic.  If this were
+confined to ‘Hamlet,’ where the play seems meant to revolve on a
+philosophical pivot, it would not be so remarkable.  But so hindered with
+thoughts, reflections, meditations, and metaphysical speculations was
+Shakespeare that he tossed them indiscriminately into other plays,
+tragedies, comedies, and histories, regardless sometimes of the character
+who uttered them.  With regard to metaphysical speculation, indeed, even
+when he was at work on the busiest scenes of his dramas, it would seem—as
+was said on the occasion before alluded to—that Shakespeare’s instinct
+for actualizing and embodying in concrete form the dreams of the
+metaphysician often arose and baffled him.  It would seem that when
+writing a comedy he could not help putting into the mouth of a man like
+Claudio those words which seem as if they ought to have been spoken by a
+metaphysician of the Hamlet type, beginning,
+
+    Ay, but to die and go we know not where.
+
+It would seem that he could not help putting into the mouth of Macbeth
+those words which also seem as if they ought to have been spoken on the
+platform at Elsinore, beginning,
+
+    To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.
+
+And if it be said that Macbeth was a philosopher as well as a murderer,
+and might have thought these thoughts in the terrible strait in which he
+then was, surely nothing but this marvellous peculiarity of Shakespeare’s
+temperament will explain his making Macbeth stop at Duncan’s bedroom
+door, dagger in hand, to say,
+
+    Now o’er the one half world Nature seems dead, &c.
+
+And again, though Prospero was very likely a philosopher too, even he
+steals from Hamlet’s mouth such words of the metaphysician as these:—
+
+          We are such stuff
+    As dreams are made on, and our little life
+    Is rounded with a sleep.
+
+That this is one of Shakespeare’s most striking characteristics will not
+be denied by any competent student of his works.  Nor will any such
+student deny that, exquisite as his lyrics are, they are too few and too
+unimportant in subject-matter to set beside his supreme wealth of
+dramatic picture, and his wide vision as a thinker and a metaphysical
+dreamer.
+
+Now on which of these sides of Shakespeare does Tennyson touch?  Is it on
+the lyrical side?  Shakespeare’s fine lyrics are so few that they would
+be lost if set beside the marvellous wealth of Tennyson’s lyrical work.
+On one side only of Shakespeare’s genius Tennyson touches, perhaps, more
+closely than any subsequent poet.  As a metaphysician none comes so near
+Shakespeare as he who wrote these lines:—
+
+       And more, my son! for more than once when I
+    Sat all alone, revolving in myself
+    The word that is the symbol of myself,
+    The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
+    And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud
+    Melts into Heaven.  I touch’d my limbs, the limbs
+    Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,
+    But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self.
+    The gain of such large life as match’d with ours
+    Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,
+    Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.
+
+Here, then, seems to be the truth of the matter: while Shakespeare had
+immense dramatic power, and immense meditative power with moderate lyric
+power, Tennyson had the lyric gift and the meditative gift without the
+dramatic.  His poems are more full of reflections, meditations, and
+generalizations upon human life than any poet’s since Shakespeare.  But
+then the moment that Shakespeare descended from those heights whether his
+metaphysical imagination had borne him, he became, not a lyrist, as
+Tennyson became, but a dramatist.  And this divides Shakespeare as far
+from Tennyson as it divides him from any other first-class writer.  We
+admirers of Tennyson must content ourselves with this thought, that,
+wonderful as it is for Shakespeare to have combined great metaphysical
+power with supreme power as a dramatist, it is scarcely less wonderful
+for Tennyson to have combined great metaphysical power with the power of
+a supreme lyrist.  Nay, is it not in a certain sense more wonderful for a
+lyrical impulse such as Tennyson’s to be found combined with a power of
+philosophical and metaphysical abstraction such as he shows in some of
+his poems?
+
+
+
+
+IV.  CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI.
+1830–1894.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Although the noble poet and high-souled woman we have just lost had been
+ill and suffering from grievous pain for a long time, Death came at last
+with a soft hand which could but make him welcome.  Since early in
+August, when she took to her bed, she was so extremely weak and otherwise
+ill that one scarcely expected her (at any time) to live more than a
+month or so, and for the last six weeks or thereabouts—say from the 15th
+of November—one expected her to die almost from day to day.  My dear
+friend William Rossetti, who used to go to Torrington Square every
+afternoon, saw her on the afternoon of December 28th [1894].  He did not,
+he told me, much expect to find her alive in the afternoon of the 29th,
+and intended, therefore, to make his next call earlier.  She died at
+half-past seven in the morning of the 29th, in the presence only of her
+faithful nurse Mrs. Read.  It was through her sudden collapse that she
+missed at her side, when she passed away, that brother whose whole life
+has been one of devotion to his family, and whose tireless affection for
+the last of them was one of the few links that bound Christina’s sympathy
+to the earth.
+
+  [Picture: Christina Rossetti.  From a crayon-drawing by D. G. Rossetti
+         reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti]
+
+Her illness was of a most complicated kind: two years and a half ago she
+was operated on for cancer: functional malady of the heart, accompanied
+by dropsy in the left arm and hand, followed.  Although on Friday the
+serious symptoms of her case became, as I have said, accentuated, she was
+throughout the day and night entirely conscious; and so peaceful and
+apparently so free from pain was she that neither the medical man nor the
+nurse supposed the end to be quite so near as it was.  During all this
+time, up to the moment of actual dissolution, her lips seemed to be
+moving in prayer, but, of course, this with her was no uncommon sign:
+duty and prayer ordered her life.  Her sufferings, I say, had been great,
+but they had been encountered by a fortitude that was greater still.
+Throughout all her life, indeed, she was the most notable example that
+our time has produced of the masterful power of man’s spiritual nature
+when at its highest to conquer in its warfare with earthly conditions, as
+her brother Gabriel’s life was the most notable example of the struggle
+of the spiritual nature with the bodily when the two are equally
+equipped.  It is the conviction of one whose high privilege it was to
+know her in many a passage of sorrow and trial that of all the poets who
+have lived and died within our time, Christina Rossetti must have had the
+noblest soul.
+
+A certain irritability of temper, which was, perhaps, natural to her,
+had, when I first became acquainted with her family (about 1872), been
+overcome, or at least greatly chastened, by religion (which with her was
+a passion) and by a large acquaintance with grief, resulting in a long
+meditation over the mystery of pain.  In wordly matters her generosity
+may be described as boundless; but perhaps it is not difficult for a poet
+to be generous in a worldly sense—to be free in parting with that which
+can be precious only to commonplace souls.  What, however, is not so easy
+is for one holding such strong religious convictions as Christina
+Rossetti held to cherish such generous thoughts and feelings as were hers
+about those to whom her shibboleths meant nothing.  This was what made
+her life so beautiful and such a blessing to all.  The indurating effects
+of a selfish religiosity never withered her soul nor narrowed it.  With
+her, indeed, religion was very love—
+
+    A largess universal like the sun.
+
+It is always futile to make guesses as to what might have been the
+development of a poet’s genius and character had the education of
+circumstances been different from what it was, and perhaps it is
+specially futile to guess what would have been the development under
+other circumstances of her, the poet of whom her friends used to speak
+with affection and reverence as “Christina.”
+
+On the death of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti (or as his friends
+used to call him Gabriel) in 1882, I gave that sketch of the family story
+which has formed the basis of most of the biographical notices of him and
+his family; it would, therefore, be superfluous to reiterate what I said
+and what is now matter of familiar knowledge.  It may, however, be as
+well to remind the reader that, owing to the peculiar position in London
+of the father Gabriele Rossetti, the family were during childhood and
+partly during youth as much isolated from the outer English world as were
+the family between whom and themselves there were many points of
+resemblance—the Brontës.  The two among them who were not in youth of a
+retiring disposition were he who afterwards became the most retiring of
+all, Gabriel, and Maria, the latter of whom was in one sense retiring,
+and in another expansive.  In her dark brown, or, as some called them,
+black eyes, there would suddenly come up and shine an enthusiasm, a
+capacity of poetic and romantic fire, to the quelling of which there must
+have gone an immensity of religious force.  As to Gabriel, during a large
+portion of his splendid youth he exhibited a genial breadth of front that
+affined him to Shakespeare and Walter Scott.  The English strain in the
+family found expression in him, and in him alone.  There was a something
+in the hearty ring of his voice that drew Englishmen to him as by a
+magnet.
+
+While it was but little that the others drew from the rich soil of merry
+England, he drew from it half at least of his radiant personality—half at
+least of his incomparable genius.  Though he was in every way part and
+parcel of that marvellous little family circle of children of genius in
+Charlotte Street, he had also the power of looking at it from the
+outside.  It would be strange, indeed, if this or any other power should
+be found lacking in him.  I have often heard Rossetti—by the red flicker
+of the studio fire, when the gas was turned down to save his
+eyesight—give the most graphic and fascinating descriptions of the little
+group and the way in which they grew up to be what they were under the
+tuition of a father whose career can only be called romantic, and a
+mother whose intellectual gifts were so remarkable that, had they not
+been in some great degree stifled by the exercise of an entire
+self-abnegation on behalf of her family, she, too, must have become an
+important figure in literature.
+
+    [Picture: Mrs. Rossetti.  From a crayon-drawing by D. G. Rossetti
+         reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti]
+
+The father died in 1854, many years before I knew the family; but
+Gabriel’s description of him; his conversations with his brother-refugees
+and others who visited the house—conversations in which the dreamy and
+the matter-of-fact were oddly blent; his striking skill as an
+improvisatore of Italian poetry, and also as a master of pen-and-ink
+drawing; his great musical gift—a gift which none of his family seemed to
+have inherited; his fine tenor voice; his unflinching courage and
+independence of character (qualities which made him refuse, in a
+Protestant country, to make open abjuration of the creed in which the
+Rossettis had been reared, though he detested the Pope and all his works,
+and was, if not an actual freethinker, thoroughly
+latitudinarian)—Gabriel’s pictures of this poet and father of poets were
+so vivid—so amazingly and incredibly vivid—that I find it difficult to
+think I never met the father in the flesh: not unfrequently I find myself
+talking of him as if I had known him.  What higher tribute than this can
+be made to a narrator’s dramatic power?  Those who have seen the elder
+Rossetti’s pen-and-ink drawings (the work of a child) will agree with me
+that Gabriel did not over-estimate them in the least degree.  All the
+Rossettis inherited from their father voices so musical that they could
+be recognized among other voices in any gathering, and no doubt that
+clear-cut method of syllabification which was so marked a characteristic
+of Christina’s conversation, but which gave it a sort of foreign tone,
+was inherited from the father.  Her affinity to the other two members of
+the family was seen in that intense sense of duty of which Gabriel, with
+all his generosity, had but little.  There was no martyrdom she would not
+have undertaken if she thought that duty called upon her to undertake it,
+and this may be said of the other two.
+
+In most things, however, Christina Rossetti seemed to stand midway
+between Gabriel and the other two members of her family, and it was the
+same in physical matters.  She had Gabriel’s eyes, in which hazel and
+blue-grey were marvellously blent, one hue shifting into the other,
+answering to the movements of the thoughts—eyes like the mother’s.  And
+her brown hair, though less warm in colour than his during his boyhood,
+was still like it.  When a young girl, at the time that she sat for the
+Virgin in the picture now in the National Gallery, she was, as both her
+mother and Gabriel have told me, really lovely, with an extraordinary
+expression of pensive sweetness.  She used to have in the little back
+parlour a portrait of herself at eighteen by Gabriel, which gives all
+these qualities.  Even then, however, the fullness in the eyes was
+somewhat excessive.  Afterwards her ill health took a peculiar form, the
+effect of which was that the eyes were, in a manner of speaking, pushed
+forward, and although this protuberance was never disagreeable, it
+certainly took a good deal of beauty from her face.
+
+Dominant, however, as was the father’s personality among his friends, the
+mother’s influence upon the children was stronger than his; and no
+wonder, for I think there was no beautiful charm of woman that Mrs.
+Rossetti lacked.  She did not seem at all aware that she was a woman of
+exceptional gifts, yet her intellectual penetration and the curious
+exactitude of her knowledge were so remarkable that Gabriel accepted her
+dicta as oracles not to be challenged.  One of her specialities was the
+pronunciation of English words, in which she was an authority.  I cannot
+resist giving one little instance, as it illustrates a sweet feature of
+Gabriel’s character.  It occurred on a lovely summer’s day in the old
+Kelmscott manor house in 1873, when Mrs. Rossetti, Christina, and myself
+were watching Gabriel at work upon ‘Proserpine.’  I had pronounced the
+word _aspirant_ with the accent upon the middle syllable.  “Pardon me, my
+dear fellow,” said he, without looking from his work, “that word should
+be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, as a purist like you
+ought to know.”  On my challenging this, he said, in a tone which was
+meant to show that he was saying the last word upon the subject, “My
+mother always says _áspirant_, and she is always right upon matters of
+pronunciation.”  “Then I shall always say _áspirant_,” I replied.  And I
+may add that I now do say _áspirant_, and, right or wrong, intend to say
+_áspirant_ so long as this breath of mine enables me to say _áspirant_ at
+all.  Afterwards Christina, as we were strolling by the weir, watching
+Gabriel and George Hake pounding across the meadows at the rate of five
+miles an hour, said to me, “I think you were right about _aspírant_.”
+“No,” I said, “it is a dear, old-fashioned way.  Your mother says
+_áspirant_; I now remember that my own mother said _áspirant_.  I shall
+stick to _áspirant_ till the end of the chapter.”  And Christina said,
+“Then so will I.”
+
+Among Mrs. Rossetti’s accomplishments was reading aloud, mainly from
+imaginative writers, and I cannot recall without a thrill of mingled
+emotions a delightful stay of mine at Kelmscott in the summer of ’73,
+when she, whose age then was seventy-three, used to read out to us all
+sorts of things.  And writing these words makes me hear those readings
+again—makes me hear, through the open casement of the quaint old house,
+the blackbirds from the home field trying in vain to rival the music of
+that half-Italian, half-English voice.  To have been admitted into such a
+charmed circle I look upon as one of the greatest privileges of my life.
+It is something for a man to have lived within touch of Christina
+Rossetti and her mother.  From her father, however, Christina took,
+either by the operation of some law of heredity or from early association
+with the author of ‘Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo’ and
+‘La Beatrice di Dante,’ that passion for symbolism which is one of the
+chief features of her poetry.  There is, perhaps, no more striking
+instance of the inscrutable lines in which ancestral characteristics
+descend than the way in which the passion for symbolism was inherited by
+Christina and Gabriel Rossetti from their father.
+
+While Christina’s poetical work may be described as being all symbolical,
+she was not much given, like her brother, to read symbols into the
+every-day incidents of life.  Gabriel, on the contrary, though using
+symbolism in his poetry in only a moderate degree, allowed his instinct
+for symbolizing his own life to pass into positive superstition.  When a
+party of us—including Mrs. Rossetti, Christina, the two aunts, Dr. Hake,
+with four of his sons, and myself—were staying for Christmas with Gabriel
+near Bognor, a tree fell in the garden during a storm.  While Gabriel
+seemed inclined to take it as a sign of future disaster, Christina, whose
+poetry is so full of symbolism, would smile at such a notion.  Yet
+Gabriel could speak of his father’s symbolizing (as in ‘La Beatrice di
+Dante’) as being absolutely and hopelessly eccentric and worthless.  This
+is remarkable, for one would have thought that it was impossible to read
+those extraordinary works of the elder Rossetti’s without being impressed
+by the rare intellectual subtlety of the Italian scholar.
+
+Of course the opportunities of brother and sister of studying Nature were
+identical.  Both were born in London, and during childhood saw Nature
+only as a holiday scene.  Christina would talk with delight of her
+grandfather’s cottage retreat about thirty miles from London, to which
+she used to go for a holiday in a stage coach, and of the beauty of the
+country around.  But these expeditions were not numerous, and came to an
+end when she was a child of seven or eight, and it was very little that
+she saw outside London before girlhood was past.  I have myself heard her
+speak of what she has somewhere written about—the rapture of the sight of
+some primroses growing in a railway cutting.  It is, of course, a great
+disadvantage to any poet not to have been born in the country; learned in
+Nature the city-born poet can never be, as we see in the case of Milton,
+who loved Nature without knowing her.  It is here that Jean Ingelow has
+such an advantage over Christina Rossetti.  Her love of flowers, and
+birds, and trees, and all that makes the earth so beautiful, is not one
+whit stronger than Christina’s own, but it is a love born of an
+exhaustive detailed knowledge of Nature’s life.
+
+On a certain occasion when walking with a friend at Hunter’s Forestall,
+near Herne Bay, where she and her mother were nursing Gabriel through one
+of his illnesses, the talk ran upon Shelley’s ‘Skylark,’ a poem which she
+adored.  She was literally bewildered because the friend showed that he
+was able to tell, from a certain change of sound in the note of a skylark
+that had risen over the lane, the moment when the bird had made up its
+mind to cease singing and return to the earth.  It seemed to her an
+almost supernatural gift, and yet an ignorant ploughman will often be
+able to do the same thing.  This kind of intimacy with Nature she
+coveted.  With the lower animals, nevertheless, she had a strange kind of
+sympathy of her own.  Young creatures especially understood the playful
+humour of her approach.  A delightful fantastic whim was the bond between
+her and puppies and kittens and birds.  Her intimacy with Nature—of a
+different kind altogether from that of Wordsworth and Tennyson—was of the
+kind that I have described on a previous occasion as Sufeyistic: she
+loved the beauty of this world, but not entirely for itself; she loved it
+on account of its symbols of another world beyond.  And yet she was no
+slave to the ascetic side of Christianity.  No doubt there was mixed with
+her spiritualism, or perhaps underlying it, a rich sensuousness that
+under other circumstances of life would have made itself manifest, and
+also a rare potentiality of deep passion.  It is this, indeed, which
+makes the study of her great and noble nature so absorbing.
+
+Perhaps for strength both of subject and of treatment, Christina
+Rossetti’s masterpiece is ‘Amor Mundi.’  Here we get a lesson of human
+life expressed, not didactically, but in a concrete form of unsurpassable
+strength, harmony, and concision.  Indeed, it may be said of her work
+generally that her strength as an artist is seen not so much in mastery
+over the rhythm, or even over the verbal texture of poetry, as in the
+skill with which she expresses an allegorical intent by subtle suggestion
+instead of direct preachment.  Herein ‘An Apple Gathering’ is quite
+perfect.  It is, however, if I may venture to say so, a mistake to speak
+of Christina Rossetti as being a great poetic artist.  Exquisite as her
+best things are, no one had a more uncertain hand than she when at work.
+Here, as in so many things, she was like Blake, whose influence upon her
+was very great.
+
+Of self-criticism she had almost nothing.  On one occasion, many years
+ago now, she expressed a wish to have some of her verses printed in _The
+Athenæum_, and I suggested her sending them to 16, Cheyne Walk, her
+brother’s house, where I then used to spend much time in a study that I
+occupied there.  I said that her brother and I would read them together
+and submit them to the editor.  She sent several poems (I think about
+six), not one of which was in the least degree worthy of her.  This
+naturally embarrassed me, but Gabriel, who entirely shared my opinion of
+the poems, wrote at once to her and told her that the verses sent were,
+both in his own judgment and mine, unworthy of her, and that she “had
+better buckle to at once and write another poem.”  She did so, and the
+result was an exquisite lyric which appeared in _The Athenæum_.  Here is
+where she was wonderfully unlike Gabriel, whose power of self-criticism
+in poetry was almost as great as Tennyson’s own.  But in the matter of
+inspiration she was, I must think, above Gabriel—above almost everybody.
+
+If English rhymed metres had been as easy to work in as Italian rhymed
+metres, her imagination was so vivid, her poetic impulse was so strong,
+and, indeed, her poetic wealth so inexhaustible, that she would have
+stood in the front rank of English poets.  But the writer of English
+rhymed measures is in a very different position as regards
+improvisatorial efforts from the Italian who writes in rhymed measures.
+He has to grapple with the metrical structure—to seize the form by the
+throat, as it were, and force it to take in the enormous wealth at the
+English poet’s command.  Fine as is the ‘Prince’s Progress,’ for instance
+(and it would be hard to find its superior in regard to poetic material
+in the whole compass of Victorian poetry), the number of rugged lines the
+reader has to encounter weighs upon and distresses him until, indeed, the
+conclusion is reached: then the passion and the pathos of the subject
+cause the poem to rise upon billows of true rhythm.  On the other hand,
+however, it may be said that a special quality of her verse is a _curiosa
+felicitas_ which makes a metrical blemish tell as a kind of suggestive
+grace.  But I must stop; I must bear in mind that he who has walked and
+talked with Christina Rossetti, burdened with a wealth of remembered
+beauty from earth and heaven, runs the risk of becoming garrulous.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+In regard to unpublished manuscripts which a writer has left behind him,
+the responsibilities of his legal representatives are far more grave than
+seems to be generally supposed.  In deciding what posthumous writings an
+executor is justified in giving to the public it is important, of course,
+to take into account the character, the idiosyncrasy of the writer in
+regard to all his relations towards what may be called the mechanism of
+every-day life.  Some poets are so methodical that the mere fact of
+anything having been left by them in manuscript unaccompanied by
+directions as to its disposal is _primâ facie_ evidence that it was
+intended to be withheld from the public, either temporarily for revision
+or finally and absolutely.  And, of course, the representative,
+especially if he is also a relative or a friend, has to consider
+primarily the intentions of the dead.  If loyalty to living friends is a
+duty, what shall be said of loyalty to friends who are dead?  This,
+indeed, has a sanction of the deepest religious kind.
+
+No doubt, in the philosophical sense, the aspiration of the dead artist
+for perfect work and the honour it brings is a delusion, a sweet mockery
+of the fancy.  But then so is every other aspiration which soars above
+the warm circle of the human affections, and if this delusion of the dead
+artist was held worthy of respect during the artist’s life, it is worthy
+of respect—nay, it is worthy of reverence—after he is dead.  Now every
+true artist when at work has before him an ideal which he would fain
+reach, or at least approach, and if he does not himself know whether in
+any given exercise he has reached that ideal or neared it, we may be
+pretty sure that no one else does.  Hence, whenever there is apparent in
+the circumstances under which the MS. has been found the slightest
+indication that the writer did not wish it to be given to the public, the
+representative who ignores this indication sins against that reverence
+for the dead which in all forms of civilization declares itself to be one
+of the deepest instincts of man.
+
+That the instinct we are speaking of is really one of the primal
+instincts is the very first fact that archæology vouches for.  Of many
+lost races, such as the Aztecs and Toltecs, for instance, we have no
+historical traces save those which are furnished by testimonials of their
+reverence for the dead.  But that this fine instinct is now dying out in
+the Western world—that it will soon be eliminated from the human
+constitution of races that are generally considered to be the most
+advanced—is made manifest by the present attitude of England and America
+towards their illustrious dead.  In the literary arena of both countries,
+indeed, so entire is the abrogation of this most beautiful of all
+feelings—so recklessly and so shamefully are not only raw manuscripts,
+but private letters, put up to auction for publication—that at last the
+great writers of our time, confronted by this new terror, are wisely
+beginning to take care of themselves and their friends by a holocaust of
+every scrap of paper lying in their desks.
+
+So demoralized has the literary world become by the present craze for
+notoriety and for personal details of prominent men that an executor who
+in regard to the disposal of his testator’s money would act with the most
+rigid scrupulousness will, in regard to the MSS. he finds in his
+testator’s desk, commit, “for the benefit of the public,” an outrage that
+would have made the men of a less vulgar period shudder.  The “benefit of
+the public,” indeed!  Who is this “public,” and what are its rights as
+against the rights of the dead poet, whose heartstrings are woven into
+“copy” by the disloyal friend he trusted?  The inherent callousness of
+man’s nature is never so painfully seen as in the relation of this ogre,
+“the public,” to dead genius.  Without the smallest real reverence for
+genius—without the smallest capacity of distinguishing the poetaster it
+always adores from the true poet it always ignores—the public can still
+fall down before the pedestal upon which genius has been placed by the
+select few—fall down with its long ears wide open for gossip about
+genius, or anything else that is talked about.
+
+It was with such thoughts as these that we opened the present somewhat
+bulky volume {195}—not, however, with many misgivings; for Christina
+Rossetti, before she made her brother executor, knew what were his views
+as to the rights of the public as against the rights of genius.  And if
+he has printed here every poem he could lay hands upon, he may fairly be
+assumed to have done so with the consent of a sister whom he loved so
+dearly and by whom he was so dearly loved.  Fortunately there are not
+many of these relics that are devoid of a deep interest, some from the
+biographical point of view, some from the poetical.
+
+Again, what is to be said about such part of a dead author’s writing as,
+having appeared in print, has afterwards passed through the author’s
+crucible of artistic revision?  What about the executor’s duty here,
+where the case between the author and the public stands on a different
+footing?  At the present time, when newspapers and novels alone are read,
+it is not the poet’s verses which most people read, but paragraphs about
+what the author and his wife and children “eat and drink and avoid”: a
+time when, if the poet’s verses are read at all, it is the accidents
+rather than the essentials of the work that seem primarily to concern the
+public.  At such a time an editor is not entirely master of his actions.
+Doubtless, there is much reason in the wrath of Tennyson and other great
+poets against the “literary resurrection man,” who, though incapable of
+understanding the beauties of a beautiful work, can take a very great
+interest in poring over the various stages through which that work has
+passed on its way to perfection.  These poets, however, are apt to forget
+that, after a poem or line has once passed into print, its final
+suppression is impossible.  And perhaps there are other reasons why, in
+this matter, an editor should be allowed some indulgence.
+
+Here, for instance, is a puzzling case to be tried _in foro conscientiæ_.
+In the first edition of ‘Goblin Market,’ published in 1862, appeared
+three poems of more breadth of treatment than any of the others: ‘Cousin
+Kate,’ a ballad, ‘Sister Maude,’ a ballad, and ‘A Triad,’ a sonnet.  In
+subsequent issues of the book these were all omitted.  Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti, speaking of ‘Sister Maude,’ says: “I presume that my sister,
+with overstrained scrupulosity, considered its moral tone to be somewhat
+open to exception.  In such a view I by no means agree, and I therefore
+reproduce it.”  If Christina’s objection was valid when she raised it, it
+is, of course, valid now, when the beloved poet is in the “country beyond
+Orion,” and knows what sanctions are of man’s imagining, and what
+sanctions are more eternal than the movements of the stars.
+
+The question here is, What were Christina Rossetti’s wishes? not whether
+her brother “agrees” with them.  Hence, if it were not certain that some
+one would soon have restored them, would Mr. W. M. Rossetti have
+hesitated before doing so?  For they are among the most powerful things
+Christina Rossetti ever wrote, and it was a subject of deep regret to her
+friends that she suppressed them.  Yet she withdrew them from
+conscientious motives.  In ‘Sister Maude’ she showed how great was her
+power in the most difficult of all forms of poetic art—the romantic
+ballad.  Splendid as are Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Sister Helen’ and ‘Rose
+Mary,’ the literary _aura_ surrounding them prevents them from seeming—as
+the best of the Border ballads seem—Nature’s very voice muttering in her
+dreams of the pathos and the mystery of the human story.  It was not,
+perhaps, given even to Rossetti to get very near to that supreme old poet
+(not forgotten, because never known) who wrote “May Margaret’s” appeal to
+the ghost of her lover Clerk Saunders:—
+
+    Is there ony room at your head, Saunders?
+       Is there ony room at your feet?
+    Is there ony room at your side, Saunders,
+       Where fain, fain I wad sleep?
+
+where the very imperfections of the rhymes seem somehow to add to the
+pathos and the mystery of the chant.  But if, indeed, it has been given
+to any modern poet to get into this atmosphere, it has been given to
+Christina Rossetti.  And so with the ballad of simple human passion no
+modern writer has quite done what Christina Rossetti has done in one of
+the poems here restored:—
+
+
+SISTER MAUDE.
+
+
+    Who told my mother of my shame,
+       Who told my father of my dear?
+    Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
+       Who lurked to spy and peer.
+
+    Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
+       With his clotted curls about his face:
+    The comeliest corpse in all the world,
+       And worthy of a queen’s embrace.
+
+    You might have spared his soul, sister,
+       Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
+    Though I had not been born at all,
+       He’d never have looked at you.
+
+    My father may sleep in Paradise,
+       My mother at Heaven-gate:
+    But sister Maude shall get no sleep
+       Either early or late.
+
+    My father may wear a golden gown,
+       My mother a crown may win;
+    If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
+       Perhaps they’d let us in:
+    But sister Maude, O sister Maude,
+       Bide _you_ with death and sin.
+
+But it is for the personal poems that this volume will be prized most
+dearly by certain readers.
+
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti speaks of “the very wide and exceedingly strong
+outburst of eulogy” of his sister which appeared in the public press
+after her death.  Yet that outburst was far from giving adequate
+expression to what was felt by some of her readers—those between whom and
+herself there was a bond of sympathy so sacred and so deep as to be
+something like a religion.  It is not merely that she was the
+acknowledged queen in that world (outside the arena called “the literary
+world”) where poetry is “its own exceeding great reward,” but to other
+readers of a different kind altogether—readers who, drawing the deepest
+delight from such poetry as specially appeals to them, never read any
+other, and have but small knowledge of poetry as a fine art—her verse
+was, perhaps, more precious still.  They feel that at every page of her
+writing the beautiful poetry is only the outcome of a life whose almost
+unexampled beauty fascinates them.
+
+Although Christina Rossetti had more of what is called the
+unconsciousness of poetic inspiration than any other poet of her time,
+the writing of poetry was not by any means the chief business of her
+life.  She was too thorough a poet for that.  No one felt so deeply as
+she that poetic art is only at the best the imperfect body in which
+dwells the poetic soul.  No one felt so deeply as she that as the notes
+of the nightingale are but the involuntary expression of the bird’s
+emotion, and, again, as the perfume of the violet is but the flower’s
+natural breath, so it is and must be with the song of the very poet, and
+that, therefore, to write beautifully is in a deep and true sense to live
+beautifully.  In the volume before us, as in all her previously published
+writings, we see at its best what Christianity is as the motive power of
+poetry.  The Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine
+quality Christina Rossetti’s poetry is full.
+
+In motive power the difference between classic and Christian poetry must
+needs be very great.  But whatever may be said in favour of one as
+against the other, this at least cannot be controverted, that the history
+of literature shows no human development so beautiful as the ideal
+Christian woman of our own day.  She is unique, indeed.  Men of science
+tell us that among all the fossilized plants we find none of the lovely
+family of the rose, and in the same way we should search in vain through
+the entire human record for anything so beautiful as that kind of
+Christian lady to whom self-abnegation is not only the first of duties,
+but the first of joys.  Yet, no doubt, the Christian idea must needs be
+more or less flavoured by each personality through which it is expressed.
+With regard to Christina Rossetti, while upon herself Christian dogma
+imposed infinite obligations—obligations which could never be evaded by
+her without the risk of all the penalties fulminated by all
+believers—there was in the order of things a sort of ether of universal
+charity for all others.  She would lament, of course, the lapses of every
+soul, but for these there was a forgiveness which her own lapses could
+never claim.  There was, to be sure, a sweet egotism in this.  It was
+very fascinating, however.  This feeling explains what seems somewhat to
+puzzle the editor, especially in the poem called ‘The End of the First
+Part,’ written April 18th, 1849, of which he says, “‘Tears for guilt’ is
+in reference to Christina a very exaggerated phrase”:—
+
+
+THE END OF THE FIRST PART.
+
+
+    My happy dream is finished with,
+       My dream in which alone I lived so long.
+    My heart slept—woe is me, it wakeneth;
+       Was weak—I thought it strong.
+
+    Oh, weary wakening from a life-true dream!
+       Oh pleasant dream from which I wake in pain!
+    I rested all my trust on things that seem,
+       And all my trust is vain.
+
+    I must pull down my palace that I built,
+       Dig up the pleasure-gardens of my soul;
+    Must change my laughter to sad tears for guilt,
+       My freedom to control.
+
+    Now all the cherished secrets of my heart,
+       Now all my hidden hopes, are turned to sin.
+    Part of my life is dead, part sick, and part
+       Is all on fire within.
+
+    The fruitless thought of what I might have been,
+       Haunting me ever, will not let me rest.
+    A cold North wind has withered all my green,
+       My sun is in the West.
+
+    But, where my palace stood, with the same stone
+       I will uprear a shady hermitage;
+    And there my spirit shall keep house alone,
+       Accomplishing its age.
+
+    There other garden beds shall lie around,
+       Full of sweet-briar and incense-bearing thyme:
+    There I will sit, and listen for the sound
+       Of the last lingering chime.
+
+It was the beauty of her life that made her personal influence so great,
+and upon no one was that influence exercised with more strength than upon
+her illustrious brother Gabriel, who in many ways was so much unlike her.
+In spite of his deep religious instinct and his intense sympathy with
+mysticism, Gabriel remained what is called a free thinker in the true
+meaning of that much-abused phrase.  In religion as in politics he
+thought for himself, and yet when Mr. W. M. Rossetti affirms that the
+poet was never drawn towards free thinking women, he says what is
+perfectly true.  And this arose from the extraordinary influence,
+scarcely recognized by himself, that the beauty of Christina’s life and
+her religious system had upon him.
+
+This, of course, is not the place in which to say much about him; nor
+need much at any time and in any place be said, for has he not written
+his own biography—depicted himself more faithfully than Lockhart could
+depict Walter Scott, more faithfully than Boswell could depict Dr.
+Johnson?  Has he not done this in the immortal sonnet-sequence called
+‘The House of Life’?  What poet of the nineteenth century do we know so
+intimately as we know the author of ‘The House of Life’?
+
+Christina Rossetti’s peculiar form of the Christian sentiment she
+inherited from her mother, the sweetness of whose nature was never
+disturbed by that exercise of the egoism of the artist in which Christina
+indulged and without whose influence it is difficult to imagine what the
+Rossetti family would have been.  The father was a poet and a mystic of
+the cryptographic kind, and it is by no means unlikely that had he
+studied Shakespeare as he studied Dante he would in these days have been
+a disciple of the Baconians, and, of course, his influence on the family
+in the matter of literary activity and of mysticism must have been very
+great.  And yet all that is noblest in Christina’s poetry, an
+ever-present sense of the beauty and power of goodness, must surely have
+come from the mother, from whom also came that other charm of
+Christina’s, to which Gabriel was peculiarly sensitive, her youthfulness
+of temperament.
+
+Among the many differences which exist between the sexes this might,
+perhaps, be mentioned, that while it is beautiful for a man to grow
+old—grow old with the passage of years—a woman to retain her charm must
+always remain young.  In a deep sense woman may be said to have but one
+paramount charm, youth, and when this is gone all is gone.  The
+youthfulness of the body, of course, soon vanishes, but with any woman
+who can really win and retain the love of man this is not nearly so
+important as at first it seems.  It is the youthfulness of the soul that,
+in the truly adorable woman, is invulnerable.  It is one of the deep
+misfortunes of the very poor of cities that as a rule the terrible
+struggle with the wolf at the door is apt to sour the nature of women and
+turn them into crones at the age when in the more fortunate classes the
+true beauty of woman often begins; and even where the environment is not
+that of poverty, but of straitened means, it is as a rule impossible for
+a woman to retain this youthfulness.
+
+In the case of the Rossettis, in the early period they were in a position
+of straitened means.  Nor was this all: the children, Gabriel alone
+excepted, felt themselves to be by nationality aliens.  Christina, though
+she made only one visit to Italy, felt herself to be an Italian, and
+would smile when any one talked to her of the John Bullism of her brother
+Gabriel, and yet, with these powerful causes working against their
+natural elasticity of temperament, both mother and daughter retained that
+juvenility which Gabriel Rossetti felt to be so refreshing.  So strong
+was it in the mother that it had a strange effect upon the mere physique,
+and at eighty the expression in the eyes, and, indeed, on the face
+throughout, retained so much of the winsomeness of youth that she was
+more beautiful than most young women:—
+
+
+1882.
+
+
+    My blessed mother dozing in her chair
+       On Christmas Day seemed an embodied Love,
+    A comfortable Love with soft brown hair
+       Softened and silvered to a tint of dove;
+    A better sort of Venus with an air
+       Angelical from thoughts that dwell above;
+    A wiser Pallas in whose body fair
+       Enshrined a blessed soul looks out thereof.
+    Winter brought holly then, now Spring has brought
+       Paler and frailer snowdrops shivering;
+    And I have brought a simple humble thought—
+       I her devoted duteous Valentine—
+    A lifelong thought which thrills this song I sing,
+       A lifelong love to this dear saint of mine.
+
+Although this was not so with Christina, upon whose face ill-health
+worked its ravages, her temperament, as we say, remained as young as
+ever.  The lovely relations—sometimes staid and sometimes playful—between
+mother and daughter, are seen throughout the book before us.  But
+especially are they seen in one little group of poems—“The Valentines to
+her Mother”—in regard to which Christina left the following pencilled
+note:—
+
+“These Valentines had their origin from my dearest mother’s remarking
+that she had never received one.  I, her C. G. R., ever after supplied
+one on the day; and (so far as I recollect) it was a surprise every time,
+she having forgotten all about it in the interim.”
+
+Mrs. Rossetti’s first valentine was received when she was nearly
+seventy-six years of age, and she continued every year to receive a
+valentine until 1886, when she died.  Surely there is not in the history
+of English poetry anything more fascinating than these valentines.
+
+It is pleasing to see the book open with the following dedication by Mr.
+W. M. Rossetti:—
+
+“To Algernon Charles Swinburne, a generous eulogist of Christina
+Rossetti, who hailed his genius and prized himself the greatest of living
+British poets, my old and constant friend, I dedicate this book.”
+
+
+
+
+V.  DR. GORDON HAKE.
+1809–1895.
+
+
+I little thought when I recently quoted from Dr. Hake’s account of that
+Christmas gathering of the Rossettis at Bognor in 1875—a gathering which
+he has made historic—that to-day I should be writing an obituary notice
+of the “parable-poet” himself.  It is true that, having fractured a leg
+in a lamentable accident which befell him, he had for the last few years
+been imprisoned in one room and compelled during most of the time to lie
+in a horizontal position.  But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding
+his great age, his mental faculties remained so unimpaired that it was
+hard to believe his death could be so near.
+
+   [Picture: Dr. Gordon Hake.  From a crayon-drawing by D. G. Rossetti
+          reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. Thomas Hake]
+
+Although, owing to his intimacy with George Borrow, Hake was associated
+in the public mind with the Eastern Counties, he was not an East Anglian.
+It was at Leeds (in 1809) that he first saw the light.  His mother was a
+Gordon of the Huntly stock, and came of “the Park branch” of that house.
+The famous General Gordon was his first cousin, and it was owing to this
+fact that Hake’s son, Mr. Egmont Hake, was entrusted with the material
+for writing his authoritative books upon the heroic Christian soldier.
+Between Hake’s eldest son, Mr. T. St. E. Hake, a rising novelist, and the
+General the likeness was curiously strong.  Nominated by one of his
+uncles to Christ’s Hospital, Hake entered that famous school.  He gives
+in his ‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’ a very vivid picture of it and also a
+really vital portrait of himself.  From his very childhood he was haunted
+by a literary ambition which can only be called an insatiable passion.
+It lasted till the very hour of his death.  When eleven years of age he
+became acquainted with that one poet whose immensity of fame has for more
+than three centuries been the flame into which the myriad Shakespeare
+moths of English literature have been flying.  The Shakespearean of
+eleven summers did not, like so many Shakespeare enthusiasts from
+Davenant down to those latest Shakespeares, Homers, and Miltons of our
+contemporary paragraphists, get himself up to look like the Stratford
+bust.  The only man who ever really looked like that bust was the late
+Dion Boucicault, who did so without trying.  But Shakespeare’s wonderful
+work acted on the imagination of the child of eleven in an equally
+humorous way.  “Shakespeare’s perfection,” he says in his memoirs, “not
+only made me envious of the greatest of writers, but it depressed me in
+turn with the feeling that I could never equal it howsoever long I might
+live.”
+
+Yet although this passion never passed away, but waxed with his years, it
+must not be supposed that Hake suffered from what in the “new criticism”
+is sweetly and appropriately called “modernity”—in other words, that
+vulgar greed for notoriety that in these days, when literature to be
+listened to must be puffed like quack medicine and patent soap, has made
+the atmosphere of the literary arena somewhat stifling in the nostrils of
+those who turn from “modernity” to poetic art.  Nor was Hake’s feeling
+akin to that fine despair
+
+    Before the foreheads of the gods of song
+
+which true poets, great or small, know—that fine despair which, while it
+will sometimes stop the breath of one of the true sons of Apollo, as it
+actually did strike mute Charles Wells, and as at one time it threatened
+to stop the breath of Rossetti, will lead others to write, and write, and
+write.  It is, however, life’s illusions that in most cases make life
+tolerable.  When in old age calamity came upon Hake, and he was shut out
+from life as by a prison wall, his one solace, the one thing that really
+bound him to life, was this ambitious dream which came upon the Bluecoat
+boy of eleven.
+
+His mother was in easy circumstances, and when a youth Hake travelled a
+good deal on the Continent, where his success in the “great world” of
+that time was swift and complete.  If this success was owing as much to
+his exceptionally striking personal appearance and natural endowment of
+style as to his intellectual equipments—high as these were—that is not
+surprising to those who knew him.  Of course he was well advanced in
+years before I was old enough to call him my friend; but even then he was
+so extremely handsome a man that I can well believe the stories I have
+got from his family connexions (such as his wife’s sisters) of his
+appearance in youth.  With the single exception of Tennyson, he was the
+most poetical-looking poet I have ever seen.  And circumstances put to
+the best uses his natural gift of style; for it was in the plastic period
+of his life that he met the best people on the Continent and in England.
+I suspect, indeed, that after the plastic period in a man’s life is
+passed it is not of much use for him to come into contact with what used
+to be called “the great world.”  To be, or to seem to be, unconscious of
+one’s own bearing towards the world, and unconscious of the world’s
+bearing towards oneself, is, I fancy, impossible to a man—even though he
+have the genius and intellectual endowment of a Browning—who is for the
+first time brought into touch with society after the plastic period is
+passed.
+
+I have told elsewhere the whimsical story of Hake and Rossetti, of
+Rossetti’s delightful account of his reading as a boy, in a coffee-house
+in Chancery Lane, Hake’s remarkable romance ‘Vates,’ afterwards called
+‘Valdarno,’ in a magazine; his writing a letter about it to the unknown
+author, and getting no reply until many years had passed.  Hake’s
+relations towards Rossetti were of the deepest and most sacred kind.
+Rossetti had the highest opinion of Hake’s poetical genius, and also felt
+towards him the greatest love and gratitude for services of an
+inestimable kind rendered to him in the direst crisis of his life.  To
+enter upon these matters, however, is obviously impossible in a brief and
+hurried obituary notice; and equally impossible is it for me to enter
+into the poetic principles of a writer whose very originality has been a
+barrier to his winning a wide recognition.
+
+Hake’s best work is that, I think, contained in the volume called ‘New
+Symbols,’ in which there is disclosed an extraordinary variety of poetic
+power.  In execution, too, he is at his best in that volume.  Christina
+Rossetti has often told me that ‘Ecce Homo’ impressed her more profoundly
+than did any other poem of her own time.  Also its daring startled her.
+It was, however, the previous volume, ‘Madeline, and other Poems,’ which
+brought him into contact with Rossetti—the great event of his literary
+life.
+
+If the man ever lived who could take as much interest in another man’s
+work as his own, Dr. Hake in finding Rossetti found that man.  Although
+at that time Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and
+Swinburne were running abreast of each other, there was no poet in
+England who would not have felt honoured by having his work reviewed by
+Rossetti.  But Dr. Hake, whose name was absolutely unknown, had made his
+way into Rossetti’s affections—as, indeed, he made his way into the
+affections of all who knew him—and this was quite enough to induce
+Rossetti to ask Dr. Appleton for leave to review ‘Madeline’ in ’71 in
+_The Academy_—a request which Appleton, of course, was delighted to
+grant.  And again, when in 1873 ‘Parables and Tales’ appeared, Mr. John
+Morley, we may be sure, was something more than willing to let Rossetti
+review the book in _The Fortnightly Review_; and, again, when ‘New
+Symbols’ appeared, there was some talk about Rossetti’s reviewing it in
+_The Fortnightly Review_; but this, for certain reasons which Rossetti
+explained to me—reasons which have been misunderstood, but which were
+entirely adequate—was abandoned.  Down to the period when Dr. Hake went
+to live in Germany he and his son Mr. Gordon Hake were among the most
+intimate friends of the great poet-painter.  Mr. Gordon Hake, indeed, a
+man of admirable culture and abilities, lived with Rossetti, who
+certainly benefited much by contact with his bright and lively companion.
+The portrait of Dr. Hake prefixed to Mrs. Meynell’s selections from his
+works is one of Rossetti’s finest crayons.  It is, however, too heavy in
+expression for Hake.
+
+Full of fine qualities as is his best poetry, full of intellectual
+subtlety, imagination, and a rare combination of subjective with
+objective power, there is apparently in it a certain _je ne sais quoi_
+which has prevented him at present from winning his true meed of fame.
+His hand, no doubt, is uncertain; but so is the hand of many a successful
+poet—that of Christina Rossetti, for instance.  For sheer originality of
+conception and of treatment what recent poems surpass or even equal ‘Old
+Souls’ and the ‘Serpent Charmer’?  Then take the remarkable mastery over
+colour exhibited by ‘Ortrud’s Vision.’  His volume of pantheistic sonnets
+in the Shakespearean form, ‘The New Day,’ written in his eighty-first
+year, is on the whole, however, his most remarkable work.  The kind of
+Sufeyistic nature ecstasy displayed therein by a man of so advanced an
+age is nothing less than wonderful.  And as to knowledge of nature, not
+even Wordsworth or Tennyson knew nature so completely as did Hake, for he
+had a thorough training as a naturalist.  In looking at a flower he could
+enjoy not only its beauty, but also the delight of picturing to himself
+the flower’s inherited beauty and the ancestors from which the flower got
+its inheritance.  And as regards the lyrical flow imported into so
+monumental a form as the sonnet, every student of this form must needs
+study the book with the greatest interest.  His very latest work,
+however, is in prose.  I find it extremely difficult to write about
+‘Memoirs of Eighty Years.’  It is full of remarkable qualities: wit,
+humour, an ebullience of animal spirits that is Rabelaisian.  What it
+lacks (and in some portions of it greatly lacks) is delicacy, refinement
+of tone.  And surely this is remarkable when we realize the kind of man
+he was who wrote it.
+
+It has been my privilege to go about with him not only in London, but
+also in Rome, in Paris, in Venice, in Florence, Pisa, &c.; and no matter
+what might be the quality of the society with which he was brought into
+contact, it always seemed to me that he was distinguished by his very
+lack of that accentuated movement which the _littérateur_ generally
+displays.  I merely dwell upon this to show how inscrutable are the
+mental processes in the crowning puzzle of the great humourist Nature,
+the writing man.  Just as the most angular and _gauche_ man in a literary
+gathering may possibly turn out to be the poet whose lyrics have been
+compared to Shelley, or the prose writer whose mellifluous periods have
+been compared to those of Plato, so the most dignified man in the room
+may turn out to be the writer of a book whose defect is a noticeable lack
+of dignified style.  It was hard, indeed, for those who knew Hake in the
+flesh to believe that the ‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’ was written by him.
+I suppose I shall be expected to say a word about the famous intimacy
+between Hake and Borrow.  After Hake went to live in Germany, Borrow told
+me a good deal about this intimacy and also about his own early life; for
+reticent as he naturally was, he and I got to be confidential and
+intimate.  His friendship with Hake began when Hake was practising as a
+physician in Norfolk.  It lasted during the greater part of Borrow’s
+later life.  When Borrow was living in London, his great delight was to
+walk over on Sundays from Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake,
+and take a stroll with him over Richmond Park.  They both had a passion
+for herons and for deer.  At that time Hake was a very intimate friend of
+my own, and having had the good fortune to be introduced by him to
+Borrow, I used to join the two in their walks.  Afterwards, when Hake
+went to live in Germany, I used to take these walks with Borrow alone.
+Two more interesting men it would be impossible to meet.  The remarkable
+thing was that there was between them no sort of intellectual sympathy.
+In style, in education, in experience, whatever Hake was Borrow was not.
+Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake’s writings, either in prose or in
+verse.  His ideal poet was Pope, and when he read, or rather looked into,
+Hake’s ‘World’s Epitaph,’ he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by
+saying, “There are lines here and there that are nigh as good as Pope’s.”
+On the other hand, Hake’s acquaintance with Borrow’s works was far behind
+that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the flesh, such as
+Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell.
+
+Borrow was shy, eccentric, angular, rustic in accent and in locution, but
+with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible.  Hake was polished,
+easy, and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and
+bias, ready to shine gracefully in any society.  As far as Hake was
+concerned, the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of earlier
+days and adventures in Borrow’s beloved East Anglia.  Among many proofs
+that I could adduce of this, I will give one.  I am the possessor of the
+manuscript of Borrow’s ‘Gypsies in Spain,’ written partly in a Spanish
+note-book as he moved about Spain in his colporteur days.  It was my wish
+that Hake would leave behind him some memorial of Borrow more worthy of
+himself and his friend than those brief reminiscences contained in
+‘Memoirs of Eighty Years.’  I took to Hake this precious relic of one of
+the most wonderful men of the nineteenth century in order to discuss with
+him differences between the MS. and the printed text.  Hake was sitting
+in his invalid chair, writing verses.  “What does it all matter?” he
+said.  “I do not think you understand Lavengro,” said I.  Hake replied,
+“And yet Lavengro had an advantage over me, for _he_ understood _nobody_.
+Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had, as no one
+knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his own before he
+could see it at all.”
+
+This, of course, was true enough; and Hake’s asperities when speaking of
+Borrow in ‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’—asperities which have vexed a good
+many Borrovians—simply arose from the fact that it was impossible for two
+such men to understand each other.  When I told him of Andrew Lang’s
+angry onslaught upon Borrow, in his notes to the “Waverley Novels,” on
+account of his attacks upon Scott, he said, “Well, and does he not
+deserve it?”  When I told him of Miss Cobbe’s description of Borrow as a
+_poseur_, he said to me, “I told you the same scores of times.  But I saw
+that Borrow had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in
+Richmond Park.  It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled you.”
+Borrow’s affection for Hake, however, was both strong and deep, as I saw
+after Hake had gone to Germany and in a way dropped out of Borrow’s ken.
+Yet Hake was as good a man as ever Borrow was, and for certain others
+with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine affection as
+Borrow was himself.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD DE TABLEY.
+1835–1895.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters has lost a
+true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments.  His friends have
+lost much more.  Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him
+and loved him had been much concerned about him.  The pallor of his
+complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness.  As long ago as
+May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join
+him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had
+engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards.  The
+expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he had
+noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting for us.
+“You know my love of a growler,” he said; “this is just to save us the
+bother of getting across the Piccadilly cataracts.”  I thought to myself,
+“I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts which accounts
+for the growler.”
+
+Another sign that the physical part of him was in the grip of the demon
+of decay was that, instead of coming to the Pines to luncheon, as had
+been his wont, he preferred of late to come to afternoon tea, and return
+to Elm Park before dinner.  And on the occasion when he last came in this
+way it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his
+intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power.  And as a companion
+he was as winsome as ever.  That fine quality with which he was so richly
+endowed, the quality which used to be called “urbanity,” was as fresh
+when I saw him last as when I first knew him.  That sweet sagacity,
+mellowed and softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face
+at intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my
+colleague on _The Athenæum_, and when I used to call upon him so
+frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to chat over “the walnuts
+and the wine” about poetry.
+
+My own friendship with him began at my first meeting him, and this was
+long ago.  Being at that time a less-known man of letters than I am now,
+supposing that to be possible, I was astonished one day when my friend
+Edmund Gosse told me that his friend Leicester Warren had expressed a
+wish to meet me on account of certain things of mine which he had read in
+_The Examiner_ and _The Athenæum_.  I accepted with alacrity Mr. Gosse’s
+invitation to one of those charming _salons_ of his on the banks of
+Westbournia’s Grand Canal which have become historic.  I was surprised to
+find Warren, who was then scarcely above forty, looking so old, not to
+say so old-fashioned.  At that time he did not wear the moustache and
+beard which afterwards lent a picturesqueness to his face.  There was a
+kind of rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own;
+it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought.  This being the
+impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how delighted I was
+shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of Ivy Lodge, Putney,
+where I was then living alone.  Nor was I less surprised than delighted
+to see him.  On realizing at Gosse’s _salon_ that my new acquaintance was
+a botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had described
+to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing in the centre of
+my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had imported.  I had given
+Warren a kind of general invitation to come some day and see it.  So
+early a call as this I had not hoped to get.  Perhaps I thought so
+reclusive a man as he even then appeared would never come at all.
+
+After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti crayons on
+the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much about ‘The Spirit of
+the Rainbow’ and the design from the same beautiful model which William
+Sharp has christened ‘Forced Music,’ the loveliness of which attracted
+him not a little, I perceived that he had something else that he wanted
+to talk about, and allowed him to lead the conversation up to it.  To my
+surprise I found that, so far from having perceived how much he had
+interested me, he had imagined that my attitude towards him was
+constrained, and had explained it to his own discomfort after the
+following fashion: “Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a
+deep admirer—so deep indeed that some people, and not without reason,
+have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by it.  But an article
+by me in _The Fortnightly_ goes out of its way to dub as a ‘minor poet’
+the very writer to whose influence I have succumbed.  It is the
+incongruity between my dubbing my idol a ‘minor poet’ and my real and
+most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in spite of an
+external civility, feel unfriendly towards me.  Yet there is no real
+incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H. Lewes, who, after my proof had
+been returned for press, interpolated the objectionable words about the
+minor poet.”
+
+This was how he had been reasoning.  When I laughed and told him to
+recast his syllogism—told him that I had never seen the article in
+question, and doubted whether my friend had—matters became very bright
+between us.  He stayed to luncheon; we walked on the Common; I showed him
+our Wimbledon sun-dews; in a word, I felt that I had discovered a richer
+gold mine than the richest in the world, a new friend.  Had I then known
+him as well as I afterwards did, I should have been aware that he had a
+strong dash of the sensitive, not to say the morbid, in his nature.  He
+had a habit of submitting almost every incident of his life to such an
+analysis as that I have been describing.
+
+On another occasion, when years later he had a difference with a friend,
+I reminded him of the incident recorded above, and made him laugh by
+saying, “My dear Warren, you are so afraid of treading on people’s corns
+that you tread upon them.”
+
+On first visiting him, as on many a subsequent occasion, I was struck by
+the variety of his intellectual interests, and the thoroughness with
+which he pursued them all.  I have lately said in print what I fully
+believe—that he was the most learned of English poets, if learning means
+something more than mere scholarship.  He was a skilled numismatist, and
+in 1862 published, through the Numismatic Society, ‘An Essay on Greek
+Federal Coinage,’ and an essay ‘On Some Coins of Lycia under Rhodian
+Domination and of the Lycian League.’  He even took an interest in
+book-plates, and actually, in 1880, published ‘A Guide to the Study of
+Book-Plates.’  I should not have been at all surprised to learn that he
+was also writing a guide for the collectors of postage stamps.
+
+At this time he had published a good deal of verse; for instance,
+‘Eclogues and Monodramas’ in 1865; ‘Studies in Verse’ in 1866; ‘Orestes’
+in 1867; a collection of poems called ‘Rehearsals’ in 1873; another
+collection, called ‘The Searching Net,’ in 1876.  From this time, during
+many years, I saw him frequently, although, for a reason which it is not
+necessary to discuss here, he became seized with a deep dislike of the
+literary world and its doings, and I am not aware that he saw any
+literary man save myself and the late W. B. Scott, the bond between whom
+and himself was “book-plates”!  Then he took to residing in the country.
+As a poet he seemed to be quite forgotten, save by students of poetry,
+until his name was revived by means of Mr. Miles’s colossal anthology
+‘The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century,’ Mr. Miles, it
+seems, was a great admirer of Lord de Tabley’s poetry, and managed to
+reach the hermit in his cell.  In the sixth volume of his work Mr. Miles
+gave a judicious selection from Lord de Tabley’s poems and an admirable
+essay upon them.  The selection attracted a good deal of attention.
+
+On finding that the public would listen to him, I urged him to bring out
+a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea which for some
+time he contested with his usual pessimistic vigour.  Having, however,
+set my heart upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at
+once saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk.  To the
+poet’s astonishment the book was a success, and it at once passed into a
+second edition.  In the spring of this year he was emboldened to bring
+out another volume of new poems, and his name became firmly
+re-established as a poet.  It was after the success of the first book
+that he consulted me upon a question which was then upon his mind: Should
+he devote his future energies to literature or to making himself a
+position as a speaker in the Lords?  He had lately had occasion to speak
+both in the country and in the Lords upon some local matter of
+importance, and his success had in some slight degree revived an old
+aspiration to plunge into the world of politics.  He was a Liberal, and
+in 1868 he had contested—but unsuccessfully—Mid-Cheshire.  This was on
+the first election for that division after the Reform Act of 1867.  His
+support in a county so Conservative as Cheshire had really been very
+strong, but he never made another effort to get into Parliament.  “You
+know my way,” he used to say.  “I can make one spring—perhaps a pretty
+good spring—but not more than one.”
+
+On the whole, he leaned towards the idea of going into politics.  The way
+in which he put the case to me was thoroughly characteristic of him:
+“Even if my verse were strong and vital, which I fear it is not, there is
+almost no chance for men of my generation receiving more than a slight
+attention at the present day.  Things have altogether changed since the
+sixties and seventies, when I published my most important work—at a time
+when the prominent names were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold,
+Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne.  The old critical oracles are now dumb;
+the reviewers are all young men whose knowledge of poetry does not go
+back so far as the sixties.  Those who reviewed the selection from my
+work in Miles’s book showed themselves to be entirely unconscious of the
+name of Leicester Warren, and treated the poems there selected as being
+the work of a new writer; and even when the poems published by Lane came
+out, no one seemed to be aware that they were by a writer who was very
+much to the fore a quarter of a century ago.  That book has had a flutter
+of success, but in how large a degree was the success owing to the
+curiosity excited by the book of a man of my generation being brought out
+now, and by the publisher of the men of this?  With all my sympathy with
+the work of the younger men and my admiration of some of it, things, I
+say, have changed since those days.”
+
+I did not share these pessimistic views.  Moreover, knowing as I did how
+extremely sensitive he was, I knew that his figuring in Parliament would
+result in the greatest pain to him, and if I gave a somewhat exaggerated
+expression with regard to my hopes of him in the literary world, it was a
+kindly feeling towards himself that impelled me to do so.  He took my
+advice and proceeded to gather material for another volume.
+
+To define clearly the impression left upon one by intercourse with any
+man is difficult.  In De Tabley’s case it is almost impossible.  His
+remarkable modesty, or rather diffidence, was what, perhaps, struck me
+most.  It was a genuine lack of faith in his own powers; it had nothing
+whatever to do with “mock-modesty.”  I had a singular instance of this
+diffidence in the autumn of last year.  Lord de Tabley, who was staying
+at Ryde, having learnt that I was staying with a friend near Niton Bay,
+wrote to me there saying that he somewhat specially wanted to see me, and
+proposed our lunching together at an hotel at Ventnor.  I was delighted
+to accede to this, for, like all who fully knew Lord de Tabley, I was
+thoroughly and deeply attached to him.  He was so genuine and so modest
+and so genial—unsoured by the great and various sorrows of which he used
+sometimes to talk to me by the cosy study fire—nay, sweetened by them, as
+I often thought—so grateful for the smallest service rendered in an arena
+where ingratitude sometimes seems to be the _vis motrix_ of life—a truly
+lovable man, if ever there was one.
+
+I drove over to Ventnor.  As I chanced to reach the hotel somewhat before
+the appointed time, and he had not arrived, I drove on to Bonchurch along
+the Shanklin road.  On my way back, I passed a four-wheel cab; but not
+dreaming that his love of the “growler” reached beyond London, I never
+thought of him in connexion with it until I saw the well-known face with
+its sweet thoughtful expression looking through the cab window.  On this
+occasion it looked so specially thoughtful that I imagined something
+serious had occurred.  At the hotel I found that he had secured a snug
+room and a luxurious luncheon.  An ominous packet of writing-paper
+peering from his overcoat pocket convinced me that it was a manuscript
+brought for me to read, and feeling that I should prefer to get it over
+before luncheon, I asked him to show it to me.  He then told me its
+history.  Having sent by special invitation a poem to _The Nineteenth
+Century_, the editor had returned it—returned it with certain strictures
+upon portions of it.  This incident he had at once subjected to the usual
+analysis, and had come to the conclusion that certain outside influences
+of an invidious kind had been brought to play upon the editor.
+
+Time was when I should have shrunk with terror from so thankless a task
+as that of reading a manuscript with such a frightful history, but it is
+astonishing what a long experience in the literary world will do for a
+man in perplexities of this kind.  I read the manuscript and the editor’s
+courteous but sagacious comments, and I found that the poet had
+undertaken a subject which was utterly and almost inconceivably alien to
+his genius.  As I read I felt the wistful gaze fixed upon me while the
+waiter was moving in and out of the room, preparing the luncheon table.
+“Well,” said he, as I laid the manuscript down, “what do you think? do
+you agree with the editor?”  “Not entirely,” I said.  “Not entirely!” he
+exclaimed; then turning to the waiter, he said, “You can leave the soup,
+and I will ring when we are ready.”  “Not entirely,” I repeated.  “With
+all the editor’s strictures I entirely agree, but he says that by working
+upon it you may make it into a worthy poem: there I disagree with him.  I
+consider it absolutely hopeless.  I regret now that we did not leave the
+matter until after luncheon, but we will not let it spoil our appetites.”
+
+I am afraid it did spoil our appetites nevertheless, for I felt that I
+had been compelled, for his own sake, to give him pain.  He was much
+depressed, declared that the success of his late book was entirely
+factitious, and vowed that nothing should ever persuade him to write
+another line of verse, and that he would now devote his attention to a
+peer’s duties in the House of Lords.  I was so disturbed myself at thus
+paining so lovable a friend that next day I wrote to him, trying to
+soften what I had said, and urged him to do as the editor of _The
+Nineteenth Century_ had suggested, write another poem—a poem upon some
+classical subject, which he would deal with so admirably.  The result of
+it all was that he found the editor’s strictures on the unlucky poem to
+be absolutely well grounded, and wrote for _The Nineteenth Century_
+‘Orpheus,’ one of the finest of his later poems.
+
+I think these anecdotes of Lord de Tabley will show why we who knew him
+were so attached to him.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Can it be claimed for Lord de Tabley that in the poetical firmament which
+hung over the days of his youth—when the heavens were bright with such
+luminaries as Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne,
+and Morris—he had a place of his own?  We think it can.  And in saying
+this we are fully conscious of the kind of praise we are awarding him.
+Whatever may be said for or against the artistic temper of the present
+hour, it must certainly be said of the time we are alluding to that it
+was great as regards its wealth of poetic genius, and as regards its
+artistic temper greater still.  It was a time when “the beauteous damsel
+Poesy, honourable and retired,” whom Cervantes described, dared still
+roam the English Parnassus, “a friend of solitude,” disturbed by no clash
+of Notoriety’s brazen cymbals, “where fountains entertained her, woods
+freed her from _ennui_, and flowers delighted her”—delighted her for
+their own sakes.  In order to write such verses as the following from the
+concluding poem of the volume before us {231} a man must really have
+passed into that true mood of the poet described by the great Spanish
+humourist:—
+
+    How idle for a spurious fame
+       To roll in thorn-beds of unrest;
+    What matter whom the mob acclaim,
+       If thou art master of thy breast?
+
+    If sick thy soul with fear and doubt,
+       And weary with the rabble din,—
+    If thou wouldst scorn the herd without,
+       First make the discord calm within.
+
+    If we are lords in our disdain,
+       And rule our kingdoms of despair,
+    As fools we shall not plough the main
+       For halters made of syren’s hair.
+
+    We need not traverse foreign earth
+       To seek an alien Sorrow’s face.
+    She sits within thy central hearth,
+       And at thy table has her place.
+
+    So with this hour of push and pelf,
+       Where nought unsordid seems to last,
+    Vex not thy miserable self,
+       But search the fallows of the past.
+
+    In Time’s rich track behind us lies
+       A soil replete with root and seed;
+    There harvest wheat repays the wise,
+       While idiots find but charlock weed.
+
+Between the writer of the above lines and those great poets who in his
+youth were his contemporaries there is this point of affinity: like them
+his actual achievements do not strike the reader so forcibly as the
+potentialities which those achievements reveal.  In the same way that
+Achilles was suggested by his “spear” in the picture in the chamber of
+Lucrece, the poet who writes not for fame, but writes to please himself,
+suggests unconsciously his own portrait by every touch:—
+
+    For much imaginary work was there;
+    Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
+    That for Achilles’ image stood his spear
+    Grip’d in an armèd hand; himself behind
+    Was left unseen save to the eye of mind:
+    A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
+    Stood for the whole to be imaginèd.
+
+Poets, indeed, have always been divisible into those whose poetry gives
+the reader an impression that they are greater than their work, and those
+whose poetry gives the reader a contrary impression.  There have always
+been poets who may say of themselves, like the “Poet” in ‘Timon of
+Athens,’
+
+    Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
+    From whence ’tis nourished: the fire i’ the flint
+    Shows not till it be struck.
+
+And there have always been poets whose verse, howsoever good it may be,
+shows that, although they have been able to mould into poetic forms the
+riches of the life around them, and also of the literature which has come
+to them as an inheritance, they are simply working for fame, or rather
+for notoriety, in the markets of the outer world.  The former can give us
+an impression of personal greatness such as the latter cannot.
+
+With regard to the originality of Lord de Tabley’s work, it is obvious
+that every poet must in some measure be influenced by the leading
+luminaries of his own period.  But at no time would it have been fair to
+call Lord de Tabley an imitator; and in the new poems in this volume the
+accent is, perhaps, more individual than was the accent of any of his
+previous poetry.  The general reader’s comparatively slight acquaintance
+with Greek poetry may become unfortunate for modern poets.  Often and
+often it occurs that a poet is charged with imitating another poet of a
+more prominent position than his own when, as a matter of fact, both
+poets have been yielding to the magic influence of some poet of Greece.
+Such a yielding has been held to be legitimate in every literature of the
+modern world.  Indeed, to be coloured by the great classics of Greek and
+Roman literature is the inevitable destiny and the special glory of all
+the best poetry of the modern world, as it is the inevitable destiny and
+the special glory of the far-off waters of the Nile to be enriched and
+toned by the far-off wealth of Ruwenzori and the great fertilizing lakes
+from which they have sprung.  But in drawing from the eternal fountains
+of beauty Lord de Tabley’s processes were not those of his great
+contemporaries; they were very specially his own, as far removed from the
+severe method of Matthew Arnold on the one hand as from Tennyson’s method
+on the other.
+
+His way of work was always to illustrate a story of Hellenic myth by
+symbols and analogies drawn not from the more complex economies of a
+later world, as was Tennyson’s way, but from that wide knowledge of the
+phenomena of nature which can be attained only by a poet whose knowledge
+is that of the naturalist.  His devotion to certain departments of
+natural science has been running parallel with his devotion to poetry,
+and if learning is something wider than scholarship, he is the most
+learned poet of his time.  While Tennyson’s knowledge of natural science,
+though wide, was gathered from books, Lord de Tabley’s knowledge,
+especially in the department of botany, is derived largely from original
+observation and inquiry.  And this knowledge enables him to make his
+poetry alive with organic detail such as satisfies the naturalist as
+fully as the other qualities in his works satisfy the lover of poetry.
+The leading poem of the present volume, ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ is full of a
+knowledge of the ways of nature beyond the reach of most poets, and yet
+this knowledge is kept well in governance by his artistic sense; it is
+never obtruded—never more than hinted at, indeed:—
+
+    Soon, soon I saw the spectral vanguard come,
+    Coasting along, as swallows, beating low
+    Before a hint of rain.  In buoyant air,
+    Circling thy poise, and hardly move the wing,
+    And rather float than fly.  Then other spirits,
+    Shrill and more fierce, came wailing down the gale;
+    As plaintive plovers came with swoop and scream
+    To lure our footsteps from their furrowy nest,
+    So these, as lapwing guardians, sailed and swung
+    To save the secrets of their gloomy lair.
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+    I hate to watch the flower set up its face.
+    I loathe the trembling shimmer of the sea,
+    Its heaving roods of intertangled weed
+    And orange sea-wrack with its necklace fruit;
+    The stale, insipid cadence of the dawn,
+    The ringdove, tedious harper on five tones,
+    The eternal havoc of the sodden leaves,
+    Rotting the floors of Autumn.
+
+‘The Death of Phaëthon’ is another poem in which Lord de Tabley succeeds
+in mingling a true poetic energy with that subtle dignity of utterance
+which can never really be divorced from true poetry, whether the poet’s
+subject be lofty or homely.
+
+The line
+
+    With sudden ray and music across the sea
+
+and the opening line of the poem,
+
+    Before him the immeasurable heaven,
+
+cause us to think that Lord de Tabley has paid but little attention to
+the question of elision in English poetry.  In the second of the lines
+above quoted elision is impossible, in the first elision is demanded.
+The reason why elision is sometimes demanded is that in certain lines, as
+in the one which opens ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ the hiatus which occurs when a
+word ending with a vowel is followed by a vowel beginning the next word
+may be so great as to become intolerable.  The reason why elision is
+sometimes a merely allowable beauty is that when a word ends with _w_,
+_r_, or _l_, to elide the liquids is to secure a kind of billowy music of
+a peculiarly delightful kind.  Now elision is very specially demanded in
+a line like that which opens ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ where the pause of the
+line fall upon _the_.  To make the main pause of the line fall upon _the_
+is extremely and painfully bad, even when the next word begins with a
+consonant; but when the word following _the_ begins with a vowel, the
+line is absolutely immetrical; it has, indeed, no more to do with English
+prosody than with that prosody of Japan upon which Mr. Basil Chamberlain
+discourses so pleasantly.  On the other hand, the elision of the second
+syllable of the word _music_ in the other line quoted above is equally
+faulty in another direction.  But as we said when reviewing Mr. Bridges’s
+treatise on Milton’s prosody, nothing is more striking than the
+helplessness of most recent poets when confronted with the simple
+question of elision.
+
+In an ‘Ode to a Star’ there is great beauty and breadth of thought and
+expression.  Its only structural blemish, that of an opening stanza whose
+form is not distinctly followed, can be so easily put right that it need
+only be mentioned here in order to emphasize the canon that it is only in
+irregular odes that variation of stanza is permissible.  Keats, no doubt,
+in one at least of his unequalled odes, does depart from the scheme of
+structure indicated by the opening stanza, and without any apparent
+metrical need for so doing.  But the poem does not gain by the departure.
+Besides, Keats is now a classic, and has a freedom in regard to
+irregularities of metre which Lord de Tabley would be the last to claim
+for himself.  Another blemish of a minor kind in the ‘Ode to a Star’ is
+that of rhyming “meteor” with “wheatear.”
+
+If the poetry in Lord de Tabley’s volume answers as little to Milton’s
+famous list of the poetic requirements, “simple, sensuous, and
+passionate,” as does Milton’s own poetry, which answers to only the
+second of these demands, very high poetry might be cited which is neither
+sensuous nor passionate.  The so-called coldness displayed by ‘Lycidas’
+arises not, it may well be supposed, from any lack on Milton’s part of
+sorrow for his friend, but from his determination that simple he would
+not be, and yet his method is justified of its own beauty and glory.  Of
+course poetry may be too ornate, but in demanding a simplicity of
+utterance from the poet it is easy for the critic to forget how wide and
+how various are poetry’s domains.  For if in one mood poetry is the
+simple and unadorned expression of nature, in another it is the woof of
+art,
+
+    Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes
+    As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings.
+
+In the matter of poetic ornament, all that the reader has any right to
+demand is that the decoration should be poetical and not rhetorical.
+Now, as a matter of fact, there is no surer sign of the amount of the
+poetical endowment of any poet than the insight he shows into the nature
+of poetry as distinguished from rhetoric when working on ornate poetry.
+It is a serious impeachment of latter-day criticism that in very many
+cases, perhaps in most cases, the plaudits given to the last new “leading
+poet” of the hour are awarded to “felicitous lines,” every felicity of
+which is rhetorical and not poetical.
+
+
+
+
+VII.  WILLIAM MORRIS.
+1834–1896.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+The news of the grave turn suddenly taken by William Morris’s illness
+prepared the public for the still worse news that was to follow.
+
+The certificate of the immediate cause of death affirms it to have been
+phthisis, but one would suppose that almost every vital organ had become
+exhausted.  Each time that I saw him he declared, in answer to my
+inquiries, that he suffered no pain whatever.  And a comforting thought
+this is to us all—that Morris suffered no pain.  To Death himself we may
+easily be reconciled—nay, we might even look upon him as Nature’s final
+beneficence to all her children, if it were not for the cruel means he so
+often employs in fulfilling his inevitable mission.  The thought that
+Morris’s life had ended in the tragedy of pain—the thought that he to
+whom work was sport and generosity the highest form of enjoyment,
+suffered what some men suffer in shuffling off the mortal coil—would have
+been intolerable almost.  For among the thousand and one charms of the
+man, this, perhaps, was the chief, that Nature had endowed him with an
+enormous capacity of enjoyment, and that Circumstance, conspiring with
+Nature, said to him, “Enjoy.”
+
+                        [Picture: William Morris]
+
+Born in easy circumstances, though not to the degrading trouble of
+wealth—cherishing as his sweetest possessions a devoted wife and two
+daughters, each of them endowed with intelligence so rare as to
+understand a genius such as his—surrounded by friends, some of whom were
+among the first men of our time, and most of whom were of the very salt
+of the earth—it may be said of him that Misfortune, if she touched him at
+all, never struck home.  If it is true, as Mérimée affirms, that men are
+hastened to maturity by misfortune, who wanted Morris to be mature?  Who
+wanted him to be other than the radiant boy of genius that he remained
+till the years had silvered his hair and carved wrinkles on his brow, but
+left his blue-grey eyes as bright as when they first opened on the world?
+Enough for us to think that the man must, indeed, be specially beloved by
+the gods who in his sixty-third year dies young.  Old age Morris could
+not have borne with patience.  Pain would not have developed him into a
+hero.  This beloved man, who must have died some day, died when his
+marvellous powers were at their best—and died without pain.  The scheme
+of life and death does not seem so much awry, after all.
+
+At the last interview but one that ever I had with him—it was in the
+little carpetless room from which so much of his best work was turned
+out—he himself surprised me by leading the conversation upon a subject he
+rarely chose to talk about—the mystery of life and death.  The
+conversation ended with these words of his: “I have enjoyed my life—few
+men more so—and death in any case is sure.”
+
+It is difficult not to think that the cause of causes of his death was
+excessive exercise of all his forces, especially of the imaginative
+faculty.  When I talked to him, as I often did, of the peril of such a
+life of tension as his, he pooh-poohed the idea.  “Look at Gladstone,” he
+would say; “look at those wise owls your chancellors and your judges.
+Don’t they live all the longer for work?  It is rust that kills men, not
+work.”  No doubt he was right in contending that in intellectual efforts
+such as those he alluded to, where the only faculty drawn upon is the
+“dry light of intelligence,” a prodigious amount of work may be achieved
+without any sapping of the sources of life.  But is this so where that
+fusion of all the faculties which we call genius is greatly taxed?  I
+doubt it.  In all true imaginative production there is, as De Quincey
+pointed out many years ago, a movement not of “the thinking machine”
+only, but of the whole man—the whole “genial” nature of the worker—his
+imagination, his judgment, moving in an evolution of lightning velocity
+from the whole of the work to the part, from the part to the whole,
+together with every emotion of the soul.  Hence when, as in the case of
+Walter Scott, of Charles Dickens, and presumably of Shakespeare too, the
+emotional nature of Man is overtaxed, every part of the frame suffers,
+and cries out in vain for its share of that nervous fluid which is the
+true _vis vitæ_.
+
+We have only to consider the sort of work Morris produced and its amount
+to realize that no human powers could continue to withstand such a
+strain.  Many are of opinion that ‘The Lovers of Gudrun’ is his finest
+poem; he worked at it from four o’clock in the morning till four in the
+afternoon, and when he rose from the table he had produced 750 lines!
+Think of the forces at work in producing a poem like ‘Sigurd.’  Think of
+the mingling of the drudgery of the Dryasdust with the movements of an
+imaginative vision unsurpassed in our time; think, I say, of the
+collaborating of the ‘Völsunga Saga’ with the ‘Nibelungenlied,’ the
+choosing of this point from the Saga-man, and of that point from the
+later poem of the Germans, and then fusing the whole by imaginative heat
+into the greatest epic of the nineteenth century.  Was there not work
+enough here for a considerable portion of a poet’s life?  And yet so
+great is the entire mass of his work that ‘Sigurd’ is positively
+overlooked in many of the notices of his writings which have appeared
+since his death in the press, while in the others it is alluded to in
+three words, and this simply because the mass of other matter to be dealt
+with fills up all the available space of a newspaper.
+
+Then, again, take his translation of the Odyssey.  Some competent critics
+are dissatisfied with this; yet in a certain sense it is a triumph.  The
+two specially Homeric qualities—those, indeed, which set Homer apart from
+all other poets—are eagerness and dignity.  Never again can they be fully
+combined, for never again will poetry be written in the Greek hexameters
+and by a Homer.  That Tennyson could have given us the Homeric dignity
+his magnificent rendering of a famous fragment of the Iliad shows.
+Chapman’s translations show that the eagerness also can be caught.
+Morris, of course, could not have given the dignity of Homer, but then,
+while Tennyson has left us only a few lines speaking with the dignity of
+the Iliad, Morris gave us a translation of the entire Odyssey, which,
+though it missed the Homeric dignity, secured the eagerness as completely
+as Chapman’s free-and-easy paraphrase, and in a rendering as literal as
+Buckley’s prose crib, which lay frankly by Morris’s side as he wrote.
+
+This, with his much less satisfactory translation of Virgil, where he
+gives us an almost word-for-word translation, and yet throws over the
+poem a glamour of romance which brings Virgil into the sympathy of the
+modern reader, would have occupied years with almost any other poet.  But
+these two efforts of his genius are swamped by the purely original poems,
+such as ‘The Defence of Guenevere,’ ‘Jason,’ ‘The Earthly Paradise,’
+‘Love is Enough,’ ‘Poems by the Way,’ &c.  And then come his translations
+from the Icelandic.  Mere translation is, of course, easy enough, but not
+such translation as that in the “Saga Library.”  Allowing for all the aid
+he got from Mr. Magnússon, what a work this is!  Think of the imaginative
+exercise required to turn the language of these Saga-men into a diction
+so picturesque and so concrete as to make each Saga an English poem, for
+poem each one is, if Aristotle is right in thinking that imaginative
+substance and not metre is the first requisite of a poem.
+
+And this brings me to those poems without metre which he invented for
+himself in the latter portion of his career.  There is in these
+delightful stories, leaving out of consideration the exquisite lyrics
+interspersed, enough poetic wealth adequately to endow a dozen poets.
+The last of all of them—the one of which the last two chapters, when he
+could no longer hold a pen, he dictated to his friend Mr. Cockerell, in
+the determination, as he said to me, that he would finish it before he
+died—will be found to be finer than any hitherto published.  It is called
+‘The Sundering Flood,’ and was written after the story ‘The Water of the
+Wondrous Isles.’  It (‘The Sundering Flood’) is as long as ‘The Wood
+beyond the World,’ but has lyrics interspersed.
+
+But evidently it is as an inventor in the fine arts that he is chiefly
+known to the general public.  “Had he written no poetry at all, he would
+have been as famous,” we are told, “as he is now.”  Anyhow, there is no
+household of any culture among the English-speaking races in which the
+name of William Morris does not at once call up that great revival in
+decorative art for which the latter part of the nineteenth century will
+be famous.  In his designs for tapestry and other textures, in his
+designs for wall-papers and furniture, there is an expenditure of
+imaginative force which alone might make the fame of an artist.  Then his
+artistic printing, in which he invented his own decorations, his own
+type, and his own paper—think of the energy he put into all that!  The
+moment that this new interest seized him he made a more thorough study of
+the various specimens of black-letter printing than had ever been made
+before save by specialists.  But even this could not “fatigue an
+appetite” for the joy of work “which was insatiable.”  He started as an
+apostle of Socialism.  He edited _The Commonweal_, and wrote largely in
+it, sank money in it week by week with the greatest glee, stumped the
+country as a Socialist orator, and into that cause alone put the energy
+of three men.  Is it any wonder, then, that those who loved him were
+appalled at this prodigious output?  Often and often have I tried to
+bring this matter before him.  It was all of no use.  “For me to rest
+from work,” he would say, “means to die.”
+
+When not absorbed in some occupation that he loved—and in no other would
+he move—his restlessness was that of a young animal.  In conversation he
+could rarely sit still for ten consecutive minutes, but must needs spring
+from his seat and walk round the room, as if every limb were eager to
+take part in the talk.  His boisterous restlessness was the first thing
+that struck strangers.  During the period when the famous partnership of
+Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was being dissolved I saw him very
+frequently at Queen’s Square, for I took a very active part in the
+arrangement of that matter, and after our interviews at Queen Square he
+and I used often to lunch together at the “Cock” in Fleet Street.  He
+liked a sanded floor and quaint old-fashioned settles.  Moreover, the
+chops were the finest to be had in London.
+
+On the day following our first forgathering at the “Cock,” I was lunching
+there with another poet—a friend of his—when the waiter, who knew me
+well, said, “That was a loudish gent a-lunching with you yesterday, sir.
+I thought once you was a-coming to blows.”  Morris had merely been
+declaiming against the Elizabethan dramatists, especially Cyril Tourneur.
+He shouted out, “You ought to know better than to claim any merit for
+such work as ‘The Atheist’s Tragedy’”; and wound up with the
+generalization that “the use of blank verse as a poetic medium ought to
+be stopped by Act of Parliament for at least two generations.”  On
+another occasion, when Middleton (another fine spirit, who “should have
+died hereafter”) and I were staying with him at Kelmscott Manor, the
+passionate emphasis with which he declared that the curse of mankind was
+civilization, and that Australia ought to have been left to the blacks,
+New Zealand to the Maoris, and South Africa to the Kaffirs, startled even
+Middleton, who knew him so well.
+
+It was this boisterous energy and infinite enjoyment of life which made
+it so difficult for people on meeting him for the first time to associate
+him with the sweet sadness of ‘The Earthly Paradise.’  How could a man of
+such exuberant animal spirits as Morris—so hearty, so noisy often, and
+often so humorous—have written those lovely poems, whose only fault was
+an occasional languor and a lack of humour often commented on when the
+critic compares him with Chaucer?  This subject of Chaucer’s humour and
+Morris’s lack of it demands, however, a special word even in so brief a
+notice as this.  No man of our time—not even Rossetti—had a finer
+appreciation of humour than Morris, as is well known to those who heard
+him read aloud the famous “Rainbow Scene” in ‘Silas Marner’ and certain
+passages in Charles Dickens’s novels.  These readings were as fine as
+Rossetti’s recitations of ‘Jim Bludso’ and other specimens of Yankee
+humour.  And yet it is a common remark, and one that cannot be gainsaid,
+that there is no spark of humour in the published poems of either of
+these two friends.  Did it never occur to any critic to ask whether the
+anomaly was not explicable by some theory of poetic art that they held in
+common?  It is no disparagement to say of Morris that when he began to
+write poetry the influence of Rossetti’s canons of criticism upon him was
+enormous, notwithstanding the influence upon him of Browning’s dramatic
+methods.  But while Rossetti’s admiration of Browning was very strong, it
+was a canon of his criticism that humour was, if not out of place in
+poetry, a disturbing element of it.
+
+What makes me think that Morris was greatly influenced by this canon is
+the fact that Morris could and did write humorous poetry, and then
+withheld it from publication.  For the splendid poem of ‘Sir Peter
+Harpdon’s End,’ printed in his first volume, Morris wrote a humorous
+scene of the highest order, in which the hero said to his faithful fellow
+captive and follower John Curzon that as their deaths were so near he
+felt a sudden interest in what had never interested him before—the story
+of John’s life before they had been brought so close to each other.  The
+heroic but dull-witted soldier acceded to his master’s request, and the
+incoherent, muddle-headed way in which he gave his autobiography was full
+of a dramatic and subtle humour—was almost worthy of him who in three or
+four words created the foolish fat scullion in ‘Tristram Shandy.’  This
+he refused to print, in deference, I suspect, to a theory of poetic art.
+
+In criticizing Morris, however, the critic is apt to forget that among
+poets there are those who, treating poetry simply as an art, do not press
+into their work any more of their own individual forces than the work
+artistically demands, while another class of poets are impelled to give
+full expression to themselves in every poem they write.  It is to the
+former class of poets that Morris belongs.
+
+Whatever chanced to be Morris’s goal of the moment was pursued by him
+with as much intensity as though the universe contained no other possible
+goal, and then, when the moment was passed, another goal received all his
+attention.  I was never more struck with this than on the memorable day
+when I first met him, and was blessed with a friendship that lasted
+without interruption for nearly a quarter of a century.  It was shortly
+after he and Rossetti entered upon the joint occupancy of Kelmscott Manor
+on the Thames, where I was staying as Rossetti’s guest.  On a certain
+morning when we were walking in the fields Rossetti told me that Morris
+was coming down for a day’s fishing with George Hake, and that “Mouse,”
+the Icelandic pony, was to be sent to the Lechlade railway station to
+meet them.  “You are now going to be introduced to my fellow partner,”
+Rossetti said.  At that time I only knew of the famous firm by name, and
+I asked Rossetti for an explanation, which he gave in his usual incisive
+way.
+
+“Well,” said he, “one evening a lot of us were together, and we got
+talking about the way in which artists did all kinds of things in olden
+times, designed every kind of decoration and most kinds of furniture, and
+some one suggested—as a joke more than anything else—that we should each
+put down five pounds and form a company.  Fivers were blossoms of a rare
+growth among us in those days, and I won’t swear that the table bristled
+with fivers.  Anyhow, the firm was formed, but of course there was no
+deed, or anything of that kind.  In fact, it was a mere playing at
+business, and Morris was elected manager, not because we ever dreamed he
+would turn out a man of business, but because he was the only one among
+us who had both time and money to spare.  We had no idea whatever of
+commercial success, but it succeeded almost in our own despite.  Here
+comes the manager.  You must mind your _p’s_ and _q’s_ with him; he is a
+wonderfully stand-off chap, and generally manages to take against
+people.”
+
+“What is he like?” I said.
+
+“You know the portraits of Francis I.  Well, take that portrait as the
+basis of what you would call in your metaphysical jargon your ‘mental
+image’ of the manager’s face, soften down the nose a bit, and give him
+the rose-bloom colour of an English farmer, and there you have him.”
+
+“What about Francis’s eyes?” I said.
+
+“Well, they are not quite so small, but not big—blue-grey, but full of
+genius.”
+
+And then I saw, coming towards us on a rough pony so diminutive that he
+well deserved the name of “Mouse,” the figure of a man in a wideawake—a
+figure so broad and square that the breeze at his back, soft and balmy as
+it was, seemed to be using him as a sail, and blowing both him and the
+pony towards us.
+
+When Rossetti introduced me, the manager greeted him with a “H’m! I
+thought you were alone.”  This did not seem promising.  Morris at that
+time was as proverbial for his exclusiveness as he afterwards became for
+his expansiveness.
+
+Rossetti, however, was irresistible to everybody, and especially to
+Morris, who saw that he was expected to be agreeable to me, and most
+agreeable he was, though for at least an hour I could still see the shy
+look in the corner of his eyes.  He invited me to join the fishing, which
+I did.  Finding every faculty of Morris’s mind and every nerve in his
+body occupied with one subject, fishing, I (coached by Rossetti, who
+warned me not to talk about ‘The Defence of Guenevere’) talked about
+nothing but the bream, roach, dace, and gudgeon I used to catch as a boy
+in the Ouse, and the baits that used to tempt the victims to their doom.
+Not one word passed Morris’s lips, as far as I remember at this distance
+of time, which had not some relation to fish and baits.  He had come from
+London for a few hours’ fishing, and all the other interests which as
+soon as he got back to Queen’s Square would be absorbing him were
+forgotten.  Instead of watching my float, I could not help watching his
+face with an amused interest at its absorbed expression, which after a
+while he began to notice, and the following little dialogue ensued, which
+I remember as though it took place yesterday:—
+
+“How old were you when you used to fish in the Ouse?”
+
+“Oh, all sorts of ages; it was at all sorts of times, you know.”
+
+“Well, how young then?”
+
+“Say ten or twelve.”
+
+“When you got a bite at ten or twelve, did you get as interested, as
+excited, as I get when I see my float bob?”
+
+“No.”
+
+The way in which he said, “I thought not,” conveyed a world of
+disparagement of me as a man who could care to gaze upon a brother angler
+instead of upon his own float.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+In whatsoever William Morris does or says the hand or the voice of the
+poet is seen or heard: in his house decorations no less than in his
+epics, in his illuminated manuscripts no less than in his tapestries, in
+his philippics against “restoration” no less than in his sage-greens, in
+his socialism no less than in his samplers.  And first a word as to his
+poetry.  Any critic who, having for contemporaries such writers as
+Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and William Morris, fails to see that he
+lives in a period of great poets may rest assured that he is a critic
+born—may rest assured that had he lived in the days of the Elizabethans
+he would have joined the author of ‘The Returne from Parnassus’ in
+despising the unacademic author of ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Lear.’  Among this band
+of great contemporary poets what is the special position held by him who,
+having set his triumphant hand to everything from the sampler up to the
+epic, has now, by way of recreation, or rather by way of opening a
+necessary safety-valve to ease his restless energies, invented a system
+of poetic socialism and expounded it in a brand-new kind of prose
+fiction?
+
+A special and peculiar position Morris holds among his peers—on that we
+are all agreed; but what is that position?  We must not talk too
+familiarly about the Olympian gods; but is it that, without being the
+greatest where all are great, Morris is the one who on all occasions
+produces pure poetry and nothing else?  Without affirming that it is so,
+we may at least ask the question.  If other poets of our time show more
+intellectual strength than he, are they, perchance, given sometimes to
+adulterating their poetry with ratiocination and didactic preachments
+such as were better left to the proseman?  Without affirming that it is
+so, we may at least ask the question.  If other poets of our time can
+reach a finer frenzy than he and give it voice with a more melodious
+throat, are they, perchance, apt to forget that “eloquence is heard while
+poetry is overheard”?  Without affirming that it is so, we may at least
+ask the question.  If others, again, are more picturesque than he (though
+these it might be difficult to find), are they, perchance, a little too
+self-conscious in their word-pictures, and are they, perchance, apt to
+pass into those flowery but uncertain ways that were first discovered by
+Euphues?  Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the
+question.
+
+But supposing that we really had to affirm all these things about the
+other Olympians, where then would be the position of him about whose work
+such questions could not even be asked?  Where would then be the place of
+him who never passes into ratiocination or rhetoric, never passes into
+excessive word-painting or into euphuism, never speaks so loud as to be
+heard rather than overheard, but, on the contrary, gives us always clear
+and simple pictures, and always in musical language?  Where would then be
+the place of him who is the very ideal, if not of the poet as _vates_,
+yet of the poet as “maker”—the poet who always looks out upon life
+through a poetic atmosphere which, if sometimes more attenuated than
+suits some readers, is as simple and as clear as the air of a May
+morning?  A question which would be variously answered according to the
+various temperaments of those who answer—of those who define poetry to be
+“making,” or those who define it to be “prophesying,” or those who define
+it to be “singing.”
+
+Exception has, no doubt, been taken to certain archaisms in which Morris
+indulges not only in the epic of ‘Sigurd,’ but also, and in a greater
+degree, in his translations, especially in that rendering of the Odyssey.
+It is not our business here to examine into the merits and demerits of
+Morris as a translator; but if it were, this is what we should say on his
+behalf.  While admitting that now and again his diction is a little too
+Scandinavian to be in colour, we should point to Matthew Arnold’s dictum
+that in a versified translation a poet is no longer recognizable, and
+then we should ask whether it is given to any man in any kind of diction
+to translate Homer.  One Homeric quality only can any one translator
+secure, it seems; and if he can secure one, is not his partial failure
+better than success in less ambitious efforts?  To Chapman it was given
+to secure in the Iliad a measure of the Homeric eagerness—but what else?
+To Tennyson (in one wonderful fragment) it was given to secure a measure
+of the Homeric dignity and also a measure of the Homeric picture—but what
+else?  There was still left one of the three supreme Homeric
+qualities—the very quality which no one ever supposed could be secured
+for our literature, or, indeed, for any other—Homer’s quality of _naïf_
+wonder.  There is no witchery of Homer so fascinating as this; and did
+any one suppose that it could ever be caught by any translator?  And
+could it ever have been caught had not Nature in one of her happiest
+moods bethought herself of evolving, in a late and empty day, the
+industrious tapestry weaver of Merton and idle singer of ‘Sigurd,’ ‘The
+Earthly Paradise,’ ‘Love is Enough,’ and ten thousand delightful verses
+besides?
+
+But can a writer be called _naïf_ who works in a diction belonging rather
+to a past age than to his own?  Morris has proved that he could.
+Imagination is the basis upon which all other human faculties rest.  In
+the deep sense, indeed, one possession only have we “fools of nature,”
+our imagination.  What we fondly take for substance is the very shadow;
+what we fondly take for shadow is the very substance.  And day by day is
+Science herself endorsing more emphatically than ever Hamlet’s dictum,
+that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  By
+the aid of imagination our souls confront the present, and, as a rule,
+the present only.  But Morris is an instance, and not a solitary one, of
+a modern writer’s inhaling so naturally the atmosphere of the particular
+past period his imagination delights in as to belong spiritually to that
+period rather than his own.  To deny sincerity of accent to Morris
+because of his love of the simple old Scandinavian note—the note which to
+him represents every other kind of primitive simplicity—would be as
+uncritical as to deny sincerity of accent to Charles Lamb because of his
+sympathy with Elizabethan and Jacobean times, or to Dante Rossetti
+because of his sympathy with the period of his great Italian namesake.
+
+So much for the poetry of our many-handed poet.  As to his house
+decorations, his illuminated manuscripts, his “anti-scrape” philippics,
+his sage-greens, his tapestries, his socialism, and his samplers: to deal
+with the infinite is far beyond the scope of an article so very finite as
+this, or we could easily show that in them all there is seen the same
+_naïf_ genius of the poet, the same rare instinct for beautiful
+expression, the same originality as in the epics and the translations.
+Let him who is rash enough to suppose that even the socialism of a great
+poet is like the socialism of common folk read ‘John Ball.’  Let him
+observe how like Titania floating and dancing and playing among the
+Athenian clowns seems the Morrisian genius floating and dancing and
+playing among the surroundings in which at present it pleases him to
+disport.  What makes the ordinary socialistic literature to many people
+unreadable is its sourness.  What the Socialists say may be true, but
+their way of saying it sets one’s teeth on edge.  They contrive to state
+their case with so much bitterness, with so much unfairness—so much lack
+of logic—that the listener says at once, “For me, _any_ galley but this!
+Things _are_ bad; but, for Heaven’s sake, let us go on as we are!”
+
+By the clever competition of organisms did Nature, long before socialism
+was thought of, contrive to build up a world—this makeshift world.  By
+the teeth of her very cats did she evolve her succulent clover.  But
+whether the Socialists are therefore wrong in their views of society and
+its ultimate goal is not a question we need discuss.  What they want is
+more knowledge and less zeal.  It is possible to see, and see clearly,
+that the social organism is far from being what it ought to be, and at
+the same time to remember that man is a creature of slow growth, and that
+even in reaching his present modest stage of development the time he
+required was long—long indeed unless we consider his history in relation
+to the history of the earth, and then he appears to have been very
+commendably expeditious.  If there is any truth in what the geologists
+tell us of the vast age of the earth, it seems only a few years ago that
+man succeeded, after much heroic sitting down, in wearing off an
+appendage which had done him good service in his early tree-climbing
+days, but which, with new environments and with trousers in prospect, had
+ceased to be useful or ornamental.  An anthropoid Socialist would have
+advised him to “cut it off,” and had he done so he would have bled to
+death.
+
+That among all her children Man is really Nature’s prime favourite seems
+pretty evident, though no one can say why.  It is to him that the Great
+Mother is ever pointing and saying, “A poor creature, but mine own.  I
+shall do something with him some day, but I must not try to force him.”
+Here, indeed, is the mistake of the Socialists.  They think they can
+force the very creature who above all others cannot be forced.  They
+think they can turn him into something rich and strange—turn him in a
+single generation—even as certain ingenious experimentalists turned what
+Nature meant for a land-salamander into a water-salamander, with new
+rudder-tail and gills instead of lungs and feet suppressed, by feeding
+him with water animals in oxygenated water and cajoling his functions.
+Competition, that evolved Shakespeare from an ascidian, may be a mistake
+of Nature’s—M. Arsène Houssaye declares that she never was so wise and
+artistically perfect as we take her to be—but her mistakes are too old to
+be rectified in a single generation.  A little more knowledge, we say,
+and a little less zeal would save the Socialist from being considered by
+the advanced thinker—who, studying the present by the light of the past,
+sees that all civilization is provisional—as the most serious obstructive
+whom he has to encounter.
+
+As to Morris, we have always felt that, take him all round, he is the
+richest and most varied in artistic endowments of any man of our time.
+On whichsoever of the fine arts he had chanced to concentrate his gifts
+and energies the result would have been the same as in poetry.  In the
+front rank he would always have been.  But it is not until we come to
+deal with his socialism that we see how entirely aestheticism is the
+primal source from which all his energies spring.  That he has a great
+and generous heart—a heart that must needs sympathize with every form of
+distress—no one can doubt who reads these two books, {263} and yet his
+socialism comes from an entirely æsthetic impulse.  It is the vulgarities
+of civilization, it is the ugliness of contemporary life—so unlike that
+Earthly Paradise of the poetic dream—that have driven him from his
+natural and proper work.  He cannot take offence at our saying this, for
+he has said it himself in ‘Signs of Change’:—
+
+    “As I strove to stir up people to this reform, I found that the
+    causes of the vulgarities of civilization lay deeper than I had
+    thought, and little by little I was driven to the conclusion that all
+    these uglinesses are but the outward expression of the innate moral
+    baseness into which we are forced by our present form of society, and
+    that it is futile to attempt to deal with them from the outside.
+    Whatever I have written, or spoken on the platform, on these social
+    subjects is the result of the truths of socialism meeting my earlier
+    impulse, and giving it a definite and much more serious aim; and I
+    can only hope, in conclusion, that any of my readers who have found
+    themselves hard-pressed by the sordidness of civilization, and have
+    not known where to turn to for encouragement, may receive the same
+    enlightenment as I have, and that even the rough pieces in this book
+    may help them to that end.”
+
+With these eloquent words no one can more fully agree than we do, so far
+as they relate to the unloveliness of Philistine rule.  But though the
+bad features of the present time {264} are peculiar to itself, when were
+those paradisal days of which Morris dreams? when did that merry England
+exist in which the general sum of human happiness and human misery was
+more equally distributed than now?
+
+Those “dark ages” beloved of the author of ‘John Ball’ may not have been
+quite so dark as Swinburne declares them to have been; but in this matter
+of the equalization of human happiness were they so very far in advance
+of the present time?  Those who have watched the progress of Morris’s
+socialism know that, so far from being out of keeping with the
+“anti-scrape” philippics and the tapestry weaving, it is in entire
+harmony with them.  Out of a noble anger against the “jerry builder” and
+his detestable doings sprang this the last of the Morrisian epics, as out
+of the wrath of Achilles sprang the Iliad.  That the picturesqueness of
+the John Ball period should lead captive the imagination of Morris was,
+of course, inevitable.  Society is at least picturesque wheresoever the
+classes are so sharply demarcated as they were in the dark ages, when the
+difference as to quality of flesh and blood between the lord and the
+thrall was greater than the difference between the thrall and the swine
+he tended.  But what about the condition of this same picturesque thrall
+who (as the law books have it) “clothed the soil”—whose every chance of
+happiness, whose every chance of comfort, depended upon the arbitrary
+will of some more or less brutal lord?  What was the condition of the
+English lower orders—the orders for whom many bitter social tears are now
+being shed?  What about the condition of the thralls in dark ages so dark
+that even an apostle of Wyclif’s (this same John Ball, Morris’s hero)
+preached the doctrine—unless he has been belied—that no child had a soul
+that could be saved who had been born out of wedlock?  The Persian
+aphorism that warns us to beware of poets, princes, and women must have
+had a satirical reference to the fact that their governance of the world
+is by means of picturesqueness.  Always it has been the picturesqueness
+of tyranny that has kept it up.  It was the picturesqueness of the _auto
+de fe_ that kept up the Spanish Inquisition, but we may rest assured that
+the most picturesque actors in that striking tableau would have preferred
+a colourless time of jerry builders to a picturesqueness like that.  To
+find a fourteenth-century pothouse parlour painted by a modern Socialist
+with a hand more loving than Walter Scott’s own is indeed touching:—
+
+    “I entered the door and started at first with my old astonishment,
+    with which I had woke up, so strange and beautiful did this interior
+    seem to me, though it was but a pothouse parlour.  A quaintly carved
+    sideboard held an array of bright pewter pots and dishes and wooden
+    and earthen bowls; a stout oak table went up and down the room, and a
+    carved oak chair stood by the chimney-corner, now filled by a very
+    old man dim-eyed and white-bearded.  That, except the rough stools
+    and benches on which the company sat, was all the furniture.  The
+    walls were panelled roughly enough with oak boards to about six feet
+    from the floor, and about three feet of plaster above that was
+    wrought in a pattern of a rose stem running all round the room,
+    freely and roughly done, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes)
+    wonderful skill and spirit.  On the hood of the great chimney a huge
+    rose was wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper
+    colours.  There were a dozen or more of the men I had seen coming
+    along the street sitting there, some eating and all drinking; their
+    cased bows leaned against the wall, their quivers hung on pegs in the
+    panelling, and in a corner of the room I saw half a dozen bill-hooks
+    that looked made more for war than for hedge-shearing, with ashen
+    handles some seven foot long.  Three or four children were running
+    about among the legs of the men, heeding them mighty little in their
+    bold play, and the men seemed little troubled by it, although they
+    were talking earnestly and seriously too.  A well-made comely girl
+    leaned up against the chimney close to the gaffer’s chair, and seemed
+    to be in waiting on the company: she was clad in a close-fitting gown
+    of bright blue cloth, with a broad silver girdle, daintily wrought,
+    round her loins, a rose wreath was on her head, and her hair hung
+    down unbound; the gaffer grumbled a few words to her from time to
+    time, so that I judged he was her grandfather.”
+
+“Morris’s ‘Earthly Paradise’!” the reader will exclaim.  Yes; and here we
+come upon that feature of originality which, as has been before said,
+distinguishes Morris’s socialism from the socialism of the prosaic
+reformer.
+
+Political opinions almost always spring from temperament.  The
+conservative temper of such a poet as Sir Walter Scott leads him to
+idealize the past, and to concern himself but little about the future.
+The rebellious temperament of such a poet as Shelley leads him to
+idealize the future, and concern himself but little about the past.  But
+by contriving to idealize both the past and the future, and mixing the
+two idealizations into one delicious amalgam, the poet of the ‘Earthly
+Paradise’ gives us the Morrisian socialism, the most charming, and in
+many respects the most marvellous product of “the poet’s mind” that has
+ever yet been presented to an admiring world.
+
+The plan of ‘John Ball’ is simplicity itself.  The poet in a dream
+becomes a spectator of the insurrection of the Kentish men at the time
+when Wat Tyler rebelled against the powers that were; and the hero, John
+Ball, who is mainly famous as having preached a sermon from the text
+
+    Wan Adam dalf and Eve span
+    Wo was thanne a gentilman?
+
+is made to listen to the poet-dreamer’s prophecy of the days of
+_bourgeois_ rule and the jerry builder.
+
+If we take into account the perfect truth and beauty of the literary form
+in which the story is presented, we do not believe that anything to
+surpass it could be found in historic fiction; indeed, we do not know
+that anything could be found to equal it.  The difficulty of the
+imaginative writer who attempts, whether in prose or verse, to vivify the
+past seems to be increasing, as we have before said, every day with the
+growth of the scientific temper and the reverence of the sacredness of
+mere documents.  The old-fashioned theory—the theory which obtained from
+Shakespeare’s time down to Scott’s and even down to Kingsley’s—that the
+facts of history could be manipulated for artistic purposes with the same
+freedom that the artist’s own inventions can be handled, gave the artist
+power to produce vital and flexible work at the expense of the historic
+conscience—a power which is being curtailed day by day.  The instinct for
+vivifying by imaginative treatment the records of the past is too
+universal and too deeply inwoven in the very texture of the human mind to
+be other than a true and healthy instinct.  But so oppressive has become
+the tyranny of documents, so fettered by what a humourist has called
+“factology” have become the wings of the romancer’s imagination, that one
+wonders at his courage in dealing with historic subjects at all.
+
+A bold writer would he be who in the present day should make Shakespeare
+figure among the Kenilworth festivities as a famous player (after the
+manner of Scott), or who should (after the manner of Kingsley) give
+Elizabeth credit for Winter’s device of using the fire-ships before
+Calais.  Even the poet—he who, dealing as he does with essential and
+elemental qualities only, is not so hampered as the proseman in these
+matters—is beginning also to feel the tyranny of documents, as we see
+notably in Swinburne’s ‘Bothwell,’ which consists very largely of
+documents transfigured into splendid verse.  But more than even this: the
+mere literary form has now to be as true to the time depicted as
+circumstances will allow.  If Scott’s romances have a fault it is that,
+as he had no command over, and perhaps but little sympathy with, the
+beautiful old English of which Morris is such a master, his stories lack
+one important element of dramatic illusion.  But it is in the literary
+form of his story that Morris is especially successful.  Where time has
+dealt most cruelly with our beloved language is in robbing it of that
+beautiful cadence which fell from our forefathers’ lips as sweetly and as
+unconsciously as melody falls from the throat of the mavis.  One of the
+many advantages that Morris has reaped from his peculiar line of study is
+that he can write like this—he, and he alone among living men:—
+
+    “‘Surely thou goest to thy death.’  He smiled very sweetly, yet
+    proudly, as he said: ‘Yea, the road is long, but the end cometh at
+    last.  Friend, many a day have I been dying; for my sister, with whom
+    I have played and been merry in the autumntide about the edges of the
+    stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and bramble-berries there,
+    and started thence the missel-thrush, and wondered at his voice and
+    thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk wheeled and turned over the
+    hedges, and the weasel ran across the path, and the sound of the
+    sheep-bells came to us from the downs as we sat happy on the grass;
+    and she is dead and gone from the earth, for she pined from famine
+    after the years of the great sickness; and my brother was slain in
+    the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he that stripped
+    him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after
+    I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and
+    true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth;
+    and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be
+    done?  Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must die; and
+    I will tell thee another, to wit, that they live: and I live now and
+    shall live.  Tell me then what shall befall.”
+
+Note the music of the cadence here—a music that plays about the heart
+more sweetly than any verse, save the very highest.  And here we touch
+upon an extremely interesting subject.
+
+Always in reading a prose story by a writer whose energies have been
+exercised in other departments of letters there is for the critic a
+special interest.  If this exercise has been in fields outside
+imaginative literature—in those fields of philosophical speculation where
+a logical method and a scientific modulation of sentences are
+required—the novelist, instead of presenting us with those concrete
+pictures of human life demanded in all imaginative art, is apt to give us
+disquisitions “about and about” human life.  Forgetting that it is not
+the function of any art to prove, he is apt to concern himself deeply in
+showing why his actors did and said this or that—apt to busy himself
+about proving his story either by subtle analyses or else by purely
+scientific generalizations, instead of attending to the true method of
+convincement that belongs to his art—the convincement that is effected by
+actual pictorial and dramatic illustration of how his actors really did
+the things and said the things vouched for by his own imagination.  That
+the quest of a scientific, or supposed scientific, basis for a novelist’s
+imaginative structure is fatal to true art is seen not only in George
+Eliot and the accomplished author of ‘Elsie Venner,’ but also in writers
+of another kind—writers whose hands cannot possibly have been stiffened
+by their knowledge of science.
+
+Among the many instances that occur to us we need point to only one, that
+of a story recently published by one of our most successful living
+novelists, in which the writer endeavours to prove that animal magnetism
+is the acting cause of spiritualistic manifestations so called.  Setting
+out to show that a medium is nothing more than a powerful mesmerist, to
+whose manipulations all but two in a certain household are unconsciously
+succumbing, he soon ignores for plot purposes the nature of the dramatic
+situation by making those very two sceptics at a séance hear the same
+music, see the same spiritually conveyed newspaper, as the others hear
+and see.  That the writer should mistake, as he seems to do, the merely
+directive force of magnetism for a motive force does not concern the
+literary critic.  But when two sceptics, who are to expose a charlatan’s
+tricks by watching how the believers are succumbing to mesmeric
+hallucinations, are found succumbing to the same hallucinations
+themselves—succumbing because the story-teller needs them as witnesses of
+the phenomena—then the literary critic grows pensive, for he sees what
+havoc the scientific method will work in the flower-garden of art.
+
+On the other hand, should the story-teller be a poet—one who, like the
+writer of ‘John Ball,’ has been accustomed to write under the conditions
+of a form of literary art where the diction is always and necessarily
+concrete, figurative, and quintessential, and where the movement is
+metrical—his danger lies in a very different direction.  The critic’s
+interest then lies in watching how the poet will comport himself in
+another field of imaginative literature—a field where no such conditions
+as these exist—a field where quintessential and concrete diction, though
+meritorious, may yet be carried too far, and where those regular and
+expected bars of the metricist which are the first requisites of verse
+are not only without function, but are in the way—are fatal, indeed, to
+that kind of convincement which, and which alone, is the proper quest of
+prose art.  No doubt it is true, as we have before said, that literature
+being nothing but the reflex of the life of man, or else of the life of
+nature, the final quest of every form of literature is that special kind
+of convincement which is inherently suitable to the special form.  For
+the analogy between nature and true art is not a fanciful one, and the
+relation of function to organism is the same in both.  But what is the
+difference between the convincement achieved by poetic and the
+convincement achieved by prose art?  Is it that the convincement of him
+who works in poetic forms is, though not necessarily, yet most perfectly
+achieved by a faithful record of the emotion aroused in his own soul by
+the impact upon his senses of the external world, while the convincement
+of the proseman is, though not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved
+by a faithful record and picture of the external world itself?
+
+All such generalizations as this are, no doubt, to be taken with many and
+great qualifications; but, roughly speaking, would not this seem to be
+the fundamental difference between that kind of imaginative literature
+which expresses itself in metrical forms and that kind of imaginative
+literature in which metrical form is replaced by other qualities and
+other functions?  Not but that these two methods may meet in the same
+work, not but that they may meet and strengthen each other, as we have
+before said when glancing at the interesting question, How much, or how
+little, of realism can poetry capture from the world of prose and weave
+into her magic woof, and how much of music can prose steal from poetry?
+But in order to do all that can be done in the way of enriching poetry
+with prose material without missing the convincement of poetic art, the
+poet must be Homer himself; in order to do all that can be done in the
+way of vivifying prose fiction with poetic fire without missing the
+convincement of prose art, the story-teller must be Charlotte Brontë or
+Emily, her sister, in whose work we find for once the quintessential
+strength and the concrete and figurative diction of the poet—indeed, all
+the poetical requisites save metre alone.  Had ‘Jane Eyre,’ ‘Villette,’
+and ‘Wuthering Heights’ existed in Coleridge’s time he would, we may be
+sure, have taken these three prose poems as illustrations of the truth of
+his axiom that the true antithesis of poetry is not prose, but science.
+
+What the prose poet has to avoid is metrical movement on the one side and
+scientific modulation of sentences on the other.  And perhaps in no case
+can it be achieved save in the autobiographic form of fiction, where and
+where alone the work is so subjective that it may bear even the poetic
+glow of ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette.’  What makes us think this to be so is
+the fact that in ‘Shirley’—a story written in the epic method—the only
+passages of the poetic kind which really convince are those uttered by
+the characters in their own persons.  And as to ‘Wuthering Heights,’ a
+story which could not, of course, be told in one autobiography, the
+method of telling it by means of a group of autobiographies, though
+clumsy enough from the constructor’s point, was yet just as effective as
+a more artistic method.  And it was true instinct of genius that led
+Emily Brontë to adopt the autobiographic method even under these heavy
+conditions.
+
+Still the general truth remains that the primary function of the poet is
+to tell his story steeped in his own emotion, while the primary function
+of the prose fictionist is to tell his story in an objective way.  Hence
+it is that in a general way the difficulty of the poet who turns to prose
+fiction lies, like that of philosophical or scientific writers, in
+suppressing certain intellectual functions which he has been in the habit
+of exercising.  And the case of Scott, which at first sight might seem to
+show against this theory, may be adduced in support of it.  For Scott’s
+versified diction, though concrete, is never more quintessential than
+that of prose; and his method being always objective rather than
+subjective, when he turned to prose fiction he seemed at once to be
+writing with his right hand where formerly he had been writing with his
+left.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.  FRANCIS HINDES GROOME.
+(THE TARNO RYE.)
+1851–1902.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+I have been invited to write about my late friend and colleague Francis
+Hindes Groome, who died on the 24th ult., and was buried among his
+forefathers at Monk Soham in Suffolk.  I find the task extremely
+difficult.  Though he died at fifty, he, with the single exception of
+Borrow, had lived more than any other friend of mine, and perhaps
+suffered more.  Indeed, his was one of the most remarkable and romantic
+literary lives that, since Borrow’s, have been lived in my time.
+
+The son of an Archdeacon of Suffolk, he was born in 1851 at Monk Soham
+Rectory, where, I believe, his father and his grandfather were born, and
+where they certainly lived; for—as has been recorded in one of the
+invaluable registry books of my friend Mr. F. A. Crisp—he belonged to one
+of the oldest and most distinguished families in Suffolk.  He was sent
+early to Ipswich School, where he was a very popular boy, but never
+strong and never fond of athletic exercises.  His early taste for
+literature is shown by the fact that with his boy friend Henry Elliot
+Maiden he originated a school magazine called the _Elizabethan_.  Like
+many an organ originated in the outer world, the _Elizabethan_ failed
+because it would not, or could not, bring itself into harmony with the
+public taste.  The boys wanted news of cricket and other games: Groome
+and his assistant editor gave them literature as far as it was in their
+power to do so.
+
+                     [Picture: Francis Hindes Groome]
+
+The Ipswich School was a very good one for those who got into the sixth,
+as Groome did.  The head master, Dr. Holden, was a very fine scholar; and
+it is no wonder that Groome throughout his life showed a considerable
+knowledge of and interest in classical literature.  That he had a real
+insight into the structure of Latin verse is seen by a rendering of
+Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus,’ which Mr. Maiden has been so very good as to show
+me—a rendering for which he got a prize.  In 1869 he got prizes for
+classical literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin hexameters.
+But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence over Groome’s taste, the
+assistant master, Mr. Sanderson, certainly exercised more, for Mr.
+Sanderson was an enthusiastic student of Romany.  The influence of the
+assistant master was soon seen after Groome went up to Oxford.  He was
+ploughed for his “Smalls,” and, remaining up for part of the “Long,” he
+went one night to a fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present—an
+incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story ‘Kriegspiel.’
+Groome at once struck up an acquaintance with the gipsies at the fair.
+It occurred also that Mr. Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich
+School, used to go and stay at Monk Soham Rectory every summer for
+fishing; and this tended to focus Groome’s interest in Romany matters.
+At Göttingen, where he afterwards went, he found himself in a kind of
+Romany atmosphere, for, owing perhaps to Benfey’s having been a Göttingen
+man, Romany matters were still somewhat rife there in certain sets.
+
+The period from his leaving Göttingen to his appearance in Edinburgh in
+1876 as a working literary man of amazing activity, intelligence, and
+knowledge is the period that he spent among the gipsies.  And it is this
+very period of wild adventure and romance that it is impossible for me to
+dwell upon here.  But on some future occasion I hope to write something
+about his adventures as a Romany Rye.  His first work was on the ‘Globe
+Encyclopædia,’ edited by Dr. John Ross.  Even at that time he was very
+delicate and subject to long wearisome periods of illness.  During his
+work on the ‘Globe’ he fell seriously ill in the middle of the letter
+_S_.  Things were going very badly with him; but they would have gone
+much worse had it not been for the affection and generosity of his friend
+and colleague Prof. H. A. Webster, who, in order to get the work out in
+time, sat up night after night in Groome’s room, writing articles on
+Sterne, Voltaire, and other subjects.
+
+Webster’s kindness, and afterwards the kindness of Dr. Patrick, endeared
+Edinburgh and Scotland to the “Tarno Rye.”  As Webster was at that time
+on the staff of ‘The Encyclopædia Britannica,’ I think, but I do not
+know, that it was through him that Groome got the commission to write his
+article ‘Gypsies’ in that stupendous work.  I do not know whether it is
+the most important, but I do know that it is one of the most thorough and
+conscientious articles in the entire encyclopædia.  This was followed by
+his being engaged by Messrs. Jack to edit the ‘Ordnance Gazetteer of
+Scotland,’ a splendid work, which on its completion was made the subject
+of a long and elaborate article in _The Athenæum_—an article which was a
+great means of directing attention to him, as he always declared.
+Anyhow, people now began to inquire about Groome.  In 1880 he brought out
+‘In Gypsy Tents,’ which I shall describe further on.  In 1885 he was
+chosen to join the staff of Messrs. W. & R. Chambers.  It is curious to
+think of the “Tarno Rye,” perhaps the most variously equipped literary
+man in Europe, after such adventures as his, sitting from 10 to 4 every
+day on the sub-editorial stool.  He was perfectly content on that stool,
+however, owing to the genial kindness of his colleague.  As sub-editor
+under Dr. Patrick, and also as a very copious contributor, he took part
+in the preparation of the new edition of ‘Chambers’s Encyclopædia.’  He
+took a large part also in preparing ‘Chambers’s Gazetteer’ and
+‘Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary.’  Meanwhile he was writing articles
+in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ articles in _Blackwood’s
+Magazine_ and _The Bookman_, and also reviews upon special subjects in
+_The Athenæum_.
+
+This was followed in 1887 by a short Border history, crammed with
+knowledge.  In 1895 his name became really familiar to the general reader
+by his delightful little volume ‘Two Suffolk Friends’—sketches of his
+father and his father’s friend Edward FitzGerald—full of humour and
+admirable character-drawing.
+
+In 1896 he published his Romany novel ‘Kriegspiel,’ which did not meet
+with anything like the success it deserved, although I must say he was
+himself in some degree answerable for its comparative failure.  The
+origin of the story was this.  Shortly after our intimacy I told him that
+I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East Anglian gipsies and the
+Welsh gipsies, but that it had been so dinned into me by Borrow that in
+England there was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart
+to publish it.  Groome urged me to let him read it, and he did read it,
+as far as it was then complete, and took an extremely kind view of it,
+and urged me to bring it out.  But now came another and a new cause for
+delay in my bringing out ‘Aylwin’: Groome himself, who at that time knew
+more about Romany matters than all other Romany students of my
+acquaintance put together, showed a remarkable gift as a _raconteur_, and
+I felt quite sure that he could, if he set to work, write a Romany
+story—_the_ Romany story of the English language.  He strongly resisted
+the idea for a long time—for two or three years at least—and he was only
+persuaded to undertake the task at last by my telling him that I would
+never bring out my story until he brought out one himself.  At last he
+yielded, told me of a plot, a capital one, and set to work upon it.  When
+it was finished he sent the manuscript to me, and I read it through with
+the greatest interest, and also the greatest care.  I found, as I
+expected to find, that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect, and that
+it was altogether an extremely clever romance; but I felt also that
+Groome had given no attention whatever to the structure of a story.
+Incidents of the most striking and original kind were introduced at the
+wrong places, and this made them interesting no longer.  So persuaded was
+I that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success that I
+devoted days, and even weeks, to going through the novel, and indicating
+where the transpositions should take place.  Groome, however, had got so
+entirely sick of his novel before he had completed it that he refused
+absolutely to put another hour’s work into it; for, as he said, “the
+writing of it had already been a loss to the pantry.”
+
+He sent it, as it was, to an eminent firm of publishers, who, knowing
+Groome and his abilities, would have willingly taken it if they had seen
+their way to do so.  But they could not, for the very reasons that had
+induced me to recast it, and they declined it.  The book was then sent
+round to publisher after publisher with the same result; and yet there
+was more fine substance in this novel than in five ordinary stories.  It
+was at last through the good offices of Mr. Coulson Kernahan that it was
+eventually taken by Messrs. Ward & Lock; and, although it won warm
+eulogies from such great writers as George Meredith, it never made its
+way.  Its failure distressed me far more than it distressed Groome, for I
+loved the man, and knew what its success would have been to him.  Amiable
+and charming as Groome was, there was in him a singular vein of dogged
+obstinacy after he had formed an opinion; and he not only refused to
+recast his story, but refused to abandon the absurd name of ‘Kriegspiel’
+for a volume of romantic gipsy adventure.  I suspect that a large
+proportion of people who asked for ‘Kriegspiel’ at Mudie’s and Smith’s
+consisted of officers who thought that it was a book on the German war
+game.
+
+I tried to persuade him to begin another gipsy novel, but found it quite
+impossible to do so.  But even then I waited before bringing out my own
+prose story.  I published instead my poem in which was told the story of
+Rhona Boswell, which, to my own surprise and Groome’s, had a success,
+notwithstanding its gipsy subject.  Then I brought out my gipsy story,
+and accepted its success rather ungratefully, remembering how the
+greatest gipsy scholar in the world had failed in this line.  In 1899 he
+published ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales,’ in which he got the aid of the first Romany
+scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson.  And this was followed in 1901 by
+his edition of ‘Lavengro,’ which, notwithstanding certain unnecessary
+carpings at Borrow—such, for instance, as the assertion that the word
+“dook” is never used in Anglo-Romany for “ghost”—is beyond any doubt the
+best edition of the book ever published.  The introduction gives sketches
+of all the Romany Ryes and students of Romany, from Andrew Boorde (_c._
+1490–1549) down to Mr. G. R. Sims and Mr. David MacRitchie.  During this
+time it was becoming painfully perceptible to me that his physical powers
+were waning, although for two years that decadence seemed to have no
+effect upon his mental powers.  But at last, while he was working on a
+book in which he took the deepest interest—the new edition of ‘Chambers’s
+Cyclopædia of English Literature’—it became manifest that the general
+physical depression was sapping the forces of the brain.
+
+But it is personal reminiscences of Groome that I have been invited to
+write, and I have not yet even begun upon these.  Our close friendship
+dated no further back than 1881—the year in which died the great Romany
+Rye.  Indeed, it was owing to Borrow’s death, coupled with Groome’s
+interest in that same Romany girl Sinfi Lovell, whom the eloquent Romany
+preacher “Gipsy Smith” has lately been expiating upon to immense
+audiences, that I first became acquainted with Groome.  Although he has
+himself in some magazine told the story, it seems necessary for me to
+retell it here, for I know of no better way of giving the readers of _The
+Athenæum_ a picture of Frank Groome as he lives in my mind.
+
+It was in 1881 that Borrow, who some seven years before went down to
+Oulton, as he told me, “to die,” achieved death.  And it devolved upon me
+as the chief friend of his latest years to write an obituary notice of
+him in _The Athenæum_.  Among the many interesting letters that it
+brought me from strangers was one from Groome, whose name was familiar to
+me as the author of the article ‘Gypsies’ in the ‘Encyclopædia
+Britannica.’  But besides this I had read ‘In Gypsy Tents,’ a picture of
+the very kind of gipsies I knew myself, those of East Anglia—a picture
+whose photographic truth had quite startled me.  Howsoever much of matter
+of fact may be worked into ‘Lavengro’ (and to no one did Borrow talk with
+so little reticence upon this delicate subject as to me during many a
+stroll about Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park), I am certain that his
+first-hand knowledge of gipsy life was quite superficial compared with
+Groome’s during the nine years or so that he was brought into contact
+with them in Great Britain and on the Continent.  Hence a book like ‘In
+Gypsy Tents’ has for a student of Romany subjects an interest altogether
+different from that which Borrow’s books command; for while Borrow, the
+man of genius, throws by the very necessities of his temperament the
+colours of romance around his gipsies, the characters of ‘In Gypsy
+Tents,’ depicted by a man of remarkable talent merely, are as realistic
+as though painted by Zola, while the wealth of gipsy lore at his command
+is simply overwhelming.
+
+At that time—with the exception of Borrow and the late Sir Richard
+Burton—the only man of letters with whom I had been brought into contact
+who knew anything about the gipsies was Tom Taylor, whose picture of
+Romany life in an anonymous story called ‘Gypsy Experiences,’ which
+appeared in _The Illustrated London News_ in 1851, and in his play ‘Sir
+Roger de Coverley,’ is not only fascinating, but on the whole true.
+By-the-by, this charming play might be revived now that there is a
+revived interest in Romany matters.  George Meredith’s wonderful ‘Kiomi’
+was a picture, I think, of the only Romany chi he knew; but genius such
+as his needs little straw for the making of bricks.  The letter I
+received from Groome enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from a
+forgotten anonymous _Athenæum_ article of mine, written as far back as
+1877, in which I showed acquaintance with gipsydom and described the
+ascent of Snowdon in the company of Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards
+removed bodily to ‘Aylwin.’  Here is the cutting:—
+
+    “We had a striking instance of this some years ago, when crossing
+    Snowdon from Capel Curig, one morning, with a friend.  She was not
+    what is technically called a lady, yet she was both tall and, in her
+    way, handsome, and was far more clever than many of those who might
+    look down upon her; for her speculative and her practical abilities
+    were equally remarkable: besides being the first palmist of her time,
+    she had the reputation of being able to make more clothes-pegs in an
+    hour, and sell more, than any other woman in England.  The splendour
+    of that ‘Snowdon sunrise’ was such as we can say, from much
+    experience, can only be seen about once in a lifetime, and could
+    never be given by any pen or pencil.  ‘You don’t seem to enjoy it a
+    bit,’ was the irritated remark we could not help making to our
+    friend, who stood quite silent and apparently deaf to the rhapsodies
+    in which we had been indulging, as we both stood looking at the
+    peaks, or rather at the vast masses of billowy vapours enveloping
+    them, as they sometimes boiled and sometimes blazed, shaking,
+    whenever the sun struck one and then another, from amethyst to
+    vermilion, ‘shot’ now and then with gold.  ‘Don’t injiy it, don’t I?’
+    said she, removing her pipe.  ‘_You_ injiy talking about it, _I_
+    injiy lettin’ it soak in.’”
+
+Groome asked whether the gipsy mentioned in the cutting was not a certain
+Romany chi whom he named, and said that he had always wondered who the
+writer of that article was, and that now he wondered no longer, for he
+knew him to be the writer of the obituary notice of George Borrow.
+Interested as I was in his letter, it came at a moment when the illness
+of a very dear friend of mine threw most other things out of my mind, and
+it was a good while before I answered it, and told him what I had to tell
+about my Welsh gipsy experiences and the adventure on Snowdon.  I got
+another letter from him, and this was the beginning of a charming
+correspondence.  After a while I discovered that there were, besides
+Romany matters, other points of attraction between us.  Groome was the
+son of Edward FitzGerald’s intimate friend Robert Hindes Groome,
+Archdeacon of Suffolk.  Now long before the great vogue of Omar Khayyam,
+and, of course, long before the institution of the Omar Khayyam Club,
+there was a little group of Omarians of which I was a member.  I need not
+say here who were the others of that group, but it was to them I alluded
+in the ‘Toast to Omar Khayyam,’ which years afterwards I printed in _The
+Athenæum_, and have since reprinted in a volume of mine.
+
+After a while it was arranged that he was to come and visit us for a few
+days at The Pines.  When it got wind in the little household here that
+another Romany Rye, a successor to George Borrow, was to visit us, and
+when it further became known that he had travelled with Hungarian
+gipsies, Roumanian gipsies, Roumelian gipsies, &c., I don’t know what
+kind of wild and dishevelled visitor was not expected.  Instead of such a
+guest there appeared one of the neatest and most quiet young gentlemen
+who had ever presented themselves at the door.  No one could possibly
+have dared to associate Bohemia with him.  As a friend remarked who was
+afterwards invited to meet him at luncheon, “Clergyman’s son—suckling for
+the Church, was stamped upon him from head to foot.”  I will not deny
+that so respectable a looking Romany Rye rather disappointed The Pines at
+first.  At that time he was a little over thirty, but owing to his
+slender, graceful figure, and especially owing to his lithe movements and
+elastic walk, he seemed to be several years younger.
+
+The subject of Welsh gipsies, and especially of the Romany chi of
+Swindon, made us intimate friends in half an hour, and then there were
+East Anglia, Omar Khayyàm, and Edward FitzGerald to talk about!—a
+delightful new friend for a man who had so lately lost the only other
+Romany Rye in the world.  Owing to his youthful appearance, I christened
+him there and then the “Tarno Rye,” in remembrance of that other “Tarno
+Rye” whom Rhona Boswell loved.  I soon found that, great as was the
+physical contrast between the Tarno Rye and the original Romany Rye, the
+mental contrast was greater still.  Both were shy—very shy; but while
+Borrow’s shyness seemed to be born of wariness, the wariness of a man who
+felt that he was famous and had a part to play before an inquisitive
+world, Groome’s shyness arose from a modesty that was unique.
+
+As a philologist merely, to speak of nothing else, his equipment was ten
+times that of Borrow, whose temperament may be called anti-academic, and
+who really knew nothing thoroughly.  But while Borrow was for ever
+displaying his philology, and seemed always far prouder of it than of his
+fascinating powers as a writer of romantic adventures, Groome’s
+philological stores, like all his other intellectual riches, had to be
+drawn from him by his interlocutor if they were to be recognized at all.
+Whenever Borrow enunciated anything showing, as he thought, exceptional
+philological knowledge or exceptional acquaintance with matters Romany,
+it was his way always to bring it out with a sort of rustic twinkle of
+conscious superiority, which in its way, however, was very engaging.
+From Groome, on the contrary, philological lore would drop, when it did
+come, as unconsciously as drops of rain that fall.  It was the same with
+his knowledge of Romany matters, which was so vast.  Not once in all my
+close intercourse with him did he display his knowledge of this subject
+save in answer to some inquiry.  The same thing is to be noticed in
+‘Kriegspiel.’  Romany students alone are able by reading between the
+lines to discover how deep is the hidden knowledge of Romany matters, so
+full is the story of allusions which are lost upon the general
+reader—lost, indeed, upon all readers except the very few.  For instance,
+the gipsy villain of the story, Perun, when telling the tale of his crime
+against the father of the hero who married the Romany chi whom Perun had
+hoped to marry, makes allusion thus to the dead woman: “And then about
+her as I have named too often to-day.”  Had Borrow been alluding to the
+Romany taboo of the names of the dead, how differently would he have gone
+to work! how eager would he have been to display and explain his
+knowledge of this remarkable Romany superstition!  The same remark may be
+made upon the gipsy heroine’s sly allusion in ‘Kriegspiel’ to “Squire
+Lucas,” the Romany equivalent of Baron Munchausen, an allusion which none
+but a Romany student would understand.
+
+Before luncheon Groome and I took a walk over the common, and along the
+Portsmouth Road, through the Robin Hood Gate and across Richmond Park,
+where Borrow and I and Dr. Hake had so often strolled.  I wondered what
+the Gryengroes whom Borrow used to foregather with would have thought of
+my new friend.  In personal appearance the two Romany Ryes were as unlike
+as in every point of character they were unlike.  Borrow’s giant frame
+made him stand conspicuous wherever he went, Groome’s slender, slight
+body gave an impression of great agility; and the walk of the two great
+pedestrians was equally contrasted.  Borrow’s slope over the ground with
+the loose, long step of a hound I have, on a previous occasion,
+described; Groome’s walk was springy as a gipsy lad’s, and as noiseless
+as a cat’s.
+
+Of course, the talk during that walk ran very much upon Borrow, whom
+Groome had seen once or twice, but whom he did not in the least
+understand.  The two men were antipathetic to each other.  It was then
+that he told me how he had first been thrown across the gipsies, and it
+was then that he began to open up to me his wonderful record of
+experiences among them.  The talk during that first out of many most
+delightful strolls ran upon Benfey, and afterwards upon all kinds of
+Romany matters.  I remember how warm he waxed upon his pet aversion,
+“Smith of Coalville,” as he called him, who, he said, for the purposes of
+a professional philanthropist, had done infinite mischief to the gipsies
+by confounding them with all the wandering cockney raff from the slums of
+London.  On my repeating to him what, among other things, the Romany chi
+before mentioned said to me during the ascent of Snowdon from Capel
+Curig, that “to make _kairengroes_ (house-dwellers) of full-blooded
+Romanies was impossible, because they were the cuckoos of the human race,
+who had no desire to build nests, and were pricked on to move about from
+one place to another over the earth,” Groome’s tongue became loosened,
+and he launched out into a monologue on this subject full of learning and
+full, as it seemed to me, of original views upon the Romanies.
+
+As an instance of the cuckoo instincts of the true Romany, he told me
+that in North America—for which land, alas! so many of our best Romanies
+even in Borrow’s time were leaving Gypsey Dell and the grassy lanes of
+old England—the gipsies have contracted a habit, which is growing rather
+than waning, of migrating southward in autumn and northward again in
+spring.  He then launched out upon the subject of the wide dispersion of
+the Romanies not only in Europe—where they are found from almost the
+extreme north to the extreme south, and from the shores of the Bosphorus
+to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean—but also from north to south and from
+east to west in Asia, in Africa, from Egypt to the very south of the
+Soudan, and in America from Canada to the River Amazon.  And he then went
+on to show how intensely migratory they were over all these vast areas.
+
+So absorbing had been the gipsy talk that I am afraid the waiting
+luncheon was spoilt.  The little luncheon party was composed of fervent
+admirers of Sir Walter Scott—bigoted admirers, I fear, some of our
+present-day critics would have dubbed us; and it chanced that we all
+agreed in pronouncing ‘Guy Mannering’ to be the most fascinating of all
+the Wizard’s work.  Of course Meg Merrilies became at once the centre of
+the talk.  One contended that, great as Meg was as a woman, she was as a
+gipsy a failure; in short, that Scott’s idea of the Scottish gipsy woman
+was conventional—a fancy portrait in which are depicted some of the
+loftiest characteristics of the Highland woman rather than of the
+Scottish gipsy.  The true romany chi can be quite as noble as Meg
+Merrilies, said one, but great in a different way.  From Meg Merrilies
+the talk naturally turned upon Jane Gordon of Kirk Yetholm, Meg’s
+prototype, who, when an old woman, was ducked to death in the River Eden
+at Carlisle.  Then came the subject of Kirk Yetholm itself, the famous
+headquarters of the Scotch Romanies; and after this it naturally turned
+to Kirk Yetholm’s most famous inhabitant, old Will Faas, the gipsy king,
+whose corpse was escorted to Yetholm by three hundred and more donkeys.
+And upon all these subjects Groome’s knowledge was like an inexhaustible
+fountain; or rather it was like a tap, ready to supply any amount of lore
+when called upon to do so.
+
+But it was not merely upon Romany subjects that Groome found points of
+sympathy at The Pines during that first luncheon; there was that other
+subject before mentioned, Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyàm.  We, a
+handful of Omarians of those antediluvian days, were perhaps all the more
+intense in our cult because we believed it to be esoteric.  And here was
+a guest who had been brought into actual personal contact with the
+wonderful old Fitz.  As a child of eight he had seen him—talked with
+him—been patted on the head by him.  Groome’s father, the Archdeacon of
+Suffolk, was one of FitzGerald’s most intimate friends.  This was at once
+a delightful and a powerful link between Frank Groome and those at the
+luncheon table; and when he heard, as he soon did, the toast to “Omar
+Khayyàm,” none drank that toast with more gusto than he.  The fact is, as
+the Romanies say, that true friendship, like true love, is apt to begin
+at first sight.  But I must stop.  Frequently when the “Tarno Rye” came
+to England his headquarters were at The Pines.  Many and delightful were
+the strolls he and I had together.  One day we went to hear a gipsy band
+supposed to be composed of Roumelian gipsies.  After we had listened to
+several well-executed things Groome sauntered up to one of the performers
+and spoke to him in Roumelian Romany.  The man, although he did not
+understand Groome, knew that he was speaking Romany of some kind, and
+began speaking in Hungarian Romany, and was at once responded to by
+Groome in that variety of the Romany tongue.  Groome then turned to
+another of the performers, and was answered in English Romany.  At last
+he found one, and one only, in the band who was a Roumelian gipsy, and a
+conversation between them at once began.
+
+This incident affords an illustration of the width as well as the
+thoroughness of Groome’s knowledge of Romany matters.  I have affirmed in
+‘Aylwin’ that Sinfi Lovell—a born linguist who could neither read nor
+write—was the only gipsy who knew both English and Welsh Romany.  Groome
+was one of the few Englishmen who knew the most interesting of all
+varieties of the Romany tongue.  But latterly he talked a great deal of
+the vast knowledge of the Welsh gipsies, both as to language and
+folklore, possessed by Mr. John Sampson, University Librarian at
+Liverpool, the scholar who did so much to aid Groome in his last volume
+on Romany subjects, called ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales.’  It therefore gives me the
+greatest pleasure to end these very inadequate words of mine with a
+beautiful little poem in Welsh Romany by Mr. Sampson upon the death of
+the “Tarno Rye.”  In a very few years Welsh Romany will become absolutely
+extinct, and then this little gem, so full of the Romany feeling, will be
+greatly prized.  I wish I could have written the poem myself, but no man
+could have written it save Mr. Sampson:—
+
+
+STANYAKERÉSKI.
+
+
+    Romano ráia, prala, jinimángro,
+       Konyo chumeráva to chīkát,
+    Shukar java mangi, ta mukáva
+       Tut te ’jâ kamdóm me—kushki rat!
+
+    Kamli, savimáski, sas i sarla,
+       Baro zī sas tut, sar, tarno rom,
+    Lhatián i jivimáski patrin,
+       Ta līán o purikeno drom.
+
+    Boshadé i chiriklé veshténdi;
+       Sanilé ’pre tuti chal ta chai;
+    Mūri, pūv ta pāni tu kamésas
+       Dudyerás o sonakó lilaí.
+
+    Palla ’vena brishin, shil, la baval:
+       Sa’o divés tu murshkinés pīrdán:
+    Ako kino ’vesa, rat avéla,
+       Chēros sī te kesa tiro tan.
+
+    Parl o tamlo merimásko pāni
+       Dava tuki miro vast, ta so
+    Tu kamésas tire kokoréski
+       Mai kamáva—“Te sovés mīstō!”
+
+                              _Translation_.
+
+                        TO FRANCIS HINDES GROOME.
+
+    Scholar, Gypsy, Brother, Student,
+       Peacefully I kiss thy forehead,
+    Quietly I depart and leave
+       Thee whom I loved—“Good night.”
+
+    Sunny, smiling was the morning;
+       A light heart was thine, as, a youth,
+    Thou dids’t strike life’s trail
+       And take the ancient road.
+
+    The birds sang in the woods,
+       Man and maid laughed on thee,
+    The hills, field, and water thou didst love
+       The golden summer illuminated.
+
+    Then come the rain, cold, and wind,
+       All the day thou hast tramped bravely.
+    Now thou growest weary, night comes on.
+       It is time to make thy tent.
+
+    Across death’s dark stream
+       I give thee my hand; and what
+    Thou wouldst have desired for thyself
+       I wish thee—mayst thou sleep well.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Although novelists, dramatists, and poets are particularly fond of trying
+to paint the gipsies, it cannot be said that many of them have been
+successful in their delineations.  And this is because the inner and the
+outer life of a proscribed race must necessarily be unlike each other.
+Meg Merrilies is no more a gipsy than is Borrow’s delightful Isopel
+Berners.  Among the characteristic traits of the Romany woman, Meg does
+no doubt exhibit two: a wild poetic imagination and a fearlessness such
+as women rarely display.  But no one who had been brought into personal
+contact with gipsy women could ever have presented Meg Merrilies as one
+of them.  In the true Romany chi poetic imagination is combined with a
+homeliness and a positive love of respectability which are very curious.
+Not that Meg, noble as she is, is superior to the kind of heroic woman
+that the Romany race is capable of producing.  Indeed, the great
+speciality of the Romanies is the superiority of the women to the men—a
+superiority which extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that
+gift of music for which the gipsies are noticeable.  Even in Eastern
+Europe—Russia alone excepted—where gipsy music is so universal that,
+according to some writers, every Hungarian musician is of Romany
+extraction, it is the men and not, in general, the women who excel.
+This, however, may simply be the result of opportunity and training.
+
+It is not merely in intelligence, in imagination, in command over
+language, in breadth of view regarding the “Gorgio” world around them,
+that the Romany women, in Great Britain at least, leave the men far
+behind.  In character this superiority is equally noticeable.  To imagine
+a gipsy hero is not easy.  The male gipsy is not without a certain amount
+of courage, but it soon gives way, and in a physical conflict between a
+gipsy and an Englishman it always seems as though ages of oppression have
+damped its virility.  Although some of our most notable prizefighters
+have been gipsies, it used to be well known in times when the ring was
+fashionable that a gipsy could not be relied upon “to take punishment”
+with the stolid indifference of an Englishman or a negro, partly,
+perhaps, because his more highly strung nervous system makes him more
+sensitive to pain.  The courage of a gipsy woman, on the other hand, has
+passed into a proverb; nothing seems to daunt her, and yet she will allow
+her husband, a cowardly ruffian himself, perhaps, to strike her without
+returning the blow.  Wife-beating, however, is not common among the
+gipsies.  It may possibly be the case that some of the fine qualities of
+the gipsy woman are the result of that very barrenness of fine qualities
+among the men of which we have been speaking.  The lack of masculine
+chivalry among the men may in some measure account for the irresistible
+impulse among the women for taking their own part without appealing to
+the men for aid.  Also this may account for the strong way in which a
+gipsy woman is often drawn to the “Tarno Rye,” the young English
+gentleman of whom Matthew Arnold was thinking when he wrote the
+‘Scholar-Gipsy,’ and her fidelity to whom is so striking.  It is often in
+such relations as these with the Tarno Rye that the instinct of monogamy
+in the Romany woman is seen.  The unconquerable virtue of the Romany chi
+was often commented upon by Borrow; and, indeed, every observer of gipsy
+life is struck by it.
+
+Seeing that the moment the Romanies are brought into contact with the
+Gorgio world they adopt a method of approach entirely different from the
+natural method—natural to them in intercourse with each other—it is
+perhaps no wonder that the popular notion of the gipsy girl, taken mainly
+from the tradition of the stage, is so fantastically wrong.  With regard
+to the stage, no characters in the least like gipsies ever appeared on
+the boards, save the characters in Tom Taylor’s ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’
+In the eyes of the novelist, as well as in the eyes of the playwright,
+devilry seems to be the chief characteristic of the gipsy woman.  The
+fact is, however, that in the average gipsy woman as she really exists
+there is but little devilry.  “Romany guile,” which is well defined in
+the gipsy phrase as “the lie for the Gorgios,” does not prevent gipsy
+women from retaining some of the most marked characteristics of childhood
+throughout their lives.  This, indeed, is one of their special charms.
+In his desire to depict the supposed devilry of the Romany woman, Prosper
+Mérimée has perpetrated in ‘Carmen’ the greatest of all caricatures of
+the gipsy girl.  A mere incarnation of lust and bloodthirstiness is more
+likely to exist in any other race than in the Romanies, who have a great
+deal of love as a sentiment and comparatively very little of love as a
+movement of animal desire.
+
+In G. P. R. James’s ‘Gipsy’ (1835) there are touches which certainly show
+some original knowledge of Romany life and character.  The same may,
+perhaps, be said of Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Bird of Passage,’ but the
+pictures of gipsy life in these and in all other novels are the merest
+daubs compared with the Kiomi of George Meredith’s story ‘Harry
+Richmond.’  Not even Borrow and Groome, with all their intimate knowledge
+of gipsy life, ever painted a more vigorous picture of the Romany chi
+than this.  The original was well known in the art circles of London at
+one time, and was probably known to Meredith, but this does not in any
+way derogate from the splendour of the imaginative achievement of
+painting in a few touches a Romany girl who must, one would think, live
+for ever.
+
+Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an extraordinary
+attraction—an attraction, we may say in passing, which did not exist
+between Borrow and the gipsy women with whom he was brought into contact.
+Supposing Borrow to have been physically drawn to any woman, she would
+have been of the Scandinavian type; she would have been what he used to
+call a Brynhild.  It was tall blondes he really admired.  Hence,
+notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life, his gipsy women
+are all mere “scenic characters”—they clothe and beautify the scene; they
+are not dramatic characters.  When he comes to delineate a heroine,
+Isopel Berners, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany chi—a
+Scandinavian Brynhild, in short.
+
+                                 THE END
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{15}  Mr. Coulson Kernahan.
+
+{17}  The writer is much indebted to Mr. Coulson Kernahan for this story
+and much other information of life at “The Pines.”
+
+{18}  ‘My Reminiscences,’ by Lord Ronald Gower.
+
+{25}  Of August 13, 1881.  By Mr. A. Egmont Hake.
+
+{32}  Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, art-critic, who poisoned a number of
+his relatives for their money, a contributor to _The London Magazine_ and
+exhibitor at the Royal Academy.  He died a convict in Tasmania in 1852.
+
+{33}  C. G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”), on whom Borrow’s books had “an
+incredible influence,” and caused him to take up the study of things
+Romany.
+
+{34}  Louis Jeremiah Abershaw, better known as Jerry Abershaw,
+1773?-1795, a notorious highwayman, who was the terror of the roads from
+London to Wimbledon and Kingston.  Borrow with characteristic perversity
+persisted in regarding the redoubtable Jerry as a hero, in spite of the
+fact that he justly met his death on the gallows.
+
+{50}  ‘Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow.’  Derived
+from Official and other Authentic Sources.  By William I. Knapp, Ph.D.
+With Portrait and Illustrations.  2 vols.  (Murray.)
+
+{60}  The “reader” was Richard Ford, author of the ‘Handbook for
+Travellers in Spain,’ &c.  He subsequently became Burrow’s warm admirer
+and friend.
+
+{77}  ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as Designer and Writer.’  Notes by William
+Michael Rossetti.  (Cassell and Co.)
+
+{104}  ‘Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham,
+1854–1870.’  By George Birkbeck Hill.  (Fisher Unwin.)
+
+{108}  The year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
+
+{132}  ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a Memoir.’  By his Son.  2 vols.
+(Macmillan).
+
+{156}  “My father’s words.”
+
+{168}  _The Times_, October 18, 1876.
+
+{195}  ‘New Poems.’  By Christina Rossetti.  Edited by William Michael
+Rossetti.  (Macmillan & Co.)
+
+{231}  ‘Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical.’  By Lord de Tabley.  Second Series.
+(Lane.)
+
+{263}  ‘A Dream of John Ball and a King’s Lesson.’  ‘Signs of Change.’
+
+{264}  Written in 1888.
+
+
+
+
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Old Familiar Faces</title>
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+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">Old Familiar Faces, by Theodore Watts-Dunton</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old Familiar Faces, by Theodore Watts-Dunton
+
+
+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: Old Familiar Faces
+
+
+Author: Theodore Watts-Dunton
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 25, 2008  [eBook #27025]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FAMILIAR FACES***
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1916 E. P. Dutton and Company edition by
+david Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org.  Many thanks to
+<a href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/libraries/">Kensington Central
+Library</a> for providing the copy from which the illustrations
+are taken.</p>
+<h1>OLD<br />
+FAMILIAR<br />
+FACES</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center">BY<br />
+THEODORE<br />
+WATTS-DUNTON</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">AUTHOR OF<br />
+&ldquo;AYLWIN&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">NEW YORK<br />
+E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY<br />
+MCMXVI</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 4--><a
+name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span><span
+class="smcap">The Athen&aelig;um Press</span>,<span
+class="smcap"> London, England</span>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p0b.jpg">
+<img alt="Mrs. William Morris.  &ldquo;She was the most lovely
+woman I have ever known, her beauty was
+incredible.&rdquo;&mdash;Theodore Watts-Dunton"
+src="images/p0s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><!-- page 5--><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+5</span>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<p>For some years before his death it was the intention of
+Theodore Watts-Dunton to publish in volume form under the title
+of &lsquo;Old Familiar Faces,&rsquo; the recollections of his
+friends that he had from time to time contributed to <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; Had his range of interests been less
+wide he might have found the time in which to further this and
+many other literary projects he had formed; but he was,
+unfortunately, very slow to write, and slower still to
+publish.&nbsp; His long life produced in published works a number
+of critical and biographical essays contributed to periodicals
+and encyclop&aelig;dias, a romance (&lsquo;Aylwin&rsquo;), a
+sheaf of poems (&lsquo;The Coming of Love&rsquo;), two of the
+most stimulating critical pronouncements that his century
+produced (&lsquo;Poetry&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Renascence of
+Wonder&rsquo;), a handful of introductions to classics&mdash;and
+that is all.</p>
+<p>Only those who were frequent visitors at &ldquo;The
+Pines&rdquo; can form any idea of his keen interest in life and
+affairs, which seemed to grow rather than to diminish with the
+passage of each year, even when 81 had passed him by.&nbsp; At
+his charmingly situated house at the foot of Putney Hill, he
+lived a life of as little seclusion as he would have lived in
+<!-- page 6--><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+6</span>Fleet Street.&nbsp; Here he received his friends and
+acquaintances, and there was little happening in the world
+outside with which he was unacquainted.</p>
+<p>He was a tremendous worker, and only a few months before his
+death he wrote of &ldquo;the enormous pressure of work&rdquo;
+that was upon him, telling his correspondent that he had
+&ldquo;no idea, no one can have any idea, what it is.&nbsp; I am
+an early riser and breakfast at seven, and from that hour until
+seven in the evening, I am in full swing of my labours with the
+aid of two most intelligent secretaries.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To outlive his generation is, perhaps, the worst fate that can
+befall a man; but this cannot truly be said of Theodore
+Watts-Dunton, who seemed to be of no generation in
+particular.&nbsp; His interest in the life of the twentieth
+century, a life so different from that of his own youth and early
+manhood, was strangely keen and insistent.&nbsp; Sometimes in
+talking of his great contemporaries, Tennyson, Meredith,
+Swinburne, Rossetti, Morris, Matthew Arnold, Borrow, there would
+creep into his voice a note of reminiscent sadness; but it always
+seemed poetic rather than personal.&nbsp; It may be said that he
+never really grew up, that his spirit never tired.&nbsp; His
+laugh was as youthful as the hearty &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo;
+with which he would address his friends.</p>
+<p>His most remarkable quality was his youth.&nbsp; <!-- page
+7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>His body
+had aged, his voice had shrunk; but once launched into the
+subject of literature, Greek verse in particular (he regarded the
+Attic tongue as the peculiar vehicle for poetic expression), he
+seemed immediately to become a young man.&nbsp; When quoting his
+favourite passage from Keats, his voice would falter with
+emotion.</p>
+<blockquote><p>Charm&rsquo;d magic casements, opening on the
+foam<br />
+Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These lines he regarded as the finest in English poetry.</p>
+<p>He possessed the great gift of conversation.&nbsp; Every
+subject seemed to develope quite naturally out of that which had
+preceded it, and although in a single hour he would have passed
+from &AElig;schylus and Sophocles to twentieth-century
+publishers, there was never any break or suspicion of a change of
+topic.&nbsp; Seated on the sofa in the middle of his study, with
+reminders of his friendship with Rossetti gazing down upon him
+from the walls, he welcomed his friends with that almost boyish
+cordiality that so endeared him to their hearts.&nbsp; If they
+had been doing anything of which the world knew, he would be sure
+to have heard all about it.&nbsp; His mind was as alert as his
+memory was remarkable; but above all he was possessed of a very
+real charm, a charm that did not vanish before the on-coming
+years.&nbsp; It was this quality of interesting himself in the
+doings of <!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 8</span>others that retained for him the
+friendships that his personality and cordiality had created.</p>
+<p>Few men have been so richly endowed with great friendships as
+Theodore Watts-Dunton: Swinburne, the Rossettis, William Morris,
+Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Borrow, Lowell, Latham, men of vastly
+dissimilar temperaments; yet he was on terms of intimacy with
+them all, and as they one by one passed away, to him was left the
+sad duty of giving to the world by far the most intimate picture
+of their various personalities.&nbsp; There was obviously some
+subtle quality in Watts-Dunton&rsquo;s nature that not only
+attracted to him great minds in the world of art and letters; but
+which seemed to hold captive their affection for a
+lifetime.&nbsp; Even an instinctive recluse such as Borrow, a man
+almost too sensitive for friendship, found in Watts-Dunton one
+whose capacity for friendship was so great as to override all
+other considerations.&nbsp; Watts-Dunton was &ldquo;the friend of
+friends&rdquo; to Rossetti, who wished to make him his heir, and
+was dissuaded only when he saw that to do so would pain his
+friend, who regarded it as an act of injustice to
+Rossetti&rsquo;s own family.&nbsp; During his lifetime Swinburne
+desired to make over to him his entire fortune.&nbsp; The man to
+whom these tributes were paid was undoubtedly possessed of some
+rare and strange gift.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p8b.jpg">
+<img alt="Algernon Charles Swinburne" src="images/p8s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The greatest among his many great friendships <!-- page 9--><a
+name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>was with
+Swinburne.&nbsp; For thirty years they lived together at
+&ldquo;The Pines&rdquo; in the closest unity and accord.&nbsp;
+They would take their walks together, discuss the hundred and one
+things in which they were both interested, living, not as great
+men sometimes live, a frigid existence of intellectual
+loneliness; but showing the keenest interest in the affairs of
+the everyday, as well as of the literary, world.&nbsp; When death
+at last severed the link that it had taken upwards of thirty
+years to forge, it is not strange that there should be no
+reminiscences written of the man who had been to Watts-Dunton
+more than a brother.</p>
+<p>It was not always easy to get Watts-Dunton to talk of those he
+had known so intimately; but when he did so it was frankly and
+freely.&nbsp; Once when telling of some characteristic act of
+generosity on the part of that strangely composite being, half
+genius, half schoolboy, William Morris, he remarked, &ldquo;Yes,
+Morris was a very dear friend of mine; but he had strange
+limitations.&nbsp; Swinburne had the utmost contempt for the
+narrowness of his outlook.&nbsp; It was incredible!&nbsp; Outside
+his own domain he was unintelligent in his narrowness, and
+frequently bored and irritated his friends.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As artist, poet, and craftsman, however, Watts-Dunton spoke
+with enthusiasm of Morris; <!-- page 10--><a
+name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>but
+intellectually he regarded him as inferior to Mrs. Morris.&nbsp;
+On the day following the announcement of her death, the present
+writer happened to be taking tea at &ldquo;The Pines,&rdquo; and
+the conversation not unnaturally turned upon the Morrises.&nbsp;
+Watts-Dunton called attention to the large number of magnificent
+Rossetti portraits of her that hung from the walls of his
+study.&nbsp; &ldquo;A remarkable woman,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;a
+most remarkable woman; superior to Morris intellectually, she
+reached a greater mental height than he was capable of, yet few
+knew it.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then he proceeded to tell how she had
+acquired French and Italian with the greatest ease and
+facility.&nbsp; When Morris had met her she possessed very few
+educational advantages; yet she very quickly made good her
+shortcomings.&nbsp; When reminded that Mr. H. Buxton Forman had
+recently written that he had seen beautiful women in all quarters
+of the globe, &ldquo;but never one so strangely lovely and
+majestic as Mrs. Morris,&rdquo; Watts-Dunton remarked, &ldquo;She
+was the most lovely woman I have ever known, her beauty was
+incredible.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In answer to a question he went on to say that Rossetti
+painted her lips with the utmost faithfulness.&nbsp; In spite of
+her beauty and her high mental qualities, she was very shy and
+retiring, almost fearful, in her attitude towards others.</p>
+<p>In literature and criticism Watts-Dunton <!-- page 11--><a
+name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>stood for
+enthusiasm.&nbsp; His gospel as a critic was to seek for the good
+that is to be found in most things, literary or otherwise; and
+what is, perhaps, most remarkable in one who has known so many
+great men, he never seemed to draw invidious comparisons between
+the writers and artists of to-day and those of the great
+Victorian Era.</p>
+<p>Life at &ldquo;The Pines&rdquo; was as bright as naturally
+cheerful and bright people could make it, people who were not
+only attracted to and interested in each other; but found the
+world an exceedingly good place in which to live.&nbsp; The home
+circle was composed of Swinburne, Watts-Dunton, his two sisters,
+Miss Watts and Mrs. Mason.&nbsp; To these must be added Mr.
+Thomas Hake, for many years Watts-Dunton&rsquo;s friend and
+secretary, who was in daily attendance.&nbsp; Later the circle
+was enlarged by the entry into it of the young and accomplished
+bride, the present Mrs. Watts-Dunton.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Pines&rdquo; would have seemed a strange place
+without &ldquo;the Colonel,&rdquo; as Watts-Dunton always called
+Mr. Hake, adopting a family name given to him when a boy on
+account of his likeness to his cousin, General, then Colonel,
+Gordon.&nbsp; Nothing amused Watts-Dunton more than for some
+caller to start discussing army matters with the supposed
+ex-officer.&nbsp; He would watch with a mischievous glee Mr.
+Hake&rsquo;s endeavours to carry on a conversation <!-- page
+12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>in
+which he had no special interest.&nbsp; Watts-Dunton never
+informed callers of their mistake, and to this day there is one
+friend of twenty-five years&rsquo; standing, a man keenly
+interested in National Defence, who regards Mr. Hake as an
+authority upon army matters.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No living man knew Borrow so well as Thomas
+Hake,&rdquo; Watts-Dunton once remarked to a friend.&nbsp; To the
+young Hakes Lavengro was a great joy, and they would often
+accompany him part of his way home from Coombe End.&nbsp; On one
+occasion Borrow said to the youngest boy, &ldquo;Do you know how
+to fight a man bigger than yourself?&rdquo;&nbsp; The lad
+confessed that he did not.&nbsp; &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Borrow,
+&ldquo;You challenge him to fight, and when he is taking off his
+coat, you hit him in the stomach as hard as you can and run for
+your life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Swinburne and Watts-Dunton had first met in 1872.&nbsp; In
+1879 they went to live together at &ldquo;The Pines,&rdquo; and
+from that date were never parted until Swinburne&rsquo;s death
+thirty years&rsquo; later.&nbsp; In no literary friendship has
+the bond been closer.&nbsp; Watts-Dunton&rsquo;s first act each
+morning was to visit Swinburne in his own room, where the poet
+breakfasted alone with the morning newspapers.&nbsp; During the
+morning the two would take their daily walk together, a practice
+continued for many years.&nbsp; &ldquo;There is no time like the
+morning for a walk,&rdquo; Swinburne would say, &ldquo;The
+sparkle, the exhilaration <!-- page 13--><a
+name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>of it.&nbsp;
+I walk every morning of my life, no matter what the weather,
+pelting along all the time as fast as I can go.&rdquo;&nbsp; His
+perfect health he attributed entirely to this habit.</p>
+<p>In later years he would take his walks alone.&nbsp; It was
+during one of these that he met with an adventure that seemed to
+cause him some irritation.&nbsp; A young artist hearing that
+&ldquo;the master&rdquo; walked each day up Putney Hill lay in
+wait for him.&nbsp; After several unsuccessful ventures he at
+length saw a figure approaching which he instantly
+recognized.&nbsp; Crossing the road the youth went boldly up and
+said:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you are Mr. Swinburne, may I shake hands with
+you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; remarked the astonished poet.</p>
+<p>The young man repeated his request in a louder voice,
+remembering Swinburne&rsquo;s deafness, adding:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is my ambition to shake hands with you,
+sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! very well,&rdquo; was the response, as Swinburne
+half-heartedly extended his hand, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not accustomed
+to this sort of thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Meal times at &ldquo;The Pines&rdquo; were occasions when
+there was much talk and laughter; for in both Swinburne and
+Watts-Dunton the mischievous spirit of boyhood had not been
+entirely disciplined by life, and in the other members of the
+household the same unconquerable spirit of youth was
+manifest.&nbsp; <!-- page 14--><a name="page14"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 14</span>Sometimes there were great
+discussions and arguments.&nbsp; Watts-Dunton had more than a
+passing interest in science, whereas, to Swinburne it was
+anathema, although his father was strongly scientific in his
+learning.&nbsp; The libraries of the two men clearly showed how
+different were their tastes; for that of Watts-Dunton was
+all-embracing, Swinburne&rsquo;s was as exclusive as his circle
+of personal friends.&nbsp; The one was the library of a critic,
+the other that of a poet.</p>
+<p>Swinburne enjoyed nothing better than a discussion, and he was
+a foe who wielded a stout blade.&nbsp; He fought, however, with
+scrupulous fairness, never interrupting an adversary; but
+listening to him with a deliberate patience that was almost
+disconcerting.&nbsp; Then when his turn came he would overwhelm
+his opponent and destroy his most weighty arguments in what a
+friend once described as &ldquo;a lava torrent of burning
+words.&rdquo;&nbsp; He possessed many of the qualities necessary
+to debate: concentration, the power of pouncing upon the weak
+spot in his adversary&rsquo;s argument, and above all a wonderful
+memory.&nbsp; What he lacked was that calm and calculating
+frigidity so necessary to the successful debater.&nbsp; Instead
+of freezing his opponent to silence with deliberate logic, he
+would strive rather by the tempestuous quality of his rhetoric to
+hurl him into the next parish.</p>
+<p><!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+15</span>There were times when he would work himself up into a
+passion of denunciation, when, trembling and quivering in every
+limb, he would in a fine frenzy of scorn annihilate those whom he
+conceived to be his enemies, and in scathing periods pour
+ridicule upon their works.&nbsp; But if he were merciless in his
+onslaughts upon his foes, he was correspondingly loyal in the
+defence of his friends.&nbsp; He seemed as incapable of seeing
+the weakness of a friend as of appreciating the strength of an
+enemy.</p>
+<p>The things and the people who did not interest him he had the
+fortunate capacity of entirely forgetting.&nbsp; A friend <a
+name="citation15"></a><a href="#footnote15"
+class="citation">[15]</a> tells of how on one occasion he
+happened to mention in the course of conversation a book by a
+certain author whom he knew had been a visitor at &ldquo;The
+Pines&rdquo; on several occasions, and as such was personally
+known to Swinburne.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! really,&rdquo; Swinburne remarked, &ldquo;Yes, now
+that you mention it, I believe someone of that name has been so
+good as to come and see us.&nbsp; I seem to recall him, and I
+seem to remember hearing someone say that he had written
+something, though I don&rsquo;t remember exactly what.&nbsp; So
+he has published a book upon the subject of which we are
+talking.&nbsp; Really?&nbsp; I did not know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All this was said with perfect courtesy and <!-- page 16--><a
+name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>without the
+least intention of administering a snub or belittling the writer
+in question.&nbsp; Swinburne had merely forgotten because there
+was nothing in that author&rsquo;s personality that had impressed
+itself upon him.&nbsp; On the other hand, he would remember the
+minutest details of conversations in which he had been
+interested.</p>
+<p>In spite of his capacity for passionate outbursts and inspired
+invective, Swinburne was a most attentive listener, provided
+there were things being said to which it was worth
+listening.&nbsp; At meal times when his attention became engaged
+he would forget everything but the conversation.&nbsp;
+Indifferent as to what stage of the meal he was at, he would turn
+to whoever it might be that had introduced the subject, and would
+talk or listen oblivious of the fact that food might be
+spoiling.&nbsp; Fortunately, he was a small eater.</p>
+<p>On one occasion when lunching at &ldquo;The Pines&rdquo; Mr.
+Coulson Kernahan happened to remark that he had in his pocket a
+copy of Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s then unpublished poem,
+&lsquo;The Death of a First-born,&rsquo; written in memory of the
+Duke of Clarence.&nbsp; Down went knife and fork as Swinburne
+half rose from his chair to reach across the table for the
+manuscript.&nbsp; &ldquo;She is as a god to mortals when compared
+to most other living women poets,&rdquo; he exclaimed.&nbsp;
+Then, in his thin-high-pitched, but exquisitely <!-- page 17--><a
+name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>modulated
+voice he half read, half chanted, two stanzas of the poem.</p>
+<blockquote><p>One young life lost, two happy young lives
+blighted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With earthward eyes we see:<br />
+With eyes uplifted, keener, farther sighted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We look, O Lord to thee.</p>
+<p>Grief hears a funeral knell: hope hears the ringing<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of birthday bells on high.<br />
+Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Half carol and half cry.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>He stopped abruptly refusing to read the third and last stanza
+because it was unequal, and the poem was stronger and finer by
+its omission.&nbsp; Then he said in a hushed voice, &ldquo;For
+the happy folk who are able to think as she thinks, who believe
+as she believes, the poem is of its kind perfect.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>With glowing eyes and with hand that marked time to the music,
+he read once more the second verse, repeating the line,
+&ldquo;half carol and half cry&rdquo; three times, lowering his
+voice with each repetition until it became little more than a
+whisper.&nbsp; Laying the manuscript reverently beside him, he
+sat perfectly still for a space with brooding eyes, then rising
+silently left the room with short swift strides. <a
+name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17"
+class="citation">[17]</a></p>
+<p>Many of Swinburne&rsquo;s friends have testified to his
+personal charm and courtliness of bearing.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Unmistakably an aristocrat, and with <!-- page 18--><a
+name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>all the ease
+and polish which one associates with high breeding, there was,
+even in the cordiality with which he would rise and come forward
+to welcome a visitor a suspicion of the shy nervousness of the
+introspective man and of the recluse on first facing a
+stranger.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. Coulson Kernahan has said, &ldquo;I
+have seen him angry, I have heard him furiously dissent from, and
+even denounce the views put forward by others, but never once was
+what, for want of a better word, I must call his personal
+deference to those others relaxed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To no one would he defer quite so graciously and
+readily, to no one was he so scrupulously courtly in bearing as
+to those who constituted his own household.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If he felt that he had monopolized the conversation he would
+turn to Watts-Dunton and apologize, and for a time become
+transformed into an attentive listener.</p>
+<p>Lord Ronald Gower writes of Swinburne&rsquo;s remarkable
+powers as a talker.&nbsp; Telling of a luncheon at &ldquo;The
+Pines&rdquo; in 1879, he writes:&mdash;&ldquo;Swinburne&rsquo;s
+talk after luncheon was wonderful . . . What, far beyond the
+wonderful flow of words of the poet, struck me, was his real
+diffidence and modesty; while fully aware of the divine gifts
+within him, he is as simple and unaffected as a child.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation18"></a><a href="#footnote18"
+class="citation">[18]</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p18b.jpg">
+<img alt="Theodore Watts-Dunton" src="images/p18s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>But conversation at &ldquo;The Pines&rdquo; was not <!-- page
+19--><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+19</span>always of the serious things of life.&nbsp; It very
+frequently partook of the playful, when the hearers would be kept
+amused with a humour and whimsicality, cauterized now and then
+with some biting touch of satire which showed that neither
+Swinburne nor Watts-Dunton had entirely grown up.</p>
+<p>Reading aloud was also a greatly favoured form of
+entertainment.&nbsp; Swinburne was a sympathetic reader,
+possessed of a voice of remarkable quality and power of
+expression, and he would read for the hour together from Dickens,
+Lamb, Charles Reade, and Thackeray.&nbsp; To Mrs. Mason&rsquo;s
+little boy he was a wizard who could open many magic
+casements.&nbsp; He would carry off the lad to his own room, and
+there read to him the stories which caused the hour of bedtime to
+be dreaded.&nbsp; When the nurse arrived to fetch the child to
+bed he would imperiously wave her away, hoping that Swinburne
+would not notice the action and so bring the evening&rsquo;s
+entertainment to a close.&nbsp; On one occasion the child stole
+down to Swinburne&rsquo;s room after he had been safely put to
+bed, where the interrupted story was renewed.&nbsp; When
+eventually discovered both seemed to regard the incident as a
+huge joke, and Swinburne carried the child to the nursery and
+tucked him up for the night.</p>
+<p>A great capacity for friendship involves an equally great meed
+of sorrow.&nbsp; At last the <!-- page 20--><a
+name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>hour arrived
+when the friend who was nearer to him than a brother followed
+those who one by one he had mourned, and of the old familiar
+faces there were left to him only the two sisters, whose love and
+devotion had contributed so much to his domestic happiness, and
+his friend, Mr. Thomas Hake, who for seventeen years had acted as
+confidential secretary.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+21</span>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">page</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page5">5</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>I.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">George Borrow</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page25">25</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>II.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page69">69</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>III.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Alfred</span>,<span class="smcap">
+Lord Tennyson</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page120">120</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>IV.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Christina Georgina Rossetti</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page177">177</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>V.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Dr. Gordon Hake</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page207">207</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>VI.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">John Leicester Warren</span>, <span
+class="smcap">Lord de Tabley</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page219">219</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>VII.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">William Morris</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page240">240</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>VIII.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Francis Hindes Groome</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page277">277</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><!-- page 23--><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+23</span>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Mrs. William Morris</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>Frontispiece</i></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A. C. Swinburne</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">to face page <span
+class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Theodore Watts-Dunton</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page18">18</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page70">70</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
+&aelig;t</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page80">80</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page120">120</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page178">178</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Rossetti</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page182">182</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Dr. Gordon Hake</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page208">208</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">William Morris</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page240">240</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Francis Hindes Groome</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page278">278</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><!-- page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+25</span>I.&nbsp; GEORGE BORROW.<br />
+1803&ndash;1881.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>I have been reading those charming reminiscences of George
+Borrow which appeared in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>. <a
+name="citation25"></a><a href="#footnote25"
+class="citation">[25]</a>&nbsp; I have been reading them, I may
+add, under the happiest conditions for enjoying them&mdash;amid
+the self-same heather and bracken where I have so often listened
+to Lavengro&rsquo;s quaint talk of all the wondrous things he saw
+and heard in his wondrous life.&nbsp; So graphically has Mr. Hake
+depicted him, that as I walked and read his paper I seemed to
+hear the fine East-Anglian accent of the well-remembered
+voice&mdash;I seemed to see the mighty figure, strengthened by
+the years rather than stricken by them, striding along between
+the whin bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water
+to pluck the wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms
+perfumed the air as he crushed them, now stopping to watch the
+water-wagtail by the ponds as he descanted upon the powers of
+that enchanted bird&mdash;powers, like many human endowments,
+more glorious than pleasant, if it is sober truth, as Borrow
+would gravely tell, that the gipsy lad who knocks a water-wagtail
+<!-- page 26--><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+26</span>on the head with a stone gains for a bride a
+&ldquo;ladye from a far countrie,&rdquo; and dazzles with his
+good luck all the other black-eyed young urchins of the
+dingle.</p>
+<p>Though my own intimacy with Borrow did not begin till he was
+considerably advanced in years, and ended on his finally quitting
+London for Oulton, there were circumstances in our
+intercourse&mdash;circumstances, I mean, connected partly with
+temperament and partly with mutual experience&mdash;which make me
+doubt whether any one understood him better than I did, or broke
+more thoroughly through that exclusiveness of temper which
+isolated him from all but a few.&nbsp; However, be this as it
+may, no one at least realized more fully than I how lovable was
+his nature, with all his angularities&mdash;how simple and
+courageous, how manly and noble.&nbsp; His shyness, his apparent
+coldness, his crotchety obstinacy, repelled people, and
+consequently those who at any time during his life really
+understood him must have been very few.&nbsp; How was it, then,
+that such a man wandered about over Europe and fraternized so
+completely with a race so suspicious and intractable as the
+gipsies?&nbsp; A natural enough question, which I have often been
+asked, and this is my reply:&mdash;</p>
+<p>Those who know the gipsies will understand me when I say that
+this suspicious and wary race of wanderers&mdash;suspicious and
+wary from <!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 27</span>an instinct transmitted through ages
+of dire persecutions from the Children of the Roof&mdash;will
+readily fraternize with a blunt, single-minded, and shy eccentric
+like Borrow, while perhaps the skilful man of the world may find
+all his tact and <i>savoir faire</i> useless and, indeed, in the
+way.&nbsp; And the reason of this is not far to seek,
+perhaps.&nbsp; What a gipsy most dislikes is the feeling that his
+&ldquo;gorgio&rdquo; interlocutor is thinking about him; for,
+alas! to be the object of &ldquo;gorgio&rdquo; thoughts&mdash;has
+it not been a most dangerous and mischievous honour to every
+gipsy since first his mysterious race was driven to accept the
+grudging hospitality of the Western world?&nbsp; A gipsy hates to
+be watched, and knows at once when he is being watched; for in
+tremulous delicacy of apprehension his organization is far beyond
+that of an Englishman, or, indeed, of any member of any of the
+thick-fingered races of Europe.&nbsp; One of the results of this
+excessive delicacy is that a gipsy can always tell to a surety
+whether a &ldquo;gorgio&rdquo; companion is thinking about him,
+or whether the &ldquo;gorgio&rsquo;s&rdquo; thoughts are really
+and genuinely occupied with the fishing rod, the net, the gin,
+the gun, or whatsoever may be the common source of interest that
+has drawn them together.</p>
+<p>Now, George Borrow, after the first one or two awkward
+interviews were well over, would lapse into a kind of unconscious
+ruminating <!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 28</span>bluntness, a pronounced and angular
+self-dependence, which might well disarm the suspiciousness of
+the most wary gipsy, from the simple fact that it was
+genuine.&nbsp; Hence, as I say, among the few who understood
+Borrow his gipsy friends very likely stood first&mdash;outside,
+of course, his family circle.&nbsp; And surely this is an honour
+to Borrow; for the gipsies, notwithstanding certain undeniable
+obliquities in matters of morals and cusine, are the only people
+left in the island who are still free from British vulgarity
+(perhaps because they are not British).&nbsp; It is no less an
+honour to them, for while he lived the island did not contain a
+nobler English gentleman than him they called the &ldquo;Romany
+Rye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Borrow&rsquo;s descriptions of gipsy life are, no doubt, too
+deeply charged with the rich lights shed from his own personality
+entirely to satisfy a more matter-of-fact observer, and I am not
+going to say that he is anything like so photographic as F. H.
+Groome, for instance, or so trustworthy.&nbsp; But then it should
+never be forgotten that Borrow was, before everything else, a
+poet.&nbsp; If this statement should be challenged by &ldquo;the
+present time,&rdquo; let me tell the present time that by poet I
+do not mean merely a man who is skilled in writing lyrics and
+sonnets and that kind of thing, but primarily a man who has the
+poetic gift of seeing through &ldquo;the shows of things&rdquo;
+and knowing <!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 29</span>where he is&mdash;the gift of
+drinking deeply of the waters of life and of feeling grateful to
+Nature for so sweet a draught; a man who, while acutely feeling
+the ineffable pathos of human life, can also feel how sweet a
+thing it is to live, having so great and rich a queen as Nature
+for his mother, and for companions any number of such amusing
+creatures as men and women.&nbsp; In this sense I cannot but set
+Borrow, with his love of nature and his love of adventure, very
+high among poets&mdash;as high, perhaps, as I place another
+dweller in tents, Sylvester Boswell himself, &ldquo;the
+well-known and popalated gipsy of Codling Gap,&rdquo; who, like
+Borrow, is famous for &ldquo;his great knowledge in grammaring
+one of the ancientist langeges on record,&rdquo; and whose
+touching preference of a gipsy tent to a roof, &ldquo;on the
+accent of health, sweetness of the air, and for enjoying the
+pleasure of Nature&rsquo;s life,&rdquo; is expressed with a
+poetical feeling such as Chaucer might have known had he not, as
+a court poet, been too genteel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Enjoying the
+pleasure of Nature&rsquo;s life!&rdquo;&nbsp; That is what Borrow
+did; and how few there are that understand it.</p>
+<p>The self-consciousness which in the presence of man produces
+that kind of shyness which was Borrow&rsquo;s characteristic left
+him at once when he was with Nature alone or in the company of an
+intimate friend.&nbsp; At her, no man&rsquo;s gaze was more frank
+and childlike than his.&nbsp; Hence <!-- page 30--><a
+name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>the charm of
+his books.&nbsp; No man&rsquo;s writing can take you into the
+country as Borrow&rsquo;s can: it makes you feel the sunshine,
+see the meadows, smell the flowers, hear the skylark sing and the
+grasshopper chirrup.&nbsp; Who else can do it?&nbsp; I know of
+none.&nbsp; And as to personal intercourse with him, if I were
+asked what was the chief delight of this, I should say that it
+was the delight of bracingness.&nbsp; A walking tour with a
+self-conscious lover of the picturesque&mdash;an
+&ldquo;interviewer&rdquo; of Nature with a
+note-book&mdash;worrying you to admire <i>him</i> for admiring
+Nature so much, is one of those occasional calamities of life
+which a gentleman and a Christian must sometimes heroically bear,
+but the very thought of which will paralyze with fear the
+sturdiest Nature-worshipper, whom no crevasse or avalanche or
+treacherous mist can appal.&nbsp; But a walk and talk with Borrow
+as he strode through the bracken on an autumn morning had the
+exhilarating effect upon his companion of a draught of the
+brightest mountain air.&nbsp; And this was the result not,
+assuredly, of any exuberance of animal spirits (Borrow, indeed,
+was subject to fits of serious depression), but rather of a
+feeling he induced that between himself and all nature, from the
+clouds floating lazily over head to the scented heather, crisp
+and purple, under foot, there was an entire fitness and
+harmony&mdash;a sort of mutual understanding, indeed.&nbsp; There
+was, I say, something <!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 31</span>bracing in the very look of this
+silvery-haired giant as he strode along with a kind of easy
+sloping movement, like that of a St. Bernard dog (the most
+deceptive of all movements as regards pace), his beardless face
+(quite matchless for symmetrical beauty) beaded with the healthy
+perspiration drops of strong exercise, and glowing and rosy in
+the sun.</p>
+<p>As a vigorous old man Borrow never had an equal, I
+think.&nbsp; There has been much talk of the vigour of
+Shelley&rsquo;s friend, E. J. Trelawny.&nbsp; I knew that
+splendid old corsair, and admired his agility of limb and brain;
+but at seventy Borrow could have walked off with Trelawny under
+his arm.&nbsp; At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at
+eight o&rsquo;clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney,
+meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and
+Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east
+wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the
+grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops,
+stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for
+twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir
+Walter Scott&rsquo;s eyes good to see.&nbsp; Finally, he would
+walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night.</p>
+<p>And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation,
+unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional
+fits of depression, <!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 32</span>was still more so.&nbsp; Its
+freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could
+describe.&nbsp; There is a kind of humour the delight of which is
+that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as
+much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical,
+crotchety, and odd as to draw them.&nbsp; This was the humour of
+Borrow.&nbsp; His command of facial expression&mdash;though he
+seemed to exercise it almost involuntarily and
+unconsciously&mdash;had, no doubt, much to do with this
+charm.&nbsp; Once, when he was talking to me about the men of
+Charles Lamb&rsquo;s day&mdash;<i>The London Magazine</i>
+set&mdash;I asked him what kind of a man was the notorious and
+infamous Griffiths Wainewright. <a name="citation32"></a><a
+href="#footnote32" class="citation">[32]</a>&nbsp; In a moment
+Borrow&rsquo;s face changed: his mouth broke into a Carker-like
+smile, his eyes became elongated to an expression that was at
+once fawning and sinister, as he said, &ldquo;Wainewright!&nbsp;
+He used to sit in an armchair close to the fire and <i>smile</i>
+all the evening like <i>this</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; He made me see
+Wainewright and hear his voice as plainly as though I had seen
+him and heard him in the publishers&rsquo; parlour.</p>
+<p>His vocabulary, rich in picturesque words of the high road and
+dingle, his quaint countrified phrases, might also have added to
+the <!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+33</span>effect of this kind of eccentric humour.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+duncie book&mdash;of course it&rsquo;s duncie&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+only duncie books that sell nowadays,&rdquo; he would shout when
+some new &ldquo;immortal poem&rdquo; or &ldquo;greatest work of
+the age&rdquo; was mentioned.&nbsp; Tennyson, I fear, was the
+representative duncie poet of the time; but that was because
+nothing could ever make Borrow realize the fact that Tennyson was
+not the latest juvenile representative of a &ldquo;duncie&rdquo;
+age; for although, according to Leland, <a
+name="citation33"></a><a href="#footnote33"
+class="citation">[33]</a> the author of &lsquo;Sordello&rsquo; is
+(as is natural, perhaps) the only bard known in the gipsy tent,
+it is doubtful whether even his name was more than a name to
+Borrow; indeed, I think that people who had no knowledge of
+Romany, Welsh, and Armenian were all more or less
+&ldquo;duncie.&rdquo;&nbsp; As a trap to catch the &ldquo;foaming
+vipers,&rdquo; his critics, he in &lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo;
+purposely misspelt certain Armenian and Welsh words, just to have
+the triumph of saying in another volume that they who had
+attacked him on so many points had failed to discover that he had
+wrongly given &ldquo;zhats&rdquo; as the nominative of the
+Armenian noun for bread, while everybody in England, especially
+every critic, ought to know that &ldquo;zhats&rdquo; is the
+accusative form.</p>
+<p>I will try, however, to give the reader an <!-- page 34--><a
+name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>idea of the
+whim of Borrow&rsquo;s conversation, by giving it in something
+like a dramatic form.&nbsp; Let the reader suppose himself on a
+summer&rsquo;s evening at that delightful old roadside inn the
+Bald-Faced Stag, in the Roehampton Valley, near Richmond Park,
+where are sitting, over a &ldquo;cup&rdquo; (to use
+Borrow&rsquo;s word) of foaming ale, Lavengro himself, one of his
+oldest friends, and a new acquaintance, a certain student of
+things in general lately introduced to Borrow and nearly, but not
+quite, admitted behind the hedge of Borrow&rsquo;s shyness, as
+may be seen by the initiated from a certain rather constrained,
+half-resentful expression on his face.&nbsp; Jerry
+Abershaw&rsquo;s <a name="citation34"></a><a href="#footnote34"
+class="citation">[34]</a> sword (the chief trophy of mine host)
+has been introduced, and Borrow&rsquo;s old friend has been
+craftily endeavouring to turn the conversation upon that ever
+fresh and fruitful topic, but in vain.&nbsp; Suddenly the song of
+a nightingale, perched on a tree not far off, rings pleasantly
+through the open window and fills the room with a new atmosphere
+of poetry and romance.&nbsp; &ldquo;That nightingale has as fine
+a voice,&rdquo; says Borrow, &ldquo;as though he were born and
+bred in the Eastern Counties.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow is proud of
+being <!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 35</span>an East-Anglian, of which the student
+has already been made aware and which he now turns to good
+account in the important business he has set himself, of melting
+Lavengro&rsquo;s frost and being admitted a member of the
+Open-Air Club.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; says the wily-student,
+&ldquo;I know the Eastern Counties; no nightingales like those,
+especially Norfolk nightingales.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s face
+begins to brighten slightly, but still he does not direct his
+attention to the stranger, who proceeds to remark that although
+the southern counties are so much warmer than Norfolk, some of
+them, such as Cornwall and Devon, are without nightingales.&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s face begins to get brighter still, and he looks
+out of the window with a smile, as though he were being suddenly
+carried back to the green lanes of his beloved Norfolk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From which well-known fact of ornithology,&rdquo;
+continues the student, &ldquo;I am driven to infer that in their
+choice of habitat nightingales are guided not so much by
+considerations of latitude as of good taste.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s anger is evidently melting away.&nbsp; The talk
+runs still upon nightingales, and the student mentions the
+attempt to settle them in Scotland once made by Sir John
+Sinclair, who introduced nightingales&rsquo; eggs from England
+into robins&rsquo; nests in Scotland, in the hope that the young
+nightingales, after enjoying a Scotch summer, would return to the
+place of their birth, after <!-- page 36--><a
+name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>the custom of
+English nightingales.&nbsp; &ldquo;And did they return?&rdquo;
+says Borrow, with as much interest as if the honour of his
+country were involved in the question.&nbsp; &ldquo;Return to
+Scotland?&rdquo; says the student quietly; &ldquo;the entire
+animal kingdom are agreed, you know, in never returning to
+Scotland.&nbsp; Besides, the nightingales&rsquo; eggs in question
+were laid in Norfolk.&rdquo;&nbsp; Conquered at last, Borrow
+extends the hand of brotherhood to the impudent student (whose
+own private opinion, no doubt, is that Norfolk is more successful
+in producing Nelsons than nightingales), and proceeds without
+more ado to tell how &ldquo;poor Jerry Abershaw,&rdquo; on being
+captured by the Bow Street runners, had left his good sword
+behind him as a memento of highway glories soon to be ended on
+the gallows tree.&nbsp; (By-the-bye, I wonder where that sword is
+now; it was bought by Mr. Adolphus Levy, of Alton Lodge, at the
+closing of the Bald-Faced Stag.)</p>
+<p>From Jerry Abershaw Borrow gets upon other equally interesting
+topics, such as the decadence of beer and pugilism, and the
+nobility of the now neglected British bruiser, as exampled
+especially in the case of the noble Pearce, who lost his life
+through rushing up a staircase and rescuing a woman from a
+burning house after having on a previous occasion rescued another
+woman by blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had been set
+upon her by some noble lord <!-- page 37--><a
+name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>or
+another.&nbsp; Then, while the ale sparkles with a richer colour
+as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk gets naturally upon
+&ldquo;lords&rdquo; in general, gentility nonsense, and
+&ldquo;hoity-toityism&rdquo; as the canker at the heart of modern
+civilization.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 38--><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+38</span>II.</h3>
+<p>Borrow could look at Nature without thinking of
+himself&mdash;a rare gift, for Nature, as I have said, has been
+disappointed in man.&nbsp; Her great desire from the first has
+been to grow an organism so conscious that it can turn round and
+look at her with intelligent eyes.&nbsp; She has done so at last,
+but the consciousness is so high as to be self-conscious, and man
+cannot for egotism look at his mother after all.&nbsp; Borrow was
+a great exception.&nbsp; Thoreau&rsquo;s self-consciousness
+showed itself in presence of Nature, Borrow&rsquo;s in presence
+of man.&nbsp; The very basis of Borrow&rsquo;s nature was
+reverence.&nbsp; His unswerving belief in the beneficence of God
+was most beautiful, most touching.&nbsp; In his life Borrow had
+suffered much: a temperament such as his must needs suffer
+much&mdash;so shy it was, so proud, and yet yearning for a close
+sympathy such as no creature and only solitary communing with
+Nature can give.&nbsp; Under any circumstances, I say, Borrow
+would have known how sharp and cruel are the flints along the
+road&mdash;how tender are a poet&rsquo;s feet; but <i>his</i>
+road at one time was rough indeed; not when he was with his gipsy
+friends (for a tent is freer than a roof, according to the
+grammarian of Codling Gap, and roast hedgehog is the daintiest of
+viands), but when he was toiling in London, his fine gifts
+unrecognized <!-- page 39--><a name="page39"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 39</span>and useless&mdash;<i>that</i> was
+when Borrow passed through the fire.&nbsp; Yet every sorrow and
+every disaster of his life he traced to the kindly hand of a
+benevolent and wise Father, who sometimes will use a whip of
+scorpions, but only to chastise into a right and happy course the
+children he loves.</p>
+<p>Apart from the instinctive rectitude of his nature, it was
+with Borrow a deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and
+never can go, unpunished.&nbsp; His doctrine, indeed, was
+something like the Buddhist doctrine of Karma&mdash;it was based
+on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of
+&ldquo;law&rdquo; in the most universal acceptation of that
+word.&nbsp; Sylvester Boswell&rsquo;s definition of a free man,
+in that fine, self-respective certificate of his, as one who is
+&ldquo;free from all cares or fears of law that may come against
+him,&rdquo; is, indeed, the gospel of every true
+nature-worshipper.&nbsp; The moment Thoreau spurned the legal
+tax-gatherer the law locked the nature-worshipper in gaol.&nbsp;
+To enjoy nature the soul <i>must</i> be free&mdash;free not only
+from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every wrongful act awakes,
+out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its own peculiar
+serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and
+bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent&rsquo;s feet
+whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the
+brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve,
+wriggling <!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 40</span>across the brook where the wrongdoer
+would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul with
+the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the
+water-weeds&mdash;following him everywhere, in short, till at
+last, in sheer desperation, he must needs stop and turn, and bare
+his breast to the fangs; when, having yielded up to the thing its
+fill of atoning blood, Nature breaks into her old smile again,
+and he goes on his way in peace.</p>
+<p>All this Borrow understood better than any man I have ever
+met.&nbsp; Yet even into his doctrine of Providence Borrow
+imported such an element of whim that it was impossible to listen
+to him sometimes without a smile.&nbsp; For instance, having
+arrived at the conclusion that a certain lieutenant had been
+cruelly ill used by genteel magnates high in office, Borrow
+discovered that since that iniquity Providence had frowned on the
+British arms, and went on to trace the disastrous blunder of
+Balaklava to this cause.&nbsp; Again, having decided that Sir
+Walter Scott&rsquo;s worship of gentility and Jacobitism had been
+the main cause of the revival of flunkeyism and Popery in
+England, Borrow saw in the dreadful monetary disasters which
+overclouded Scott&rsquo;s last days the hand of God, whose plan
+was to deprive him of the worldly position Scott worshipped at
+the very moment when his literary fame (which he misprized) was
+dazzling the world.</p>
+<p><!-- page 41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+41</span>And now as to the gipsy wanderings.&nbsp; As I have
+said, no man has been more entirely misunderstood than
+Borrow.&nbsp; That a man who certainly did (as F. H. Groome says)
+look like a &ldquo;colossal clergyman&rdquo; should have joined
+the gipsies, that he should have wandered over England and
+Europe, content often to have the grass for his bed and the sky
+for his hostry-roof, has astonished very much (and I believe
+scandalized very much) this age.&nbsp; My explanation of the
+matter is this: Among the myriads of children born into a world
+of brick and mortar there appears now and then one who is meant
+for better things&mdash;one who exhibits unmistakable signs that
+he inherits the blood of those remote children of the open air
+who, according to the old Sab&aelig;an notion, on the plains of
+Asia lived with Nature, loved Nature and were loved by her, and
+from whom all men are descended.&nbsp; George Borrow was one of
+those who show the olden strain.&nbsp; Now, for such a man, born
+in a country like England, where the modern fanaticism of
+house-worship has reached a condition which can only be called
+maniacal, what is there left but to try for a time the
+gipsy&rsquo;s tent?&nbsp; On the Continent house-worship is
+strong enough in all conscience; but in France, in Spain, in
+Italy, even in Germany, people do think of something beyond the
+house.&nbsp; But here, where there are no romantic crimes, to get
+a genteel house, to keep (or &ldquo;run&rdquo;) a <!-- page
+42--><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+42</span>genteel house, or to pretend to keep (or
+&ldquo;run&rdquo;) a genteel house, is the great first cause of
+almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander
+up to forgery, robbery, and murder.&nbsp; And yet it is a fact,
+as Borrow discovered (when a mere lad in a solicitor&rsquo;s
+office), that to men in health the house need not, and should
+not, be the all-absorbing consideration, but should be quite
+secondary to considerations of honesty and sweet air, pure water,
+clean linen, good manners, freedom to migrate at will, and, above
+all, freedom from &ldquo;all cares or fears of law&rdquo; that
+may come against a man in the shape of debts, duns, and
+tax-gatherers.</p>
+<p>Against this folly of softening our bodies by
+&ldquo;snugness&rdquo; and degrading our souls by
+&ldquo;flunkeyism,&rdquo; Borrow&rsquo;s early life was a
+protest.&nbsp; He saw that if it were really unwholesome for man
+to be shone upon by the sun, blown upon by the winds, and rained
+upon by the rain, like all the other animals, man would never
+have existed at all, for sun and wind and rain have produced him
+and everything that lives.&nbsp; He saw that for the cultivation
+of health, honesty, and good behaviour every man born in the
+temperate zone ought, unless King Circumstance says
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; to spend in the open air eight or nine hours at
+least out of the twenty-four, and ought to court rather than to
+shun Nature&rsquo;s sweet shower-bath the rain, unless, of
+course, his chest is weak.</p>
+<p><!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+43</span>The evanescence of literary fame is strikingly
+illustrated by recalling at this moment my first sight of
+Borrow.&nbsp; I could not have been much more than a boy, for I
+and a friend had gone down to Yarmouth in March to enjoy the
+luxury of bathing in a Yarmouth sea, and it is certainly a
+&ldquo;good while&rdquo;&mdash;to use Borrow&rsquo;s
+phrase&mdash;since I considered <i>that</i> a luxury suitable to
+March.&nbsp; On the morning after our arrival, having walked some
+distance out of Yarmouth, we threw down our clothes and towels
+upon the sand some few yards from another heap of clothes, which
+indicated, to our surprise, that we were not, after all, the only
+people in Yarmouth who could bathe in a biting wind; and soon we
+perceived, ducking in an immense billow that came curving and
+curling towards the shore, such a pair of shoulders as I had not
+seen for a long time, crowned by a head white and glistening as
+burnished silver.&nbsp; (Borrow&rsquo;s hair was white I believe,
+when he was quite a young man.)&nbsp; When the wave had broken
+upon the sand, there was the bather wallowing on the top of the
+water like a Polar bear disporting in an Arctic sun.&nbsp; In
+swimming Borrow clawed the water like a dog.&nbsp; I had plunged
+into the surf and got very close to the swimmer, whom I perceived
+to be a man of almost gigantic proportions, when suddenly an
+instinct told me that it was Lavengro himself, who lived
+thereabouts, and the feeling that it was he so entirely <!-- page
+44--><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+44</span>stopped the action of my heart that I sank for a moment
+like a stone, soon to rise again, however, in glow of pleasure
+and excitement: so august a presence was Lavengro&rsquo;s
+then!</p>
+<p>I ought to say, however, that Borrow was at that time my
+hero.&nbsp; From my childhood I had taken the deepest interest in
+proscribed races such as the Cagots, but especially in the
+persecuted children of Roma.&nbsp; I had read accounts of whole
+families being executed in past times for no other crime than
+that of their being born gipsies, and tears, childish and yet
+bitter, had I shed over their woes.&nbsp; Now Borrow was the
+recognized champion of the gipsies&mdash;the friend companion,
+indeed, of the proscribed and persecuted races of the
+world.&nbsp; Nor was this all: I saw in him more of the true
+Nature instinct than in any other writer&mdash;or so, at least, I
+imagined.&nbsp; To walk out from a snug house at Rydal Mount for
+the purpose of making poetical sketches for publication seemed to
+me a very different thing from having no home but a tent in a
+dingle, or rather from Borrow&rsquo;s fashion of making all
+Nature your home.&nbsp; Although I would have given worlds to go
+up and speak to him as he was tossing his clothes upon his back,
+I could not do it.&nbsp; Morning after morning did I see him
+undress, wallow in the sea, come out again, give me a somewhat
+sour look, dress, and then stride away inland at a tremendous
+pace, but never could I speak to <!-- page 45--><a
+name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>him; and many
+years passed before I saw him again.&nbsp; He was then half
+forgotten.</p>
+<p>For an introduction to him at last I was indebted to Dr.
+Gordon Hake, the poet, who had known Borrow for many years, and
+whose friendship Borrow cherished above most things&mdash;as was
+usual, indeed, with the friends of Dr. Hake.&nbsp; This was done
+with some difficulty, for, in calling at Roehampton for a walk
+through Richmond Park and about the Common, Borrow&rsquo;s first
+question was always, &ldquo;Are you alone?&rdquo; and no
+persuasion could induce him to stay unless it could be
+satisfactorily shown that he would not be &ldquo;pestered by
+strangers.&rdquo;&nbsp; On a certain morning, however, he called,
+and suddenly coming upon me, there was no retreating, and we were
+introduced.&nbsp; He tried to be as civil as possible, but
+evidently he was much annoyed.&nbsp; Yet there was something in
+the very tone of his voice that drew my heart to him, for to me
+he was the Lavengro of my boyhood still.&nbsp; My own shyness had
+been long before fingered off by the rough handling of the world,
+but his retained all the bloom of youth, and a terrible barrier
+it was, yet I attacked it manfully.&nbsp; I knew that Borrow had
+read but little except in his own out-of-the-way directions; but
+then unfortunately, like all specialists, he considered that in
+these his own special directions lay all the knowledge that was
+of any value.&nbsp; Accordingly, what appeared to Borrow <!--
+page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+46</span>as the most striking characteristic of the present age
+was its ignorance.</p>
+<p>Unfortunately, too, I knew that for strangers to talk of his
+own published books or of gipsies appeared to him to be
+&ldquo;prying,&rdquo; though there I should have been quite at
+home.&nbsp; I knew, however, that in the obscure English pamphlet
+literature of the last century, recording the sayings and doings
+of eccentric people and strange adventurers, Borrow was very
+learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that
+direction.&nbsp; I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without
+effect.&nbsp; Borrow evidently considered that every properly
+educated man was familiar with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew
+in its every detail.&nbsp; Then I touched upon beer, the British
+bruiser, &ldquo;gentility-nonsense,&rdquo; the &ldquo;trumpery
+great&rdquo;; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to
+<i>toit</i>, a roof,&mdash;but only to have my shallow philology
+dismissed with a withering smile.&nbsp; I tried other subjects in
+the same direction, but with small success, till in a lucky
+moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett.&nbsp; There is a
+very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story of
+Ambrose Gwinett, the man who, after having been hanged and
+gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a
+double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night,
+escaped from the gibbet irons, went to sea as a common sailor,
+and afterwards met on a British man-of-war <!-- page 47--><a
+name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>the very man
+he had been hanged for murdering.&nbsp; The truth was that
+Gwinett&rsquo;s supposed victim, having been attacked on the
+night in question by a violent bleeding at the nose, had risen
+and left the house for a few minutes&rsquo; walk in the
+sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to
+sea, where he had been in service ever since.&nbsp; The story is
+true, and the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on
+what authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett&rsquo;s
+dictation for a platter of cowheel.</p>
+<p>To the bewilderment of Dr. Hake, I introduced the subject of
+Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the
+story of &ldquo;Achilles&rsquo; wrath,&rdquo; and appealed to Dr.
+Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book or the man) as
+to whether a certain incident in the pamphlet had gained or lost
+by the dramatist who, at one of the minor theatres, had many
+years ago dramatized the story.&nbsp; Borrow was caught at
+last.&nbsp; &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you know that
+pamphlet about Ambrose Gwinett?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Know
+it?&rdquo; said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked me if I
+knew &lsquo;Macbeth&rsquo;; &ldquo;of course I know Ambrose
+Gwinett, Mr. Borrow, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;And you
+know the play?&rdquo; said he.&nbsp; &ldquo;Of course I do, Mr.
+Borrow?&rdquo; I said, in a tone that was now a little angry at
+such an insinuation of crass ignorance.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why,&rdquo;
+said he, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s years and <!-- page 48--><a
+name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>years since
+it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I did go to
+see <i>that</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Well, I should rather think
+you <i>did</i>, Mr. Borrow,&rdquo; said I.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said he, staring hard at me,
+&ldquo;<i>you</i>&mdash;you were not born!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And I was not born,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;when the
+&lsquo;Agamemnon&rsquo; was produced, and yet one reads the
+&lsquo;Agamemnon,&rsquo; Mr. Borrow.&nbsp; I have read the drama
+of &lsquo;Ambrose Gwinett.&rsquo;&nbsp; I have it bound in
+morocco with some more of Douglas Jerrold&rsquo;s early
+transpontine plays, and some &AElig;schylean dramas by Mr.
+Fitzball.&nbsp; I will lend it to you, Mr. Borrow, if you
+like.&rdquo;&nbsp; He was completely conquered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Hake!&rdquo; he cried, in a loud voice, regardless of my
+presence.&nbsp; &ldquo;Hake! your friend knows
+everything.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then he murmured to himself,
+&ldquo;Wonderful man!&nbsp; Knows Ambrose Gwinett!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause
+me to have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for
+the memory of George Borrow.</p>
+<p>From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton,
+sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in
+London.&nbsp; I could have seen much more of him than I did had
+not the whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time,
+borne me away from this most original of men; and this is what I
+so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it was
+said of a greater man still, that <!-- page 49--><a
+name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>&ldquo;after
+Nature made <i>him</i> she forthwith broke the
+mould.&rdquo;&nbsp; The last time I ever saw him was shortly
+before he left London to live in the country.&nbsp; It was, I
+remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at
+a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous
+clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the
+West-End.&nbsp; Borrow came up and stood leaning over the
+parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be.&nbsp; Like
+most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for
+sunsets.&nbsp; Turner could not have painted that one, I think,
+and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke
+was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and,
+reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and
+towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour,
+leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed
+as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air&mdash;a
+peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply.&nbsp; I never saw
+such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and
+from its association with &ldquo;the last of Borrow&rdquo; I
+shall never forget it.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+50</span>III.</h3>
+<p>Students of Borrow will be as much surprised as pleased to
+find what a large collection of documents Dr. Knapp has been able
+to use in compiling this long-expected biography. <a
+name="citation50"></a><a href="#footnote50"
+class="citation">[50]</a>&nbsp; Indeed, the collection might have
+been larger and richer still.&nbsp; For instance, in the original
+manuscript of &lsquo;Zincali&rsquo; (in the possession of the
+present writer) there are some variations from the printed text;
+but, what is of very much more importance, the whole&mdash;or
+nearly the whole&mdash;of Borrow&rsquo;s letters to the Bible
+Society, which Dr. Knapp believed to be lost, have been
+discovered in the crypt of the Bible House in which the records
+of the Society are stored.&nbsp; But even without these materials
+two massive volumes crammed with documents throwing light upon
+the life and career of a man like George Borrow must needs be
+interesting to the student of English literature.&nbsp; For among
+all the remarkable characters that during the middle of the
+present century figured in the world of letters, the most
+eccentric, the most whimsical, and in every way the most <!--
+page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+51</span>extraordinary was surely the man whom Dr. Knapp calls,
+appropriately enough, his &ldquo;hero.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is no exaggeration to say that there was not a single point
+in which Borrow resembled any other writing man of his time;
+indeed, we cannot, at the moment, recall any really important
+writer of any period whose eccentricity of character can be
+compared with his.&nbsp; At the basis of the artistic temperament
+is generally that &ldquo;sweet reasonableness&rdquo; the lack of
+which we excuse in Borrow and in almost no one else.&nbsp; As to
+literary whim, it must not be supposed that this quality is
+necessarily and always the outcome of temperament.&nbsp; There
+are some authors of whom it may be said that the moment they take
+pen in hand they pass into their &ldquo;literary mood,&rdquo; a
+mood that in their cases does not seem to be born of temperament,
+but to spring from some fantastic movement of the
+intellect.&nbsp; Sterne, for instance, the greatest of all
+masters of whim (not excluding Rabelais), passed when in the act
+of writing into a literary mood which, as &ldquo;Yorick,&rdquo;
+he tried to live up to in his private life&mdash;tried in
+vain.&nbsp; With regard to Charles Lamb, his temperament, no
+doubt, was whimsical enough, and yet how many rich and rare
+passages in his writings are informed by a whim of a purely
+intellectual kind&mdash;a whim which could only have sprung from
+that delicious literary mood of his, engendered by much <!-- page
+52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>study
+of quaint old writers, into which he passed when at his
+desk!&nbsp; But whatsoever is whimsical, whatsoever is eccentric
+and angular, in Borrow&rsquo;s writings is the natural, the
+inevitable growth of a nature more whimsical, more eccentric,
+more angular still.</p>
+<p>That such a man should have had an extraordinary
+life-experience was to be expected.&nbsp; And an extraordinary
+life-experience Borrow&rsquo;s was, to be sure!&nbsp; This alone
+would lend an especial interest to Borrow&rsquo;s
+biography&mdash;the fact, we mean, of his life having been
+extraordinary.&nbsp; For in these days no lives, as a rule, are
+less adventurous, none, as a rule, less tinged with romance, than
+the lives of those who attain eminence in the world of
+letters.&nbsp; No doubt they nowadays move about from place to
+place a good deal; not a few of them may even be called
+travellers, or at least globe-trotters; but, alas! in
+globe-trotting who shall hope to meet with adventures of a more
+romantic kind than those connected with a railway collision or a
+storm at sea?&nbsp; And this was so in days that preceded
+ours.&nbsp; It was so with Scott, it was so with Dickens, it was
+so with even Dumas, who, chained to his desk for months and
+months at a stretch, could only be seen by his friends during the
+intervals of work.&nbsp; Nay, even with regard to the writing men
+of the far past, the more time a man gave to literary production
+the less time he had to drink the rich wine of life, to see <!--
+page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+53</span>the world, to study nature and nature&rsquo;s enigma
+man.</p>
+<p>Perhaps one reason why we have almost no record of what the
+greatest of all writing men was doing in the world is that while
+his friends were elbowing the tide of life in the streets of
+London, or fighting in the Low Countries, or carousing at the
+Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo Saloon, he was filling every
+moment with work&mdash;work which enabled him, before he reached
+his fifty-second year, to build up that literary monument of his,
+that edifice which made the monuments of the others, his
+contemporaries, seem like the handiwork of pigmies.&nbsp; But as
+regards Borrow, student though he was, it is not as an author
+that we think of him; it is as the adventurer, it is as the great
+Romany Rye, who discovered the most interesting people in Europe,
+and as a brother vagabond lived with them&mdash;lived with them
+&ldquo;on the accont of health, sweetness of the air, and for
+enjoying the pleasure of Nature&rsquo;s life,&rdquo; to quote the
+&ldquo;testimonial&rdquo; of the prose-poet Sylvester
+Boswell.</p>
+<p>Even by his personal appearance Borrow was marked off from his
+fellow-men.&nbsp; As a gipsy girl once remarked, &ldquo;Nobody as
+ever see&rsquo;d the white-headed Romany Rye ever forgot
+him.&rdquo;&nbsp; Standing considerably above six feet in height,
+he was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his practice of
+athletic <!-- page 54--><a name="page54"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 54</span>exercises gave his every movement the
+easy elasticity of an athlete under training.&nbsp; As to his
+countenance, &ldquo;noble&rdquo; is the only word that can be
+used to describe it.&nbsp; The silvery whiteness of the thick
+crop of hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty of
+the hairless face, but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this
+strangeness was intensified by a certain incongruity between the
+features (perfect Roman-Greek in type) and the Scandinavian
+complexion, luminous and sometimes rosy as an English
+girl&rsquo;s.&nbsp; An increased intensity was lent by the fair
+skin to the dark lustre of the eyes.&nbsp; What struck the
+observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of
+the man&rsquo;s appearance.&nbsp; It was not this feature or that
+which struck the eye, it was the expression of the face as a
+whole.&nbsp; If it were possible to describe this expression in a
+word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a shy
+self-consciousness.</p>
+<p>How did it come about, then, that a man shy, self-conscious,
+and sensitive to the last degree, became the Ulysses of the
+writing fraternity, wandering among strangers all over Europe,
+and consorting on intimate terms with that race who, more than
+all others, are repelled by shy self-consciousness&mdash;the
+gipsies?&nbsp; This, perhaps, is how the puzzle may be
+explained.&nbsp; When Borrow was talking to people in his own
+class of life there was always in his bearing a kind <!-- page
+55--><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>of
+shy, defiant egotism.&nbsp; What Carlyle calls the &ldquo;armed
+neutrality&rdquo; of social intercourse oppressed him.&nbsp; He
+felt himself to be in the enemy&rsquo;s camp.&nbsp; In his eyes
+there was always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking
+stock of his interlocutor and weighing him against himself.&nbsp;
+He seemed to be observing what effect his words were having, and
+this attitude repelled people at first.&nbsp; But the moment he
+approached a gipsy on the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or
+a homeless wanderer by the wayside, he became another man.&nbsp;
+He threw off the burden of restraint.&nbsp; The feeling of the
+&ldquo;armed neutrality&rdquo; was left behind, and he seemed to
+be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that could give
+him pleasure.&nbsp; This it was that enabled him to make friends
+so entirely with the gipsies.&nbsp; Notwithstanding what is
+called &ldquo;Romany guile&rdquo; (which is the growth of ages of
+oppression), the basis of the Romany character is a joyous
+frankness.&nbsp; Once let the isolating wall which shuts off the
+Romany from the &ldquo;Gorgio&rdquo; be broken through, and the
+communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins to show
+itself.&nbsp; The gipsies are extremely close observers; they
+were very quick to notice how different was Borrow&rsquo;s
+bearing towards themselves from his bearing towards people of his
+own race, and Borrow used to say that &ldquo;old Mrs. Herne and
+Leonora were <!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 56</span>the only gipsies who suspected and
+disliked him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus it came about that the gipsies and the wanderers
+generally were almost the only people in any country who saw the
+winsome side of Borrow.&nbsp; A truly winsome side he had.&nbsp;
+Yes, notwithstanding all that has been said about him to the
+contrary, Borrow was a most interesting and charming
+companion.&nbsp; We all have our angularities; we all have
+unpleasant facets of character when occasion offers for showing
+them.&nbsp; But there are some unfortunate people whose
+angularities are for ever chafing and irritating their
+friends.&nbsp; Borrow was one of these.&nbsp; It is very rarely
+indeed that one meets a friend or an acquaintance of
+Borrow&rsquo;s who speaks of him with the kindness he
+deserved.&nbsp; When a friend or an acquaintance relates an
+anecdote of him the asperity with which he does so is really
+remarkable and quite painful.&nbsp; It was&mdash;it must have
+been&mdash;far from Dr. Gordon Hake&rsquo;s wish to speak
+unkindly of his old friend who remained to the last deeply
+attached to him.&nbsp; And yet few things have done more to
+prejudice the public against Borrow than the Doctor&rsquo;s tale
+of Lavengro&rsquo;s outrage at Rougham Rookery, the residence of
+the banker Bevan, one of the kindest and most benevolent men in
+Suffolk.</p>
+<p>This story, often told by Hake, appeared at last in print in
+his memoirs.&nbsp; Invited to dinner <!-- page 57--><a
+name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>by Mr. Bevan,
+Borrow accepted the invitation and, according to the anecdote,
+thus behaved: During dinner Mrs. Bevan, thinking to please him,
+said, &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much
+pleasure!&rdquo;&nbsp; On which Borrow exclaimed, &ldquo;Pray
+what books do you mean, ma&rsquo;am&mdash;do you mean my account
+books?&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, rising from the table, he walked up and
+down among the servants during the whole dinner, and afterwards
+wandered about the rooms and passages till the carriage could be
+ordered for his return home.&nbsp; A monstrous proceeding truly,
+and not to be condoned by any circumstances.&nbsp; Yet some part
+of its violence may, perhaps, thus be explained.&nbsp;
+Borrow&rsquo;s loyalty to a friend was proverbial&mdash;until he
+and the friend quarrelled.&nbsp; A man who dared say an
+ungenerous word against a friend of Borrow&rsquo;s ran the risk
+of being knocked down.&nbsp; Borrow on this occasion had been
+driven half mad with rage&mdash;unreasoning, ignorant
+rage&mdash;against the Bury banking-house, because it had
+&ldquo;struck the docket&rdquo; against a friend of
+Borrow&rsquo;s, the heir to a considerable estate, who had got
+into difficulties.&nbsp; What Borrow yearned to do was, as he
+told the present writer, to cane the banker.&nbsp; He had, as far
+as his own reputation went, far better have done this and taken
+the consequences than have insulted the banker&rsquo;s
+wife&mdash;one of the most gentle, amiable, and unassuming ladies
+in <!-- page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+58</span>Suffolk.&nbsp; Dr. Knapp speaks very sharply of Miss
+Cobb&rsquo;s remarks upon Borrow, and certainly these remarks are
+made with a great deal too much acidity.&nbsp; But if the
+Borrovian is to lose temper with every one who girds at Borrow he
+will lead a not very comfortable life.</p>
+<p>Dr. Knapp has no doubt whatever that &lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo; is
+in the main an autobiography.&nbsp; We have none.&nbsp; The only
+question is how much <i>Dichtung</i> is mingled with the
+<i>Wahrheit</i>.&nbsp; Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy
+pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative&mdash;such
+incidents as that of his meeting on the road the sailor son of
+the old apple-woman of London Bridge, and the exaggerated
+description of the man sent to sleep by reading
+Wordsworth&mdash;few readers would have doubted the
+autobiographical nature of &lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo; and &lsquo;The
+Romany Rye.&rsquo;&nbsp; Such incidents as these shed an air of
+unreality over the whole.</p>
+<p>All writers upon Borrow fall into the mistake of considering
+him to have been an East Anglian.&nbsp; They might as well call
+Charlotte Bront&euml; a Yorkshirewoman as call Borrow an East
+Anglian.&nbsp; He was, of course, no more an East Anglian than an
+Irishman born in London is an Englishman.&nbsp; He had at bottom
+no East Anglian characteristics.&nbsp; He inherited nothing from
+Norfolk save his accent and his love of &ldquo;leg of mutton and
+turnips.&rdquo;&nbsp; Yet he is a striking illustration of the
+way in which the locality <!-- page 59--><a
+name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>that has
+given birth to a man influences him throughout his life.&nbsp;
+The fact of Borrow&rsquo;s having been born in East Anglia was
+the result of accident.&nbsp; His father, a Cornishman of a good
+middle-class family, had been obliged, owing to a youthful
+escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a common
+soldier.&nbsp; Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and
+moved about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to
+another.&nbsp; It so chanced that while staying at East Dereham,
+in Norfolk, he met and fell in love with a lady of French
+extraction.&nbsp; Not one drop of East Anglian blood was in the
+veins of Borrow&rsquo;s father, and very little in the veins of
+his mother.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s ancestry was pure Cornish on one
+side, and on the other mainly French.&nbsp; But such was the
+sublime egotism of Borrow&mdash;perhaps we should have said such
+is the sublime egotism of human nature&mdash;that the fact of his
+having been born in East Anglia made him look upon that part of
+the world as the very hub of the universe.</p>
+<p>There is, it must be confessed, something to us very agreeable
+in Dr. Knapp&rsquo;s single-minded hero-worship.&nbsp; A scholar
+and a philologist himself, he seems to have devoted a large
+portion of his life to the study of Borrow&mdash;following in
+Lavengro&rsquo;s footsteps from one country to another with
+unflagging enthusiasm.&nbsp; Now and again, undoubtedly, this
+hero-worship runs to excess: the faults of style and of method in
+<!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+60</span>Borrow&rsquo;s writings are condoned or are passed by
+unobserved by Dr. Knapp, while the most unanswerable strictures
+upon them by others are resented.&nbsp; For instance, at the end
+of the following extract from the report of the gentleman who
+read &lsquo;Zincali&rsquo; for Mr. Murray, he appends a note of
+exclamation, as though he considers the admirable advice given to
+be eccentric or bad:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of
+the book; but in several of them the tone of the speakers, of
+those especially who are in humble life, is too correct and
+elevated, and therefore out of character.&nbsp; This takes away
+from their effect.&nbsp; I think it would be very advisable that
+Mr. Borrow should go over them with reference to this point,
+simplifying a few of the terms of expression and introducing a
+few contractions&mdash;<i>don&rsquo;ts</i>, <i>can&rsquo;ts</i>,
+&amp;c.&nbsp; This would improve them greatly.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Now the truth is that Mr. Murray&rsquo;s reader, whoever he
+was, <a name="citation60"></a><a href="#footnote60"
+class="citation">[60]</a> pointed out the one great blemish in
+<i>all</i> Borrow&rsquo;s dramatic pictures of gipsy life,
+wheresoever the scene may be laid.&nbsp; Take his pictures of
+English gipsies.&nbsp; The reader has only to compare the
+dialogue between gipsies given in that photographic study of
+Romany life &lsquo;In Gipsy Tents&rsquo; with the dialogues in
+&lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo; to see how the <!-- page 61--><a
+name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>illusion in
+Borrow&rsquo;s narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial
+vocabulary of the speakers.&nbsp; After all allowance is made for
+the Romany&rsquo;s love of high-sounding words, it considerably
+weakens our belief in Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro, Ursula, and the
+rest, to find them using complex sentences and bookish words
+which, even among English people, are rarely heard in
+conversation.</p>
+<p>Dr. Knapp says emphatically that Borrow never created a
+character, and that the originals are easily recognizable to one
+who thoroughly knows the times and Borrow&rsquo;s writings.&nbsp;
+This is true, no doubt, as regards people with whom he was
+brought into contact at Norwich, and, indeed, generally before
+the period of his gipsy wanderings.&nbsp; It must not be
+supposed, however, that such characters as the man who
+&ldquo;touched&rdquo; to avert the evil chance and the man who
+taught himself Chinese are in any sense portraits.&nbsp; They
+have so many of Borrow&rsquo;s own peculiarities that they might
+rather be called portraits of himself.&nbsp; There was nothing
+that Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious
+impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr. Johnson, to touch
+the objects along his path in order to save himself from the evil
+chance.&nbsp; He never conquered the superstition.&nbsp; In
+walking through Richmond Park he would step out of his way
+constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the <!-- page
+62--><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+62</span>friend he was with seemed to observe it.&nbsp; Many of
+the peculiarities of the man who taught himself Chinese were also
+Borrow&rsquo;s own.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But what about Isopel Berners?&rdquo; the reader will
+ask.&nbsp; &ldquo;How much of truth and how much of fiction went
+to the presentation of this most interesting
+character?&rdquo;&nbsp; Seeing that Dr. Knapp has at his command
+such an immense amount of material in manuscript, the reader will
+feel some disappointment at discovering that the book tells us
+nothing new about her.&nbsp; The character he names Isopel
+Berners was just the sort of girl in every way to attract Borrow,
+and if he had had the feeblest spark of the love-passion in his
+constitution one could almost imagine his falling in love with
+her.&nbsp; Yet even the portrait of Isopel is marred by
+Borrow&rsquo;s impulse towards exaggeration.&nbsp; He must needs
+describe her as being taller than himself, and as he certainly
+stood six feet three Isopel would have been far better suited to
+sit by the side of Borrow&rsquo;s friend the &ldquo;Norfolk
+giant,&rdquo; Hales, in the little London public-house where he
+latterly resided, than to become famous as a fighting woman who
+could conquer the Flaming Tinman.&nbsp; Few indeed have been the
+women who could stand up for long before a trained boxer, and
+these must needs be not too tall, and moreover they must have
+their breasts padded after the manner of a well-known gipsy girl
+who excelled in this once <!-- page 63--><a
+name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>fashionable
+accomplishment.&nbsp; Even then a woman&rsquo;s instinct impels
+her to guard her chest more carefully than she guards her face,
+and this leads to disaster.&nbsp; Altogether Borrow, by his
+wilful exaggeration, makes the reader a little sceptical about
+Isopel, who was really an East Anglian road-girl of the finest
+type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not many years
+ago.&nbsp; All that Dr. Knapp has derived from the documents in
+his possession concerning her is the following extraordinary
+passage from the original manuscript, which Borrow struck out of
+&lsquo;Lavengro.&rsquo;&nbsp; He says:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As to the remarkable character introduced
+into &lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo; and &lsquo;Romany Rye&rsquo; under
+the name of Isopel Berners, I have no light from the MSS. of
+George Borrow, save the following fragment, which perhaps I ought
+to have suppressed.&nbsp; I am sorry if it dispel any
+illusions:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;(<i>Loquitur Petulengro</i>) &lsquo;My mind at present
+rather inclines towards two wives.&nbsp; I have heard that King
+Pharaoh had two, if not more.&nbsp; Now, I think myself as good a
+man as he; and if he had more wives than one, why should not I,
+whose name is Petulengro?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;But what would Mrs. Petulengro say?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Why, to tell you the truth, brother, it was she
+who first put the thought into my mind.&nbsp; She has always, you
+know, had strange notions in her head, gorgiko notions, I suppose
+we may call them, about gentility and the like, and reading and
+writing.&nbsp; Now, though she can <!-- page 64--><a
+name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>neither read
+nor write herself, she thinks that she is lost among our people
+and that they are no society for her.&nbsp; So says she to me one
+day, &ldquo;Pharaoh,&rdquo; says she, &ldquo;I wish you would
+take another wife, that I might have a little pleasant
+company.&nbsp; As for these here, I am their
+betters.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;I have no objection,&rdquo; said I;
+&ldquo;who shall it be?&nbsp; Shall it be a Cooper or a
+Stanley?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;A Cooper or a Stanley!&rdquo; said
+she, with a toss of her head, &ldquo;I might as well keep my
+present company as theirs; none of your rubbish; let it be a
+<i>gorgie</i>, one that I can speak an idea
+with&rdquo;&mdash;that was her word, I think.&nbsp; Now I am
+thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the kind of
+person both for my wife and myself.&nbsp; My wife wants something
+gorgiko, something genteel.&nbsp; Now Bess is of blood gorgious;
+if you doubt it, look in her face, all full of <i>pawno
+ratter</i>, white blood, brother; and as for gentility, nobody
+can make exceptions to Bess&rsquo;s gentility, seeing she was
+born in the workhouse of Melford the Short, where she learned to
+read and write.&nbsp; She is no Irish woman, brother, but English
+pure, and her father was a farmer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;So much as far as my wife is concerned.&nbsp; As
+for myself, I tell you what, brother, I want a strapper; one who
+can give and take.&nbsp; The Flying Tinker is abroad, vowing
+vengeance against us all.&nbsp; I know what the Flying Tinker is,
+so does Tawno.&nbsp; The Flying Tinker came to our camp.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Damn you all,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll fight the
+best of you for nothing.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Done!&rdquo; says
+Tawno, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be ready for you in a
+minute.&rdquo;&nbsp; So Tawno went into his tent and came out
+<!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+65</span>naked.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s at you,&rdquo; says
+Tawno.&nbsp; Brother, Tawno fought for two hours with the Flying
+Tinker, for two whole hours, and it&rsquo;s hard to say which had
+the best of it or the worst.&nbsp; I tell you what, brother, I
+think Tawno had the worst of it.&nbsp; Night came on.&nbsp; Tawno
+went into his tent to dress himself and the Flying Tinker went
+his way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Now suppose, brother, the Flying Tinker comes
+upon us when Tawno is away.&nbsp; Who is to fight the Flying
+Tinker when he says: &ldquo;D---n you, I will fight the best of
+you&rdquo;?&nbsp; Brother, I will fight the Flying Tinker for
+five pounds; but I couldn&rsquo;t for less.&nbsp; The Flying
+Tinker is a big man, and though he hasn&rsquo;t my science, he
+weighs five stone heavier.&nbsp; It wouldn&rsquo;t do for me to
+fight a man like that for nothing.&nbsp; But there&rsquo;s Bess,
+who can afford to fight the Flying Tinker at any time for what
+he&rsquo;s got, and that&rsquo;s three ha&rsquo;pence.&nbsp; She
+can beat him, brother; I bet five pounds that Bess can beat the
+Flying Tinker.&nbsp; Now, if I marry Bess, I&rsquo;m quite easy
+on his score.&nbsp; He comes to our camp and says his say.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t dirty my hands with you,&rdquo; says I,
+&ldquo;at least not under five pounds; but here&rsquo;s Bess
+who&rsquo;ll fight you for nothing.&rdquo;&nbsp; I tell you what,
+brother, when he knows that Bess is Mrs. Pharaoh, he&rsquo;ll
+fight shy of our camp; he won&rsquo;t come near it,
+brother.&nbsp; He knows Bess don&rsquo;t like him, and
+what&rsquo;s more, that she can lick him.&nbsp; He&rsquo;ll let
+us alone; at least I think so.&nbsp; If he does come, I&rsquo;ll
+smoke my pipe whilst Bess is beating the Flying Tinker.&nbsp;
+Brother, I&rsquo;m dry, and will now take a cup of
+ale.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+66</span>Why did Borrow reject this passage?&nbsp; Was it owing
+to his dread of respectability&rsquo;s frowns?&mdash;or was it
+not rather because he felt that here his exaggeration, his
+departure from the true in quest of the striking, did not
+recommend itself to his cooler judgment?&nbsp; For those who know
+anything of the gipsies would say at once that it would have been
+impossible for Mrs. Petulengro to make this suggestion; and that,
+even if she had made it, Mr. Petulengro would not have dared to
+broach it to any English road-girl, least of all to a girl like
+Isopel Berners.&nbsp; The passage, however, is the most
+interesting document that Dr. Knapp has published.</p>
+<p>What may be called the Isopel Berners chapter of
+Borrow&rsquo;s life was soon to be followed by the &ldquo;veiled
+period&rdquo;&mdash;that is to say, the period between the point
+where ends &lsquo;The Romany Rye&rsquo; and the point where the
+Bible Society engages Borrow.</p>
+<p>Dr. Knapp&rsquo;s mind seems a good deal exercised concerning
+this period.&nbsp; Borrow having chosen to draw the veil over
+that period, no one has any right to raise it&mdash;or, rather,
+perhaps no one would have had any right to do so had not Borrow
+himself thrown such a needless mystery around it.&nbsp; In
+considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always
+necessary to take into account the secretiveness of his
+disposition, and also his passion for posing.&nbsp; He had a
+child&rsquo;s fondness for the wonderful.&nbsp; It <!-- page
+67--><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>is
+through his own love of mystification that students like Dr.
+Knapp must needs pry into these matters&mdash;must needs ask why
+Borrow drew the veil over seven years&mdash;must needs ask
+whether during the &ldquo;veiled period&rdquo; he led a life of
+squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel
+Berners in Mumpers&rsquo; Dingle was luxury, or whether he was
+really travelling, as he pretended to have been, over the
+world.</p>
+<p>By yielding to his instinct as a born showman he excites a
+curiosity which would otherwise be unjustifiable.&nbsp; Even if
+Dr. Knapp had been able to approach Borrow&rsquo;s
+stepdaughter&mdash;which he seems not to have been able to
+do&mdash;it is pretty certain that she could have told him
+nothing of that mysterious seven years.&nbsp; For about this
+subject the people to whom Borrow seems to have been most
+reticent were his wife and her daughter.&nbsp; Indeed, it was not
+until after his wife&rsquo;s death that he would allude to this
+period even to his most intimate friends.&nbsp; One of the very
+few people to whom he did latterly talk with anything like
+frankness about this period in his life&mdash;Dr. Gordon
+Hake&mdash;is dead; and perhaps there is not more than about one
+other person now living who had anything of his confidence.</p>
+<p>With regard to this veiled period, people who read the idyllic
+pictures in &lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Romany
+Rye&rsquo; of the life of a gipsy gentleman working as a
+hedge-smith in the <!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 68</span>dingle or by the roadside seem to
+forget that Borrow was then working not for amusement, but for
+bread, and they forget how scant the bread must have been that
+could be bought for the odd sixpence or the few coppers that he
+was able to earn.&nbsp; To those, however, who do not forget this
+it needs no revelation from documents, and none from any
+surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as Borrow was
+mainly living in England during these seven years (continuing for
+a considerable time his life of a wanderer, and afterwards living
+as an obscure literary struggler in Norwich), his life was during
+this period one of privation, disappointment, and gloom.&nbsp; It
+was for him to decide what he would give to the public and what
+he would withhold.</p>
+<p>The concluding chapter of Dr. Knapp&rsquo;s book is not only
+pathetic&mdash;it is painful.&nbsp; In the summer of 1874 Borrow
+left London, bade adieu to Mr. Murray and a few friends, and
+returned to Oulton&mdash;to die.&nbsp; On the 26th of July, 1881,
+he was found dead in his home at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth
+year.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 69--><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+69</span>II.&nbsp; DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI,<br />
+1828&ndash;1882.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>At Birchington-on-Sea one of the most rarely gifted men of our
+time has just died [April 9th, 1882] after a lingering
+illness.&nbsp; During the time that his &lsquo;Ballads and
+Sonnets&rsquo; was passing through the press last autumn his
+health began to give way, and he left London for
+Cumberland.&nbsp; A stay of a few weeks in the Vale of St. John,
+however, did nothing to improve his health, and he returned much
+shattered.&nbsp; After a time a numbness in the left arm excited
+fear of paralysis, and he became dangerously ill.&nbsp; It is
+probable, indeed, that nothing but the skill and unwearied
+attention of Mr. John Marshall saved his life then, as it had
+done upon several previous occasions.&nbsp; Such of his friends
+as were then in London&mdash;W. B. Scott, Burne Jones, Leyland,
+F. Shields, Mr. Dunn, and others&mdash;feeling the greatest
+alarm, showed him every affectionate attention, and spared no
+effort to preserve a life so precious and so beloved.&nbsp; Mr.
+Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow,
+Birchington-on-Sea, <!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 70</span>he went thither, accompanied by his
+mother and sister and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but
+received no benefit from the change, and, gradually sinking from
+a complication of disorders, he died on Sunday last at 10 <span
+class="smcap">p.m.</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p70b.jpg">
+<img alt="Dante Gabriel Rosette.  From a crayon-drawing by
+himself reproduced by the kind permission of Mrs. W. M. Rossetti"
+src="images/p70s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Were I even competent to enter upon the discussion of
+Rossetti&rsquo;s gifts as a poet and as a painter, it would not
+be possible to do so here and at this moment.&nbsp; That the
+quality of romantic imagination informs with more vitality his
+work than it can be said to inform the work of any of his
+contemporaries was recognized at first by the few, and is now
+(judging from the great popularity of his last volume of poetry)
+being recognized by the many.&nbsp; And the same, I think, may be
+said of his painting.&nbsp; Those who had the privilege of a
+personal acquaintance with him knew how &ldquo;of imagination all
+compact&rdquo; he was.&nbsp; Imagination, indeed, was at once his
+blessing and his bane.&nbsp; To see too vividly&mdash;to love too
+intensely&mdash;to suffer and enjoy too acutely&mdash;is the
+doom, no doubt, of all those &ldquo;lost wanderers from
+Arden&rdquo; who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the
+world&rsquo;s songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps,
+than to most poets.&nbsp; And when we consider that the one
+quality in all poetry which really gives it an endurance
+outlasting the generation of its birth is neither music nor
+colour, nor even intellectual substance, but the <!-- page
+71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+71</span>clearness of the seeing; the living breath of
+imagination&mdash;the very qualities, in short, for which such
+poems as &lsquo;Sister Helen&rsquo; and &lsquo;Rose Mary&rsquo;
+are so conspicuous&mdash;we are driven to the conclusion that
+Rossetti&rsquo;s poetry has a long and enduring future before
+it.</p>
+<p>A life more devoted to literature and art than his it is
+impossible to imagine.&nbsp; Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was
+born at 38, Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, on the 12th
+of May, 1828.&nbsp; He was the first son and second child of
+Gabriele Rossetti, the patriotic poet, who, born at Vasto in the
+Abruzzi, settled in Naples, and took an active part in extorting
+from the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I. the constitution granted in
+1820, which constitution being traitorously cancelled by the king
+in 1821, Rossetti had to escape for his life to Malta with
+various other persecuted constitutionalists.&nbsp; From Malta
+Gabriele Rossetti went to England about 1823, where he married in
+1826 Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri&rsquo;s secretary and
+sister of Byron&rsquo;s Dr. Polidori.&nbsp; He became Professor
+of Italian in King&rsquo;s College, London, became also prominent
+as a commentator on Dante, and died in April, 1854.&nbsp; His
+children, four in number&mdash;Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel,
+William Michael, and Christina Georgina&mdash;all turned to
+literature or to art, or to both, and all became famous.&nbsp;
+There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Rossetti <!-- page
+72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+72</span>family will hold a position quite unique in the literary
+and artistic annals of our time.</p>
+<p>Young Rossetti was first sent to the private school of the
+Rev. Mr. Paul in Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained,
+however, for only three quarters of a year, from the autumn of
+1835 to the summer of 1836.&nbsp; He next went to King&rsquo;s
+College School in the autumn of 1836, where he remained till the
+summer of 1843, having reached the fourth class, then conducted
+by the Rev. Mr. Framley.</p>
+<p>Having from early childhood shown a strong propensity for
+drawing and painting, which had thus been always regarded as his
+future profession, he now left school for ever and received no
+more school learning.&nbsp; In Latin he was already fairly
+proficient for his age; French he knew well; he had spoken
+Italian from childhood, and had some German lessons about
+1844&ndash;5.&nbsp; On leaving school he went at once to the Art
+Academy of Cary (previously called Sass&rsquo;s) near Bedford
+Square, and thence obtained admission to the Royal Academy
+Antique School in 1844 or 1845.&nbsp; To the Royal Academy Life
+School he never went, and he was a somewhat negligent art
+student, but always regarded as one who had a future before
+him.</p>
+<p>In 1849 Rossetti exhibited &lsquo;The Girlhood of the
+Virgin&rsquo; in the so-called Free Exhibition or Portland
+Gallery.&nbsp; The artist who had perhaps the strongest influence
+upon Rossetti&rsquo;s <!-- page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 73</span>early tastes was Ford Madox Brown,
+who, however, refused from the first to join the Pre-Raphaelite
+Brotherhood on the ground that coteries had in modern art no
+proper function.&nbsp; Rossetti was deeply impressed with the
+power and designing faculty displayed by Madox Brown&rsquo;s
+cartoons exhibited in Westminster Hall.&nbsp; When Rossetti began
+serious work as a painter he thought of Madox Brown as the one
+man from whom he would willingly receive practical guidance, and
+wrote to him at random.&nbsp; From this time Madox Brown became
+his intimate friend and artistic monitor.</p>
+<p>In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising
+only half his genius.&nbsp; From his childhood it became evident
+that he was a poet.&nbsp; At the age of five he wrote a sort of
+play called &lsquo;The Slave,&rsquo; which, as may be imagined,
+showed no noteworthy characteristic save precocity.&nbsp; This
+was followed by the poem called &lsquo;Sir Hugh Heron,&rsquo;
+which was written about 1844, and some translations of German
+poetry.&nbsp; &lsquo;The Blessed Damozel&rsquo; and &lsquo;Sister
+Helen&rsquo; were produced in their original form so early as
+1846 or 1847.&nbsp; The latter of these has undergone more
+modifications than any other first-class poem of our time.&nbsp;
+To take even the new edition of the &lsquo;Poems&rsquo; which
+appeared last year [1881], the stanzas introducing the wife of
+the luckless hero appealing to the sorceress for mercy are so
+important in the <!-- page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 74</span>glamour they shed back over the
+stanzas that have gone before, that their introduction may almost
+be characterized as a rewriting of every previous line.</p>
+<p>The translations from the early Italian poets also began as
+far back as 1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by
+1849.&nbsp; Rossetti&rsquo;s gifts as a translator were, no
+doubt, of the highest.&nbsp; And this arose from his deep
+sympathy with literature as a medium of human expression: he
+could enter into the temperaments of other writers, and by
+sympathy criticize the literary form from the author&rsquo;s own
+inner standpoint, supposing always that there was a certain
+racial kinship with the author.&nbsp; Many who write well
+themselves have less sympathy with the expressional forms adopted
+by other writers than is displayed by men who have neither the
+impulse nor the power to write themselves.&nbsp; But this
+sympathy betrayed him sometimes into a free rendering of
+locutions such as a translator should be chary of indulging
+in.&nbsp; Materials for a volume accumulated slowly, but all the
+important portions of the &lsquo;Poems&rsquo; published in 1870
+had been in existence some years before that date.&nbsp; The
+prose story of &lsquo;Hand and Soul&rsquo; was also written as
+early as 1848 or 1849.</p>
+<p>In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall,
+who being very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by
+him.&nbsp; She <!-- page 75--><a name="page75"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 75</span>had one still-born child in 1861, and
+died in February, 1862.&nbsp; He felt her death very acutely, and
+for a time ceased to write or to take any interest in his own
+poetry.&nbsp; Like Prospero, indeed, he literally buried his
+wand, but for a time only.&nbsp; From this time to his death he
+continued to produce pictures, all of them showing, as far as
+technical skill goes, an unfaltering advance in his art.</p>
+<p>Yet wonderful as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was
+still more wonderful, I think, as a man.&nbsp; The chief
+characteristic of his conversation was an incisiveness so perfect
+and clear as to have often the pleasurable surprise of wit.&nbsp;
+It is so well known that Rossetti has been for a long time the
+most retired man of genius of our day, and so many absurd causes
+for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is nothing
+indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who
+of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other
+person.&nbsp; About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic
+temperament&mdash;insomnia&mdash;attacked him, and one of the
+most distressing effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from
+personal contact with any save a few intimate friends.&nbsp; This
+peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of
+sleeping draughts, and in his case was thus aggravated.</p>
+<p>But, although Rossetti lived thus secluded, he did not lose
+the affectionate regard of the <!-- page 76--><a
+name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>illustrious
+men with whom he started in his artistic life.&nbsp; Nor,
+assuredly, did he deserve to lose it, for no man ever lived, I
+think, who was so generous as he in sympathizing with other
+men&rsquo;s work, save only when the cruel fumes of chloral
+turned him against everything.&nbsp; And his sympathy was as wide
+as generous.&nbsp; It was only necessary to mention the name of
+Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or Burne Jones or G. F. Watts,
+or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to get from him a
+glowing disquisition upon the merits of each&mdash;a disquisition
+full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the
+brilliant lights of his matchless fancy.&nbsp; And it was the
+same in poetry.</p>
+<p>But those who loved Rossetti (that is to say, those who knew
+him) can realize how difficult it is for me, a friend, to pursue
+just now such reminiscences as these.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 77--><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+77</span>II.</h3>
+<p>In his preface Mr. W. M. Rossetti says:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have not attempted to write a
+biographical account of my brother, nor to estimate the range or
+value of his powers and performances in fine art and in
+literature.&nbsp; I agree with those who think that a brother is
+not the proper person to undertake a work of this sort.&nbsp; An
+outsider can do it dispassionately, though with imperfect
+knowledge of the facts; a friend can do it with mastery, and
+without much undue bias; but a brother, however equitably he may
+address himself to the task, cannot perform it so as to secure
+the prompt and cordial assent of his readers.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>These words will serve as a good example of the dignified
+modesty which is a characteristic of Mr. W. M. Rossetti&rsquo;s,
+and is one of the best features of this volume. <a
+name="citation77"></a><a href="#footnote77"
+class="citation">[77]</a>&nbsp; In these days of empty pretence
+it is always refreshing to come upon a page written in the spirit
+of scholarly self-suppression which informs every line this
+patient and admirable critic writes.&nbsp; And as to the
+interesting question glanced at in the passage above quoted,
+though the contents of this volume will, no doubt, form valuable
+material for the future biography of Rossetti, <!-- page 78--><a
+name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>we wonder
+whether the time is even yet at hand when that biography, whether
+written by brother, by friend, or by outsider, is needed.&nbsp;
+That mysterious entity &ldquo;the public,&rdquo; would, no doubt,
+like to get one; but we have always shared Rossetti&rsquo;s own
+opinion that a man of genius is no more the property of the
+&ldquo;public&rdquo; than is any private gentleman; and we have
+always felt with him that the prevalence in our time of the
+opposite opinion has fashioned so intolerable a yoke for the neck
+of any one who has had the misfortune to pass from the sweet
+paradise of obscurity into the vulgar purgatory of Fame, that it
+almost behoves a man of genius to avoid, if he can, passing into
+that purgatory at all.</p>
+<p>Can any biography, by whomsoever written, be other than
+inchoate and illusory&mdash;nay, can it fail to be fraught with
+danger to the memory of the dead, with danger to the peace of the
+living, until years have fully calmed the air around the dead
+man&rsquo;s grave?&nbsp; So long as the man to be portrayed
+cannot be separated from his surroundings, so long as his
+portrait cannot be fully and honestly limned without peril to the
+peace of those among whom he moved&mdash;in a word, so long as
+there remains any throb of vitality in those delicate filaments
+of social life by which he was enlinked to those with whom he
+played his part&mdash;that brother, or that friend, or that
+outsider who shall attempt the portraiture <!-- page 79--><a
+name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>must feel
+what heavy responsibilities are his&mdash;must not forget that
+with him to trip is to sin against the head.&nbsp; And how shall
+he decide when the time has at last come for making the
+attempt?&nbsp; Before the incidents of a man&rsquo;s life can be
+exploited without any risk of mischief, how much time should
+elapse?&nbsp; &ldquo;A month,&rdquo; say the publishers, each one
+of whom runs his own special &ldquo;biographical series,&rdquo;
+and keeps his own special bevy of recording angels writing
+against time and against each other.&nbsp; &ldquo;Thirty
+years,&rdquo; said one whose life-wisdom was so perfect as to be
+in a world like ours almost an adequate substitute for the
+morality he lacked&mdash;Talleyrand.</p>
+<p>Of all forms of literary art biography demands from the artist
+not only the greatest courage, but also the happiest combination
+of the highest gifts.&nbsp; To succeed in painting the portrait
+of Achilles or of Priam, of Hamlet or of Othello, may be
+difficult, but is it as difficult as to succeed in painting the
+portrait of Browning or Rossetti?&nbsp; Surely not.&nbsp; In the
+one case an intense dramatic imagination is needed, and nothing
+more.&nbsp; If Homer&rsquo;s Achaian and Trojan heroes were
+falsely limned, not they, but Homer&rsquo;s art, would suffer the
+injury.&nbsp; If for the purposes of art the poet unduly exalted
+this one or unduly abased that&mdash;if he misread one incident
+in the mythical life of Achilles, and another in the mythical
+life of Hector&mdash;he did <!-- page 80--><a
+name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>wrong to his
+art undoubtedly, but none to the memory of a dead man, and none
+to the peace of a living one.&nbsp; But with him who would paint
+the portrait of Browning or Rossetti how different is the
+case!&nbsp; Although he requires the poet&rsquo;s vision before
+he can paint a living picture of his subject, the task he has set
+himself to do is something more than artistic: before everything
+else it is fiduciary.</p>
+<p>A trustee whose trust fund is biographical truth, he has,
+after collecting and marshalling all the facts that come to his
+hand, to decide what is truth as indicated by those generalized
+facts.&nbsp; But having done this, he has to decide what is the
+proper time for giving the world the truth, the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth&mdash;what is the proper time?&nbsp; In the
+biographer&rsquo;s relation to the dead man on the one-hand and
+to the public on the other should he be so unhappy as to forget
+that time is of the very &ldquo;essence of the
+contract&rdquo;&mdash;should he forget that so inwoven is human
+life that truth spoken at the wrong moment may be a greater
+mischief-worker than error&mdash;he may, if conscientious, have
+to remember that forgetfulness of his during the remainder of his
+days.&nbsp; He who thinks that truth may not be sometimes as
+mischievous as a pestilence knows but little of this mysterious
+and wonderful net of human life.&nbsp; But if this is so with
+regard to truth, how much more is it so with regard to mere
+matter <!-- page 81--><a name="page81"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 81</span>of fact?&nbsp; Fact-worship,
+document-worship, is at once the crowning folly and the crowning
+vice of our time.&nbsp; To mistake a fact for a truth, and to
+give the world that; to throw facts about and documents about
+heedless of the mischief they may work&mdash;wronging the dead
+and wronging the living&mdash;this is actually paraded as a
+virtue in these days.</p>
+<p>Here is a case in point.&nbsp; Down to the very last moment of
+his life Rossetti&rsquo;s feeling towards his great contemporary
+Tennyson was that of the deepest admiration, and yet what says
+the documentary evidence as given to the world by
+Rossetti&rsquo;s brother?&nbsp; It shows that Rossetti used an
+extremely unpleasant phrase concerning a letter from Tennyson
+acknowledging the receipt of Rossetti&rsquo;s first volume of
+poems in 1870.&nbsp; Those who have heard Tennyson speak of
+Rossetti know that to use this phrase in relation to any letter
+of his dealing with Rossetti&rsquo;s poetry was to misunderstand
+it.&nbsp; Yet here are the unpleasant words of a hasty mood,
+&ldquo;rather shabby,&rdquo; in print.&nbsp; And why?&nbsp;
+Because the public has become so demoralized that its feast of
+facts, its feast of documents it must have, come what will.&nbsp;
+But even supposing that the public had any rights whatsoever in
+regard to a man of genius, which we deny, what are letters as
+indications of a man&rsquo;s character?&nbsp; Of all modes of
+expression is not the epistolary mode that in which man&rsquo;s
+<!-- page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+82</span>instinct for using language &ldquo;to disguise his
+thought&rdquo; is most likely to exercise itself?&nbsp; There is
+likely to be far more deep sincerity in a sonnet than in a
+letter.&nbsp; It is no exaggeration to say that the common
+courtesies of life demand a certain amount of what is called
+&ldquo;blarney&rdquo; in a letter&mdash;especially in an eminent
+man&rsquo;s letter&mdash;which would ruin a sonnet.&nbsp; And
+this must be steadily borne in mind at a time like ours, when
+private letters are bought and sold like any other article of
+merchandise, not only immediately after a man&rsquo;s death, but
+during his lifetime.</p>
+<p>With regard to literary men, their letters in former times
+were simply artistic compositions; hence as indications of
+character they must be judged by the same canons as literary
+essays would be judged.&nbsp; In both cases the writer had full
+space and full time to qualify his statements of opinion; in both
+cases he was without excuse for throwing out anything
+heedlessly.&nbsp; Not only in Walpole&rsquo;s case and
+Gray&rsquo;s, but also in Charles Lamb&rsquo;s, we apply the same
+rules of criticism to the letters as we apply to the published
+utterances that appeared in the writer&rsquo;s lifetime.&nbsp;
+But now, when letters are just the hurried expression of the
+moment, when ill-considered things&mdash;often rash
+things&mdash;are said which either in literary compositions or in
+conversation would have been, if said at all, greatly
+qualified&mdash;the greatest injustice that <!-- page 83--><a
+name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>can be done
+to a writer is to print his letters indiscriminately.&nbsp;
+Especially is this the case with Rossetti.&nbsp; All who knew him
+speak of him as being a superb critic, and a superb critic he
+was.&nbsp; But his printed letters show nothing of the
+kind.&nbsp; On literary subjects they are often full of
+over-statement and of biased judgment.&nbsp; Here is the
+explanation: in conversation he had a way of perpetrating a
+brilliant critical paradox for the very purpose of qualifying it,
+turning it about, colouring it by the lights of his wonderful
+fancy, until at last it became something quite different from the
+original paradox, and full of truth and wisdom.&nbsp; But when
+such a paradox went off in a letter, there it remained
+unqualified; and they who, not having known him, scoff at his
+friends who claim for him the honours of a great critic, seem to
+scoff with reason.</p>
+<p>No one was more conscious of the treachery of letters than was
+Rossetti himself.&nbsp; Comparatively late in his life he
+realized what all eminent men would do well to realize, that
+owing to the degradation of public taste, which cries out for
+more personal gossip and still more every day, the time has fully
+come when every man of mark must consider the rights of his
+friends&mdash;when it behoves every man who has had the
+misfortune to pass into fame to burn all letters; and he began
+the holocaust that duty to friendship demanded of him.&nbsp; But
+the <!-- page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+84</span>work of reading through such a correspondence as his in
+order to see what letters must be preserved from the burning took
+more time and more patience than he had contemplated, and the
+destruction did not progress further than to include the letters
+of the early sixties.&nbsp; Business letters it was, of course,
+necessary to preserve, and very properly it is from these that
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti has mainly quoted.</p>
+<p>The volume is divided into two parts: first, documents
+relating to the production of certain of Rossetti&rsquo;s
+pictures and poems; and second, a prose paraphrase of &lsquo;The
+House of Life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The documents consist of abstracts of and extracts from such
+portions of Rossetti&rsquo;s correspondence as have fallen into
+his brother&rsquo;s hands as executor.&nbsp; Dealing as they
+necessarily do with those complications of prices and those
+involved commissions for which Rossetti&rsquo;s artistic career
+was remarkable, there is a commercial air about the first portion
+of the book which some will think out of harmony with their
+conception of the painter, about whom there used to be such a
+mysterious interest until much writing about him had brought him
+into the light of common day.&nbsp; In future years a summary so
+accurate and so judicious as this will seem better worth making
+than it, perhaps, seems at the present moment; for Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti&rsquo;s love of facts is accompanied by an equally
+strong love of making an honest statement <!-- page 85--><a
+name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>of
+facts&mdash;a tabulated statement, if possible; and no one
+writing of Rossetti need hesitate about following his brother to
+the last letter and to the last figure.</p>
+<p>To be precise and perspicuous is, he hints in his preface,
+better than to be graphic and entertaining; and we entirely agree
+with him, especially when the subject discussed is Rossetti,
+about whom so many fancies that are neither precise nor
+perspicuous are current.&nbsp; Still, to read about this picture
+being offered to one buyer and that to another, and rejected or
+accepted at a greatly reduced price after much chaffering, is
+not, we will confess, exhilarating reading to those to whom
+Rossetti&rsquo;s pictures are also poems.&nbsp; It does not
+conduce to the happiness of his admirers to think of such works
+being produced under such prosaic conditions.&nbsp; One
+buyer&mdash;a most worthy man, to be sure, and a true friend of
+Rossetti&rsquo;s, but full of that British superstition about the
+saving grace of clothes which is so wonderful a revelation to the
+pensive foreigner&mdash;had to be humoured in his craze against
+the nude.&nbsp; After having painted a beautiful partly-draped
+Gretchen (which, we may remark in passing, had no relation, as
+Mr. W. M. Rossetti supposes, to the Marguerite alluded to in a
+letter to Mr. Graham in 1870) from a new model whose
+characteristics were a superb bosom and arms, he, Rossetti, was
+obliged to consent to conceal the best portions of the picture
+under drapery.</p>
+<p><!-- page 86--><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+86</span>That this was a matter of great and peculiar vexation to
+him may be supposed when it is remembered that unequalled as had
+been his good fortune in finding fine face-models (ladies of
+position and culture, and often of extraordinary beauty), he had
+in the matter of figure-models been most unlucky.&nbsp; And this,
+added to his slight knowledge of anatomy, made all his nude
+pictures undesirable save those few painted from the beautiful
+girl who stood for &lsquo;The Spirit of the Rainbow&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Forced Music.&rsquo;&nbsp; What his work from the nude
+suffered from this is incalculable, as may be seen in the crayon
+called &lsquo;Ligeia Siren,&rsquo; a naked siren playing on a
+kind of lute, which Rossetti described as &ldquo;certainly one of
+his best things.&rdquo;&nbsp; The beauty and value of a crayon
+which for weird poetry&mdash;especially in the eyes&mdash;must be
+among Rossetti&rsquo;s masterpieces are ruined by the drawing of
+the breasts.</p>
+<p>The most interesting feature of the book, however, is not that
+which deals with the prices Rossetti got for his pictures, but
+that which tells the reader the place where and the conditions
+under which they were painted; and no portion of the book is more
+interesting than that which relates to the work done at
+Kelmscott:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;At the beginning of this year 1874 Rossetti
+was again occupied with the picture which he had commenced in the
+preceding spring, entitled, <!-- page 87--><a
+name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>&lsquo;The
+Bower Maiden&rsquo;&mdash;a girl in a room with a pot of
+marigolds and a black cat.&nbsp; It was painted from
+&lsquo;little Annie&rsquo; (a cottage-girl and house assistant at
+Kelmscott), and it &lsquo;goes on&rsquo; (to quote the words of
+one of his letters) &lsquo;like a house on fire.&nbsp; This is
+the only kind of picture one ought to do&mdash;just copying the
+materials, and no more: all others are too much
+trouble.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is not difficult to understand that the
+painter of a &lsquo;Proserpine&rsquo; and a
+&lsquo;Ghirlandata&rsquo; would occasionally feel the luxury of a
+mood intellectually lazy, and would be minded to give voice to
+it&mdash;as in this instance&mdash;in terms wilfully extreme;
+keeping his mental eye none the less steadily directed to a
+&lsquo;Roman Widow&rsquo; or a &lsquo;Blessed Damozel&rsquo; in
+the near future.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, my brother painted
+very few things, at any stage of his career, as mere
+representations of reality, unimbued by some inventive or ideal
+meaning: in the rare instances when he did so, he naturally felt
+an indolent comfort, and made no scruple of putting the feeling
+into words&mdash;highly suitable for being taken <i>cum grano
+salis</i>.&nbsp; Nothing was more alien from his nature or habit
+than &lsquo;tall talk&rsquo; of any kind about his aims,
+aspirations, or performances.&nbsp; It was into his
+work&mdash;not into his utterances about his work&mdash;that he
+infused the higher and deeper elements of his spirit.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The Bower Maiden&rsquo; was finished early in February,
+and sold to Mr. Graham for 682<i>l.</i>, after it had been
+offered to Mr. Leyland at a rather higher figure, and
+declined.&nbsp; It has also passed under the names of
+&lsquo;Fleurs de Marie,&rsquo; &lsquo;Marigolds,&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;The Gardener&rsquo;s Daughter.&rsquo;&nbsp; After
+&lsquo;The Bower Maiden&rsquo; had <!-- page 88--><a
+name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>been disposed
+of, other work was taken up&mdash;more especially &lsquo;The
+Roman Widow,&rsquo; bearing the alternative title of
+&lsquo;D&icirc;s Manibus,&rsquo; which was in an advanced stage
+by the month of May, and was completed in June or July.&nbsp; It
+was finished with little or no glazing.&nbsp; The Roman widow is
+a lady still youthful, in a grey fawn-tinted drapery, with a
+musical instrument in each hand; she is in the sepulchral chamber
+of her husband, whose stone urn appears in the background.&nbsp;
+I possess the antique urn which my brother procured, and which he
+used for the painting.&nbsp; For graceful simplicity, and for
+depth of earnest but not strained sentiment, he never, I think,
+exceeded &lsquo;The Roman Widow.&rsquo;&nbsp; The two instruments
+seem to repeat the two mottoes on the urn, &lsquo;Ave
+Domine&mdash;Vale Domine.&rsquo;&nbsp; The head was painted from
+Miss Wilding, already mentioned; but it seems to me partly
+associated with the type of Mrs. Stillman&rsquo;s face as
+well.&nbsp; There are many roses in this picture&mdash;both wild
+and garden roses; they kept the artist waiting a little after the
+work was otherwise finished.&nbsp; &lsquo;I really think it looks
+well,&rsquo; he wrote on one occasion; &lsquo;its fair luminous
+colour seems to melt into the gold frame (which has only just
+come) like a part of it.&rsquo;&nbsp; He feared that the picture
+might be &lsquo;too severe and tragic&rsquo; for some tastes; but
+could add (not, perhaps, with undue confidence), &lsquo;I
+don&rsquo;t think G&eacute;ricault or R&eacute;gnault would have
+quite scorned it.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The magnificent design here alluded to, &lsquo;D&icirc;s
+Manibus,&rsquo; entirely suggested by the urn, which had somewhat
+come into his possession (probably <!-- page 89--><a
+name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>through
+Howell), and also &lsquo;The Bower Maiden,&rsquo; suggested by
+his accidentally seeing a pretty cottage-child lifting some
+marigolds to a shelf, formed part of the superb work produced by
+Rossetti during his long retirement at Kelmscott Manor&mdash;that
+period never before recorded, which has at this very moment been
+brought into prominence by his friend Dr. Hake&rsquo;s
+sonnet-sequence &lsquo;The New Day,&rsquo; just published.&nbsp;
+As far as literary and artistic work goes, it was, perhaps, the
+richest period of his life; and that it was also one of the
+happiest is clear not only from his own words, but also from the
+following testimony of Dr. Hake, who saw much of him
+there:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>O, happy days with him who once so loved us!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We loved as brothers, with a single heart,<br />
+The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From nature to her blazoned shadow&mdash;Art.<br />
+How often did we trace the nestling Thames<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From humblest waters on his course of might,<br />
+Down where the weir the bursting current stems&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; There sat till evening grew to balmy night,<br />
+Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the Strand<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea,<br />
+That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Triumphal labours of the day to be.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was at Kelmscott, in the famous tapestried room, that
+besides painting the &lsquo;Proserpine,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Roman
+Widow,&rsquo; &amp;c., he wrote many of his later poems,
+including &lsquo;Rose Mary.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Considering how deep is Mr. W. M. Rossetti&rsquo;s affection
+for his brother&rsquo;s memory, and how great is his admiration
+for his brother&rsquo;s work, <!-- page 90--><a
+name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>it is
+remarkable how judicial is his mind when writing about him.&nbsp;
+This is what he says about the much discussed &lsquo;Venus
+Astarte&rsquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Into the &lsquo;Venus Astarte&rsquo; he had
+put his utmost intensity of thinking, feeling, and
+method&mdash;he had aimed to make it equally strong in abstract
+sentiment and in physical grandeur&mdash;an ideal of the mystery
+of beauty, offering a sort of combined quintessence of what he
+had endeavoured in earlier years to embody in the two several
+types of &lsquo;Sibylla Palmifera&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Lilith,&rsquo; or (as he ultimately named them in the
+respective sonnets) &lsquo;Soul&rsquo;s Beauty&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Body&rsquo;s Beauty.&rsquo;&nbsp; It may be well to remark
+that, by the time when he completed the &lsquo;Venus
+Astarte,&rsquo; or &lsquo;Astarte Syriaca,&rsquo; he had got into
+a more austere feeling than of old with regard to colour and
+chiaroscuro; and the charm of the picture has, I am aware, been
+less, to many critics and spectators of the work, than he would
+have deemed to be its due, as compared with some of his other
+performances of more obvious and ostensible
+attraction.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Though Mr. W. M. Rossetti is right in saying that it was not
+till the beginning of 1877 that this remarkable picture was
+brought to a conclusion, the main portions were done during that
+long sojourn at Bognor in 1876&ndash;7, which those who have
+written about Rossetti have hitherto left unrecorded.&nbsp;
+Having fallen into ill health after his return to London from
+Kelmscott, he was advised to go to the seaside, and a large house
+at Bognor was finally selected.&nbsp; <!-- page 91--><a
+name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>No doubt one
+reason why the preference was given to Bognor was the fact that
+Blake&rsquo;s cottage at Felpham was close by, for businesslike
+and unbusiness-like qualities were strangely mingled in
+Rossetti&rsquo;s temperament, and it was generally some sentiment
+or unpractical fancy of this kind that brought about
+Rossetti&rsquo;s final decision upon anything.&nbsp;
+Blake&rsquo;s name was with him still a word to charm with, and
+he was surprised to find, on the first pilgrimage of himself and
+his friends to the cottage, that scarcely a person in the
+neighbourhood knew what Blake it was that &ldquo;the
+Londoners&rdquo; were inquiring about.</p>
+<p>To the secluded house at Bognor&mdash;a house so surrounded by
+trees and shrubs that the murmur of the waves mingling with the
+whispers of the leaves seemed at one moment the sea&rsquo;s
+voice, and at another the voice of the earth&mdash;Rossetti took
+not only the cartoon of the &lsquo;Astarte Syriaca,&rsquo; but
+also the most peculiar of all his pictures, &lsquo;The Blessed
+Damozel,&rsquo; which had long lain in an incomplete state.&nbsp;
+But it was not much painting that he did at Bognor.&nbsp; From a
+cause he tried in vain to understand, and tried in vain to
+conquer, his thoughts ran upon poetry, and refused to fix
+themselves upon art.&nbsp; Partly this might have been owing to
+the fact that now, comparatively late in life, he to whom, as his
+brother well says, &ldquo;such words as <i>sea</i>, <i>ship</i>,
+and <i>boat</i> were <!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 92</span>generic terms admitting of little
+specific and still less of any individual and detailed
+distinction,&rdquo; awoke to the fascination that the sea sooner
+or later exercises upon all truly romantic souls.&nbsp; For deep
+as is the poetry of the inland woods, the Spirit of Romance, if
+there at all, is there in hiding.&nbsp; In order for that Spirit
+to come forth and take captive the soul something else is wanted;
+howsoever thick and green the trees&mdash;howsoever bright and
+winding the streams&mdash;a magical glimmer of sea-light far or
+near must shine through the branches as they wave.</p>
+<p>That this should be a new experience to so fine a poet as
+Rossetti was no doubt strange, but so it chanced to be.&nbsp; He
+whose talk at Kelmscott had been of &lsquo;Blessed
+Damozels&rsquo; and &lsquo;Roman Widows&rsquo; and the like,
+talked now of the wanderings of Ulysses, of &lsquo;The Ancient
+Mariner,&rsquo; of &lsquo;Sir Patrick Spens,&rsquo; and even of
+&lsquo;Arthur Gordon Pym&rsquo; and &lsquo;Allan
+Gordon.&rsquo;&nbsp; And on hearing a friend recite some
+tentative verses on a great naval battle, he looked about for sea
+subjects too; and it was now, and not later, as is generally
+supposed, that he really thought of the subject of &lsquo;The
+White Ship,&rsquo; a subject apparently so alien from his
+genius.&nbsp; Every evening he used to take walks on the beach
+for miles and miles, delighted with a beauty that before had had
+no charms for him.&nbsp; Still, the &lsquo;Astarte Syriaca&rsquo;
+did progress, <!-- page 93--><a name="page93"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 93</span>though slowly, and became the
+masterpiece that Mr. W. M. Rossetti sets so high among his
+brother&rsquo;s work.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;From Bognor my brother returned to his
+house in Cheyne Walk; and in the summer he paid a visit to two of
+his kindest and most considerate friends, Lord and Lady
+Mount-Temple, at their seat of Broadlands in Hampshire.&nbsp; He
+executed there a portrait in chalks of Lady Mount-Temple.&nbsp;
+He went on also with the picture of &lsquo;The Blessed
+Damozel.&rsquo;&nbsp; For the head of an infant angel which
+appears in the front of this picture he made drawings from two
+children&mdash;one being the baby of the Rev. H. C. Hawtrey, and
+the other a workhouse infant.&nbsp; The former sketch was
+presented to the parents of the child and the latter to Lady
+Mount-Temple; and the head with its wings, was painted on to the
+canvas at Broadlands.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Mr. W. M. Rossetti omits to mention that the landscape which
+forms the predella to &lsquo;The Blessed Damozel,&rsquo; a river
+winding in a peculiarly tortuous course through the cedars and
+other wide-spread trees of an English park, was taken from the
+scenery of Broadlands&mdash;that fairyland of soft beauty which
+lived in his memory as it must needs live in the memory of every
+one who has once known it.&nbsp; But the wonder is that such a
+mass of solid material has been compressed into so small a
+space.</p>
+<p>Mr. W. M. Rossetti&rsquo;s paraphrase of &lsquo;The House of
+Life&rsquo;&mdash;done with so much admiration <!-- page 94--><a
+name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>of his
+brother&rsquo;s genius and affection for his memory&mdash;touches
+upon a question relating to poetic art which has been raised
+before&mdash;raised in connexion with prose renderings of Homer,
+Sophocles, and Dante: Are poetry and prose so closely related in
+method that one can ever be adequately turned into the
+other?&nbsp; Schiller no doubt wrote his dramas in prose and then
+turned them into rhetorical verse; but then there are those who
+affirm that Schiller&rsquo;s rhetorical verse is scarcely
+poetry.&nbsp; The importance of the question will be seen when we
+call to mind that if such a transmutation of form were possible,
+translations of poetry would be possible; for though, owing to
+the tyrannous demands of form, the verse of one language can
+never be translated into the verse of another, it can always be
+rendered in the prose of another, only it then ceases to be
+poetry.</p>
+<p>That the intellectual, and even to some extent the emotional,
+substance of a poem can be seized and covered by a prose
+translation is seen in Prof. Jebb&rsquo;s rendering of the
+&lsquo;&OElig;dipus Rex&rsquo;; but, as we have before remarked,
+the fundamental difference between imaginative prose and poetry
+is that, while the one must be informed with intellectual life
+and emotional life, the other has to be informed with both these
+kinds of life, and with another life beyond these&mdash;rhythmic
+life.&nbsp; Now, if we wished to show that rhythmic life is in
+poetry the most <!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 95</span>important of all, our example would,
+we think, be Mr. W. M. Rossetti&rsquo;s prose paraphrase of his
+brother&rsquo;s sonnets.&nbsp; The obstacles against the adequate
+turning of poetry into prose can be best understood by
+considering the obstacles against the adequate turning of prose
+into poetry.&nbsp; Prose notes tracing out the course of the
+future poem may, no doubt, be made, and usefully made, by the
+poet (as Wordsworth said in an admirable letter to Gillies),
+unless, indeed, the notes form too elaborate an attempt at a full
+prose expression of the subject-matter, in which case, so soon as
+the poet tries to rise on his winged words, his wingless words
+are likely to act as a dead weight.&nbsp; For this reason, when
+Wordsworth said that the prose notes should be brief, he might
+almost as well have gone on to say that in expression they should
+be slovenly.&nbsp; This at least may be said, that the moment the
+language of the prose note is so &ldquo;adequate&rdquo; and rich
+that it seems to be what Wordsworth would call the natural
+&ldquo;incarnation of the thought,&rdquo; the poet&rsquo;s
+imagination, if it escapes at all from the chains of the prose
+expression, escapes with great difficulty.&nbsp; An instance of
+this occurred in Rossetti&rsquo;s own experience.</p>
+<p>During one of those seaside rambles alluded to above, while he
+was watching with some friends the billows tumbling in beneath
+the wintry moon, some one, perhaps Rossetti <!-- page 96--><a
+name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>himself,
+directed attention to the peculiar effect of the moon&rsquo;s
+disc reflected in the white surf, and compared it to fire in
+snow.&nbsp; Rossetti, struck with the picturesqueness of the
+comparison, made there and then an elaborate prose note of it in
+one of the diminutive pocket-books that he was in the habit of
+carrying in the capacious pocket of his waistcoat.&nbsp; Years
+afterwards&mdash;shortly before his death, in fact&mdash;when he
+came to write &lsquo;The King&rsquo;s Tragedy,&rsquo; remembering
+this note, he thought he could find an excellent place for it in
+the scene where the king meets the Spae wife on the seashore and
+listens to her prophecies of doom.&nbsp; But he was at once
+confronted by this obstacle: so elaborately had the image of the
+moon reflected in the surf been rendered in the prose
+note&mdash;so entirely did the prose matter seem to be the
+inevitable and the final incarnation of the thought&mdash;that it
+appeared impossible to escape from it into the movement and the
+diction proper to poetry.&nbsp; It was only after much
+labour&mdash;a labour greater than he had given to all the
+previous stanzas combined&mdash;that he succeeded in freeing
+himself from the fetters of the prose, and in painting the
+picture in these words:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>That eve was clenched for a boding storm<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Neath a toilsome moon half seen;<br />
+The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;<br />
+And where there was a line of sky,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wild wings loomed dark between.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">* * * *</p>
+<p><!-- page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+97</span>&rsquo;Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On high on her hollow dome;<br />
+And still as aloft with hoary crest<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Each clamorous wave rang home,<br />
+Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Amid the champing foam.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And the remark was then made to him with regard to
+Coleridge&rsquo;s &lsquo;Wanderings of Cain,&rsquo; that it is
+not unlikely the matchless fragment given in Coleridge&rsquo;s
+poems might have passed nearer towards completion, or at least
+towards the completion of the first part, had it not been for
+those elaborate and beautiful prose notes which he has left
+behind.</p>
+<p>And if the attempt to turn prose into poetry is hopeless, the
+attempt to turn poetry into prose is no less so, and for a like
+reason&mdash;that of the immense difficulty of passing from the
+movement natural to one mood into the movement natural to
+another.&nbsp; And this criticism applies especially to the
+poetry of Rossetti, which produces so many of its best effects by
+means not of logical statement, but of the music and suggestive
+richness of rhythmical language.&nbsp; That Rossetti did on some
+occasions, when told that his sonnets were unintelligible, talk
+about making such a paraphrase himself is indisputable, because
+Mr. Fairfax Murray say that he heard him say so.&nbsp; But
+indisputable also is many another saying of Rossetti&rsquo;s,
+equally ill-considered and equally impracticable.&nbsp; That he
+ever seriously thought of doing so is most unlikely.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+98</span>III.</h3>
+<p>In his memoir of his brother, Mr. William Michael Rossetti
+thus makes mention of a ballad left by the poet which still
+remains unpublished:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;It [the ballad] is most fully worthy of
+publication, but has not been included in Rossetti&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Collected Works,&rsquo; because he gave the MS. to his
+devoted friend Mr. Theodore Watts, with whom alone now rests the
+decision of presenting it or not to the public.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And he afterwards mentions certain sonnets on the Sphinx, also
+in my possession.</p>
+<p>With the most generous intentions my dear and loyal friend
+William Rossetti has here brought me into trouble.</p>
+<p>Naturally such an announcement as the above has excited great
+curiosity among admirers of Rossetti, and I am frequently
+receiving letters&mdash;some of them cordial enough, but others
+far from cordial&mdash;asking, or rather demanding, to know the
+reason why important poems of Rossetti&rsquo;s have for so long a
+period been withheld from the public.&nbsp; In order to explain
+the delay I must first give two extracts from Mr. Hall
+Caine&rsquo;s picturesque &lsquo;Recollections of
+Rossetti,&rsquo; published in 1882:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;The end was drawing near, and we all knew
+<!-- page 99--><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+99</span>the fact.&nbsp; Rossetti had actually taken to poetical
+composition afresh, and had written a facetious ballad (conceived
+years before), of the length of &lsquo;The White Ship,&rsquo;
+called &lsquo;Jan Van Hunks,&rsquo; embodying an eccentric story
+of a Dutchman&rsquo;s wager to smoke against the devil.&nbsp;
+This was to appear in a miscellany of stories and poems by
+himself and Mr. Theodore Watts, a project which had been a
+favourite one of his for some years, and in which he now, in his
+last moments, took a revived interest, strange and
+strong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On Wednesday morning, April 5th, I went into the
+bedroom to which he had for some days been confined, and wrote
+out to his dictation two sonnets which he had composed on a
+design of his called &lsquo;The Sphinx,&rsquo; and which he
+wished to give, together with the drawing and the ballad before
+described, to Mr. Watts for publication in the volume just
+mentioned.&nbsp; On the Thursday morning I found his utterance
+thick, and his speech from that cause hardly
+intelligible.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>As the facts in connexion with this project exhibit, with a
+force that not all the words of all his detractors can withstand,
+the splendid generosity of the poet&rsquo;s nature, I only wish
+that I had made them public years ago, Rossetti (whose power of
+taking interest in a friend&rsquo;s work Mr. Joseph Knight has
+commented upon) had for years been urging me to publish certain
+writings of mine with which he was familiar, and for years I had
+declined to do so&mdash;declined for two simple reasons: first,
+though I liked <!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 100</span>writing for its own
+sake&mdash;indulged in it, indeed, as a delightful
+luxury&mdash;to enter formally the literary arena, and to go
+through that struggle which, as he himself used to say,
+&ldquo;had never yet brought comfort to any poet, but only
+sorrow,&rdquo; had never been an ambition of mine; and, secondly,
+I was only too conscious how biased must the judgment be of a man
+whose affections were so strong as his when brought to bear upon
+the work of a friend.</p>
+<p>In order at last to achieve an end upon which he had set his
+heart, he proposed that he and I should jointly produce the
+volume to which Mr. Hall Caine refers, and that he should enrich
+it with reproductions of certain drawings of his, including the
+&lsquo;Sphinx&rsquo; (now or lately in the possession of Mr.
+William Rossetti) and crayons and pencil drawings in my own
+possession illustrating poems of mine&mdash;those drawings, I
+mean, from that new model chosen by me whose head Leighton said
+must be the loveliest ever drawn, who sat for &lsquo;The Spirit
+of the Rainbow,&rsquo; and that other design which William Sharp
+christened &lsquo;Forced Music.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>In order to conquer my most natural reluctance to see a name
+so unknown as mine upon a title-page side by side with a name so
+illustrious as his, he (or else it was his generous sister
+Christina, I forget which) italianized the words Walter Theodore
+Watts into &ldquo;Gualtiero Teodoro Gualtieri&rdquo;&mdash;a
+name, I may add in <!-- page 101--><a name="page101"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 101</span>passing, which appears as an
+inscription on one at least of the valuable Christmas presents he
+made me, a rare old Venetian Boccaccio.&nbsp; My portion of the
+book was already in existence, but that which was to have been
+the main feature of the volume, a ballad of Rossetti&rsquo;s to
+be called &lsquo;Michael Scott&rsquo;s Wooing&rsquo; (which had
+no relation to early designs of his bearing that name), hung fire
+for this reason: the story upon which the ballad was to have been
+based was discovered to be not an old legend adapted and varied
+by the Romanies, as I had supposed when I gave it to him, but
+simply the Ettrick Shepherd&rsquo;s novelette &lsquo;Mary
+Burnet&rsquo;; and the project then rested in abeyance until that
+last illness at Birchington painted so graphically and
+pathetically by Mr. Hall Caine.</p>
+<p>For some reason quite inscrutable to the late John Marshall,
+who attended him, and to all of us, this old idea seized upon his
+brain; so much so, indeed, that Marshall hailed it as a good
+omen, and advised us to foster it, which we did with excellent
+results, as will be seen by referring to the very last entry in
+his mother&rsquo;s touching diary as lately printed by Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti: &ldquo;March 28, Tuesday.&nbsp; Mr. Watts came
+down.&nbsp; Gabriel rallied marvellously.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Though the ballad, in Rossetti&rsquo;s own writing, has ever
+since remained in my possession, as have also the two sonnets in
+the MS. of another friend who has since, I am delighted to know,
+<!-- page 102--><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+102</span>achieved fame for himself, no one who enjoyed the
+intimate friendship of Rossetti need be told that his death took
+from me all heart to publish.</p>
+<p>Time, however, is the suzerain before whom every king, even
+Sorrow himself, bows at last.&nbsp; The rights of
+Rossetti&rsquo;s admirers can no longer be set at nought, and I
+am making arrangements to publish within the present year
+&lsquo;Jan Van Hunks&rsquo; and the &lsquo;Sphinx Sonnets,&rsquo;
+the former of which will show a new and, I think, unexpected side
+of Rossetti&rsquo;s genius.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 103--><a name="page103"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 103</span>IV.</h3>
+<p>It is a sweet and comforting thought for every poet that,
+whether or not the public cares during his life to read his
+verses, it will after his death care very much to read his
+letters to his mistress, to his wife, to his relatives, to his
+friends, to his butcher, and to his baker.&nbsp; And some letters
+are by that same public held to be more precious than
+others.&nbsp; If, for instance, it has chanced that during the
+poet&rsquo;s life he, like Rossetti, had to borrow thirty
+shillings from a friend, that is a circumstance of especial
+piquancy.&nbsp; The public likes&mdash;or rather it
+demands&mdash;to know all about that borrowed cash.&nbsp; Hence
+it behoves the properly equipped editor who understands his duty
+to see that not one allusion to it in the poet&rsquo;s
+correspondence is omitted.&nbsp; If he can also show what caused
+the poet to borrow those thirty shillings&mdash;if he can by
+learned annotations show whether the friend in question lent the
+sum willingly or unwillingly, conveniently or
+inconveniently&mdash;if he can show whether the loan was ever
+repaid, and if repaid when&mdash;he will be a happy editor
+indeed.&nbsp; Then he will find a large and a grateful public to
+whom the mood in which the poet sat down to write <!-- page
+104--><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+104</span>&lsquo;The Blessed Damosel&rsquo; is of far less
+interest than the mood in which he borrowed thirty shillings.</p>
+<p>We do not charge the editor of this volume <a
+name="citation104"></a><a href="#footnote104"
+class="citation">[104]</a> with exhibiting unusual want of
+taste.&nbsp; On the whole, he is less irritating to the poetical
+student than those who have laboured in kindred &ldquo;fields of
+literature.&rdquo;&nbsp; Indeed, we do not so much blame the
+editors of such books as we blame the public, whose coarse and
+vulgar mouth is always agape for such pabulum.&nbsp; The writer
+of this review possesses an old circulating-library copy of a
+book containing some letters of Coleridge.&nbsp; One page, and
+one only, is greatly disfigured by thumb marks.&nbsp; It is the
+page on which appears, not some precious hint as to the
+conclusion of &lsquo;Christabel,&rsquo; but a domestic missive of
+Coleridge&rsquo;s ordering broad beans for dinner.</p>
+<p>If, then, the name of those readers who take an interest in
+broad beans is legion compared with the name of those who take an
+interest in &lsquo;Kubla Khan,&rsquo; is not the wise editor he
+who gives all due attention to the poet&rsquo;s favourite
+vegetable?&nbsp; Those who will read with avidity
+Rossetti&rsquo;s allusion to his wife&rsquo;s confinement in the
+letter in which he tells Allingham that &ldquo;the child had been
+dead for two or <!-- page 105--><a name="page105"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 105</span>three weeks&rdquo; will laugh to
+scorn the above remarks, and as they are in the majority the
+laugh is with them.</p>
+<p>The editor of this volume laments that Allingham&rsquo;s
+letters to Rossetti are beyond all editorial reach.&nbsp; But who
+has any right to ask for Allingham&rsquo;s private letters?&nbsp;
+Rossetti, who was strongly against the printing of private
+letters, had the wholesome practice of burning all his
+correspondence.&nbsp; This he did at periodical
+holocausts&mdash;memorable occasions when the coruscations of the
+poet&rsquo;s wit made the sparks from the burning paper seem pale
+and dull.&nbsp; He died away from home, or not a scrap of
+correspondence would have been left for the publishers.&nbsp;
+Although the &ldquo;public&rdquo; acknowledges no duties towards
+the man of literary or artistic genius, but would shrug up its
+shoulders or look with dismay at being asked to give five pounds
+in order to keep a poet from the workhouse, the moment a man of
+genius becomes famous the public becomes aware of certain rights
+in relation to him.&nbsp; Strangely enough, these rights are
+recognized more fully in the literary arena than anywhere else,
+and among them the chief appears to be that of reading an
+author&rsquo;s private letters.&nbsp; One advantage&mdash;and
+surely it is a very great one&mdash;that the &ldquo;writing
+man&rdquo; has over the man of action is this: that, while the
+portrait of the man of action has to be painted, if painted at
+all, by <!-- page 106--><a name="page106"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 106</span>the biographer, the writing man
+paints his own portrait for himself.</p>
+<p>And as, in a deep sense, every biographer is an inventor like
+the novelist&mdash;as from the few facts that he is able to
+collect he infers a character&mdash;the man of action, after he
+is dead, is at the mercy of every man who writes his life.&nbsp;
+Is not Alexander the Great no less a figment of another
+man&rsquo;s brain than Achilles, or Macbeth, or Mr.
+Pickwick?&nbsp; But a poet, howsoever artistic, howsoever
+dramatic, the form of his work may be, is occupied during his
+entire life in painting his own portrait.&nbsp; And if it were
+not for the intervention of the biographer, the reminiscence
+writer, or the collector of letters for publication, our
+conception of every poet would be true and vital according to the
+intelligence with which we read his work.</p>
+<p>This is why, of all English poets, Shakespeare is the only one
+whom we do thoroughly know&mdash;unless perhaps we should except
+his two great contemporaries Webster and Marlowe.&nbsp; Steevens
+did not exaggerate when he said that all we know of
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s outer life is that he was born at
+Stratford-on-Avon, married, went to London, wrote plays, returned
+to Stratford, and died.&nbsp; Owing to this circumstance (and a
+blessed one it is) we can commune with the greatest of our poets
+undisturbed.&nbsp; We know how Shakespeare confronted every
+circumstance of this mysterious life&mdash;we know how he
+confronted <!-- page 107--><a name="page107"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 107</span>the universe, seen and
+unseen&mdash;we know to what degree and in what way he felt every
+human passion.&nbsp; There is no careless letter of his, thank
+God! to give us a wrong impression of him.&nbsp; There is no
+record of his talk at the Mermaid, the Falcon, or the Apollo
+saloon to make readers doubtful whether his printed utterances
+truly represent him.&nbsp; Would that the will had been
+destroyed! then there would have been no talk about the
+&ldquo;second-best bed&rdquo; and the like insane gabble.&nbsp;
+Suppose, by ill chance, a batch of his letters to Anna Hathaway
+had been preserved.&nbsp; Is it not a moral certainty that they
+would have been as uninteresting as the letters of Coleridge, of
+Scott, of Dickens, of Rossetti, and of Rossetti&rsquo;s
+sister?</p>
+<p>Why are the letters of literary men apt to be so much less
+interesting than those of other people?&nbsp; Is it not because,
+the desire to express oneself in written language being
+universal, this desire with people outside the literary class has
+to be of necessity exercised in letter-writing?&nbsp; Is it not
+because, where there is no other means of written expression than
+that of letter-writing, the best efforts of the letter-writer are
+put into the composition, as the best writing of the essayist is
+put into his essays?&nbsp; However this might have been in
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s time, the half-conscious, graphic power of
+the non-literary letter-writer of to-day is often so <!-- page
+108--><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+108</span>great that if all the letters written in English by
+non-literary people, especially letters written from abroad to
+friends at home in the year 1897, <a name="citation108"></a><a
+href="#footnote108" class="citation">[108]</a> were collected,
+and the cream of them extracted and printed, the book would be
+the most precious literary production that the year has to
+show.&nbsp; If, on the other hand, the letters of contemporary
+English authors were collected in the same way, the poverty of
+the book would be amazing as compared with the published writings
+of the authors.&nbsp; With regard to Dickens&rsquo;s letters,
+indeed, the contrast between their commonplace, colourless style
+and the pregnancy of his printed utterances makes the writing in
+his books seem forced, artificial, unnatural.</p>
+<p>The same may in some degree be said of such letters of
+Rossetti as have hitherto been published.&nbsp; The charming
+family letters printed by his brother come, of course, under a
+different category.&nbsp; With the exception of these, perhaps
+the letters in the volume before us are the most interesting
+Rossetti letters that have been printed.&nbsp; Yet it is
+astonishing how feeble they are in giving the reader an idea of
+Rossetti himself.&nbsp; And this gives birth to the question: Do
+we not live at a time when the unfairness of printing an
+author&rsquo;s letters is greater than it ever was before?&nbsp;
+To go no further back than the early years of the present
+century, the <!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 109</span>facilities of locomotion were then
+few, friends were necessarily separated from each other by long
+intervals of time, and letters were a very important part of
+intercommunication, consequently it might be expected that even
+among authors a good deal of a man&rsquo;s individuality would be
+expressed in his letters.&nbsp; But even at that period it was
+only a quite exceptional nature like that of Charles Lamb which
+adequately expressed itself in epistolary form.&nbsp;
+Keats&rsquo;s letters, no doubt, are full of good sense and good
+criticism, but taking them as a body, including the letters to
+Fanny Brawne, we think it were better if they had been totally
+destroyed.&nbsp; As to Byron&rsquo;s letters, they, of course,
+are admirable in style and full of literary life, but their very
+excellence shows that his natural mode of expression was
+brilliant, slashing prose.&nbsp; But if it was unfair to publish
+the letters of Coleridge and Keats, what shall we say of the
+publication of letters written by the authors of our own day,
+when, owing to an entire change in the conditions of life, no one
+dreams of putting into his letters anything of literary
+interest?</p>
+<p>When Rossetti died he was, as regards the public, owing to his
+exclusiveness, much in the same position as Shakespeare has
+always been.&nbsp; The picture of Rossetti that lived in the
+public mind was that of a poet and painter of extraordinary
+imaginative intensity and magic, whose <!-- page 110--><a
+name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+110</span>personality, as romantic as his work, influenced all
+who came in contact with him.&nbsp; He was, indeed, the only
+romantic figure in the imagination of the literary and art world
+of his time.&nbsp; It seemed as if in his very name there was an
+unaccountable music.&nbsp; The present writer well remembers
+being at a dinner-party many years ago when the late Lord
+Leighton was talking in his usual delightful way.&nbsp; His
+conversation was specially attended to only by his interlocutor,
+until the name of Rossetti fell from his lips.&nbsp; Then the
+general murmur of tongues ceased.&nbsp; Everybody wanted to hear
+what was being said about the mysterious poet-painter.&nbsp; Thus
+matters stood when Rossetti died.&nbsp; Within forty-eight hours
+of his death the many-headed beast clamoured for its
+rights.&nbsp; Within forty-eight hours of his death there was a
+leading article in an important newspaper on the subject of his
+suspiciousness as the result of chloral-drinking.&nbsp; And from
+that moment the romance has been rubbed off the picture as
+effectually by many of those who have written about him as the
+bloom is fingered off of a clumsily gathered peach.</p>
+<p>But the reader will say, &ldquo;Truth is great, and must
+prevail.&nbsp; The picture of Rossetti that now exists in the
+public mind is the true one.&nbsp; The former picture was a
+lie.&rdquo;&nbsp; But here the reader will be much
+mistaken.&nbsp; The romantic picture which existed in the public
+mind during Rossetti&rsquo;s <!-- page 111--><a
+name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>life was
+the true one; the picture that now exists of him is false.</p>
+<p>Does any one want to know what kind of a man was the painter
+of &lsquo;Dante&rsquo;s Dream&rsquo; and the poet of &lsquo;The
+Blessed Damosel,&rsquo; let him wipe out of his mind most of what
+has been written about him, let him forget if he can most of the
+Rossetti letters that have been published, and let him read the
+poet&rsquo;s poems and study the painter&rsquo;s pictures, and he
+will know Rossetti&mdash;not, indeed, so thoroughly as we know
+Shakespeare and &AElig;schylus and Sophocles, but as intimately
+as it is possible to know any man whose biography is written only
+in his works.</p>
+<p>It must be admitted, however, that for those who had a
+personal knowledge of Rossetti some of the letters in this volume
+will have an interest, owing to the evidence they afford of that
+authorial generosity which was one of his most beautiful
+characteristics.&nbsp; His disinterested appreciation of the work
+of his contemporaries sets him apart from all the other poets of
+his time and perhaps of any other time.&nbsp; To wax eloquent in
+praise of this and that illustrious name, and thus to claim a
+kind of kinship with it, is a very different thing from
+Rossetti&rsquo;s noble championship of a name, whether that of a
+friend or otherwise, which has never emerged from
+obscurity.&nbsp; It is perhaps inevitable and in the nature of
+things that most poets are too much absorbed in their own work to
+have time <!-- page 112--><a name="page112"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 112</span>to interest themselves in the doings
+of their fellow-workers.</p>
+<p>But, with regard to Rossetti, he could feel, and often did
+feel, as deep an interest in the work of another man as in his
+own.&nbsp; There was no trouble he would not take to aid a friend
+in gaining recognition.&nbsp; This it was more than anything else
+which endeared him to all his friends, and made them condone
+those faults of his which ever since his death have been so
+freely discussed.&nbsp; The editor of this volume quotes this
+sentence from Skelton&rsquo;s &lsquo;Table-Talk of
+Shirley&rsquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I have preserved a number of
+Rossetti&rsquo;s letters, and there is barely one, I think, which
+is not mainly devoted to warm commendation of obscure poets and
+painters&mdash;obscure at the time of writing, but of whom more
+than one has since become famous.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Nor was his interest in other men&rsquo;s work confined to
+that of his personal friends.&nbsp; His discovery of
+Browning&rsquo;s &lsquo;Pauline,&rsquo; of Charles Wells, and of
+the poems of Ebenezer Jones may be cited as instances of
+this.&nbsp; Moreover, he was always looking out in
+magazines&mdash;some of them of the most obscure kind&mdash;for
+good work.&nbsp; And if he was rewarded, as he sometimes was, by
+coming upon precious things that might otherwise have been lost,
+his heart was rejoiced.</p>
+<p>One day, having turned into a coffee-house in Chancery Lane to
+get a cup of coffee, he <!-- page 113--><a
+name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>came upon a
+number of <i>Reynolds&rsquo;s Miscellany</i>, and finding there a
+poem called &lsquo;A Lover&rsquo;s Pastime,&rsquo; he saw at once
+its extraordinary beauty, and enclosed it in a letter to
+Allingham.&nbsp; In this case, however, he unfortunately did not
+make his usual efforts to discover the authorship of a poem that
+pleased him; and a pity it is, for the poem is one of the
+loveliest lyrics that have been written in modern times.&nbsp; We
+hope it will find a place in the next anthology of lyrical
+poetry.</p>
+<p>Though his criticisms were not always sure and impeccable, he
+was of all critics the most independent of authority.&nbsp; Had
+he chanced to find in the poets&rsquo; corner of <i>The
+Eatanswill Gazette</i> a lyric equal to the best of
+Shelley&rsquo;s, he would have recognized its merits at once and
+proclaimed them; and had he come across a lyric of
+Shelley&rsquo;s that had received unmerited applause, he would
+have recognized its demerits for himself, and proclaimed them
+with equal candour and fearlessness.</p>
+<p>Again, certain passages in these letters will surprise the
+reader by throwing light upon a side of Rossetti&rsquo;s life and
+character which was only known to his intimate friends.&nbsp;
+Recluse as Rossetti came to be, he knew more of &ldquo;London
+life&rdquo; in the true sense of the word than did many of those
+who were supposed to know it well&mdash;diners-out like Browning,
+for instance, <!-- page 114--><a name="page114"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 114</span>and Richard Doyle.&nbsp; That the
+author of &lsquo;The House of Life&rsquo; knew London on the side
+that Dickens knew it better than any other poet of his time will
+no doubt surprise many a reader.&nbsp; His visits to
+Jamrach&rsquo;s mart for wild animals led him to explore the
+wonderful world, that so few people ever dream of, which lies
+around Ratcliffe Highway.&nbsp; He observed with the greatest
+zest the movements of the East-End swarm.&nbsp; Moreover, his
+passion for picking up &ldquo;curios&rdquo; and antique furniture
+made him familiar with quarters of London that he would otherwise
+have never known.&nbsp; And not Dickens himself had more of what
+may be called the &ldquo;Haroun al Raschid passion&rdquo; for
+wandering through a city&rsquo;s streets at night.&nbsp; It was
+this that kept him in touch on one side with men so unlike him as
+Brough and Sala.</p>
+<p>In this volume there is a charming anecdote of his generosity
+to Brough&rsquo;s family, and Sala always spoke of him as
+&ldquo;dear Dante Rossetti.&rdquo;&nbsp; The transpontine
+theatre, even the penny gaff of the New Cut, was not quite
+unfamiliar with the face of the poet-painter.&nbsp; Hence no man
+was a better judge than he of the low-life pictures of a writer
+like F. W. Robinson, whose descriptions of the street arab in
+&lsquo;Owen, a Waif,&rsquo; &amp;c., he would read aloud with a
+dramatic power astonishing to those who associated him
+exclusively with Dante, Beatrice, and mystical passion.</p>
+<p><!-- page 115--><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+115</span>Frequently in these letters an allusion will puzzle the
+reader who does not know of Rossetti&rsquo;s love of nocturnal
+rambling, an allusion, however, which those who knew him will
+fully understand.&nbsp; Here is a sentence of the
+kind:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As I haven&rsquo;t been outside my door for
+months in the daytime, I should not have had much opportunity of
+enjoying pastime and pleasaunces.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The editor quotes some graphic and interesting words from Mr.
+W. M. Rossetti which explain this passage.</p>
+<p>In summer, as in winter, he rose very late in the day and made
+a breakfast, as he used to say, which was to keep him in fuel for
+something under twelve hours.&nbsp; He would then begin to paint,
+and scarcely leave his work till the daylight waned.&nbsp; Then
+he would dine, and afterwards start off for a walk through the
+London streets, which to him, as he used to say, put on a magical
+robe with the lighting of the gas lamps.&nbsp; After walking for
+miles through the streets, either with a friend or alone,
+loitering at the windows of such shops as still were open, he
+would turn into an oyster shop or late restaurant for
+supper.&nbsp; Here his frankness of bearing was quite
+irresistible with strangers whenever it pleased him to approach
+them, as he sometimes did.&nbsp; The most singular and bizarre
+incidents of his life occurred to him on these
+occasions&mdash;incidents which he would relate <!-- page
+116--><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+116</span>with a dramatic power that set him at the head of the
+<i>raconteurs</i> of his time.&nbsp; One of these
+<i>rencontres</i> in the Haymarket was of a quite extraordinary
+character.</p>
+<p>In the latter years of his life, when he lived at Cheyne Walk,
+he would often not begin his perambulations until an hour before
+midnight.&nbsp; It will be a pity if some one who accompanied him
+in his nocturnal rambles&mdash;the most remarkable man of our
+time&mdash;does not furnish the world with reminiscences of
+them.</p>
+<p>Another point of interest upon which these letters will throw
+light is that connected with his method of work.&nbsp; He
+himself, like Tennyson, used to say that those who are the most
+curious as to the way in which a poem was written are precisely
+those who have the least appreciation of the beauties of the poem
+itself.&nbsp; If this is true, the time in which we live is not
+remarkable, perhaps, for its appreciation of poetry.&nbsp; These
+letters, at any rate, will be appreciated, for the light that
+some of them throw upon Rossetti at work is remarkable.&nbsp;
+When a subject for a poem struck him, it was his way to make a
+prose note of it, then to cartoon it, then to leave it for a
+time, then to take it up again and read it to his friends, and
+then to finish it.&nbsp; In a letter to Allingham, dated July
+18th, 1854, enclosing the first form of the sonnet called
+&lsquo;Lost on Both Sides&rsquo;&mdash;which sonnet did not
+appear in print till 1881&mdash;<!-- page 117--><a
+name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>Rossetti
+says: &ldquo;My sonnets are not generally finished till I see
+them again after forgetting them; and this is only two days
+old.&nbsp; When between the first form of a sonnet and the second
+an interval of twenty-seven years elapses, no student of poetry
+can fail to compare one form with the other.</p>
+<p>And so with regard to that poem which is, on the whole,
+Rossetti&rsquo;s masterpiece&mdash;&lsquo;Sister
+Helen&rsquo;&mdash;sent as early as 1854 to Mrs. Howitt for the
+German publication the <i>D&uuml;sseldorf Annual</i>; the changes
+in it are extremely interesting.&nbsp; Never did it appear in
+print without suffering some important variation.&nbsp;
+Sometimes, indeed, the change of a word or two in a line would
+entirely transfigure the stanza.&nbsp; As to the new stanzas
+added to the ballad just before Rossetti&rsquo;s death, these
+turned the ballad from a fine poem into a great one.</p>
+<p>Equally striking are the changes in &lsquo;The Blessed
+Damosel.&rsquo;&nbsp; But the most notable example of the surety
+of his hand in revising is seen in regard to a poem several times
+mentioned in this volume, called originally &lsquo;Bride&rsquo;s
+Chamber Talk.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was begun as early as
+&lsquo;Jenny,&rsquo; read by Allingham in 1860, but not printed
+till more than a quarter of a century later.&nbsp; The earliest
+form is still in existence in MS., and although some of the lines
+struck out are as poetry most lovely, the poem on the whole is
+better without them.&nbsp; It was a theory <!-- page 118--><a
+name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>of
+Rossetti&rsquo;s, indeed, that the very riches of the English
+language made it necessary for the poet who would achieve
+excellence to revise and manipulate his lines.&nbsp; And in
+support of this he would contrast the amazing passion for
+revision disclosed by Dr. Garnett&rsquo;s &lsquo;Relics of
+Shelley,&rsquo; in which sometimes scarcely half a dozen of the
+original words are left on a page, with Scott&rsquo;s metrical
+narratives, which were sent to the printer in cantos as they were
+written, like one of the contemporary novels thrown off for the
+serials.&nbsp; The fact seems to be, however, that the
+poet&rsquo;s power of reaching, as Scott reached, his own ideal
+expression <i>per saltum</i>, or reaching it slowly and
+tentatively, is simply a matter of temperament.&nbsp; For whose
+verses are more loose-jointed than Byron&rsquo;s? whose diction
+is more commonplace than his?&nbsp; And yet this is what the
+greatest of Byron specialists, Mr John Murray, says in his
+extremely interesting remarks upon Byron&rsquo;s
+autograph:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;If we except Byron&rsquo;s dramatic pieces
+and &lsquo;Don Juan,&rsquo; the first draft of Byron&rsquo;s
+longer poems formed but a nucleus of the work as it was
+printed.&nbsp; For example, &lsquo;English Bards and Scotch
+Reviewers&rsquo; grew out of the &lsquo;British Bards,&rsquo;
+while &lsquo;The Giaour,&rsquo; by constant additions to the
+manuscript, the proofs, and even to the work after publication,
+was expanded to nearly twice its original size. . . . When the
+<!-- page 119--><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+119</span>inspiration was on him, the printer had to be kept at
+work the greater part of the night, and fresh &lsquo;copy&rsquo;
+and fresh revises were crossing one another hour by
+hour.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>The conclusion is that poets cannot be classified according to
+their methods of work, but only in relation to the result of
+those methods, and that our two great elaborators, Byron and
+Rossetti, may still be more unlike each other in essentials than
+are any other two nineteenth-century poets.</p>
+<p>On the whole, we cannot help closing this book with kindly
+feelings towards the editor, inasmuch as it aids in the good work
+of restoring the true portrait of the man who has suffered more
+than any other from the mischievous malignity of foes and the
+more mischievous indiscretion of certain of his friends.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 120--><a name="page120"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 120</span>III.&nbsp; ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.<br
+/>
+1809&ndash;1892.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>Charles Lamb was so paralyzed, it is said, by
+Coleridge&rsquo;s death, that for weeks after that event, he was
+heard murmuring often to himself, &ldquo;Coleridge is dead,
+Coleridge is dead.&rdquo;&nbsp; In such a mental condition at
+this moment is an entire country, I think.&nbsp; &ldquo;Tennyson
+is dead!&nbsp; Tennyson is dead!&rdquo;&nbsp; It will be some
+time before England&rsquo;s loss can really be expressed by any
+words so powerful in pathos and in sorrow as these.&nbsp; And if
+this is so with regard to English people generally, what of those
+few who knew the man, and knowing him, must needs love
+him&mdash;must needs love him above all others?&mdash;those, I
+mean, who, when speaking of him, used to talk not so much about
+the poetry as about the man who wrote it&mdash;those who now are
+saying, with a tremor of the voice, and a moistening of the
+eye:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>There was none like him&mdash;none.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p120b.jpg">
+<img alt="Alfred, Lord Tennyson, &aelig;t. 80.  From a
+photography reproduced by the kind permission of Lord Tennyson"
+src="images/p120s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>To say wherein lies the secret of the charm of anything that
+lives is mostly difficult.&nbsp; Especially <!-- page 121--><a
+name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>is it so
+with regard to a man of poetic genius.&nbsp; All are agreed, for
+instance, that D. G. Rossetti possessed an immense charm.&nbsp;
+So he did, indeed.&nbsp; But who has been able to define that
+charm?&nbsp; I, too, knew Rossetti well, and loved him
+well.&nbsp; Sometimes, indeed, the egotism of a sorrowing memory
+makes me think that outside his own most affectionate and
+noble-tempered family, including that old friend in art at whose
+feet he sat as a boy, no man loved Rossetti so deeply and so
+lastingly as I did; unless, perhaps, it was the poor blind poet,
+Philip Marston, who, being so deeply stricken, needed to love and
+to be loved more sorely than I, to whom Fate has been kind.&nbsp;
+And yet I should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm
+of Rossetti&rsquo;s chameleon-like personality.&nbsp; So with
+other men and women I could name.&nbsp; This is not so in regard
+to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth.&nbsp; Nothing is
+easier than to define the charm of Tennyson.</p>
+<p>It lay in a great veracity of soul&mdash;in a
+simple-mindedness so childlike that, unless you had known him to
+be the undoubted author of his exquisitely artistic poems, you
+would have supposed that even the subtleties of poetic art must
+be foreign to a nature so devoid of all subtlety as his.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Homer,&rdquo; you would have said, &ldquo;might have been
+such a man as this, for Homer worked in a language which is
+Poetry&rsquo;s very voice.&nbsp; But Tennyson works in a language
+<!-- page 122--><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+122</span>which has to be moulded into harmony by a myriad
+subtleties of art.&nbsp; How can this great inspired child, who
+yet has the simple wisdom of Bragi, the poetry-smith of the
+Northern Olympus, be the delicate-fingered artist of &lsquo;The
+Princess,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Palace of Art,&rsquo; &lsquo;The
+Day-Dream,&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Dream of Fair
+Women&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As deeply as some men feel that language was given to men to
+disguise their thoughts did Tennyson feel that language was given
+to <i>him</i> to declare his thoughts without disguise.&nbsp; He
+knew of but one justification for the thing he said, viz., that
+it was the thing he thought.&nbsp; <i>Arri&egrave;re
+pens&eacute;e</i> was with him impossible.&nbsp; But, it may be
+asked, when a man carries out-speaking to such a pass as this, is
+he not apt to become a somewhat troublesome and discordant thread
+in the complex web of modern society?&nbsp; No doubt any other
+man than Tennyson would have been so.&nbsp; But the honest ring
+in the voice&mdash;which, by-the-by, was strengthened and
+deepened by the old-fashioned Lincolnshire accent&mdash;softened
+and, to a great degree, neutralized the effect of the
+bluntness.&nbsp; Moreover, behind this uncompromising directness
+was apparent a noble and a splendid courtesy; for, above all
+things, Tennyson was a great and forthright English
+gentleman.&nbsp; As he stood at the porch at Aldworth, meeting a
+guest or bidding him good-bye&mdash;as he stood there, tall, far
+beyond the height of average men, his naturally <!-- page
+123--><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+123</span>fair skin showing dark and tanned by the sun and
+wind&mdash;as he stood there no one could mistake him for
+anything but a great gentleman, who was also much more.&nbsp; Up
+to the last a man of extraordinary presence, he showed, I think,
+the beauty of old age to a degree rarely seen.</p>
+<p>A friend of his who, visiting him on his birthday, discovered
+him thus standing at the door to welcome him, has described his
+unique appearance in words which are literally accurate at
+least:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>A poet should be limned in youth, they say,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or else in prime, with eyes and forehead beaming<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of manhood&rsquo;s noon&mdash;the very body
+seeming<br />
+To lend the spirit wings to win the bay;<br />
+But here stands he whose noontide blooms for aye,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose eyes, where past and future both are
+gleaming<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With lore beyond all youthful poets&rsquo;
+dreaming,<br />
+Seem lit from shores of some far-glittering day.</p>
+<p>Our master&rsquo;s prime is now&mdash;is ever now;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Our star that wastes not in the wastes of night<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Holds Nature&rsquo;s dower undimmed in Time&rsquo;s
+despite;<br />
+Those eyes seem Wisdom&rsquo;s own beneath that brow,<br />
+Where every furrow Time hath dared to plough<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Shines a new bar of still diviner light.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This, then, was the secret of Tennyson&rsquo;s personal
+charm.&nbsp; And if the reader is sceptical as to its magnetic
+effect upon his friends, let me remind him of the amazing rarity
+of these great and guileless natures; let me remind him also that
+this world is comprised of two classes of people&mdash;the bores,
+whose name is legion, and the interesting people, whose name is
+<!-- page 124--><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+124</span><i>not</i> legion&mdash;the former being those whose
+natural instinct of self-protective mimicry impels them to move
+about among their fellows hiding their features behind a mask of
+convention, the latter being those who move about with uncovered
+faces just as Nature fashioned them.&nbsp; If guilelessness lends
+interest to a dullard, it is still more so with the really
+luminous souls.&nbsp; So infinite is the creative power of nature
+that she makes no two individuals alike.&nbsp; If we only had the
+power of inquiring into the matter, we should find not only that
+each individual creature that once inhabited one of the minute
+shells that go to the building of England&rsquo;s fortress walls
+of chalk was absolutely unlike all the others, but that even the
+poor microbe himself, who in these days is so maligned, is also
+very intensely an individual.</p>
+<p>Some time ago the old discussion was revived in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i> as to whether the nightingale&rsquo;s song was
+joyful or melancholy.&nbsp; And, perhaps, if the poems of the
+late James Thomson and the poems of Mr. Austin Dobson were
+recited by their authors to a congregation of nightingales, the
+question would at once be debated amongst them, &ldquo;Is the
+note of the human songster joyful or melancholy?&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+truth is that the humidity or the dryness of the atmosphere in
+the various habitats of the nightingale modifies so greatly the
+<i>timbre</i> of the voice that, while a nightingale chorus at
+Fiesole may seem joyous, <!-- page 125--><a
+name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>a
+nightingale chorus in the moist thickets along the banks of the
+Ouse may seem melancholy.&nbsp; Nay, more, as I once told
+Tennyson at Aldworth, I, when a truant boy wandering along the
+banks of the Ouse (where six nightingales&rsquo; nests have been
+found in the hedge of a single meadow), got so used to these
+matters that I had my own favourite individuals, and could easily
+distinguish one from another.&nbsp; That rich climacteric swell
+which is reached just before the &ldquo;jug, jug, jug,&rdquo;
+varies amazingly, if the listener will only give the matter
+attention.&nbsp; And if this infinite variety of individualism is
+thus seen in the lower animals, what must it be in man?</p>
+<p>There is, however, in the entire human race, a fatal instinct
+for marring itself.&nbsp; To break down the exterior signs of
+this variety of individualism in the race by mutual imitation, by
+all sorts of affectations, is the object not only of the
+civilization of the Western world, but of the very negroes on the
+Gaboon River.&nbsp; No wonder, then, that whensoever we meet, as
+at rarest interval we do meet, an individual who is able to
+preserve his personality as Nature meant it to live, we feel an
+attraction towards him such as is irresistible.&nbsp; Now I would
+challenge those who knew him to say whether they ever knew any
+other man so free from this great human infirmity as
+Tennyson.&nbsp; The way in which his simplicity of nature would
+manifest <!-- page 126--><a name="page126"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 126</span>itself was, in some instances, most
+remarkable.&nbsp; Though, of course, he had his share of that
+egoism of the artist without which imaginative genius may become
+sterile, it seemed impossible for him to realize what a
+transcendent position he took among contemporary writers all over
+the world.&nbsp; &ldquo;Poets,&rdquo; he once said to me,
+&ldquo;have not had the advantage of being <i>born</i> to the
+purple.&rdquo;&nbsp; Up to the last he felt himself to be a poet
+at struggle more or less with the Wilsons and the Crokers who, in
+his youth, assailed him.&nbsp; I, and a very dear friend of his,
+a family connexion, tried in vain to make him see that when a
+poet had reached a position such as he had won, no criticism
+could injure him or benefit him one jot.</p>
+<p>What has been called his exclusiveness is entirely
+mythical.&nbsp; He was the most hospitable of men.&nbsp; It was
+very rare, indeed, for him to part from a friend at his hall
+door, or at the railway station without urging him to return as
+soon as possible, and generally with the words, &ldquo;Come
+whenever you like.&rdquo;&nbsp; The fact is, however, that for
+many years the strangest notions seem to have got abroad as to
+the claims of the public upon men of genius.&nbsp; There seems
+now to be scarcely any one who does not look upon every man who
+has passed into the purgatory of fame as his or her common
+property.&nbsp; The unlucky victim is to be pestered by letters
+upon every sort of foolish subject, and to be hunted <!-- page
+127--><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+127</span>down in his walks and insulted by senseless
+adulation.&nbsp; Tennyson resented this, and so did Rossetti, and
+so ought every man who has reached eminence and respects his own
+genius.&nbsp; Neither fame nor life itself is worth having on
+such terms as these.</p>
+<p>One day, Tennyson when walking round his garden at
+Farringford, saw perched up in the trees that surrounded it, two
+men who had been refused admittance at the gate&mdash;two men
+dressed like gentlemen.&nbsp; He very wisely gave the public to
+understand that his fame was not to be taken as an abrogation of
+his rights as a private English gentleman.&nbsp; For my part,
+whenever I hear any one railing against a man of eminence with
+whom he cannot possibly have been brought into contact, I know at
+once what it means: the railer has been writing an idle letter to
+the eminent one and received no reply.</p>
+<p>Tennyson&rsquo;s knowledge of nature&mdash;nature in every
+aspect&mdash;was very great.&nbsp; His passion for
+&ldquo;star-gazing&rdquo; has often been commented upon by
+readers of his poetry.&nbsp; Since Dante no poet in any land has
+so loved the stars.&nbsp; He had an equal delight in watching the
+lightning; and I remember being at Aldworth once during a
+thunderstorm, when I was alarmed at the temerity with which he
+persisted, in spite of all remonstrances, in gazing at the
+blinding lightning.&nbsp; For moonlight effects he had a passion
+equally strong, and it is especially pathetic to <!-- page
+128--><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+128</span>those who know this to remember that he passed away in
+the light he so loved&mdash;in a room where there was no
+artificial light&mdash;nothing to quicken the darkness but the
+light of the full moon (which somehow seems to shine more
+brightly at Aldworth than anywhere else in England); and that on
+the face of the poet, as he passed away, fell that radiance in
+which he so loved to bathe it when alive.</p>
+<p>If it is as easy to describe the personal attraction of
+Tennyson as it is difficult to describe that of any one of his
+great contemporaries, we do not find the same relations existing
+between him and them as regards his place in the firmament of
+English poetry.&nbsp; In a country with a composite language such
+as ours, it may be affirmed with special emphasis, that there are
+two kinds of poetry; one appealing to the uncultivated masses,
+whose vocabulary is of the narrowest; the other appealing to the
+few who, partly by temperament, and partly by education, are
+sensitive to the true beauties of poetic art.&nbsp; While in the
+one case the appeal is made through a free and popular use of
+words, partly commonplace and partly steeped in that literary
+sentimentalism which in certain stages of an artificial society
+takes the place of the simple utterances of simple passion of
+earlier and simpler times; in the other case the appeal is made
+very largely through what Dante calls the &ldquo;use of the sieve
+for noble words.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 129--><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+129</span>Of the one perhaps Byron is the type, the exemplars
+being such poets as those of the Mrs. Hemans school in England,
+and of the Longfellow school in America.&nbsp; Of the other class
+of poets, the class typified by Milton, the most notable
+exemplars are Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge.&nbsp; Wordsworth
+partakes of the qualities of both classes.&nbsp; The methods of
+the first of these two groups are so cheap&mdash;they are so
+based on the wide severance between the popular taste and the
+poetic temper (which, though in earlier times it inspired the
+people, is now confined to the few)&mdash;that one may say of the
+first group that their success in finding and holding an audience
+is almost damnatory to them as poets.&nbsp; As compared with the
+poets of Greece, however, both groups may be said to have secured
+only a partial success in poetry; for not only &AElig;schylus and
+Sophocles, but Homer too, are as satisfying in the matter of
+noble words as though they had never tried to win that popular
+success which was their goal.&nbsp; In this respect&mdash;as
+being, I mean, the compeer of the great poets of
+Greece&mdash;Shakespeare takes his peculiar place in English
+poetry.&nbsp; Of all poets he is the most popular, and yet in his
+use of the &ldquo;sieve for noble words&rdquo; his skill
+transcends that of even Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and
+Keats.&nbsp; His felicities of diction in the great passages seem
+little short of miraculous, and they are so many that it is <!--
+page 130--><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+130</span>easy to understand why he is so often spoken of as
+being a kind of inspired improvisatore.&nbsp; That he was
+<i>not</i> an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will
+take the trouble to compare the first edition of &lsquo;Romeo and
+Juliet&rsquo; with the received text, the first sketch of
+&lsquo;The Merry Wives of Windsor&rsquo; with the play as we now
+have it, and the &lsquo;Hamlet&rsquo; of 1603 with the
+&lsquo;Hamlet&rsquo; of 1604, and with the still further varied
+version of the play given by Heminge and Condell in the Folio of
+1623.&nbsp; If we take into account, moreover, that it is only by
+the lucky chapter of accidents that we now possess the earlier
+forms of the three plays mentioned above, and that most likely
+the other plays were once in a like condition, we shall come to
+the conclusion that there was no more vigilant worker with
+Dante&rsquo;s sieve than Shakespeare.&nbsp; Next to Shakespeare
+in this great power of combining the forces of the two great
+classes of English poets, appealing both to the commonplace sense
+of a commonplace public and to the artistic sense of the few,
+stands, perhaps, Chaucer; but since Shakespeare&rsquo;s time no
+one has met with anything like Tennyson&rsquo;s success in
+effecting a reconciliation between popular and artistic sympathy
+with poetry in England.</p>
+<p>The biography of such a poet, one who has had such an immense
+influence upon the literary history of the entire Victorian
+epoch&mdash;<!-- page 131--><a name="page131"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 131</span>indeed, upon the nineteenth century,
+for his work covers two-thirds of the century&mdash;will be a
+work of incalculable importance.&nbsp; There is but one man who
+is fully equipped for such an undertaking, and fortunately that
+is his own son&mdash;a man of great ability, of admirable
+critical acumen, and of quite exceptional accomplishments.&nbsp;
+His son&rsquo;s filial affection was so precious to Tennyson
+that, although the poet&rsquo;s powers remained undimmed to the
+last day of his life, I do not believe that we should have had
+all the splendid work of the last ten years without his
+affectionate and unwearied aid.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 132--><a name="page132"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 132</span>II.</h3>
+<p>All emotion&mdash;that of communities as well as that of
+individuals&mdash;is largely governed by the laws of ebb and
+flow.&nbsp; It is immediately after a national mourning for the
+loss of a great man that a wave of reaction generally sets
+in.&nbsp; But the eagerness with which these volumes <a
+name="citation132"></a><a href="#footnote132"
+class="citation">[132]</a> have been awaited shows that
+Tennyson&rsquo;s hold upon the British public is as strong at
+this moment as it was on the day of his death.&nbsp; This very
+popularity of his, however, has sometimes been spoken of by
+critics as though it were an impeachment of him as a poet.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The English public is commonplace,&rdquo; they say,
+&ldquo;and hence the commonplace in poetry suits it.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And no doubt this is true as a general saying, otherwise what
+would become of certain English poetasters who are such a joy to
+the many and such a source of laughter to the few?&nbsp; But a
+hardy critic would he be who should characterize Tennyson&rsquo;s
+poetry as commonplace&mdash;that very poetry which, before it
+became popular, was decried because it was merely &ldquo;poetry
+for poets.&rdquo;&nbsp; Still that poetry so rich and so rare as
+his <!-- page 133--><a name="page133"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 133</span>should find its way to the heart of
+a people like the English, who have &ldquo;not sufficient poetic
+instinct in them to give birth to vernacular poetry,&rdquo; is
+undoubtedly a striking fact.&nbsp; With regard to the mass of his
+work, he belonged to those poets whose appeal is as much through
+their mastery over the more subtle beauties of poetic art as
+through the heat of the poetic fire; and such as these must
+expect to share the fate of Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley.&nbsp;
+Every true poet must have an individual accent of his
+own&mdash;an accent which is, however, recognizable as another
+variation of that large utterance of the early gods common to all
+true poets in all tongues.&nbsp; Is it not, then, in the nature
+of things that, in England at least, &ldquo;the fit though
+few&rdquo; comprise the audience of such a poet until the voice
+of recognized Authority proclaims him?&nbsp; But Authority moves
+slowly in these matters; years have to pass before the music of
+the new voice can wind its way through the convolutions of the
+general ear&mdash;so many years, indeed, that unless the poet is
+blessed with the sublime self-esteem of Wordsworth he generally
+has to die in the belief that his is another name &ldquo;written
+in water.&rdquo;&nbsp; And was it always so?&nbsp; Yes,
+always.</p>
+<p>England having, as we have said, no vernacular song, her
+poetry is entirely artistic, even such poetry as &lsquo;The May
+Queen,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Northern Farmer,&rsquo; and the idyls of
+<!-- page 134--><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+134</span>William Barnes.&nbsp; And it would be strange indeed
+if, until Authority spoke out, the beauties of artistic poetry
+were ever apparent to the many.&nbsp; Is it supposable, for
+instance, that even the voice of Chaucer&mdash;is it supposable
+that even the voice of Shakspeare&mdash;would have succeeded in
+winning the contemporary ear had it not been for that great mass
+of legendary and romantic material which each of these found
+ready to his hand, waiting to be moulded into poetic form?&nbsp;
+The fate, however, of Moore&rsquo;s poetical narratives (perhaps
+we might say of Byron&rsquo;s too) shows that if any poetry is to
+last beyond the generation that produced it, there is needed not
+only the romantic material, but also the accent, new and true, of
+the old poetic voice.&nbsp; And these volumes show why in these
+late days, when the poet&rsquo;s inheritance of romantic material
+seemed to have been exhausted, there appeared one poet to whom
+the English public gave an acceptance as wide almost as if he had
+written in the vernacular like Burns or B&eacute;ranger.</p>
+<p>It is long since any book has been so eagerly looked forward
+to as this.&nbsp; The main facts of Tennyson&rsquo;s life have
+been matter of familiar knowledge for so many years that we do
+not propose to run over them here once more.&nbsp; Nor shall we
+fill the space at our command with the biographer&rsquo;s
+interesting personal anecdotes.&nbsp; So fierce a light had been
+beating upon Aldworth <!-- page 135--><a name="page135"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 135</span>and Farringford that the relations
+of the present Lord Tennyson to his father were pretty generally
+known.&nbsp; In the story of English poetry these relations held
+a place that was quite unique.&nbsp; What the biographer says
+about the poet&rsquo;s sagacity, judgment, and good
+sense&mdash;especially what he says about his insight into the
+characters of those with whom he was brought into
+contact&mdash;will be challenged by no one who knew him.&nbsp;
+Still, the fact remains that Tennyson&rsquo;s temperament was
+poetic entirely.&nbsp; And the more attention the poet pays to
+his art, the more unfitted does he become to pay attention to
+anything else.&nbsp; For in these days the mechanism of social
+life moves on grating wheels that need no little oiling if the
+poet is to bring out the very best that is within him.&nbsp; Not
+that all poets are equally vexed by the special infirmity of the
+poetic temperament.&nbsp; Poets like Wordsworth, for instance,
+are supported against the world by love of Nature and by that
+&ldquo;divine arrogance&rdquo; which is sometimes a
+characteristic of genius.&nbsp; Tennyson&rsquo;s case shows that
+not even love of Nature and intimate communings with her are of
+use in giving a man peace when he has not Wordsworth&rsquo;s
+temperament.&nbsp; No adverse criticism could disturb
+Wordsworth&rsquo;s sublime self-complacency.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your father,&rdquo; writes Jowett, with his usual
+wisdom, to Lord Tennyson, &ldquo;was very sensitive, <!-- page
+136--><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+136</span>and had an honest hatred of being gossiped about.&nbsp;
+He called the malignant critics and chatterers
+&lsquo;mosquitos.&rsquo;&nbsp; He never felt any pleasure at
+praise (except from his friends), but he felt a great pain at the
+injustice of censure.&nbsp; It never occurred to him that a new
+poet in the days of his youth was sure to provoke dangerous
+hostilities in the &lsquo;genus irritabile vatum&rsquo; and in
+the old-fashioned public.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It might almost be said, indeed, that had it not been for the
+ministrations, first of his beloved wife, and then of his sons,
+Tennyson&rsquo;s life would have been one long warfare between
+the attitude of his splendid intellect towards the universe and
+the response of his nervous system to human criticism.&nbsp; From
+his very childhood he seems to have had that instinct for
+confronting the universe as a whole which, except in the case of
+Shakespeare, is not often seen among poets.&nbsp; Star-gazing and
+speculation as to the meaning of the stars and what was going on
+in them seem to have begun in his childhood.&nbsp; In his first
+Cambridge letter to his aunt, Mrs. Russell, written from No. 12,
+Rose Crescent, he says, &ldquo;I am sitting owl-like and solitary
+in my room, nothing between me and the stars but a stratum of
+tiles.&rdquo;&nbsp; And his son tells us of a story current in
+the family that Frederick, when an Eton schoolboy, was shy of
+going to a neighbouring dinner-party to which <!-- page 137--><a
+name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>he had been
+invited.&nbsp; &ldquo;Fred,&rdquo; said his younger brother,
+&ldquo;think of Herschel&rsquo;s great star-patches, and you will
+soon get over all that.&rdquo;&nbsp; He had Wordsworth&rsquo;s
+passion, too, for communing with Nature alone.&nbsp; He was one
+of Nature&rsquo;s elect who knew that even the company of a dear
+and intimate friend, howsoever close, is a disturbance of the
+delight that intercourse with her can afford to the true
+devotee.&nbsp; In a letter to his future wife, written from
+Mablethorpe in 1839, he says:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I am not so able as in old years to commune
+<i>alone</i> with Nature . . . Dim mystic sympathies with tree
+and hill reaching far back into childhood, a known landskip is to
+me an old friend, that continually talks to me of my own youth
+and half-forgotten things, and indeed does more for me than many
+an old friend that I know.&nbsp; An old park is my delight, and I
+could tumble about it for ever.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Moreover, he was always speculating upon the mystery and the
+wonder of the human story.&nbsp; &ldquo;The far future,&rdquo; he
+says in a letter to Miss Sellwood, written from High Beech in
+Epping Forest, &ldquo;has been my world always.&rdquo;&nbsp; And
+yet so powerless is reason in that dire wrestle with temperament
+which most poets know, that with all these causes for despising
+criticism of his work, Tennyson was as sensitive to critical
+strictures as Wordsworth was indifferent.&nbsp; &ldquo;He
+fancied,&rdquo; says his biographer, <!-- page 138--><a
+name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>&ldquo;that
+England was an unsympathetic atmosphere, and half resolved to
+live abroad in Jersey, in the South of France, or in Italy.&nbsp;
+He was so far persuaded that the English people would never care
+for his poetry, that, had it not been for the intervention of his
+friends, he declared it not unlikely that after the death of
+Hallam he would not have continued to write.&rdquo;&nbsp; And
+again, in reference to the completion of &lsquo;The Sleeping
+Beauty,&rsquo; his son says, &ldquo;He warmed to his work because
+there had been a favourable review of him lately published in
+far-off Calcutta.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We dwell upon this weakness of Tennyson&rsquo;s&mdash;a
+weakness which, in view of his immense powers, was certainly a
+source of wonder to his friends&mdash;in order to show, once for
+all, that without the tender care of his son he could never in
+his later years have done the work he did.&nbsp; This it was
+which caused the relations between Tennyson and the writer of
+this admirable memoir to be those of brother with brother rather
+than of father with son.&nbsp; And those who have been eagerly
+looking forward to these volumes will not be disappointed.&nbsp;
+In writing the life of any man there are scores and scores of
+facts and documents, great and small, which only some person
+closely acquainted with him, either as relative or as friend, can
+bring into their true light; and this it is which makes documents
+so deceptive.&nbsp; Here is an instance of what we mean.&nbsp; In
+writing to Thompson, Spedding <!-- page 139--><a
+name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>says of
+Tennyson on a certain occasion: &ldquo;I could not get Alfred to
+Rydal Mount.&nbsp; He would and would not (sulky one!), although
+Wordsworth was hospitably minded towards him.&rdquo;&nbsp; This
+remark would inevitably have been construed into another instance
+of that churlishness which is so often said (though quite
+erroneously) to have been one of Tennyson&rsquo;s
+infirmities.&nbsp; But when we read the following foot-note by
+the biographer, &ldquo;He said he did not wish to intrude himself
+on the great man at Rydal,&rdquo; we accept the incident as
+another proof of that &ldquo;humility&rdquo; which the son
+alludes to in his preface as being one of his father&rsquo;s
+characteristics.&nbsp; And of such evidence that had not the
+poet&rsquo;s son written his biography the loss to literature
+would have been incalculable the book is full.&nbsp; Evidence of
+a fine intellect, a fine culture, and a sure judgment is afforded
+by every page&mdash;afforded as much by what is left unsaid as by
+what is said.</p>
+<p>The biographer has invited a few of the poet&rsquo;s friends
+to furnish their impressions of him.&nbsp; These could not fail
+to be interesting; it is pleasant to know what impression
+Tennyson made upon men of such diverse characters as the Duke of
+Argyll, Jowett, Tyndall, Froude, and others.&nbsp; But so far as
+a vital portrait of the man is concerned they were not needed, so
+vigorously does the man live in the portrait painted by him who
+knew the poet best of all.</p>
+<p><!-- page 140--><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+140</span>&ldquo;For my own part,&rdquo; says the biographer,
+&ldquo;I feel strongly that no biographer could so truly give him
+as he gives himself in his own works; but this may be because,
+having lived my life with him, I see him in every word which he
+has written; and it is difficult for me so far to detach myself
+from the home circle as to pourtray him for others.&nbsp; There
+is also the impossibility of fathoming a great man&rsquo;s mind;
+his deeper thoughts are hardly ever revealed.&nbsp; He himself
+disliked the notion of a long, formal biography, for</p>
+<blockquote><p>None can truly write his single day,<br />
+And none can write it for him upon earth.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;However, he wished that, if I deemed it better, the
+incidents of his life should be given as shortly as might be
+without comment, but that my notes should be final and full
+enough to preclude the chance of further and unauthentic
+biographies.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For those who cared to know about his literary history
+he wrote &lsquo;Merlin and the Gleam.&rsquo;&nbsp; From his
+boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin&mdash;that spirit of
+poetry&mdash;which bade him know his power and follow throughout
+his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single
+devotedness and a desire to ennoble the life of the world, and
+which helped him through doubts and difficulties to &lsquo;endure
+as seeing Him who is invisible.&rsquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Great the Master,<br />
+And sweet the Magic,<br />
+When over the valley,<br />
+In early summers,<br />
+<!-- page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+141</span>Over the mountain,<br />
+On human faces,<br />
+And all around me,<br />
+Moving to melody,<br />
+Floated the Gleam.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;In his youth he sang of the brook flowing through his
+upland valley, of the &lsquo;ridged wolds&rsquo; that rose above
+his home, of the mountain-glen and snowy summits of his early
+dreams, and of the beings, heroes and fairies, with which his
+imaginary world was peopled.&nbsp; Then was heard the
+&lsquo;croak of the raven,&rsquo; the harsh voice of those who
+were unsympathetic&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>The light retreated,<br />
+The Landskip darken&rsquo;d,<br />
+The melody deaden&rsquo;d,<br />
+The Master whisper&rsquo;d,<br />
+&lsquo;Follow the Gleam.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;Still the inward voice told him not to be faint-hearted
+but to follow his ideal.&nbsp; And by the delight in his own
+romantic fancy, and by the harmonies of nature, &lsquo;the warble
+of water,&rsquo; and &lsquo;cataract music of falling
+torrents,&rsquo; the inspiration of the poet was renewed.&nbsp;
+His Eclogues and English Idyls followed, when he sang the songs
+of country life and the joys and griefs of country folk, which he
+knew through and through,</p>
+<blockquote><p>Innocent maidens,<br />
+Garrulous children,<br />
+Homestead and harvest,<br />
+Reaper and gleaner,<br />
+And rough-ruddy faces<br />
+Of lowly labour.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;By degrees, having learnt somewhat of the real
+philosophy of life and of humanity from his own experience, he
+rose to a melody &lsquo;stronger <!-- page 142--><a
+name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>and
+statelier.&rsquo;&nbsp; He celebrated the glory of &lsquo;human
+love and of human heroism&rsquo; and of human thought, and began
+what he had already devised, his epic of King Arthur,
+&lsquo;typifying above all things the life of man,&rsquo; wherein
+he had intended to represent some of the great religions of the
+world.&nbsp; He had purposed that this was to be the chief work
+of his manhood.&nbsp; Yet the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam,
+and the consequent darkening of the whole world for him made him
+almost fail in this purpose; nor any longer for a while did he
+rejoice in the splendour of his spiritual visions, nor in the
+Gleam that had &lsquo;waned to a wintry glimmer.&rsquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Clouds and darkness<br />
+Closed upon Camelot;<br />
+Arthur had vanish&rsquo;d<br />
+I knew not whither,<br />
+The King who loved me,<br />
+And cannot die.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;Here my father united the two Arthurs, the Arthur of
+the Idylls and the Arthur &lsquo;the man he held as half
+divine.&rsquo;&nbsp; He himself had fought with death, and had
+come out victorious to find &lsquo;a stronger faith his
+own,&rsquo; and a hope for himself, for all those in sorrow and
+for universal human kind, that never forsook him through the
+future years.</p>
+<blockquote><p>And broader and brighter<br />
+The Gleam flying onward,<br />
+Wed to the melody,<br />
+Sang thro&rsquo; the world.</p>
+<p>* * *</p>
+<p>I saw, wherever<br />
+In passing it glanced upon<br />
+Hamlet or city,<br />
+That under the Crosses<br />
+<!-- page 143--><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+143</span>The dead man&rsquo;s garden,<br />
+The mortal hillock,<br />
+Would break into blossom;<br />
+And so to the land&rsquo;s<br />
+Last limit I came.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;Up to the end he faced death with the same earnest and
+unfailing courage that he had always shown, but with an added
+sense of the awe and the mystery of the Infinite.</p>
+<blockquote><p>I can no longer,<br />
+But die rejoicing,<br />
+For thro&rsquo; the Magic<br />
+Of Him the Mighty,<br />
+Who taught me in childhood,<br />
+There on the border<br />
+Of boundless Ocean,<br />
+And all but in Heaven<br />
+Hovers the Gleam.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;That is the reading of the poet&rsquo;s riddle as he
+gave it to me.&nbsp; He thought that &lsquo;Merlin and the
+Gleam&rsquo; would probably be enough of biography for those
+friends who urged him to write about himself.&nbsp; However, this
+has not been their verdict, and I have tried to do what he said
+that I might do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There are many specialists in Tennysonian bibliography who
+take a pride (and a worthy pride) in their knowledge of the
+master&rsquo;s poems.&nbsp; But the knowledge of all of these
+specialists put together is not equal to that of him who writes
+this book.&nbsp; Not only is every line at his fingers&rsquo;
+ends, but he knows, either from his own memory or from what his
+father has told him, where and when and why every line was
+written.&nbsp; He, however, shares, it is evident that
+dislike&mdash;<!-- page 144--><a name="page144"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 144</span>rather let us say that passionate
+hatred&mdash;which his father, like so many other poets, had of
+that well-intentioned but vexing being whom Rossetti
+anathematized as the &ldquo;literary resurrection
+man.&rdquo;&nbsp; Rossetti used to say that &ldquo;of all signs
+that a man was devoid of poetic instinct and poetic feeling the
+impulse of the literary resurrectionist was the
+surest.&rdquo;&nbsp; Without going so far as this we may at least
+affirm that all poets writing in a language requiring, as English
+does, much manipulation before it can be moulded into perfect
+form must needs revise in the brain before the line is set down,
+or in manuscript, as Shelley did, or partly in manuscript and
+partly in type, as Coleridge did.&nbsp; But the rakers-up of the
+&ldquo;chips of the workshop,&rdquo; to use Tennyson&rsquo;s own
+phrase, seem to have been specially irritating to him, because he
+belonged to those poets who cannot really revise and complete
+their work till they see it in type.&nbsp; &ldquo;Poetry,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;looks better, more convincing in
+print.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From the volume of 1832,&rdquo; says his son, &ldquo;he
+omitted several stanzas of &lsquo;The Palace of Art&rsquo;
+because he thought that the poem was too full.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+artist is known by his self-limitation&rsquo; was a favourite
+adage of his.&nbsp; He allowed me, however, to print some of them
+in my notes, otherwise I should have hesitated to quote without
+his leave lines that he had excised.&nbsp; He &lsquo;gave the
+people of his best,&rsquo; and <!-- page 145--><a
+name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>he usually
+wished that his best should remain without variorum readings,
+&lsquo;the chips of the workshop,&rsquo; as he called them.&nbsp;
+The love of bibliomaniacs for first editions filled him with
+horror, for the first editions are obviously in many cases the
+worst editions, and once he said to me: &lsquo;Why do they
+treasure the rubbish I shot from my full-finish&rsquo;d
+cantos?&rsquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nu;&eta;&pi;&iota;&omicron;&iota;
+&omicron;&upsilon;&delta;&epsilon;
+&iota;&sigma;&alpha;&sigma;&iota;&nu; &omicron;&sigma;&omega;
+&pi;&lambda;&#941;&omicron;&nu; &eta;&mu;&iota;&sigma;&upsilon;
+&pi;&alpha;&nu;&tau;&omicron;&sigmaf;.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>For himself many passages in Wordsworth and other poets have
+been entirely spoilt by the modern habit of giving every various
+reading along with the text.&nbsp; Besides, in his case, very
+often what is published as the latest edition has been the
+original version in his first manuscript, so that there is no
+possibility of really tracing the history of what may seem to be
+a new word or a new passage.&nbsp; &lsquo;For instance,&rsquo; he
+said, &lsquo;in &ldquo;Maud&rdquo; a line in the first edition
+was &lsquo;I will bury myself in <i>my books</i>, and the Devil
+may pipe to his own,&rsquo; which was afterwards altered to
+&lsquo;I will bury myself <i>in myself</i>, &amp;c.&rsquo;: this
+was highly commended by the critics as an improvement on the
+<i>original</i> reading&mdash;but it was actually in the first
+MS. draft of the poem.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again, it is important to get a statement by one entitled to
+speak with authority as to what Tennyson did and what he did not
+believe upon religious matters.&nbsp; He had in &lsquo;In
+Memoriam&rsquo; and other poems touched with a hand so <!-- page
+146--><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+146</span>strong and sometimes so daring upon the teaching of
+modern science, and yet he had spoken always so reverently of
+what modern civilization reverences, that the most opposite
+lessons were read from his utterances.&nbsp; To one thinker it
+would seem that Tennyson had thrown himself boldly upon the very
+foremost wave of scientific thought.&nbsp; To another it would
+seem that Wordsworth (although, living and writing when he did,
+before the birth of the new cosmogony, he believed himself to be
+still in trammels of the old) was by temperament far more in
+touch with the new cosmogony than was Tennyson, who studied
+evolution more ardently than any poet since Lucretius.&nbsp;
+While Wordsworth, notwithstanding a conventional phrase here and
+there, had an apprehension of Nature without the ever-present
+idea of the Power behind her, Spinosa himself was not so
+&ldquo;God-intoxicated&rdquo; a man as Tennyson.&nbsp; His son
+sets the question at rest in the following pregnant
+words:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Assuredly Religion was no nebulous abstraction for
+him.&nbsp; He consistently emphasized his own belief in what he
+called the Eternal Truths; in an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and
+All-loving God, Who has revealed Himself through the human
+attribute of the highest self-sacrificing love; in the freedom of
+the human will; and in the immortality of the soul.&nbsp; But he
+asserted that &lsquo;Nothing worthy proving can be proven,&rsquo;
+and that even as to the great laws which are the basis of
+Science, &lsquo;We have <!-- page 147--><a
+name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>but faith,
+we cannot know.&rsquo;&nbsp; He dreaded the dogmatism of sects
+and rash definitions of God.&nbsp; &lsquo;I dare hardly name His
+Name,&rsquo; he would say, and accordingly he named Him in
+&lsquo;The Ancient Sage&rsquo; the &lsquo;Nameless.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;But take away belief in the self-conscious personality of
+God,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and you take away the backbone of the
+world.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;On God and God-like men we build our
+trust.&rsquo;&nbsp; A week before his death I was sitting by him,
+and he talked long of the Personality and of the Love of God,
+&lsquo;That God, Whose eyes consider the poor,&rsquo; &lsquo;Who
+catereth, even for the sparrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+should,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;infinitely rather feel myself the
+most miserable wretch on the face of the earth with a God above,
+than the highest type of man standing alone.&rsquo;&nbsp; He
+would allow that God is unknowable in &lsquo;his whole
+world-self, and all-in-all,&rsquo; and that, therefore, there was
+some force in the objection made by some people to the word
+&lsquo;Personality&rsquo; as being &lsquo;anthropomorphic,&rsquo;
+and that, perhaps &lsquo;Self-consciousness&rsquo; or
+&lsquo;Mind&rsquo; might be clearer to them: but at the same time
+he insisted that, although &lsquo;man is like a thing of
+nought&rsquo; in &lsquo;the boundless plan,&rsquo; our highest
+view of God must be more or less anthropomorphic: and that
+&lsquo;Personality,&rsquo; as far as our intelligence goes, is
+the widest definition and includes &lsquo;Mind,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Self-consciousness,&rsquo; &lsquo;Will,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Love,&rsquo; and other attributes of the Real, the
+Supreme, &lsquo;the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity,
+Whose name is Holy.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then Lord Tennyson quotes a manuscript note of
+Jowett&rsquo;s in which he says:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alfred Tennyson thinks it ridiculous to <!-- page
+148--><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+148</span>believe in a God and deny his consciousness, and was
+amused at some one who said of him that he had versified
+Hegelianism.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He notes also an anecdote of Edward Fitzgerald&rsquo;s which
+speaks of a week with Tennyson, when the poet, picking up a
+daisy, and looking closely at its crimson-tipped leaves, said,
+&ldquo;Does not this look like a thinking Artificer, one who
+wishes to ornament?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Here is a paragraph which will be read with the deepest
+interest, not only by every lover of poetry, but by every man
+whose heart has been rung by the most terrible of all
+bereavements&mdash;the loss of a beloved friend.&nbsp; Close as
+the tie of blood relationship undoubtedly is, it is based upon
+convention as much as upon nature.&nbsp; It may exist and
+flourish vigorously when there is little or no community of taste
+or of thought:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It may be as well to say here that all the letters from
+my father to Arthur Hallam were destroyed by his father after
+Arthur&rsquo;s death: a great loss, as these particular letters
+probably revealed his inner self more truly than anything outside
+his poems.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We confess to belonging to those who always read with a twinge
+of remorse the private letters of a man in print.&nbsp; But if
+there is a case where one must needs long to see the letters
+between two intimate friends, it is that of Tennyson and Arthur
+Hallam.&nbsp; They would have been only second in interest to
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s <!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 149</span>letters to that mysterious
+&ldquo;Mr. W. H.&rdquo; whose identity now can never be
+traced.&nbsp; For, notwithstanding all that has recently been
+said, and ably said, to the contrary, the man to whom many of the
+sonnets were addressed was he whom &ldquo;T. T.&rdquo; addresses
+as &ldquo;Mr. W. H.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But for an intimacy to be so strong as that which existed
+between Tennyson and Arthur H. Hallam there must be a kinship of
+soul so close and so rare that the tie of blood relationship
+seems weak beside it.&nbsp; It is then that friendship may
+sometimes pass from a sentiment into a passion.&nbsp; It did so
+in the case of Shakespeare and his mysterious friend, as the
+sonnets in question make manifest; but we are not aware that
+there is in English literature any other instance of friendship
+as a passion until we get to &lsquo;In Memoriam.&rsquo;&nbsp; So
+profound was the effect of Hallam&rsquo;s death upon Tennyson
+that it was the origin, his son tells us, of &lsquo;The Two
+Voices; or, Thoughts of a Suicide.&rsquo;&nbsp; What was the
+secret of Hallam&rsquo;s influence over Tennyson can never be
+guessed from anything that he has left behind either in prose or
+verse.&nbsp; But besides the creative genius of the artist there
+is that genius of personality which is irresistible.&nbsp; With a
+very large gift of this kind of genius Arthur Hallam seems to
+have been endowed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the letters from Arthur Hallam&rsquo;s
+friends,&rdquo; says Lord Tennyson, &ldquo;there was a rare
+unanimity <!-- page 150--><a name="page150"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 150</span>of opinion about his worth.&nbsp;
+Milnes, writing to his father, says that he had a &lsquo;very
+deep respect&rsquo; for Hallam, and that Thirlwall, in after
+years the great bishop, for whom Hallam and my father had a
+profound affection, was &lsquo;actually captivated by
+him.&rsquo;&nbsp; When at Cambridge with Hallam he had written:
+&lsquo;He is the only man here of my own standing before whom I
+bow in conscious inferiority in everything.&rsquo;&nbsp; Alford
+writes: &lsquo;Hallam was a man of wonderful mind and knowledge
+on all subjects, hardly credible at his age. . . .&nbsp; I long
+ago set him down for the most wonderful person I ever knew.&nbsp;
+He was of the most tender, affectionate
+disposition.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Lord Tennyson&rsquo;s remarks upon the &lsquo;Idylls of the
+King,&rsquo; and upon the enormous success of the book have a
+special interest, and serve to illustrate our opening remarks
+upon the popularity of his father&rsquo;s works.&nbsp; Popular as
+Tennyson had become through &lsquo;The Gardener&rsquo;s
+Daughter,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Miller&rsquo;s Daughter,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;The May Queen,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Lord of Burleigh,&rsquo;
+and scores of other poems&mdash;endeared to every sorrowing heart
+as he had become through &lsquo;In Memoriam&rsquo;&mdash;it was
+the &lsquo;Idylls of the King&rsquo; that secured for him his
+unique place.&nbsp; Many explanations of the phenomenon of a true
+poet securing the popular suffrages have been offered, one of
+them being his acceptance of the Laureateship.&nbsp; But
+Wordsworth, a great <!-- page 151--><a name="page151"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 151</span>poet, also accepted it; and he never
+was and never will be popular.&nbsp; The wisdom of what Goethe
+says about the enormous importance of &ldquo;subject&rdquo; in
+poetic art is illustrated by the story of Tennyson and the
+&lsquo;Idylls of the King.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>For what was there in the &lsquo;Idylls of the King&rsquo;
+that brought all England to Tennyson&rsquo;s feet&mdash;made
+English people re-read with a new seeing in their eyes the poems
+which they once thought merely beautiful, but now thought half
+divine?&nbsp; Beautiful these &lsquo;Idylls&rsquo; are indeed,
+but they are not more beautiful than work of his that went
+before.&nbsp; The rich Klondyke of Malory and Geoffrey of
+Monmouth had not escaped the eyes of previous prospectors.&nbsp;
+All his life Milton had dreamed of the mines lying concealed in
+the &ldquo;misty mid-region&rdquo; of King Arthur and the Round
+Table, but, luckily for Tennyson, was led away from it into other
+paths.&nbsp; With Milton&rsquo;s immense power of sensuous
+expression&mdash;a power that impelled him, even when dealing
+with the spirit world, to flash upon our senses pictures of the
+very limbs of angels and fiends at fight&mdash;we may imagine
+what an epic of King Arthur he would have produced.&nbsp; Dryden
+also contemplated working in this mine, but never did; and until
+Scott came with his Lyulph&rsquo;s Tale in &lsquo;The Bridal of
+Triermain,&rsquo; no one had taken up the subject but writers
+like Blackmore.&nbsp; Then came Bulwer&rsquo;s <!-- page 152--><a
+name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+152</span>burlesque.&nbsp; Now no prospector on the banks of the
+Yukon has a keener eye for nuggets than Tennyson had for poetic
+ore, and besides &lsquo;The Lady of Shalott&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Launcelot and Guinevere,&rsquo; he had already printed the
+grandest of all his poems&mdash;the &lsquo;Morte
+d&rsquo;Arthur.&rsquo;&nbsp; It needed only the &lsquo;Idylls of
+the King,&rsquo; where episode after episode of the Arthurian
+cycle was rendered in poems which could be understood by
+all&mdash;it needed only this for all England to be set reading
+and re-reading all his poems, some of them more precious than any
+of these &lsquo;Idylls&rsquo;&mdash;poems whose familiar beauties
+shone out now with a new light.</p>
+<p>Ever since then Tennyson&rsquo;s hold upon the British public
+seemed to grow stronger and stronger up to the day of his death,
+when Great Britain, and, indeed, the entire English-speaking
+race, went into mourning for him; nor, as we have said, has any
+weakening of that hold been perceptible during the five years
+that have elapsed since.</p>
+<p>The volumes are so crammed with interesting and important
+matter that to discuss them in one article is impossible.&nbsp;
+But before concluding these remarks we must say that the good
+fortune which attended Tennyson during his life did not end with
+his death.&nbsp; Fortunate, indeed, is the famous man who escapes
+the catchpenny biographer.&nbsp; No man so illustrious as
+Tennyson ever before passed away without his death <!-- page
+153--><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+153</span>giving rise to a flood of books professing to tell the
+story of his life.&nbsp; Yet it chanced that for a long time
+before his death a monograph on Tennyson by Mr. Arthur
+Waugh&mdash;which, though of course it is sometimes at fault, was
+carefully prepared and well considered&mdash;had been in
+preparation, as had also a second edition of another sketch of
+the poet&rsquo;s life by Mr. Henry Jennings, written with equal
+reticence and judgment.&nbsp; These two books, coming out, as far
+as we remember, in the very week of Tennyson&rsquo;s funeral, did
+the good service of filling up the gap of five years until the
+appearance of this authorized biography by his son.&nbsp;
+Otherwise there is no knowing what pseudo-biographies stuffed
+with what errors and nonsense might have flooded the market and
+vexed the souls of Tennysonian students.&nbsp; For the future
+such pseudo-biographies will be impossible.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 154--><a name="page154"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 154</span>III.</h3>
+<p>Notwithstanding the apparently fortunate circumstances by
+which Tennyson was surrounded, the record of his early life
+produces in the reader&rsquo;s mind a sense of unhappiness.&nbsp;
+Happiness is an affair of temperament, not of outward
+circumstances.&nbsp; Happy, in the sense of enjoying the present
+as Wordsworth enjoyed it, Tennyson could never be.&nbsp; Once, no
+doubt, Nature&rsquo;s sweetest gift to all living
+things&mdash;the power of enjoying the present&mdash;was
+man&rsquo;s inheritance too.&nbsp; Some of the human family have
+not lost it even yet; but poets are rarely of these.&nbsp; Give
+Wordsworth any pittance, enough to satisfy the simplest physical
+wants&mdash;enough to procure him plain living and leisure for
+&ldquo;high thinking&rdquo;&mdash;and he would be happier than
+Tennyson would have been, cracking the finest
+&ldquo;walnuts&rdquo; and sipping the richest &ldquo;wine&rdquo;
+amidst a circle of admiring and powerful friends.&nbsp; As to
+opinion, as to criticism of his work&mdash;what was that to
+Wordsworth?&nbsp; Had he not from the first the good opinion of
+her of whom he was the high priest elect.&nbsp; Natura Benigna
+herself?&nbsp; Nay, had he not from the first the good opinions
+of Wordsworth himself and Dorothy?&nbsp; Without this faculty of
+enjoying the <!-- page 155--><a name="page155"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 155</span>present, how can a bard be
+happy?&nbsp; For the present alone exists.&nbsp; The past is a
+dream; the future is a dream; the present is the narrow plank
+thrown for an instant from the dream of the past to the dream of
+the future.&nbsp; And yet it is the poet (who of all men should
+enjoy the raree show hurrying and scrambling along the
+plank)&mdash;it is he who refuses to enjoy himself on his own
+trembling little plank in order to &ldquo;stare round&rdquo; from
+side to side.</p>
+<p>Spedding, speaking in a letter to Thompson in 1835 of
+Tennyson&rsquo;s visit to the Lake country, lets fall a few words
+that describe the poet in the period before his marriage more
+fully than could have been done by a volume of subtle
+analysis:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than
+any one would have supposed who did not know his own almost
+personal dislike of the present, whatever it might be.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This is what makes us say that by far the most important thing
+in Tennyson&rsquo;s life was his marriage.&nbsp; He began to
+enjoy the present: &ldquo;The peace of God came into my life
+before the altar when I wedded her.&rdquo;&nbsp; No more
+beautiful words than these were ever uttered by any man
+concerning any woman.&nbsp; And to say that the words were
+Tennyson&rsquo;s is to say that they expressed the simple truth,
+for his definition of human speech as God meant it to be would
+have been &ldquo;the breath that utters truth.&rdquo;&nbsp; It
+would <!-- page 156--><a name="page156"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 156</span>have been wonderful, indeed, if he,
+whose capacity of loving a friend was so great had been without
+an equal capacity of loving a woman.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Although as a son,&rdquo; says the biographer, &ldquo;I
+cannot allow myself full utterance about her whom I loved as
+perfect mother and &lsquo;very woman of very
+woman&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;such a wife&rsquo; and true helpmate
+she proved herself.&nbsp; It was she who became my father&rsquo;s
+adviser in literary matters; &lsquo;I am proud of her
+intellect,&rsquo; he wrote.&nbsp; With her he always discussed
+what he was working at; she transcribed his poems: to her and to
+no one else he referred for a final criticism before
+publishing.&nbsp; She, with her &lsquo;tender, spiritual
+nature,&rsquo; <a name="citation156"></a><a href="#footnote156"
+class="citation">[156]</a> and instinctive nobility of thought,
+was always by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and
+sympathetic counsellor.&nbsp; It was she who shielded his
+sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life,
+answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him
+from all parts of the world.&nbsp; By her quiet sense of humour,
+by her selfless devotion, by &lsquo;her faith as clear as the
+heights of the June-blue heaven,&rsquo; she helped him also to
+the utmost in the hours of his depression and of his
+sorrow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There are some few people whose natures are so noble or so
+sweet that how rich soever may be their endowment of intellect,
+or even of genius, we seem to remember them mainly <!-- page
+157--><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>by
+what St. Gregory Nazianzen calls &ldquo;the rhetoric of their
+lives.&rdquo;&nbsp; And surely the knowledge that this is so is
+encouraging to him who would fain believe in the high destiny of
+man&mdash;surely it is encouraging to know that, in spite of
+&ldquo;the inhuman dearth of noble natures,&rdquo; mankind can
+still so dearly love moral beauty as to hold it more precious
+than any other human force.&nbsp; And certainly one of those
+whose intellectual endowments are outdazzled by the beauty of
+their qualities of heart and soul was the sweet lady whose death
+I am recording.</p>
+<p>Among those who had the privilege of knowing Lady Tennyson
+(and they were many, and these many were of the best), some are
+at this moment eloquent in talk about the perfect helpmate she
+was to the great poet, and the perfect mother she was to his
+children, and they quote those lovely lines of Tennyson which
+every one knows by heart:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Dear, near and true&mdash;no truer Time himself<br
+/>
+Can prove you, tho&rsquo; he make you evermore<br />
+Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life<br />
+Shoots to the fall&mdash;take this and pray that he<br />
+Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith to him,<br />
+May trust himself;&mdash;and after praise and scorn,<br />
+As one who feels the immeasurable world,<br />
+Attain the wise indifference of the wise;<br />
+And after autumn past&mdash;if left to pass<br />
+His autumn into seeming leafless days&mdash;<br />
+Draw toward the long frost and longest night,<br />
+Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit<br />
+Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 158--><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+158</span>Others dwell on the unique way in which those wistful
+blue eyes of hers and that beautiful face expressed the
+&ldquo;tender spiritual nature&rdquo; described by the
+poet&mdash;expressed it, indeed, more and more eloquently with
+the passage of years, and the bereavements the years had
+brought.&nbsp; The present writer saw her within a few days of
+her death.&nbsp; She did not seem to him then more fragile than
+ordinary.&nbsp; For many years she whose fragile frame seemed to
+be kept alive by the love and sweet movements of the soul within
+had seemed as she lay upon her couch the same as she seemed when
+death was so near&mdash;intensely pale, save when a flush as
+slight as the pink on a wild rose told her watchful son that the
+subject of conversation was interesting her more than was well
+for her.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, however, Lady Tennyson was no
+less remarkable as an intelligence than as the central heart of
+love and light that illumined one of the most beautiful
+households of our time.</p>
+<p>Though her special gift was no doubt music, she had, as
+Tennyson would say with affectionate pride, a &ldquo;real insight
+into poetical effects&rdquo;; and those who knew her best shared
+his opinion in this matter.&nbsp; Whether, had her life not been
+devoted so entirely to others, she would have been a noticeable
+artistic producer it is hard to guess.&nbsp; But there is no
+doubt that she was born to hold a high place as a
+conversationalist, <!-- page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 159</span>brilliant and stimulating.&nbsp;
+Notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness of her family lest the
+dinner talk should draw too heavily upon her small stock of
+physical power, the fascination of her conversation, both as to
+subject-matter and manner, was so irresistible that her friends
+were apt to forget how fragile she really was until warned by a
+sign from her son or, daughter-in-law, who adored her, that the
+conversation should be brought to a close.</p>
+<p>Her diary, upon which her son has drawn for certain
+biographical portions of his book shows how keen and how
+persistent was her interest in the poetry of her husband; it also
+shows how thorough was her insight into its principles.&nbsp; As
+a rule, diaries, professing as they do to give portraitures of
+eminent men, are mostly very much worse than worthless.&nbsp; The
+points seized upon by the diarist are almost never physiognomic,
+and even if the diarist does give some glimpse of the character
+he professes to limn, the picture can only be partially true,
+inasmuch as it can never be toned down by other aspects of the
+character unseen by the diarist and unknown to him.</p>
+<p>Very different, however, is the record kept by Lady
+Tennyson.&nbsp; As an instance of her power of selecting really
+luminous points for preservation in her diary, let me instance
+this.&nbsp; Many a student of the &lsquo;Idylls of the
+King&rsquo; has been struck by a certain difference in the style
+<!-- page 160--><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+160</span>between &lsquo;The Coming of Arthur&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;The Passing of Arthur&rsquo; and the other idylls.&nbsp;
+Indeed, more than once this difference has been cited as showing
+Tennyson&rsquo;s inability to fuse the different portions of a
+long poem.&nbsp; This fact had not escaped the eye of the loving
+wife and critic, and two days before her death she said to her
+son, &ldquo;He said &lsquo;The Coming of Arthur&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;The Passing of Arthur&rsquo; are purposely simpler in
+style than the other idylls as dealing with the awfulness of
+birth and death,&rdquo; and wished this remark of the
+poet&rsquo;s to be put on record in the book.</p>
+<p>It is needless to comment on the value of these few words and
+the light they shed upon Tennyson&rsquo;s method.</p>
+<p>Those who saw Lady Tennyson in middle life and in advanced
+age, and were struck by that spiritual beauty of hers which no
+painter could ever render, will not find it difficult to imagine
+what she was at seventeen, when Tennyson suddenly came upon her
+in the &ldquo;Fairy Wood,&rdquo; and exclaimed, &ldquo;Are you an
+Oread or a Dryad wandering here?&rdquo;&nbsp; And yet her beauty
+was only a small part of a charm that was indescribable.&nbsp; An
+important event for English literature was that meeting in the
+&ldquo;Fairy Wood.&rdquo;&nbsp; For, from the moment of his
+engagement, &ldquo;the current of his mind was no longer and
+constantly in the channel of mournful memories and melancholy
+forebodings,&rdquo; <!-- page 161--><a name="page161"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 161</span>says his son.&nbsp; And speaking of
+the year, 1838, the son tells us that, on the whole, he was happy
+in his life.&nbsp; &ldquo;When I wrote &lsquo;The Two
+Voices,&rsquo;&rdquo; he used to say, &ldquo;I was so utterly
+miserable, a burden to myself and my family, that I said,
+&lsquo;Is life worth anything?&rsquo; and now that I am old, I
+fear that I shall only live a year or two, for I have work still
+to do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The hostile manner in which &lsquo;Maud&rsquo; was received
+vexed him, and would, before his marriage, have deeply disturbed
+him.&nbsp; A right view of this fine poem seems to have been
+taken by George Brimley, an admirable critic, who in the
+&lsquo;Cambridge Essays,&rsquo; had already pointed out with
+great acumen many of the more subtle beauties of Tennyson.</p>
+<p>There are few more pleasant pages in this book than those
+which record Tennyson&rsquo;s relations with another poet who was
+blessed in his wife&mdash;Browning.&nbsp; Although the two poets
+had previously met (notably in Paris in 1851), the intimacy
+between them would seem to have been cemented, if not begun,
+during one of Tennyson&rsquo;s visits to his and Browning&rsquo;s
+friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham
+Common.&nbsp; Here Tennyson read to Browning the
+&lsquo;Grail&rsquo; (which the latter pronounced to be
+Tennyson&rsquo;s &ldquo;best and highest&rdquo;); and here
+Browning came and read his own new poem &lsquo;The Ring and the
+Book,&rsquo; when Tennyson&rsquo;s verdict on it was, &ldquo;Full
+of strange vigour and <!-- page 162--><a name="page162"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 162</span>remarkable in many ways, doubtful if
+it will ever be popular.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The record of his long intimacy with Coventry Patmore and
+Aubrey de Vere takes an important place in the biography, and the
+reminiscences of Tennyson by the latter poet form an interesting
+feature of the volumes.&nbsp; In George Meredith&rsquo;s first
+little book Tennyson was delighted by the &lsquo;Love in a
+Valley,&rsquo; and he had a full appreciation of the great
+novelist all round.&nbsp; With the three leading poets of a
+younger generation, Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne, he
+had slight acquaintance.&nbsp; Here, however, is an interesting
+memorandum by Tennyson recording his first meeting with
+Swinburne:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I may tell you, however, that young Swinburne called
+here the other day with a college friend of his, and we asked him
+to dinner, and I thought him a very modest and intelligent young
+fellow.&nbsp; Moreover I read him what you vindicated
+[&lsquo;Maud&rsquo;], but what I particularly admired in him was
+that he did not press upon me any verses of his own.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Of contemporary novels he seems to have been a voracious and
+indiscriminate reader.&nbsp; In the long list here given of
+novelists whose books he read&mdash;good, bad, and
+indifferent&mdash;it is curious not to find the name of Mrs.
+Humphry Ward.&nbsp; With Thackeray he was intimate; and he was in
+cordial relations with Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, and George
+Eliot.&nbsp; Among <!-- page 163--><a name="page163"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 163</span>the poets, besides Edward Fitzgerald
+and Coventry Patmore, he saw much of William Allingham.&nbsp;
+Though he admired parts of &lsquo;<i>Festus</i>&rsquo; greatly,
+we do not gather from these volumes that he met the author.&nbsp;
+Dobell he saw much of at Malvern in 1846.&nbsp; The letter-diary
+from Tennyson during his stay in Cornwall with Holman Hunt, Val.
+Prinsep, Woolner, and Palgrave, shows how exhilarated he could be
+by wind and sea.&nbsp; The death of Lionel was a sad blow to
+him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Demeter, and other Poems,&rsquo; was dedicated
+to Lord Dufferin, &ldquo;as a tribute,&rdquo; says his son,
+&ldquo;of affection and of gratitude; for words would fail me to
+tell the unremitting kindness shown by himself and Lady Dufferin
+to my brother Lionel during his fatal illness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Tennyson&rsquo;s critical insight could not fail to be good
+when exercised upon poetry.&nbsp; Here are one or two of his
+sayings about Burns, which show in what spirit he would have read
+Henley&rsquo;s recent utterances about that poet:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Burns did for the old songs of Scotland almost what
+Shakespeare had done for the English drama that preceded
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Read the exquisite songs of Burns.&nbsp; In shape each
+of them has the perfection of the berry, in light the radiance of
+the dew-drop: you forget for its sake those stupid things his
+serious poems.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Among the reminiscences and impressions <!-- page 164--><a
+name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>of the poet
+which Lord Tennyson has appended to his second volume, it is only
+fair to specialize the admirable paper by F. T. Palgrave, which,
+long as it is, is not by one word too long.&nbsp; That Jowett
+would write wisely and well was in the nature of things.&nbsp;
+The only contribution, however, we can quote here is
+Froude&rsquo;s, for it is as brief as it is emphatic:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I owe to your father the first serious
+reflexions upon life and the nature of it which have followed me
+for more than fifty years.&nbsp; The same voice speaks to me now
+as I come near my own end, from beyond the bar.&nbsp; Of the
+early poems, &lsquo;Love and Death&rsquo; had the deepest effect
+upon me.&nbsp; The same thought is in the last lines of the last
+poems which we shall ever have from him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your father in my estimate, stands, and will stand far
+away by the side of Shakespeare above all other English Poets,
+with this relative superiority even to Shakespeare, that he
+speaks the thoughts and speaks <i>to</i> the perplexities and
+misgivings of his own age.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was born at the fit time, before the world had grown
+inflated with the vanity of Progress, and there was still an
+atmosphere in which such a soul could grow.&nbsp; There will be
+no such others for many a long age.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&ldquo;Yours gratefully,<br />
+&ldquo;<span class="smcap">J. A. Froude</span>.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This letter is striking evidence of the influence Tennyson had
+upon his contemporaries.&nbsp; Comparisons, however, between
+Shakespeare <!-- page 165--><a name="page165"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 165</span>and other poets can hardly be
+satisfactory.&nbsp; A kinship between him and any other poet can
+only be discovered in relation to one of the many sides of the
+&ldquo;myriad-minded&rdquo; man.&nbsp; Where lies
+Tennyson&rsquo;s kinship?&nbsp; Is it on the dramatic side?&nbsp;
+In a certain sense Tennyson possessed dramatic power undoubtedly;
+for he had a fine imagination of extraordinary vividness, and
+could, as in &lsquo;Rizpah,&rsquo; make a character live in an
+imagined situation.&nbsp; But to write a vital play requires more
+than this: it requires a knowledge&mdash;partly instinctive and
+partly acquired&mdash;of men as well as of man, and especially of
+the way in which one individual acts and reacts upon another in
+the complex web of human life.&nbsp; To depict the workings of
+the soul of man in a given situation is one thing&mdash;to depict
+the impact of ego upon ego is another.&nbsp; When we consider
+that the more poetical a poet is the more oblivious we expect him
+to be of the machinery of social life, it is no wonder that
+poetical dramatists are so rare.&nbsp; In drama, even poetic
+drama, the poet must leave the &ldquo;golden clime&rdquo; in
+which he was born, must leave those &ldquo;golden stars
+above&rdquo; in order to learn this machinery, and not only learn
+it, but take a pleasure in learning it.</p>
+<p>In honest admiration of Tennyson&rsquo;s dramatic work, where
+it is admirable, we yield to none, at the time when &lsquo;The
+Foresters&rsquo; was somewhat coldly accepted by the press on
+account of <!-- page 166--><a name="page166"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 166</span>its &ldquo;lack of virility,&rdquo;
+we considered that in the class to which it belonged, the scenic
+pastoral plays, it held a very worthy place.&nbsp; That
+Tennyson&rsquo;s admiration for Shakespeare was unbounded is
+evident enough.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There was no one,&rdquo; says Jowett in his
+recollections of Tennyson, &ldquo;to whom he was so absolutely
+devoted, no poet of whom he had a more intimate knowledge than
+Shakespeare.&nbsp; He said to me, and probably to many others,
+that there was one intellectual process in the world of which he
+could not even entertain an apprehension&mdash;that was the plays
+of Shakespeare.&nbsp; He thought that he could instinctively
+distinguish between the genuine and the spurious in them,
+<i>e.g.</i>, between those parts of &lsquo;King Henry
+VIII.,&rsquo; which are generally admitted to be spurious, and
+those that are genuine.&nbsp; The same thought was partly working
+in his mind on another occasion, when he spoke of two things,
+which he conceived to be beyond the intelligence of man, and it
+was certainly not repeated by him from any irreverence; the one,
+the intellectual genius of Shakespeare&mdash;the other, the
+religious genius of Jesus Christ.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And in the pathetic account of Tennyson&rsquo;s last moments
+we find it recorded that on the Tuesday before the Wednesday on
+which he died, he called out, &ldquo;Where is my
+Shakespeare?&nbsp; I must have my Shakespeare&rdquo;; and again
+on the day of his death, when the breath was passing out of his
+body, he asked for his Shakespeare.&nbsp; <!-- page 167--><a
+name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>All this,
+however, makes it the more remarkable that of poets Shakespeare
+had the least influence upon Tennyson&rsquo;s art.&nbsp; There
+was a fundamental unlikeness between the genius of the two
+men.&nbsp; The only point in common between them is that each in
+his own way captivated the suffrages both of the many and of the
+fit though few, notwithstanding the fact that their methods of
+dramatic approach in their plays are absolutely and fundamentally
+different.&nbsp; Even their very methods of writing verse are
+entirely different.&nbsp; Tennyson&rsquo;s blank verse seems at
+its best to combine the beauties of the Miltonic and the
+Wordsworthian line; while nothing is so rare in his work as a
+Shakespearean line.&nbsp; Now and then such a line as</p>
+<blockquote><p>Authority forgets a dying king</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>turns up, but very rarely.&nbsp; We agree with all Professor
+Jebb says in praise of Tennyson&rsquo;s blank verse.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has known,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;how to modulate it
+to every theme, and to elicit a music appropriate to each;
+attuning it in turn to a tender and homely grace, as in
+&lsquo;The Gardener&rsquo;s Daughter &lsquo;; to the severe and
+ideal majesty of the antique, as in &lsquo;Tithonus&rsquo;; to
+meditative thought, as in &lsquo;The Ancient Sage,&rsquo; or
+&lsquo;Akbar&rsquo;s Dream&rsquo;; to pathetic or tragic tales of
+contemporary life, as in &lsquo;Aylmer&rsquo;s Field,&rsquo; or
+&lsquo;Enoch Arden&rsquo;; or to sustained romance narrative, as
+in the &lsquo;Idylls.&rsquo;&nbsp; No English poet has used blank
+verse with such flexible variety, or <!-- page 168--><a
+name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>drawn from
+it so large a compass of tones; nor has any maintained it so
+equably on a high level of excellence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But we fail to see where he touched Shakespeare on the
+dramatic side of Shakespeare&rsquo;s immense genius.</p>
+<p>Tennyson had the yearning common to all English poets to write
+Shakespearean plays, and the filial piety with which his son
+tries to uphold his father&rsquo;s claims as a dramatist is
+beautiful; indeed, it is pathetic.&nbsp; But the greatest
+injustice that can be done to a great poet is to claim for him
+honours that do not belong to him.&nbsp; In his own line Tennyson
+is supreme, and this book makes it necessary to ask once more
+what that line is.&nbsp; Shakespeare&rsquo;s stupendous fame has
+for centuries been the candle into which all the various coloured
+wings of later days have flown with more or less of
+disaster.&nbsp; Though much was said in praise of
+&lsquo;Harold&rsquo; by one of the most accomplished critics and
+scholars of our time, Dr. Jebb, <a name="citation168"></a><a
+href="#footnote168" class="citation">[168]</a> the play could not
+keep the stage, nor does it live as a drama as any one of
+Tennyson&rsquo;s lyrics can be said to live.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Becket,&rsquo; to be sure, was a success on the
+stage.&nbsp; A letter to Tennyson in 1884 from so competent a
+student of Shakespeare as Sir Henry Irving declares that
+&lsquo;Becket&rsquo; is a finer play than &lsquo;King
+John.&rsquo;&nbsp; Still, the &lsquo;Morte d&rsquo;Arthur,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;The <!-- page 169--><a name="page169"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 169</span>Lotos-Eaters,&rsquo; &lsquo;The
+Gardener&rsquo;s Daughter,&rsquo; outweigh the five-act tragedy
+in the world of literary art.&nbsp; Of acted drama Tennyson knew
+nothing at all.&nbsp; To him, evidently, the word <i>act</i> in a
+printed play meant <i>chapter</i>; the word <i>scene</i> meant
+<i>section</i>.&nbsp; In his early days he had gone occasionally
+to see a play, and in 1875 he went to see Irving in Hamlet and
+liked him better than Macready, whom he had seen in the
+part.&nbsp; Still later he went to see Lady Archibald Campbell
+act when &lsquo;Becket&rsquo; was given &ldquo;among the glades
+of oak and fern in the Canizzaro Wood at Wimbledon.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+But handicapped as he was by ignorance of drama as a stage
+product how could he write Shakespearean plays?</p>
+<p>But let us for a moment consider the difference between the
+two men as poets.&nbsp; It is hard to imagine the
+master-dramatist of the world&mdash;it is hard to imagine the
+poet who, by setting his foot upon allegory, saved our poetry
+from drying up after the invasion of gongorism, euphuism, and
+allegory&mdash;it is, we say, hard to imagine Shakespeare, if he
+had conceived and written such lovely episodes as those of the
+&lsquo;Idylls of the King,&rsquo; so full of concrete pictures,
+setting about to turn his flesh-and-blood characters into
+symbolic abstractions.&nbsp; There is in these volumes a curious
+document, a memorandum of Tennyson&rsquo;s presented to Mr.
+Knowles at Aldworth in 1869, in which an elaborate <!-- page
+170--><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+170</span>scheme for turning into abstract ideas the characters
+of the Arthurian story is sketched:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>K.A. Religious Faith.</p>
+<p>King Arthur&rsquo;s three Guineveres.</p>
+<p>The Lady of the Lake.</p>
+<p>Two Guineveres, ye first prim Christianity.&nbsp; 2d Roman
+Catholicism: ye first is put away and dwells apart, 2d Guinevere
+flies.&nbsp; Arthur takes to the first again, but finds her
+changed by lapse of Time.</p>
+<p>Modred, the sceptical understanding.&nbsp; He pulls Guinevere,
+Arthur&rsquo;s latest wife, from the throne.</p>
+<p>Merlin Emrys, the Enchanter.&nbsp; Science.&nbsp; Marries his
+daughter to Modred.</p>
+<p>Excalibur, War.</p>
+<p>The Sea, the people / The Saxons, the people } the S. are a
+sea-people and it is theirs and a type of them.</p>
+<p>The Round Table: liberal institutions.</p>
+<p>Battle of Camlan.</p>
+<p>2d Guinevere with the enchanted book and cup.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And Mr. Knowles in a letter to the biographer says:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He encouraged me to write a short paper, in the form of
+a letter to <i>The Spectator</i>, on the inner meaning of the
+whole poem, which I did, simply upon the lines he himself
+indicated.&nbsp; He often said, however, that an allegory should
+never be pressed too far.&rdquo;&nbsp; Are all the lovely
+passages of human passion and human pathos in these
+&lsquo;Idylls&rsquo; allegorical&mdash;that is to
+say&mdash;make-believe?&nbsp; The reason why allegorical poetry
+is always second-rate, even at its best, is that it flatters the
+reader&rsquo;s intellect at the expense of his heart.&nbsp; Fancy
+&ldquo;the allegorical intent&rdquo; behind the parting of Hector
+and Andromache, and behind the death <!-- page 171--><a
+name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>of
+Desdemona!&nbsp; Thank Heaven, however, Tennyson&rsquo;s
+allegorical intent was a destructive afterthought.&nbsp; For,
+says the biographer, &ldquo;the allegorical drift here marked out
+was fundamentally changed in the later schemes in the
+&lsquo;Idylls.&rsquo;&rdquo; According to that delicate critic,
+Canon Ainger, there is a symbolical intent underlying &lsquo;The
+Lady of Shalott&rsquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The new-born love for something, for some one in the
+wide world from whom she has been so long secluded, takes her out
+of the region of shadows into that of realities.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But what concerns us here is the fact that when Shakespeare
+wrote, although he yielded too much now and then to the passion
+for gongorism and euphuism which had spread all over Europe, it
+was against the nature of his genius to be influenced by the
+contemporary passion for allegory.&nbsp; That he had a natural
+dislike of allegorical treatment of a subject is evident, not
+only in his plays, but in his sonnets.&nbsp; At a time when the
+sonnet was treated as the special vehicle for allegory,
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s sonnets were the direct outcome of emotion of
+the most intimate and personal kind&mdash;a fact which at once
+destroys the ignorant drivel about the Baconian authorship of
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s plays, for what Bacon had was fancy, not
+imagination, and Fancy is the mother of Allegory, Imagination is
+the mother of Drama.&nbsp; The moment that <!-- page 172--><a
+name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>Bacon
+essayed imaginative work, he passed into allegory, as we see in
+the &lsquo;New Atlantis.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It might, perhaps, be said that there are three kinds of
+poetical temperament which have never yet been found equally
+combined in any one poet&mdash;not even in Shakespeare
+himself.&nbsp; There is the lyric temperament, as exemplified in
+writers like Sappho, Shelley, and others; there is the meditative
+temperament&mdash;sometimes speculative, but not always
+accompanied by metaphysical dreaming&mdash;as exemplified in
+Lucretius, Wordsworth, and others; and there is the dramatic
+temperament, as exemplified in Homer, &AElig;schylus, Sophocles,
+and Shakespeare.&nbsp; In a certain sense the Iliad is the most
+dramatic poem in the world, for the dramatic picture lives
+undisturbed by lyrism or meditation.&nbsp; In &AElig;schylus and
+Sophocles we find, besides the dramatic temperament, a large
+amount of the lyrical temperament, and a large amount of the
+meditative, but unaccompanied by metaphysical speculation.&nbsp;
+In Shakespeare we find, besides the dramatic temperament, a large
+amount of the meditative accompanied by an irresistible impulse
+towards metaphysical speculation, but, on the whole, a moderate
+endowment of the lyrical temperament, judging by the few
+occasions on which he exercised it.&nbsp; For fine as are such
+lyrics as &ldquo;Hark, hark, the lark,&rdquo; &ldquo;Where the
+bee sucks,&rdquo; &amp;c., other poets have written lyrics as
+fine.</p>
+<p><!-- page 173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+173</span>In a certain sense no man can be a pure and perfect
+dramatist.&nbsp; Every ego is a central sun found which the
+universe revolves, and it must needs assert itself.&nbsp; This is
+why on a previous occasion, when speaking of the way in which
+thoughts are interjected into drama by the Greek dramatists, we
+said that really and truly no man can paint another, but only
+himself, and what we call character-painting is at the best but a
+poor mixing of painter and painted&mdash;a third something
+between these two, just as what we call colour and sound are born
+of the play of undulation upon organism.&nbsp; Very likely this
+is putting the case too strongly.&nbsp; But be this as it may, it
+is impossible to open a play of Shakespeare&rsquo;s without being
+struck with the way in which the meditative side of
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s mind strove with and sometimes nearly
+strangled the dramatic.&nbsp; If this were confined to
+&lsquo;Hamlet,&rsquo; where the play seems meant to revolve on a
+philosophical pivot, it would not be so remarkable.&nbsp; But so
+hindered with thoughts, reflections, meditations, and
+metaphysical speculations was Shakespeare that he tossed them
+indiscriminately into other plays, tragedies, comedies, and
+histories, regardless sometimes of the character who uttered
+them.&nbsp; With regard to metaphysical speculation, indeed, even
+when he was at work on the busiest scenes of his dramas, it would
+seem&mdash;as was said on the occasion before alluded
+to&mdash;that Shakespeare&rsquo;s <!-- page 174--><a
+name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>instinct
+for actualizing and embodying in concrete form the dreams of the
+metaphysician often arose and baffled him.&nbsp; It would seem
+that when writing a comedy he could not help putting into the
+mouth of a man like Claudio those words which seem as if they
+ought to have been spoken by a metaphysician of the Hamlet type,
+beginning,</p>
+<blockquote><p>Ay, but to die and go we know not where.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It would seem that he could not help putting into the mouth of
+Macbeth those words which also seem as if they ought to have been
+spoken on the platform at Elsinore, beginning,</p>
+<blockquote><p>To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And if it be said that Macbeth was a philosopher as well as a
+murderer, and might have thought these thoughts in the terrible
+strait in which he then was, surely nothing but this marvellous
+peculiarity of Shakespeare&rsquo;s temperament will explain his
+making Macbeth stop at Duncan&rsquo;s bedroom door, dagger in
+hand, to say,</p>
+<blockquote><p>Now o&rsquo;er the one half world Nature seems
+dead, &amp;c.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And again, though Prospero was very likely a philosopher too,
+even he steals from Hamlet&rsquo;s mouth such words of the
+metaphysician as these:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We are such
+stuff<br />
+As dreams are made on, and our little life<br />
+Is rounded with a sleep.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>That this is one of Shakespeare&rsquo;s most striking
+characteristics will not be denied by any competent student of
+his works.&nbsp; Nor will <!-- page 175--><a
+name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>any such
+student deny that, exquisite as his lyrics are, they are too few
+and too unimportant in subject-matter to set beside his supreme
+wealth of dramatic picture, and his wide vision as a thinker and
+a metaphysical dreamer.</p>
+<p>Now on which of these sides of Shakespeare does Tennyson
+touch?&nbsp; Is it on the lyrical side?&nbsp; Shakespeare&rsquo;s
+fine lyrics are so few that they would be lost if set beside the
+marvellous wealth of Tennyson&rsquo;s lyrical work.&nbsp; On one
+side only of Shakespeare&rsquo;s genius Tennyson touches,
+perhaps, more closely than any subsequent poet.&nbsp; As a
+metaphysician none comes so near Shakespeare as he who wrote
+these lines:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And more, my son! for more than
+once when I<br />
+Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br />
+The word that is the symbol of myself,<br />
+The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,<br />
+And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud<br />
+Melts into Heaven.&nbsp; I touch&rsquo;d my limbs, the limbs<br
+/>
+Were strange not mine&mdash;and yet no shade of doubt,<br />
+But utter clearness, and thro&rsquo; loss of Self.<br />
+The gain of such large life as match&rsquo;d with ours<br />
+Were Sun to spark&mdash;unshadowable in words,<br />
+Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Here, then, seems to be the truth of the matter: while
+Shakespeare had immense dramatic power, and immense meditative
+power with moderate lyric power, Tennyson had the lyric gift and
+the meditative gift without the dramatic.&nbsp; His poems are
+more full of reflections, meditations, and generalizations upon
+human life than any poet&rsquo;s since Shakespeare.&nbsp; But
+then the moment <!-- page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 176</span>that Shakespeare descended from
+those heights whether his metaphysical imagination had borne him,
+he became, not a lyrist, as Tennyson became, but a
+dramatist.&nbsp; And this divides Shakespeare as far from
+Tennyson as it divides him from any other first-class
+writer.&nbsp; We admirers of Tennyson must content ourselves with
+this thought, that, wonderful as it is for Shakespeare to have
+combined great metaphysical power with supreme power as a
+dramatist, it is scarcely less wonderful for Tennyson to have
+combined great metaphysical power with the power of a supreme
+lyrist.&nbsp; Nay, is it not in a certain sense more wonderful
+for a lyrical impulse such as Tennyson&rsquo;s to be found
+combined with a power of philosophical and metaphysical
+abstraction such as he shows in some of his poems?</p>
+<h2><!-- page 177--><a name="page177"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 177</span>IV.&nbsp; CHRISTINA GEORGINA
+ROSSETTI.<br />
+1830&ndash;1894.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>Although the noble poet and high-souled woman we have just
+lost had been ill and suffering from grievous pain for a long
+time, Death came at last with a soft hand which could but make
+him welcome.&nbsp; Since early in August, when she took to her
+bed, she was so extremely weak and otherwise ill that one
+scarcely expected her (at any time) to live more than a month or
+so, and for the last six weeks or thereabouts&mdash;say from the
+15th of November&mdash;one expected her to die almost from day to
+day.&nbsp; My dear friend William Rossetti, who used to go to
+Torrington Square every afternoon, saw her on the afternoon of
+December 28th [1894].&nbsp; He did not, he told me, much expect
+to find her alive in the afternoon of the 29th, and intended,
+therefore, to make his next call earlier.&nbsp; She died at
+half-past seven in the morning of the 29th, in the presence only
+of her faithful nurse Mrs. Read.&nbsp; It was through her sudden
+collapse that she missed at her side, <!-- page 178--><a
+name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>when she
+passed away, that brother whose whole life has been one of
+devotion to his family, and whose tireless affection for the last
+of them was one of the few links that bound Christina&rsquo;s
+sympathy to the earth.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p178b.jpg">
+<img alt="Christina Rossetti.  From a crayon-drawing by D. G.
+Rossetti reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti"
+src="images/p178s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Her illness was of a most complicated kind: two years and a
+half ago she was operated on for cancer: functional malady of the
+heart, accompanied by dropsy in the left arm and hand,
+followed.&nbsp; Although on Friday the serious symptoms of her
+case became, as I have said, accentuated, she was throughout the
+day and night entirely conscious; and so peaceful and apparently
+so free from pain was she that neither the medical man nor the
+nurse supposed the end to be quite so near as it was.&nbsp;
+During all this time, up to the moment of actual dissolution, her
+lips seemed to be moving in prayer, but, of course, this with her
+was no uncommon sign: duty and prayer ordered her life.&nbsp; Her
+sufferings, I say, had been great, but they had been encountered
+by a fortitude that was greater still.&nbsp; Throughout all her
+life, indeed, she was the most notable example that our time has
+produced of the masterful power of man&rsquo;s spiritual nature
+when at its highest to conquer in its warfare with earthly
+conditions, as her brother Gabriel&rsquo;s life was the most
+notable example of the struggle of the spiritual nature with the
+bodily when the two are equally equipped.&nbsp; It is the
+conviction of one whose <!-- page 179--><a
+name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>high
+privilege it was to know her in many a passage of sorrow and
+trial that of all the poets who have lived and died within our
+time, Christina Rossetti must have had the noblest soul.</p>
+<p>A certain irritability of temper, which was, perhaps, natural
+to her, had, when I first became acquainted with her family
+(about 1872), been overcome, or at least greatly chastened, by
+religion (which with her was a passion) and by a large
+acquaintance with grief, resulting in a long meditation over the
+mystery of pain.&nbsp; In wordly matters her generosity may be
+described as boundless; but perhaps it is not difficult for a
+poet to be generous in a worldly sense&mdash;to be free in
+parting with that which can be precious only to commonplace
+souls.&nbsp; What, however, is not so easy is for one holding
+such strong religious convictions as Christina Rossetti held to
+cherish such generous thoughts and feelings as were hers about
+those to whom her shibboleths meant nothing.&nbsp; This was what
+made her life so beautiful and such a blessing to all.&nbsp; The
+indurating effects of a selfish religiosity never withered her
+soul nor narrowed it.&nbsp; With her, indeed, religion was very
+love&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>A largess universal like the sun.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It is always futile to make guesses as to what might have been
+the development of a poet&rsquo;s genius and character had the
+education of <!-- page 180--><a name="page180"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 180</span>circumstances been different from
+what it was, and perhaps it is specially futile to guess what
+would have been the development under other circumstances of her,
+the poet of whom her friends used to speak with affection and
+reverence as &ldquo;Christina.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the death of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti (or as his
+friends used to call him Gabriel) in 1882, I gave that sketch of
+the family story which has formed the basis of most of the
+biographical notices of him and his family; it would, therefore,
+be superfluous to reiterate what I said and what is now matter of
+familiar knowledge.&nbsp; It may, however, be as well to remind
+the reader that, owing to the peculiar position in London of the
+father Gabriele Rossetti, the family were during childhood and
+partly during youth as much isolated from the outer English world
+as were the family between whom and themselves there were many
+points of resemblance&mdash;the Bront&euml;s.&nbsp; The two among
+them who were not in youth of a retiring disposition were he who
+afterwards became the most retiring of all, Gabriel, and Maria,
+the latter of whom was in one sense retiring, and in another
+expansive.&nbsp; In her dark brown, or, as some called them,
+black eyes, there would suddenly come up and shine an enthusiasm,
+a capacity of poetic and romantic fire, to the quelling of which
+there must have gone an immensity of religious force.&nbsp; <!--
+page 181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+181</span>As to Gabriel, during a large portion of his splendid
+youth he exhibited a genial breadth of front that affined him to
+Shakespeare and Walter Scott.&nbsp; The English strain in the
+family found expression in him, and in him alone.&nbsp; There was
+a something in the hearty ring of his voice that drew Englishmen
+to him as by a magnet.</p>
+<p>While it was but little that the others drew from the rich
+soil of merry England, he drew from it half at least of his
+radiant personality&mdash;half at least of his incomparable
+genius.&nbsp; Though he was in every way part and parcel of that
+marvellous little family circle of children of genius in
+Charlotte Street, he had also the power of looking at it from the
+outside.&nbsp; It would be strange, indeed, if this or any other
+power should be found lacking in him.&nbsp; I have often heard
+Rossetti&mdash;by the red flicker of the studio fire, when the
+gas was turned down to save his eyesight&mdash;give the most
+graphic and fascinating descriptions of the little group and the
+way in which they grew up to be what they were under the tuition
+of a father whose career can only be called romantic, and a
+mother whose intellectual gifts were so remarkable that, had they
+not been in some great degree stifled by the exercise of an
+entire self-abnegation on behalf of her family, she, too, must
+have become an important figure in literature.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p182b.jpg">
+<img alt="Mrs. Rossetti.  From a crayon-drawing by D. G. Rossetti
+reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti"
+src="images/p182s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The father died in 1854, many years before <!-- page 182--><a
+name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>I knew the
+family; but Gabriel&rsquo;s description of him; his conversations
+with his brother-refugees and others who visited the
+house&mdash;conversations in which the dreamy and the
+matter-of-fact were oddly blent; his striking skill as an
+improvisatore of Italian poetry, and also as a master of
+pen-and-ink drawing; his great musical gift&mdash;a gift which
+none of his family seemed to have inherited; his fine tenor
+voice; his unflinching courage and independence of character
+(qualities which made him refuse, in a Protestant country, to
+make open abjuration of the creed in which the Rossettis had been
+reared, though he detested the Pope and all his works, and was,
+if not an actual freethinker, thoroughly
+latitudinarian)&mdash;Gabriel&rsquo;s pictures of this poet and
+father of poets were so vivid&mdash;so amazingly and incredibly
+vivid&mdash;that I find it difficult to think I never met the
+father in the flesh: not unfrequently I find myself talking of
+him as if I had known him.&nbsp; What higher tribute than this
+can be made to a narrator&rsquo;s dramatic power?&nbsp; Those who
+have seen the elder Rossetti&rsquo;s pen-and-ink drawings (the
+work of a child) will agree with me that Gabriel did not
+over-estimate them in the least degree.&nbsp; All the Rossettis
+inherited from their father voices so musical that they could be
+recognized among other voices in any gathering, and no doubt that
+clear-cut method of syllabification which was so marked a
+characteristic <!-- page 183--><a name="page183"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 183</span>of Christina&rsquo;s conversation,
+but which gave it a sort of foreign tone, was inherited from the
+father.&nbsp; Her affinity to the other two members of the family
+was seen in that intense sense of duty of which Gabriel, with all
+his generosity, had but little.&nbsp; There was no martyrdom she
+would not have undertaken if she thought that duty called upon
+her to undertake it, and this may be said of the other two.</p>
+<p>In most things, however, Christina Rossetti seemed to stand
+midway between Gabriel and the other two members of her family,
+and it was the same in physical matters.&nbsp; She had
+Gabriel&rsquo;s eyes, in which hazel and blue-grey were
+marvellously blent, one hue shifting into the other, answering to
+the movements of the thoughts&mdash;eyes like the
+mother&rsquo;s.&nbsp; And her brown hair, though less warm in
+colour than his during his boyhood, was still like it.&nbsp; When
+a young girl, at the time that she sat for the Virgin in the
+picture now in the National Gallery, she was, as both her mother
+and Gabriel have told me, really lovely, with an extraordinary
+expression of pensive sweetness.&nbsp; She used to have in the
+little back parlour a portrait of herself at eighteen by Gabriel,
+which gives all these qualities.&nbsp; Even then, however, the
+fullness in the eyes was somewhat excessive.&nbsp; Afterwards her
+ill health took a peculiar form, the effect of which was that the
+eyes were, in a manner of speaking, pushed <!-- page 184--><a
+name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>forward,
+and although this protuberance was never disagreeable, it
+certainly took a good deal of beauty from her face.</p>
+<p>Dominant, however, as was the father&rsquo;s personality among
+his friends, the mother&rsquo;s influence upon the children was
+stronger than his; and no wonder, for I think there was no
+beautiful charm of woman that Mrs. Rossetti lacked.&nbsp; She did
+not seem at all aware that she was a woman of exceptional gifts,
+yet her intellectual penetration and the curious exactitude of
+her knowledge were so remarkable that Gabriel accepted her dicta
+as oracles not to be challenged.&nbsp; One of her specialities
+was the pronunciation of English words, in which she was an
+authority.&nbsp; I cannot resist giving one little instance, as
+it illustrates a sweet feature of Gabriel&rsquo;s
+character.&nbsp; It occurred on a lovely summer&rsquo;s day in
+the old Kelmscott manor house in 1873, when Mrs. Rossetti,
+Christina, and myself were watching Gabriel at work upon
+&lsquo;Proserpine.&rsquo;&nbsp; I had pronounced the word
+<i>aspirant</i> with the accent upon the middle syllable.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Pardon me, my dear fellow,&rdquo; said he, without looking
+from his work, &ldquo;that word should be pronounced with the
+accent on the first syllable, as a purist like you ought to
+know.&rdquo;&nbsp; On my challenging this, he said, in a tone
+which was meant to show that he was saying the last word upon the
+subject, &ldquo;My mother always says <i>&aacute;spirant</i>, and
+she is always right upon <!-- page 185--><a
+name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>matters of
+pronunciation.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Then I shall always say
+<i>&aacute;spirant</i>,&rdquo; I replied.&nbsp; And I may add
+that I now do say <i>&aacute;spirant</i>, and, right or wrong,
+intend to say <i>&aacute;spirant</i> so long as this breath of
+mine enables me to say <i>&aacute;spirant</i> at all.&nbsp;
+Afterwards Christina, as we were strolling by the weir, watching
+Gabriel and George Hake pounding across the meadows at the rate
+of five miles an hour, said to me, &ldquo;I think you were right
+about <i>asp&iacute;rant</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;it is a dear, old-fashioned way.&nbsp; Your mother
+says <i>&aacute;spirant</i>; I now remember that my own mother
+said <i>&aacute;spirant</i>.&nbsp; I shall stick to
+<i>&aacute;spirant</i> till the end of the chapter.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And Christina said, &ldquo;Then so will I.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Among Mrs. Rossetti&rsquo;s accomplishments was reading aloud,
+mainly from imaginative writers, and I cannot recall without a
+thrill of mingled emotions a delightful stay of mine at Kelmscott
+in the summer of &rsquo;73, when she, whose age then was
+seventy-three, used to read out to us all sorts of things.&nbsp;
+And writing these words makes me hear those readings
+again&mdash;makes me hear, through the open casement of the
+quaint old house, the blackbirds from the home field trying in
+vain to rival the music of that half-Italian, half-English
+voice.&nbsp; To have been admitted into such a charmed circle I
+look upon as one of the greatest privileges of my life.&nbsp; It
+is something for a man to have lived within touch of Christina
+Rossetti and her mother.&nbsp; <!-- page 186--><a
+name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>From her
+father, however, Christina took, either by the operation of some
+law of heredity or from early association with the author of
+&lsquo;Il Mistero dell&rsquo; Amor Platonico del Medio Evo&rsquo;
+and &lsquo;La Beatrice di Dante,&rsquo; that passion for
+symbolism which is one of the chief features of her poetry.&nbsp;
+There is, perhaps, no more striking instance of the inscrutable
+lines in which ancestral characteristics descend than the way in
+which the passion for symbolism was inherited by Christina and
+Gabriel Rossetti from their father.</p>
+<p>While Christina&rsquo;s poetical work may be described as
+being all symbolical, she was not much given, like her brother,
+to read symbols into the every-day incidents of life.&nbsp;
+Gabriel, on the contrary, though using symbolism in his poetry in
+only a moderate degree, allowed his instinct for symbolizing his
+own life to pass into positive superstition.&nbsp; When a party
+of us&mdash;including Mrs. Rossetti, Christina, the two aunts,
+Dr. Hake, with four of his sons, and myself&mdash;were staying
+for Christmas with Gabriel near Bognor, a tree fell in the garden
+during a storm.&nbsp; While Gabriel seemed inclined to take it as
+a sign of future disaster, Christina, whose poetry is so full of
+symbolism, would smile at such a notion.&nbsp; Yet Gabriel could
+speak of his father&rsquo;s symbolizing (as in &lsquo;La Beatrice
+di Dante&rsquo;) as being absolutely and hopelessly eccentric and
+worthless.&nbsp; This is <!-- page 187--><a
+name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>remarkable,
+for one would have thought that it was impossible to read those
+extraordinary works of the elder Rossetti&rsquo;s without being
+impressed by the rare intellectual subtlety of the Italian
+scholar.</p>
+<p>Of course the opportunities of brother and sister of studying
+Nature were identical.&nbsp; Both were born in London, and during
+childhood saw Nature only as a holiday scene.&nbsp; Christina
+would talk with delight of her grandfather&rsquo;s cottage
+retreat about thirty miles from London, to which she used to go
+for a holiday in a stage coach, and of the beauty of the country
+around.&nbsp; But these expeditions were not numerous, and came
+to an end when she was a child of seven or eight, and it was very
+little that she saw outside London before girlhood was
+past.&nbsp; I have myself heard her speak of what she has
+somewhere written about&mdash;the rapture of the sight of some
+primroses growing in a railway cutting.&nbsp; It is, of course, a
+great disadvantage to any poet not to have been born in the
+country; learned in Nature the city-born poet can never be, as we
+see in the case of Milton, who loved Nature without knowing
+her.&nbsp; It is here that Jean Ingelow has such an advantage
+over Christina Rossetti.&nbsp; Her love of flowers, and birds,
+and trees, and all that makes the earth so beautiful, is not one
+whit stronger than Christina&rsquo;s own, but it is a love born
+of an exhaustive detailed knowledge of Nature&rsquo;s life.</p>
+<p><!-- page 188--><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+188</span>On a certain occasion when walking with a friend at
+Hunter&rsquo;s Forestall, near Herne Bay, where she and her
+mother were nursing Gabriel through one of his illnesses, the
+talk ran upon Shelley&rsquo;s &lsquo;Skylark,&rsquo; a poem which
+she adored.&nbsp; She was literally bewildered because the friend
+showed that he was able to tell, from a certain change of sound
+in the note of a skylark that had risen over the lane, the moment
+when the bird had made up its mind to cease singing and return to
+the earth.&nbsp; It seemed to her an almost supernatural gift,
+and yet an ignorant ploughman will often be able to do the same
+thing.&nbsp; This kind of intimacy with Nature she coveted.&nbsp;
+With the lower animals, nevertheless, she had a strange kind of
+sympathy of her own.&nbsp; Young creatures especially understood
+the playful humour of her approach.&nbsp; A delightful fantastic
+whim was the bond between her and puppies and kittens and
+birds.&nbsp; Her intimacy with Nature&mdash;of a different kind
+altogether from that of Wordsworth and Tennyson&mdash;was of the
+kind that I have described on a previous occasion as Sufeyistic:
+she loved the beauty of this world, but not entirely for itself;
+she loved it on account of its symbols of another world
+beyond.&nbsp; And yet she was no slave to the ascetic side of
+Christianity.&nbsp; No doubt there was mixed with her
+spiritualism, or perhaps underlying it, a rich sensuousness that
+under other circumstances <!-- page 189--><a
+name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>of life
+would have made itself manifest, and also a rare potentiality of
+deep passion.&nbsp; It is this, indeed, which makes the study of
+her great and noble nature so absorbing.</p>
+<p>Perhaps for strength both of subject and of treatment,
+Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s masterpiece is &lsquo;Amor
+Mundi.&rsquo;&nbsp; Here we get a lesson of human life expressed,
+not didactically, but in a concrete form of unsurpassable
+strength, harmony, and concision.&nbsp; Indeed, it may be said of
+her work generally that her strength as an artist is seen not so
+much in mastery over the rhythm, or even over the verbal texture
+of poetry, as in the skill with which she expresses an
+allegorical intent by subtle suggestion instead of direct
+preachment.&nbsp; Herein &lsquo;An Apple Gathering&rsquo; is
+quite perfect.&nbsp; It is, however, if I may venture to say so,
+a mistake to speak of Christina Rossetti as being a great poetic
+artist.&nbsp; Exquisite as her best things are, no one had a more
+uncertain hand than she when at work.&nbsp; Here, as in so many
+things, she was like Blake, whose influence upon her was very
+great.</p>
+<p>Of self-criticism she had almost nothing.&nbsp; On one
+occasion, many years ago now, she expressed a wish to have some
+of her verses printed in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, and I
+suggested her sending them to 16, Cheyne Walk, her
+brother&rsquo;s house, where I then used to spend much time in a
+study that I occupied there.&nbsp; I said that her brother and I
+would read them together and <!-- page 190--><a
+name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 190</span>submit them
+to the editor.&nbsp; She sent several poems (I think about six),
+not one of which was in the least degree worthy of her.&nbsp;
+This naturally embarrassed me, but Gabriel, who entirely shared
+my opinion of the poems, wrote at once to her and told her that
+the verses sent were, both in his own judgment and mine, unworthy
+of her, and that she &ldquo;had better buckle to at once and
+write another poem.&rdquo;&nbsp; She did so, and the result was
+an exquisite lyric which appeared in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; Here is where she was wonderfully
+unlike Gabriel, whose power of self-criticism in poetry was
+almost as great as Tennyson&rsquo;s own.&nbsp; But in the matter
+of inspiration she was, I must think, above Gabriel&mdash;above
+almost everybody.</p>
+<p>If English rhymed metres had been as easy to work in as
+Italian rhymed metres, her imagination was so vivid, her poetic
+impulse was so strong, and, indeed, her poetic wealth so
+inexhaustible, that she would have stood in the front rank of
+English poets.&nbsp; But the writer of English rhymed measures is
+in a very different position as regards improvisatorial efforts
+from the Italian who writes in rhymed measures.&nbsp; He has to
+grapple with the metrical structure&mdash;to seize the form by
+the throat, as it were, and force it to take in the enormous
+wealth at the English poet&rsquo;s command.&nbsp; Fine as is the
+&lsquo;Prince&rsquo;s Progress,&rsquo; for instance (and it would
+be hard to <!-- page 191--><a name="page191"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 191</span>find its superior in regard to
+poetic material in the whole compass of Victorian poetry), the
+number of rugged lines the reader has to encounter weighs upon
+and distresses him until, indeed, the conclusion is reached: then
+the passion and the pathos of the subject cause the poem to rise
+upon billows of true rhythm.&nbsp; On the other hand, however, it
+may be said that a special quality of her verse is a <i>curiosa
+felicitas</i> which makes a metrical blemish tell as a kind of
+suggestive grace.&nbsp; But I must stop; I must bear in mind that
+he who has walked and talked with Christina Rossetti, burdened
+with a wealth of remembered beauty from earth and heaven, runs
+the risk of becoming garrulous.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 192--><a name="page192"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 192</span>II.</h3>
+<p>In regard to unpublished manuscripts which a writer has left
+behind him, the responsibilities of his legal representatives are
+far more grave than seems to be generally supposed.&nbsp; In
+deciding what posthumous writings an executor is justified in
+giving to the public it is important, of course, to take into
+account the character, the idiosyncrasy of the writer in regard
+to all his relations towards what may be called the mechanism of
+every-day life.&nbsp; Some poets are so methodical that the mere
+fact of anything having been left by them in manuscript
+unaccompanied by directions as to its disposal is <i>prim&acirc;
+facie</i> evidence that it was intended to be withheld from the
+public, either temporarily for revision or finally and
+absolutely.&nbsp; And, of course, the representative, especially
+if he is also a relative or a friend, has to consider primarily
+the intentions of the dead.&nbsp; If loyalty to living friends is
+a duty, what shall be said of loyalty to friends who are
+dead?&nbsp; This, indeed, has a sanction of the deepest religious
+kind.</p>
+<p>No doubt, in the philosophical sense, the aspiration of the
+dead artist for perfect work and the honour it brings is a
+delusion, a sweet <!-- page 193--><a name="page193"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 193</span>mockery of the fancy.&nbsp; But then
+so is every other aspiration which soars above the warm circle of
+the human affections, and if this delusion of the dead artist was
+held worthy of respect during the artist&rsquo;s life, it is
+worthy of respect&mdash;nay, it is worthy of
+reverence&mdash;after he is dead.&nbsp; Now every true artist
+when at work has before him an ideal which he would fain reach,
+or at least approach, and if he does not himself know whether in
+any given exercise he has reached that ideal or neared it, we may
+be pretty sure that no one else does.&nbsp; Hence, whenever there
+is apparent in the circumstances under which the MS. has been
+found the slightest indication that the writer did not wish it to
+be given to the public, the representative who ignores this
+indication sins against that reverence for the dead which in all
+forms of civilization declares itself to be one of the deepest
+instincts of man.</p>
+<p>That the instinct we are speaking of is really one of the
+primal instincts is the very first fact that arch&aelig;ology
+vouches for.&nbsp; Of many lost races, such as the Aztecs and
+Toltecs, for instance, we have no historical traces save those
+which are furnished by testimonials of their reverence for the
+dead.&nbsp; But that this fine instinct is now dying out in the
+Western world&mdash;that it will soon be eliminated from the
+human constitution of races that are generally considered to be
+the most advanced&mdash;is made <!-- page 194--><a
+name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>manifest by
+the present attitude of England and America towards their
+illustrious dead.&nbsp; In the literary arena of both countries,
+indeed, so entire is the abrogation of this most beautiful of all
+feelings&mdash;so recklessly and so shamefully are not only raw
+manuscripts, but private letters, put up to auction for
+publication&mdash;that at last the great writers of our time,
+confronted by this new terror, are wisely beginning to take care
+of themselves and their friends by a holocaust of every scrap of
+paper lying in their desks.</p>
+<p>So demoralized has the literary world become by the present
+craze for notoriety and for personal details of prominent men
+that an executor who in regard to the disposal of his
+testator&rsquo;s money would act with the most rigid
+scrupulousness will, in regard to the MSS. he finds in his
+testator&rsquo;s desk, commit, &ldquo;for the benefit of the
+public,&rdquo; an outrage that would have made the men of a less
+vulgar period shudder.&nbsp; The &ldquo;benefit of the
+public,&rdquo; indeed!&nbsp; Who is this &ldquo;public,&rdquo;
+and what are its rights as against the rights of the dead poet,
+whose heartstrings are woven into &ldquo;copy&rdquo; by the
+disloyal friend he trusted?&nbsp; The inherent callousness of
+man&rsquo;s nature is never so painfully seen as in the relation
+of this ogre, &ldquo;the public,&rdquo; to dead genius.&nbsp;
+Without the smallest real reverence for genius&mdash;without the
+smallest capacity of distinguishing the poetaster it <!-- page
+195--><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+195</span>always adores from the true poet it always
+ignores&mdash;the public can still fall down before the pedestal
+upon which genius has been placed by the select few&mdash;fall
+down with its long ears wide open for gossip about genius, or
+anything else that is talked about.</p>
+<p>It was with such thoughts as these that we opened the present
+somewhat bulky volume <a name="citation195"></a><a
+href="#footnote195" class="citation">[195]</a>&mdash;not,
+however, with many misgivings; for Christina Rossetti, before she
+made her brother executor, knew what were his views as to the
+rights of the public as against the rights of genius.&nbsp; And
+if he has printed here every poem he could lay hands upon, he may
+fairly be assumed to have done so with the consent of a sister
+whom he loved so dearly and by whom he was so dearly loved.&nbsp;
+Fortunately there are not many of these relics that are devoid of
+a deep interest, some from the biographical point of view, some
+from the poetical.</p>
+<p>Again, what is to be said about such part of a dead
+author&rsquo;s writing as, having appeared in print, has
+afterwards passed through the author&rsquo;s crucible of artistic
+revision?&nbsp; What about the executor&rsquo;s duty here, where
+the case between the author and the public stands on a different
+footing?&nbsp; At the present time, when newspapers and novels
+alone are read, it is not the poet&rsquo;s verses which most
+people read, but <!-- page 196--><a name="page196"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 196</span>paragraphs about what the author and
+his wife and children &ldquo;eat and drink and avoid&rdquo;: a
+time when, if the poet&rsquo;s verses are read at all, it is the
+accidents rather than the essentials of the work that seem
+primarily to concern the public.&nbsp; At such a time an editor
+is not entirely master of his actions.&nbsp; Doubtless, there is
+much reason in the wrath of Tennyson and other great poets
+against the &ldquo;literary resurrection man,&rdquo; who, though
+incapable of understanding the beauties of a beautiful work, can
+take a very great interest in poring over the various stages
+through which that work has passed on its way to
+perfection.&nbsp; These poets, however, are apt to forget that,
+after a poem or line has once passed into print, its final
+suppression is impossible.&nbsp; And perhaps there are other
+reasons why, in this matter, an editor should be allowed some
+indulgence.</p>
+<p>Here, for instance, is a puzzling case to be tried <i>in foro
+conscienti&aelig;</i>.&nbsp; In the first edition of
+&lsquo;Goblin Market,&rsquo; published in 1862, appeared three
+poems of more breadth of treatment than any of the others:
+&lsquo;Cousin Kate,&rsquo; a ballad, &lsquo;Sister Maude,&rsquo;
+a ballad, and &lsquo;A Triad,&rsquo; a sonnet.&nbsp; In
+subsequent issues of the book these were all omitted.&nbsp; Mr.
+W. M. Rossetti, speaking of &lsquo;Sister Maude,&rsquo; says:
+&ldquo;I presume that my sister, with overstrained scrupulosity,
+considered its moral tone to be somewhat open to exception.&nbsp;
+In such a view I by no means <!-- page 197--><a
+name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>agree, and
+I therefore reproduce it.&rdquo;&nbsp; If Christina&rsquo;s
+objection was valid when she raised it, it is, of course, valid
+now, when the beloved poet is in the &ldquo;country beyond
+Orion,&rdquo; and knows what sanctions are of man&rsquo;s
+imagining, and what sanctions are more eternal than the movements
+of the stars.</p>
+<p>The question here is, What were Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s
+wishes? not whether her brother &ldquo;agrees&rdquo; with
+them.&nbsp; Hence, if it were not certain that some one would
+soon have restored them, would Mr. W. M. Rossetti have hesitated
+before doing so?&nbsp; For they are among the most powerful
+things Christina Rossetti ever wrote, and it was a subject of
+deep regret to her friends that she suppressed them.&nbsp; Yet
+she withdrew them from conscientious motives.&nbsp; In
+&lsquo;Sister Maude&rsquo; she showed how great was her power in
+the most difficult of all forms of poetic art&mdash;the romantic
+ballad.&nbsp; Splendid as are Gabriel Rossetti&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Sister Helen&rsquo; and &lsquo;Rose Mary,&rsquo; the
+literary <i>aura</i> surrounding them prevents them from
+seeming&mdash;as the best of the Border ballads
+seem&mdash;Nature&rsquo;s very voice muttering in her dreams of
+the pathos and the mystery of the human story.&nbsp; It was not,
+perhaps, given even to Rossetti to get very near to that supreme
+old poet (not forgotten, because never known) who wrote
+&ldquo;May Margaret&rsquo;s&rdquo; appeal to the ghost of her
+lover Clerk Saunders:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p><!-- page 198--><a name="page198"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 198</span>Is there ony room at your head,
+Saunders?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is there ony room at your feet?<br />
+Is there ony room at your side, Saunders,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where fain, fain I wad sleep?</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>where the very imperfections of the rhymes seem somehow to add
+to the pathos and the mystery of the chant.&nbsp; But if, indeed,
+it has been given to any modern poet to get into this atmosphere,
+it has been given to Christina Rossetti.&nbsp; And so with the
+ballad of simple human passion no modern writer has quite done
+what Christina Rossetti has done in one of the poems here
+restored:&mdash;</p>
+<h4>SISTER MAUDE.</h4>
+<blockquote><p>Who told my mother of my shame,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who told my father of my dear?<br />
+Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who lurked to spy and peer.</p>
+<p>Cold he lies, as cold as stone,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With his clotted curls about his face:<br />
+The comeliest corpse in all the world,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And worthy of a queen&rsquo;s embrace.</p>
+<p>You might have spared his soul, sister,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Have spared my soul, your own soul too:<br />
+Though I had not been born at all,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; He&rsquo;d never have looked at you.</p>
+<p>My father may sleep in Paradise,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My mother at Heaven-gate:<br />
+But sister Maude shall get no sleep<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Either early or late.</p>
+<p>My father may wear a golden gown,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My mother a crown may win;<br />
+If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Perhaps they&rsquo;d let us in:<br />
+But sister Maude, O sister Maude,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bide <i>you</i> with death and sin.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 199--><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+199</span>But it is for the personal poems that this volume will
+be prized most dearly by certain readers.</p>
+<p>Mr. W. M. Rossetti speaks of &ldquo;the very wide and
+exceedingly strong outburst of eulogy&rdquo; of his sister which
+appeared in the public press after her death.&nbsp; Yet that
+outburst was far from giving adequate expression to what was felt
+by some of her readers&mdash;those between whom and herself there
+was a bond of sympathy so sacred and so deep as to be something
+like a religion.&nbsp; It is not merely that she was the
+acknowledged queen in that world (outside the arena called
+&ldquo;the literary world&rdquo;) where poetry is &ldquo;its own
+exceeding great reward,&rdquo; but to other readers of a
+different kind altogether&mdash;readers who, drawing the deepest
+delight from such poetry as specially appeals to them, never read
+any other, and have but small knowledge of poetry as a fine
+art&mdash;her verse was, perhaps, more precious still.&nbsp; They
+feel that at every page of her writing the beautiful poetry is
+only the outcome of a life whose almost unexampled beauty
+fascinates them.</p>
+<p>Although Christina Rossetti had more of what is called the
+unconsciousness of poetic inspiration than any other poet of her
+time, the writing of poetry was not by any means the chief
+business of her life.&nbsp; She was too thorough a poet for
+that.&nbsp; No one felt so deeply as she that poetic art is only
+at the best the imperfect body in which dwells the poetic
+soul.&nbsp; <!-- page 200--><a name="page200"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 200</span>No one felt so deeply as she that as
+the notes of the nightingale are but the involuntary expression
+of the bird&rsquo;s emotion, and, again, as the perfume of the
+violet is but the flower&rsquo;s natural breath, so it is and
+must be with the song of the very poet, and that, therefore, to
+write beautifully is in a deep and true sense to live
+beautifully.&nbsp; In the volume before us, as in all her
+previously published writings, we see at its best what
+Christianity is as the motive power of poetry.&nbsp; The
+Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine
+quality Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s poetry is full.</p>
+<p>In motive power the difference between classic and Christian
+poetry must needs be very great.&nbsp; But whatever may be said
+in favour of one as against the other, this at least cannot be
+controverted, that the history of literature shows no human
+development so beautiful as the ideal Christian woman of our own
+day.&nbsp; She is unique, indeed.&nbsp; Men of science tell us
+that among all the fossilized plants we find none of the lovely
+family of the rose, and in the same way we should search in vain
+through the entire human record for anything so beautiful as that
+kind of Christian lady to whom self-abnegation is not only the
+first of duties, but the first of joys.&nbsp; Yet, no doubt, the
+Christian idea must needs be more or less flavoured by each
+personality through which it is expressed.&nbsp; With regard to
+Christina <!-- page 201--><a name="page201"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 201</span>Rossetti, while upon herself
+Christian dogma imposed infinite obligations&mdash;obligations
+which could never be evaded by her without the risk of all the
+penalties fulminated by all believers&mdash;there was in the
+order of things a sort of ether of universal charity for all
+others.&nbsp; She would lament, of course, the lapses of every
+soul, but for these there was a forgiveness which her own lapses
+could never claim.&nbsp; There was, to be sure, a sweet egotism
+in this.&nbsp; It was very fascinating, however.&nbsp; This
+feeling explains what seems somewhat to puzzle the editor,
+especially in the poem called &lsquo;The End of the First
+Part,&rsquo; written April 18th, 1849, of which he says,
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Tears for guilt&rsquo; is in reference to Christina
+a very exaggerated phrase&rdquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<h4>THE END OF THE FIRST PART.</h4>
+<blockquote><p>My happy dream is finished with,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My dream in which alone I lived so long.<br />
+My heart slept&mdash;woe is me, it wakeneth;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was weak&mdash;I thought it strong.</p>
+<p>Oh, weary wakening from a life-true dream!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh pleasant dream from which I wake in pain!<br />
+I rested all my trust on things that seem,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And all my trust is vain.</p>
+<p>I must pull down my palace that I built,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dig up the pleasure-gardens of my soul;<br />
+Must change my laughter to sad tears for guilt,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My freedom to control.</p>
+<p>Now all the cherished secrets of my heart,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Now all my hidden hopes, are turned to sin.<br />
+Part of my life is dead, part sick, and part<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is all on fire within.</p>
+<p><!-- page 202--><a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+202</span>The fruitless thought of what I might have been,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Haunting me ever, will not let me rest.<br />
+A cold North wind has withered all my green,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My sun is in the West.</p>
+<p>But, where my palace stood, with the same stone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I will uprear a shady hermitage;<br />
+And there my spirit shall keep house alone,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Accomplishing its age.</p>
+<p>There other garden beds shall lie around,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Full of sweet-briar and incense-bearing thyme:<br />
+There I will sit, and listen for the sound<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the last lingering chime.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It was the beauty of her life that made her personal influence
+so great, and upon no one was that influence exercised with more
+strength than upon her illustrious brother Gabriel, who in many
+ways was so much unlike her.&nbsp; In spite of his deep religious
+instinct and his intense sympathy with mysticism, Gabriel
+remained what is called a free thinker in the true meaning of
+that much-abused phrase.&nbsp; In religion as in politics he
+thought for himself, and yet when Mr. W. M. Rossetti affirms that
+the poet was never drawn towards free thinking women, he says
+what is perfectly true.&nbsp; And this arose from the
+extraordinary influence, scarcely recognized by himself, that the
+beauty of Christina&rsquo;s life and her religious system had
+upon him.</p>
+<p>This, of course, is not the place in which to say much about
+him; nor need much at any time and in any place be said, for has
+he not <!-- page 203--><a name="page203"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 203</span>written his own
+biography&mdash;depicted himself more faithfully than Lockhart
+could depict Walter Scott, more faithfully than Boswell could
+depict Dr. Johnson?&nbsp; Has he not done this in the immortal
+sonnet-sequence called &lsquo;The House of Life&rsquo;?&nbsp;
+What poet of the nineteenth century do we know so intimately as
+we know the author of &lsquo;The House of Life&rsquo;?</p>
+<p>Christina Rossetti&rsquo;s peculiar form of the Christian
+sentiment she inherited from her mother, the sweetness of whose
+nature was never disturbed by that exercise of the egoism of the
+artist in which Christina indulged and without whose influence it
+is difficult to imagine what the Rossetti family would have
+been.&nbsp; The father was a poet and a mystic of the
+cryptographic kind, and it is by no means unlikely that had he
+studied Shakespeare as he studied Dante he would in these days
+have been a disciple of the Baconians, and, of course, his
+influence on the family in the matter of literary activity and of
+mysticism must have been very great.&nbsp; And yet all that is
+noblest in Christina&rsquo;s poetry, an ever-present sense of the
+beauty and power of goodness, must surely have come from the
+mother, from whom also came that other charm of
+Christina&rsquo;s, to which Gabriel was peculiarly sensitive, her
+youthfulness of temperament.</p>
+<p>Among the many differences which exist between the sexes this
+might, perhaps, be <!-- page 204--><a name="page204"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 204</span>mentioned, that while it is
+beautiful for a man to grow old&mdash;grow old with the passage
+of years&mdash;a woman to retain her charm must always remain
+young.&nbsp; In a deep sense woman may be said to have but one
+paramount charm, youth, and when this is gone all is gone.&nbsp;
+The youthfulness of the body, of course, soon vanishes, but with
+any woman who can really win and retain the love of man this is
+not nearly so important as at first it seems.&nbsp; It is the
+youthfulness of the soul that, in the truly adorable woman, is
+invulnerable.&nbsp; It is one of the deep misfortunes of the very
+poor of cities that as a rule the terrible struggle with the wolf
+at the door is apt to sour the nature of women and turn them into
+crones at the age when in the more fortunate classes the true
+beauty of woman often begins; and even where the environment is
+not that of poverty, but of straitened means, it is as a rule
+impossible for a woman to retain this youthfulness.</p>
+<p>In the case of the Rossettis, in the early period they were in
+a position of straitened means.&nbsp; Nor was this all: the
+children, Gabriel alone excepted, felt themselves to be by
+nationality aliens.&nbsp; Christina, though she made only one
+visit to Italy, felt herself to be an Italian, and would smile
+when any one talked to her of the John Bullism of her brother
+Gabriel, and yet, with these powerful causes working against
+their natural elasticity of temperament, both <!-- page 205--><a
+name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>mother and
+daughter retained that juvenility which Gabriel Rossetti felt to
+be so refreshing.&nbsp; So strong was it in the mother that it
+had a strange effect upon the mere physique, and at eighty the
+expression in the eyes, and, indeed, on the face throughout,
+retained so much of the winsomeness of youth that she was more
+beautiful than most young women:&mdash;</p>
+<h4>1882.</h4>
+<blockquote><p>My blessed mother dozing in her chair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On Christmas Day seemed an embodied Love,<br />
+A comfortable Love with soft brown hair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Softened and silvered to a tint of dove;<br />
+A better sort of Venus with an air<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Angelical from thoughts that dwell above;<br />
+A wiser Pallas in whose body fair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Enshrined a blessed soul looks out thereof.<br />
+Winter brought holly then, now Spring has brought<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Paler and frailer snowdrops shivering;<br />
+And I have brought a simple humble thought&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I her devoted duteous Valentine&mdash;<br />
+A lifelong thought which thrills this song I sing,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A lifelong love to this dear saint of mine.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Although this was not so with Christina, upon whose face
+ill-health worked its ravages, her temperament, as we say,
+remained as young as ever.&nbsp; The lovely
+relations&mdash;sometimes staid and sometimes
+playful&mdash;between mother and daughter, are seen throughout
+the book before us.&nbsp; But especially are they seen in one
+little group of poems&mdash;&ldquo;The Valentines to her
+Mother&rdquo;&mdash;in regard to which Christina left the
+following pencilled note:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;These Valentines had their origin from my <!-- page
+206--><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+206</span>dearest mother&rsquo;s remarking that she had never
+received one.&nbsp; I, her C. G. R., ever after supplied one on
+the day; and (so far as I recollect) it was a surprise every
+time, she having forgotten all about it in the
+interim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Rossetti&rsquo;s first valentine was received when she
+was nearly seventy-six years of age, and she continued every year
+to receive a valentine until 1886, when she died.&nbsp; Surely
+there is not in the history of English poetry anything more
+fascinating than these valentines.</p>
+<p>It is pleasing to see the book open with the following
+dedication by Mr. W. M. Rossetti:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To Algernon Charles Swinburne, a generous eulogist of
+Christina Rossetti, who hailed his genius and prized himself the
+greatest of living British poets, my old and constant friend, I
+dedicate this book.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><!-- page 207--><a name="page207"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 207</span>V.&nbsp; DR. GORDON HAKE.<br />
+1809&ndash;1895.</h2>
+<p>I little thought when I recently quoted from Dr. Hake&rsquo;s
+account of that Christmas gathering of the Rossettis at Bognor in
+1875&mdash;a gathering which he has made historic&mdash;that
+to-day I should be writing an obituary notice of the
+&ldquo;parable-poet&rdquo; himself.&nbsp; It is true that, having
+fractured a leg in a lamentable accident which befell him, he had
+for the last few years been imprisoned in one room and compelled
+during most of the time to lie in a horizontal position.&nbsp;
+But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding his great age, his
+mental faculties remained so unimpaired that it was hard to
+believe his death could be so near.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p208b.jpg">
+<img alt="Dr. Gordon Hake.  From a crayon-drawing by D. G.
+Rossetti reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. Thomas Hake"
+src="images/p208s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Although, owing to his intimacy with George Borrow, Hake was
+associated in the public mind with the Eastern Counties, he was
+not an East Anglian.&nbsp; It was at Leeds (in 1809) that he
+first saw the light.&nbsp; His mother was a Gordon of the Huntly
+stock, and came of &ldquo;the Park branch&rdquo; of that
+house.&nbsp; The famous General Gordon was his first cousin, and
+it was owing to this fact that Hake&rsquo;s son, Mr. Egmont <!--
+page 208--><a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+208</span>Hake, was entrusted with the material for writing his
+authoritative books upon the heroic Christian soldier.&nbsp;
+Between Hake&rsquo;s eldest son, Mr. T. St. E. Hake, a rising
+novelist, and the General the likeness was curiously
+strong.&nbsp; Nominated by one of his uncles to Christ&rsquo;s
+Hospital, Hake entered that famous school.&nbsp; He gives in his
+&lsquo;Memoirs of Eighty Years&rsquo; a very vivid picture of it
+and also a really vital portrait of himself.&nbsp; From his very
+childhood he was haunted by a literary ambition which can only be
+called an insatiable passion.&nbsp; It lasted till the very hour
+of his death.&nbsp; When eleven years of age he became acquainted
+with that one poet whose immensity of fame has for more than
+three centuries been the flame into which the myriad Shakespeare
+moths of English literature have been flying.&nbsp; The
+Shakespearean of eleven summers did not, like so many Shakespeare
+enthusiasts from Davenant down to those latest Shakespeares,
+Homers, and Miltons of our contemporary paragraphists, get
+himself up to look like the Stratford bust.&nbsp; The only man
+who ever really looked like that bust was the late Dion
+Boucicault, who did so without trying.&nbsp; But
+Shakespeare&rsquo;s wonderful work acted on the imagination of
+the child of eleven in an equally humorous way.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Shakespeare&rsquo;s perfection,&rdquo; he says in his
+memoirs, &ldquo;not only made me envious of the greatest of
+writers, but it depressed me in turn with the feeling that <!--
+page 209--><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+209</span>I could never equal it howsoever long I might
+live.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Yet although this passion never passed away, but waxed with
+his years, it must not be supposed that Hake suffered from what
+in the &ldquo;new criticism&rdquo; is sweetly and appropriately
+called &ldquo;modernity&rdquo;&mdash;in other words, that vulgar
+greed for notoriety that in these days, when literature to be
+listened to must be puffed like quack medicine and patent soap,
+has made the atmosphere of the literary arena somewhat stifling
+in the nostrils of those who turn from &ldquo;modernity&rdquo; to
+poetic art.&nbsp; Nor was Hake&rsquo;s feeling akin to that fine
+despair</p>
+<blockquote><p>Before the foreheads of the gods of song</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>which true poets, great or small, know&mdash;that fine despair
+which, while it will sometimes stop the breath of one of the true
+sons of Apollo, as it actually did strike mute Charles Wells, and
+as at one time it threatened to stop the breath of Rossetti, will
+lead others to write, and write, and write.&nbsp; It is, however,
+life&rsquo;s illusions that in most cases make life
+tolerable.&nbsp; When in old age calamity came upon Hake, and he
+was shut out from life as by a prison wall, his one solace, the
+one thing that really bound him to life, was this ambitious dream
+which came upon the Bluecoat boy of eleven.</p>
+<p>His mother was in easy circumstances, and when a youth Hake
+travelled a good deal on the Continent, where his success in the
+&ldquo;great <!-- page 210--><a name="page210"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 210</span>world&rdquo; of that time was swift
+and complete.&nbsp; If this success was owing as much to his
+exceptionally striking personal appearance and natural endowment
+of style as to his intellectual equipments&mdash;high as these
+were&mdash;that is not surprising to those who knew him.&nbsp; Of
+course he was well advanced in years before I was old enough to
+call him my friend; but even then he was so extremely handsome a
+man that I can well believe the stories I have got from his
+family connexions (such as his wife&rsquo;s sisters) of his
+appearance in youth.&nbsp; With the single exception of Tennyson,
+he was the most poetical-looking poet I have ever seen.&nbsp; And
+circumstances put to the best uses his natural gift of style; for
+it was in the plastic period of his life that he met the best
+people on the Continent and in England.&nbsp; I suspect, indeed,
+that after the plastic period in a man&rsquo;s life is passed it
+is not of much use for him to come into contact with what used to
+be called &ldquo;the great world.&rdquo;&nbsp; To be, or to seem
+to be, unconscious of one&rsquo;s own bearing towards the world,
+and unconscious of the world&rsquo;s bearing towards oneself, is,
+I fancy, impossible to a man&mdash;even though he have the genius
+and intellectual endowment of a Browning&mdash;who is for the
+first time brought into touch with society after the plastic
+period is passed.</p>
+<p>I have told elsewhere the whimsical story of Hake and
+Rossetti, of Rossetti&rsquo;s delightful <!-- page 211--><a
+name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>account of
+his reading as a boy, in a coffee-house in Chancery Lane,
+Hake&rsquo;s remarkable romance &lsquo;Vates,&rsquo; afterwards
+called &lsquo;Valdarno,&rsquo; in a magazine; his writing a
+letter about it to the unknown author, and getting no reply until
+many years had passed.&nbsp; Hake&rsquo;s relations towards
+Rossetti were of the deepest and most sacred kind.&nbsp; Rossetti
+had the highest opinion of Hake&rsquo;s poetical genius, and also
+felt towards him the greatest love and gratitude for services of
+an inestimable kind rendered to him in the direst crisis of his
+life.&nbsp; To enter upon these matters, however, is obviously
+impossible in a brief and hurried obituary notice; and equally
+impossible is it for me to enter into the poetic principles of a
+writer whose very originality has been a barrier to his winning a
+wide recognition.</p>
+<p>Hake&rsquo;s best work is that, I think, contained in the
+volume called &lsquo;New Symbols,&rsquo; in which there is
+disclosed an extraordinary variety of poetic power.&nbsp; In
+execution, too, he is at his best in that volume.&nbsp; Christina
+Rossetti has often told me that &lsquo;Ecce Homo&rsquo; impressed
+her more profoundly than did any other poem of her own
+time.&nbsp; Also its daring startled her.&nbsp; It was, however,
+the previous volume, &lsquo;Madeline, and other Poems,&rsquo;
+which brought him into contact with Rossetti&mdash;the great
+event of his literary life.</p>
+<p>If the man ever lived who could take as much <!-- page
+212--><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+212</span>interest in another man&rsquo;s work as his own, Dr.
+Hake in finding Rossetti found that man.&nbsp; Although at that
+time Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and
+Swinburne were running abreast of each other, there was no poet
+in England who would not have felt honoured by having his work
+reviewed by Rossetti.&nbsp; But Dr. Hake, whose name was
+absolutely unknown, had made his way into Rossetti&rsquo;s
+affections&mdash;as, indeed, he made his way into the affections
+of all who knew him&mdash;and this was quite enough to induce
+Rossetti to ask Dr. Appleton for leave to review
+&lsquo;Madeline&rsquo; in &rsquo;71 in <i>The Academy</i>&mdash;a
+request which Appleton, of course, was delighted to grant.&nbsp;
+And again, when in 1873 &lsquo;Parables and Tales&rsquo;
+appeared, Mr. John Morley, we may be sure, was something more
+than willing to let Rossetti review the book in <i>The
+Fortnightly Review</i>; and, again, when &lsquo;New
+Symbols&rsquo; appeared, there was some talk about
+Rossetti&rsquo;s reviewing it in <i>The Fortnightly Review</i>;
+but this, for certain reasons which Rossetti explained to
+me&mdash;reasons which have been misunderstood, but which were
+entirely adequate&mdash;was abandoned.&nbsp; Down to the period
+when Dr. Hake went to live in Germany he and his son Mr. Gordon
+Hake were among the most intimate friends of the great
+poet-painter.&nbsp; Mr. Gordon Hake, indeed, a man of admirable
+culture and abilities, lived with Rossetti, who certainly
+benefited much by <!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 213</span>contact with his bright and lively
+companion.&nbsp; The portrait of Dr. Hake prefixed to Mrs.
+Meynell&rsquo;s selections from his works is one of
+Rossetti&rsquo;s finest crayons.&nbsp; It is, however, too heavy
+in expression for Hake.</p>
+<p>Full of fine qualities as is his best poetry, full of
+intellectual subtlety, imagination, and a rare combination of
+subjective with objective power, there is apparently in it a
+certain <i>je ne sais quoi</i> which has prevented him at present
+from winning his true meed of fame.&nbsp; His hand, no doubt, is
+uncertain; but so is the hand of many a successful
+poet&mdash;that of Christina Rossetti, for instance.&nbsp; For
+sheer originality of conception and of treatment what recent
+poems surpass or even equal &lsquo;Old Souls&rsquo; and the
+&lsquo;Serpent Charmer&rsquo;?&nbsp; Then take the remarkable
+mastery over colour exhibited by &lsquo;Ortrud&rsquo;s
+Vision.&rsquo;&nbsp; His volume of pantheistic sonnets in the
+Shakespearean form, &lsquo;The New Day,&rsquo; written in his
+eighty-first year, is on the whole, however, his most remarkable
+work.&nbsp; The kind of Sufeyistic nature ecstasy displayed
+therein by a man of so advanced an age is nothing less than
+wonderful.&nbsp; And as to knowledge of nature, not even
+Wordsworth or Tennyson knew nature so completely as did Hake, for
+he had a thorough training as a naturalist.&nbsp; In looking at a
+flower he could enjoy not only its beauty, but also the delight
+of picturing to himself the flower&rsquo;s inherited <!-- page
+214--><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+214</span>beauty and the ancestors from which the flower got its
+inheritance.&nbsp; And as regards the lyrical flow imported into
+so monumental a form as the sonnet, every student of this form
+must needs study the book with the greatest interest.&nbsp; His
+very latest work, however, is in prose.&nbsp; I find it extremely
+difficult to write about &lsquo;Memoirs of Eighty
+Years.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is full of remarkable qualities: wit,
+humour, an ebullience of animal spirits that is
+Rabelaisian.&nbsp; What it lacks (and in some portions of it
+greatly lacks) is delicacy, refinement of tone.&nbsp; And surely
+this is remarkable when we realize the kind of man he was who
+wrote it.</p>
+<p>It has been my privilege to go about with him not only in
+London, but also in Rome, in Paris, in Venice, in Florence, Pisa,
+&amp;c.; and no matter what might be the quality of the society
+with which he was brought into contact, it always seemed to me
+that he was distinguished by his very lack of that accentuated
+movement which the <i>litt&eacute;rateur</i> generally
+displays.&nbsp; I merely dwell upon this to show how inscrutable
+are the mental processes in the crowning puzzle of the great
+humourist Nature, the writing man.&nbsp; Just as the most angular
+and <i>gauche</i> man in a literary gathering may possibly turn
+out to be the poet whose lyrics have been compared to Shelley, or
+the prose writer whose mellifluous periods have been compared to
+those of Plato, so the most dignified man in <!-- page 215--><a
+name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>the room
+may turn out to be the writer of a book whose defect is a
+noticeable lack of dignified style.&nbsp; It was hard, indeed,
+for those who knew Hake in the flesh to believe that the
+&lsquo;Memoirs of Eighty Years&rsquo; was written by him.&nbsp; I
+suppose I shall be expected to say a word about the famous
+intimacy between Hake and Borrow.&nbsp; After Hake went to live
+in Germany, Borrow told me a good deal about this intimacy and
+also about his own early life; for reticent as he naturally was,
+he and I got to be confidential and intimate.&nbsp; His
+friendship with Hake began when Hake was practising as a
+physician in Norfolk.&nbsp; It lasted during the greater part of
+Borrow&rsquo;s later life.&nbsp; When Borrow was living in
+London, his great delight was to walk over on Sundays from
+Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll
+with him over Richmond Park.&nbsp; They both had a passion for
+herons and for deer.&nbsp; At that time Hake was a very intimate
+friend of my own, and having had the good fortune to be
+introduced by him to Borrow, I used to join the two in their
+walks.&nbsp; Afterwards, when Hake went to live in Germany, I
+used to take these walks with Borrow alone.&nbsp; Two more
+interesting men it would be impossible to meet.&nbsp; The
+remarkable thing was that there was between them no sort of
+intellectual sympathy.&nbsp; In style, in education, in
+experience, whatever Hake was Borrow was <!-- page 216--><a
+name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>not.&nbsp;
+Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake&rsquo;s writings, either in
+prose or in verse.&nbsp; His ideal poet was Pope, and when he
+read, or rather looked into, Hake&rsquo;s &lsquo;World&rsquo;s
+Epitaph,&rsquo; he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by
+saying, &ldquo;There are lines here and there that are nigh as
+good as Pope&rsquo;s.&rdquo;&nbsp; On the other hand,
+Hake&rsquo;s acquaintance with Borrow&rsquo;s works was far
+behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the
+flesh, such as Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell.</p>
+<p>Borrow was shy, eccentric, angular, rustic in accent and in
+locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was
+irresistible.&nbsp; Hake was polished, easy, and urbane in
+everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready
+to shine gracefully in any society.&nbsp; As far as Hake was
+concerned, the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of
+earlier days and adventures in Borrow&rsquo;s beloved East
+Anglia.&nbsp; Among many proofs that I could adduce of this, I
+will give one.&nbsp; I am the possessor of the manuscript of
+Borrow&rsquo;s &lsquo;Gypsies in Spain,&rsquo; written partly in
+a Spanish note-book as he moved about Spain in his colporteur
+days.&nbsp; It was my wish that Hake would leave behind him some
+memorial of Borrow more worthy of himself and his friend than
+those brief reminiscences contained in &lsquo;Memoirs of Eighty
+Years.&rsquo;&nbsp; I took to Hake this precious relic of one of
+the most wonderful men of the nineteenth <!-- page 217--><a
+name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>century in
+order to discuss with him differences between the MS. and the
+printed text.&nbsp; Hake was sitting in his invalid chair,
+writing verses.&nbsp; &ldquo;What does it all matter?&rdquo; he
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I do not think you understand Lavengro,&rdquo;
+said I.&nbsp; Hake replied, &ldquo;And yet Lavengro had an
+advantage over me, for <i>he</i> understood <i>nobody</i>.&nbsp;
+Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had,
+as no one knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his
+own before he could see it at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This, of course, was true enough; and Hake&rsquo;s asperities
+when speaking of Borrow in &lsquo;Memoirs of Eighty
+Years&rsquo;&mdash;asperities which have vexed a good many
+Borrovians&mdash;simply arose from the fact that it was
+impossible for two such men to understand each other.&nbsp; When
+I told him of Andrew Lang&rsquo;s angry onslaught upon Borrow, in
+his notes to the &ldquo;Waverley Novels,&rdquo; on account of his
+attacks upon Scott, he said, &ldquo;Well, and does he not deserve
+it?&rdquo;&nbsp; When I told him of Miss Cobbe&rsquo;s
+description of Borrow as a <i>poseur</i>, he said to me, &ldquo;I
+told you the same scores of times.&nbsp; But I saw that Borrow
+had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in
+Richmond Park.&nbsp; It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled
+you.&rdquo;&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s affection for Hake, however, was
+both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone to Germany and
+in a way dropped out of Borrow&rsquo;s ken.&nbsp; Yet Hake was as
+good a man <!-- page 218--><a name="page218"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 218</span>as ever Borrow was, and for certain
+others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine
+affection as Borrow was himself.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 219--><a name="page219"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 219</span>JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD DE
+TABLEY.<br />
+1835&ndash;1895.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters
+has lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied
+accomplishments.&nbsp; His friends have lost much more.&nbsp;
+Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved
+him had been much concerned about him.&nbsp; The pallor of his
+complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness.&nbsp; As
+long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the
+Athen&aelig;um Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was
+giving at the Caf&eacute; Royal, I found that he had engaged a
+four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards.&nbsp; The
+expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he
+had noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting
+for us.&nbsp; &ldquo;You know my love of a growler,&rdquo; he
+said; &ldquo;this is just to save us the bother of getting across
+the Piccadilly cataracts.&rdquo;&nbsp; I thought to myself,
+&ldquo;I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts
+which accounts for the growler.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 220--><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+220</span>Another sign that the physical part of him was in the
+grip of the demon of decay was that, instead of coming to the
+Pines to luncheon, as had been his wont, he preferred of late to
+come to afternoon tea, and return to Elm Park before
+dinner.&nbsp; And on the occasion when he last came in this way
+it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his
+intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power.&nbsp; And as
+a companion he was as winsome as ever.&nbsp; That fine quality
+with which he was so richly endowed, the quality which used to be
+called &ldquo;urbanity,&rdquo; was as fresh when I saw him last
+as when I first knew him.&nbsp; That sweet sagacity, mellowed and
+softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face at
+intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my
+colleague on <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, and when I used to call
+upon him so frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to
+chat over &ldquo;the walnuts and the wine&rdquo; about
+poetry.</p>
+<p>My own friendship with him began at my first meeting him, and
+this was long ago.&nbsp; Being at that time a less-known man of
+letters than I am now, supposing that to be possible, I was
+astonished one day when my friend Edmund Gosse told me that his
+friend Leicester Warren had expressed a wish to meet me on
+account of certain things of mine which he had read in <i>The
+Examiner</i> and <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; I accepted with
+alacrity Mr. Gosse&rsquo;s invitation to one of those <!-- page
+221--><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+221</span>charming <i>salons</i> of his on the banks of
+Westbournia&rsquo;s Grand Canal which have become historic.&nbsp;
+I was surprised to find Warren, who was then scarcely above
+forty, looking so old, not to say so old-fashioned.&nbsp; At that
+time he did not wear the moustache and beard which afterwards
+lent a picturesqueness to his face.&nbsp; There was a kind of
+rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own;
+it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought.&nbsp; This
+being the impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how
+delighted I was shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of
+Ivy Lodge, Putney, where I was then living alone.&nbsp; Nor was I
+less surprised than delighted to see him.&nbsp; On realizing at
+Gosse&rsquo;s <i>salon</i> that my new acquaintance was a
+botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had
+described to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing
+in the centre of my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had
+imported.&nbsp; I had given Warren a kind of general invitation
+to come some day and see it.&nbsp; So early a call as this I had
+not hoped to get.&nbsp; Perhaps I thought so reclusive a man as
+he even then appeared would never come at all.</p>
+<p>After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti
+crayons on the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much
+about &lsquo;The Spirit of the Rainbow&rsquo; and the design from
+the same beautiful model which William <!-- page 222--><a
+name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>Sharp has
+christened &lsquo;Forced Music,&rsquo; the loveliness of which
+attracted him not a little, I perceived that he had something
+else that he wanted to talk about, and allowed him to lead the
+conversation up to it.&nbsp; To my surprise I found that, so far
+from having perceived how much he had interested me, he had
+imagined that my attitude towards him was constrained, and had
+explained it to his own discomfort after the following fashion:
+&ldquo;Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a deep
+admirer&mdash;so deep indeed that some people, and not without
+reason, have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by
+it.&nbsp; But an article by me in <i>The Fortnightly</i> goes out
+of its way to dub as a &lsquo;minor poet&rsquo; the very writer
+to whose influence I have succumbed.&nbsp; It is the incongruity
+between my dubbing my idol a &lsquo;minor poet&rsquo; and my real
+and most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in
+spite of an external civility, feel unfriendly towards me.&nbsp;
+Yet there is no real incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H.
+Lewes, who, after my proof had been returned for press,
+interpolated the objectionable words about the minor
+poet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was how he had been reasoning.&nbsp; When I laughed and
+told him to recast his syllogism&mdash;told him that I had never
+seen the article in question, and doubted whether my friend
+had&mdash;matters became very bright between us.&nbsp; He stayed
+to luncheon; we walked <!-- page 223--><a
+name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>on the
+Common; I showed him our Wimbledon sun-dews; in a word, I felt
+that I had discovered a richer gold mine than the richest in the
+world, a new friend.&nbsp; Had I then known him as well as I
+afterwards did, I should have been aware that he had a strong
+dash of the sensitive, not to say the morbid, in his
+nature.&nbsp; He had a habit of submitting almost every incident
+of his life to such an analysis as that I have been
+describing.</p>
+<p>On another occasion, when years later he had a difference with
+a friend, I reminded him of the incident recorded above, and made
+him laugh by saying, &ldquo;My dear Warren, you are so afraid of
+treading on people&rsquo;s corns that you tread upon
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On first visiting him, as on many a subsequent occasion, I was
+struck by the variety of his intellectual interests, and the
+thoroughness with which he pursued them all.&nbsp; I have lately
+said in print what I fully believe&mdash;that he was the most
+learned of English poets, if learning means something more than
+mere scholarship.&nbsp; He was a skilled numismatist, and in 1862
+published, through the Numismatic Society, &lsquo;An Essay on
+Greek Federal Coinage,&rsquo; and an essay &lsquo;On Some Coins
+of Lycia under Rhodian Domination and of the Lycian
+League.&rsquo;&nbsp; He even took an interest in book-plates, and
+actually, in 1880, published &lsquo;A Guide to the Study of
+Book-Plates.&rsquo;&nbsp; I should not have been <!-- page
+224--><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>at
+all surprised to learn that he was also writing a guide for the
+collectors of postage stamps.</p>
+<p>At this time he had published a good deal of verse; for
+instance, &lsquo;Eclogues and Monodramas&rsquo; in 1865;
+&lsquo;Studies in Verse&rsquo; in 1866; &lsquo;Orestes&rsquo; in
+1867; a collection of poems called &lsquo;Rehearsals&rsquo; in
+1873; another collection, called &lsquo;The Searching Net,&rsquo;
+in 1876.&nbsp; From this time, during many years, I saw him
+frequently, although, for a reason which it is not necessary to
+discuss here, he became seized with a deep dislike of the
+literary world and its doings, and I am not aware that he saw any
+literary man save myself and the late W. B. Scott, the bond
+between whom and himself was &ldquo;book-plates&rdquo;!&nbsp;
+Then he took to residing in the country.&nbsp; As a poet he
+seemed to be quite forgotten, save by students of poetry, until
+his name was revived by means of Mr. Miles&rsquo;s colossal
+anthology &lsquo;The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth
+Century,&rsquo; Mr. Miles, it seems, was a great admirer of Lord
+de Tabley&rsquo;s poetry, and managed to reach the hermit in his
+cell.&nbsp; In the sixth volume of his work Mr. Miles gave a
+judicious selection from Lord de Tabley&rsquo;s poems and an
+admirable essay upon them.&nbsp; The selection attracted a good
+deal of attention.</p>
+<p>On finding that the public would listen to him, I urged him to
+bring out a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea
+which for some time he contested with his usual <!-- page
+225--><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+225</span>pessimistic vigour.&nbsp; Having, however, set my heart
+upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at once
+saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk.&nbsp; To
+the poet&rsquo;s astonishment the book was a success, and it at
+once passed into a second edition.&nbsp; In the spring of this
+year he was emboldened to bring out another volume of new poems,
+and his name became firmly re-established as a poet.&nbsp; It was
+after the success of the first book that he consulted me upon a
+question which was then upon his mind: Should he devote his
+future energies to literature or to making himself a position as
+a speaker in the Lords?&nbsp; He had lately had occasion to speak
+both in the country and in the Lords upon some local matter of
+importance, and his success had in some slight degree revived an
+old aspiration to plunge into the world of politics.&nbsp; He was
+a Liberal, and in 1868 he had contested&mdash;but
+unsuccessfully&mdash;Mid-Cheshire.&nbsp; This was on the first
+election for that division after the Reform Act of 1867.&nbsp;
+His support in a county so Conservative as Cheshire had really
+been very strong, but he never made another effort to get into
+Parliament.&nbsp; &ldquo;You know my way,&rdquo; he used to
+say.&nbsp; &ldquo;I can make one spring&mdash;perhaps a pretty
+good spring&mdash;but not more than one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On the whole, he leaned towards the idea of going into
+politics.&nbsp; The way in which he put the case to me was
+thoroughly characteristic of <!-- page 226--><a
+name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>him:
+&ldquo;Even if my verse were strong and vital, which I fear it is
+not, there is almost no chance for men of my generation receiving
+more than a slight attention at the present day.&nbsp; Things
+have altogether changed since the sixties and seventies, when I
+published my most important work&mdash;at a time when the
+prominent names were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold,
+Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne.&nbsp; The old critical oracles
+are now dumb; the reviewers are all young men whose knowledge of
+poetry does not go back so far as the sixties.&nbsp; Those who
+reviewed the selection from my work in Miles&rsquo;s book showed
+themselves to be entirely unconscious of the name of Leicester
+Warren, and treated the poems there selected as being the work of
+a new writer; and even when the poems published by Lane came out,
+no one seemed to be aware that they were by a writer who was very
+much to the fore a quarter of a century ago.&nbsp; That book has
+had a flutter of success, but in how large a degree was the
+success owing to the curiosity excited by the book of a man of my
+generation being brought out now, and by the publisher of the men
+of this?&nbsp; With all my sympathy with the work of the younger
+men and my admiration of some of it, things, I say, have changed
+since those days.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I did not share these pessimistic views.&nbsp; Moreover,
+knowing as I did how extremely <!-- page 227--><a
+name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>sensitive
+he was, I knew that his figuring in Parliament would result in
+the greatest pain to him, and if I gave a somewhat exaggerated
+expression with regard to my hopes of him in the literary world,
+it was a kindly feeling towards himself that impelled me to do
+so.&nbsp; He took my advice and proceeded to gather material for
+another volume.</p>
+<p>To define clearly the impression left upon one by intercourse
+with any man is difficult.&nbsp; In De Tabley&rsquo;s case it is
+almost impossible.&nbsp; His remarkable modesty, or rather
+diffidence, was what, perhaps, struck me most.&nbsp; It was a
+genuine lack of faith in his own powers; it had nothing whatever
+to do with &ldquo;mock-modesty.&rdquo;&nbsp; I had a singular
+instance of this diffidence in the autumn of last year.&nbsp;
+Lord de Tabley, who was staying at Ryde, having learnt that I was
+staying with a friend near Niton Bay, wrote to me there saying
+that he somewhat specially wanted to see me, and proposed our
+lunching together at an hotel at Ventnor.&nbsp; I was delighted
+to accede to this, for, like all who fully knew Lord de Tabley, I
+was thoroughly and deeply attached to him.&nbsp; He was so
+genuine and so modest and so genial&mdash;unsoured by the great
+and various sorrows of which he used sometimes to talk to me by
+the cosy study fire&mdash;nay, sweetened by them, as I often
+thought&mdash;so grateful for the smallest service rendered in an
+arena where ingratitude sometimes seems <!-- page 228--><a
+name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 228</span>to be the
+<i>vis motrix</i> of life&mdash;a truly lovable man, if ever
+there was one.</p>
+<p>I drove over to Ventnor.&nbsp; As I chanced to reach the hotel
+somewhat before the appointed time, and he had not arrived, I
+drove on to Bonchurch along the Shanklin road.&nbsp; On my way
+back, I passed a four-wheel cab; but not dreaming that his love
+of the &ldquo;growler&rdquo; reached beyond London, I never
+thought of him in connexion with it until I saw the well-known
+face with its sweet thoughtful expression looking through the cab
+window.&nbsp; On this occasion it looked so specially thoughtful
+that I imagined something serious had occurred.&nbsp; At the
+hotel I found that he had secured a snug room and a luxurious
+luncheon.&nbsp; An ominous packet of writing-paper peering from
+his overcoat pocket convinced me that it was a manuscript brought
+for me to read, and feeling that I should prefer to get it over
+before luncheon, I asked him to show it to me.&nbsp; He then told
+me its history.&nbsp; Having sent by special invitation a poem to
+<i>The Nineteenth Century</i>, the editor had returned
+it&mdash;returned it with certain strictures upon portions of
+it.&nbsp; This incident he had at once subjected to the usual
+analysis, and had come to the conclusion that certain outside
+influences of an invidious kind had been brought to play upon the
+editor.</p>
+<p>Time was when I should have shrunk with terror from so
+thankless a task as that of reading <!-- page 229--><a
+name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>a
+manuscript with such a frightful history, but it is astonishing
+what a long experience in the literary world will do for a man in
+perplexities of this kind.&nbsp; I read the manuscript and the
+editor&rsquo;s courteous but sagacious comments, and I found that
+the poet had undertaken a subject which was utterly and almost
+inconceivably alien to his genius.&nbsp; As I read I felt the
+wistful gaze fixed upon me while the waiter was moving in and out
+of the room, preparing the luncheon table.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, as I laid the manuscript down,
+&ldquo;what do you think? do you agree with the
+editor?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Not entirely,&rdquo; I said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Not entirely!&rdquo; he exclaimed; then turning to the
+waiter, he said, &ldquo;You can leave the soup, and I will ring
+when we are ready.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Not entirely,&rdquo; I
+repeated.&nbsp; &ldquo;With all the editor&rsquo;s strictures I
+entirely agree, but he says that by working upon it you may make
+it into a worthy poem: there I disagree with him.&nbsp; I
+consider it absolutely hopeless.&nbsp; I regret now that we did
+not leave the matter until after luncheon, but we will not let it
+spoil our appetites.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I am afraid it did spoil our appetites nevertheless, for I
+felt that I had been compelled, for his own sake, to give him
+pain.&nbsp; He was much depressed, declared that the success of
+his late book was entirely factitious, and vowed that nothing
+should ever persuade him to write another line of verse, and that
+he would now devote his attention to a peer&rsquo;s duties in the
+<!-- page 230--><a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+230</span>House of Lords.&nbsp; I was so disturbed myself at thus
+paining so lovable a friend that next day I wrote to him, trying
+to soften what I had said, and urged him to do as the editor of
+<i>The Nineteenth Century</i> had suggested, write another
+poem&mdash;a poem upon some classical subject, which he would
+deal with so admirably.&nbsp; The result of it all was that he
+found the editor&rsquo;s strictures on the unlucky poem to be
+absolutely well grounded, and wrote for <i>The Nineteenth
+Century</i> &lsquo;Orpheus,&rsquo; one of the finest of his later
+poems.</p>
+<p>I think these anecdotes of Lord de Tabley will show why we who
+knew him were so attached to him.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 231--><a name="page231"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 231</span>II.</h3>
+<p>Can it be claimed for Lord de Tabley that in the poetical
+firmament which hung over the days of his youth&mdash;when the
+heavens were bright with such luminaries as Tennyson, Browning,
+Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Morris&mdash;he had a
+place of his own?&nbsp; We think it can.&nbsp; And in saying this
+we are fully conscious of the kind of praise we are awarding
+him.&nbsp; Whatever may be said for or against the artistic
+temper of the present hour, it must certainly be said of the time
+we are alluding to that it was great as regards its wealth of
+poetic genius, and as regards its artistic temper greater
+still.&nbsp; It was a time when &ldquo;the beauteous damsel
+Poesy, honourable and retired,&rdquo; whom Cervantes described,
+dared still roam the English Parnassus, &ldquo;a friend of
+solitude,&rdquo; disturbed by no clash of Notoriety&rsquo;s
+brazen cymbals, &ldquo;where fountains entertained her, woods
+freed her from <i>ennui</i>, and flowers delighted
+her&rdquo;&mdash;delighted her for their own sakes.&nbsp; In
+order to write such verses as the following from the concluding
+poem of the volume before us <a name="citation231"></a><a
+href="#footnote231" class="citation">[231]</a> a man must really
+have passed <!-- page 232--><a name="page232"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 232</span>into that true mood of the poet
+described by the great Spanish humourist:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>How idle for a spurious fame<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To roll in thorn-beds of unrest;<br />
+What matter whom the mob acclaim,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; If thou art master of thy breast?</p>
+<p>If sick thy soul with fear and doubt,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And weary with the rabble din,&mdash;<br />
+If thou wouldst scorn the herd without,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; First make the discord calm within.</p>
+<p>If we are lords in our disdain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And rule our kingdoms of despair,<br />
+As fools we shall not plough the main<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For halters made of syren&rsquo;s hair.</p>
+<p>We need not traverse foreign earth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To seek an alien Sorrow&rsquo;s face.<br />
+She sits within thy central hearth,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And at thy table has her place.</p>
+<p>So with this hour of push and pelf,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where nought unsordid seems to last,<br />
+Vex not thy miserable self,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But search the fallows of the past.</p>
+<p>In Time&rsquo;s rich track behind us lies<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A soil replete with root and seed;<br />
+There harvest wheat repays the wise,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; While idiots find but charlock weed.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Between the writer of the above lines and those great poets
+who in his youth were his contemporaries there is this point of
+affinity: like them his actual achievements do not strike the
+reader so forcibly as the potentialities which those achievements
+reveal.&nbsp; In the same way that Achilles was suggested by his
+&ldquo;spear&rdquo; in the picture in the chamber of Lucrece, the
+poet who writes not for fame, but writes to <!-- page 233--><a
+name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span>please
+himself, suggests unconsciously his own portrait by every
+touch:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>For much imaginary work was there;<br />
+Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,<br />
+That for Achilles&rsquo; image stood his spear<br />
+Grip&rsquo;d in an arm&egrave;d hand; himself behind<br />
+Was left unseen save to the eye of mind:<br />
+A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,<br />
+Stood for the whole to be imagin&egrave;d.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Poets, indeed, have always been divisible into those whose
+poetry gives the reader an impression that they are greater than
+their work, and those whose poetry gives the reader a contrary
+impression.&nbsp; There have always been poets who may say of
+themselves, like the &ldquo;Poet&rdquo; in &lsquo;Timon of
+Athens,&rsquo;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes<br />
+From whence &rsquo;tis nourished: the fire i&rsquo; the flint<br
+/>
+Shows not till it be struck.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And there have always been poets whose verse, howsoever good
+it may be, shows that, although they have been able to mould into
+poetic forms the riches of the life around them, and also of the
+literature which has come to them as an inheritance, they are
+simply working for fame, or rather for notoriety, in the markets
+of the outer world.&nbsp; The former can give us an impression of
+personal greatness such as the latter cannot.</p>
+<p>With regard to the originality of Lord de Tabley&rsquo;s work,
+it is obvious that every poet must in some measure be influenced
+by the <!-- page 234--><a name="page234"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 234</span>leading luminaries of his own
+period.&nbsp; But at no time would it have been fair to call Lord
+de Tabley an imitator; and in the new poems in this volume the
+accent is, perhaps, more individual than was the accent of any of
+his previous poetry.&nbsp; The general reader&rsquo;s
+comparatively slight acquaintance with Greek poetry may become
+unfortunate for modern poets.&nbsp; Often and often it occurs
+that a poet is charged with imitating another poet of a more
+prominent position than his own when, as a matter of fact, both
+poets have been yielding to the magic influence of some poet of
+Greece.&nbsp; Such a yielding has been held to be legitimate in
+every literature of the modern world.&nbsp; Indeed, to be
+coloured by the great classics of Greek and Roman literature is
+the inevitable destiny and the special glory of all the best
+poetry of the modern world, as it is the inevitable destiny and
+the special glory of the far-off waters of the Nile to be
+enriched and toned by the far-off wealth of Ruwenzori and the
+great fertilizing lakes from which they have sprung.&nbsp; But in
+drawing from the eternal fountains of beauty Lord de
+Tabley&rsquo;s processes were not those of his great
+contemporaries; they were very specially his own, as far removed
+from the severe method of Matthew Arnold on the one hand as from
+Tennyson&rsquo;s method on the other.</p>
+<p>His way of work was always to illustrate a story of Hellenic
+myth by symbols and <!-- page 235--><a name="page235"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 235</span>analogies drawn not from the more
+complex economies of a later world, as was Tennyson&rsquo;s way,
+but from that wide knowledge of the phenomena of nature which can
+be attained only by a poet whose knowledge is that of the
+naturalist.&nbsp; His devotion to certain departments of natural
+science has been running parallel with his devotion to poetry,
+and if learning is something wider than scholarship, he is the
+most learned poet of his time.&nbsp; While Tennyson&rsquo;s
+knowledge of natural science, though wide, was gathered from
+books, Lord de Tabley&rsquo;s knowledge, especially in the
+department of botany, is derived largely from original
+observation and inquiry.&nbsp; And this knowledge enables him to
+make his poetry alive with organic detail such as satisfies the
+naturalist as fully as the other qualities in his works satisfy
+the lover of poetry.&nbsp; The leading poem of the present
+volume, &lsquo;Orpheus in Hades,&rsquo; is full of a knowledge of
+the ways of nature beyond the reach of most poets, and yet this
+knowledge is kept well in governance by his artistic sense; it is
+never obtruded&mdash;never more than hinted at,
+indeed:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>Soon, soon I saw the spectral vanguard come,<br />
+Coasting along, as swallows, beating low<br />
+Before a hint of rain.&nbsp; In buoyant air,<br />
+Circling thy poise, and hardly move the wing,<br />
+And rather float than fly.&nbsp; Then other spirits,<br />
+Shrill and more fierce, came wailing down the gale;<br />
+As plaintive plovers came with swoop and scream<br />
+<!-- page 236--><a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+236</span>To lure our footsteps from their furrowy nest,<br />
+So these, as lapwing guardians, sailed and swung<br />
+To save the secrets of their gloomy lair.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
+<p>I hate to watch the flower set up its face.<br />
+I loathe the trembling shimmer of the sea,<br />
+Its heaving roods of intertangled weed<br />
+And orange sea-wrack with its necklace fruit;<br />
+The stale, insipid cadence of the dawn,<br />
+The ringdove, tedious harper on five tones,<br />
+The eternal havoc of the sodden leaves,<br />
+Rotting the floors of Autumn.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&lsquo;The Death of Pha&euml;thon&rsquo; is another poem in
+which Lord de Tabley succeeds in mingling a true poetic energy
+with that subtle dignity of utterance which can never really be
+divorced from true poetry, whether the poet&rsquo;s subject be
+lofty or homely.</p>
+<p>The line</p>
+<blockquote><p>With sudden ray and music across the sea</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>and the opening line of the poem,</p>
+<blockquote><p>Before him the immeasurable heaven,</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>cause us to think that Lord de Tabley has paid but little
+attention to the question of elision in English poetry.&nbsp; In
+the second of the lines above quoted elision is impossible, in
+the first elision is demanded.&nbsp; The reason why elision is
+sometimes demanded is that in certain lines, as in the one which
+opens &lsquo;Orpheus in Hades,&rsquo; the hiatus which occurs
+when a word ending with a vowel is followed by a vowel beginning
+the next word may be so great as to <!-- page 237--><a
+name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 237</span>become
+intolerable.&nbsp; The reason why elision is sometimes a merely
+allowable beauty is that when a word ends with <i>w</i>,
+<i>r</i>, or <i>l</i>, to elide the liquids is to secure a kind
+of billowy music of a peculiarly delightful kind.&nbsp; Now
+elision is very specially demanded in a line like that which
+opens &lsquo;Orpheus in Hades,&rsquo; where the pause of the line
+fall upon <i>the</i>.&nbsp; To make the main pause of the line
+fall upon <i>the</i> is extremely and painfully bad, even when
+the next word begins with a consonant; but when the word
+following <i>the</i> begins with a vowel, the line is absolutely
+immetrical; it has, indeed, no more to do with English prosody
+than with that prosody of Japan upon which Mr. Basil Chamberlain
+discourses so pleasantly.&nbsp; On the other hand, the elision of
+the second syllable of the word <i>music</i> in the other line
+quoted above is equally faulty in another direction.&nbsp; But as
+we said when reviewing Mr. Bridges&rsquo;s treatise on
+Milton&rsquo;s prosody, nothing is more striking than the
+helplessness of most recent poets when confronted with the simple
+question of elision.</p>
+<p>In an &lsquo;Ode to a Star&rsquo; there is great beauty and
+breadth of thought and expression.&nbsp; Its only structural
+blemish, that of an opening stanza whose form is not distinctly
+followed, can be so easily put right that it need only be
+mentioned here in order to emphasize the canon that it is only in
+irregular odes that variation of stanza is permissible.&nbsp;
+Keats, no doubt, in <!-- page 238--><a name="page238"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 238</span>one at least of his unequalled odes,
+does depart from the scheme of structure indicated by the opening
+stanza, and without any apparent metrical need for so
+doing.&nbsp; But the poem does not gain by the departure.&nbsp;
+Besides, Keats is now a classic, and has a freedom in regard to
+irregularities of metre which Lord de Tabley would be the last to
+claim for himself.&nbsp; Another blemish of a minor kind in the
+&lsquo;Ode to a Star&rsquo; is that of rhyming
+&ldquo;meteor&rdquo; with &ldquo;wheatear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If the poetry in Lord de Tabley&rsquo;s volume answers as
+little to Milton&rsquo;s famous list of the poetic requirements,
+&ldquo;simple, sensuous, and passionate,&rdquo; as does
+Milton&rsquo;s own poetry, which answers to only the second of
+these demands, very high poetry might be cited which is neither
+sensuous nor passionate.&nbsp; The so-called coldness displayed
+by &lsquo;Lycidas&rsquo; arises not, it may well be supposed,
+from any lack on Milton&rsquo;s part of sorrow for his friend,
+but from his determination that simple he would not be, and yet
+his method is justified of its own beauty and glory.&nbsp; Of
+course poetry may be too ornate, but in demanding a simplicity of
+utterance from the poet it is easy for the critic to forget how
+wide and how various are poetry&rsquo;s domains.&nbsp; For if in
+one mood poetry is the simple and unadorned expression of nature,
+in another it is the woof of art,</p>
+<blockquote><p>Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes<br />
+As are the tiger-moth&rsquo;s deep-damasked wings.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 239--><a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+239</span>In the matter of poetic ornament, all that the reader
+has any right to demand is that the decoration should be poetical
+and not rhetorical.&nbsp; Now, as a matter of fact, there is no
+surer sign of the amount of the poetical endowment of any poet
+than the insight he shows into the nature of poetry as
+distinguished from rhetoric when working on ornate poetry.&nbsp;
+It is a serious impeachment of latter-day criticism that in very
+many cases, perhaps in most cases, the plaudits given to the last
+new &ldquo;leading poet&rdquo; of the hour are awarded to
+&ldquo;felicitous lines,&rdquo; every felicity of which is
+rhetorical and not poetical.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 240--><a name="page240"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 240</span>VII.&nbsp; WILLIAM MORRIS.<br />
+1834&ndash;1896.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>The news of the grave turn suddenly taken by William
+Morris&rsquo;s illness prepared the public for the still worse
+news that was to follow.</p>
+<p>The certificate of the immediate cause of death affirms it to
+have been phthisis, but one would suppose that almost every vital
+organ had become exhausted.&nbsp; Each time that I saw him he
+declared, in answer to my inquiries, that he suffered no pain
+whatever.&nbsp; And a comforting thought this is to us
+all&mdash;that Morris suffered no pain.&nbsp; To Death himself we
+may easily be reconciled&mdash;nay, we might even look upon him
+as Nature&rsquo;s final beneficence to all her children, if it
+were not for the cruel means he so often employs in fulfilling
+his inevitable mission.&nbsp; The thought that Morris&rsquo;s
+life had ended in the tragedy of pain&mdash;the thought that he
+to whom work was sport and generosity the highest form of
+enjoyment, suffered what some men suffer in shuffling off <!--
+page 241--><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+241</span>the mortal coil&mdash;would have been intolerable
+almost.&nbsp; For among the thousand and one charms of the man,
+this, perhaps, was the chief, that Nature had endowed him with an
+enormous capacity of enjoyment, and that Circumstance, conspiring
+with Nature, said to him, &ldquo;Enjoy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p240b.jpg">
+<img alt="William Morris" src="images/p240s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>Born in easy circumstances, though not to the degrading
+trouble of wealth&mdash;cherishing as his sweetest possessions a
+devoted wife and two daughters, each of them endowed with
+intelligence so rare as to understand a genius such as
+his&mdash;surrounded by friends, some of whom were among the
+first men of our time, and most of whom were of the very salt of
+the earth&mdash;it may be said of him that Misfortune, if she
+touched him at all, never struck home.&nbsp; If it is true, as
+M&eacute;rim&eacute;e affirms, that men are hastened to maturity
+by misfortune, who wanted Morris to be mature?&nbsp; Who wanted
+him to be other than the radiant boy of genius that he remained
+till the years had silvered his hair and carved wrinkles on his
+brow, but left his blue-grey eyes as bright as when they first
+opened on the world?&nbsp; Enough for us to think that the man
+must, indeed, be specially beloved by the gods who in his
+sixty-third year dies young.&nbsp; Old age Morris could not have
+borne with patience.&nbsp; Pain would not have developed him into
+a hero.&nbsp; This beloved man, who must have died some day, died
+when his marvellous powers were at their best&mdash;and died <!--
+page 242--><a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+242</span>without pain.&nbsp; The scheme of life and death does
+not seem so much awry, after all.</p>
+<p>At the last interview but one that ever I had with
+him&mdash;it was in the little carpetless room from which so much
+of his best work was turned out&mdash;he himself surprised me by
+leading the conversation upon a subject he rarely chose to talk
+about&mdash;the mystery of life and death.&nbsp; The conversation
+ended with these words of his: &ldquo;I have enjoyed my
+life&mdash;few men more so&mdash;and death in any case is
+sure.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is difficult not to think that the cause of causes of his
+death was excessive exercise of all his forces, especially of the
+imaginative faculty.&nbsp; When I talked to him, as I often did,
+of the peril of such a life of tension as his, he pooh-poohed the
+idea.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look at Gladstone,&rdquo; he would say;
+&ldquo;look at those wise owls your chancellors and your
+judges.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t they live all the longer for
+work?&nbsp; It is rust that kills men, not work.&rdquo;&nbsp; No
+doubt he was right in contending that in intellectual efforts
+such as those he alluded to, where the only faculty drawn upon is
+the &ldquo;dry light of intelligence,&rdquo; a prodigious amount
+of work may be achieved without any sapping of the sources of
+life.&nbsp; But is this so where that fusion of all the faculties
+which we call genius is greatly taxed?&nbsp; I doubt it.&nbsp; In
+all true imaginative production there is, as De Quincey pointed
+out many years ago, a movement not of &ldquo;the thinking
+machine&rdquo; only, but of the <!-- page 243--><a
+name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>whole
+man&mdash;the whole &ldquo;genial&rdquo; nature of the
+worker&mdash;his imagination, his judgment, moving in an
+evolution of lightning velocity from the whole of the work to the
+part, from the part to the whole, together with every emotion of
+the soul.&nbsp; Hence when, as in the case of Walter Scott, of
+Charles Dickens, and presumably of Shakespeare too, the emotional
+nature of Man is overtaxed, every part of the frame suffers, and
+cries out in vain for its share of that nervous fluid which is
+the true <i>vis vit&aelig;</i>.</p>
+<p>We have only to consider the sort of work Morris produced and
+its amount to realize that no human powers could continue to
+withstand such a strain.&nbsp; Many are of opinion that
+&lsquo;The Lovers of Gudrun&rsquo; is his finest poem; he worked
+at it from four o&rsquo;clock in the morning till four in the
+afternoon, and when he rose from the table he had produced 750
+lines!&nbsp; Think of the forces at work in producing a poem like
+&lsquo;Sigurd.&rsquo;&nbsp; Think of the mingling of the drudgery
+of the Dryasdust with the movements of an imaginative vision
+unsurpassed in our time; think, I say, of the collaborating of
+the &lsquo;V&ouml;lsunga Saga&rsquo; with the
+&lsquo;Nibelungenlied,&rsquo; the choosing of this point from the
+Saga-man, and of that point from the later poem of the Germans,
+and then fusing the whole by imaginative heat into the greatest
+epic of the nineteenth century.&nbsp; Was there not work enough
+here for a considerable portion of a <!-- page 244--><a
+name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+244</span>poet&rsquo;s life?&nbsp; And yet so great is the entire
+mass of his work that &lsquo;Sigurd&rsquo; is positively
+overlooked in many of the notices of his writings which have
+appeared since his death in the press, while in the others it is
+alluded to in three words, and this simply because the mass of
+other matter to be dealt with fills up all the available space of
+a newspaper.</p>
+<p>Then, again, take his translation of the Odyssey.&nbsp; Some
+competent critics are dissatisfied with this; yet in a certain
+sense it is a triumph.&nbsp; The two specially Homeric
+qualities&mdash;those, indeed, which set Homer apart from all
+other poets&mdash;are eagerness and dignity.&nbsp; Never again
+can they be fully combined, for never again will poetry be
+written in the Greek hexameters and by a Homer.&nbsp; That
+Tennyson could have given us the Homeric dignity his magnificent
+rendering of a famous fragment of the Iliad shows.&nbsp;
+Chapman&rsquo;s translations show that the eagerness also can be
+caught.&nbsp; Morris, of course, could not have given the dignity
+of Homer, but then, while Tennyson has left us only a few lines
+speaking with the dignity of the Iliad, Morris gave us a
+translation of the entire Odyssey, which, though it missed the
+Homeric dignity, secured the eagerness as completely as
+Chapman&rsquo;s free-and-easy paraphrase, and in a rendering as
+literal as Buckley&rsquo;s prose crib, which lay frankly by
+Morris&rsquo;s side as he wrote.</p>
+<p><!-- page 245--><a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+245</span>This, with his much less satisfactory translation of
+Virgil, where he gives us an almost word-for-word translation,
+and yet throws over the poem a glamour of romance which brings
+Virgil into the sympathy of the modern reader, would have
+occupied years with almost any other poet.&nbsp; But these two
+efforts of his genius are swamped by the purely original poems,
+such as &lsquo;The Defence of Guenevere,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Jason,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Earthly Paradise,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Love is Enough,&rsquo; &lsquo;Poems by the Way,&rsquo;
+&amp;c.&nbsp; And then come his translations from the
+Icelandic.&nbsp; Mere translation is, of course, easy enough, but
+not such translation as that in the &ldquo;Saga
+Library.&rdquo;&nbsp; Allowing for all the aid he got from Mr.
+Magn&uacute;sson, what a work this is!&nbsp; Think of the
+imaginative exercise required to turn the language of these
+Saga-men into a diction so picturesque and so concrete as to make
+each Saga an English poem, for poem each one is, if Aristotle is
+right in thinking that imaginative substance and not metre is the
+first requisite of a poem.</p>
+<p>And this brings me to those poems without metre which he
+invented for himself in the latter portion of his career.&nbsp;
+There is in these delightful stories, leaving out of
+consideration the exquisite lyrics interspersed, enough poetic
+wealth adequately to endow a dozen poets.&nbsp; The last of all
+of them&mdash;the one of which the last two chapters, when he
+could no longer <!-- page 246--><a name="page246"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 246</span>hold a pen, he dictated to his
+friend Mr. Cockerell, in the determination, as he said to me,
+that he would finish it before he died&mdash;will be found to be
+finer than any hitherto published.&nbsp; It is called &lsquo;The
+Sundering Flood,&rsquo; and was written after the story
+&lsquo;The Water of the Wondrous Isles.&rsquo;&nbsp; It
+(&lsquo;The Sundering Flood&rsquo;) is as long as &lsquo;The Wood
+beyond the World,&rsquo; but has lyrics interspersed.</p>
+<p>But evidently it is as an inventor in the fine arts that he is
+chiefly known to the general public.&nbsp; &ldquo;Had he written
+no poetry at all, he would have been as famous,&rdquo; we are
+told, &ldquo;as he is now.&rdquo;&nbsp; Anyhow, there is no
+household of any culture among the English-speaking races in
+which the name of William Morris does not at once call up that
+great revival in decorative art for which the latter part of the
+nineteenth century will be famous.&nbsp; In his designs for
+tapestry and other textures, in his designs for wall-papers and
+furniture, there is an expenditure of imaginative force which
+alone might make the fame of an artist.&nbsp; Then his artistic
+printing, in which he invented his own decorations, his own type,
+and his own paper&mdash;think of the energy he put into all
+that!&nbsp; The moment that this new interest seized him he made
+a more thorough study of the various specimens of black-letter
+printing than had ever been made before save by
+specialists.&nbsp; But even this could not &ldquo;fatigue an
+appetite&rdquo; <!-- page 247--><a name="page247"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 247</span>for the joy of work &ldquo;which was
+insatiable.&rdquo;&nbsp; He started as an apostle of
+Socialism.&nbsp; He edited <i>The Commonweal</i>, and wrote
+largely in it, sank money in it week by week with the greatest
+glee, stumped the country as a Socialist orator, and into that
+cause alone put the energy of three men.&nbsp; Is it any wonder,
+then, that those who loved him were appalled at this prodigious
+output?&nbsp; Often and often have I tried to bring this matter
+before him.&nbsp; It was all of no use.&nbsp; &ldquo;For me to
+rest from work,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;means to
+die.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>When not absorbed in some occupation that he loved&mdash;and
+in no other would he move&mdash;his restlessness was that of a
+young animal.&nbsp; In conversation he could rarely sit still for
+ten consecutive minutes, but must needs spring from his seat and
+walk round the room, as if every limb were eager to take part in
+the talk.&nbsp; His boisterous restlessness was the first thing
+that struck strangers.&nbsp; During the period when the famous
+partnership of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner &amp; Co. was being
+dissolved I saw him very frequently at Queen&rsquo;s Square, for
+I took a very active part in the arrangement of that matter, and
+after our interviews at Queen Square he and I used often to lunch
+together at the &ldquo;Cock&rdquo; in Fleet Street.&nbsp; He
+liked a sanded floor and quaint old-fashioned settles.&nbsp;
+Moreover, the chops were the finest to be had in London.</p>
+<p><!-- page 248--><a name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+248</span>On the day following our first forgathering at the
+&ldquo;Cock,&rdquo; I was lunching there with another
+poet&mdash;a friend of his&mdash;when the waiter, who knew me
+well, said, &ldquo;That was a loudish gent a-lunching with you
+yesterday, sir.&nbsp; I thought once you was a-coming to
+blows.&rdquo;&nbsp; Morris had merely been declaiming against the
+Elizabethan dramatists, especially Cyril Tourneur.&nbsp; He
+shouted out, &ldquo;You ought to know better than to claim any
+merit for such work as &lsquo;The Atheist&rsquo;s
+Tragedy&rsquo;&rdquo;; and wound up with the generalization that
+&ldquo;the use of blank verse as a poetic medium ought to be
+stopped by Act of Parliament for at least two
+generations.&rdquo;&nbsp; On another occasion, when Middleton
+(another fine spirit, who &ldquo;should have died
+hereafter&rdquo;) and I were staying with him at Kelmscott Manor,
+the passionate emphasis with which he declared that the curse of
+mankind was civilization, and that Australia ought to have been
+left to the blacks, New Zealand to the Maoris, and South Africa
+to the Kaffirs, startled even Middleton, who knew him so
+well.</p>
+<p>It was this boisterous energy and infinite enjoyment of life
+which made it so difficult for people on meeting him for the
+first time to associate him with the sweet sadness of &lsquo;The
+Earthly Paradise.&rsquo;&nbsp; How could a man of such exuberant
+animal spirits as Morris&mdash;so hearty, so noisy often, and
+often so humorous&mdash;have written those lovely poems, whose
+only fault <!-- page 249--><a name="page249"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 249</span>was an occasional languor and a lack
+of humour often commented on when the critic compares him with
+Chaucer?&nbsp; This subject of Chaucer&rsquo;s humour and
+Morris&rsquo;s lack of it demands, however, a special word even
+in so brief a notice as this.&nbsp; No man of our time&mdash;not
+even Rossetti&mdash;had a finer appreciation of humour than
+Morris, as is well known to those who heard him read aloud the
+famous &ldquo;Rainbow Scene&rdquo; in &lsquo;Silas Marner&rsquo;
+and certain passages in Charles Dickens&rsquo;s novels.&nbsp;
+These readings were as fine as Rossetti&rsquo;s recitations of
+&lsquo;Jim Bludso&rsquo; and other specimens of Yankee
+humour.&nbsp; And yet it is a common remark, and one that cannot
+be gainsaid, that there is no spark of humour in the published
+poems of either of these two friends.&nbsp; Did it never occur to
+any critic to ask whether the anomaly was not explicable by some
+theory of poetic art that they held in common?&nbsp; It is no
+disparagement to say of Morris that when he began to write poetry
+the influence of Rossetti&rsquo;s canons of criticism upon him
+was enormous, notwithstanding the influence upon him of
+Browning&rsquo;s dramatic methods.&nbsp; But while
+Rossetti&rsquo;s admiration of Browning was very strong, it was a
+canon of his criticism that humour was, if not out of place in
+poetry, a disturbing element of it.</p>
+<p>What makes me think that Morris was greatly influenced by this
+canon is the fact that Morris could and did write humorous
+poetry, and then <!-- page 250--><a name="page250"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 250</span>withheld it from publication.&nbsp;
+For the splendid poem of &lsquo;Sir Peter Harpdon&rsquo;s
+End,&rsquo; printed in his first volume, Morris wrote a humorous
+scene of the highest order, in which the hero said to his
+faithful fellow captive and follower John Curzon that as their
+deaths were so near he felt a sudden interest in what had never
+interested him before&mdash;the story of John&rsquo;s life before
+they had been brought so close to each other.&nbsp; The heroic
+but dull-witted soldier acceded to his master&rsquo;s request,
+and the incoherent, muddle-headed way in which he gave his
+autobiography was full of a dramatic and subtle humour&mdash;was
+almost worthy of him who in three or four words created the
+foolish fat scullion in &lsquo;Tristram Shandy.&rsquo;&nbsp; This
+he refused to print, in deference, I suspect, to a theory of
+poetic art.</p>
+<p>In criticizing Morris, however, the critic is apt to forget
+that among poets there are those who, treating poetry simply as
+an art, do not press into their work any more of their own
+individual forces than the work artistically demands, while
+another class of poets are impelled to give full expression to
+themselves in every poem they write.&nbsp; It is to the former
+class of poets that Morris belongs.</p>
+<p>Whatever chanced to be Morris&rsquo;s goal of the moment was
+pursued by him with as much intensity as though the universe
+contained no other possible goal, and then, when the moment <!--
+page 251--><a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+251</span>was passed, another goal received all his
+attention.&nbsp; I was never more struck with this than on the
+memorable day when I first met him, and was blessed with a
+friendship that lasted without interruption for nearly a quarter
+of a century.&nbsp; It was shortly after he and Rossetti entered
+upon the joint occupancy of Kelmscott Manor on the Thames, where
+I was staying as Rossetti&rsquo;s guest.&nbsp; On a certain
+morning when we were walking in the fields Rossetti told me that
+Morris was coming down for a day&rsquo;s fishing with George
+Hake, and that &ldquo;Mouse,&rdquo; the Icelandic pony, was to be
+sent to the Lechlade railway station to meet them.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You are now going to be introduced to my fellow
+partner,&rdquo; Rossetti said.&nbsp; At that time I only knew of
+the famous firm by name, and I asked Rossetti for an explanation,
+which he gave in his usual incisive way.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;one evening a lot of us
+were together, and we got talking about the way in which artists
+did all kinds of things in olden times, designed every kind of
+decoration and most kinds of furniture, and some one
+suggested&mdash;as a joke more than anything else&mdash;that we
+should each put down five pounds and form a company.&nbsp; Fivers
+were blossoms of a rare growth among us in those days, and I
+won&rsquo;t swear that the table bristled with fivers.&nbsp;
+Anyhow, the firm was formed, but of course there was no deed, or
+anything of that kind.&nbsp; In fact, <!-- page 252--><a
+name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>it was a
+mere playing at business, and Morris was elected manager, not
+because we ever dreamed he would turn out a man of business, but
+because he was the only one among us who had both time and money
+to spare.&nbsp; We had no idea whatever of commercial success,
+but it succeeded almost in our own despite.&nbsp; Here comes the
+manager.&nbsp; You must mind your <i>p&rsquo;s</i> and
+<i>q&rsquo;s</i> with him; he is a wonderfully stand-off chap,
+and generally manages to take against people.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is he like?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know the portraits of Francis I.&nbsp; Well, take
+that portrait as the basis of what you would call in your
+metaphysical jargon your &lsquo;mental image&rsquo; of the
+manager&rsquo;s face, soften down the nose a bit, and give him
+the rose-bloom colour of an English farmer, and there you have
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What about Francis&rsquo;s eyes?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, they are not quite so small, but not
+big&mdash;blue-grey, but full of genius.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then I saw, coming towards us on a rough pony so
+diminutive that he well deserved the name of &ldquo;Mouse,&rdquo;
+the figure of a man in a wideawake&mdash;a figure so broad and
+square that the breeze at his back, soft and balmy as it was,
+seemed to be using him as a sail, and blowing both him and the
+pony towards us.</p>
+<p>When Rossetti introduced me, the manager greeted him with a
+&ldquo;H&rsquo;m! I thought you were <!-- page 253--><a
+name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+253</span>alone.&rdquo;&nbsp; This did not seem promising.&nbsp;
+Morris at that time was as proverbial for his exclusiveness as he
+afterwards became for his expansiveness.</p>
+<p>Rossetti, however, was irresistible to everybody, and
+especially to Morris, who saw that he was expected to be
+agreeable to me, and most agreeable he was, though for at least
+an hour I could still see the shy look in the corner of his
+eyes.&nbsp; He invited me to join the fishing, which I did.&nbsp;
+Finding every faculty of Morris&rsquo;s mind and every nerve in
+his body occupied with one subject, fishing, I (coached by
+Rossetti, who warned me not to talk about &lsquo;The Defence of
+Guenevere&rsquo;) talked about nothing but the bream, roach,
+dace, and gudgeon I used to catch as a boy in the Ouse, and the
+baits that used to tempt the victims to their doom.&nbsp; Not one
+word passed Morris&rsquo;s lips, as far as I remember at this
+distance of time, which had not some relation to fish and
+baits.&nbsp; He had come from London for a few hours&rsquo;
+fishing, and all the other interests which as soon as he got back
+to Queen&rsquo;s Square would be absorbing him were
+forgotten.&nbsp; Instead of watching my float, I could not help
+watching his face with an amused interest at its absorbed
+expression, which after a while he began to notice, and the
+following little dialogue ensued, which I remember as though it
+took place yesterday:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How old were you when you used to fish in the
+Ouse?&rdquo;</p>
+<p><!-- page 254--><a name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+254</span>&ldquo;Oh, all sorts of ages; it was at all sorts of
+times, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, how young then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Say ten or twelve.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When you got a bite at ten or twelve, did you get as
+interested, as excited, as I get when I see my float
+bob?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The way in which he said, &ldquo;I thought not,&rdquo;
+conveyed a world of disparagement of me as a man who could care
+to gaze upon a brother angler instead of upon his own float.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 255--><a name="page255"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 255</span>II.</h3>
+<p>In whatsoever William Morris does or says the hand or the
+voice of the poet is seen or heard: in his house decorations no
+less than in his epics, in his illuminated manuscripts no less
+than in his tapestries, in his philippics against
+&ldquo;restoration&rdquo; no less than in his sage-greens, in his
+socialism no less than in his samplers.&nbsp; And first a word as
+to his poetry.&nbsp; Any critic who, having for contemporaries
+such writers as Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and William
+Morris, fails to see that he lives in a period of great poets may
+rest assured that he is a critic born&mdash;may rest assured that
+had he lived in the days of the Elizabethans he would have joined
+the author of &lsquo;The Returne from Parnassus&rsquo; in
+despising the unacademic author of &lsquo;Hamlet&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Lear.&rsquo;&nbsp; Among this band of great contemporary
+poets what is the special position held by him who, having set
+his triumphant hand to everything from the sampler up to the
+epic, has now, by way of recreation, or rather by way of opening
+a necessary safety-valve to ease his restless energies, invented
+a system of poetic socialism and expounded it in a brand-new kind
+of prose fiction?</p>
+<p><!-- page 256--><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+256</span>A special and peculiar position Morris holds among his
+peers&mdash;on that we are all agreed; but what is that
+position?&nbsp; We must not talk too familiarly about the
+Olympian gods; but is it that, without being the greatest where
+all are great, Morris is the one who on all occasions produces
+pure poetry and nothing else?&nbsp; Without affirming that it is
+so, we may at least ask the question.&nbsp; If other poets of our
+time show more intellectual strength than he, are they,
+perchance, given sometimes to adulterating their poetry with
+ratiocination and didactic preachments such as were better left
+to the proseman?&nbsp; Without affirming that it is so, we may at
+least ask the question.&nbsp; If other poets of our time can
+reach a finer frenzy than he and give it voice with a more
+melodious throat, are they, perchance, apt to forget that
+&ldquo;eloquence is heard while poetry is overheard&rdquo;?&nbsp;
+Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the
+question.&nbsp; If others, again, are more picturesque than he
+(though these it might be difficult to find), are they,
+perchance, a little too self-conscious in their word-pictures,
+and are they, perchance, apt to pass into those flowery but
+uncertain ways that were first discovered by Euphues?&nbsp;
+Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the
+question.</p>
+<p>But supposing that we really had to affirm all these things
+about the other Olympians, where then would be the position of
+him about whose <!-- page 257--><a name="page257"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 257</span>work such questions could not even
+be asked?&nbsp; Where would then be the place of him who never
+passes into ratiocination or rhetoric, never passes into
+excessive word-painting or into euphuism, never speaks so loud as
+to be heard rather than overheard, but, on the contrary, gives us
+always clear and simple pictures, and always in musical
+language?&nbsp; Where would then be the place of him who is the
+very ideal, if not of the poet as <i>vates</i>, yet of the poet
+as &ldquo;maker&rdquo;&mdash;the poet who always looks out upon
+life through a poetic atmosphere which, if sometimes more
+attenuated than suits some readers, is as simple and as clear as
+the air of a May morning?&nbsp; A question which would be
+variously answered according to the various temperaments of those
+who answer&mdash;of those who define poetry to be
+&ldquo;making,&rdquo; or those who define it to be
+&ldquo;prophesying,&rdquo; or those who define it to be
+&ldquo;singing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Exception has, no doubt, been taken to certain archaisms in
+which Morris indulges not only in the epic of
+&lsquo;Sigurd,&rsquo; but also, and in a greater degree, in his
+translations, especially in that rendering of the Odyssey.&nbsp;
+It is not our business here to examine into the merits and
+demerits of Morris as a translator; but if it were, this is what
+we should say on his behalf.&nbsp; While admitting that now and
+again his diction is a little too Scandinavian to be in colour,
+we should point to Matthew Arnold&rsquo;s <!-- page 258--><a
+name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 258</span>dictum that
+in a versified translation a poet is no longer recognizable, and
+then we should ask whether it is given to any man in any kind of
+diction to translate Homer.&nbsp; One Homeric quality only can
+any one translator secure, it seems; and if he can secure one, is
+not his partial failure better than success in less ambitious
+efforts?&nbsp; To Chapman it was given to secure in the Iliad a
+measure of the Homeric eagerness&mdash;but what else?&nbsp; To
+Tennyson (in one wonderful fragment) it was given to secure a
+measure of the Homeric dignity and also a measure of the Homeric
+picture&mdash;but what else?&nbsp; There was still left one of
+the three supreme Homeric qualities&mdash;the very quality which
+no one ever supposed could be secured for our literature, or,
+indeed, for any other&mdash;Homer&rsquo;s quality of
+<i>na&iuml;f</i> wonder.&nbsp; There is no witchery of Homer so
+fascinating as this; and did any one suppose that it could ever
+be caught by any translator?&nbsp; And could it ever have been
+caught had not Nature in one of her happiest moods bethought
+herself of evolving, in a late and empty day, the industrious
+tapestry weaver of Merton and idle singer of
+&lsquo;Sigurd,&rsquo; &lsquo;The Earthly Paradise,&rsquo;
+&lsquo;Love is Enough,&rsquo; and ten thousand delightful verses
+besides?</p>
+<p>But can a writer be called <i>na&iuml;f</i> who works in a
+diction belonging rather to a past age than to his own?&nbsp;
+Morris has proved that he could.&nbsp; Imagination is the basis
+upon which all other <!-- page 259--><a name="page259"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 259</span>human faculties rest.&nbsp; In the
+deep sense, indeed, one possession only have we &ldquo;fools of
+nature,&rdquo; our imagination.&nbsp; What we fondly take for
+substance is the very shadow; what we fondly take for shadow is
+the very substance.&nbsp; And day by day is Science herself
+endorsing more emphatically than ever Hamlet&rsquo;s dictum, that
+&ldquo;there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it
+so.&rdquo;&nbsp; By the aid of imagination our souls confront the
+present, and, as a rule, the present only.&nbsp; But Morris is an
+instance, and not a solitary one, of a modern writer&rsquo;s
+inhaling so naturally the atmosphere of the particular past
+period his imagination delights in as to belong spiritually to
+that period rather than his own.&nbsp; To deny sincerity of
+accent to Morris because of his love of the simple old
+Scandinavian note&mdash;the note which to him represents every
+other kind of primitive simplicity&mdash;would be as uncritical
+as to deny sincerity of accent to Charles Lamb because of his
+sympathy with Elizabethan and Jacobean times, or to Dante
+Rossetti because of his sympathy with the period of his great
+Italian namesake.</p>
+<p>So much for the poetry of our many-handed poet.&nbsp; As to
+his house decorations, his illuminated manuscripts, his
+&ldquo;anti-scrape&rdquo; philippics, his sage-greens, his
+tapestries, his socialism, and his samplers: to deal with the
+infinite is far beyond the scope of an article so <!-- page
+260--><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+260</span>very finite as this, or we could easily show that in
+them all there is seen the same <i>na&iuml;f</i> genius of the
+poet, the same rare instinct for beautiful expression, the same
+originality as in the epics and the translations.&nbsp; Let him
+who is rash enough to suppose that even the socialism of a great
+poet is like the socialism of common folk read &lsquo;John
+Ball.&rsquo;&nbsp; Let him observe how like Titania floating and
+dancing and playing among the Athenian clowns seems the Morrisian
+genius floating and dancing and playing among the surroundings in
+which at present it pleases him to disport.&nbsp; What makes the
+ordinary socialistic literature to many people unreadable is its
+sourness.&nbsp; What the Socialists say may be true, but their
+way of saying it sets one&rsquo;s teeth on edge.&nbsp; They
+contrive to state their case with so much bitterness, with so
+much unfairness&mdash;so much lack of logic&mdash;that the
+listener says at once, &ldquo;For me, <i>any</i> galley but
+this!&nbsp; Things <i>are</i> bad; but, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake,
+let us go on as we are!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By the clever competition of organisms did Nature, long before
+socialism was thought of, contrive to build up a world&mdash;this
+makeshift world.&nbsp; By the teeth of her very cats did she
+evolve her succulent clover.&nbsp; But whether the Socialists are
+therefore wrong in their views of society and its ultimate goal
+is not a question we need discuss.&nbsp; What they want is more
+knowledge and less zeal.&nbsp; It is <!-- page 261--><a
+name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 261</span>possible to
+see, and see clearly, that the social organism is far from being
+what it ought to be, and at the same time to remember that man is
+a creature of slow growth, and that even in reaching his present
+modest stage of development the time he required was
+long&mdash;long indeed unless we consider his history in relation
+to the history of the earth, and then he appears to have been
+very commendably expeditious.&nbsp; If there is any truth in what
+the geologists tell us of the vast age of the earth, it seems
+only a few years ago that man succeeded, after much heroic
+sitting down, in wearing off an appendage which had done him good
+service in his early tree-climbing days, but which, with new
+environments and with trousers in prospect, had ceased to be
+useful or ornamental.&nbsp; An anthropoid Socialist would have
+advised him to &ldquo;cut it off,&rdquo; and had he done so he
+would have bled to death.</p>
+<p>That among all her children Man is really Nature&rsquo;s prime
+favourite seems pretty evident, though no one can say why.&nbsp;
+It is to him that the Great Mother is ever pointing and saying,
+&ldquo;A poor creature, but mine own.&nbsp; I shall do something
+with him some day, but I must not try to force him.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Here, indeed, is the mistake of the Socialists.&nbsp; They think
+they can force the very creature who above all others cannot be
+forced.&nbsp; They think they can turn him into something rich
+and strange&mdash;turn him in a <!-- page 262--><a
+name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 262</span>single
+generation&mdash;even as certain ingenious experimentalists
+turned what Nature meant for a land-salamander into a
+water-salamander, with new rudder-tail and gills instead of lungs
+and feet suppressed, by feeding him with water animals in
+oxygenated water and cajoling his functions.&nbsp; Competition,
+that evolved Shakespeare from an ascidian, may be a mistake of
+Nature&rsquo;s&mdash;M. Ars&egrave;ne Houssaye declares that she
+never was so wise and artistically perfect as we take her to
+be&mdash;but her mistakes are too old to be rectified in a single
+generation.&nbsp; A little more knowledge, we say, and a little
+less zeal would save the Socialist from being considered by the
+advanced thinker&mdash;who, studying the present by the light of
+the past, sees that all civilization is provisional&mdash;as the
+most serious obstructive whom he has to encounter.</p>
+<p>As to Morris, we have always felt that, take him all round, he
+is the richest and most varied in artistic endowments of any man
+of our time.&nbsp; On whichsoever of the fine arts he had chanced
+to concentrate his gifts and energies the result would have been
+the same as in poetry.&nbsp; In the front rank he would always
+have been.&nbsp; But it is not until we come to deal with his
+socialism that we see how entirely aestheticism is the primal
+source from which all his energies spring.&nbsp; That he has a
+great and generous heart&mdash;a heart that must needs sympathize
+with every form of distress&mdash;no one can doubt who <!-- page
+263--><a name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+263</span>reads these two books, <a name="citation263"></a><a
+href="#footnote263" class="citation">[263]</a> and yet his
+socialism comes from an entirely &aelig;sthetic impulse.&nbsp; It
+is the vulgarities of civilization, it is the ugliness of
+contemporary life&mdash;so unlike that Earthly Paradise of the
+poetic dream&mdash;that have driven him from his natural and
+proper work.&nbsp; He cannot take offence at our saying this, for
+he has said it himself in &lsquo;Signs of
+Change&rsquo;:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;As I strove to stir up people to this
+reform, I found that the causes of the vulgarities of
+civilization lay deeper than I had thought, and little by little
+I was driven to the conclusion that all these uglinesses are but
+the outward expression of the innate moral baseness into which we
+are forced by our present form of society, and that it is futile
+to attempt to deal with them from the outside.&nbsp; Whatever I
+have written, or spoken on the platform, on these social subjects
+is the result of the truths of socialism meeting my earlier
+impulse, and giving it a definite and much more serious aim; and
+I can only hope, in conclusion, that any of my readers who have
+found themselves hard-pressed by the sordidness of civilization,
+and have not known where to turn to for encouragement, may
+receive the same enlightenment as I have, and that even the rough
+pieces in this book may help them to that end.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>With these eloquent words no one can more fully agree than we
+do, so far as they relate to the unloveliness of Philistine
+rule.&nbsp; But <!-- page 264--><a name="page264"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 264</span>though the bad features of the
+present time <a name="citation264"></a><a href="#footnote264"
+class="citation">[264]</a> are peculiar to itself, when were
+those paradisal days of which Morris dreams? when did that merry
+England exist in which the general sum of human happiness and
+human misery was more equally distributed than now?</p>
+<p>Those &ldquo;dark ages&rdquo; beloved of the author of
+&lsquo;John Ball&rsquo; may not have been quite so dark as
+Swinburne declares them to have been; but in this matter of the
+equalization of human happiness were they so very far in advance
+of the present time?&nbsp; Those who have watched the progress of
+Morris&rsquo;s socialism know that, so far from being out of
+keeping with the &ldquo;anti-scrape&rdquo; philippics and the
+tapestry weaving, it is in entire harmony with them.&nbsp; Out of
+a noble anger against the &ldquo;jerry builder&rdquo; and his
+detestable doings sprang this the last of the Morrisian epics, as
+out of the wrath of Achilles sprang the Iliad.&nbsp; That the
+picturesqueness of the John Ball period should lead captive the
+imagination of Morris was, of course, inevitable.&nbsp; Society
+is at least picturesque wheresoever the classes are so sharply
+demarcated as they were in the dark ages, when the difference as
+to quality of flesh and blood between the lord and the thrall was
+greater than the difference between the thrall and the swine he
+tended.&nbsp; But what about the condition of this same
+picturesque thrall who (as the law books have it) <!-- page
+265--><a name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+265</span>&ldquo;clothed the soil&rdquo;&mdash;whose every chance
+of happiness, whose every chance of comfort, depended upon the
+arbitrary will of some more or less brutal lord?&nbsp; What was
+the condition of the English lower orders&mdash;the orders for
+whom many bitter social tears are now being shed?&nbsp; What
+about the condition of the thralls in dark ages so dark that even
+an apostle of Wyclif&rsquo;s (this same John Ball, Morris&rsquo;s
+hero) preached the doctrine&mdash;unless he has been
+belied&mdash;that no child had a soul that could be saved who had
+been born out of wedlock?&nbsp; The Persian aphorism that warns
+us to beware of poets, princes, and women must have had a
+satirical reference to the fact that their governance of the
+world is by means of picturesqueness.&nbsp; Always it has been
+the picturesqueness of tyranny that has kept it up.&nbsp; It was
+the picturesqueness of the <i>auto de fe</i> that kept up the
+Spanish Inquisition, but we may rest assured that the most
+picturesque actors in that striking tableau would have preferred
+a colourless time of jerry builders to a picturesqueness like
+that.&nbsp; To find a fourteenth-century pothouse parlour painted
+by a modern Socialist with a hand more loving than Walter
+Scott&rsquo;s own is indeed touching:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I entered the door and started at first
+with my old astonishment, with which I had woke up, so strange
+and beautiful did this interior seem to me, though it was but a
+pothouse <!-- page 266--><a name="page266"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 266</span>parlour.&nbsp; A quaintly carved
+sideboard held an array of bright pewter pots and dishes and
+wooden and earthen bowls; a stout oak table went up and down the
+room, and a carved oak chair stood by the chimney-corner, now
+filled by a very old man dim-eyed and white-bearded.&nbsp; That,
+except the rough stools and benches on which the company sat, was
+all the furniture.&nbsp; The walls were panelled roughly enough
+with oak boards to about six feet from the floor, and about three
+feet of plaster above that was wrought in a pattern of a rose
+stem running all round the room, freely and roughly done, but
+with (as it seemed to my unused eyes) wonderful skill and
+spirit.&nbsp; On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was
+wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper
+colours.&nbsp; There were a dozen or more of the men I had seen
+coming along the street sitting there, some eating and all
+drinking; their cased bows leaned against the wall, their quivers
+hung on pegs in the panelling, and in a corner of the room I saw
+half a dozen bill-hooks that looked made more for war than for
+hedge-shearing, with ashen handles some seven foot long.&nbsp;
+Three or four children were running about among the legs of the
+men, heeding them mighty little in their bold play, and the men
+seemed little troubled by it, although they were talking
+earnestly and seriously too.&nbsp; A well-made comely girl leaned
+up against the chimney close to the gaffer&rsquo;s chair, and
+seemed to be in waiting on the company: she was clad in a
+close-fitting gown of bright blue cloth, with a broad silver
+girdle, daintily wrought, round her loins, a rose <!-- page
+267--><a name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+267</span>wreath was on her head, and her hair hung down unbound;
+the gaffer grumbled a few words to her from time to time, so that
+I judged he was her grandfather.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;Morris&rsquo;s &lsquo;Earthly Paradise&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+the reader will exclaim.&nbsp; Yes; and here we come upon that
+feature of originality which, as has been before said,
+distinguishes Morris&rsquo;s socialism from the socialism of the
+prosaic reformer.</p>
+<p>Political opinions almost always spring from
+temperament.&nbsp; The conservative temper of such a poet as Sir
+Walter Scott leads him to idealize the past, and to concern
+himself but little about the future.&nbsp; The rebellious
+temperament of such a poet as Shelley leads him to idealize the
+future, and concern himself but little about the past.&nbsp; But
+by contriving to idealize both the past and the future, and
+mixing the two idealizations into one delicious amalgam, the poet
+of the &lsquo;Earthly Paradise&rsquo; gives us the Morrisian
+socialism, the most charming, and in many respects the most
+marvellous product of &ldquo;the poet&rsquo;s mind&rdquo; that
+has ever yet been presented to an admiring world.</p>
+<p>The plan of &lsquo;John Ball&rsquo; is simplicity
+itself.&nbsp; The poet in a dream becomes a spectator of the
+insurrection of the Kentish men at the time when Wat Tyler
+rebelled against the powers that were; and the hero, John Ball,
+who is mainly famous as having preached a sermon from the
+text</p>
+<blockquote><p>Wan Adam dalf and Eve span<br />
+Wo was thanne a gentilman?</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p><!-- page 268--><a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+268</span>is made to listen to the poet-dreamer&rsquo;s prophecy
+of the days of <i>bourgeois</i> rule and the jerry builder.</p>
+<p>If we take into account the perfect truth and beauty of the
+literary form in which the story is presented, we do not believe
+that anything to surpass it could be found in historic fiction;
+indeed, we do not know that anything could be found to equal
+it.&nbsp; The difficulty of the imaginative writer who attempts,
+whether in prose or verse, to vivify the past seems to be
+increasing, as we have before said, every day with the growth of
+the scientific temper and the reverence of the sacredness of mere
+documents.&nbsp; The old-fashioned theory&mdash;the theory which
+obtained from Shakespeare&rsquo;s time down to Scott&rsquo;s and
+even down to Kingsley&rsquo;s&mdash;that the facts of history
+could be manipulated for artistic purposes with the same freedom
+that the artist&rsquo;s own inventions can be handled, gave the
+artist power to produce vital and flexible work at the expense of
+the historic conscience&mdash;a power which is being curtailed
+day by day.&nbsp; The instinct for vivifying by imaginative
+treatment the records of the past is too universal and too deeply
+inwoven in the very texture of the human mind to be other than a
+true and healthy instinct.&nbsp; But so oppressive has become the
+tyranny of documents, so fettered by what a humourist has called
+&ldquo;factology&rdquo; have become the wings of the
+romancer&rsquo;s imagination, that <!-- page 269--><a
+name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 269</span>one wonders
+at his courage in dealing with historic subjects at all.</p>
+<p>A bold writer would he be who in the present day should make
+Shakespeare figure among the Kenilworth festivities as a famous
+player (after the manner of Scott), or who should (after the
+manner of Kingsley) give Elizabeth credit for Winter&rsquo;s
+device of using the fire-ships before Calais.&nbsp; Even the
+poet&mdash;he who, dealing as he does with essential and
+elemental qualities only, is not so hampered as the proseman in
+these matters&mdash;is beginning also to feel the tyranny of
+documents, as we see notably in Swinburne&rsquo;s
+&lsquo;Bothwell,&rsquo; which consists very largely of documents
+transfigured into splendid verse.&nbsp; But more than even this:
+the mere literary form has now to be as true to the time depicted
+as circumstances will allow.&nbsp; If Scott&rsquo;s romances have
+a fault it is that, as he had no command over, and perhaps but
+little sympathy with, the beautiful old English of which Morris
+is such a master, his stories lack one important element of
+dramatic illusion.&nbsp; But it is in the literary form of his
+story that Morris is especially successful.&nbsp; Where time has
+dealt most cruelly with our beloved language is in robbing it of
+that beautiful cadence which fell from our forefathers&rsquo;
+lips as sweetly and as unconsciously as melody falls from the
+throat of the mavis.&nbsp; One of the many advantages that Morris
+has reaped from his peculiar line of study is that he can <!--
+page 270--><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+270</span>write like this&mdash;he, and he alone among living
+men:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Surely thou goest to thy
+death.&rsquo;&nbsp; He smiled very sweetly, yet proudly, as he
+said: &lsquo;Yea, the road is long, but the end cometh at
+last.&nbsp; Friend, many a day have I been dying; for my sister,
+with whom I have played and been merry in the autumntide about
+the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and
+bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush, and
+wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk
+wheeled and turned over the hedges, and the weasel ran across the
+path, and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs
+as we sat happy on the grass; and she is dead and gone from the
+earth, for she pined from famine after the years of the great
+sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none
+thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and
+my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the
+tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was
+and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why
+should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be
+done?&nbsp; Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must
+die; and I will tell thee another, to wit, that they live: and I
+live now and shall live.&nbsp; Tell me then what shall
+befall.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Note the music of the cadence here&mdash;a music that plays
+about the heart more sweetly than any verse, save the very
+highest.&nbsp; And here we touch upon an extremely interesting
+subject.</p>
+<p><!-- page 271--><a name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+271</span>Always in reading a prose story by a writer whose
+energies have been exercised in other departments of letters
+there is for the critic a special interest.&nbsp; If this
+exercise has been in fields outside imaginative
+literature&mdash;in those fields of philosophical speculation
+where a logical method and a scientific modulation of sentences
+are required&mdash;the novelist, instead of presenting us with
+those concrete pictures of human life demanded in all imaginative
+art, is apt to give us disquisitions &ldquo;about and
+about&rdquo; human life.&nbsp; Forgetting that it is not the
+function of any art to prove, he is apt to concern himself deeply
+in showing why his actors did and said this or that&mdash;apt to
+busy himself about proving his story either by subtle analyses or
+else by purely scientific generalizations, instead of attending
+to the true method of convincement that belongs to his
+art&mdash;the convincement that is effected by actual pictorial
+and dramatic illustration of how his actors really did the things
+and said the things vouched for by his own imagination.&nbsp;
+That the quest of a scientific, or supposed scientific, basis for
+a novelist&rsquo;s imaginative structure is fatal to true art is
+seen not only in George Eliot and the accomplished author of
+&lsquo;Elsie Venner,&rsquo; but also in writers of another
+kind&mdash;writers whose hands cannot possibly have been
+stiffened by their knowledge of science.</p>
+<p>Among the many instances that occur to us <!-- page 272--><a
+name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 272</span>we need
+point to only one, that of a story recently published by one of
+our most successful living novelists, in which the writer
+endeavours to prove that animal magnetism is the acting cause of
+spiritualistic manifestations so called.&nbsp; Setting out to
+show that a medium is nothing more than a powerful mesmerist, to
+whose manipulations all but two in a certain household are
+unconsciously succumbing, he soon ignores for plot purposes the
+nature of the dramatic situation by making those very two
+sceptics at a s&eacute;ance hear the same music, see the same
+spiritually conveyed newspaper, as the others hear and see.&nbsp;
+That the writer should mistake, as he seems to do, the merely
+directive force of magnetism for a motive force does not concern
+the literary critic.&nbsp; But when two sceptics, who are to
+expose a charlatan&rsquo;s tricks by watching how the believers
+are succumbing to mesmeric hallucinations, are found succumbing
+to the same hallucinations themselves&mdash;succumbing because
+the story-teller needs them as witnesses of the
+phenomena&mdash;then the literary critic grows pensive, for he
+sees what havoc the scientific method will work in the
+flower-garden of art.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, should the story-teller be a poet&mdash;one
+who, like the writer of &lsquo;John Ball,&rsquo; has been
+accustomed to write under the conditions of a form of literary
+art where the diction is always and necessarily concrete, <!--
+page 273--><a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+273</span>figurative, and quintessential, and where the movement
+is metrical&mdash;his danger lies in a very different
+direction.&nbsp; The critic&rsquo;s interest then lies in
+watching how the poet will comport himself in another field of
+imaginative literature&mdash;a field where no such conditions as
+these exist&mdash;a field where quintessential and concrete
+diction, though meritorious, may yet be carried too far, and
+where those regular and expected bars of the metricist which are
+the first requisites of verse are not only without function, but
+are in the way&mdash;are fatal, indeed, to that kind of
+convincement which, and which alone, is the proper quest of prose
+art.&nbsp; No doubt it is true, as we have before said, that
+literature being nothing but the reflex of the life of man, or
+else of the life of nature, the final quest of every form of
+literature is that special kind of convincement which is
+inherently suitable to the special form.&nbsp; For the analogy
+between nature and true art is not a fanciful one, and the
+relation of function to organism is the same in both.&nbsp; But
+what is the difference between the convincement achieved by
+poetic and the convincement achieved by prose art?&nbsp; Is it
+that the convincement of him who works in poetic forms is, though
+not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful record
+of the emotion aroused in his own soul by the impact upon his
+senses of the external world, while the convincement of the
+proseman is, though not <!-- page 274--><a
+name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+274</span>necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful
+record and picture of the external world itself?</p>
+<p>All such generalizations as this are, no doubt, to be taken
+with many and great qualifications; but, roughly speaking, would
+not this seem to be the fundamental difference between that kind
+of imaginative literature which expresses itself in metrical
+forms and that kind of imaginative literature in which metrical
+form is replaced by other qualities and other functions?&nbsp;
+Not but that these two methods may meet in the same work, not but
+that they may meet and strengthen each other, as we have before
+said when glancing at the interesting question, How much, or how
+little, of realism can poetry capture from the world of prose and
+weave into her magic woof, and how much of music can prose steal
+from poetry?&nbsp; But in order to do all that can be done in the
+way of enriching poetry with prose material without missing the
+convincement of poetic art, the poet must be Homer himself; in
+order to do all that can be done in the way of vivifying prose
+fiction with poetic fire without missing the convincement of
+prose art, the story-teller must be Charlotte Bront&euml; or
+Emily, her sister, in whose work we find for once the
+quintessential strength and the concrete and figurative diction
+of the poet&mdash;indeed, all the poetical requisites save metre
+alone.&nbsp; Had &lsquo;Jane Eyre,&rsquo; &lsquo;Villette,&rsquo;
+and &lsquo;Wuthering <!-- page 275--><a name="page275"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 275</span>Heights&rsquo; existed in
+Coleridge&rsquo;s time he would, we may be sure, have taken these
+three prose poems as illustrations of the truth of his axiom that
+the true antithesis of poetry is not prose, but science.</p>
+<p>What the prose poet has to avoid is metrical movement on the
+one side and scientific modulation of sentences on the
+other.&nbsp; And perhaps in no case can it be achieved save in
+the autobiographic form of fiction, where and where alone the
+work is so subjective that it may bear even the poetic glow of
+&lsquo;Jane Eyre&rsquo; and &lsquo;Villette.&rsquo;&nbsp; What
+makes us think this to be so is the fact that in
+&lsquo;Shirley&rsquo;&mdash;a story written in the epic
+method&mdash;the only passages of the poetic kind which really
+convince are those uttered by the characters in their own
+persons.&nbsp; And as to &lsquo;Wuthering Heights,&rsquo; a story
+which could not, of course, be told in one autobiography, the
+method of telling it by means of a group of autobiographies,
+though clumsy enough from the constructor&rsquo;s point, was yet
+just as effective as a more artistic method.&nbsp; And it was
+true instinct of genius that led Emily Bront&euml; to adopt the
+autobiographic method even under these heavy conditions.</p>
+<p>Still the general truth remains that the primary function of
+the poet is to tell his story steeped in his own emotion, while
+the primary function of the prose fictionist is to tell his story
+in an objective way.&nbsp; Hence it <!-- page 276--><a
+name="page276"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 276</span>is that in
+a general way the difficulty of the poet who turns to prose
+fiction lies, like that of philosophical or scientific writers,
+in suppressing certain intellectual functions which he has been
+in the habit of exercising.&nbsp; And the case of Scott, which at
+first sight might seem to show against this theory, may be
+adduced in support of it.&nbsp; For Scott&rsquo;s versified
+diction, though concrete, is never more quintessential than that
+of prose; and his method being always objective rather than
+subjective, when he turned to prose fiction he seemed at once to
+be writing with his right hand where formerly he had been writing
+with his left.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 277--><a name="page277"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 277</span>VIII.&nbsp; FRANCIS HINDES
+GROOME.<br />
+(THE TARNO RYE.)<br />
+1851&ndash;1902.</h2>
+<h3>I.</h3>
+<p>I have been invited to write about my late friend and
+colleague Francis Hindes Groome, who died on the 24th ult., and
+was buried among his forefathers at Monk Soham in Suffolk.&nbsp;
+I find the task extremely difficult.&nbsp; Though he died at
+fifty, he, with the single exception of Borrow, had lived more
+than any other friend of mine, and perhaps suffered more.&nbsp;
+Indeed, his was one of the most remarkable and romantic literary
+lives that, since Borrow&rsquo;s, have been lived in my time.</p>
+<p>The son of an Archdeacon of Suffolk, he was born in 1851 at
+Monk Soham Rectory, where, I believe, his father and his
+grandfather were born, and where they certainly lived;
+for&mdash;as has been recorded in one of the invaluable registry
+books of my friend Mr. F. A. Crisp&mdash;he belonged to one of
+the oldest and most distinguished families in Suffolk.&nbsp; He
+was sent early to Ipswich School, where he was a very popular
+boy, but never <!-- page 278--><a name="page278"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 278</span>strong and never fond of athletic
+exercises.&nbsp; His early taste for literature is shown by the
+fact that with his boy friend Henry Elliot Maiden he originated a
+school magazine called the <i>Elizabethan</i>.&nbsp; Like many an
+organ originated in the outer world, the <i>Elizabethan</i>
+failed because it would not, or could not, bring itself into
+harmony with the public taste.&nbsp; The boys wanted news of
+cricket and other games: Groome and his assistant editor gave
+them literature as far as it was in their power to do so.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p278b.jpg">
+<img alt="Francis Hindes Groome" src="images/p278s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The Ipswich School was a very good one for those who got into
+the sixth, as Groome did.&nbsp; The head master, Dr. Holden, was
+a very fine scholar; and it is no wonder that Groome throughout
+his life showed a considerable knowledge of and interest in
+classical literature.&nbsp; That he had a real insight into the
+structure of Latin verse is seen by a rendering of
+Tennyson&rsquo;s &lsquo;Tithonus,&rsquo; which Mr. Maiden has
+been so very good as to show me&mdash;a rendering for which he
+got a prize.&nbsp; In 1869 he got prizes for classical
+literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin
+hexameters.&nbsp; But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence over
+Groome&rsquo;s taste, the assistant master, Mr. Sanderson,
+certainly exercised more, for Mr. Sanderson was an enthusiastic
+student of Romany.&nbsp; The influence of the assistant master
+was soon seen after Groome went up to Oxford.&nbsp; He was
+ploughed for his <!-- page 279--><a name="page279"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 279</span>&ldquo;Smalls,&rdquo; and, remaining
+up for part of the &ldquo;Long,&rdquo; he went one night to a
+fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present&mdash;an
+incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story
+&lsquo;Kriegspiel.&rsquo;&nbsp; Groome at once struck up an
+acquaintance with the gipsies at the fair.&nbsp; It occurred also
+that Mr. Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich School, used to
+go and stay at Monk Soham Rectory every summer for fishing; and
+this tended to focus Groome&rsquo;s interest in Romany
+matters.&nbsp; At G&ouml;ttingen, where he afterwards went, he
+found himself in a kind of Romany atmosphere, for, owing perhaps
+to Benfey&rsquo;s having been a G&ouml;ttingen man, Romany
+matters were still somewhat rife there in certain sets.</p>
+<p>The period from his leaving G&ouml;ttingen to his appearance
+in Edinburgh in 1876 as a working literary man of amazing
+activity, intelligence, and knowledge is the period that he spent
+among the gipsies.&nbsp; And it is this very period of wild
+adventure and romance that it is impossible for me to dwell upon
+here.&nbsp; But on some future occasion I hope to write something
+about his adventures as a Romany Rye.&nbsp; His first work was on
+the &lsquo;Globe Encyclop&aelig;dia,&rsquo; edited by Dr. John
+Ross.&nbsp; Even at that time he was very delicate and subject to
+long wearisome periods of illness.&nbsp; During his work on the
+&lsquo;Globe&rsquo; he fell seriously ill in the middle of the
+letter <i>S</i>.&nbsp; Things were going <!-- page 280--><a
+name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 280</span>very badly
+with him; but they would have gone much worse had it not been for
+the affection and generosity of his friend and colleague Prof. H.
+A. Webster, who, in order to get the work out in time, sat up
+night after night in Groome&rsquo;s room, writing articles on
+Sterne, Voltaire, and other subjects.</p>
+<p>Webster&rsquo;s kindness, and afterwards the kindness of Dr.
+Patrick, endeared Edinburgh and Scotland to the &ldquo;Tarno
+Rye.&rdquo;&nbsp; As Webster was at that time on the staff of
+&lsquo;The Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica,&rsquo; I think, but I
+do not know, that it was through him that Groome got the
+commission to write his article &lsquo;Gypsies&rsquo; in that
+stupendous work.&nbsp; I do not know whether it is the most
+important, but I do know that it is one of the most thorough and
+conscientious articles in the entire encyclop&aelig;dia.&nbsp;
+This was followed by his being engaged by Messrs. Jack to edit
+the &lsquo;Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland,&rsquo; a splendid
+work, which on its completion was made the subject of a long and
+elaborate article in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>&mdash;an article
+which was a great means of directing attention to him, as he
+always declared.&nbsp; Anyhow, people now began to inquire about
+Groome.&nbsp; In 1880 he brought out &lsquo;In Gypsy
+Tents,&rsquo; which I shall describe further on.&nbsp; In 1885 he
+was chosen to join the staff of Messrs. W. &amp; R.
+Chambers.&nbsp; It is curious to think of the &ldquo;Tarno
+Rye,&rdquo; perhaps the most variously equipped <!-- page
+281--><a name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+281</span>literary man in Europe, after such adventures as his,
+sitting from 10 to 4 every day on the sub-editorial stool.&nbsp;
+He was perfectly content on that stool, however, owing to the
+genial kindness of his colleague.&nbsp; As sub-editor under Dr.
+Patrick, and also as a very copious contributor, he took part in
+the preparation of the new edition of &lsquo;Chambers&rsquo;s
+Encyclop&aelig;dia.&rsquo;&nbsp; He took a large part also in
+preparing &lsquo;Chambers&rsquo;s Gazetteer&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;Chambers&rsquo;s Biographical Dictionary.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Meanwhile he was writing articles in the &lsquo;Dictionary of
+National Biography,&rsquo; articles in <i>Blackwood&rsquo;s
+Magazine</i> and <i>The Bookman</i>, and also reviews upon
+special subjects in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>.</p>
+<p>This was followed in 1887 by a short Border history, crammed
+with knowledge.&nbsp; In 1895 his name became really familiar to
+the general reader by his delightful little volume &lsquo;Two
+Suffolk Friends&rsquo;&mdash;sketches of his father and his
+father&rsquo;s friend Edward FitzGerald&mdash;full of humour and
+admirable character-drawing.</p>
+<p>In 1896 he published his Romany novel
+&lsquo;Kriegspiel,&rsquo; which did not meet with anything like
+the success it deserved, although I must say he was himself in
+some degree answerable for its comparative failure.&nbsp; The
+origin of the story was this.&nbsp; Shortly after our intimacy I
+told him that I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East
+Anglian gipsies and the Welsh gipsies, but that it had been so
+dinned <!-- page 282--><a name="page282"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 282</span>into me by Borrow that in England
+there was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart
+to publish it.&nbsp; Groome urged me to let him read it, and he
+did read it, as far as it was then complete, and took an
+extremely kind view of it, and urged me to bring it out.&nbsp;
+But now came another and a new cause for delay in my bringing out
+&lsquo;Aylwin&rsquo;: Groome himself, who at that time knew more
+about Romany matters than all other Romany students of my
+acquaintance put together, showed a remarkable gift as a
+<i>raconteur</i>, and I felt quite sure that he could, if he set
+to work, write a Romany story&mdash;<i>the</i> Romany story of
+the English language.&nbsp; He strongly resisted the idea for a
+long time&mdash;for two or three years at least&mdash;and he was
+only persuaded to undertake the task at last by my telling him
+that I would never bring out my story until he brought out one
+himself.&nbsp; At last he yielded, told me of a plot, a capital
+one, and set to work upon it.&nbsp; When it was finished he sent
+the manuscript to me, and I read it through with the greatest
+interest, and also the greatest care.&nbsp; I found, as I
+expected to find, that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect,
+and that it was altogether an extremely clever romance; but I
+felt also that Groome had given no attention whatever to the
+structure of a story.&nbsp; Incidents of the most striking and
+original kind were introduced at the wrong places, and this made
+them interesting no <!-- page 283--><a name="page283"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 283</span>longer.&nbsp; So persuaded was I
+that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success that
+I devoted days, and even weeks, to going through the novel, and
+indicating where the transpositions should take place.&nbsp;
+Groome, however, had got so entirely sick of his novel before he
+had completed it that he refused absolutely to put another
+hour&rsquo;s work into it; for, as he said, &ldquo;the writing of
+it had already been a loss to the pantry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He sent it, as it was, to an eminent firm of publishers, who,
+knowing Groome and his abilities, would have willingly taken it
+if they had seen their way to do so.&nbsp; But they could not,
+for the very reasons that had induced me to recast it, and they
+declined it.&nbsp; The book was then sent round to publisher
+after publisher with the same result; and yet there was more fine
+substance in this novel than in five ordinary stories.&nbsp; It
+was at last through the good offices of Mr. Coulson Kernahan that
+it was eventually taken by Messrs. Ward &amp; Lock; and, although
+it won warm eulogies from such great writers as George Meredith,
+it never made its way.&nbsp; Its failure distressed me far more
+than it distressed Groome, for I loved the man, and knew what its
+success would have been to him.&nbsp; Amiable and charming as
+Groome was, there was in him a singular vein of dogged obstinacy
+after he had formed an opinion; and he not only refused to recast
+his story, but <!-- page 284--><a name="page284"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 284</span>refused to abandon the absurd name
+of &lsquo;Kriegspiel&rsquo; for a volume of romantic gipsy
+adventure.&nbsp; I suspect that a large proportion of people who
+asked for &lsquo;Kriegspiel&rsquo; at Mudie&rsquo;s and
+Smith&rsquo;s consisted of officers who thought that it was a
+book on the German war game.</p>
+<p>I tried to persuade him to begin another gipsy novel, but
+found it quite impossible to do so.&nbsp; But even then I waited
+before bringing out my own prose story.&nbsp; I published instead
+my poem in which was told the story of Rhona Boswell, which, to
+my own surprise and Groome&rsquo;s, had a success,
+notwithstanding its gipsy subject.&nbsp; Then I brought out my
+gipsy story, and accepted its success rather ungratefully,
+remembering how the greatest gipsy scholar in the world had
+failed in this line.&nbsp; In 1899 he published &lsquo;Gypsy
+Folk-Tales,&rsquo; in which he got the aid of the first Romany
+scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson.&nbsp; And this was followed
+in 1901 by his edition of &lsquo;Lavengro,&rsquo; which,
+notwithstanding certain unnecessary carpings at
+Borrow&mdash;such, for instance, as the assertion that the word
+&ldquo;dook&rdquo; is never used in Anglo-Romany for
+&ldquo;ghost&rdquo;&mdash;is beyond any doubt the best edition of
+the book ever published.&nbsp; The introduction gives sketches of
+all the Romany Ryes and students of Romany, from Andrew Boorde
+(<i>c.</i> 1490&ndash;1549) down to Mr. G. R. Sims and Mr. David
+MacRitchie.&nbsp; During this time it <!-- page 285--><a
+name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 285</span>was
+becoming painfully perceptible to me that his physical powers
+were waning, although for two years that decadence seemed to have
+no effect upon his mental powers.&nbsp; But at last, while he was
+working on a book in which he took the deepest interest&mdash;the
+new edition of &lsquo;Chambers&rsquo;s Cyclop&aelig;dia of
+English Literature&rsquo;&mdash;it became manifest that the
+general physical depression was sapping the forces of the
+brain.</p>
+<p>But it is personal reminiscences of Groome that I have been
+invited to write, and I have not yet even begun upon these.&nbsp;
+Our close friendship dated no further back than 1881&mdash;the
+year in which died the great Romany Rye.&nbsp; Indeed, it was
+owing to Borrow&rsquo;s death, coupled with Groome&rsquo;s
+interest in that same Romany girl Sinfi Lovell, whom the eloquent
+Romany preacher &ldquo;Gipsy Smith&rdquo; has lately been
+expiating upon to immense audiences, that I first became
+acquainted with Groome.&nbsp; Although he has himself in some
+magazine told the story, it seems necessary for me to retell it
+here, for I know of no better way of giving the readers of <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i> a picture of Frank Groome as he lives in my
+mind.</p>
+<p>It was in 1881 that Borrow, who some seven years before went
+down to Oulton, as he told me, &ldquo;to die,&rdquo; achieved
+death.&nbsp; And it devolved upon me as the chief friend of his
+latest years to write an obituary notice of him in <i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>.&nbsp; Among the many interesting letters <!--
+page 286--><a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+286</span>that it brought me from strangers was one from Groome,
+whose name was familiar to me as the author of the article
+&lsquo;Gypsies&rsquo; in the &lsquo;Encyclop&aelig;dia
+Britannica.&rsquo;&nbsp; But besides this I had read &lsquo;In
+Gypsy Tents,&rsquo; a picture of the very kind of gipsies I knew
+myself, those of East Anglia&mdash;a picture whose photographic
+truth had quite startled me.&nbsp; Howsoever much of matter of
+fact may be worked into &lsquo;Lavengro&rsquo; (and to no one did
+Borrow talk with so little reticence upon this delicate subject
+as to me during many a stroll about Wimbledon Common and Richmond
+Park), I am certain that his first-hand knowledge of gipsy life
+was quite superficial compared with Groome&rsquo;s during the
+nine years or so that he was brought into contact with them in
+Great Britain and on the Continent.&nbsp; Hence a book like
+&lsquo;In Gypsy Tents&rsquo; has for a student of Romany subjects
+an interest altogether different from that which Borrow&rsquo;s
+books command; for while Borrow, the man of genius, throws by the
+very necessities of his temperament the colours of romance around
+his gipsies, the characters of &lsquo;In Gypsy Tents,&rsquo;
+depicted by a man of remarkable talent merely, are as realistic
+as though painted by Zola, while the wealth of gipsy lore at his
+command is simply overwhelming.</p>
+<p>At that time&mdash;with the exception of Borrow and the late
+Sir Richard Burton&mdash;the only man of letters with whom I had
+been <!-- page 287--><a name="page287"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 287</span>brought into contact who knew
+anything about the gipsies was Tom Taylor, whose picture of
+Romany life in an anonymous story called &lsquo;Gypsy
+Experiences,&rsquo; which appeared in <i>The Illustrated London
+News</i> in 1851, and in his play &lsquo;Sir Roger de
+Coverley,&rsquo; is not only fascinating, but on the whole
+true.&nbsp; By-the-by, this charming play might be revived now
+that there is a revived interest in Romany matters.&nbsp; George
+Meredith&rsquo;s wonderful &lsquo;Kiomi&rsquo; was a picture, I
+think, of the only Romany chi he knew; but genius such as his
+needs little straw for the making of bricks.&nbsp; The letter I
+received from Groome enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from
+a forgotten anonymous <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> article of mine,
+written as far back as 1877, in which I showed acquaintance with
+gipsydom and described the ascent of Snowdon in the company of
+Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards removed bodily to
+&lsquo;Aylwin.&rsquo;&nbsp; Here is the cutting:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;We had a striking instance of this some
+years ago, when crossing Snowdon from Capel Curig, one morning,
+with a friend.&nbsp; She was not what is technically called a
+lady, yet she was both tall and, in her way, handsome, and was
+far more clever than many of those who might look down upon her;
+for her speculative and her practical abilities were equally
+remarkable: besides being the first palmist of her time, she had
+the reputation of being able to make more clothes-pegs in an
+hour, and sell <!-- page 288--><a name="page288"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 288</span>more, than any other woman in
+England.&nbsp; The splendour of that &lsquo;Snowdon
+sunrise&rsquo; was such as we can say, from much experience, can
+only be seen about once in a lifetime, and could never be given
+by any pen or pencil.&nbsp; &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t seem to enjoy
+it a bit,&rsquo; was the irritated remark we could not help
+making to our friend, who stood quite silent and apparently deaf
+to the rhapsodies in which we had been indulging, as we both
+stood looking at the peaks, or rather at the vast masses of
+billowy vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes boiled and
+sometimes blazed, shaking, whenever the sun struck one and then
+another, from amethyst to vermilion, &lsquo;shot&rsquo; now and
+then with gold.&nbsp; &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t injiy it, don&rsquo;t
+I?&rsquo; said she, removing her pipe.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>You</i>
+injiy talking about it, <i>I</i> injiy lettin&rsquo; it soak
+in.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Groome asked whether the gipsy mentioned in the cutting was
+not a certain Romany chi whom he named, and said that he had
+always wondered who the writer of that article was, and that now
+he wondered no longer, for he knew him to be the writer of the
+obituary notice of George Borrow.&nbsp; Interested as I was in
+his letter, it came at a moment when the illness of a very dear
+friend of mine threw most other things out of my mind, and it was
+a good while before I answered it, and told him what I had to
+tell about my Welsh gipsy experiences and the adventure on
+Snowdon.&nbsp; I got another letter from him, and this was the
+beginning of a charming correspondence.&nbsp; After a while <!--
+page 289--><a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+289</span>I discovered that there were, besides Romany matters,
+other points of attraction between us.&nbsp; Groome was the son
+of Edward FitzGerald&rsquo;s intimate friend Robert Hindes
+Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk.&nbsp; Now long before the great
+vogue of Omar Khayyam, and, of course, long before the
+institution of the Omar Khayyam Club, there was a little group of
+Omarians of which I was a member.&nbsp; I need not say here who
+were the others of that group, but it was to them I alluded in
+the &lsquo;Toast to Omar Khayyam,&rsquo; which years afterwards I
+printed in <i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>, and have since reprinted in
+a volume of mine.</p>
+<p>After a while it was arranged that he was to come and visit us
+for a few days at The Pines.&nbsp; When it got wind in the little
+household here that another Romany Rye, a successor to George
+Borrow, was to visit us, and when it further became known that he
+had travelled with Hungarian gipsies, Roumanian gipsies,
+Roumelian gipsies, &amp;c., I don&rsquo;t know what kind of wild
+and dishevelled visitor was not expected.&nbsp; Instead of such a
+guest there appeared one of the neatest and most quiet young
+gentlemen who had ever presented themselves at the door.&nbsp; No
+one could possibly have dared to associate Bohemia with
+him.&nbsp; As a friend remarked who was afterwards invited to
+meet him at luncheon, &ldquo;Clergyman&rsquo;s son&mdash;suckling
+for the Church, was stamped upon him from head to
+foot.&rdquo;&nbsp; <!-- page 290--><a name="page290"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 290</span>I will not deny that so respectable
+a looking Romany Rye rather disappointed The Pines at
+first.&nbsp; At that time he was a little over thirty, but owing
+to his slender, graceful figure, and especially owing to his
+lithe movements and elastic walk, he seemed to be several years
+younger.</p>
+<p>The subject of Welsh gipsies, and especially of the Romany chi
+of Swindon, made us intimate friends in half an hour, and then
+there were East Anglia, Omar Khayy&agrave;m, and Edward
+FitzGerald to talk about!&mdash;a delightful new friend for a man
+who had so lately lost the only other Romany Rye in the
+world.&nbsp; Owing to his youthful appearance, I christened him
+there and then the &ldquo;Tarno Rye,&rdquo; in remembrance of
+that other &ldquo;Tarno Rye&rdquo; whom Rhona Boswell
+loved.&nbsp; I soon found that, great as was the physical
+contrast between the Tarno Rye and the original Romany Rye, the
+mental contrast was greater still.&nbsp; Both were shy&mdash;very
+shy; but while Borrow&rsquo;s shyness seemed to be born of
+wariness, the wariness of a man who felt that he was famous and
+had a part to play before an inquisitive world, Groome&rsquo;s
+shyness arose from a modesty that was unique.</p>
+<p>As a philologist merely, to speak of nothing else, his
+equipment was ten times that of Borrow, whose temperament may be
+called anti-academic, and who really knew nothing
+thoroughly.&nbsp; But while Borrow was for ever <!-- page
+291--><a name="page291"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+291</span>displaying his philology, and seemed always far prouder
+of it than of his fascinating powers as a writer of romantic
+adventures, Groome&rsquo;s philological stores, like all his
+other intellectual riches, had to be drawn from him by his
+interlocutor if they were to be recognized at all.&nbsp; Whenever
+Borrow enunciated anything showing, as he thought, exceptional
+philological knowledge or exceptional acquaintance with matters
+Romany, it was his way always to bring it out with a sort of
+rustic twinkle of conscious superiority, which in its way,
+however, was very engaging.&nbsp; From Groome, on the contrary,
+philological lore would drop, when it did come, as unconsciously
+as drops of rain that fall.&nbsp; It was the same with his
+knowledge of Romany matters, which was so vast.&nbsp; Not once in
+all my close intercourse with him did he display his knowledge of
+this subject save in answer to some inquiry.&nbsp; The same thing
+is to be noticed in &lsquo;Kriegspiel.&rsquo;&nbsp; Romany
+students alone are able by reading between the lines to discover
+how deep is the hidden knowledge of Romany matters, so full is
+the story of allusions which are lost upon the general
+reader&mdash;lost, indeed, upon all readers except the very
+few.&nbsp; For instance, the gipsy villain of the story, Perun,
+when telling the tale of his crime against the father of the hero
+who married the Romany chi whom Perun had hoped to marry, makes
+allusion thus to the dead woman: <!-- page 292--><a
+name="page292"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 292</span>&ldquo;And
+then about her as I have named too often to-day.&rdquo;&nbsp; Had
+Borrow been alluding to the Romany taboo of the names of the
+dead, how differently would he have gone to work! how eager would
+he have been to display and explain his knowledge of this
+remarkable Romany superstition!&nbsp; The same remark may be made
+upon the gipsy heroine&rsquo;s sly allusion in
+&lsquo;Kriegspiel&rsquo; to &ldquo;Squire Lucas,&rdquo; the
+Romany equivalent of Baron Munchausen, an allusion which none but
+a Romany student would understand.</p>
+<p>Before luncheon Groome and I took a walk over the common, and
+along the Portsmouth Road, through the Robin Hood Gate and across
+Richmond Park, where Borrow and I and Dr. Hake had so often
+strolled.&nbsp; I wondered what the Gryengroes whom Borrow used
+to foregather with would have thought of my new friend.&nbsp; In
+personal appearance the two Romany Ryes were as unlike as in
+every point of character they were unlike.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s
+giant frame made him stand conspicuous wherever he went,
+Groome&rsquo;s slender, slight body gave an impression of great
+agility; and the walk of the two great pedestrians was equally
+contrasted.&nbsp; Borrow&rsquo;s slope over the ground with the
+loose, long step of a hound I have, on a previous occasion,
+described; Groome&rsquo;s walk was springy as a gipsy
+lad&rsquo;s, and as noiseless as a cat&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Of course, the talk during that walk ran very <!-- page
+293--><a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+293</span>much upon Borrow, whom Groome had seen once or twice,
+but whom he did not in the least understand.&nbsp; The two men
+were antipathetic to each other.&nbsp; It was then that he told
+me how he had first been thrown across the gipsies, and it was
+then that he began to open up to me his wonderful record of
+experiences among them.&nbsp; The talk during that first out of
+many most delightful strolls ran upon Benfey, and afterwards upon
+all kinds of Romany matters.&nbsp; I remember how warm he waxed
+upon his pet aversion, &ldquo;Smith of Coalville,&rdquo; as he
+called him, who, he said, for the purposes of a professional
+philanthropist, had done infinite mischief to the gipsies by
+confounding them with all the wandering cockney raff from the
+slums of London.&nbsp; On my repeating to him what, among other
+things, the Romany chi before mentioned said to me during the
+ascent of Snowdon from Capel Curig, that &ldquo;to make
+<i>kairengroes</i> (house-dwellers) of full-blooded Romanies was
+impossible, because they were the cuckoos of the human race, who
+had no desire to build nests, and were pricked on to move about
+from one place to another over the earth,&rdquo; Groome&rsquo;s
+tongue became loosened, and he launched out into a monologue on
+this subject full of learning and full, as it seemed to me, of
+original views upon the Romanies.</p>
+<p>As an instance of the cuckoo instincts of the true Romany, he
+told me that in North America&mdash;<!-- page 294--><a
+name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 294</span>for which
+land, alas! so many of our best Romanies even in Borrow&rsquo;s
+time were leaving Gypsey Dell and the grassy lanes of old
+England&mdash;the gipsies have contracted a habit, which is
+growing rather than waning, of migrating southward in autumn and
+northward again in spring.&nbsp; He then launched out upon the
+subject of the wide dispersion of the Romanies not only in
+Europe&mdash;where they are found from almost the extreme north
+to the extreme south, and from the shores of the Bosphorus to the
+shores of the Atlantic Ocean&mdash;but also from north to south
+and from east to west in Asia, in Africa, from Egypt to the very
+south of the Soudan, and in America from Canada to the River
+Amazon.&nbsp; And he then went on to show how intensely migratory
+they were over all these vast areas.</p>
+<p>So absorbing had been the gipsy talk that I am afraid the
+waiting luncheon was spoilt.&nbsp; The little luncheon party was
+composed of fervent admirers of Sir Walter Scott&mdash;bigoted
+admirers, I fear, some of our present-day critics would have
+dubbed us; and it chanced that we all agreed in pronouncing
+&lsquo;Guy Mannering&rsquo; to be the most fascinating of all the
+Wizard&rsquo;s work.&nbsp; Of course Meg Merrilies became at once
+the centre of the talk.&nbsp; One contended that, great as Meg
+was as a woman, she was as a gipsy a failure; in short, that
+Scott&rsquo;s idea of the Scottish gipsy woman was
+conventional&mdash;<!-- page 295--><a name="page295"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 295</span>a fancy portrait in which are
+depicted some of the loftiest characteristics of the Highland
+woman rather than of the Scottish gipsy.&nbsp; The true romany
+chi can be quite as noble as Meg Merrilies, said one, but great
+in a different way.&nbsp; From Meg Merrilies the talk naturally
+turned upon Jane Gordon of Kirk Yetholm, Meg&rsquo;s prototype,
+who, when an old woman, was ducked to death in the River Eden at
+Carlisle.&nbsp; Then came the subject of Kirk Yetholm itself, the
+famous headquarters of the Scotch Romanies; and after this it
+naturally turned to Kirk Yetholm&rsquo;s most famous inhabitant,
+old Will Faas, the gipsy king, whose corpse was escorted to
+Yetholm by three hundred and more donkeys.&nbsp; And upon all
+these subjects Groome&rsquo;s knowledge was like an inexhaustible
+fountain; or rather it was like a tap, ready to supply any amount
+of lore when called upon to do so.</p>
+<p>But it was not merely upon Romany subjects that Groome found
+points of sympathy at The Pines during that first luncheon; there
+was that other subject before mentioned, Edward FitzGerald and
+Omar Khayy&agrave;m.&nbsp; We, a handful of Omarians of those
+antediluvian days, were perhaps all the more intense in our cult
+because we believed it to be esoteric.&nbsp; And here was a guest
+who had been brought into actual personal contact with the
+wonderful old Fitz.&nbsp; As a child of eight he had seen
+him&mdash;talked with him&mdash;<!-- page 296--><a
+name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 296</span>been patted
+on the head by him.&nbsp; Groome&rsquo;s father, the Archdeacon
+of Suffolk, was one of FitzGerald&rsquo;s most intimate
+friends.&nbsp; This was at once a delightful and a powerful link
+between Frank Groome and those at the luncheon table; and when he
+heard, as he soon did, the toast to &ldquo;Omar
+Khayy&agrave;m,&rdquo; none drank that toast with more gusto than
+he.&nbsp; The fact is, as the Romanies say, that true friendship,
+like true love, is apt to begin at first sight.&nbsp; But I must
+stop.&nbsp; Frequently when the &ldquo;Tarno Rye&rdquo; came to
+England his headquarters were at The Pines.&nbsp; Many and
+delightful were the strolls he and I had together.&nbsp; One day
+we went to hear a gipsy band supposed to be composed of Roumelian
+gipsies.&nbsp; After we had listened to several well-executed
+things Groome sauntered up to one of the performers and spoke to
+him in Roumelian Romany.&nbsp; The man, although he did not
+understand Groome, knew that he was speaking Romany of some kind,
+and began speaking in Hungarian Romany, and was at once responded
+to by Groome in that variety of the Romany tongue.&nbsp; Groome
+then turned to another of the performers, and was answered in
+English Romany.&nbsp; At last he found one, and one only, in the
+band who was a Roumelian gipsy, and a conversation between them
+at once began.</p>
+<p>This incident affords an illustration of the width as well as
+the thoroughness of Groome&rsquo;s <!-- page 297--><a
+name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 297</span>knowledge
+of Romany matters.&nbsp; I have affirmed in &lsquo;Aylwin&rsquo;
+that Sinfi Lovell&mdash;a born linguist who could neither read
+nor write&mdash;was the only gipsy who knew both English and
+Welsh Romany.&nbsp; Groome was one of the few Englishmen who knew
+the most interesting of all varieties of the Romany tongue.&nbsp;
+But latterly he talked a great deal of the vast knowledge of the
+Welsh gipsies, both as to language and folklore, possessed by Mr.
+John Sampson, University Librarian at Liverpool, the scholar who
+did so much to aid Groome in his last volume on Romany subjects,
+called &lsquo;Gypsy Folk-Tales.&rsquo;&nbsp; It therefore gives
+me the greatest pleasure to end these very inadequate words of
+mine with a beautiful little poem in Welsh Romany by Mr. Sampson
+upon the death of the &ldquo;Tarno Rye.&rdquo;&nbsp; In a very
+few years Welsh Romany will become absolutely extinct, and then
+this little gem, so full of the Romany feeling, will be greatly
+prized.&nbsp; I wish I could have written the poem myself, but no
+man could have written it save Mr. Sampson:&mdash;</p>
+<h4>STANYAKER&Eacute;SKI.</h4>
+<blockquote><p>Romano r&aacute;ia, prala, jinim&aacute;ngro,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Konyo chumer&aacute;va to ch&#299;k&aacute;t,<br />
+Shukar java mangi, ta muk&aacute;va<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Tut te &rsquo;j&acirc; kamd&oacute;m me&mdash;kushki
+rat!</p>
+<p>Kamli, savim&aacute;ski, sas i sarla,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Baro z&#299; sas tut, sar, tarno rom,<br />
+Lhati&aacute;n i jivim&aacute;ski patrin,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ta l&#299;&aacute;n o purikeno drom.</p>
+<p><!-- page 298--><a name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+298</span>Boshad&eacute; i chirikl&eacute; vesht&eacute;ndi;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sanil&eacute; &rsquo;pre tuti chal ta chai;<br />
+M&#363;ri, p&#363;v ta p&#257;ni tu kam&eacute;sas<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dudyer&aacute;s o sonak&oacute; lila&iacute;.</p>
+<p>Palla &rsquo;vena brishin, shil, la baval:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sa&rsquo;o div&eacute;s tu murshkin&eacute;s
+p&#299;rd&aacute;n:<br />
+Ako kino &rsquo;vesa, rat av&eacute;la,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ch&#275;ros s&#299; te kesa tiro tan.</p>
+<p>Parl o tamlo merim&aacute;sko p&#257;ni<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dava tuki miro vast, ta so<br />
+Tu kam&eacute;sas tire kokor&eacute;ski<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Mai kam&aacute;va&mdash;&ldquo;Te sov&eacute;s
+m&#299;st&#333;!&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Translation</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to francis
+hindes groome</span>.</p>
+<blockquote><p>Scholar, Gypsy, Brother, Student,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Peacefully I kiss thy forehead,<br />
+Quietly I depart and leave<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thee whom I loved&mdash;&ldquo;Good
+night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sunny, smiling was the morning;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A light heart was thine, as, a youth,<br />
+Thou dids&rsquo;t strike life&rsquo;s trail<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And take the ancient road.</p>
+<p>The birds sang in the woods,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Man and maid laughed on thee,<br />
+The hills, field, and water thou didst love<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The golden summer illuminated.</p>
+<p>Then come the rain, cold, and wind,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; All the day thou hast tramped bravely.<br />
+Now thou growest weary, night comes on.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; It is time to make thy tent.</p>
+<p>Across death&rsquo;s dark stream<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I give thee my hand; and what<br />
+Thou wouldst have desired for thyself<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I wish thee&mdash;mayst thou sleep well.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h3><!-- page 299--><a name="page299"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 299</span>II.</h3>
+<p>Although novelists, dramatists, and poets are particularly
+fond of trying to paint the gipsies, it cannot be said that many
+of them have been successful in their delineations.&nbsp; And
+this is because the inner and the outer life of a proscribed race
+must necessarily be unlike each other.&nbsp; Meg Merrilies is no
+more a gipsy than is Borrow&rsquo;s delightful Isopel
+Berners.&nbsp; Among the characteristic traits of the Romany
+woman, Meg does no doubt exhibit two: a wild poetic imagination
+and a fearlessness such as women rarely display.&nbsp; But no one
+who had been brought into personal contact with gipsy women could
+ever have presented Meg Merrilies as one of them.&nbsp; In the
+true Romany chi poetic imagination is combined with a homeliness
+and a positive love of respectability which are very
+curious.&nbsp; Not that Meg, noble as she is, is superior to the
+kind of heroic woman that the Romany race is capable of
+producing.&nbsp; Indeed, the great speciality of the Romanies is
+the superiority of the women to the men&mdash;a superiority which
+extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift of
+music for which the gipsies are noticeable.&nbsp; Even in Eastern
+<!-- page 300--><a name="page300"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+300</span>Europe&mdash;Russia alone excepted&mdash;where gipsy
+music is so universal that, according to some writers, every
+Hungarian musician is of Romany extraction, it is the men and
+not, in general, the women who excel.&nbsp; This, however, may
+simply be the result of opportunity and training.</p>
+<p>It is not merely in intelligence, in imagination, in command
+over language, in breadth of view regarding the
+&ldquo;Gorgio&rdquo; world around them, that the Romany women, in
+Great Britain at least, leave the men far behind.&nbsp; In
+character this superiority is equally noticeable.&nbsp; To
+imagine a gipsy hero is not easy.&nbsp; The male gipsy is not
+without a certain amount of courage, but it soon gives way, and
+in a physical conflict between a gipsy and an Englishman it
+always seems as though ages of oppression have damped its
+virility.&nbsp; Although some of our most notable prizefighters
+have been gipsies, it used to be well known in times when the
+ring was fashionable that a gipsy could not be relied upon
+&ldquo;to take punishment&rdquo; with the stolid indifference of
+an Englishman or a negro, partly, perhaps, because his more
+highly strung nervous system makes him more sensitive to
+pain.&nbsp; The courage of a gipsy woman, on the other hand, has
+passed into a proverb; nothing seems to daunt her, and yet she
+will allow her husband, a cowardly ruffian himself, perhaps, to
+strike her without returning the blow.&nbsp; Wife-beating,
+however, is not common among the gipsies.&nbsp; It may possibly
+<!-- page 301--><a name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+301</span>be the case that some of the fine qualities of the
+gipsy woman are the result of that very barrenness of fine
+qualities among the men of which we have been speaking.&nbsp; The
+lack of masculine chivalry among the men may in some measure
+account for the irresistible impulse among the women for taking
+their own part without appealing to the men for aid.&nbsp; Also
+this may account for the strong way in which a gipsy woman is
+often drawn to the &ldquo;Tarno Rye,&rdquo; the young English
+gentleman of whom Matthew Arnold was thinking when he wrote the
+&lsquo;Scholar-Gipsy,&rsquo; and her fidelity to whom is so
+striking.&nbsp; It is often in such relations as these with the
+Tarno Rye that the instinct of monogamy in the Romany woman is
+seen.&nbsp; The unconquerable virtue of the Romany chi was often
+commented upon by Borrow; and, indeed, every observer of gipsy
+life is struck by it.</p>
+<p>Seeing that the moment the Romanies are brought into contact
+with the Gorgio world they adopt a method of approach entirely
+different from the natural method&mdash;natural to them in
+intercourse with each other&mdash;it is perhaps no wonder that
+the popular notion of the gipsy girl, taken mainly from the
+tradition of the stage, is so fantastically wrong.&nbsp; With
+regard to the stage, no characters in the least like gipsies ever
+appeared on the boards, save the characters in Tom Taylor&rsquo;s
+<!-- page 302--><a name="page302"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+302</span>&lsquo;Sir Roger de Coverley.&rsquo;&nbsp; In the eyes
+of the novelist, as well as in the eyes of the playwright,
+devilry seems to be the chief characteristic of the gipsy
+woman.&nbsp; The fact is, however, that in the average gipsy
+woman as she really exists there is but little devilry.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Romany guile,&rdquo; which is well defined in the gipsy
+phrase as &ldquo;the lie for the Gorgios,&rdquo; does not prevent
+gipsy women from retaining some of the most marked
+characteristics of childhood throughout their lives.&nbsp; This,
+indeed, is one of their special charms.&nbsp; In his desire to
+depict the supposed devilry of the Romany woman, Prosper
+M&eacute;rim&eacute;e has perpetrated in &lsquo;Carmen&rsquo; the
+greatest of all caricatures of the gipsy girl.&nbsp; A mere
+incarnation of lust and bloodthirstiness is more likely to exist
+in any other race than in the Romanies, who have a great deal of
+love as a sentiment and comparatively very little of love as a
+movement of animal desire.</p>
+<p>In G. P. R. James&rsquo;s &lsquo;Gipsy&rsquo; (1835) there are
+touches which certainly show some original knowledge of Romany
+life and character.&nbsp; The same may, perhaps, be said of
+Sheridan Le Fanu&rsquo;s &lsquo;Bird of Passage,&rsquo; but the
+pictures of gipsy life in these and in all other novels are the
+merest daubs compared with the Kiomi of George Meredith&rsquo;s
+story &lsquo;Harry Richmond.&rsquo;&nbsp; Not even Borrow and
+Groome, with all their intimate knowledge of gipsy life, ever
+painted a more vigorous picture of the Romany chi <!-- page
+303--><a name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+303</span>than this.&nbsp; The original was well known in the art
+circles of London at one time, and was probably known to
+Meredith, but this does not in any way derogate from the
+splendour of the imaginative achievement of painting in a few
+touches a Romany girl who must, one would think, live for
+ever.</p>
+<p>Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an
+extraordinary attraction&mdash;an attraction, we may say in
+passing, which did not exist between Borrow and the gipsy women
+with whom he was brought into contact.&nbsp; Supposing Borrow to
+have been physically drawn to any woman, she would have been of
+the Scandinavian type; she would have been what he used to call a
+Brynhild.&nbsp; It was tall blondes he really admired.&nbsp;
+Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life,
+his gipsy women are all mere &ldquo;scenic
+characters&rdquo;&mdash;they clothe and beautify the scene; they
+are not dramatic characters.&nbsp; When he comes to delineate a
+heroine, Isopel Berners, she is physically the very opposite of
+the Romany chi&mdash;a Scandinavian Brynhild, in short.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p>
+<h2>Footnotes:</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15"
+class="footnote">[15]</a>&nbsp; Mr. Coulson Kernahan.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17"
+class="footnote">[17]</a>&nbsp; The writer is much indebted to
+Mr. Coulson Kernahan for this story and much other information of
+life at &ldquo;The Pines.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote18"></a><a href="#citation18"
+class="footnote">[18]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;My Reminiscences,&rsquo;
+by Lord Ronald Gower.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote25"></a><a href="#citation25"
+class="footnote">[25]</a>&nbsp; Of August 13, 1881.&nbsp; By Mr.
+A. Egmont Hake.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote32"></a><a href="#citation32"
+class="footnote">[32]</a>&nbsp; Thomas Griffiths Wainewright,
+art-critic, who poisoned a number of his relatives for their
+money, a contributor to <i>The London Magazine</i> and exhibitor
+at the Royal Academy.&nbsp; He died a convict in Tasmania in
+1852.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote33"></a><a href="#citation33"
+class="footnote">[33]</a>&nbsp; C. G. Leland (&ldquo;Hans
+Breitmann&rdquo;), on whom Borrow&rsquo;s books had &ldquo;an
+incredible influence,&rdquo; and caused him to take up the study
+of things Romany.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote34"></a><a href="#citation34"
+class="footnote">[34]</a>&nbsp; Louis Jeremiah Abershaw, better
+known as Jerry Abershaw, 1773?-1795, a notorious highwayman, who
+was the terror of the roads from London to Wimbledon and
+Kingston.&nbsp; Borrow with characteristic perversity persisted
+in regarding the redoubtable Jerry as a hero, in spite of the
+fact that he justly met his death on the gallows.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote50"></a><a href="#citation50"
+class="footnote">[50]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;Life, Writings, and
+Correspondence of George Borrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; Derived from
+Official and other Authentic Sources.&nbsp; By William I. Knapp,
+Ph.D.&nbsp; With Portrait and Illustrations.&nbsp; 2 vols.&nbsp;
+(Murray.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote60"></a><a href="#citation60"
+class="footnote">[60]</a>&nbsp; The &ldquo;reader&rdquo; was
+Richard Ford, author of the &lsquo;Handbook for Travellers in
+Spain,&rsquo; &amp;c.&nbsp; He subsequently became Burrow&rsquo;s
+warm admirer and friend.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote77"></a><a href="#citation77"
+class="footnote">[77]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as
+Designer and Writer.&rsquo;&nbsp; Notes by William Michael
+Rossetti.&nbsp; (Cassell and Co.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote104"></a><a href="#citation104"
+class="footnote">[104]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;Letters of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854&ndash;1870.&rsquo;&nbsp; By
+George Birkbeck Hill.&nbsp; (Fisher Unwin.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108"></a><a href="#citation108"
+class="footnote">[108]</a>&nbsp; The year of Queen
+Victoria&rsquo;s Diamond Jubilee.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote132"></a><a href="#citation132"
+class="footnote">[132]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a
+Memoir.&rsquo;&nbsp; By his Son.&nbsp; 2 vols.&nbsp;
+(Macmillan).</p>
+<p><a name="footnote156"></a><a href="#citation156"
+class="footnote">[156]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;My father&rsquo;s
+words.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote168"></a><a href="#citation168"
+class="footnote">[168]</a>&nbsp; <i>The Times</i>, October 18,
+1876.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195"></a><a href="#citation195"
+class="footnote">[195]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;New Poems.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+By Christina Rossetti.&nbsp; Edited by William Michael
+Rossetti.&nbsp; (Macmillan &amp; Co.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote231"></a><a href="#citation231"
+class="footnote">[231]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;Poems, Dramatic and
+Lyrical.&rsquo;&nbsp; By Lord de Tabley.&nbsp; Second
+Series.&nbsp; (Lane.)</p>
+<p><a name="footnote263"></a><a href="#citation263"
+class="footnote">[263]</a>&nbsp; &lsquo;A Dream of John Ball and
+a King&rsquo;s Lesson.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Signs of
+Change.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote264"></a><a href="#citation264"
+class="footnote">[264]</a>&nbsp; Written in 1888.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FAMILIAR FACES***</p>
+<pre>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #27025 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27025)