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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/35438-8.txt b/35438-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a25ce7a --- /dev/null +++ b/35438-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7506 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and +Goethe's, by David Masson + + +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: The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's + With Other Essays + + +Author: David Masson + + + +Release Date: March 1, 2011 [eBook #35438] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, +MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S*** + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/threedevilsluthe00mass + + + + + +THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S. + +With Other Essays. + +by + +DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D., +Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the +University of Edinburgh. + + + + + + + +London: +Macmillan And Co. +1874. + +[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.] + +London: +R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers, +Bread Street Hill. + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +The first five of the following Essays are reprinted from the Author's +_Essays Biographical and Critical: chiefly on English Poets_, published in +1856. The present Volume and two similar Volumes issued separately (under +the titles "_Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays_" and +"_Chatterton: A Story of the Year 1770_") may be taken together as forming +a new and somewhat enlarged edition of the older book. The addition in the +present Volume consists of the last Essay. + + EDINBURGH: + _November 1874_. + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + I. THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S 1 + + II. SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE 61 + + III. MILTON'S YOUTH 125 + + IV. DRYDEN AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION 153 + + V. DEAN SWIFT 235 + + VI. HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY 301 + + + + +THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S. + + + + +THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S.[1] + + +Luther, Milton, and Goethe: these are very strange names to bring +together. It strikes us, however, that the effect may not be uninteresting +if we connect the names of those three great men, as having each +represented to us the Principle of Evil, and each represented him in a +different way. Each of the three has left on record his conception of a +great accursed being, incessantly working in human affairs, and whose +function it is to produce evil. There is nothing more striking about +Luther than the amazing sincerity of his belief in the existence of such +an evil being, the great general enemy of mankind, and whose specific +object, in Luther's time, it was to resist Luther's movement, and, if +possible, "cut his soul out of God's mercy." What was Luther's exact +conception of this being is to be gathered from his life and writings. +Again, we have Milton's Satan. Lastly, we have Goethe's Mephistopheles. +Nor is it possible to confound the three, or for a moment to mistake the +one for the other. They are as unlike as it is possible for three grand +conceptions of the same thing to be. May it not, then, be profitable to +make their peculiarities and their differences a subject of study? +Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles have indeed been frequently +contrasted in a vague, antithetic way; for no writer could possibly give a +description of Goethe's Mephistopheles without saying something or other +about Milton's Satan. The exposition, however, of the difference between +the two has never been sufficient; and it may give the whole speculation +greater interest if, in addition to Milton's Satan and Goethe's +Mephistopheles, we include Luther's Devil. It is scarcely necessary to +premise that here there is to be no theological discussion. All that we +propose is to compare, as we find them, three very striking delineations +of the Evil Principle, one of them experimental, the other two poetical. + + * * * * * + +These last words indicate one respect in which, it will be perceived at +the outset, Luther's conception of the Evil Principle on the one hand and +Milton's and Goethe's on the other are fundamentally distinguishable. All +the three, of course, are founded on the Scriptural proposition of the +existence of a being whose express function it is to produce evil. Luther, +firmly believing every jot and tittle of Scripture, believed the +proposition about the Devil also; and so the whole of his experience of +evil in himself and others was cast into the shape of a verification of +that proposition. Had he started without such a preliminary conception, +his experience would have had to encounter the difficulty of expressing +itself in some other way; which, it is likely, would not have been nearly +so effective, or so Luther-like. Milton, too, borrows the elements of his +conception of Satan from Scripture. The Fallen Angel of the Bible is the +hero of _Paradise Lost_; and one of the most striking things about this +poem is that in it we see the grand imagination of the poet blazing in the +very track of the propositions of the theologian. And, though there can be +no doubt that Goethe's Mephistopheles is conceived less in the spirit of +Scripture than either Milton's Satan or Luther's Devil, still even in +Mephistopheles we discern the lineaments of the same traditional being. +All the three, then, have this in common--that they are founded on the +Scriptural proposition of the existence of an accursed being whose +function it is to produce evil, and that, more or less, they adopt the +Scriptural account of that being. Still, as we have said, Luther's +conception of this being belongs to one category; Milton's and Goethe's +to another. Luther's is a biographical phenomenon; Milton's and Goethe's +are literary performances. Luther illustrated the Evil Being of Scripture +to himself by means of his personal experience. Whatever resistance he met +with, whatever obstacle to Divine grace he found in his own heart or in +external circumstances, whatever event he saw plainly cast in the way of +the progress of the Gospel, whatever outbreak of a bad or unamiable spirit +occurred in the Church, whatever strange phenomenon of nature wore a +malevolent aspect,--out of that he obtained a clearer notion of the Devil. +In this way it might be said that Luther was all his life gaining a deeper +insight into the Devil's character. On the other hand, Milton's Satan and +Goethe's Mephistopheles are poetical creations, the one epic, the other +dramatic. Borrowing the elements of his conception from Scripture, Milton +set himself to the task of describing the ruined Archangel as he may be +supposed to have existed at that epoch of the creation when he had hardly +decided his own function, as yet warring with the Almighty, or, in pursuit +of a gigantic scheme of revenge, travelling from star to star. Poetically +assuming the device of the same Scriptural proposition, Goethe set himself +to the task of representing the Spirit of Evil as he existed six thousand +years later, no longer gifted with the same powers of locomotion, or +struggling for admission into this part of the universe, but plying his +understood function in crowded cities and on the minds of individuals. + +So far as the mere fact of Milton's having made Satan the hero of his +epic, or of Goethe's having made Mephistopheles a character in his drama, +qualifies us to speak of the theological opinions of the one or of the +other, we are not entitled to say that either Milton or Goethe believed in +a Devil at all as Luther did. Or, again, it is quite conceivable that +Milton might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did, and that +Goethe might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did also, and +yet that, in that case, the Devil which Milton believed in might not have +been the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_, and the Devil which Goethe believed +in might not have been the Mephistopheles of _Faust_. Of course, we have +other means of knowing whether Milton did actually believe in the +existence of the great accursed being whose fall he sings. It is also +plain that Goethe's Mephistopheles resembles Luther's Devil more than +Milton's Satan does in this respect--that Mephistopheles is the expression +of a great deal of Goethe's actual observation of life and experience in +human affairs. Still, neither the fact, on the one hand, that Milton did +believe in the existence of the Evil Spirit, nor the fact, on the other, +that Mephistopheles is an expression for the aggregate of much profound +thinking on the part of Goethe, is of force to obliterate the fundamental +distinction between Luther's Devil, as a biographical reality, and +Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles, as two literary performances. +If we might risk summing up under the light of this preliminary +distinction, perhaps the following would be near the truth:--Luther had as +strong a faith as ever man had in the existence and activity of the Evil +Spirit of Scripture: he used to recognise the operation of this Spirit in +every individual instance of evil as it occurred; he used, moreover, to +conceive that this Spirit and he were personal antagonists; and so, just +as one man forms to himself a distinct idea of the character of another +man to whom he stands in an important relation, Luther came to form to +himself a distinct idea of the Devil, and what this idea was it seems +possible to find out by examining his writings. Milton, again, chose the +Scripture personage as the hero of an epic poem, and employed his grand +imagination in realizing the Scripture narrative: we have reason also to +know that he did actually believe in the Devil's existence; and it agrees +with what we know of Milton's character to suppose that the Devil thus +believed in would be pretty much the same magnificent being he has +described in his poem--though, on the whole, we should not say that Milton +was a man likely to carry about with him, in daily affairs, any constant +recognition of the Devil's presence. Lastly, Goethe, adopting, for a +different literary effect, the Scriptural and traditional account of the +same being, conceived his Mephistopheles. This Mephistopheles, there is no +doubt, had a real allegoric meaning with Goethe; he meant him to typify +the Evil Spirit in modern civilization; but whether Goethe did actually +believe in the existence of a supernatural intelligence whose function it +is to produce evil is a question which no one will feel himself called +upon to answer, although, if he did, it may be unhesitatingly asserted +that this supernatural intelligence cannot have been Mephistopheles. + +From all this it appears that Luther's conception of the Evil Being +belongs to one category, Milton's and Goethe's to another. Let us +consider, _first_, Milton's Satan, _secondly_, Goethe's Mephistopheles, +and, _thirdly_, Luther's Devil. + + * * * * * + +The difficulties which Milton had to overcome in writing his _Paradise +Lost_ were immense. The gist of those difficulties may be defined as +consisting in this, that the poet had at once to represent a supernatural +condition of being and to construct a story. He had to describe the +ongoings of Angels, and at the same time to make one event follow another. +It is comparatively easy for Milton to sustain his conception of those +superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena--to represent them flying +singly through space like huge black shadows, or standing opposite to +each other in hostile battalions; but to construct a story in which these +beings should be the agents, to exhibit these beings thinking, scheming, +blundering, in such a way as to produce a likely succession of events, was +enormously difficult. The difficulty was to make the course of events +correspond with the reputation of the objects. To do this perfectly was +literally impossible. It is possible for the human mind to conceive +twenty-four great supernatural beings existing together at any given +moment in space; but it is utterly impossible to conceive what would occur +among those twenty-four beings during twenty-four hours. The value of +time, the amount of history that can be transacted in a given period, +depends on the nature and prowess of the beings whose volitions make the +chain of events; and so a lower order of beings can have no idea at what +rate things happen in a higher. The mode of causation will be different +from that with which they are acquainted. + +This is the difficulty with which Milton had to struggle; or, rather, this +is the difficulty with which he did not struggle. He had to construct a +narrative; and so, while he represents to us the full stature of his +superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena, he does not attempt to +make events follow each other at a higher rate among those beings than +they do amongst ourselves, except in the single respect of their being +infinitely more powerful physical agents than we are. Whatever feeling of +inconsistency is experienced in reading the _Paradise Lost_ may be traced, +perhaps, to the fact that the necessities of the story obliged the poet +not to attempt to make the rate of causation among those beings as +extraordinary as his description of them as phenomena. Such a feeling of +inconsistency there is; and yet Milton sustains his flight as nobly as +mortal could have done. Throughout the whole poem we see him recollecting +his original conception of Satan as an object:-- + + "Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, + With head uplift above the waves, and eyes + That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides, + Prone on the flood, extended long and large, + Lay floating many a rood." + +And this is a great thing to have done. If the poet ever flags in his +conception of those superhuman beings as objects, it is when he finds it +necessary to describe a multitude of them assembled together in some +_place_; and his usual device then is to reduce the bulk of the greatest +number. This, too, is for the behoof of the story. If it is necessary, for +instance, to assemble the Angels to deliberate, this must be done in an +audience-hall, and the human mind refuses to go beyond certain limits in +its conception of what an audience-hall is. Again the gate of Hell is +described, although the Hell of Milton is a mere vague extent of fiery +element, which, in strict keeping, could not be described as having a +gate. The narrative, however, requires the conception. And so in other +cases. Still, consistency of description is well sustained. + +Nor is it merely as objects or phenomena that Milton sustains throughout +his whole poem a consistent conception of the Angels. He is likewise +consistent in his description of them as physical agents. Lofty stature +and appearance carry with them a promise of so much physical power; and +hence, in Milton's case, the necessity of finding words and figures +capable of expressing modes and powers of mechanical action, on the part +of the Angels, as superhuman as the stature and appearance he has given to +them. This complicated his difficulties very much. It is quite conceivable +that a man should be able to describe the mere appearance of a gigantic +being standing up, as it were, with his back to a wall, and yet utterly +break down, and not be able to find words, when he tried to describe this +gigantic being stepping forth into colossal activity and doing some +characteristic thing. Milton has overcome the difficulty. His conception +of the Angels as physical agents does not fall beneath his conception of +them as mere objects. In his description, for instance, in the sixth book, +of the Angels tearing up mountains by the roots and flinging them upon +each other, we have strength suggested corresponding to the reputed +stature of the beings. In extension of the same remark, we may observe how +skilfully Milton has aggrandized and eked out his conception of the +superhuman beings he is describing by endowing them with the power of +infinitely swift motion through space. On this point we offer our readers +an observation which they may verify for themselves:--Milton, we are +persuaded, had it vaguely in his mind, throughout _Paradise Lost_, that +the bounding peculiarity between the human condition of being and the +angelic one he is describing is the law of gravitation. We, and all that +is cognisable by us, are subject to this law; but Creation may be peopled +with beings who are not subject to it, and to us these beings are as if +they were not. But, whenever one of those beings becomes cognisable by us, +he instantly becomes subject to gravitation; and he must resume his own +mode of being ere he can be free from its consequences. The Angels were +not subject to gravitation; that is to say, they had the means of moving +in any direction at will. When they rebelled, and were punished by +expulsion from Heaven, they did not _fall_ out; for, in fact, so far as +the description intimates, there existed no planet, no distinct material +element, towards which they could gravitate. They were _driven_ out by a +pursuing fire. Then, after their fall, they had the power of rising +upward, of navigating space, of quitting Hell, directing their flight to +one glittering planet, alighting on its rotund surface, and then bounding +off again, and away to another. A corollary of this fundamental difference +between the human condition of being and the angelic would be that angels +are capable of direct vertical action, whereas men are capable mainly of +horizontal. An army of men can exist only as a square, or other plane +figure, whereas an army of angels can exist as a cube or parallelopiped. + +Now, in everything relating to the physical action of the Angels, even in +carrying out this notion of their mode of being, Milton is most +consistent. But it was impossible to follow out the superiority of these +beings to its whole length. The attempt to do so would have made a +narrative impossible. Exalting our conception of these beings as mere +objects, or as mere physical agents, as much as he could, it would have +been suicidal in the poet to attempt to realize history as it must be +among such beings. No human mind could do it. He had, therefore, except +where the notion of physical superiority assisted him, to make events +follow each other just as they would in a human narrative. The motives, +the reasonings, the misconceptions of those beings, all that determined +the succession of events, he had to make substantially human. The whole +narrative, for instance, proceeds on the supposition that those +supernatural beings had no higher degree of knowledge than human beings, +with equal physical advantages, would have had under similar +circumstances. Credit the spirits with a greater degree of insight--credit +them even with such a strong conviction of the Divine omnipotence as, in +their reputed condition of being, we can hardly conceive them not +attaining--and the whole of Milton's story is rendered impossible. The +crushing conviction of the Divine omnipotence would have prevented them +from rebelling with the alleged motive; or, after they had rebelled, it +would have prevented them from struggling with the alleged hope. In +_Paradise Lost_ the working notion which the devils have about God is +exactly that which human beings have when they hope to succeed in a bad +enterprise. Otherwise the poem could not have been written. Suppose the +fallen Angels to have had a working notion of the Deity as superhuman as +their reputed appearance and physical greatness: then the events of the +_Paradise Lost_ might have happened nevertheless, but the chain of +volitions would not have been the same, and it would have been impossible +for any human poet to realize the narrative. + +These remarks are necessary to prepare us for conceiving the Satan of +Milton. Except, as we have said, for an occasional feeling during a +perusal of the poem that the style of thinking and speculating about the +issue of their enterprise is too meagre and human for a race of beings +physically so superhuman, one's astonishment at the consistency of the +poet's conceptions is unmitigated throughout. Such keeping is there +between one conception and another, such a distinct material grasp had the +poet of his whole subject, so little is there of the mystic or the hazy in +his descriptions from beginning to end, that it would be quite possible to +prefix to the _Paradise Lost_ an illustrative diagram exhibiting the +universal space in which Milton conceived his beings moving to and fro, +divided, as he conceived it, at first into two or three, and afterwards +into four tropics or regions. Then his narrative is so clear that a brief +prose version of it would be a history of Satan in the interval between +his own fall and the fall of Man. + +It is to be noted that Milton as a poet proceeds on the Homeric method, +and not on the Shakespearian, devoting the whole strength of his genius to +the object, not of being discursive and original, not of making profound +remarks on everything as he goes along, but of carrying on a sublime and +stately narrative. We should hardly be led to assert, however, that the +difference between the epic and the drama lies in this, that the latter +may be discursive and reflective while the former cannot. We can conceive +an epic written after the Shakespearian method; that is, one which, while +strictly sustaining a narrative, should be profoundly expository in its +spirit. Certain it is, however, that Milton wrote after the Homeric +method, and did not exert himself chiefly in strewing his text with +luminous propositions. One consequence of this is that the way to obtain +an idea of Milton's Satan is not to lay hold of specific sayings that fall +from his mouth, but to go through his history. Goethe's Mephistopheles, we +shall find, on the other hand, reveals himself in the characteristic +propositions which he utters. Satan is to be studied by following his +progress; Mephistopheles by attending to his remarks. + +In the history of Milton's Satan it is important to begin at the time of +his being an Archangel. Before the creation of our World, there existed, +according to Milton, a grand race of beings altogether different from what +we are. Those beings were Spirits. They did not lead a planetary +existence; they tenanted space in some strange, and, to us, inconceivable +way. Or, rather, they did not tenant all space, but only that upper and +illuminated part of infinity called Heaven. For Heaven, in Milton, is not +to be considered as a locality, but as a region stretching infinitely out +on all sides--an immense extent of continent and kingdom. The infinite +darkness, howling and blustering underneath Heaven, was Chaos or Night. +What was the exact mode of being of the Spirits who lived in dispersion +through Heaven is unknown to us; but it was social. Moreover, there +subsisted between the multitudinous far-extending population of Spirits +and the Almighty Creator a relation closer, or at least more sensible and +immediate, than that which exists between human beings and Him. The best +way of expressing this relation in human language is by the idea of +physical nearness. They were God's Angels. Pursuing, each individual among +them, a life of his own, agreeable to his wishes and his character, yet +they all recognised themselves as the Almighty's ministering spirits. At +times they were summoned, from following their different occupations in +all the ends of Heaven, to assemble near the Divine presence. Among these +Angels there were degrees and differences. Some were, in their very +essence and constitution, grander and more sublime intelligences than the +rest; others, in the course of their long existence, had become noted for +their zeal and assiduity. Thus, although really a race of beings living on +their own account as men do, they constituted a hierarchy, and were called +Angels. + +Among all the vast angelic population three or four individuals stood +pre-eminent and unapproachable. These were the Archangels. Satan was one +of these: if not the highest Archangel in Heaven, he was one of the four +highest. After God, he could feel conscious of being the greatest being in +the Universe. But, although the relation between the Deity and the +angelic population was so close that we can only express it by having +recourse to the conception of physical nearness, yet even to the Angels +the Deity was so shrouded in clouds and mystery that the highest Archangel +might proceed on a wrong notion of his character, and, just as human +beings do, might believe the Divine omnipotence as a theological +proposition, and yet, in going about his enterprises, might not carry a +working consciousness of it along with him. There is something in the +exercise of power, in the mere feeling of existence, in the stretching out +of a limb, in the resisting of an obstacle, in being active in any way, +which generates a conviction that our powers are self-contained, hostile +to the recollection of inferiority or accountability. A messenger, +employed in his master's business, becomes, in the very act of serving +him, forgetful of him. As the feeling of enjoyment in action grows strong, +the feeling of a dependent state of being, the feeling of being a +messenger, grows weak. Repose and physical weakness are favourable to the +recognition of a derived existence: hence the beauty of the feebleness of +old age preceding the approach of death. The feebleness of the body +weakens the self-sufficient feeling, and disposes to piety. The young man, +rejoicing in his strength, cannot believe that his breath is in his +nostrils. In some such way the Archangel fell. Rejoicing in his strength, +walking colossal through Heaven, gigantic in his conceptions, incessant in +his working, ever scheming, ever imagining new enterprises, Satan was in +his very nature the most active of God's Archangels. He was ever doing +some great thing, and ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. And, +alas! his very wisdom became his folly. His notion of the Deity was higher +and grander than that of any other Angel: but, then, he was not a +contemplative spirit; and his feeling of derived existence grew weak in +the glow and excitement of constant occupation. As the feeling of +enjoyment in action grew strong, the feeling of being an Angel grew weak. +Thus the mere duration of his existence had undermined his strength and +prepared him for sin. Although the greatest Angel in Heaven--nay, just +because he was such--he was the readiest to fall. + +At last an occasion came. When the intimation was made by the Almighty in +the Congregation of the Angels that he had anointed his only-begotten Son +King on the holy hill of Zion, the Archangel frowned and became a rebel: +not because he had weighed the enterprise to which he was committing +himself, but because he was hurried on by the impetus of an over-wrought +nature. Even had he weighed the enterprise, and found it wanting, he would +have been a rebel nevertheless; he would have rushed into ruin on the +wheels of his old impulses. He could not have said to himself "It is +useless to rebel, and I will not;" and, if he could, what a hypocrite to +have remained in Heaven! His revolt was the natural issue of the thoughts +to which he had accustomed himself; and his crime lay in having acquired a +rebellious constitution, in having pursued action too much, and spurned +worship and contemplation. Herein lay the difference between him and the +other Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael. + +Satan in his revolt carried a third part of the Angels with him. He had +accustomed many of the Angels to his mode of thinking. One of the ways in +which he gratified his desire for activity had been that of exerting a +moral and intellectual influence over the inferior Angels. A few of these +he had liked to associate with, discoursing with them, and observing how +they imbibed his ideas. His chief associate, almost his bosom-companion, +had been Beelzebub, a princely Angel. Moloch, Belial, and Mammon, had +likewise been admitted to his confidence. These five had constituted a +kind of clique in Heaven, giving the word to a whole multitude of inferior +Angels, all of them resembling their leader in being fonder of action than +of contemplation. Thus, in addition to the mere hankering after action, +there had grown up in Satan's mind a love of power. This feeling that it +was a glorious thing to be a leader seems to have had much to do with his +voluntary sacrifice of happiness. We may conceive it to have been +voluntary. Foreseeing never so much misery would not have prevented such a +spirit from rebelling. Having a third of the Angels away with him in some +dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, would have +seemed, even if he had foreseen it, infinitely preferable to the puny +sovereignty of an Archangel in that world of gold and emerald: "better to +reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Thus we conceive him to have faced +the anticipation of the future. It required little persuasion to gain over +the kindred spirit of Beelzebub. These two appear to have conceived the +enterprise from the beginning in a different light from that in which they +represented it to their followers. Happiness with the inferior Spirits was +a more important consideration than with such Spirits as Satan and +Beelzebub; and to have hinted the possibility of losing happiness in the +enterprise would have been to terrify them away. Satan and Beelzebub were +losing happiness to gain something which they thought better; to the +inferior Angels nothing could be mentioned that would appear better. +Again, the inferior Angels, judging from narrower premises, might indulge +in enthusiastic expectations which the greater knowledge of the leaders +would prevent them from entertaining. At all events, the effect of the +intercourse with the Angels was that a third of their number joined the +standard of Satan. Then began the wars in Heaven, related in the poem. + +It may be remarked that the carrying on those wars by Satan with the hope +of victory is not inconsistent with what has been said as to the +possibility of his not having proceeded on a false calculation. We are apt +to imagine those wars as wars between the rebel Angels and the armies of +God. Now this is true; but it is scarcely the proper idea in the +circumstances. How could Satan have hoped for victory in that case? You +can only suppose that he did so by lessening his intellect, by making him +a mere blundering Fury, and not a keen, far-seeing Intelligence. But in +warring with Michael and his followers he was, until the contrary should +be proved, warring merely against his fellow-beings of the same Heaven, +whose strength he knew and feared not. The idea of physical nearness +between the Almighty and the Angels confuses us here. Satan had heard the +threat which had accompanied the proclamation of the Messiah's +sovereignty; but it may have been problematical in his mind whether the +way in which God would fulfil the threat would be to make Michael conquer +him. So he made war against Michael and his Angels. At last, when all +Heaven was in confusion, the Divine omnipotence interfered. On the third +day the Messiah rode forth in his strength, to end the wars and expel the +rebel host from Heaven. They fled, driven before his thunder. The crystal +wall of Heaven opened wide, and the two lips, rolling inward, disclosed a +spacious gap yawning into the wasteful Deep. The reeling Angels saw down, +and hung back affrighted; but the terror of the Lord was behind them: +headlong they threw themselves from the verge of Heaven into the +fathomless abyss, eternal wrath burning after them down through the +blackness like a hissing fiery funnel. + +And now the Almighty determined to create a new kind of World, and to +people it with a race of beings different from that already existing, +inferior in the meantime to the Angels, but with the power of working +themselves up into the Angelic mode of being. The Messiah, girt with +omnipotence, rode out on this creating errand. Heaven opened her +everlasting gates, moving on their golden hinges, and the King of Glory, +uplifted on the wings of Cherubim, rode on and on into Chaos. At last he +stayed his fervid wheels and took the golden compasses in his hand. +Centering one point where he stood, he turned the other silently and +slowly round through the profound obscurity. Thus were the limits of _our_ +Universe marked out--that azure region in which the stars were to shine, +and the planets were to wheel. On the huge fragment of Chaos thus marked +out the Creating Spirit brooded, and the light gushed down. In six days +the work of creation was completed. In the centre of the new Universe hung +a silvery star. That was the Earth. Thereon, in a paradise of trees and +flowers, walked Adam and Eve, the last and the fairest of all God's +creatures. + +Meanwhile the rebel host lay rolling in the fiery gulf underneath Chaos. +The bottom of Chaos was Hell. Above it was Chaos proper, a thick, black, +sweltering confusion. Above it again was the new experimental World, cut +out of it like a mine, and brilliant with stars and galaxies. And high +over all, behind the stars and galaxies, was Heaven itself. Satan and his +crew lay rolling in Hell, the fiery element underneath Chaos. Chaos lay +between them and the new World. Satan was the first to awake out of stupor +and realize the whole state of the case--what had occurred, what was to be +their future condition of being, and what remained to be attempted. In the +first dialogue between him and Beelzebub we see that, even thus early, he +had ascertained what his function was to be for the future, and decided in +what precise mode of being he could make his existence most pungent and +perceptible. + + "Of this be sure, + To do aught good never will be our task, + But ever to do evil our sole delight, + As being the contrary to His high will + Whom we resist." + +Here the ruined Archangel first strikes out the idea of existing for ever +after as the Devil. It is important to observe that his becoming a Devil +was not the mere inevitable consequence of his being a ruined Archangel. +Beelzebub, for instance, could see in the future nothing but a prospect of +continued suffering, until Satan communicated to him his conception of a +way of enjoying action in the midst of suffering. Again, some of the +Angels appear to have been ruminating the possibility of retrieving their +former condition by patient enduring. The gigantic scheme of becoming a +Devil was Satan's. At first it existed in his mind only as a vague +perception that the way in which he would be most likely to get the full +worth of his existence was to employ himself thenceforward in doing evil. +The idea afterwards became more definite. After glancing round their new +domain, Beelzebub and he aroused their abject followers. In the speech +which Satan addresses to them after they had all mustered in order we find +him hint an opening into a new career, as if the idea had just occurred to +him:-- + + "Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife + There went a fame in Heaven that He ere long + Intended to create, and therein plant + A generation whom His choice regard + Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven: + Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps + Our first eruption." + +Here is an advance in definiteness upon the first proposal--that, namely, +of determining to spend the rest of existence in doing evil. Casting +about in his mind for some specific opening, Satan had recollected the +talk they used to have in Heaven about the new World that was to be cut +out of Chaos, and the new race of beings that was to be created to inhabit +it; and it instantly struck his scheming fancy that _this_ would be the +weak point of the Universe. If he could but insert the wedge here! He did +not, however, announce the scheme fully at the moment, but went on +thinking. In the council of gods which was summoned some advised one +thing, some another. Moloch was for open war; Belial had great faith in +the force of circumstances; and Mammon was for organizing their new +kingdom so as to make it as comfortable as possible. No one, however, +could say the exact thing that was wanted. At last Beelzebub, prompted by +Satan, rose and detailed the project of their great leader:-- + + "There is a place + (If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven + Err not), another world, the happy seat + Of some new race called Man, about this time + To be created, like to us, though less + In power and excellence, but favoured more + Of Him who rules above. So was His will + Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath + That shook Heaven's whole circumference confirmed. + Thither let us bend all our thoughts, and learn + What creatures there inhabit, of what mould + Or substance, how endued, and what their power + And where their weakness: how attempted best; + By force or subtlety." + +This was Satan's scheme. The more he had thought on it the more did it +recommend itself to him. It was more feasible than any other. It held out +an indefinite prospect of action. Success in it would be the addition of +another fragment of the Universe to Satan's kingdom, mingling and +confounding the new World with Hell, and dragging down the new race of +beings to share the perdition of the old. The scheme was universally +applauded by the Angels; who seem to have differed from their leaders in +this, that they were sanguine of being able to better their condition, +whereas their leaders sought only the gratification of their desire of +action. + +The question next was, Who would venture out of Hell to explore the way to +the new World? Satan volunteered the perilous excursion. Immediately, +putting on his swiftest wings, he directs his solitary flight towards +Hell-gate, where sat Sin and Death. When, at length, the gate was opened +to give him exit, it was like a huge furnace-mouth, vomiting forth smoke +and flames into the womb of Chaos. Issuing thence, Satan spread his +sail-broad wings for flight, and began his toilsome way upward, half on +foot, half on wing, swimming, sinking, wading, climbing, flying, through +the thick and turbid element. At last he emerged out of Chaos into the +glimmer surrounding the new Universe. Winging at leisure now through the +balmier ether, and still ascending, he could discern at last the whole +empyrean Heaven, his former home, with its opal towers and sapphire +battlements, and, depending thence by a golden chain, our little World or +Universe, like a star of smallest magnitude on the full moon's edge. At +the point of suspension of this World from Heaven was an opening, and by +that opening Satan entered. + +When Satan thus arrived in the new Creation the whole phenomenon was +strange to him, and he had no idea what kind of a being Man was. He asked +Uriel, whom he found on the sun fulfilling some Divine errand, in which of +all the shining orbs round him Man had fixed his seat, or whether he had a +fixed seat at all, and was not at liberty to shift his residence, and +dwell now in one star, now in another. Uriel, deceived by the appearance +which Satan had assumed, pointed out the way to Paradise. + +Alighting on the surface of the Earth, Satan walks about immersed in +thought. Heaven's gate was in view. Overhead and round him were the quiet +hills and the green fields. Oh, what an errand he had come upon! His +thoughts were sad and noble. Fallen as he was, all the Archangel stirred +within him. Oh, had he not been made so high, should he ever have fallen +so low? Is there no hope even now, no room for repentance? Such were his +first thoughts. But he roused himself and shook them off. "The past is +gone and away; it is to the future that I must look. Perish the days of my +Archangelship! perish the name of Archangel! Such is my name no longer. My +future, if less happy, shall be more glorious. Ah, and this is the World I +have singled out for my experiment! Formerly, in the days of my +Archangelship, I ranged at will through infinity, doing one thing here and +another there. Now I must contract the sphere of my activity, and labour +nowhere but here. But it is better to apply myself to the task of +thoroughly impregnating one point of space with my presence than +henceforth to beat my wings vaguely all through infinitude. Ah, but may +not my nature suffer by the change? In thus selecting a specific aim, in +thus concerning myself exclusively with one point of space, and +forswearing all interest in the innumerable glorious things that may be +happening out of it, shall I not run the risk of degenerating into a +smaller and meaner being? In the course of ages of dealing with the puny +offspring of these new beings, may I not dwindle into a mere pungent, +pettifogging Spirit? What would Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael say, were +they to see their old co-mate changed into such a being? But be it so. If +I cannot cope with the Almighty on the grand scale of infinitude, I shall +at least make my existence felt by opposing His plans respecting this new +race of beings. Besides, by beginning with this, may I not worm my way to +a more effective position even in infinitude? At all events, I shall have +a scheme on hand, and be incessantly occupied. And, as time makes the +occupation more congenial, if I do become less magnanimous, I shall, at +the same time, become happier. And, whether my fears on this point are +visionary or not, it will, at least, be a noble thing to be able to say +that I have caused a whirlpool that shall suck down generation after +generation of these new beings, before their Maker's eyes, into the same +wretched condition of being to which He has doomed us. It will be +something so to vitiate the Universe that, let Him create, create on, as +He chooses, it will be like pouring water into a broken vessel." + +In the very course of this train of thinking Satan begins to degenerate +into a meaner being. He is on the very threshold of that career in which +he will cease for ever to be the Archangel and become irrevocably the +Devil. The very manner in which he tempts the first pair is devil-like. It +is in the shape of a cormorant on a tree that he sits watching his +victims. He sat at the ear of Eve "squat like a toad." It was in the shape +of a serpent that he tempted her. And, when the evil was done, he slunk +away through the brushwood. In the very act of ruining Man he committed +himself to a life of ignominious activity: he was to go on his belly and +eat dust all his days. + + * * * * * + +Such is the story of Milton's Satan. It will be easy to express more +precisely the idea which we have acquired of him when we come to contrast +him with Goethe's Mephistopheles. Meanwhile, we shall be much assisted in +our efforts to conceive Goethe's Mephistopheles by keeping in mind what we +have been saying about Milton's Satan. + +We do not think it possible to sum up in a single expression all that +Goethe meant to signify by his Mephistopheles. For one thing, it is +questionable whether Goethe kept strictly working out one specific meaning +and making it clearer all through Mephistopheles's gambols and devilries, +or whether, having once for all allegorized the Spirit of Evil into a +living personage, he did not treat him just as he would have treated any +other of his characters, making him always consistent, always diabolic, +but not intent upon making his actions run parallel to any under-current +of exposition. It may be best, therefore, to take Mephistopheles as a +character in a drama which we wish to study. On the whole, perhaps, we +shall be on the right track if, in the first place, we establish a +relation between Satan and Mephistopheles by adopting the notion which we +have imagined Satan himself to have entertained when engaged in scheming +out his future life, _i.e._ if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what Satan +has become after six thousand years. Milton's Satan, then, is the ruined +Archangel deciding his future function, and forswearing all interest in +other regions of the universe, in order that he may more thoroughly +possess and impregnate this. Goethe's Mephistopheles is this same being +after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years in his new +vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper and +cleverer. By way of corroboration of this view, we may refer, in passing, +to the Satan of the _Paradise Regained_; who, though still a sublime and +Miltonic being, dealing in high thoughts and high arguments, yet seems to +betray, in his demeanour, the effects of four thousand years spent in a +new walk. Is there not something Mephistopheles-like, for instance, in the +description of the Fiend's appearance when he approached Christ to begin +his temptation? Christ was walking alone and thoughtful one evening in the +thick of the forest where he had lived fasting forty days, when he heard +the dry twigs behind him snapping beneath approaching footsteps. He turned +round, and + + "An aged man in rural weeds, + Following as seemed the quest of some stray ewe, + Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve + Against a winter's day when winds blow keen + To warm him, wet returned from field at eve, + He saw approach; who first with curious eye + Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake." + +Observe how all the particulars of this description are drawn out of the +very thick of the civilization of the past four thousand years, and how +the whole effect of the picture is to suggest a Mephistophelic-looking +man, whom it would be disagreeable to meet alone. Indeed, if one had +space, one could make more use of the _Paradise Regained_ as exhibiting +the transition of Satan into Mephistopheles. But we must pass at once to +Goethe. + +Viewing Mephistopheles in the proposed light (of course it is not +pretended that Goethe himself had any such idea about his Mephistopheles), +we obtain a good deal of insight from the "Prologue in Heaven." For here +we have Mephistopheles out of his element, and contrasted with his old +co-equals. The scene is Miltonic. The Heavenly Hosts are assembled round +the throne, and the three Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, come +forward to praise the Lord. The theme of their song is Creation--not, as +it would have been in Milton, as an event about to take place, and which +would vary the monotony of the universe, but as a thing existing and +grandly going on. It is to be noted too that, while Milton appeals chiefly +to the sight, and is clear and coherent in his imagery, Goethe produces a +similar effect in his own manner by appealing to sight and hearing +simultaneously, making sounds and metaphors dance and whirl through each +other, as in a wild, indistinct, but overpowering dream. Raphael describes +the Sun rolling on in thunder through the heavens, singing in chorus with +the kindred stars. Gabriel describes the Earth revolving on her axis, one +hemisphere glittering in the light, the other dipped in shadow. Michael in +continuation sings of the ensphering atmosphere and the storms that rage +in it, darting forth tongues of lightning, and howling in gusts over land +and sea. And then the three burst forth in symphony, exulting in their +nature as beings deriving strength from serene contemplation, and +proclaiming all God's works to be as bright and glorious as on the day +they were created. Suddenly, while Heaven is still thrilling to the grand +undulation, another voice breaks in: + + "Da du, O Herr, dich einmal wieder nahst, + Und fragst wie alles sich bei uns befinde, + Und du mich sonst gewöhnlich gerne sahst, + So siehst du mich auch unter dem Gesinde." + +Ugh! what a discord! The tone, the voice, the words, the very metre, so +horribly out of tune with what had gone before! Mephistopheles is the +speaker. He has been standing behind, looking about him and listening +with a sarcastic air to the song of the Archangels; and, when they have +done, he thinks it his turn to speak, and immediately begins. (We give the +passage in translation.) + + "Since thou, O Lord, approachest us once more, + And askest how affairs with us are going, + And commonly hast seen me here before, + To this my presence 'mid the rest is owing. + Excuse my plainness; I'm no hand at chaffing; + I _can't_ talk fine, though all around should scorn; + _My_ pathos certainly would set thee laughing, + Hadst thou not laughter long ago forborne. + Of suns and worlds deuce one word can _I_ gabble; + I only know how men grow miserable. + The little god of Earth is still the same old clay, + And is as odd this hour as on Creation's day. + Better somewhat his situation + Hadst thou not given him that same light of inspiration: + Reason he calls 't, and uses 't so that he + Grows but more beastly than the beasts to be; + He seems to me, begging your Grace's pardon, + Like one of those long-legged things in a garden + That fly about and hop and spring, + And in the grass the same old chirrup sing. + Would I could say that here the story closes! + But in each filthy mess they thrust their noses." + +And so shameless, and at the same time so voluble, is he that he would go +on longer in the same strain did not the Lord interrupt him. + +Now this speech both announces and exhibits Mephistopheles's nature. +Without even knowing the language, one could hardly hear the original read +as Mephistopheles's without seeing in it shamelessness, impudence, +volubility, cleverness, a sneering, sarcastic disposition, want of heart, +want of sentiment, want of earnestness, want of purpose, complete, +confirmed, irrecoverable devilishness. And, besides, Mephistopheles +candidly describes himself in it. When, in sly and sarcastic allusion to +the song of the Archangels, he tells that _he_ has not the gift of talking +fine, he announces in effect that he is not going to be Miltonic. _He_ is +not going to speak of suns and universes, he says. Raphael, Gabriel, and +Michael, are at home in that sort of thing; but _he_ is not. Leaving them, +therefore, to tell how the universe is flourishing on the grand scale, and +how the suns and the planets are going on as beautifully as ever, he will +just say a word or two as to how human nature is getting on down yonder; +and, to be sure, if comparison be the order of the day, the little godkin, +Man, is quite as odd as on the day he was made. And at once, with +astounding impudence, he launches into a train of remark the purport of +which is that everything down below is at sixes and sevens, and that in +his opinion human nature has turned out a failure. And, heedless of the +disgust of his audience, he would go on talking for ever, were he not +interrupted. + +And is this the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_? Is this the Archangel +ruined? Is this the being who warred against the Almighty, who lay +floating many a rood, who shot upwards like a pyramid of fire, who +navigated space wherever he chose, speeding on his errands from star to +star, and who finally conceived the gigantic scheme of assaulting the +universe where it was weakest, and impregnating the new creation with the +venom of his spirit? Yes, it is he; but oh, how changed! For six thousand +years he has been pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying +his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and +abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as +he himself anticipated, that his nature, once great and magnificent, has +become small, virulent, and shrunken, + + "Subdued + To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." + +As if he had been journeying through a wilderness of scorching sand, all +that was left of the Archangel has long since evaporated. He is now a dry, +shrivelled up, scoffing spirit. When, at the moment of scheming out his +future existence and determining to become a Devil, he anticipated the +ruin of his nature, he could not help thinking with what a strange feeling +he should then appear before his old co-equals, Raphael, Gabriel, and +Michael. But now he stands before them disgustingly unabashed, almost +ostentatious of not being any longer an Archangel. Even in the days of his +glory he was different from them. They luxuriated in contemplation; he in +the feeling of innate all-sufficient vigour. And lo, now! They are +unchanged, the servants of the Lord, revering the day's gentle going. He, +the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured and civilized into +the clever cold-hearted Mephistopheles. + +Mephistopheles is the Spirit of Evil in modern society. Goethe's _Faust_ +is an illustration of this spirit's working in the history of an +individual. The case selected is a noble one. Faust, a man of grand and +restless nature, is aspiring after universality of feeling. Utterly +dissatisfied and disgusted with all human method and all human +acquisition, nay, fretting at the constitution of human nature itself, he +longs to spill out his soul, so that, mingling with the winds, it may +become a part of the ever-thrilling spirit of the universe and know the +essence of everything. He has been contemplating suicide. To this great +nature struggling with itself Mephistopheles is linked. It is to be noted +that throughout the whole drama there is no evidence that it was an object +of very earnest solicitude with Mephistopheles to gain possession of the +soul of Faust. Of course, he desired this, and had it in view. Thus, he +exacted a bond from Faust; and we find him also now and then chuckling +when alone in anticipation of Faust's ultimate ruin. But on the whole he +is constant to no earnest plan for effecting it. In fact, he is constant +to no single purpose whatever. The desire of doing devilry is his motive +all through. Going about with Faust was but being in the way of business +and having a companion at the same time. He studies his own gratification, +not Faust's, in all that he does. Faust never gets what he had a right to +expect from him. He is dragged hither and thither through scenes he has no +anxiety to be in, merely that Mephistopheles may enjoy some new and +_piquant_ piece of devilry. The moment he and Faust enter any place, he +quits Faust's side and mixes with the persons present, to do some mischief +or other; and, when it is done, he comes back to Faust, who has been +standing, with his arms folded, gloomily looking on, and asks him if he +could desire any better amusement than this. Now this is not the conduct +of a devil intent upon nothing so much as gaining possession of the soul +of his victim. A Miltonic devil would have pressed on to the mark more. He +would have been more self-denying, and would have kept his victim in +better humour. But Mephistopheles is a devil to the very core. He is a +devil in his conduct to Faust. What he studies is not to gratify Faust, +but to find plenty of congenial occupation for himself, to perpetrate as +great a quantity of evil as possible in as short a time as possible. It +seems capable of being inferred from this peculiarity in the character of +Mephistopheles that Goethe had in his mind all through the poem a certain +under-current of allegoric meaning. One sees that Mephistopheles, though +acting as a dramatic personage, represents an abstract something or other. + +The character of Mephistopheles is brought out all through the drama. In +the first and second parts we have Faust and him brought into a great +variety of situations and into contact with a great variety of +individuals; and in watching how Mephistopheles conducts himself in these +we obtain more and more insight into his devilish nature. He manifests +himself in two ways--by his style of speaking, and by his style of acting. +That is to say, Mephistopheles, in the first place, has a habit of making +observations upon all subjects, and throwing out all kinds of general +propositions in the course of his conversation, and by attending to the +spirit of these one can perceive very distinctly his mode of looking at +things; and, in the second place, he acts a part in the drama, and this +part is, of course, characteristic. + +The distinguishing feature in Mephistopheles's conversation is the amazing +intimacy which it displays with all the conceivable ways in which crime +can be perpetrated. There is positively not a wrong thing that people are +in the habit of doing that he does not seem to be aware of. He is profound +in his acquaintance with iniquity. If there is a joint loose anywhere in +society, he knows of it; if the affairs of the State are going into +confusion because of some blockhead's mismanagement, he knows of it. He is +versed in all the forms of professional quackery. He knows how pedants +hoodwink people, how priests act the hypocrite, how physicians act the +rake, how lawyers peculate. In all sorts of police information he is a +perfect Fouché. He has gone deep enough into one fell subject to be able +to write a book like Duchatelet's. And not only has he accumulated a mass +of observations, but he has generalized those observations, and marked +evil in its grand educational sources. If the human mind is going out into +a hopeless track of speculation, he has observed and knows it. If the +universities are frittering away the intellect of the youth of a country +in useless and barren studies, he knows it. If atheistic politicians are +vehemently defending the religious institutions of a country, he has +marked the prognostication. Whatever promises to inflict misery, to lead +people astray, to break up beneficial alliances, to make men flounder on +in error, to cause them to die blaspheming at the last, he is thoroughly +cognisant of it all. He could draw up a catalogue of social vices. He +could point out the specific existing grievances to which the +disorganization of a people is owing, and lay his finger on the exact +parent evils which the philanthropist ought to exert himself in exposing +and making away with. But here lies the diabolical peculiarity of his +knowledge. It is not in the spirit of a philanthropist that he has +accumulated his information; it is in the spirit of a devil. It is not +with the benevolent motive of a Duchatelet that he has descended into the +lurking-places of iniquity; it is because he delights in knowing the whole +extent of human misery. The doing of evil being his function, it is but +natural that he should have a taste for even the minutest details of his +own profession. Nay more, as the Spirit of all evil, who had been working +from the beginning, how could he fail to be acquainted with all the +existing varieties of criminal occupation? It is but as if he kept a +diary. Now, in this combination of the knowledge of evil with the desire +of producing it lies the very essence of his character. The combination is +horrible, unnatural, unhuman. Generally the motive to investigate deeply +into what is wrong is the desire to rectify it; and it is rarely that +profligates possess very valuable information. But in every one of +Mephistopheles's speeches there is some profound glimpse into the +rottenness of society, some masterly specification of an evil that ought +to be rooted out; and yet there is not one of those speeches in which the +language is not flippant and sarcastic, not one in which the tone is +sorrowful or philanthropic. Everything is going wrong in the world; +twaddle and quackery everywhere abounding; nothing to be seen under the +sun but hypocritical priests, sharking attorneys, unfaithful wives, +children crying for bread to eat, men and women cheating, robbing, +murdering each other: hurrah! This is exactly a burst of Mephistophelic +feeling. In fact it is an intellectual defect in Mephistopheles that his +having such an eye for evil and his taking such an interest in it prevent +him from allowing anything for good in his calculations. To Mephistopheles +the world seems going to perdition as fast as it can, while in the same +universal confusion beings like the Archangels recognise the good +struggling with the evil. + +Respecting the part which Mephistopheles performs in the drama we have +already said something. Going about the world, linked to Faust, is to him +only a racy way of acting the devil. Having as his companion a man so +flighty in his notions did but increase the flavour of whatever he engaged +in. All through he is laughing in secret at Faust, and deriving a keen +enjoyment from his transcendental style of thinking. Faust's noble +qualities are all Greek and Gaelic to his cold and devilish nature. He +has a contempt for all strong feeling, all sentiment, all evangelism. He +enjoys the Miltonic vastly. Thus in the "Prologue in Heaven" he quizzes +the Archangels about the grandiloquence of their song. Not that he does +not understand that sort of thing intellectually, but that it is not in +his nature to sympathize with anything like sentiment. Hence, when he +assumes the sentimental himself and mimicks any lofty strain, although he +does it full justice in as far as giving the whole intellectual extent of +meaning is concerned, yet he always does so in words so inappropriate +emotionally that the effect is a parody. He must have found amusement +enough in Faust's company to have reconciled him in some measure to losing +him finally. + +But to go on. Mephistopheles acts the devil all through. In the first +place he acts the devil to Faust himself, for he is continually taking his +own way and starting difficulties whenever Faust proposes anything. Then +again in his conduct towards the other principal personages of the drama +it is the same. In the murder of poor Margaret, her mother, her child, and +her brother, we have as fiendish a series of acts as devil could be +supposed capable of perpetrating. And, lastly, in the mere filling up and +side play, it is the same. He is constantly doing unnecessary mischief. If +he enters Auerbach's wine-cellar and introduces himself to the four +drinking companions, it is to set the poor brutes fighting and make them +cut off each other's noses. If he spends a few minutes in talk with +Martha, it is to make the silly old woman expose her foibles. The Second +Part of Faust is devilry all through, a tissue of bewilderments and +devilries. And while doing all this Mephistopheles is still the same cold, +self-possessed, sarcastic being. If he exhibits any emotion at all, it is +a kind of devilish anger. Perhaps, too, once or twice we recognise +something like terror or flurry. But on the whole he is a spirit bereft of +feeling. What could indicate the heart of a devil more than his words to +Faust in the harrowing prison scene? + + "Komm, komm, ich lasse dich mit ihr im Stich." + + * * * * * + +And now for a word or two describing Milton's Satan and Goethe's +Mephistopheles by each other:--Satan is a colossal figure; Mephistopheles +an elaborated portrait. Satan is a fallen Archangel scheming his future +existence; Mephistopheles is the modern Spirit of Evil. Mephistopheles has +a distinctly marked physiognomy; Satan has not. Satan has a sympathetic +knowledge of good; Mephistopheles knows good only as a phenomenon. Much of +what Satan says might be spoken by Raphael; a devilish spirit runs through +all that Mephistopheles says. Satan's bad actions are preceded by noble +reasonings; Mephistopheles does not reason. Satan's bad actions are +followed by compunctious visitings; Mephistopheles never repents. Satan is +often "inly racked;" Mephistopheles can feel nothing more noble than +disappointment. Satan conducts an enterprise; Mephistopheles enjoys an +occupation. Satan has strength of purpose; Mephistopheles is volatile. +Satan feels anxiety; Mephistopheles lets things happen. Satan's greatness +lies in the vastness of his motives; Mephistopheles's in his intimate +acquaintance with everything. Satan has a few sublime conceptions; +Mephistopheles has accumulated a mass of observations. Satan declaims; +Mephistopheles puts in remarks. Satan is conversant with the moral aspects +of things and uses adjectives; Mephistopheles has a preference for nouns, +and uses adjectives only to convey significations which he _knows_ to +exist. Satan may end in being a devil; Mephistopheles is a devil +irrecoverably. + + * * * * * + +Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles are literary performances; and, +for what they prove, neither Milton nor Goethe need have believed in a +Devil at all. Luther's Devil, on the other hand, was a being recognised by +him as actually existing--as existing, one might say, with a vengeance. +The strong conviction which Luther had on this point is a feature in his +character. The narrative of his life abounds in anecdotes showing that the +Devil with him was no chimera, no mere orthodoxy, no fiction. In every +page of his writings we have the word _Teufel_, _Teufel_, repeated again +and again. Occasionally there occurs an express dissertation upon the +nature and functions of the Evil Spirit; and one of the longest chapters +in his _Table Talk_ is that entitled "The Devil and his Works"--indicating +that his conversation with his friends often turned on the subject of +Satanic agency. _Teufel_ was actually the strongest signification he had; +and, whenever he was excited to his highest emotional pitch, it came in to +assist his utterance at the climax, and give him a correspondingly +powerful expression. "This thing I will do," it was common for him to say, +"in spite of all who may oppose me, be it duke, emperor, priest, bishop, +cardinal, pope, or Devil." Man's heart, he says, is a "Stock, Stein, +Eisen, Teufel, hart Herz," ("a stock, stone, iron, Devil, hard heart"). +And it was not a mere vague conception he had of this being, such as +theology might oblige. On the contrary, he had observed him as a man would +his personal enemy, and in so doing had formed a great many conclusions +respecting his powers and his character. In general, Luther's Devil may be +defined as a personification, in the spirit of Scripture, of the resisting +medium which Luther had to toil his way through--spiritual fears, +passionate uprisings, fainting resolutions within himself; error, +weakness, envy, in those around him; and, without, a whole world howling +for his destruction. It is in effect as if Luther had said, "Scripture +reveals to me the existence of a great accursed Being, whose function it +is to produce evil. It is for me to ascertain the character of this Being, +whom I, of all men, have to deal with. And how am I to do so except by +observing him working? God knows I have not far to go in search of his +manifestations." And thus Luther went on filling up the Scriptural +proposition with his daily experience. He was constantly gaining a clearer +conception of his great personal antagonist, constantly stumbling upon +some more concealed trait in the Spirit's character. The Being himself was +invisible; but men were walking in the midst of his manifestations. It was +as if there were some Being whom we could not see, nor directly in the +ordinary way have any intercourse with, but who every morning, before it +was light, came and left at our doors some exquisite specimen of his +workmanship. It would, of course, be difficult under such disadvantages to +become acquainted with the character of our invisible correspondent and +nightly visitant; still we could arrive at a few conclusions respecting +him, and the more of his workmanship we saw the more insight we should +come to have. Or again, in striving to realize to himself the Scriptural +proposition about the Devil, Luther, to speak in the language of the +"Positive Philosophy," was but striving to ascertain the laws according to +which evil happens. Only the Positive Philosophy would lay a veto on any +such speculation, and pronounce it fundamentally vicious in this +respect--that there are not two courses of events, separable from each +other, in history, the one good and the other evil, but that evil comes of +good and good of evil; so that, if we are to have a science of history at +all, the most we can have is a science of the laws according to which, not +evil follows evil, but events follow each other. But History to Luther was +not a physical course of events. It was God acting, and the Devil +opposing. + +So far Luther did not differ from his age. Belief in Satanic agency was +universal at that period. We have no idea now how powerful this belief +was. We realize something of the truth when we read the depositions in an +old book of trials for witchcraft. But it is sufficient to glance over any +writings of the period to see what a real meaning was then attached to the +words "Hell" and "Devil." The spirit of these words has become obsolete, +chased away by the spirit of exposition. That was what M. Comte calls the +Theological period, when all the phenomena of mind and matter were +referred to the agency of Spirits. The going out of the belief in Satanic +agency (for even those who retain it in profession allow it no force in +practice) M. Comte would attribute to the progress of the spirit of that +philosophy of which he is the apostle. We do not think, however, that the +mere progress of the scientific spirit--that is, the mere disposition of +men to pursue one mode of thinking with respect to all classes of +phenomena--could have been sufficient of itself to work such an alteration +in the general mind. We are fond of accounting for it, in part at least, +by the going out, in the progress of civilization, of those sensations +which seem naturally fitted to nourish the belief in supernatural beings. +The tendency of civilization has been to diminish our opportunities of +feeling terror, of feeling strongly at all. The horrific plays a much less +important part in human experience than it once did. To mention but a +single instance: we are exempted now, by mechanical contrivances for +locomotion, &c., from the necessity of being much in darkness or wild +physical solitude. This is especially the case with those who dwell in +cities, and therefore exert most conspicuously an intellectual influence. +The moaning of the wind at night in winter is about their highest +experience of the kind; and is it not a corroboration of the view now +suggested that the belief in the supernatural is always strongest at the +moment of this experience? Scenes and situations our ancestors were in +every day are strange to us. We have not now to travel through forests at +the dead of night, nor to pass a lonely spot on a moor where a murderer's +body is swinging from a gibbet. Tam o' Shanter, even before he came to +Allowa' Kirk, saw more than many of us see in a life-time. + + "By this time he was 'cross the ford + Whaur in the snaw the chapman smoored, + And past the birks and muckle stane + Whaur drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane, + And through the whins and by the cairn + Whaur hunters fand the murdered bairn, + And near the thorn aboon the well + Whaur Mungo's mither hanged hersel'." + +This effect of civilization in reducing all our sensations to those of +comfort is a somewhat alarming circumstance in the point of view we are +now taking. It is necessary, for many a reason, to resist the universal +application of the "Positive Philosophy," even if we adopt and adore it as +an instrument of explication. The "Positive Philosophy" commands us to +forbear all speculation into the inexplicable. For the sake of many things +this order must be disregarded. Speculation into the metaphysical is the +invariable accompaniment of strong feeling; and the moral nature of man +would starve upon such chopped straw as the mere intellectual relations of +similitude and succession. Nor does it meet the demands of the case to say +that the "Positive Philosophy" would be always far in arrear of the known +phenomena, and that here would be mystery enough. No! the "Positive +Philosophy" would require to strike a chasm in itself under the title of +the Liberty of Hypothesis. We do not mean the liberty of hypothesis merely +as a means of anticipating theory, but for spiritual and imaginative +purposes. It is in this light that one would welcome Animal Magnetism, or +any thing else whatever that would but knock a hole through the paper wall +that incloses our mode of being, snub the self-conceit of our present +knowledge, and give us other and more difficult phenomena to explain. + +But, though Luther and his age were not at variance in the belief in +Satanic agency, Luther, of course, did this as he did every thing else, +gigantically. The Devil, as Luther conceived him, was not the Satan of +Milton; although, had Luther set himself to realize the Miltonic +narrative, his conception might not have been dissimilar. But it was as +the enemy of mankind, working in human affairs, that Luther conceived the +Devil. We should expect his conception therefore to tally with Goethe's in +some respects, but only as a conception of Luther's would tally with one +of Goethe's. Luther's conception was truer to the strict Scriptural +definition than either Milton's or Goethe's. Mephistopheles being a +character in a drama, and apparently fully occupied in his part there, we +cannot bring ourselves to recognise in him that virtually omnipotent being +to whom all evil is owing, who is leavening the human mind everywhere as +if the atmosphere round the globe were charged with the venom of his +spirit. In the case of Milton's Satan we have no such difficulty, because +in his case a whole planet is at stake, and there are only two individuals +on it. But Luther's conception met the whole exigency of Scripture. His +conception was distinctly that of a being to whose operation all the evil +of all times and all places is owing, a veritable [Greek: pneuma] diffused +through the earth's atmosphere. Hence his mind had to entertain the notion +of a plurality of devils; for he could conceive the Arch-Demon acting +corporeally only through imps or emanations. Goethe's Mephistopheles might +pass for one of these. + +It would be possible farther to illustrate Luther's conception of the Evil +Principle by quoting many of his specific sayings about diabolic agency. +It would be found from these that his conception was that of a being to +whom evil of all kinds was dear. The Devil with him was a meteorological +agent. Devils, he said, are in woods, and waters, and dark poolly places, +ready to hurt passers-by; there are devils also in the thick black clouds, +who cause hail and thunders and lightnings, and poison the air and the +fields and the pastures. "When such things happen, philosophers say they +are natural, and ascribe them to the planets, and I know not what all." +The Devil he believed also to be the patron of witchcraft. The Devil, he +said, had the power of deceiving the senses, so that one should swear he +heard or saw something while really the whole was an illusion. The Devil +also was at the bottom of dreaming and somnambulism. He was likewise the +author of diseases. "I hold," said Luther, "that the Devil sendeth all +heavy diseases and sicknesses upon people." Diseases are, as it were, the +Devil striking people; only, in striking, he must use some natural +instrument, as a murderer uses a sword. When our sins get the upper hand, +and all is going wrong, then the Devil must be God's hangman, to clear +away obstructions and to blast the earth with famines and pestilences. +Whatsoever procures death, that is the Devil's trade. All sadness and +melancholy come of the Devil. So does insanity; but the Devil has no +farther power over the soul of a maniac. The Devil works in the affairs of +nations. He looks always upward, taking an interest in what is high and +pompous; he does not look downward, taking little interest in what is +insignificant and lowly. He likes to work on the great scale, to establish +an influence over the central minds which manage public affairs. The Devil +is also a spiritual tempter. He is the opponent of the Divine grace in the +hearts of individuals. This was the aspect of the doctrine of Satanic +agency which was most frequent in preaching; and, accordingly, Luther's +propositions on the point are very specific. He had ascertained the laws +of Satanic operation upon the human spirit. The Devil, he said, knows +Scripture well, and uses it in argument. He shoots fearful thoughts, which +are his fiery darts, into the hearts of the godly. The Devil is acquainted +even with those mysterious enjoyments, those spiritual excitements, which +the Christian would suppose a being like him must be ignorant of. "What +gross inexperienced fellows," Luther says, "are those Papist commentators! +They are for interpreting Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' to be merely fleshly +lust; because they know no other kind of tribulation than that." But, +though the Devil has great power over the human mind, he is limited in +some respects. He has no means, for instance, of knowing the thoughts of +the faithful until they give them utterance. Again, if the Devil be once +foiled in argument, he cannot tempt that soul again on the same tack. The +Papacy being with Luther the grand existing form of evil, he of course +recognised the Devil in _it_. If the Papacy were once overthrown, Satan +would lose his stronghold. Never on earth again would he be able to pile +up such another edifice. No wonder, then, that at that moment all the +energies of the enraged and despairing Spirit were employed to prop up the +reeling and tottering fabric. Necessarily, therefore, Luther and Satan +were personal antagonists. Satan saw that the grand struggle was with +Luther. If he could but crush him by physical violence, or make him forget +God, then the world would be his own again. So, often did he wrestle with +Luther's spirit; often in nightly heart-agonies did he try to shake +Luther's faith in Christ. But he was never victorious. "All the Duke +Georges in the universe," said Luther, "are not equal to a single Devil; +and I do not fear the Devil." "I should wish," he said, "to die rather by +the Devil's hands than by the hands of Pope or Emperor; for then I should +die, at all events, by the hands of a great and mighty Prince of the +World: but, if I die through him, he shall eat such a bit of me as shall +be his suffocation; he shall spew me out again; and, at the last day, I, +in requital, shall devour him." When all other means were unavailing, +Luther found that the Devil could not stand against humour. In his hours +of spiritual agony, he tells us, when the Devil was heaping up his sins +before him, so as to make him doubt whether he should be saved, and when +he could not drive the Devil away by uttering sentences of Holy Writ, or +by prayer, he used to address him thus: "Devil, if, as you say, Christ's +blood, which was shed for my sins, be not sufficient to insure my +salvation, can't you pray for me yourself, Devil?" At this the Devil +invariably fled, "_quia est superbus spiritus et non potest ferre +contemptum sui_." + +What Luther called "wrestling with the Devil" we at this day call "low +spirits." Life must be a much more insipid thing than it was then. O what +a soul that man must have had; under what a weight of feeling, that would +have crushed a thousand of us, _he_ must have trod the earth! + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE.[2] + + +If there are any two portraits which we all expect to find hung up in the +rooms of those whose tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture, +they are the portraits of Shakespeare and Goethe. + +There are, indeed, many and various gods in our modern Pantheon of genius. +It contains rough gods and smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of +strength, gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, and +little cupids and toy-gods. Out of this variety each master of a household +will select his own Penates, the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece. +The roughest will find some to worship them, and the smallest shall not +want domestic adoration. But we suppose a dilettante of the first class, +one who, besides excluding from his range of choice the deities of war, +and cold thought, and civic action, shall further exclude from it all +those even of the gods of modern literature who, whether by reason of +their inferior rank, or by reason of their peculiar attributes, fail as +models of universal stateliness. What we should expect to see over the +mantelpiece of such a rigorous person would be the images of the English +Shakespeare and the German Goethe. + +On the one side, we will suppose, fixed with due gance against the +luxurious crimson of the wall, would be a slab of black marble exhibiting +in relief a white plaster-cast of the face of Shakespeare as modelled from +the Stratford bust; on the other, in a similar setting, would be a copy, +if possible, of the mask of Goethe taken at Weimar after the poet's death. +This would suffice; and the considerate beholder could find no fault with +such an arrangement. It is true, reasons might be assigned why a third +mask should have been added--that of the Italian Dante; in which case +Dante and Goethe should have occupied the sides, and Shakespeare should +have been placed higher up between. But the master of the house would +point out how, in that case, a fine taste would have been pained by the +inevitable sense of contrast between the genial mildness of the two +Teutonic faces and the severe and scornful melancholy of the poet of the +Inferno. The face of the Italian poet, as being so different in kind, must +either be reluctantly omitted, he would say, or transferred by itself to +the other side of the room. Unless, indeed, with a view to satisfy the +claims both of degree and of kind, Shakespeare were to be placed alone +over the mantelpiece, and Dante and Goethe in company on the opposite +wall, where, there being but two, the contrast would be rather agreeable +than otherwise! On the whole, however, and without prejudice to new +arrangements in the course of future decorations, he is content that it +should be as it is. + +And so, reader, for the present are we. Let us enter together, then, if it +seems worth while, the room of this imaginary dilettante during his +absence; let us turn the key in the lock, so that he may not come in to +interrupt us; and let us look for a little time at the two masks he has +provided for us over the mantelpiece, receiving such reflections as they +may suggest. Doubtless we have often looked at the two masks before; but +that matters little. + + * * * * * + +As we gaze at the first of the two masks, what is it that we see? A face +full in contour, of good oval shape, the individual features small in +proportion to the entire countenance, the greater part of which is made up +of an ample and rounded forehead and a somewhat abundant mouth and chin. +The general impression is that rather of rich, fine, and very mobile +tissue, than of large or decided bone. This, together with the length of +the upper lip, and the absence of any set expression, imparts to the face +an air of lax and luxurious calmness. It is clearly a passive face rather +than an active face, a face across which moods may pass and repass rather +than a face grooved and charactered into any one permanent show of +relation to the outer world. Placed beside the mask of Cromwell, it would +fail to impress, not only as being less massive and energetic, but also as +being in every way less marked and determinate. It is the face, we repeat, +of a literary man, one of those faces which depend for their power to +impress less on the sculptor's favourite circumstance of distinct osseous +form than on the changing hue and aspect of the living flesh. And yet it +is, even in form, quite a peculiar face. Instead of being, as in the +ordinary thousand and one portraits of Shakespeare, a mere general face +which anybody or nobody might have had, the face in the mask (and the +singular portrait in the first folio edition of the poet's works +corroborates it) is a face which every call-boy about the Globe Theatre +must have carried about with him in his imagination, without any trouble, +as specifically Mr. Shakespeare's face. In complexion, as we imagine it, +it was rather fair than dark; and yet not very fair either, if we are to +believe Shakespeare himself (Sonnet 62)-- + + "But when my glass shows me myself indeed, + Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity--" + +a passage, however, in which, from the nature of the mood in which it was +written, we are to suppose exaggeration for the worse. In short, the face +of Shakespeare, so far as we can infer what it was from the homely +Stratford bust, was a genuine and even comely, but still unusual, English +face, distinguished by a kind of ripe intellectual fulness in the general +outline, comparative smallness in the individual features, and a look of +gentle and humane repose. + +Goethe's face is different. The whole size of the head is perhaps less, +but the proportion of the face to the head is greater, and there is more +of that determinate form which arises from prominence and strength in the +bony structure. The features are individually larger, and present in their +combination more of that deliberate beauty of outline which can be +conveyed with effect in sculpture. The expression, however, is also that +of calm intellectual repose; and, in the absence of harshness or undue +concentration of the parts, one is at liberty to discover the proof that +this also was the face of a man whose life was spent rather in a career of +thought and literary effort than in a career of active and laborious +strife. Yet the face, with all its power of fine susceptibility, is not so +passive as that of Shakespeare. Its passiveness is more the passiveness of +self-control, and less that of natural constitution; the susceptibilities +pass and repass over a firmer basis of permanent character; the tremors +among the nervous tissues do not reach to such depths of sheer nervous +dissolution, but sooner make impact against the solid bone. The calm in +the one face is more that of habitual softness and ease of humour; the +calm in the other is more that of dignified, though tolerant, +self-composure. It would have been more easy, one thinks, to take +liberties with Shakespeare in his presence than to attempt a similar thing +in the presence of Goethe. The one carried himself with the air of a man +often diffident of himself, and whom, therefore, a foolish or impudent +stranger might very well mistake till he saw him roused; the other wore, +with all his kindness and blandness, a fixed stateliness of mien and look +that would have checked undue familiarity from the first. Add to all this +that the face of Goethe, at least in later life, was browner and more +wrinkled; his hair more dark; his eye also nearer the black and lustrous +in species, if less mysteriously vague and deep; and his person perhaps +the taller and more symmetrically made.[3] + +But a truce to these guesses! What do we actually know respecting those +two men, whose masks, the preserved similitudes of the living features +with which they once fronted the world, are now before us? Let us turn +first to the one and then to the other, till, as we gaze at these poor +eyeless images, which are all we now have, some vision of the lives and +minds they typify shall swim into our ken. + + * * * * * + +Shakespeare, this Englishman who died two hundred and sixty years ago, +what is he now to us his countrymen, who ought to know him best? A great +name, in the first place, of which we are proud! That this little foggy +island of England should have given birth to such a man is of itself a +moiety of our acquittance among the nations. By Frenchmen Shakespeare is +accepted as at least equal to their own first; Italians waver between him +and Dante; Germans, by race more our brethren, worship him as their own +highest product too, though born by chance amongst us. All confess him to +have been one of those great spirits, occasionally created, in whom the +human faculties seem to have reached that extreme of expansion on the +slightest increase beyond which man would burst away into some other mode +of being and leave this behind. And why all this? What are the special +claims of Shakespeare to this high worship? Through what mode of activity, +practised while alive, has he won this immortality after he is dead? The +answer is simple. He was an artist, a poet, a dramatist. Having, during +some five-and-twenty years of a life not very long, written about forty +dramatic pieces, which, after being acted in several London theatres, +were printed either by himself or by his executors, he has, by this means, +bequeathed to the memory of the human race an immense number of verses, +and to its imagination a great variety of ideal characters and +creations--Lears, Othellos, Hamlets, Falstaffs, Shallows, Imogens, +Mirandas, Ariels, Calibans. This, understood in its fullest extent, is +what Shakespeare has done. Whatever blank in human affairs, as they now +are, would be produced by the immediate withdrawal of all this +intellectual capital, together with all the interest that has been +accumulated on it: _that_ is the measure of what the world owes to +Shakespeare. + +This conception, however, while it serves vaguely to indicate to us the +greatness of the man, assists us very little in the task of defining his +character. In our attempts to do this--to ascend, as it were, to the +living spring from which have flowed those rich poetic streams--we +unavoidably rely upon two kinds of authority: the records which inform us +of the leading events of his life; and the casual allusions to his person +and habits left us by his contemporaries. + +To enumerate the ascertained events of Shakespeare's life is unnecessary +here. How he was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April, +1564, the son of a respectable burgess who afterwards became poor; how, +having been educated with some care in his native town, he married there, +at the age of eighteen, a farmer's daughter eight years older than +himself; how, after employing himself as scrivener or schoolmaster, or +something of that kind, in his native county for a few years more, he at +length quitted it in his twenty-fourth year, and came up to London, +leaving his wife and three children at Stratford; how, connecting himself +with the Blackfriars theatre, he commenced the career of a poet and +play-writer; how he succeeded so well in this that, after having been a +flourishing actor and theatre-proprietor, and a most popular man of genius +about town for some seventeen years, he was able to leave the stage while +still under forty, and return to Stratford with property sufficient to +make him the most considerable man of the place; how he lived here for +some twelve years more in the midst of his family, sending up occasionally +a new play to town, and otherwise leading the even and tranquil existence +of a country gentleman; and how, after having buried his old mother, +married his daughters, and seen himself a grandfather at the age of +forty-three, he was cut off rather suddenly near his fifty-third birthday, +in the year 1616:--all this is, or ought to be, as familiar to educated +Englishmen of the present day as the letters of the English alphabet. M. +Guizot, with a little inaccuracy, has made these leading facts in the life +of the English poet tolerably familiar even to our French neighbours. + +But, while such facts, if conceived with sufficient distinctness, serve to +mark out the life of the poet in general outline, it is rather from the +few notices of him that have come down to us from his contemporaries that +we derive the more special impressions regarding his character and ways +with which we are accustomed to fill up this outline. These notices are +various; those of interest may, perhaps, be about a dozen in all; but the +only ones that take a very decided hold on the imagination are the three +following:-- + + _Fuller's Fancy-picture of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at the Mermaid + Tavern._--"Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; + which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English + man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in + learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the + English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could + turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by + the quickness of his wit and invention."--_Written, about 1650, by + Thomas Fuller, born in 1608._ + + _Aubrey's Sketch of Shakespeare at second hand._--"This William, + being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I + guess, about 18; and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did + act exceedingly well. (Now B. Jonson was never a good actor, but an + excellent instructor.) He began early to make essays at dramatic + poetry, which at that time was very low; and his plays took well. He + was a handsome, well-shaped man; very good company, and of a very + ready and pleasant smooth wit. The humour of the constable in '_A + Midsummer Night's Dream_,' he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks, + which is the road from London to Stratford; and there was living that + constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of + that parish; and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of + men daily wherever they came.... He was wont to go to his native + country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 200_l._ or + 300_l._ per annum, there and thereabout, to a sister. I have heard + Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell, who is accounted the + best comedian we have now, say that he had a most prodigious wit, and + did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He + was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life. Said + Ben Jonson, 'I wish he had blotted out a thousand.'"--_Written, about + 1680, by John Aubrey, born 1625._ + + _Ben Jonson's own Sketch of Shakespeare._--"I remember the players + have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his + writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer + hath been 'Would he had blotted a thousand!'; which they thought a + malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their + ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by + wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved + the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as + any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an + excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he + flowed with that facility that _sometimes it was necessary he should + be stopped_: '_Sufflaminandus erat_,' as Augustus said of Haterius. + His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! + Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as + when he said, in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, 'Cæsar, + thou dost me wrong,' he replied, 'Cæsar did never wrong but with just + cause,' and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his + vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than + to be pardoned."--_Ben Jonson's "Discoveries."_ + +It is sheer nonsense, with these and other such passages accessible to +anybody, to go on repeating, as people seem determined to do, the +hackneyed saying of the commentator Steevens, that "all that we know of +Shakespeare is, that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon; married and had +children there; went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote plays +and poems; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried."[4] +It is our own fault, and not the fault of the materials, if we do not know +a great deal more about Shakespeare than that; if we do not realize, for +example, these distinct and indubitable facts about him--his special +reputation among the critics of his time, as a man not so much of +erudition as of prodigious natural genius; his gentleness and openness of +disposition; his popular and sociable habits; his extreme ease, and, as +some thought, negligence in composition; and, above all, and most +characteristic of all, his excessive fluency in speech. "He sometimes +required stopping," is Ben Jonson's expression; and whoever does not see a +whole volume of revelation respecting Shakespeare in that single trait has +no eye for seeing anything. Let no one ever lose sight of that phrase in +trying to imagine Shakespeare. + +Still, after all, we cannot be content thus. With regard to such a man we +cannot rest satisfied with a mere picture of his exterior in its aspect of +repose, or in a few of its common attitudes. We seek, as the phrase is, to +penetrate into his heart--to detect and to fix in everlasting portraiture +that mood of his soul which was ultimate and characteristic; in which, so +to speak, he came ready-fashioned from the Creator's hands; towards which +he always sank when alone; and on the ground-melody of which all his +thoughts and actions were but voluntary variations. As far short of such a +result as would be any notion we could form of the poet Burns from a mere +chronological outline of his life, together with a few stories such as are +current about his moral irregularities, so far short of a true +appreciation of Shakespeare would be that idea of him which we could +derive from the scanty fund of the external evidence. + +And here it is that, in proceeding to make up the deficiency of the +external evidence by going to the only other available source of light on +the subject, namely the bequeathed writings of the man himself, we find +ourselves obstructed at the outset by an obvious difficulty, which does +not exist to the same extent in most other cases. We can, with comparative +ease, recognise Burns himself in his works; for Burns is a lyrist, pouring +out his own feelings in song, often alluding to himself, and generally +under personal agitation when he writes. Shakespeare, on the other hand, +is a dramatist, whose function it was not to communicate, but to create. +Had he been a dramatist of the same school as Ben Jonson, indeed--using +the drama as a means of spreading, or, at all events, as a medium through +which to insinuate, his opinions, and often indicating his purposes by the +very names of his _dramatis personæ_ (as Downright, Merecraft, Eitherside, +and the like)--then the task would have been easier. But it is not so with +Shakespeare. Less than almost any man that ever wrote does he inculcate or +dogmatise. He is the very type of the poet. He paints, represents, +creates, holds the mirror up to nature; but from opinion, doctrine, +controversy, theory, he holds instinctively aloof. In each of his plays +there is a "central idea," to use the favourite term of the German +critics--that is, a single thought round which all may be exhibited as +consciously or unconsciously crystallized; but there is no pervading +maxim, no point set forth to be argued or proved. Of none of all the plays +can it be said that it is more than any other a vehicle for fixed articles +in the creed of Shakespeare. + +One quality or attribute of Shakespeare's genius we do, indeed, contrive +to seize out this very difficulty of seizing anything--that quality or +attribute of _many-sidedness_ of which we have heard so much for the last +century and a half. The immense variety of his characters and conceptions, +embracing as it does Hamlets and Falstaffs, Kings and Clowns, Prosperos +and Dogberrys, and his apparently equal ease in handling them all, are +matters that have been noted by one and all of the critics. And thus, +while his own character is lost in his incessant shiftings through such a +succession of masks, we yet manage, as it were in revenge, to extract from +the very impossibility of describing him an adjective which does possess a +kind of quasi-descriptive value. It is as if of some one that had baffled +all our attempts to investigate him we were to console ourselves by saying +that he was a perfect Proteus. We call Shakespeare "many-sided;" not a +magazine, nor a young lady at a party, but tells you that; and in adding +this to our list of adjectives concerning him we find a certain +satisfaction, and even an increase of light. + +But it would be cowardice to stop here. The old sea-god Proteus himself, +despite his subtlety and versatility, had a real form and character of his +own, into which he could be compelled, if one only knew the way. Hear how +they served this old gentleman in the Odyssey: + + "We at once, + Loud shouting, flew on him, and in our arms + Constrained him fast; nor the sea-prophet old + Called not incontinent his shifts to mind. + First he became a long-maned lion grim; + A dragon then, a panther, a huge boar, + A limpid stream, and an o'ershadowing tree. + We, persevering, held him; till, at length, + The subtle sage, his ineffectual arts + Resigning weary, questioned me and spoke." + +And so with _our_ Proteus. The many-sidedness of the dramatist, let it be +well believed and pondered, is but the versatility in form of a certain +personal and substantial being, which constitutes the specific mind of the +dramatist himself. Precisely as we have insisted that Shakespeare's face, +as the best portraits represent it to us, is no mere general face or face +to let, but a good, decided, and even rather singular face, so, we would +insist, he had as specific a character, as thoroughly a way of his own in +thinking about things and going through his morning and evening hours, as +any of ourselves. "Man is only many-sided," says Goethe, "when he strives +after the highest because he _must_, and descends to the lesser because he +_will_;" that is, as we interpret, when he is borne on in a certain noble +direction in all that he does by the very structure of his mind, while, at +his option, he may keep planting this fixed path or not with a sportive +and flowery border. By the necessity of his nature, Shakespeare was +compelled in a certain earnest direction in all that he did; and it is our +part to search through the thickets of imagery and gratuitous fiction amid +which he spent his life, that this path may be discovered. As the lion, or +the limpid stream, or the overshadowing tree, into which Proteus turned +himself, was not a real lion, or a real stream, or a real tree, but only +Proteus as the one or as the other; so, involved in each of Shakespeare's +characters,--in Hamlet, in Falstaff, or in Romeo,--involved in some deep +manner in each of these diverse characters, is Shakespeare's own nature. +If Shakespeare had not been precisely and wholly Shakespeare, and not any +other man actual or conceivable, could Hamlet or Falstaff, or any other of +his creations, have been what they are? + +But how to evolve Shakespeare from his works, how to compel this Proteus +into his proper and native form, is still the question. It is a problem +of the highest difficulty. Something, indeed, of the poet's personal +character and views we cannot help gathering as we read his dramas. +Passages again and again occur of which, from their peculiar effect upon +ourselves, from their conceivable reference to what we know of the poet's +circumstances, or from their evident superfluousness and warmth, we do not +hesitate to aver "There speaks the poet's own heart." But to show +generally how much of the man has passed into the poet, and how it is that +his personal bent and peculiarities are to be surely detected inhering in +writings whose essential character it is to be arbitrary and universal, is +a task from which a critic might well shrink, were he left merely to the +ordinary resources of critical ingenuity without any positive and +ascertained clue. + +In this case, however, all the world ought to know, there is a positive +and ascertained clue. Shakespeare has left to us not merely a collection +of dramas, the exercises of his creative phantasy in a world of ideal +matter, but also certain poems which are assuredly and expressly +autobiographic. Criticism seems now pretty conclusively to have +determined, what it ought to have determined long ago, that the _Sonnets_ +of Shakespeare are, and can possibly be, nothing else than a poetical +record of his own feelings and experience--a connected series of entries, +as it were, in his own diary--during a certain period of his London life. +This, we say, is conclusively determined and agreed upon; and whoever does +not, to some extent, hold this view knows nothing about the subject. +Ulrici, who is a genuine investigator, as well as a profound critic, is, +of course, right on this point. So, also, in the main, is M. Guizot, +although he mars the worth of the conclusion by adducing the foolish +theory of _Euphuism_--that is, of the adoption of an affected style of +expression in vogue in Shakespeare's age--in order to explain away that +which is precisely the most important thing about the Sonnets, and the +very thing _not_ to be explained away: namely, the depth and strangeness +of their pervading sentiment, and the curious hyperbolism of their style. +In truth, it is the very closeness of the contact into which the right +view of the Sonnets brings us with Shakespeare, the very value of the +information respecting him to which it opens the way, that operates +against it. Where we have so eager a desire to know, there we fear to +believe, lest what we have once cherished on so great a subject we should +be obliged again to give up, or lest, if our imaginations should dare to +figure aught too exact and familiar regarding the traits and motions of so +royal a spirit, the question should be put to us, what _we_ can know of +the halls of a palace, or the mantled tread of a king? Still the fact is +as it is. These Sonnets of Shakespeare _are_ autobiographic--distinctly, +intensely, painfully autobiographic, although in a style and after a +fashion of autobiography so peculiar that we can cite only Dante in his +_Vita Nuova_, and Tennyson in his _In Memoriam_, as having furnished +similar examples of it. + +We are not going to examine the Sonnets in detail here, nor to tell the +story which they involve as a whole. We will indicate generally, however, +the impression which, we think, a close investigation of them will +infallibly leave on any thoughtful reader, as to the characteristic +personal qualities of that mind the larger and more factitious emanations +from which still cover and astonish the world. + +The general and aggregate effect, then, of these Sonnets, as contributing +to our knowledge of Shakespeare as a man, is to antiquate, or at least to +reduce very much in value, the common idea of him implied in such phrases +as William the Calm, William the Cheerful, and the like. These phrases are +true, when understood in a certain very obvious sense; but, if we were to +select that designation which would, as we think, express Shakespeare in +his most intimate and private relations to man and nature, we should +rather say William the Meditative, William the Metaphysical, or William +the Melancholy. Let not the reader, full of the just idea of Shakespeare's +wonderful concreteness as a poet, be staggered by the second of these +phrases. The phrase is a good phrase; etymologically, it is perhaps the +best phrase we could here use; and whatever of inappropriateness there may +seem to be in it proceeds from false associations, and will vanish, we +hope, before we have done with it. Nor let it be supposed that, in using, +as nearly synonymous, the word Melancholy, we mean anything so absurd as +that the author of Falstaff was a Werther. What we mean is that there is +evidence in the Sonnets, corroborated by other proof on all hands, that +the mind of Shakespeare, when left to itself, was apt to sink into that +state in which thoughts of what is sad and mysterious in the universe most +easily come and go. + +At no time, except during sleep, is the mind of any human being completely +idle. All men have some natural and congenial mood into which they fall +when they are left to talk with themselves. One man recounts the follies +of the past day, renewing the relish of them by the recollection; another +uses his leisure to hate his enemy and to scheme his discomfiture; a third +rehearses in imagination, in order to be prepared, the part which he is to +perform on the morrow. Now, at such moments, as we believe, it was the +habit of Shakespeare's mind, obliged thereto by the necessity of its +structure, to ponder ceaselessly those quest ions relating to man, his +origin, and his destiny, in familiarity with which consists what is called +the spiritual element in human nature. It was Shakespeare's use, as it +seems to us, to revert, when he was alone, to that ultimate mood of the +soul in which one hovers wistfully on the borders of the finite, vainly +pressing against the barriers that separate it from the unknown; that mood +in which even what is common and under foot seems part of a vast current +mystery, and in which, like Arabian Job of old, one looks by turns at the +heaven above, the earth beneath, and one's own moving body between, +interrogating whence it all is, why it all is, and whither it all tends. +And this, we say, is Melancholy. It is more. It is that mood of man, +which, most of all moods, is thoroughly, grandly, specifically human. That +which is the essence of all worth, all beauty, all humour, all genius, is +open or secret reference to the supernatural; and this is sorrow. The +attitude of a finite creature, contemplating the infinite, can only be +that of an exile, grief and wonder blending in a wistful longing for an +unknown home. + +As we consider this frame of mind to have been characteristic of +Shakespeare, so we find that as a poet he has not forgotten to represent +it. We have always fancied Hamlet to be a closer translation of +Shakespeare's own character than any other of his personations. The same +meditativeness, the same morbid reference at all times to the +supernatural, the same inordinate development of the speculative faculty, +the same intellectual melancholy, that are seen in the Prince of Denmark, +seem to have distinguished Shakespeare. Nor is it possible here to forget +that minor and lower form of the same fancy--the ornament of _As You Like +It_, the melancholy Jaques. + + "_Jaques._ More, more, I prithee, more. + + _Amiens._ It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques. + + _Jaques._ I thank it. More, I prithee, more! I can suck melancholy + out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More. I prithee, more! + + _Amiens._ My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you. + + _Jaques._ I do not desire you to please me; I desire you to sing. + + * * * * * + + _Rosalind._ They say you are a melancholy fellow. + + _Jaques._ I am so; I do love it better than laughing. + + _Rosalind._ Those that are in extremity of either are abominable + fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than + drunkards. + + _Jaques._ Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. + + _Rosalind._ Why, then, 'tis good to be a post. + + _Jaques._ I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is + emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the + courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; + nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; + nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine + own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and + indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often + rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness." + +Jaques is not Shakespeare; but in writing this description of Jaques +Shakespeare drew from his knowledge of himself. His also was a "melancholy +of his own," a "humorous sadness in which his often rumination wrapt him." +In that declared power of Jaques of "sucking melancholy out of a song" the +reference of Shakespeare to himself seems almost direct. Nay more, as +Rosalind, in rating poor Jaques, tells him on one occasion that he is so +abject a fellow that she verily believes he is "out of love with his +nativity, and almost chides God _for making him of that countenance that +he is_," so Shakespeare's melancholy, in one of his Sonnets (No. 29), +takes exactly the same form of self-dissatisfaction. + + "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, + I all alone beweep my outcast state, + And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, + And look upon myself and curse my fate, + Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, + _Featured like him_, like him with friends possessed, + Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, + With what I most enjoy contented least; + Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising, + Haply I think on thee," &c. + +Think of that, reader! That mask of Shakespeare's face, which we have been +discussing, Shakespeare himself did not like; and there were moments in +which he was so abject as actually to wish that he had received from +Nature another man's physical features! + +If Shakespeare's melancholy was, like that of Jaques, a complex +melancholy, a melancholy "compounded of many simples"--extracted perhaps +at first from some root of bitter experience in his own life, and then +fed, as his Sonnets clearly state, by a habitual sense of his own +"outcast" condition in society, and by the sight of a hundred social +wrongs around him, into a kind of abject dissatisfaction with himself and +his fate--yet, in the end, and in its highest form, it was rather, as we +have already hinted, the melancholy of Hamlet, a meditative, contemplative +melancholy, embracing human life as a whole, the melancholy of a mind +incessantly tending from the real ([Greek: ta physika]) to the +metaphysical ([Greek: ta meta ta physika]), and only brought back by +external occasion from the metaphysical to the real. + +Do not let us quarrel about the words, if we can agree about the thing. +Let any competent person whatever read the Sonnets, and then, with their +impression on him, pass to the plays, and he will inevitably become aware +of Shakespeare's personal fondness for certain themes or trains of +thought, particularly that of the speed and destructiveness of time. +Death, vicissitude, the march and tramp of generations across life's +stage, the rotting of human bodies in the earth--these and all the other +forms of the same thought were familiar to Shakespeare to a degree beyond +what is to be seen in the case of any other poet. It seems to have been a +habit of his mind, when left to its own tendency, ever to indulge by +preference in that oldest of human meditations, which is not yet trite: +"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble; he +cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth as a shadow, and +continueth not." Let us cite a few examples from the Sonnets:-- + + "When I consider everything that grows + Holds in perfection but a little moment, + That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows + Whereon the stars in secret influence comment."-- + _Sonnet 15._ + + "If thou survive my well-contented clay, + When that churl Death my bones with dust shall + cover."-- _Sonnet 32._ + + "No longer mourn for me when I am dead + Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell + Give warning to the world that I am fled + From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell."-- + _Sonnet 71._ + + "The wrinkles, which thy glass will truly show, + Of mouthed graves will give thee memory; + Thou by thy dial's shady stealth may'st know + Time's thievish progress to eternity."-- + _Sonnet 77._ + + "Or I shall live your epitaph to make, + Or you survive when I in earth am rotten."-- + _Sonnet 81._ + +These are but one or two out of many such passages occurring in the +Sonnets. Indeed, it may be said that, whenever Shakespeare pronounces the +words time, age, death, and the like, it is with a deep and cutting +personal emphasis, quite different from the usual manner of poets in their +stereotyped allusions to mortality. Time, in particular, seems to have +tenanted his imagination as a kind of grim and hideous personal existence, +cruel out of mere malevolence of nature. Death, too, had become to him a +kind of actual being or fury, morally unamiable, and deserving of +reproach: "that churl Death." + +If we turn to the plays of Shakespeare, we shall find that in them too the +same morbid sensitiveness to all associations with mortality is +continually breaking out. The vividness, for example, with which Juliet +describes the interior of a charnel-house partakes of a spirit of revenge, +as if Shakespeare were retaliating, through her, upon an object horrible +to himself:-- + + "Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house, + O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones, + With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls." + +More distinctly revengeful is Romeo's ejaculation at the tomb:-- + + "Thou détestable maw, thou womb of Death, + Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, + Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open!" + +And who does not remember the famous passage in _Measure for Measure_?-- + + "_Claudio._ Death is a fearful thing. + + _Isabella._ And shamed life is hateful. + + _Claudio._ Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; + To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; + This sensible warm motion to become + A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit + To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside + In thrilling regions of thick-ribbèd ice; + To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, + And blown with restless violence round about + The pendent world; or to be worse than worst + Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts + Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! + The weariest and most loathed worldly life + That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment, + Can lay on nature is a paradise + To what we fear of Death." + +Again in the grave-digging scene in _Hamlet_ we see the same fascinated +familiarity of the imagination with all that pertains to churchyards, +coffins, and the corruption within them. + + "_Hamlet._ Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. + + _Horatio._ What's that, my lord? + + _Hamlet._ Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the + earth? + + _Horatio._ E'en so. + + _Hamlet._ And smelt so? pah! (_Puts down the skull._) + + _Horatio._ E'en so, my lord! + + _Hamlet._ To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not + imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it + stopping a bung-hole? + + _Horatio._ 'Twere to reason too curiously to consider so. + + _Hamlet._ No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with + modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus:--Alexander died; + Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; + of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted + might they not stop a beer-barrel? + + Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, + Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: + O that that earth which kept the world in awe + Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!" + +Observe how Shakespeare here defends, through Hamlet, his own tendency +"too curiously" to consider death. To sum up all, however, let us turn to +that unparalleled burst of language in the _Tempest_, in which the poet +has defeated Time itself by chivalrously proclaiming to all time what Time +can do:-- + + "And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, + The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, + And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff + As dreams are made of; and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + +This, we contend, is no mere poetic phrenzy, inserted because it was +dramatically suitable that Prospero should so express himself at that +place; it is the explosion into words of a feeling during which Prospero +was forgotten, and Shakespeare swooned into himself. And what is the +continuation of the passage but a kind of postscript, describing, under +the guise of Prospero, Shakespeare's own agitation with what he had just +written?-- + + "Sir, I am vexed; + Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled: + Be not disturbed with my infirmity: + If you be pleased, retire into my cell, + And there repose: _a turn or two I'll walk, + To still my beating mind_." + +To our imagination the surmise is that Shakespeare here laid down his pen, +and began to pace his chamber, too agitated to write more that night. + +In this extreme familiarity with the conception of mortality in general, +and perhaps also in this extreme sensitiveness to the thought of death as +a matter of personal import, all great poets, and possibly all great men +whatever, have to some extent resembled Shakespeare. For these are the +feelings of our common nature on which religion and all solemn activity +have founded and maintained themselves. Space and Time are the largest and +the outermost of all human conceptions; to stand, therefore, incessantly +upon these extreme conceptions, as upon the perimeter of a figure, and to +view all inwards from them, is the highest exercise of thought to which a +human being can attain. Accordingly, in all great poets there may be +discerned this familiarity of the imagination with the world figured as a +poor little ball pendent in space and moving forward out of a dark past to +a future of light or gloom. But in this respect Shakespeare exceeds them +all; and in this respect, therefore, no poet is more religious, more +spiritual, more profoundly metaphysical, than he. Into an inordinate +amount of that outward pressure of the soul against the perimeter of +sensible things, infuse the peculiar _moral_ germ of Christianity, and you +have the religion of Shakespeare. Thus:-- + + "And our little life + Is rounded with a sleep."--_Tempest._ + +Here the poetic imagination sweeps boldly round the universe, severing it +as by a soft cloud-line from the infinite Unknown. + + "Poor soul! the centre of my sinful earth, + Fooled by those rebel powers that lead thee 'stray!" + _Sonnet 146._ + +Here the soul, retracting its thoughts from the far and physical, dwells +disgustedly on itself. + + "The dread of something after death, + The undiscovered country from whose bourn + No traveller returns."--_Hamlet._ + +Here the soul, pierced with the new and awful thought of sin, wings out +again towards the Infinite, and finds all dark. + + "How would you be, + If He, which is the top of judgment, should + But judge you as you are?"--_Measure for Measure._ + +Here the silver lamp of hope is hung up within the gloomy sphere, to burn +softly and faintly for ever! + +And so it is throughout Shakespeare's writings. Whatever is special or +doctrinal is avoided; all that intellectual tackling, so to speak, is +struck away that would afford the soul any relief whatever from the whole +sensation of the supernatural. Although we cannot, therefore, in honest +keeping with popular language, call Shakespeare, as Ulrici does, the most +Christian of poets, we believe him to have been the man in modern times +who, breathing an atmosphere full of Christian conceptions, and walking +amid a civilization studded with Christian institutions, had his whole +being tied by the closest personal links to those highest generalities of +the universe which the greatest minds in all ages have ever pondered and +meditated, and round which Christianity has thrown its clasp of gold. + +Shakespeare, then, we hold to have been essentially a meditative, +speculative, and even, in his solitary hours, an abject and melancholy +man, rather than a man of active, firm, and worldly disposition. Instead +of being a calm, stony observer of life and nature, as he has been +sometimes represented, we believe him to have been a man of the gentlest +and most troublesome affections, of sensibility abnormally keen and deep, +full of metaphysical longings, liable above most men to self-distrust, +despondency, and mental agitation from causes internal and external, and a +prey to many secret and severe experiences which he did not discuss at the +Mermaid tavern. This, we say, is no guess; it is a thing certified under +his own hand and seal. But, this being allowed, we are willing to agree +with all that is said of him, by way of indicating the immense variety of +faculties, dispositions, and acquirements, of which his character was +built up. Vast intellectual inquisitiveness, the readiest and most +universal humour, the truest sagacity and knowledge of the world, the +richest and deepest capacity of enjoying all that life presented: all +this, as applied to Shakespeare, is a mere string of undeniable +commonplaces. The man, as we fancy him, who of all others trod the +oftenest the extreme metaphysic walk which bounds our universe in, he was +also the man of all others who was related most keenly by every fibre of +his being to all the world of the real and the concrete. Better than any +man he knew life to be a dream; with as vivid a relish as any man he did +his part as one of the dreamers. If at one moment life stood before his +mental gaze, an illuminated little speck or disc, softly rounded with +mysterious sleep, the next moment this mere span shot out into an +illimitable plain, whereon he himself stood--a plain covered with forests, +parted by seas, studded with cities and huge concourses of men, mapped out +into civilizations, over-canopied by stars. Nay, it was precisely because +he came and went with such instant transition between the two extremes +that he behaved so genially and sympathetically in the latter. It was +precisely because he had done the metaphysic feat so completely once for +all, and did not bungle on metaphysicizing bit by bit amid the real, that +he stood forth in the character of the most concrete of poets. Life is an +illusion, a show, a phantasm: well then, that is settled, and _I_ belong +to that section of the illusion called London, the seventeenth century, +and woody Warwickshire! So he may have said; and he acted accordingly. He +walked amid the woods of Warwickshire, and listened to the birds singing +in their leafy retreats; he entered the Mermaid tavern with Ben Jonson +after the theatre was over, and found himself quite properly related, as +one item in the illusion, to that other item in it, a good supper and a +cup of canary. He accepted the world as it was, rejoiced in its joys, was +pained by its sorrows, reverenced its dignities, respected its laws, and +laughed at its whimsies. It was this very strength and intimacy and +universality of his relations to the concrete world of nature and life +that caused in him that spirit of acquiescence in things as they were, +that evident conservatism of temper, that indifference, or perhaps more, +to the specific contemporary forms of social and intellectual movement, +with which he has sometimes been charged as a fault. The habit of +attaching weight to what are called abstractions, of metaphysicizing bit +by bit amid the real, is almost an essential feature in the constitution +of men who are remarkable for their faith in social progress. It was +precisely, therefore, because Shakespeare was such a votary of the +concrete, because he walked so firmly on the green and solid sward of that +island of life which he knew to be surrounded by a metaphysic sea, that +this or that metaphysical proposal with respect to the island itself +occupied him but little. + +How, then, _did_ Shakespeare relate himself to this concrete world of +nature and life in which his lot had been cast? What precise function with +regard to it, if not that of an active partisan of progress, did he accept +as devolving naturally on _him_? The answer is easy. Marked out by +circumstances, and by his own bent and inclination, from the vast +majority of men, who, with greater or less faculty, sometimes perhaps with +the greatest, pass their lives in silence, appearing in the world at their +time, enjoying it for a season, and returning to the earth again,--marked +out from among these, and appointed to be one of those whom the whole +earth should remember and think of; yet precluded, as we have seen, by his +constitution and fortune, from certain modes of attaining to this +honour--the special function which, in this high place, he saw himself +called upon to discharge, and by the discharge of which he has ensured his +place in perpetuity, was simply that of _expressing_ what he felt and saw. +In other words, Shakespeare was specifically and transcendently a literary +man. To say that he was the greatest _man_ that ever lived is to provoke a +useless controversy, and comparisons that lead to nothing, between +Shakespeare and Cæsar, Shakespeare and Charlemagne, Shakespeare and +Cromwell; to say that he was the greatest _intellect_ that ever lived, is +to bring the shades of Aristotle and Plato, and Bacon and Newton, and all +the other systematic thinkers, grumbling about us, with demands for a +definition of intellect, which we are by no means in a position to give; +nay, finally, to say that he is the greatest _poet_ that the world has +produced (a thing which we would certainly say, were we provoked to it,) +would be unnecessarily to hurt the feelings of Homer and Sophocles, Dante +and Milton. What we will say, then, and challenge the world to gainsay, is +that he was the greatest _expresser_ that ever lived. This is glory +enough, and it leaves the other questions open. Other men may have led, on +the whole, greater and more impressive lives than he; other men, acting on +their fellows through the same medium of speech that he used, may have +expended a greater power of thought, and achieved a greater intellectual +effect, in one consistent direction; other men, too (though this is very +questionable), may have contrived to issue the matter which they did +address to the world in more compact and perfect artistic shapes. But no +man that ever lived said such splendid things on all subjects universally; +no man that ever lived had the faculty of pouring out on all occasions +such a flood of the richest and deepest language. He may have had rivals +in the art of imagining situations; he had no rival in the power of +sending a gush of the appropriate intellectual effusion over the image and +body of a situation once conceived. From a jewelled ring on an alderman's +finger to the most mountainous thought or deed of man or demon, nothing +suggested itself that his speech could not envelope and enfold with ease. +That excessive fluency which astonished Ben Jonson when he listened to +Shakespeare in person astonishes the world yet. Abundance, ease, +redundance, a plenitude of word, sound, and imagery, which, were the +intellect at work only a little less magnificent, would sometimes end in +sheer braggartism and bombast, are the characteristics of Shakespeare's +style. Nothing is suppressed, nothing omitted, nothing cancelled. On and +on the poet flows; words, thoughts, and fancies crowding on him as fast as +he can write, all related to the matter on hand, and all poured forth +together, to rise and fall on the waves of an established cadence. Such +lightness and ease in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in +the matter, are combined in no other writer. How the matter was first +accumulated, what proportion of it was the acquired capital of former +efforts, and what proportion of it welled up in the poet's mind during and +in virtue of the very act of speech, it is impossible to say; but this at +least may be affirmed without fear of contradiction, that there never was +a mind in the world from which, when it was pricked by any occasion +whatever, there poured forth on the instant such a stream of precious +substance intellectually related to it. By his powers of expression, in +fact, Shakespeare has beggared all his posterity, and left mere +practitioners of expression nothing possible to do. There is perhaps not a +thought, or feeling, or situation, really common and generic to human +life, on which he has not exercised his prerogative; and, wherever he has +once been, woe to the man that comes after him! He has overgrown the +whole system and face of things like a universal ivy, which has left no +wall uncovered, no pinnacle unclimbed, no chink unpenetrated. Since he +lived the concrete world has worn a richer surface. He found it great and +beautiful, with stripes here and there of the rough old coat seen through +the leafy labours of his predecessors; he left it clothed throughout with +the wealth and autumnal luxuriance of his own unparalleled language. + + * * * * * + +This brings us, by a very natural connexion, to what we have to say of +Goethe. For, if, with the foregoing impressions on our mind respecting the +character and the function of the great English poet, we turn to the mask +of his German successor and admirer, which has been so long waiting our +notice, the first question must infallibly be What recognition is it +possible that, in such circumstances, we can have left for _him_? In other +words, the first consideration that must be taken into account in any +attempt to appreciate Goethe is that he came into a world in which +Shakespeare had been before him. For a man who, in the main, was to pursue +a course so similar to that which Shakespeare had pursued this was a +matter of incalculable importance. Either, on the one hand, the value of +all that the second man could do, if he adhered to a course very similar, +must suffer from the fact that he was following in the footsteps of a +predecessor of such unapproachable excellence; or, on the other hand, the +consciousness of this, if it came in time, would be likely to _prevent_ +too close a resemblance between the lives of the two men, by giving a +special direction and character to the efforts of the second. Hear Goethe +himself on this very point:-- + + "We discoursed upon English literature, on the greatness of + Shakespeare, and on the unfavourable position held by all English + dramatic authors who had appeared after that poetical giant. 'A + dramatic talent of any importance,' said Goethe, 'could not forbear + to notice Shakespeare's works; nay, could not forbear to study them. + Having studied them, he must be aware that Shakespeare has already + exhausted the whole of human nature in all its tendencies, in all its + heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the + aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage to put + pen to paper, if one were conscious, in an earnest appreciating + spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellencies were + already in existence? It fared better with me fifty years ago in my + own dear Germany. I could soon come to an end with all that then + existed; it could not long awe me, or occupy my attention. I soon + left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my + thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went, in my own + natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of + epoch after epoch. And, at every step of life and development, my + standard of excellence was not much higher than what at such a step + I was able to attain. But, had I been born an Englishman, and had all + those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power + at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have + overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. I could not + have gone on with such fresh light-heartedness, but should have had + to bethink myself, and look about for a long time to find some new + outlet.'"--_Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe_, i. pp. 114, 115. + +All this is very clear and happily expressed. Most Englishmen that have +written since Shakespeare _have_ been overawed by the sense of his vast +superiority; and Goethe, if he had been an Englishman, would have partaken +of the same feeling, and would have been obliged, as he says, to look +about for some path in which competition with such a predecessor would +have been avoided. Being, however, a German, and coming at a time when +German literature had nothing so great to boast of but that an ardent +young man could hope to produce something as good or better, the way was +certainly open to him to the attainment, in his own nation, of a position +analogous to that which Shakespeare had occupied in his. Goethe might, if +he had chosen, have aspired to be the Shakespeare of Germany. Had his +tastes and faculties pointed in that direction, there was no reason, +special to his own nation, that would have made it very incumbent on him +to thwart the tendency of his genius and seek about for a new outlet in +order to escape injurious comparisons. But, even in such circumstances, to +have pursued a course _very_ similar to that of Shakespeare, and to have +been animated by a mere ambition to tread in the footsteps of that master, +would have been death to all chance of a reputation among the highest. +Great writers do not exclusively belong to the country of their birth; the +greatest of all are grouped together on a kind of central platform, in the +view of all peoples and tongues; and, as in this select assemblage no +duplicates are permitted, the man who does never so well a second time +that which the world has already canonized a man for doing once has little +chance of being admitted to co-equal honours. More especially in the +present case would too close a resemblance to the original, whether in +manner or in purpose, have been regarded in the end as a reason for +inferiority in place. As the poet of one branch of the great Germanic +family of mankind, Shakespeare belonged indirectly to the Germans, even +before they recognised him; in him all the genuine qualities of Teutonic +human nature, as well as the more special characteristics of English +genius, were embodied once for all in the particular form which had +chanced to be his; and, had Goethe been, in any marked sense, only a +repetition of the same form, he might have held his place for some time as +the wonder of Germany, but, as soon as the course of events had opened up +the communication which was sure to take place at some time between the +German and the English literatures, and so made his countrymen acquainted +with Shakespeare, he would have lost his extreme brilliance, and become +but a star of the second magnitude. In order, then, that Goethe might hold +permanently a first rank even among his own countrymen, it was necessary +that he should be a man of a genius quite distinct from that of +Shakespeare, a man who, having or not having certain Shakespearian +qualities, should at all events signalize such qualities as he had by a +marked character and function of his own. And, if this was necessary to +secure to Goethe a first rank in the literature of Germany, much more was +it necessary to ensure him a place as one of the intellectual potentates +of the whole modern world. If Goethe was to be admitted into this select +company at all, it could not be as a mere younger brother of Shakespeare, +but as a man whom Shakespeare himself, when he took him by the hand, would +look at with curiosity, as something new in species, produced in the earth +since his own time. + +Was this, then, the case? Was Goethe, with all his external resemblance in +some respects to Shakespeare, a man of such truly individual character, +and of so new and marked a function, as to deserve a place among the +highest, not in German literature alone, but in the literature of the +world as a whole? We do not think that anyone competent to give an opinion +will reply in the negative. + +A glance at the external circumstances of Goethe's life alone (and what a +contrast there is between the abundance of biographic material respecting +Goethe and the scantiness of our information respecting Shakespeare!) will +beget the impression that the man who led such a life must have had +opportunities for developing a very unusual character. The main facts in +the life of Goethe are:--that he was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in +1749, the only surviving son of parents who ranked among the wealthiest in +the town; that, having been educated with extreme care, and having +received whatever experience could be acquired by an impetuous +student-life, free from all ordinary forms of hardship, first at one +German town and then at another, he devoted himself, in accordance with +his tastes, to a career of literary activity; that, after unwinding +himself from several love-affairs, and travelling for the sake of farther +culture in Italy and other parts of Europe, he settled in early manhood at +Weimar, as the intimate friend and counsellor of the reigning duke of that +state; that there, during a long and honoured life, in the course of which +he married an inferior housekeeper kind of person, of whom we do not hear +much, he prosecuted his literary enterprise with unwearied industry, not +only producing poems, novels, dramas, essays, treatises, and criticisms in +great profusion from his own pen, but also acting, along with Schiller and +others, as a director and guide of the whole contemporary intellectual +movement of his native land; and that finally, having outlived all his +famous associates, become a widower and a grandfather, and attained the +position not only of the acknowledged king and patriarch of German +literature, but also, as some thought, of the wisest and most serene +intellect of Europe, he died so late as 1832, in the eighty-third year of +his age. All this, it will be observed, is very different from the life of +the prosperous Warwickshire player, whose existence had illustrated the +early part of the seventeenth century in England; and it necessarily +denoted, at the same time, a very different cast of mind and temper. + +Accordingly, such descriptions as we have of Goethe from those who knew +him best convey the idea of a character notably different from that of the +English poet. Of Shakespeare personally we have but one uniform +account--that he was a man of gentle presence and disposition, very good +company, and of such boundless fluency and intellectual inventiveness in +talk that his hearers could not always stand it, but had sometimes to +whistle him down in his flights. In Goethe's case we have two distinct +pictures. + +In youth, as all accounts agree in stating, he was one of the most +impetuous, bounding, ennui-dispelling natures that ever broke in upon a +society of ordinary mortals assembled to kill time. "He came upon you," +said one who knew him well at this period, "like a wolf in the night." The +simile is a splendid one, and it agrees wonderfully with the more subdued +representations of his early years given by Goethe himself in his +Autobiography. Handsome as an Apollo and welcome everywhere, he bore all +before him wherever he went, not only by his talent, but also by an +exuberance of animal spirits which swept dulness itself along, took away +the breath of those who relied on sarcasm and their cool heads, inspired +life and animation into the whole circle, and most especially delighted +the ladies. This vivacity became even, at times, a reckless humour, +prolific in all kinds of mad freaks and extravagances. Whether this +impetuosity kept always within the bounds of mere innocent frolic is a +question which we need not here raise. Traditions are certainly afloat of +terrible domestic incidents connected with Goethe's youth, both in +Frankfort and in Weimar; but to what extent those traditions are founded +on fact is a matter which we have never yet seen any attempt to decide +upon evidence. More authentic for us, and equally significant, if we could +be sure of our ability to appreciate them rightly, are the stories which +Goethe himself tells of his various youthful attachments, and the various +ways in which they were concluded. In Goethe's own narratives of these +affairs there is a confession of error, arising out of his disposition +passionately to abandon himself to the feelings of the moment without +looking forward to the consequences; but whether this confession is to be +converted by his critics into the harsher accusation of heartlessness and +want of principle is a thing not to be decided by any general rule as to +the matter of inconstancy, but by accurate knowledge in each case of the +whole circumstances of that case. One thing these love-romances of +Goethe's early life make clear--that, for a being of such extreme +sensibility as he was, he had a very strong element of self-control. When +he gave up Rica or Lilli, it was with tears, and no end of sleepless +nights; and yet he gave them up. Shakespeare, we believe (and there is an +instance exactly in point in the story of his Sonnets), had no such power +of breaking clear from connexions which his judgment disapproved. Remorse +and return, self-reproaches for his weakness at one moment followed the +next by weakness more abject than before--such, by his own confession, was +the conduct, in one such case, of our more passive and gentle-hearted +poet. Where Shakespeare was "past cure," and "frantic-mad with evermore +unrest," Goethe but fell into "hypochondria," which reason and resolution +enabled him to overcome. Goethe at twenty-five gave up a young, beautiful +and innocent girl, from the conviction that it was better to do so. +Shakespeare at thirty-five was the abject slave of a dark-complexioned +woman, who was faithless to him, and whom he cursed in his heart. The +sensibilities in the German poet moved from the first, as we have already +said, over a firmer basis of permanent character. + +It is chiefly, however, the Goethe of later life that the world remembers +and thinks of. The bounding impetuosity is then gone; or rather it is kept +back and restrained, so as to form a calm and steady fund of internal +energy, capable sometimes of a flash and outbreak, but generally revealing +itself only in labour and its fruits. What was formerly the beauty of an +Apollo, graceful, light, and full of motion, is now the beauty of a +Jupiter, composed, stately, serene. "What a sublime form!" says Eckermann, +describing his first interview with him. "I forgot to speak for looking at +him: I could not look enough. His face is so powerful and brown, full of +wrinkles, and each wrinkle full of expression. And everywhere there is +such nobleness and firmness, such repose and greatness. He spoke in a +slow, composed manner, such as you would expect from an aged monarch." +Such is Goethe, as he lasts now in the imagination of the world. Living +among statues, books, and pictures; daily doing something for his own +culture and for that of the world; daily receiving guests and visitors, +whom he entertained and instructed with his wise and deep, yet charming +and simple, converse; daily corresponding with friends and strangers, and +giving advice or doing a good turn to some young talent or other--never +was such a mind consecrated so perseveringly and exclusively to the +service of _Kunst_ and _Literatur_. One almost begins to wonder if it was +altogether right that an old man should go on, morning after morning, and +evening after evening, in such a fashion, talking about art and science +and literature as if they were the only interests in the world, taking his +guests into corners to have quiet discussions with them on these subjects, +and always finding something new and nice to be said about them. Possibly, +indeed, this is the fault of those who have reported him, and who only +took notes when the discourse turned on what they considered the proper +Goethean themes. But that Goethe far outdid Shakespeare in this conscious +dedication of himself to a life of the intellect is as certain as the +testimony of likelihood can make it. Shakespeare did enjoy his art; it was +what, in his pensive hours, as he himself hints, he enjoyed most; and +whatever of intellectual ecstasy literary production can bring must surely +have been his in those hours when he composed _Hamlet_ and the _Tempest_. +But Shakespeare's was precisely one of those minds whose strength is a +revelation to themselves during the moment of its exercise, rather than a +chronic ascertained possession; and from this circumstance, as well as +from the attested fact of his carelessness as to the fate of his +compositions, we can very well conceive that literature and mental culture +formed but a small part of the general system of things in Shakespeare's +daily thoughts, and that he would have been absolutely ashamed of himself +if, when anything else, from the state of the weather to the quality of +the wine, was within the circle of possible allusion, he had said a word +about his own plays. If he had not Sir Walter Scott's positive conviction +that every man ought to be either a laird or a lawyer, casting in +authorship as a mere addition if it were to be practised at all, he at +least led so full and keen a life, and was drawn forth on so many sides by +nature, society, and the unseen, that Literature, out of the actual +moments in which he was engaged in it, must have seemed to him a mere +bagatelle, a mere fantastic echo of not a tithe of life. In his home in +London, or his retirement at Stratford, he wrote on and on, because he +could not help doing so, and because it was his business and his solace; +but no play seemed to him worth a day of the contemporary actions of men, +no description worth a single glance at the Thames or at the deer feeding +in the forest, no sonnet worth the tear it was made to embalm. Literature +was by no means to him, as it was to Goethe, the main interest of life; +nor was he a man so far master of himself as ever to be able to behave as +if it were so, and to accept, as Goethe did, all that occurred as so much +culture. Yet Shakespeare would have understood Goethe, and would have +regarded him, almost with envy, as one of those men who, as being "lords +and owners of their faces," and not mere "stewards," know how to husband +Nature's gifts best. + + "They that have power to hurt and will do none, + That do not do the thing they most do show, + Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, + Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow, + They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, + And husband nature's riches from expense; + They are the lords and owners of their faces, + Others but stewards of their excellence."--_Sonnet 94._ + +If Goethe attained this character, however, it was not because, as it is +the fashion to say, he was by nature cold, heartless, and impassive, but +because, uniting will and wisdom to his wealth of sensibilities, he had +disciplined himself into what he was. A heartless man does not diffuse +geniality and kindliness around him, as Goethe did; and a statue is not +seized, as Goethe once was, with hæmorrhage in the night, the result of +suppressed grief. + +That which made Goethe what he was--namely, his philosophy of life--is to +be gathered, in the form of hints, from his various writings and +conversations. We present a few important passages here, in what seems +their philosophic connexion, as well as the order most suitable for +bringing out Goethe's mode of thought in contrast with that of +Shakespeare. + + _Goethe's Thoughts of Death._--"We had gone round the thicket, and + had turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar-road, where we had a view of + the setting sun. Goethe was for a while lost in thought; he then said + to me, in the words of one of the ancients, + + 'Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne.' + (Still it continues the self-same sun, even while it is sinking.) + + 'At the age of seventy-five,' continued he, with much cheerfulness, + 'one must, of course, think sometimes of death. But this thought + never gives me the least uneasiness, for I am fully convinced that + our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its + activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, + which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, + never sets, but shines on unceasingly.'"--_Eckermann's Conversations + of Goethe_, vol. i. p. 161. + + _Goethe's Maxim with respect to Metaphysics._--"Man is born not to + solve the problem of the universe, but to find out where the problem + begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the + comprehensible."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 272. + + _Goethe's Theory of the intention of the Supernatural with regard to + the Visible._--"After all, what does it all come to? God did not + retire to rest after the well-known six days of creation, but, on the + contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been + for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple + elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, + if He had not the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits + upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher + natures to attract the lower ones."--_Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 426. + + _Goethe's Doctrine of Immortality._--"Kant has unquestionably done + the best service, by drawing the limits beyond which human intellect + is not able to penetrate, and leaving at rest the insoluble problems. + What a deal have people philosophised about immortality! and how far + have they got? I doubt not of our immortality, for nature cannot + dispense with the _entelecheia_. But we are not all, in like manner, + immortal; and he who would manifest himself in future as a great + _entelecheia_ must be one now.... To me the eternal existence of my + soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work on incessantly + till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence + when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit."--_Ibid._ vol. + ii. pp. 193, 194, and p. 122. + + _Goethe's Image of Life._--"Child, child, no more! The coursers of + Time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light + car of our destiny; and all that we can do is, in cool + self-possession, to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the + wheels, now to the left, now to the right, avoiding a stone here, or + a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying, who can tell? and who, + indeed, can remember the point from which it started?"--_Egmont._ + + _Man's proper business._--"It has at all times been said and repeated + that man should strive to know himself. This is a singular + requisition; with which no one complies, or indeed ever will comply. + Man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals--to the + world around him; and he has to know this so far, and to make it so + far serviceable, as he requires for his own ends. It is only when he + feels joy or sorrow that he knows anything about himself, and only by + joy or sorrow is he instructed what to seek and what to + shun."--_Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe_, vol. ii. p. 180. + + _The Abstract and the Concrete, and the Subjective and the + Objective._--"The Germans are certainly strange people. By their deep + thoughts and ideas, which they seek in everything, and fix upon + everything, they make life much more burdensome than is necessary. + Only have the courage to give yourself up to your impressions; allow + yourself to be delighted, moved, elevated--nay, instructed and + inspired by something great; but do not imagine all is vanity if it + is not abstract thought and idea.... It was not in my line, as a + poet, to strive to embody anything abstract. I received in my mind + impressions, and those of a sensual, animated, charming, varied, + hundred-fold kind, just as a lively imagination presented them; and I + had, as a poet, nothing more to do than artistically to round off and + elaborate such views and impressions, and by means of a lively + representation so to bring them forward that others might receive the + same impressions in hearing or reading my representation of them.... + A poet deserves not the name while he only speaks out his few + subjective feelings; but as soon as he can appropriate to himself and + express the world he is a poet. Then he is inexhaustible, and can be + always new; while a subjective nature has soon talked out his little + internal material, and is at last ruined by mannerism. People always + talk of the study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except + that it says 'Turn your attention to the real world, and try to + express it, for that is what the ancients did when they were alive?' + Goethe arose and walked to and fro, while I remained seated at the + table, as he likes to see me. He stood a moment at the stove, and + then, like one who has reflected, came to me, and, with his finger on + his lips, said to me, 'I will now tell you something which you will + often find confirmed in your own experience. All eras in a state of + decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all + progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is + retrograde, for it is subjective; we see this not merely in poetry, + but also in painting and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the + contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you + will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of + progression, and all of an objective nature.'"--_Ibid._ vol. i. pp. + 415, 416, and pp. 283, 284. + + _Rule of Individual Activity._--"The most reasonable way is for every + man to follow his own vocation to which he has been born and which he + has learnt, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let + the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let + the king know how to govern; for this is also a business which must + be learned, and with which no one should meddle who does not + understand it."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 134. + + _Right and Wrong: The habit of Controversy._--"The end of all + opposition is negation, and negation is nothing. If I call _bad_ bad, + what do I gain? But, if I call _good_ bad, I do a great deal of + mischief. He who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble + himself at all about what is ill done, but only do well himself. For + the great point is not to pull down, but to build up; and in this + humanity finds pure joy."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 208. + + _Goethe's own Relation to the Disputes of his Time._--"'You have been + reproached,' remarked I, rather inconsiderately, 'for not taking up + arms at that great period [the war with Napoleon], or at least + co-operating as a poet.' 'Let us leave that point alone, my good + friend,' returned Goethe. 'It is an absurd world, which knows not + what it wants, and which one must allow to have its own way. How + could I take up arms without hatred, and how could I hate without + youth? If such an emergency had befallen me when twenty years old, I + should certainly not have been the last; but it found me as one who + had already passed the first sixties. Besides, we cannot all serve + our country in the same way; but each does his best, according as God + has endowed him. I have toiled hard enough during half a century. I + can say that, in those things which nature has appointed for my daily + work, I have permitted myself no relaxation night or day, but have + always striven, investigated, and done as much, and that as well, as + I could. If everyone can say the same of himself, it will prove well + with all. I will not say what I think. There is more ill-will + towards me hidden beneath that remark than you are aware of. I feel + therein a new form of the old hatred with which people have + persecuted me, and endeavoured quietly to wound me, for years. I know + very well that I am an eyesore to many; that they would all willingly + get rid of me; and that, since they cannot touch my talent, they aim + at my character. Now, it is said that I am proud; now, egotistical; + now, immersed in sensuality; now, without Christianity; and now, + without love for my native country and my own dear Germans. You have + now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk + is worth.... The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native + land; but the native land of his _poetic_ powers and _poetic_ action + is the good, noble, and beautiful: which is confined to no particular + province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he + finds them. Therein he is like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze + over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the + hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in + Saxony.'"--_Ibid._ vol. ii. pp. 257, 258, and p. 427. + +Whoever has read these sentences attentively, and penetrated their meaning +in connexion, will see that they reveal a mode of thought somewhat +resembling that which we have attributed to Shakespeare, and yet +essentially different from it. Both poets are distinguished by this, that +they abstained systematically during their lives from the abstract, the +dialectical, and the controversial, and devoted themselves, with true +feeling and enjoyment, to the concrete, the real, and the unquestioned; +and so far there is an obvious resemblance between them. But the manner in +which this characteristic was attained was by no means the same in both +cases. In Shakespeare, as we have seen, there was a metaphysical longing, +a tendency towards the supersensible and invisible, absolutely morbid, if +we take ordinary constitutions as the standard of health in this respect; +and, if, with all this, he revelled with delight and moved with ease and +firmness in the sensuous and actual, it was because the very same soul +which pressed with such energy and wailing against the bounds of this life +of man was also related with inordinate keenness and intimacy to all that +this life spheres in. In Goethe, on the other hand, the tendency to the +real existed under easier constitutional conditions, and in a state of +such natural preponderance over any concomitant craving for the +metaphysical, that it necessarily took, German though he was, a higher +place in his estimate of what is desirable in a human character. That +world of the real in which Shakespeare delighted, and which he knew so +well, seemed to him, all this knowledge and delight notwithstanding, far +more evanescent, far more a mere filmy show, far less considerable a shred +of all that is, than it did to Goethe. To Shakespeare, as we have already +said, life was but as a little island on the bosom of a boundless sea: men +must needs know what the island contains, and act as those who have to +till and rule it; still, with that expanse of waters all round in view, +and that roar of waters ever in the ear, what can men call themselves or +pretend their realm to be? "Poor fools of Nature" is the poet's own +phrase--the realm so small that it is pitiful to belong to it! Not so with +Goethe. To him also, of course, the thought was familiar of a vast region +of the supersensible outlying nature and life; but a higher value on the +whole was reserved for nature and life, even on the universal scale, by +his peculiar habit of conceiving them, not as distinct from the +supersensible and contemporaneously begirt by it, but rather, if we may so +speak, as a considerable portion, or even duration, of the +_quondam_-supersensible in the new form of the sensible. In other words, +Goethe was full of the notion of progress or evolution; the world was to +him not a mere spectacle and dominion for the supernatural, but an actual +manifestation of the substance of the supernatural itself, on its way +through time to new issues. Hence his peculiar notion of immortality; +hence his view as to the mere relativeness of the terms right and wrong, +good and bad, and the like; and hence also his resolute inculcation of the +doctrine, so unpalatable to his countrymen, that men ought to direct their +thoughts and efforts to the actual and the outward. Life being the current +phase of the universal mystery, the true duty of men could be but to +contribute in their various ways to the furtherance of life. + +And what then, finally, was Goethe's _own_ mode of activity in a life thus +defined in his general philosophy? Like Shakespeare, he was a literary +man; his function was literature. Yes, but in what respect, otherwise than +Shakespeare had done before him, did he fulfil this literary function in +reference to the world he lived in and enjoyed? In the first place, as all +know, he differed from Shakespeare in this, that he did not address the +world exclusively in the character of a poet. Besides his poetry, properly +so called, Goethe has left behind him numerous prose-writings, ranking +under very different heads, abounding with such deep and wise maxims and +perceptions, in reference to all things under the sun, as would have +entitled him, even had he been no poet, to rank as a sage. So great, +indeed, is Goethe as a thinker and a critic that it may very well be +disputed whether his prose-writings, as a whole, are not more precious +than his poems. But even if we set apart this difference, and regard the +two men in their special character as poets or artists, a marked +difference is still discernible. Hear Goethe's own definition of his +poetical career and aim. + + "Thus began that tendency from which I could not deviate my whole + life through: namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a + poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied + me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon it, + that I might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set + my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing this was necessary + to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me + constantly from one extreme to the other. All, therefore, that has + been put forth by me consists of fragments of a great + confession."--_Autobiography_, vol. i. p. 240. + +Shakespeare's genius we defined to be the genius of universal expression, +of clothing objects, circumstances, and feelings with magnificent +language, of pouring over the image of any given situation, whether +suggested from within or from without, an effusion of the richest +intellectual matter that could possibly be related to it. Goethe's genius, +as here defined by himself, was something different and narrower. It was +the genius of translation from the subjective into the objective, of +clothing real feelings with fictitious circumstance, of giving happy +intellectual form to states of mind, so as to dismiss and throw them off. +Let this distinction be sufficiently conceived and developed, and a full +idea will be obtained of the exact difference between the literary +many-sidedness attributed to Shakespeare and that also attributed to +Goethe. + + + + +MILTON'S YOUTH. + + + + +MILTON'S YOUTH.[5] + + +Never surely did a youth leave the academic halls of England more full of +fair promise than Milton, when, at the age of twenty-three, he quitted +Cambridge to reside at his father's house, amid the quiet beauties of a +rural neighbourhood some twenty miles distant from London. Fair in person, +with a clear fresh complexion, light brown hair which parted in the middle +and fell in locks to his shoulders, clear grey eyes, and a well-knit frame +of moderate proportions--there could not have been found a finer picture +of pure and ingenuous English youth. And that health and beauty which +distinguished his outward appearance, and the effect of which was +increased by a voice surpassingly sweet and musical, indicated with +perfect truth the qualities of the mind within. Seriousness, studiousness, +fondness for flowers and music, fondness also for manly exercises in the +open air, courage and resolution of character, combined with the most +maiden purity and innocence of life--these were the traits conspicuous in +Milton in his early years. Of his accomplishments it is hardly necessary +to take particular note. Whatever of learning, of science, or of +discipline in logic or philosophy, the University at that time could give, +he had duly and in the largest measure acquired. No better Greek or Latin +scholar probably had the University in that age sent forth; he was +proficient in the Hebrew tongue, and in all the other customary aids to a +Biblical Theology; and he could speak and write well in French and +Italian. His acquaintance, obtained by independent reading, with the +history and with the whole body of the literature of ancient and modern +nations, was extensive and various. And, as nature had endowed him in no +ordinary degree with that most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the +passion for harmony, he had studied music as an art, and had taught +himself not only to sing in the society of others, but also to touch the +keys for his solitary pleasure. + +The instruments which Milton preferred as a musician were, his biographers +tell us, the organ and the bass-viol. This fact seems to us to be not +without its significance. Were we to define in one word our impression of +the prevailing tone, the characteristic mood and disposition of Milton's +mind, even in his early youth, we should say that it consisted in a deep +and habitual _seriousness_. We use the word in none of those special and +restricted senses that are sometimes given to it. We do not mean that +Milton, at the period of his early youth with which we are now concerned, +was, or accounted himself as being, a confessed member of that noble party +of English Puritans with which he afterwards became allied, and to which +he rendered such vast services. True, he himself tells us, in his account +of his education, that "care had ever been had of him, with his earliest +capacity, not to be negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian +religion;" and in the fact that his first tutor, selected for him by his +father, was one Thomas Young, a Scotchman of subsequent distinction among +the English Puritans, there is enough to prove that the formation of his +character in youth was aided expressly by Puritanical influences. But +Milton, if ever in a denominational sense he could be called a Puritan (he +wore his hair long, and in other respects did not conform to the usages of +the Puritan party), could hardly, with any propriety, be designated as a +Puritan in this sense, at the time when he left College. There is evidence +that at this time he had not given so much attention, on his own personal +account, to matters of religious doctrine as he afterwards bestowed. That +seriousness of which we speak was, therefore, rather a constitutional +seriousness, ratified and nourished by rational reflection, than the +assumed temper of a sect. "A certain reservedness of natural disposition, +and a moral discipline learnt out of the noblest philosophy"--such, in +Milton's own words, were the causes which, apart from his Christian +training, would have always kept him, as he believed, above the vices that +debase youth. And herein the example of Milton contradicts much that is +commonly advanced by way of a theory of the poetical character. + +Poets and artists generally, it is held, are and ought to be distinguished +by a predominance of sensibility over principle, an excess of what +Coleridge called the spiritual over what he called the moral part of man. +A nature built on quicksands, an organization of nerve languid or +tempestuous with occasion, a soul falling and soaring, now subject to +ecstasies and now to remorses--such, it is supposed, and on no small +induction of actual instances, is the appropriate constitution of the +poet. Mobility, absolute and entire destitution of principle properly so +called, capacity for varying the mood indefinitely rather than for +retaining and keeping up one moral gesture or resolution through all +moods: this, say the theorists, is the essential thing in the structure of +the artist. Against the truth of this, however, as a maxim of universal +application, the character of Milton, as well as that of Wordsworth after +him, is a remarkable protest. Were it possible to place before the +theorists all the materials which exist for judging of Milton's personal +disposition as a young man, without exhibiting to them at the same time +the actual and early proofs of his poetical genius, their conclusion, were +they true to their theory, would necessarily be that the basis of his +nature was too solid and immovable, the platform of personal aims and +aspirations over which his thoughts moved and had footing too fixed and +firm, to permit that he should have been a poet. Nay, whosoever, even +appreciating Milton as a poet, shall come to the investigation of his +writings armed with that preconception of the poetical character which is +sure to be derived from an intimacy with the character of Shakespeare will +hardly escape some feeling of the same kind. Seriousness, we repeat, a +solemn and even austere demeanour of mind, was the characteristic of +Milton even in his youth. And the outward manifestation of this was a life +of pure and devout observance. This is a point that ought not to be +avoided, or dismissed in mere general language; for he who does not lay +stress on this knows not and loves not Milton. Accept, then, by way of +more particular statement, his own remarkable words in justifying himself +against an innuendo of one of his adversaries in later life, reflecting on +the tenor of his juvenile pursuits and behaviour. "A certain niceness of +nature," he says, "an honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I +was, or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that +modesty whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused +to make some beseeming profession, all these, uniting the supply of their +natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind +beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable +and unlawful prostitutions." Fancy, ye to whom the moral frailty of genius +is a consolation, or to whom the association of virtue with youth and +Cambridge is a jest--fancy Milton, as this passage from his own pen +describes him at the age of twenty-three, returning to his father's house +from the university, full of its accomplishments and its honours, an +auburn-haired youth, beautiful as the Apollo of a northern clime, and that +beautiful body the temple of a soul pure and unsoiled. Truly, a son for a +mother to take to her arms with joy and pride! + +Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in Milton even in +his youth, may be noted also, as indeed it is noted in the passage just +cited, a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his own +powers. Throughout all Milton's works there may be discerned a vein of +this noble egotism, this unbashful self-assertion. Frequently, in arguing +with an opponent, or in setting forth his own views on any subject of +discussion, he passes, by a very slight topical connexion, into an account +of himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the matter in +question; and this sometimes so elaborately and at such length, that the +impression is as if he said to his readers, "Besides all my other +arguments, take this also as the chief and conclusive argument, that it is +_I_, a man of such and such antecedents, and with such and such powers to +perform far higher work than you see me now engaged in, who affirm and +maintain this." In his later years Milton evidently believed himself to +be, if not the greatest man in England, at least the greatest writer, and +one whose _egomet dixi_ was entitled to as much force in the intellectual +commonwealth as the decree of a civil magistrate is invested with in the +order of civil life. All that he said or wrote was backed in his own +consciousness by a sense of the independent importance of the fact that it +was he, Milton, who said or wrote it; and often, after arguing a point for +some time on a footing of ostensible equality with his readers, he seems +suddenly to stop, retire to the vantage-ground of his own thoughts, and +bid his readers follow him thither, if they would see the whole of that +authority which his words had failed to express. + +Such, we say, is Milton's habit in his later writings. In his early life, +of course, the feeling which it shows existed rather as an undefined +consciousness of superior power, a tendency silently and with satisfaction +to compare his own intellectual measure with that of others, a resolute +ambition to be and to do something great. Now we cannot help thinking +that it will be found that this particular form of self-esteem goes along +with that moral austerity of character which we have alleged to be +discernible in Milton even in his youth, rather than with that temperament +of varying sensibility which is, according to the general theory, regarded +as characteristic of the poet. Men of this latter type, as they vary in +the entire mood of their mind, vary also in their estimate of themselves. +No permanent consciousness of their own destiny, or of their own worth in +comparison with others, belongs to them. In their moods of elevation they +are powers to move the world; but, while the impulse that has gone forth +from them in one of those moods may be still thrilling its way onward in +wider and wider circles through the hearts of myriads they have never +seen, they, the fountains of the impulse, the spirit being gone from them, +may be sitting alone in the very spot and amid the ashes of their triumph, +sunken and dead, despondent and self-accusing. It requires the evidence of +positive results, the assurance of other men's praises, the visible +presentation of effects which they cannot but trace to themselves, to +convince such men that they are or can do anything. Whatever +manifestations of egotism, whatever strokes of self-assertion come from +such men, come in the very burst and phrenzy of their passing +resistlessness. The calm, deliberate, and unshaken knowledge of their own +superiority is not theirs. True, Shakespeare, the very type, if rightly +understood, of this class of minds, is supposed in his Sonnets to have +predicted, in the strongest and most deliberate terms, his own immortality +as a poet. It could be proved, however, were this the place for such an +investigation, that the common interpretation of those passages of the +Sonnets which are supposed to supply this trait in the character of +Shakespeare is nothing more nor less than a false reading of a very subtle +meaning which the critics have missed. Those other passages of the Sonnets +which breathe an abject melancholy and discontentment with self, which +exhibit the poet as "cursing his fate," as "bewailing his outcast state," +as looking about abasedly among his literary contemporaries, envying the +"art" of one, and the "scope" of another, and even wishing sometimes that +the very features of his face had been different from what they were and +like those of some he knew, are, in our opinion, of far greater +autobiographic value. + +Nothing of this kind is to be found in Milton. As a Christian, indeed, +humiliation before God was a duty the meaning of which he knew full well; +but, as a man moving among other men, he possessed, in that moral +seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which characterized him, a +spring of ever-present pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his +fellows, and at times arousing him to a kingly intolerance. In short, +instead of that dissatisfaction with self which we trace as a not +unfrequent feeling with Shakespeare, we find in Milton, even in his early +youth, a recollection firm and habitual that he was one of those servants +to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of ten talents. In that very +sonnet, for example, written on his twenty-third birthday, in which he +laments that he had as yet achieved so little, his consolation is that the +power of achievement was still indubitably within him-- + + "All is, if I have grace to use it so, + As ever in my great Task-Master's eye." + +And what was that special mode of activity to which Milton, still in the +bloom and seed-time of his years, had chosen to dedicate the powers of +which he was so conscious? He had been destined by his parents for the +Church; but this opening into life he had definitively and deliberately +abandoned. With equal decision he renounced the profession of the Law; and +it does not seem to have been long after the conclusion of his career at +the university when he renounced the prospects of professional life +altogether. His reasons for this, which are to be gathered from various +passages of his writings, seem to have resolved themselves into a jealous +concern for his own absolute intellectual freedom. He had determined, as +he says, "to lay up, as the best treasure and solace of a good old age, +the honest liberty of free speech from his youth;" and neither the Church +nor the Bar of England, at the time when he formed that resolution, was a +place where he could hope to keep it. For a man so situated, the +alternative, then as now, was the practice or profession of literature. To +this, therefore, as soon as he was able to come to a decision on the +subject, Milton had implicitly, if not avowedly, dedicated himself. To +become a great writer, and, above all, a great poet; to teach the English +language a new strain and modulation; to elaborate and surrender over to +the English nation works that would make it more potent and wise in the +age that was passing, and more memorable and lordly in the ages to come: +such was the form which Milton's ambition had assumed when, laying aside +his student's garb, he went to reside under his father's roof. + +Nor was this merely a choice of necessity, the reluctant determination of +a young soul "Church-outed by the prelates" and disgusted with the chances +of the Law. Milton, in the Church, would certainly have been such an +archbishop, mitred or unmitred, as England has never seen; and the very +passage of such a man across the sacred floor would have trampled into +timely extinction much that has since sprung up amongst us to trouble and +perplex, and would have modelled the ecclesiasticism of England into a +shape that the world might have gazed at with no truant glance backward +to the splendours of the Seven Hills. And, doubtless, even amid the +traditions of the Law, such a man would have performed the feats of a +Samson, albeit of a Samson in chains. An inward prompting, therefore, a +love secretly plighted to the Muse, and a sweet comfort and delight in her +sole society, which no other allurement, whether of profit or pastime, +could equal or diminish,--this, less formally perhaps, but as really as +care for his intellectual liberty, or distaste for the established +professions of his time, determined Milton's early resolution as to his +future way of life. On this point it will be best to quote his own words. +"After I had," he says, "from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence +and care of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the +tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and +teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether ought +was imposed upon me by them that had the overlooking or betaken to of mine +own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly +this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to +live." The meaning of which sentence is that Milton, before his +three-and-twentieth year, knew himself to be a poet. + +He knew this, he says, by "certain vital signs" discernible in what he had +already written. What were those "vital signs," those proofs indubitable +to Milton that he had the art and faculty of a poet? We need but refer the +reader for the answer to those smaller poetical compositions of Milton, +both in English and in Latin, which survive as specimens of his earliest +Muse. Of these, some three or four which happen to be specially +dated--such as the _Elegy on the Death of a Fair Infant_, written in 1626, +or the author's eighteenth year; the well-known _Hymn on the Morning of +Christ's Nativity_, written in 1629, when the author was just twenty-one; +and the often-quoted _Lines on Shakespeare_, written not much later--may +be cited as convenient materials from which anyone who would convince +himself minutely of Milton's youthful vocation to poetry, rather than to +anything else, may derive proofs on that head. Here will be found power of +the most rare and beautiful conception, choice of words the most exact and +exquisite, the most perfect music and charm of verse. Above all, here will +be found that ineffable something--call it imagination or what we +will--wherein lies the intimate and ineradicable peculiarity of the poet: +the art to work on and on for ever in a purely ideal element, to chase and +marshal airy nothings according to a law totally unlike that of rational +association, never hastening to a logical end like the schoolboy when on +errand, but still lingering within the wood like the schoolboy during +holiday. This peculiar mental habit, nowhere better described than by +Milton himself when he speaks of verse + + "Such as the meeting soul may pierce, + In notes with many a winding bout + Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out + With wanton heed and giddy cunning," + +is so characteristic of the poetical disposition that, though in most of +the greatest poets, as, for example, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare in his +dramas, Chaucer, and almost all the ancient Greek poets, it is not +observable in any extraordinary degree, chiefly because in them the +element of direct reference to human life and its interests had fitting +preponderance, yet it may be affirmed that he who, tolerating or admiring +these poets, does not relish also such poetry as that of Spenser, Keats, +and Shakespeare in his minor pieces, but complains of it as wearisome and +sensuous, is wanting in a portion of the genuine poetic taste. + +There was but one "vital sign" the absence of which in Milton could, +according to any theory of the poetical character, have begotten doubts in +his own mind, or in the minds of his friends, whether poetry was his +peculiar and appropriate function. The single source of possible doubt on +this head could have been no other than that native austerity of feeling +and temper, that real though not formal Puritanism of heart and +intellect, which we have noticed as distinguishing Milton from his youth +upward. The poet, it is said in these days, when, by psychologizing a man, +it is supposed we can tell what course of life he is fit for--the poet +ought to be universally sympathetic; he ought to hate nothing, despise +nothing. And a notion equivalent to this, though by no means so +articulately expressed, was undoubtedly prevalent in Milton's own time. As +the Puritans, on the one hand, had set their faces against all those +practices of profane singing, dancing, masquing, theatre-going, and the +like, in which the preservation of the spirit of the arts was supposed to +be involved, so the last party in the world from which the reputed +devotees of the arts in those days would have expected a poet to arise was +that of the Puritans. Even in Shakespeare, and much more in Ben Jonson, +Beaumont and Fletcher, and other poets of the Elizabethan age, may be +traced evidences of an instinctive enmity to that Puritanical mode of +thinking which was then on the increase in English society, and in the +triumph of which those great minds foresaw the proscription of their craft +and their pleasures. When Sir Toby says to Malvolio, "Dost thou think, +because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" and when +the Clown adds, "Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth +too," it is the Knight and the Clown on the one side against Malvolio the +Puritan on the other. That the defence of the festive in this passage is +not borne by more respectable personages than the two who speak is indeed +a kind of indication that Shakespeare's personal feelings with regard to +the austere movement which he saw gathering around him were by no means so +deep or bitter as to discompose him; but, if his profounder soul could +behold such things with serenity, and even pronounce them good, they +assuredly met with enough of virulence and invective among his lesser +contemporaries. That literary crusade against the Puritans, as canting, +sour-visaged, mirth-forbidding, art-abhorring religionists, which came to +its height at the time when Butler wrote his _Hudibras_, and Wycherley his +plays, was already hot when the wits of King James's days used to assemble +after the theatre, in their favourite taverns; and if, sallying out after +one of their merry evenings in their most favourite tavern of all, the +Mermaid in Bread Street, those assembled poets and dramatists had gone in +search of the youth who was likeliest to be the poet of the age then +beginning, they certainly would not have gone to that modest residence in +the same street where the son of the Puritanic scrivener, then preparing +for College, was busy over his books. Nay, if Ben Jonson, the last +twenty-nine years of whose life coincided with the first twenty-nine of +Milton's, had followed the young student from the house where he was born +in Bread Street to his rooms at Cambridge, and had there become acquainted +with him and looked over his early poetical exercises, it is probable +enough that, while praising them so far, he would have constituted himself +the organ of that very opinion as to the requisites of the poetical +character which we are now discussing, and declared, in some strong phrase +or other, that the youth would have been all the more hopeful as a poet if +he had had a little more of the _bon vivant_ in his constitution. + +This, then, is a point of no little importance, involving as it does the +relations of Milton as a poet to the age in which he lived, that splendid +age of Puritan mastery in England which came between the age of +Shakespeare and Elizabeth and the age of Dryden and the second Charles. +Milton was _the_ poet of that intermediate era; that his character was +such as we have described it made him only the more truly a representative +of all that was then deepest in English society; and, in inquiring, +therefore, in what manner Milton's austerity as a man affected his art as +a poet, we are, at the same time, investigating the _rationale_ of that +remarkable fact in the history of English literature, the interpolation of +so original and isolated a development as the Miltonic poems between the +inventive luxuriousness of the Elizabethan epoch and the witty +licentiousness that followed the Restoration. + +First, then, it was not _humour_ that came to the rescue, in Milton's +case, to help him out in those respects wherein, according to the theory +in question, the strictness and austerity of his own disposition would +have injured his capacity to be a poet. There are and have been men as +strict and austere as he, who yet, by means of this quality of humour, +have been able to reconcile themselves to much in human life lying far +away from, and even far beneath, the sphere of their own practice and +conscientious liking. As Pantagruel, the noble and meditative, endured and +even loved those immortal companions of his, the boisterous and profane +Friar John, and the cowardly and impish Panurge, so these men, remaining +themselves with all rigour and punctuality within the limits of sober and +exemplary life, are seen extending their regards to the persons and the +doings of a whole circle of reprobate Falstaffs, Pistols, Clowns, and Sir +Toby Belches. They cannot help it. They may and often do blame themselves +for it; they wish that, in their intercourse with the world, they could +more habitually turn the austere and judicial side of their character to +the scenes and incidents that there present themselves, simply saying of +each "That is right and worthy" or "That is wrong and unworthy," and +treating it accordingly. But they break down in the trial. Suddenly some +incident presents itself which is not only right but clumsy, or not only +wrong but comic, and straightway the austere side of their character +wheels round to the back, and judge, jury, and witnesses are convulsed +with untimely laughter. It was by no means so with Milton. As his critics +have generally remarked, he had little of humour, properly so called, in +his composition. His laughter is the laughter of scorn. With one unvarying +judicial look he confronted the actions of men, and, if ever his tone +altered as he uttered his judgments, it was only because something roused +him to a pitch of higher passion. Take, as characteristic, the following +passage, in which he replies to the taunt of an opponent who had asked +where _he_, the antagonist of profane amusements, had procured that +knowledge of theatres and their furniture which certain allusions in one +of his books showed him to possess:-- + + "Since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a periwig, + or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what difficulty was + there in that, when in the colleges so many of the young divines, and + those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the + stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and + dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting + the shame of that ministry which either they had or were nigh having + to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with their grooms and + mademoiselles? There, whilst they acted and overacted, among other + young scholars, I was a spectator: they thought themselves gallant + men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they + mispronounced, and I misliked; and, to make up the atticism, they + were out, and I hissed."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._ + +Who can doubt that to a man to whom such a scene as this presented itself +in a light so different from that in which a Shakespeare would have viewed +it Friar John himself, if encountered in the real world, would have been +simply the profane and unendurable wearer of the sacred garb, Falstaff +only a foul and grey-haired iniquity, Pistol but a braggart and coward, +and Sir Toby Belch but a beastly sot? + +That office, however, which humour did not perform for Milton, in his +intercourse with the world of past and present things, was in part +performed by what he did in large measure possess--intellectual +_inquisitiveness_: respect for intellect, its accomplishments, and its +rights. If any quality in the actions or writings of other men could have +won Milton's favourable regards, even where his moral sense condemned, +that quality, we believe, was intellectual greatness, and especially +greatness of his own stamp, or marked by any of his own features. Hence +that tone of almost pitying admiration which pervades his representation +of the ruined Archangel; hence his uniformly respectful references to the +great intellects of Paganism and of the Catholic world; and hence, we +think, his unbounded and, for a time at least, unqualified reverence for +Shakespeare. As by the direct exercise of his own intellect, on the one +hand, applied to the rational discrimination for himself of what was +really wrong from what was only ignorantly reputed to be so, he had kept +his mind clear, as Cromwell also did, from many of those sectarian +prejudices in the matter of moral observance which were current in his +time--justified, for example, his love of music, his liking for natural +beauty, his habits of cheerful recreation, his devotion to various +literature, and even, most questionable of all, as would then have been +thought, his affection for the massy pillars and storied windows of +ecclesiastical architecture,--so, reflexly, by a recognition of the +intellectual liberty of others, he seems to have distinctly apprehended +the fact that there might be legitimate manifestations of intellect of a +kind very different from his own. A Falstaff in real life, for example, +might have been to Milton the most unendurable of horrors, just as, +according to his own confession, a play-acting clergyman was his +abomination; and yet, in the pages of his honoured Shakespeare, Sir John +as mentor to the Prince, and Parson Hugh Evans as the Welch fairy among +the mummers, may have been creations he would con over and very dearly +appreciate. And this accounts for the multifarious and unrestricted +character of his literary studies. Milton, we believe, was a man whose +intellectual inquisitiveness and respect for talent would have led him, in +other instances than that of the College theatricals, to see and hear much +that his heart derided, to study and know what he would not strictly have +wished to imitate. Ovid and Tibullus, for example, contain much that is +far from Miltonic; and yet that he read poets of this class with +particular pleasure let the following quotation prove:-- + + "I had my time, readers, as others have who have good learning + bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the opinion + was, it might be soonest attained; and, as the manner is, was not + unstudied in those authors which are most commended: whereof some + were grave orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved + indeed, but, as my age was, so I understood them; others were the + smooth elegiac poets whereof the schools are not scarce, whom, both + for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing (which, in + imitation, I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in + me) and for their matter (which, what it is, there be few who know + not), I was so allured to read that no recreation came to me more + welcome--for, that it was then those years with me which are excused + though they be least severe I may be saved the labour to remember + ye."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._ + +That Milton, then, notwithstanding his natural austerity and seriousness +even in youth, was led by his keen appreciation of literary beauty and +finish, and especially by his delight in sweet and melodious verse, to +read and enjoy the poetry of those writers who are usually quoted as +examples of the lusciousness and sensuousness of the poetic nature, and +even to prefer them to all others, is specially stated by himself. But let +the reader, if he should think he sees in this a ground for suspecting +that we have assigned too much importance to Milton's personal seriousness +of disposition as a cause affecting his aims and art as a poet, distinctly +mark the continuation-- + + "Whence, having observed them [the elegiac and love poets] to account + it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, + to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love, + those high perfections which, under one or other name, they took to + celebrate, I thought with myself, by every instinct and presage of + nature (which is not wont to be false), that what emboldened them to + this task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden me, and + that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share would herein best + appear, and best value itself, by how much more wisely and with more + love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent!) the object + of not unlike praises. For, albeit these thoughts to some will seem + virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort + perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. Nor + blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a + reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life + have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and + fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, + and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For, by the firm settling + of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a + proficient that, if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy + things of themselves, or unchaste those names which before they had + extolled, this effect it wrought in me: From that time forward their + art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all + preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never + wrote but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying + sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not + after when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be + frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things + ought himself to be a true poem--that is, a composition and pattern + of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high + praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the + experience and the practice of all that which is + praiseworthy."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._ + +Here, at last, therefore, we have Milton's own judgment on the matter of +our inquiry. He had speculated himself on that subject; he had made it a +matter of conscious investigation what kind of moral tone and career would +best fit a man to be a poet, on the one hand, or would be most likely to +frustrate his hopes of writing well, on the other; and his conclusion, as +we see, was dead against the "wild oats" theory. Had Ben Jonson, +according to our previous fancy, proffered him, out of kindly interest, a +touch of that theory, while criticising his juvenile poems, and telling +him how he might learn to write better, there would have descended on the +lecturer, as sure as fate, a rebuke, though from young lips, that would +have made his strong face blush. "_He who would not be frustrate of his +hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true +poem_:" fancy that sentence, an early and often pronounced formula of +Milton's, as we may be sure it was, hurled some evening, could time and +chance have permitted it, into the midst of the assembled Elizabethan wits +at the Mermaid! What interruption of the jollity, what mingled uneasiness +and resentment, what turning of faces towards the new speaker, what forced +laughter to conceal consternation! Only Shakespeare, one thinks, had he +been present, would have fixed on the bold youth a mild and approving eye, +would have looked round the room thoroughly to observe the whole scene, +and, remembering some passages in his own life, would mayhap have had his +own thoughts! Certainly, at least, the essence of that wonderful and +special development of the literary genius of England which came between +the Elizabethan epoch and the epoch of the Restoration, and which was +represented and consummated in Milton himself, consisted in the fact that +then there was a temporary protest, and by a man able to make it good, +against the theory of "wild oats," current before and current since. The +nearest poet to Milton in this respect, since Milton's time, has +undoubtedly been Wordsworth. + + + + +DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION. + + + + +DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.[6] + + +It is a common remark that literature flourishes best in times of social +order and leisure, and suffers immediate depression whenever the public +mind is agitated by violent civil controversies. The remark is more true +than such popular inductions usually are. It is confirmed, on the small +scale, by what every one finds in his own experience. When a family is +agitated by any matter affecting its interests, there is an immediate +cessation from all the lighter luxuries of books and music wherewith it +used to beguile its leisure. All the members of the family are intent for +the time being on the matter in hand; if books are consulted it is for +some purpose of practical reference; and, if pens are active, it is in +writing letters of business. Not till the matter is fairly concluded are +the recreations of music and literature resumed; though then, possibly, +with a keener zest and a mind more full and fresh than before. Precisely +so it is on the large scale. If everything that is spoken or written be +called literature, there is probably always about the same amount of +literature going on in a community; or, if there is any increase or +decrease, it is but in proportion to the increase of the population. But, +if by literature we mean a certain peculiar kind and quality of spoken or +written matter, recognisable by its likeness to certain known precedents, +then, undoubtedly literature flourishes in times of quiet and security, +and wanes in times of convulsion and disorder. When the storm of some +great civil contest is blowing, it is impossible for even the serenest man +to shut himself quite in from the noise, and turn over the leaves of his +Horace, or practise his violin, as undistractedly as before. Great is the +power of _pococurantism_; and it is a noble sight to see, in the midst of +some Whig and Tory excitement which is throwing the general community into +sixes and sevens, and sending mobs along the streets, the calm devotee of +hard science, or the impassioned lover of the ideal, going on his way, +aloof from it all, and smiling at it all. But there are times when even +these obdurate gentlemen will be touched, in spite of themselves, to the +tune of what is going on; when the shouts of the mob will penetrate to the +closets of the most studious; and when, as Archimedes of old had to leave +his darling diagrams and trudge along the Syracusan streets to superintend +the construction of rough cranes and catapults, so philosophers and poets +alike will have to quit their favourite occupations, and be whirled along +in the common agitation. Those are times when whatever literature there is +assumes a character of immediate and practical interest. Just as, in the +supposed case, the literary activity of the family is consumed in mere +letters of business, so, in this, the literary activity of the community +exhausts itself in newspaper articles, public speeches, and pamphlets, +more or less elaborate, on the present crisis. There may be a vast amount +of mind at work, and as much, on the whole, may be written as before; but +the very excess of what may be called the pamphlet literature, which is +perishable in its nature, will leave a deficiency in the various +departments of literature more strictly so called--philosophical or +expository literature, historical literature, and the literature of pure +imagination. Not till the turmoil is over, not till the battle has been +fairly fought out, and the mental activity involved in it has been let +loose for more scattered work, will the calmer muses resume their sway, +and the press send forth treatises and histories, poems and romances, as +well as pamphlets. Then, however, men may return to literature with a new +zest, and the very storm which has interrupted the course of pure +literature for a time may infuse into such literature, when it begins +again, a fresher and stronger spirit. If the battle has ended in a +victory, there will be a tone of joy, of exultation, and of scorn, in what +men think and write after it; if it has ended in a defeat, all that is +thought and written will be tinged by a deeper and finer sorrow. + +The history of English literature affords some curious illustrations of +this law. It has always puzzled historians, for example, to account for +such a great unoccupied gap in our literary progress as occurs between the +death of Chaucer and the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. From the year +1250, when the English language first makes its appearance in anything +like its present form, to the year 1400, when Chaucer died, forms, as all +know, the infant age of our literature. It was an age of great literary +activity; and how much was achieved in it remains apparent in the fact +that it culminated in a man like Chaucer--a man whom, without any drawback +for the early epoch at which he lived, we still regard as one of our +literary princes. Nor was Chaucer the solitary name of his age. He had +some notable contemporaries, both in verse and in prose. When we pass from +Chaucer's age, however, we have to overleap nearly a hundred and eighty +years before we alight upon a period presenting anything like an adequate +show of literary continuation. A few smaller names, like those of +Lydgate, Surrey, and Skelton, are all that can be cited as poetical +representatives of this sterile interval in the literary history of +England: whatever of Chaucer's genius still lingered in the island seeming +to have travelled northward, and taken refuge in a series of Scottish +poets, excelling any of their English contemporaries. How is this to be +accounted for? Is it that really, during this period, there was less of +available mind than before in England, that the quality of the English +nerve had degenerated? By no means necessarily so. Englishmen, during this +period were engaged in enterprises requiring no small amount of +intellectual and moral vigour; and there remain to us, from the same +period, specimens of grave and serious prose, which, if we do not place +them among the gems of our literature, we at least regard as evidence that +our ancestors of those days were men of heart and wit and solid sense. In +short, we are driven to suppose that there was something in the social +circumstances of England during the long period in question which +prevented such talent as there was from assuming the particular form of +literature. Fully to make out what this "something" was may baffle us; +but, when we remember that this was the period of the Civil Wars of the +Roses, and also of the great Anglican Reformation, we have reason enough +to conclude that the dearth of pure literature may have been owing, in +part, to the engrossing nature of those practical questions which then +disturbed English society. When Chaucer wrote, England, under the splendid +rule of the third Edward, was potent and triumphant abroad, but large and +leisurely at home; but scarcely had that monarch vacated the throne when a +series of civil jars began, which tore the nation into factions, and was +speedily followed by a religious movement as powerful in its effects. +Accordingly, though printing was introduced during this period, and thus +Englishmen had greater temptations to write, what they did write was +almost exclusively plain grave prose, intended for practical or polemical +occasions, and making no figure in a historical retrospect. How different +when, passing the controversial reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and +Mary, we come upon the golden days of Queen Bess! Controversy enough +remained to give occasion to plenty of polemical prose; but about the +middle of her reign, when England, once more great and powerful abroad as +in the time of the Edwards, settled down within herself into a new lease +of social order and leisure under an ascertained government, there began +an outburst of literary genius such as no age or country had ever before +witnessed. The literary fecundity of that period of English history which +embraces the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth and the whole of the +reign of James I. (1580-1625) is a perpetual astonishment to us all. In +the entire preceding three centuries and a half we can with difficulty +name six men that can, by any charity of judgment, be regarded as stars in +our literature, and of these only one that is a star of the first +magnitude: whereas in this brief period of forty-five or fifty years we +can reckon up a host of poets and prose-writers all noticeable on high +literary grounds, and of whom at least thirty were men of extraordinary +dimensions. Indeed, in the contemplation of the intellectual abundance and +variety of this age--the age of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon, of +Raleigh and Hooker, of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Donne, Herbert, +Massinger, and their illustrious contemporaries--we feel ourselves driven +from the theory that so rich a literary crop could have resulted from that +mere access of social leisure after a long series of national broils to +which we do in part attribute it, and are obliged to suppose that there +must have been, along with this, an actually finer substance and +condition, for the time being, of the national nerve. The very brain of +England must have become more "quick, nimble, and forgetive," before the +time of leisure came. + +We have spoken of this great age of English literature as terminating with +the reign of James I., in 1625. In point of fact, however, it extended +some way into the reign of his son, Charles I. Spenser had died in 1599, +before James had ascended the English throne; Shakespeare and Beaumont had +died in 1616, while James still reigned; Fletcher died in 1625; Bacon +died in 1626, when the crown had been but a year on Charles's head. But, +while these great men and many of their contemporaries had vanished from +the scene before England had any experience of the first Charles, some of +their peers survived to tell what kind of men they had been. Ben Jonson +lived till 1637, and was poet-laureate to Charles I.; Donne and Drayton +lived till 1631; Herbert till 1632; Chapman till 1634; Dekker till 1638; +Ford till 1639; and Heywood and Massinger till 1640. + +There is one point in the reign of Charles, however, where a clear line +may be drawn separating the last of the Elizabethan giants from their +literary successors. This is the point at which the Civil War commences. +The whole of the earlier part of Charles's reign was a preparation for +this war; but it cannot be said to have fairly begun till the meeting of +the Long Parliament in 1640, when Charles had been fifteen years on the +throne. If we select this year as the commencement of the great Puritan +and Republican Revolution in England, and the year 1660, when Charles II. +was restored, as the close of the same Revolution, we shall have a period +of twenty years to which, if there is any truth in the notion that the +Muses shun strife, this notion should be found peculiarly applicable. Is +it so? We think it is. In the first place, as we have just said, the last +of the Elizabethan giants died off before this period began, as if killed +by the mere approach to an atmosphere so lurid and tempestuous. In the +second place, in the case of such writers as were old enough to have +learnt in the school of those giants and yet young enough to survive them +and enter on the period of struggle,--as for example, Herrick (1591-1660), +Shirley (1596-1666), Waller (1605-1687), Davenant (1605-1668), Suckling +(1608-1643), Milton (1608-1674), Butler (1612-1680), Cleveland +(1613-1658), Denham (1615-1668), and Cowley (1618-1667),--it will be +found, on examination, either that the time of their literary activity did +not coincide with the period of struggle, but came before it, or after it, +or lay on both sides of it; or that what they did write of a purely +literary character during this period was written in exile; or, lastly, +that what they did write at home of a genuine literary character during +this period is inconsiderable in quantity, and dashed with a vein of +polemical allusion rendering it hardly an exception to the rule. The +literary career of Milton illustrates very strikingly this fact of the all +but entire cessation of pure literature in England between 1640 and 1660. +Milton's life consists of three distinctly marked periods--the first +ending with 1640, during which he composed his exquisite minor poems; the +second extending precisely from 1640 to 1660, during which he wrote no +poetry at all, except a few sonnets, but produced his various polemical +prose treatises or pamphlets, and served the state as a public +functionary; and the third, which may be called the period of his later +muse, extending from 1660 to his death in 1674, and famous for the +composition of his greater poems. Thus Milton's prose-period, if we may so +term it, coincided exactly with the period of civil strife and Cromwellian +rule. And, if this was the case with Milton--if he, who was essentially +the poet of Puritanism, with his whole heart and soul in the struggle +which Cromwell led, was obliged, during the process of that struggle, to +lay aside his singing robes, postpone his plans of a great immortal poem, +and in the meanwhile drudge laboriously as a prose pamphleteer--how much +more must those have been reduced to silence, or brought down into +practical prose, who found no such inspiration in the movement as it gave +to the soul of Milton, but regarded it all as desolation and disaster! +Indeed, one large department of the national literature at this period was +proscribed by civil enactment. Stage-plays were prohibited in 1642, and it +was not till after the Restoration that the theatres were re-opened. Such +a prohibition, though it left the sublime muse of Milton at liberty, had +it cared to sing, was a virtual extinction for the time of all the +customary literature. In fine, if all the literary produce of England in +the interval between 1640 and 1660 is examined, it will be found to +consist in the main of a huge mass of controversial prose, by far the +greater proportion of which, though effective at the time, is little +better now than antiquarian rubbish, astonishing from its bulk, though +some small percentage including all that came from the terrible pen of +Milton is saved by reason of its strength and grandeur. The intellect of +England was as active and as abundant as ever, but it was all required for +the current service of the time. Perhaps the only exception of any +consequence was in the case of the philosophical and calm-minded Sir +Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio Medici_. While all England was in +throes and confusion Browne was quietly attending his patients, or +pottering along his garden at Norwich, or pursuing his meditations about +sepulchral urns and his inquiries respecting the Quincuncial Lozenge. His +views of things might have been considerably quickened by billeting upon +his household a few of the Ironsides. + +Had Cromwell lived longer, or had he established a dynasty capable of +maintaining itself, there can be little doubt that there would have come a +time of leisure during which, even under a Puritan rule, there would have +been a new outburst of English Literature. There were symptoms, towards +the close of the Protectorate that Cromwell, having now "reasonable good +leisure," was willing and even anxious that the nation should resume its +old literary industry and all its innocent liberties and pleasures. He +allowed Cowley, Waller, Denham, Davenant, and other Royalists, to come +over from France, and was glad to see them employed in writing verses. +Waller became one of his courtiers, and composed panegyrics on him. He +released Cleveland from prison in a very handsome manner, considering what +hard things the witty roysterer had written about "O.P." and his "copper +nose." He appears even to have winked at Davenant, when, in violation of +the act against stage-plays, that gentlemanly poet began to give private +theatrical entertainments under the name of operas. Davenant's heretical +friend, Hobbes, too, already obnoxious by his opinions even to his own +political party, availed himself of the liberty of the press to issue some +fresh metaphysical essays, which the Protector may have read. In fact, had +Cromwell survived a few years, there would, in all probability, have +arisen, under his auspices, a new literature, of which his admirer and +secretary, Milton, would have been the laureate. What might have been the +characteristics of this literature of the Commonwealth, had it developed +itself to full form and proportions, we can but guess. That, in some +respects, it would not have been so broad and various as the literature +which took its rise from the Restoration is very likely; for, so long as +the Puritan element remained dominant in English society, it was +impossible that, with any amount of liberty of the press, there should +have been such an outbreak of the merely comic spirit as did occur when +that element succumbed to its antagonist, and genius had official licence +to be as profligate as it chose. But, if less gay and riotous, it might +have been more earnest, powerful, and impressive. For its masterpiece it +would still have had _Paradise Lost_,--a work which, as it is, we must +regard as its peculiar offspring, though posthumously born; nor can we +doubt that, if influenced by the example and the recognised supremacy of +such a laureate as Milton, the younger literary men of the time would have +found themselves capable of other things than epigrams and farces. + +It was fated, however, that the national leisure requisite for a new +development of English literary genius should commence only with the +restoration of the Stuarts in 1660; and then it was a leisure secured in +very different circumstances from those which would have attended a +perpetuation of Cromwell's rule. With Charles II. there came back into the +island, after many years of banishment, all the excesses of the cavalier +spirit, more reckless than before, and considerably changed by long +residence in continental cities, and especially in the French capital. +Cavalier noblemen and gentlemen came back, bringing with them French +tastes, French fashions, and foreign ladies of pleasure. As Charles II. +was a different man from his father, so the courtiers that gathered round +him at Whitehall were very different from those who had fought with +Charles I. against the Parliamentarians. Their political principles and +prejudices were nominally the same; but they were for the most part men of +a younger generation, less stiff and English in their demeanour, and more +openly dissolute in their morals. Such was the court the restoration of +which England virtually confessed to be necessary to prevent a new era of +anarchy. It was inaugurated amid the shouts of the multitude; and +Puritanism, already much weakened by defections before the event, hastened +to disappear from the public stage, diffusing itself once more as a mere +element of secret efficacy through the veins of the community, and +purchasing even this favour by the sacrifice of its most notorious +leaders. + + * * * * * + +Miserable in some respects as was this change for England, it offered, by +reason of the very unanimity with which it was effected, all the +conditions necessary for the forthcoming of a new literature. But where +were the materials for the commencement of this new literature? + +First, as regards _persons_ fit to initiate it. There were all those who +had been left over from the Protectorate, together with such wits as the +Restoration itself had brought back, or called into being. There was the +old dramatist, Shirley, now in his sixty-fifth year, very glad, no doubt, +to come back to town, after his hard fare as a country-schoolmaster during +the eclipse of the stage, and to resume his former occupation as a writer +of plays in the style that had been in fashion thirty years before. There +was Hobbes, older still than Shirley, a tough old soul of seventy-three, +but with twenty more years of life in him, and, though not exactly a +literary man, yet sturdy enough to be whatever he liked within certain +limits. There was mild Izaak Walton, of Chancery-lane, only five years +younger than Hobbes, but destined to live as long, and capable of writing +very nicely if he could have been kept from sauntering into the fields to +fish. There was the gentlemanly Waller, now fifty-six years of age, quite +ready to be a poet about the court of Charles, and to write panegyrics on +the new side to atone for that on Cromwell. There was the no less +gentlemanly Davenant, also fifty-six years of age, steady to his royalist +principles, as became a man who had received the honour of knighthood from +the royal martyr, and enjoying a wide reputation, partly from his poetical +talents, and partly from his want of nose. There was Milton, in his +fifty-second year, blind, desolate, and stern, hiding in obscure lodgings +till his defences of regicide should be sufficiently forgotten to save him +from molestation, and building up in imagination the scheme of his +promised epic. There was Butler, four years younger, brimful of hatred to +the Puritans, and already engaged on his poem of _Hudibras_, which was to +lash them so much to the popular taste. There was Denham, known as a +versifier little inferior to Waller, and with such superior claims on the +score of loyalty as to be considered worthy of knighthood and the first +vacant post. There was Cowley, still only in his forty-third year, and +with a ready-made reputation, both as a poet and as a prose-writer, such +as none of his contemporaries possessed, and such indeed as no English +writer had acquired since the days of Ben Jonson and Donne. Younger still, +and with his fame as a satirist not yet made, there was Milton's friend, +honest Andrew Marvell, whom the people of Hull had chosen as their +representative in Parliament. Had the search been extended to theologians, +and such of them selected as were capable of influencing the literature by +the form of their writings, as distinct from their matter, Jeremy Taylor +would have been noted as still alive, though his work was nearly over, +while Richard Baxter, with a longer life before him, was in the prime of +his strength, and there was in Bedford an eccentric Baptist preacher, once +a tinker, who was to be the author, though no one supposed it, of the +greatest prose allegory in the language. Close about the person of the +king, too, there were able men and wits, capable of writing themselves, or +of criticising what was written by others, from the famous Clarendon down +to such younger and lighter men as Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, Sackville, +Earl of Dorset, and Sir Charles Sedley. Lastly, not to extend the list +farther, there was then in London, aged twenty-nine, and going about in a +stout plain dress of grey drugget, a Northamptonshire squire's son, named +John Dryden, who, after having been educated at Cambridge, had come up to +town in the last year of the Protectorate to push his fortune under a +Puritan relative then in office, and who had already once or twice tried +his hand at poetry. Like Waller, he had written and published a series of +panegyrical stanzas on Cromwell after his death; and, like Waller also, he +had attempted to atone for this miscalculation by writing another poem, +called _Astræa Redux_, to celebrate the return of Charles. As a taste of +what this poet, in particular, could do, take the last of his stanzas on +Cromwell:-- + + "His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; + His name a great example stands to show + How strangely high endeavours may be blessed, + Where piety and valour jointly go"; + +or, in another metre and another strain of politics, the conclusion of the +poem addressed to Charles:-- + + "The discontented now are only they + Whose crimes before did your just cause betray: + Of those your edicts some reclaim from sin, + But most your life and blest example win. + Oh happy prince! whom Heaven hath taught the way + By paying vows to have more vows to pay! + Oh happy age! Oh times like those alone + By fate reserved for great Augustus' throne, + When the joint growth of arms and arts foreshow + The world a monarch, and that monarch you!" + +Such were the _personal elements_, if we may so call them, available at +the beginning of the reign of Charles II. for the commencement of a new +era in English literature. Let us see next what were the more pronounced +_tendencies_ visible amid these personal elements--in other words, what +tone of moral sentiment, and what peculiarities of literary style and +method, were then in the ascendant, and likely to determine the character +of the budding authorship. + +It was pre-eminently clear that the forthcoming literature would be +Royalist and anti-Puritan. With the exception of Milton, there was not one +man of known literary power whose heart still beat as it did when Cromwell +sat on the throne, and whose muse magnanimously disdained the change that +had befallen the nation. Puritanism, as a whole, was driven back into the +concealed vitals of the community, to sustain itself meanwhile as a +sectarian theology lurking in chapels and conventicles, and only to +re-appear after a lapse of years as an ingredient in the philosophy of +Locke and his contemporaries. The literary men who stepped forward to lead +the literature of the Restoration were royalists and courtiers: some of +them honest cavaliers, rejoicing at being let loose from the restraints of +the Commonwealth; others timeservers, making up for delay by the fulsome +excess of their zeal for the new state of things. It was part of this +change that there should be an affectation, even where there was not the +reality, of lax morals. According to the sarcasm of the time, it was +necessary now for those who would escape the risk of being thought +Puritans to contract a habit of swearing and pretend to be great rakes. +And this increase, both in the practice and in the profession of +profligacy, at once connected itself with that institution of English +society which, from the very fact that it had been suppressed by the +Puritans, now became doubly attractive and popular. The same revolution +which restored royalty in England re-opened the play-houses; and in them, +as the established organs of popular sentiment, all the anti-Puritanic +tendencies of the time hastened to find vent. The custom of having female +actors on the stage for female parts, instead of boys as heretofore, was +now permanently introduced, and brought many scandals along with it. +Whether, as some surmise, the very suppression of the theatres during the +reign of Puritanism contributed to their unusual corruptness when they +were again allowed by law--by damming up, as it were, a quantity of +pruriency which had afterwards to be let loose in a mass--it is not easy +to say; it is certain, however, that never in this country did impurity +run so openly at riot in literary guise as it did in the Drama of the +Restoration. To use a phrenological figure, it seemed as if the national +cranium of England had suddenly been contracted in every other direction +so as to permit an inordinate increase of that particular region which is +situated above the nape of the neck. This enormous preponderance of the +back of the head in literature was most conspicuously exhibited in Comedy. +Every comedy that was produced represented life as a meagre action of +persons and interests on a slight proscenium of streets and bits of green +field, behind which lay the real business, transacted in stews. To set +against this, it is true, there was a so-called Tragic Drama. The tragedy +that was now in favour, however, was no longer the old English tragedy of +rich and complex materials, but the French tragedy of heroic declamation. +Familiarized by their stay in France with the tragic style of Corneille +and other dramatists of the court of Louis XIV., the Royalists brought +back the taste with them into England; and the poets who catered for them +hastened to abandon the Shakespearian tragedy, with its large range of +time and action and its blank verse, and to put on the stage tragedies of +sustained and decorous declamation in the heroic or rhymed couplet, +conceived, as much as possible, after the model of Corneille. Natural to +the French, this classic or regular style accorded ill with English +faculties and habits; and Corneille himself would have been horrified at +the slovenly and laborious attempts of the English in imitation of his +masterpieces. The effect of French influence at this time, however, on +English literary taste, did not consist merely in the introduction of the +heroic or rhymed drama. The same influence extended, and in some respects +beneficially, to all departments of English literature. It helped, for +example, to correct that peculiar style of so-called "wit" which, +originating with the dregs of the Elizabethan age, had during a whole +generation infected English prose and poetry, but more especially the +latter. The characteristic of the "metaphysical school of poetry," as it +is called, which took its rise in a literary vice perceptible even in the +great works of the Elizabethan age, and of which Donne and Cowley were the +most celebrated representatives, consisted in the identification of mere +intellectual subtlety with poetic genius. To spin out a fantastic conceit, +to pursue a thread of quaint thought as long as it could be held between +the fingers of the metre without snapping, and, in doing so, to wind it +about as many oddities of the real world as possible, and introduce as +many verbal quibbles as possible, was the aim of the "metaphysical poets." +Some of them, like Donne and Cowley, were men of independent merit; but +the style of poetry itself, as all modern readers confess by the alacrity +with which they avoid reprinted specimens of it, was as unprofitable an +investment of human ingenuity as ever was attempted. At the period of the +Restoration, and partly in consequence of French influence, this kind of +wit was falling into disrepute. There were still practitioners of it; but, +on the whole, a more direct, clear, and light manner of writing was coming +into fashion. Discourse became less stiff and pedantic; or, as Dryden +himself has expressed it, "the fire of English wit, which was before +stifled under a constrained melancholy way of breeding, began to display +its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of +our neighbours." And the change in discourse passed without difficulty +into literature, calling into being a nimbler style of wit, a more direct, +rapid, and decisive manner of thought and expression, than had beseemed +authorship before. In particular, and apart from the tendency to greater +directness and concision of thought, there was an increased attention to +correctness of expression. The younger literary men began to object to +what they called the involved and incorrect syntax of the writers of the +previous age, and to pretend to greater neatness and accuracy in the +construction of their sentences. It was at this time, for example, that +the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition or other little word +began to be attended to. Whether the notion of correctness, implied in +this, and other such rules, was a true notion, and whether the writers of +the Restoration excelled their Elizabethan predecessors in this quality of +correctness, admits of being doubted. Certain it is, however, that a +change in the mechanism of writing--this change being on the whole towards +increased neatness--did become apparent about this time. The change was +visible in prose, but far more in verse. For, to conclude this enumeration +of the literary signs or tendencies of the age of the Restoration, it was +a firm belief of the writers of the period that then for the first time +was the art of correct English versification exemplified and appreciated. +It was, we say, a firm belief of the time, and indeed it has been a +common-place of criticism ever since, that Edmund Waller was the first +poet who wrote smooth and accurate verse, that in this he was followed by +Sir John Denham, and that these two men were reformers of English metre. +"Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known +till Mr. Waller introduced it," is a deliberate statement of Dryden +himself, meant to apply especially to verse. Here, again, we have to +separate a matter of fact from a matter of doctrine. To aver, with such +specimens of older English verse before us as the works of Chaucer and +Spenser, and the minor poems of Milton, that it was Waller or any other +petty writer of the Restoration that first taught us sweetness, or +smoothness, or even correctness of verse, is so ridiculous that the +currency of such a notion can only be accounted for by the servility with +which small critics go on repeating whatever any one big critic has said. +That Waller and Denham, however, did set the example of something new in +the manner of English versification,--which "something" Dryden, Pope, and +other poets who afterwards adopted it, regarded as an improvement,--needs +not be doubted. For us it is sufficient in the meantime to recognise the +change as an attempt after greater neatness of mechanical structure, +leaving open the question whether it was a change for the better. + +It was natural that the tendencies of English literature thus enumerated +should be represented in the poet-laureate for the time being. Who was the +fit man to be appointed laureate at the Restoration? Milton was out of the +question, having none of the requisites. Butler, the man of greatest +natural power of a different order, and possessing certainly as much of +the anti-Puritan sentiment as Charles and his courtiers could have desired +in their laureate, was not yet sufficiently known, and was, besides, +neither a dramatist nor a fine gentleman. Cowley, whom public opinion +would have pointed out as best entitled to the honour, was somehow not in +much favour at court, and was spending the remainder of his days on a +little property near Chertsey. Waller and Denham were wealthy men, with +whom literature was but an amusement. On the whole, Sir William Davenant +was felt to be the proper man for the office. He was an approved royalist; +he had, in fact, been laureate to Charles I. after Ben Jonson's death in +1637; and he had suffered much in the cause of the king. He was, moreover, +a literary man by profession. He had been an actor and a theatre-manager +before the Commonwealth; he had been the first to start a theatre after +the relaxed rule of Cromwell made it possible; and he was one of the first +to attempt heroic or rhymed tragedies after the French model. He was also, +far more than Cowley, a wit of the new school; and, as a versifier, he +practised, with no small reputation, the neat, lucid style introduced by +Denham and Waller. He was the author of an epic called _Gondibert_, +written in rhymed stanzas of four lines each, which Hobbes praised as +showing "more shape of art, health of morality, and vigour and beauty of +expression," than any poem he had ever read. We defy anyone to read the +poem now; but there have been worse things written; and it has the merit +of being a careful and rather serious composition by a man who had +industry, education, and taste, without genius. There was but one +awkwardness in having such a man for laureate: he had no nose. This +awkwardness, however, had existed at the time of his first appointment in +the preceding reign. At least, Suckling adverts to it in the _Session of +the Poets_, where he makes the wits of that time contend for the bays-- + + "Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischance, + That he had got lately, travelling in France, + Modestly hoped the handsomeness of 's muse + Might any deformity about him excuse. + + "And surely the company would have been content, + If they could have found any precedent; + But in all their records, either in verse or prose, + There was not one laureate without a nose." + +If the more decorous court of Charles I., however, overlooked this +deficiency, it was not for that of Charles II. to take objection to it. +After all, Davenant, notwithstanding his misfortune, seems to have been +not the worst gentleman about Charles's court, either in morals or +manners. Milton is said to have known and liked him. + +Davenant's laureateship extended over the first eight years of the +Restoration, or from 1660 to 1668. Much was done in those eight years both +by himself and others. Heroic plays and comedies were produced in +sufficient abundance to supply the two chief theatres then open in +London--one of them that of the Duke's company, under Davenant's +management; the other, that of the King's company, under the management +of an actor named Killigrew. The number of writers for the stage was very +great, including not only those whose names have been mentioned, but +others new to fame. The literature of the stage formed by far the largest +proportion of what was written, or even of what was published. Literary +efforts of other kinds, however, were not wanting. Of satires, and small +poems in the witty or amatory style, there was no end. The publication by +Butler of the first part of his _Hudibras_ in 1663, and of the second in +1664, drew public attention, for the first time, to a man, already past +his fiftieth year, who had more true wit in him than all the aristocratic +poets put together. The poem was received by the king and the courtiers +with shouts of laughter; quotations from it were in everybody's mouth; +but, notwithstanding large promises, nothing substantial was done for the +author. Meanwhile Milton, blind and gouty, and living in his house near +Bunhill Fields, where his visitors were hardly of the kind that admired +Butler's poem, was calmly proceeding with his _Paradise Lost_. The poem +was finished and published in 1667, leaving Milton free for other work. +Cowley, who would have welcomed such a poem, and whose praise Milton would +have valued more than that of any other contemporary, died in the year of +its publication. Davenant may have read it before his death in the +following year; but perhaps the only poet of the time who hailed its +appearance with enthusiasm adequate to the occasion was Milton's personal +friend Marvell. Gradually, however, copies of the poem found their way +about town, and drew public attention once more to Cromwell's old +secretary. + +The laureateship remained vacant two years after Davenant's death; and +then it was conferred--on whom? There can be little doubt that, of those +eligible to it, Butler had, in some respects, the best title. The author +of _Hudibras_, however, seems to have been one of those ill-conditioned +men whom patronage never comes near, and who are left, by a kind of +necessity, to the bitter enjoyment of their own humours. There does not +seem to have been even a question of appointing him; and the office, the +income of which would have been a competence to him, was conferred on a +man twenty years his junior, and whose circumstances required it +less--John Dryden. The appointment, which was made in August, 1670, +conferred on Dryden not only the laureateship, but also the office of +"historiographer royal," which chanced to be vacant at the same time. The +income accruing from the two offices thus conjoined was 200_l._ a-year, +which was about as valuable then as 600_l._ a-year would be now; and it +was expressly stated in the deed of appointment that these emoluments were +conferred on Dryden "in consideration of his many acceptable services done +to his majesty, and from an observation of his learning and eminent +abilities, and his great skill and elegant style both in verse and prose." +At the time of the Restoration, or even for a year or two after it, such +language could, by no stretch of courtesy, have been applied to Dryden. At +that time, as we have seen, though already past his thirtieth year, he was +certainly about the least distinguished person in the little band of wits +that were looking forward to the good time coming. He was a stout, +fresh-complexioned man, in grey drugget, who had written some robust +stanzas on Cromwell's death, and a short poem, also robust, but rather +wooden, on Charles's return. That was about all that was then known about +him. What had he done, in the interval, to raise him so high, and to make +it natural for the Court to prefer him to what was in fact the titular +supremacy of English literature, over the heads of others who might be +supposed to have claims, and especially over poor battered old Butler? A +glance at Dryden's life during Davenant's laureateship, or between 1660 +and 1670, will answer this question. + +Dryden's connexion with the politics of the Protectorate had not been such +as to make his immediate and cordial attachment to the cause of restored +Royalty either very strange or very unhandsome. Not committed either by +strong personal convictions, or by acts, to the Puritan side, he hastened +to show that, whatever the older Northamptonshire Drydens and their +relatives might think of the matter, he, for one, was willing to be a +loyal subject of Charles, both in church and in state. This main point +being settled, he had only farther to consider into what particular walk +of industry, now that official employment under government was cut off, he +should carry his loyalty and his powers. The choice was not difficult. +There was but one career open for him, or suitable to his tastes and +qualifications--that of general authorship. We say "general authorship;" +for it is important to remark that Dryden was by no means nice in his +choice of work. He was ready for anything of a literary kind to which he +was, or could make himself, competent. He had probably a preference for +verse; but he had no disinclination to prose, if that article was in +demand in the market. He had a store of acquirements, academic and other, +that fitted him for an intelligent apprehension of whatever was going on +in any of the London circles of that day--the circle of the scholars, that +of the amateurs of natural science, or that of the mere wits and men of +letters. He was, in fact, a man of general intellectual strength, which he +was willing to let out in any kind of tolerably honest intellectual +service that might be in fashion. This being the case, he set the right +way to work to make himself known in quarters where such service was +going on. He had about 40_l._ a-year of inherited fortune; which means +something more than 120_l._ a-year with us. With this income to supply his +immediate wants, he went to live with Herringman, a bookseller and +publisher in the New Exchange. What was the precise nature of his +agreement with Herringman cannot be ascertained. His literary enemies used +afterwards to say that he was Herringman's hack and wrote prefaces for +him. However this may be, there were higher conveniences in being +connected with Herringman. He was one of the best known of the London +publishers of the day, was a personal friend of Davenant, and had almost +all the wits of the day as his customers and occasional visitors. Through +him, in all probability, Dryden first became acquainted with some of these +men, including Davenant himself, Cowley, and a third person of +considerable note at that time as an aristocratic dabbler in +literature--Sir Robert Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire. That the +impression he made on these men, and on others in or out of the Herringman +circle, was no mean one, is proved by the fact that in 1663 we find him a +member of the Royal Society, the foundation of which by royal charter had +taken place in the previous year. The number of members was then one +hundred and fifteen, including such scientific celebrities of the time as +Boyle, Wallis, Wilkins, Christopher Wren, Dr. Isaac Barrow, Evelyn, and +Hooke, besides such titled amateurs of experimental science as the Duke of +Buckingham, the Marquis of Dorchester, the Earls of Devonshire, Crawford, +and Northampton, and Lords Brouncker, Cavendish, and Berkeley. Among the +more purely literary members were Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Sprat, +afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The admission of Dryden into such company +is a proof that already he was socially a man of mark. As we have Dryden's +own confession that he was somewhat dull and sluggish in conversation, and +the testimony of others that he was the very reverse of a bustling or +pushing man, and rather avoided society than sought it, we must suppose +that he had been found out in spite of himself. We can fancy him at +Herringman's, or elsewhere, sitting as one of a group with Davenant, +Howard, and others, taking snuff and listening, rather than speaking, and +yet, when he did speak, doing so with such judgment as to make his chair +one of the most important in the room, and impress all with the conviction +that he was a solid fellow. He seems also to have taken an interest in the +scientific gossip of the day about magnetism, the circulation of the +blood, and the prospects of the Baconian system of philosophy; and this +may have helped to bring him into contact with men like Boyle, Wren, and +Wallis. At all events, if the Society elected him on trust, he soon +justified their choice by taking his place among the best known members +of what was then the most important class of literary men--the writers for +the stage. His first drama, a lumbering prose-comedy entitled _The Wild +Gallant_, was produced at Killigrew's Theatre in February, 1662-3; and, +though its success was very indifferent, he was not discouraged from a +second venture in a tragi-comedy, entitled _The Rival Ladies_, written +partly in blank verse, partly in heroic rhyme, and produced at the same +theatre. This attempt was more successful; and in 1664 there was produced, +as the joint composition of Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, an attempt in +the style of the regular heroic or rhymed tragedy, called _The Indian +Queen_. The date of this effort of literary co-partnership between Dryden +and his aristocratic friend coincides with the formation of a more +intimate connexion between them, by Dryden's marriage with Sir Robert's +sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard. The marriage (the result, it would seem, of +a visit of the poet, in the company of Sir Robert, to the Earl of +Berkshire's seat in Wilts) took place in November, 1663; so that, when +_The Indian Queen_ was written, the two authors were already +brothers-in-law. The marriage of a man in the poet's circumstances with an +earl's daughter was neither altogether strange nor altogether such as to +preclude remark. The earl was poor, and able to afford his daughter but a +small settlement; and Dryden was a man of sufficiently good family, his +grandfather having been a baronet, and some of his living relations having +landed property in Northamptonshire. The property remaining for the +support of Dryden's brothers and sisters, however, after the subduction of +his own share, had been too scanty to keep them all in their original +station; and some of them had fallen a little lower in the world. One +sister, in particular, had married a tobacconist in London--a connexion +not likely to be agreeable to the Earl of Berkshire and his sons, if they +took the trouble to become cognisant of it. Dryden himself probably moved +conveniently enough between the one relationship and the other. If his +aristocratic brother-in-law, Sir Robert, could write plays with him, his +other brother-in-law, the tobacconist of Newgate-street, may have +administered to his comfort in other ways. It is known that the poet, in +his later life at least, was peculiarly fastidious in the article of +snuff, abhorring all ordinary snuffs, and satisfied only with a mixture +which he prepared himself; and it is not unlikely that the foundation of +this fastidiousness may have been laid in the facilities afforded him +originally in his brother-in-law's shop. The tobacconist's wife, of +course, would be pleased now and then to have a visit from her brother +John; but whether Lady Elizabeth ever went to see her is rather doubtful. +According to all accounts, Dryden's experience of this lady was not such +as to improve his ideas of the matrimonial state, or to give encouragement +to future poets to marry earls' daughters. + +In consequence of the ravages of the Great Plague in 1665 and the +subsequent disaster of the Great Fire in 1666 there was for some time a +total cessation in London of theatrical performances and all other +amusements. Dryden, like most other persons who were not tied to town by +business, spent the greater part of this gloomy period in the country. He +availed himself of the interruption thus given to his dramatic labours to +produce his first writings of any moment out of that field, his _Annus +Mirabilis_ and his _Essay on Dramatic Poesy_. The first, an attempt to +invest with heroic interest, and celebrate in sonorous stanzas, the events +of the famous years 1665-6, including not only the Great Fire, but also +the incidents of a naval war then going on against the Dutch, must have +done more to bring Dryden into the favourable notice of the King, the Duke +of York, and other high personages eulogized in it, than anything he had +yet written. It was, in fact, a kind of short epic on the topics of the +year, such as Dryden might have been expected to write if he had been +already doing laureate's duty; and, unless Sir William Davenant was of +very easy temper, he must have been rather annoyed at so obvious an +invasion of his province, notwithstanding the compliment the poet had +paid him by adopting the stanza of his _Gondibert_, and imitating his +manner. Scarcely less effective in another way must have been the prose +_Essay on Dramatic Poesy_--a vigorous treatise on various matters of +poetry and criticism then much discussed. It contained, among other +things, a defence of the Heroic or Rhymed Tragedy against those who +preferred the older Elizabethan Tragedy of blank verse; and so powerful a +contribution was it to this great controversy of the day that it produced +an immediate sensation in all literary circles. Sir Robert Howard, who now +ranked himself among the partisans of blank verse, took occasion to +express his dissent from some of the opinions expounded in it; and, as +Dryden replied rather tartly, a temporary quarrel ensued between the two +brothers-in-law. + +On the re-opening of the theatres in 1667 Dryden, his reputation increased +by the two performances just mentioned, stepped forward again as a +dramatist. A heroic tragedy called _The Indian Emperor_, which he had +prepared before the recess, and which, indeed, had then been acted, was +reproduced with great success, and established Dryden's position as a +practitioner of heroic and rhymed tragedy. This was followed by a comedy, +in mixed blank verse and prose, called _The Maiden Queen_; this by a +prose-comedy called _Sir Martin Mar-all_; and this again, by an +adaptation, in conjunction with Sir William Davenant, of Shakespeare's +_Tempest_. The two last were produced at Davenant's theatre, whereas all +Dryden's former pieces had been written for Killigrew's, or the King's +company. About this time, however, an arrangement was made which secured +Dryden's services exclusively for Killigrew's house. By the terms of the +agreement, Dryden engaged to supply the house with three plays every year, +in return for which, he was admitted a shareholder in the profits of the +theatre to the extent of one share and a-half. The first fruits of the +bargain were a prose-comedy called _The Mock Astrologer_ and two heroic +tragedies entitled _Tyrannic Love_ and _The Conquest of Granada_, the +latter being in two parts. These were all produced between 1668 and 1670, +and the tragedies, in particular, seem to have taken the town by storm, +and placed Dryden, beyond dispute, at the head of all the heroic +playwrights of the day. + +The extent and nature of Dryden's popularity as a dramatist about this +time may be judged by the following extract from the diary of the +omnipresent Pepys, referring to the first performance of the _Maiden +Queen_:--"After dinner, with my wife to see the _Maiden Queene_, a new +play by Dryden, mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the +strain and wit; and the truth is, the comical part done by Nell [Nell +Gwynn], which is Florimell, that I never can hope to see the like done +again by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so +great a performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world +before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all +when she comes in like a young gallant and hath the motions and carriage +of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, +admire her." But even Nell's performance in this comedy was nothing +compared to one part of her performance afterwards in the tragedy of +_Tyrannic Love_. Probably there was never such a scene of ecstasy in a +theatre as when Nell, after acting the character of a tragic princess in +this play, and killing herself at the close in a grand passage of heroism +and supernatural virtue, had to start up as she was being borne off the +stage dead, and resume her natural character, first addressing her bearer +in these words:-- + + "Hold! are you mad? you d----d confounded dog: + I am to rise and speak the epilogue.", + +and then running to the footlights and beginning her speech to the +audience:-- + + "I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye: + I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly. + Sweet ladies, be not frighted; I'll be civil: + I'm what I was, a little harmless devil." &c. &c. + +It is a tradition that it was this epilogue that effected Nell's conquest +of the king, and that he was so fascinated with her manner of delivering +it, that he went behind the scenes after the play was over and carried her +off. Ah! and it is two hundred years since that fascinating run to the +footlights took place, and the swarthy face of the monarch was seen +laughing, and the audience shrieked and clapped with delight, and Pepys +bustled about the boxes, and Dryden sat looking placidly on, contented +with his success, and wondering how much of it was owing to Nelly! + +One can see how, even if the choice had been made strictly with a +reference to the claims of the candidates, it would have been felt that +Dryden, and not Butler, was the proper man to succeed Davenant in the +laureateship. If Butler had shewn the more original vein of talent in one +peculiar walk, Dryden had proved himself the man of greatest general +strength, in whom were more broadly represented the various literary +tendencies of his time. The author of ten plays, four of which were +stately rhymed tragedies, and the rest comedies in prose and blank verse; +the author, also, of various occasional poems, one of which, the _Annus +Mirabilis_, was noticeable on its own account as the best poem of current +history; the author, moreover, of one express prose-treatise, and of +various shorter prose dissertations in the shape of prefaces and the like +prefixed to his separate plays and poems, in which the principles of +literature were discussed in a manner at once masterly and adapted to the +prevailing taste: Dryden was, on the whole, far more likely to perform +well that part of a laureate's duties which consisted in supervising and +leading the general literature of his age than a man whose reputation, +though justly great, had been acquired by one continuous effort in the +single department of burlesque. Accordingly, Dryden was promoted to the +post, and Butler was left to finish, on his own scanty resources, the +remaining portion of his _Hudibras_, varying the occupation by jotting +down those scraps of cynical thought which were found among his posthumous +papers, and which show that towards the end of his days there were other +things that he hated and would have lashed besides Puritanism. Thus:-- + + "'Tis a strange age we've lived in and a lewd + As e'er the sun in all his travels viewed." + +Again: + + "The greatest saints and sinners have been made + Of proselytes of one another's trade." + +Again: + + "Authority is a disease and cure + Which men can neither want nor well endure." + +And again, with an obvious reference to his own case:-- + + "Dame Fortune, some men's titular, + Takes charge of them without their care, + Does all their drudgery and work, + Like fairies, for them in the dark; + Conducts them blindfold, and advances + The naturals by blinder chances; + While others by desert and wit + Could never make the matter hit, + But still, the better they deserve, + Are but the abler thought to starve." + +Dryden, at the time of his appointment to the laureateship, was in his +fortieth year. This is worth noting, if we would realize his position +among his literary contemporaries. Of those contemporaries there were some +who, as being his seniors, would feel themselves free from all obligations +to pay him respect. To octogenarians like Hobbes and Izaak Walton he was +but a boy; and even from Waller, Milton, Butler, and Marvel, all of whom +lived to see him in the laureate's chair, he could only look for that +approving recognition, totally distinct from reverence, which men of +sixty-five, sixty, and fifty-five, bestow on their full-grown juniors. +Such an amount of recognition he seems to have received from all of them. +Butler, indeed, does not seem to have taken very kindly to him; and it +stands on record, as Milton's opinion of Dryden's powers about this +period, that he thought him "a rhymer but no poet." But Butler, who went +about snarling at most things, and was irreverent enough to think the +Royal Society itself little better than a humbug, was not the man from +whom a laudatory estimate of anybody was to be expected; and, though +Milton's criticism is too precious to be thrown away, and will even be +found on investigation to be not so far amiss, if the moment at which it +was given is duly borne in mind, yet it is, after all, not Milton's +opinion of Dryden's general literary capacity, but only his opinion of +Dryden's claims to be called a poet. Dryden, on his part, to whose charge +any want of veneration for his great literary predecessors cannot be +imputed, and whose faculty of appreciating the most various kinds of +excellence was conspicuously large, would probably have been more grieved +than indignant at this indifference of men like Butler and Milton to his +rising fame. He had an unfeigned admiration for the author of _Hudibras_; +and there was not a man in England who more profoundly revered the poet of +_Paradise Lost_, or more dutifully testified this reverence both by acts +of personal attention and by written expressions of allegiance to him +while he was yet alive. It would have pained Dryden much, we believe, to +know that the great Puritan poet, whom he made it a point of duty to go +and see now and then in his solitude, and of whom he is reported to have +said, on reading the _Paradise Lost_, "This man cuts us all out, and the +ancients too," thought no better of him than that he was a rhymer. But, +however he may have felt himself related to those seniors who were +vanishing from the stage, or whose literary era was in the past, it was in +a conscious spirit of superiority that he confronted the generation of his +coevals and juniors, the natural subjects of his laureateship. If we set +aside such men as Locke and Barrow, belonging more to other departments +than to that of literature proper, there were none of these coevals or +juniors who were entitled to dispute his authority. There was the Duke of +Buckingham, a year or two older than Dryden, at once the greatest wit and +the greatest profligate about Charles's court, but whose attempts in the +comic drama were little more than occasional eccentricities. There were +the Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, both about Dryden's age, and both +cultivated men and respectable versifiers. There was Thomas Sprat, +afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and now chaplain to his grace of +Buckingham, five years younger than Dryden, his fellow-member in the Royal +Society, and with considerable pretensions to literary excellence. There +was the witty rake, Sir Charles Sedley, a man of frolic, like Buckingham, +some seven years Dryden's junior, and the author of at least three +comedies and three tragedies. There was the still more witty rake, Sir +George Etherege, of about the same age, the author of two comedies, +produced between 1660 and 1670, which, for ease and sprightly fluency, +surpassed anything that Dryden had done in the comic style. But "gentle +George," as he was called, was incorrigibly lazy; and it did not seem as +if the public would get anything more from him. In his place had come +another gentleman-writer, young William Wycherley, whose first comedy had +been written before Dryden's laureateship, though it was not acted till +1672, and who was already famous as a wit. Of precisely the same age as +Wycherley, and with a far greater _quantity_ of comic writing in him, +whatever might be thought of the quality, was Thomas Shadwell, whose bulky +body was a perpetual source of jest against him, though he himself vaunted +it as one of his many resemblances to Ben Jonson. The contemporary opinion +of these two last-named comic poets, Wycherley and Shadwell, after they +came to be better known, is expressed in these lines from a poem of +Rochester's:-- + + "Of all our modern wits none seem to me + Once to have touched upon true comedy + But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley. + Shadwell's unfinished works do yet impart + Great proofs of force of Nature, none of Art. + With just bold strokes he dashes here and there, + Showing great mastery with little care; + Scorning to varnish his good touches o'er, + To make the fools and women praise the more. + But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains; + He wants no judgment, and he spares no pains; + He frequently excels, and, at the least, + Makes fewer faults than any of the rest." + +The author of these lines, the notorious Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was +also one of Dryden's literary subjects. He was but twenty-two years of age +when Dryden became laureate; but before ten years of that laureateship +were over he had blazed out, in rapid debauchery, his wretchedly-spent +life. Younger by three years than Rochester, and also destined to a short +life, though more of misery than of crime, was Thomas Otway, of whose six +tragedies and four comedies, all produced during the laureateship of +Dryden, one at least has taken a place in our dramatic literature, and is +read still for its power and pathos. Associated with Otway's name is that +of Nat. Lee, more than Otway's match in fury, and who, after a brief +career as a tragic dramatist and drunkard, became an inmate of Bedlam. +Another writer of tragedy, whose career began with Dryden's laureateship, +was John Crowne, "little starched Johnny Crowne," as Rochester calls him, +but whom so good a judge as Charles Lamb has thought worthy of +commemoration as having written some really fine things. Finally, the list +includes a few Nahum Tates, Elkanah Settles, Tom D'Urfeys, and other small +celebrities, in whose company we may place Aphra Behn, the poetess. + +Doing our best to fancy this cluster of wits and play-writers, in the +midst of which, from his appointment to the laureateship in 1670, at the +age of thirty-nine, to his deposition from that office in 1688, at the age +of fifty-eight, Dryden is historically the principal figure, we can very +well see that not one of them all could wrest the dictatorship from him. +With an income from various sources, including his salary as laureate and +historiographer and his receipts from his engagement with Killigrew's +company, amounting in all to about 600_l._ a-year--which, according to Sir +Walter Scott's computation, means about 1,800_l._ in our value--he had, +during a portion of this time at least, all the means of external +respectability in sufficient abundance. His reputation as the first +dramatic author of the day was already made; and if, as yet, there were +others who had done as well or better as poets out of the dramatic walk, +he more than made up for this by the excellence of his prologues and +epilogues, and by his readiness and power as a prose-critic of general +literature. No one could deny that, though a rather heavy man in private +society, and so slow and silent among the wits of the coffee-house that, +but for the pleasure of seeing his placid face, the deeply indented +leather chair on which he sat would have done as well to represent +literature there as his own presence in it, John Dryden was, all in all, +the first wit of the age. There was not a Buckingham, nor an Etherege, +nor a Shadwell, nor a starched Johnny Crowne, of them all, that singly +would have dared to dispute his supremacy. And yet, as will happen, what +his subjects could not dare to do singly, or ostensibly, some of them +tried to compass by cabal and systematic depreciation on particular +points. In fact, Dryden had to fight pretty hard to maintain his place, +and had to make an example or two of a rebel subject before the rest were +terrified into submission. + +He was first attacked in the very field of his greatest triumphs, the +drama. The attack was partly directed against himself personally, partly +against that style of heroic or rhymed tragedy of which he was the +advocate and representative. There had always been dissenters from this +new fashion; and among these was the Duke of Buckingham, who had a natural +genius for making fun of anything. Assisted, it is said, by his chaplain +Sprat, and by Butler, who had already satirized this style of tragedy by +writing a dialogue in which two cats are made to caterwaul to each other +in heroics, the duke had amused his leisure by preparing a farce in which +heroic plays were held up to ridicule. In the original draft of the farce +Davenant was made the butt under the name of Bilboa; but, after Davenant's +death, the farce was recast, and Dryden substituted under the name of +Bayes. The plot of this famous farce, _The Rehearsal_, is much the same as +that of Sheridan's _Critic_. The poet Bayes invites two friends, Smith +and Johnson, to be present at the rehearsal of a heroic play which he is +on the point of bringing out, and the humour consists in the supposed +representation of this heroic play, while Bayes alternately directs the +actors, and expounds the drift of the play and its beauties to Smith and +Johnson, who all the while are laughing at him, and thinking it monstrous +rubbish. Conceive a farce like this, written with amazing cleverness, and +full of absurdities, produced in the very theatre where the echoes of +Dryden's last sonorous heroics were still lingering, and acted by the same +actors; conceive it interspersed with parodies of well-known passages from +Dryden's plays, and with allusions to characters in those plays; conceive +the actor who played the part of Bayes dressed to look as like Dryden as +possible, instructed by the duke to mimic Dryden's voice, and using +phrases like "i'gad" and "i'fackins," which Dryden was in the habit of +using in familiar conversation; and an idea may be formed of the sensation +made by _The Rehearsal_ in all theatrical circles on its first performance +in the winter of 1671. Its effect, though not immediate, was decisive. +From that time the heroic or rhymed tragedy was felt to be doomed. Dryden, +indeed, did not at once recant his opinion in favour of rhymed tragedies; +but he yielded so far to the sentence pronounced against them as to write +only one more of the kind. + +Though thus driven out of his favourite style of the rhymed tragedy, he +was not driven from the stage. Bound by his agreement with the King's +Company to furnish three plays a-year, he continued to make dramatic +writing his chief occupation; and almost his sole productions during the +first ten years of his laureateship were ten plays. Three of these were +prose-comedies; one, a tragi-comedy, in blank verse and prose; one, an +opera in rhyme; five, tragedies in blank verse; and one, the rhymed +tragedy above referred to. It will be observed that this was at the rate +of only one play a-year, whereas, by his engagement, he was to furnish +three. The fact was that the company were very indulgent to him, and let +him have his full share of the receipts, averaging 300_l._ a-year, in +return for but a third of the stipulated work. Notwithstanding this, we +find them complaining, in 1679, that Dryden had behaved unhandsomely to +them in carrying one of his plays to the other theatre, and so injuring +their interests. As, from that year, none of Dryden's plays were produced +at the King's Theatre, but all at the Duke's, till 1682, when the two +companies were united, it is probable that in that year the bargain made +with Killigrew terminated. It deserves notice, by the way, that the +so-called "opera" was one entitled _The State of Innocence; or, The Fall +of Man_, founded on Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and brought out in 1674-5, +immediately after Milton's death. That this was an equivocal compliment +to Milton's memory Dryden himself lived to acknowledge. He confessed to +Dennis, twenty years afterwards, that at the time when he wrote that opera +"he knew not half the extent of Milton's excellence." A striking proof of +Dryden's veneration for Milton, when we consider how high his admiration +of Milton had been even while Milton was alive! + +Of these dramatic productions of Dryden during the first ten years of his +laureateship some were very carefully written. Thus _Marriage à-la-mode_, +performed in 1672, is esteemed one of his best comedies; and of the rhymed +tragedy, _Aurung-Zebe_, performed in 1675, he himself says in the +Prologue-- + + "What verse can do he has performed in this, + Which he presumes the most correct of his." + +The tragedy of _All for Love_, which followed _Aurung-Zebe_, in 1678, and +in which he falls back on blank verse, is pronounced by many critics to be +the very best of all his dramas; and perhaps none of his plays has been +more read than the _Spanish Friar_, written in 1680. Yet it may be doubted +if in any of these plays Dryden achieved a degree of immediate success +equal to that which had attended his _Tyrannic Love_ and his _Conquest of +Granada_, written before his laureateship. This was not owing so much to +the single blow struck at his fame by Buckingham's _Rehearsal_ as to the +growth of that general spirit of criticism and disaffection which pursues +every author after the public have become sufficiently acquainted with his +style to expect the good, and look rather for the bad, in what he writes. +Thus, we find one critic of the day, Martin Clifford, who was a man of +some note, addressing Dryden, a year or two after his laureateship, in +this polite fashion: "You do live in as much ignorance and darkness as you +did in the womb; your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they +have a variety, but nothing of value; and, if thou art not the dullest +plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with +are strangely mistaken in thee." This onslaught of Mr. Clifford's is +clearly to be regarded as only that gentleman's; but what young Rochester +said and thought about Dryden at this time is more likely to have been +what was said and thought generally by the critical part of the town. + + "Well sir, 'tis granted: I said Dryden's rhymes + Were stolen, unequal--nay, dull, many times. + What foolish patron is there found of his + So blindly partial to deny me this? + But that his plays, embroidered up and down + With wit and learning, justly pleased the town, + In the same paper I as freely own. + Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass + That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass. + + * * * * * + + But, to be just, 'twill to his praise be found + His excellencies more than faults abound; + Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear + The laurel which he best deserves to wear. + + * * * * * + + And may I not have leave impartially + To search and censure Dryden's works, and try + If these gross faults his choice pen doth commit + Proceed from want of judgment or of wit, + Or if his lumpish fancy doth refuse + Spirit and grace to his loose slattern muse?" + +We have no doubt the opinion thus expressed by the scapegrace young earl +was very general. Dryden's own prose disquisitions on the principles of +poetry may have helped to diffuse many of those notions of genuine +poetical merit by which he was now tried. But, undoubtedly, what most of +all tended to expose Dryden's reputation to the perils of criticism was +the increasing number of his dramatic competitors and the evident ability +of some of them. True, most of those competitors were Dryden's personal +friends, and some of the younger of them, as Lee, Shadwell, Crowne, and +Tate, were in the habit of coming to him for prologues and epilogues, with +which to increase the attractions of their plays. On more than one +occasion, too, Dryden clubbed with Lee or Shadwell in the composition of a +dramatic piece. But, though thus on a friendly footing with most of his +contemporary dramatists, and almost in a fatherly relation to some of +them, Dryden found his popularity not the less affected by their +competition. In the department of prose comedy, Etherege, whose last and +best comedy, _Sir Fopling Flutter_, was produced in 1676, and Wycherley, +whose four celebrated comedies were all produced between 1672 and 1677, +had introduced a style compared with which Dryden's best comic attempts +were but heavy horse-play. Even the hulking Shadwell, who dashed off his +comedies as fast as he could write, had a vein of coarse natural humour +which Dryden lacked. It was in vain that Dryden tried to keep his +pre-eminence against these rivals by increased strength of language, +increased intricacy of plot, and an increased use of those indecencies +upon which they all relied so much in their efforts to please. One comedy +in which Dryden, trusting too confidently to this last element of success, +pushed grossness to the utmost conceivable limit, was hissed off the +stage. In tragedy, it is true, his position was more firm. But even in +this department some niches were cut in the body of his fame. His friend +Nat. Lee had produced one or two tragedies displaying a tenderness and a +wild force of passion to which Dryden's more masculine genius could not +pretend; Crowne had also done one or two things of a superior character; +and, though it was not till 1682 that Otway produced his _Venice +Preserved_, he had already given evidence of his mastery of dramatic +pathos. All this Dryden might have seen without allowing himself to be +much disturbed, conscious as he must have been that in general strength he +was still superior to all about him, however they might rival him in +particulars. The deliberate resolution, however, of Rochester and some +other aristocratic leaders of the fashion to make good their criticisms on +his writings, by setting up first one and then another of the dramatists +of the day as patterns of a higher style of art than his, provoked him out +of his composure. To show what he could do, if called upon to defend his +rights against pretenders, he made a terrible example of one poor wretch, +who had been puffed for the moment into undue popularity. This unfortunate +was Elkanah Settle, and the occasion of the attack was a heroic tragedy +written by Settle, acted with great success both on the stage and at +Whitehall, and published with illustrative woodcuts. On this performance +Dryden made a most merciless onslaught in a prose-criticism prefixed to +his next published play, tearing Settle's metaphors and grammar to pieces. +Settle replied with some spirit, but little effect, and was, in fact, +"settled" for ever. Rochester next patronized Crowne and Otway for a time, +but soon gave them up, and contented himself with assailing Dryden more +directly in such lampoons as we have quoted. In the year 1679, however, +suspecting Dryden to have had a share in the authorship of a poem, then +circulating in manuscript, in which certain liberties were taken with his +name, he caused him to be way-laid and beaten as he was going home one +evening through Rose-alley to his house in Gerard-street. The poem, +entitled _An Essay on Satire_, is usually printed among Dryden's works; +but it remains uncertain whether Dryden was really the author. + +It was fortunate for Dryden and for English literature that, just about +this time, when he was beginning to be regarded as a veteran among the +dramatists, whose farther services in that department the town could +afford to spare, circumstances led him, almost without any wish of his +own, into a new path of literature. He was now arrived at the ripe age of +fifty years, and, if an inventory had been made of his writings, they +would have been found to consist of twenty-one dramas, with a series of +critical prose-essays for the most part bound up with these dramas, but +nothing in the nature of non-dramatic poetry, except a few occasional +pieces, of which the _Annus Mirabilis_ was still the chief. Had a +discerning critic examined those works with a view to discover in what +peculiar vein of verse Dryden, if he abandoned the drama, might still do +justice to his powers, he would certainly have selected the vein of +reflective satire. Of the most nervous and emphatic lines that could have +been quoted from his plays a large proportion would have been found to +consist of what may be called _maxim_ metrically expressed; while in his +dramatic prologues and epilogues, which were always thought among the +happiest efforts of his pen, the excellence would have been found to +consist in very much the same power of direct didactic declamation applied +satirically to the humours, manners, and opinions of the day. Whether any +critic, observing all this, would have been bold enough to advise Dryden +to take the hint, and quit the drama for satirical, controversial, and +didactic poetry, we need not inquire. Circumstances compelled what advice +might have failed to bring about. After some twenty years of political +stagnation, or rather of political confusion, relieved only by the +occasional cabals of leading statesmen, and by rumours of Catholic and +Protestant plots, the old Puritan feeling and the general spirit of civil +liberty which the Restoration had but pent up within the vitals of England +broke forth in a regular and organized form as modern English Whiggism. +The controversy had many ramifications; but its immediate phase at that +moment was an antagonism of two parties on the question of the succession +to the crown after Charles should die--the Tories and Catholics +maintaining the rights of the Duke of York as the legal heir, and the +Whigs and Protestants rallying, for want of a better man, round Charles's +illegitimate son, the handsome and popular Duke of Monmouth, then a puppet +in the hands of Shaftesbury, the recognised leader of the Opposition. +Charles himself was forced by reasons of state to take part with his +brother, and to frown on Monmouth; but this did not prevent the lords and +wits of the time from distributing themselves pretty equally between the +two parties, and fighting out the dispute with all the weapons of intrigue +and ridicule. Shadwell, Settle, and some other minor poets, lent their +pens to the Whigs, and wrote squibs and satires in the Whig service. Lee, +Otway, Tate, and others, worked for the Court party. Dryden, as laureate +and Tory, had but one course to take. He plunged into the controversy with +the whole force of his genius; and in November, 1681, when the nation was +waiting for the trial of Shaftesbury, then a prisoner in the Tower, he +published his satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, in which, under the thin +veil of a story of Absalom's rebellion against his father David, the +existing political state of England was represented from the Tory point of +view. Among the characters portrayed in it Dryden had the satisfaction of +introducing his old critic, the Duke of Buckingham, upon whom he now took +ample revenge. + +The satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, than which nothing finer of the +kind had ever appeared in England, and which indeed surpassed all that +could have been expected even from Dryden at that time, was the first of a +series of polemical or satirical poems the composition of which occupied +the last eight years of his laureateship. _The Medal, a Satire against +Sedition_, appeared in March, 1682, as the poet's comment on the popular +enthusiasm occasioned by the acquittal of Shaftesbury; _Mac Flecknoe_, in +which Shadwell, as poet-in-chief of the Whigs, received a thrashing all to +himself, was published in October in the same year; and, a month later, +there appeared the so-called _Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel_, +written by Nahum Tate, under Dryden's superintendence, and with +interpolations from Dryden's pen. In the same avowed character, as +literary champion of the government and the party of the Duke of York, +Dryden continued to labour during the remainder of the reign of Charles. +His _Religio Laici_, indeed, produced early in 1683, and forming a +metrical statement of the grounds and extent of his own attachment to the +Church of England, can hardly have been destined for immediate political +service. But the solitary play which he wrote about this period--a tragedy +called _The Duke of Guise_--was certainly intended for political effect, +as was also a translation from the French of a work on the history of +French Calvinism. + +How ill-requited Dryden was for these services appears but too clearly +from evidence proving that, at this time, he was in great pecuniary +difficulties. At the time when the king's cast-off mistresses were +receiving pensions of 10,000_l._ a-year, and when 130,000_l._ or more was +squandered every year on secret court-purposes, Dryden's salary as +laureate remained unpaid for four years; and when, in consequence of his +repeated solicitations, an order for part-payment of the arrears was at +last issued in May 1684, it was for the miserable pittance of one +quarter's salary, due at midsummer 1680, leaving fifteen quarters, or +750_l._ still in arrears. It appears, however, from a document published +for the first time by Mr. Bell, that an additional pension of 100_l._ +a-year was at this time conferred on Dryden--that pension to date +retrospectively from 1680, and the arrears to be paid, as convenient, +along with the larger arrears of salary. How far Dryden benefited by this +nominal increase of his emoluments from government, or whether any further +portion of the arrears was paid up while Charles continued on the throne, +can hardly be ascertained. Charles died in February, 1684-5, and Dryden, +as in duty bound, wrote his funeral panegyric. In this Pindaric, which is +entitled _Threnodia Augustalis_, the poet seems to hint, as delicately as +the occasion would permit, at the limited extent of his pecuniary +obligations to the deceased monarch. + + "As, when the new-born phoenix takes his way + His rich paternal regions to survey, + Of airy choristers a numerous train + Attends his wondrous progress o'er the plain, + So, rising from his father's urn, + So glorious did our Charles return. + The officious muses came along-- + A gay harmonious choir, like angels ever young; + The muse that mourns him now his happy triumph sung. + Even they could thrive in his auspicious reign; + And such a plenteous crop they bore + Of purest and well-winnowed grain + As Britain never knew before: + Though little was their hire, and light their gain, + Yet somewhat to their share he threw. + Fed from his hand, they sung and flew, + Like birds of Paradise, that lived on morning dew. + Oh, never let their lays his name forget: + The pension of a prince's praise is great." + +If there was any literary man in whose favour James II., on his accession, +might have been expected to relax his parsimonious habits, it was Dryden. +The poet had praised him and made a hero of him for twenty years, and had +during the last four years been working for him incessantly. In +acknowledgment of these services, James could not do otherwise than +continue him in the laureateship; but this was all that he seemed inclined +to do. In the new patent issued for the purpose, not only was there no +renewal of the deceased king's private grant of 100_l._ a-year, but even +the annual butt of sherry, hitherto forming part of the laureate's +allowance, was discontinued, and the salary limited to the precise money +payment of 200_l._ a-year. If, as is probable, the salary was now more +punctually paid than it had been under Charles, the reduction may have +been of less consequence. In March 1685-6, however, James opened his +purse, and, by fresh letters patent, conferred on Dryden a permanent +additional salary of 100_l._ a-year, thus raising the annual income of the +laureateship to 300_l._ The explanation of this unusual piece of +liberality on the part of James has been generally supposed to lie in the +fact that, in the course of the preceding year, Dryden had proved the +thorough and unstinted character of his loyalty by declaring himself a +convert to the king's religion. That Dryden's passing over to the Catholic +church was contemporaneous with the increase of his pension is a fact; but +what may have been the exact relation between the two events is a question +which one ought to be cautious in answering. Lord Macaulay's view of the +case is harsh enough. "Finding," he says, "that, if he continued to call +himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared +himself a Papist. The king's parsimony instantly relaxed Dryden was +gratified with a pension of one hundred pounds a-year, and was employed to +defend his new religion both in prose and verse." Sir Walter Scott's view +is more charitable, and, we believe, more just. He regards Dryden's +conversion as having been, in the main, honest to the extent professed by +himself, though his situation and expectations may have co-operated to +effect it. In support of this view Mr. Bell points out the fact that the +pension granted by James was, after all, only a renewal of a pension +granted by Charles, and which, not being secured by letters patent, had +lapsed on that king's decease. Dryden, it is also to be remarked, remained +sufficiently staunch to his new faith during the rest of his life, and +seems even to have felt a kind of comfort in it. Probably, therefore, the +true state of the case is that conformity to the Catholic religion, at the +time when Dryden embraced it, was the least troublesome mode of +systematizing for his own mind a number of diverse speculations, personal +and political, that were then perplexing him, and that, afterwards, in +consequence of the very obloquy which his change of religion drew upon him +from all quarters, he hugged his new creed more closely, so as to coil +round him, for the first time in his life, a few threads of private +theological conviction. This is not very different from the notion +entertained by Sir Walter Scott, who argues that Dryden's conversion was +not, except in outward profession, a change from Protestant to Catholic +belief, but rather, like that of Gibbon, a choice of Catholicism as the +most convenient resting-place for a mind tired of Pyrrhonism, and disposed +to cut short the process of emancipation from it by taking a decisive step +at once. + +At all events, Dryden showed sufficient polemical energy in the service of +the religion which he had adopted. He became James's literary factotum, +the defender in prose and in verse of the worst measures of his rule; and +he was ready to do battle with Stillingfleet, Burnet, or anyone else that +dared to use a pen on the other side. As if to make the highest display of +his powers as a versifier at a time when his character as a man was +lowest, he published in 1687 his controversial allegory of _The Hind and +the Panther_, by far the largest and most elaborate of his original poems. +In this poem, in which the various churches and sects of the day figure as +beasts--the Church of Rome as a "milk-white hind," innocent and unchanged; +the Church of England as a "panther," spotted, but still beautiful; +Presbyterianism as a haggard ugly "wolf;" Independency as the "bloody +bear;" the Baptists as the "bristled boar;" the Unitarians as the "false +fox;" the Freethinkers as the "buffoon ape;" and the Quakers as the timid +"hare"--Dryden showed that, whatever his new faith had done for him, it +had not changed his genius for satire. In fact, precisely as during +James's reign Dryden appears personally as a solitary giant, warring on +the wrong side, so this poem remains as the sole literary work of any +excellence in which the wretched spirit of that reign is fully +represented. Dryden himself, as if he had thrown all his force into it, +wrote little else in verse till the year 1688, when, on the occasion of +the birth of James's son, afterwards the Pretender, he made himself the +spokesman of the exulting Catholics, and published his _Britannia +Rediviva_. + + "See how the venerable infant lies + In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes + The father's soul, with an undaunted view, + Looks out, and takes our homage as his due. + See on his future subjects how he smiles, + Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles; + But with an open face, as on his throne, + Assures our birthrights, and secures his own." + +Within a few months after these lines were written, the father, the +mother, and the baby, were out of England, Dutch William was king, and the +Whigs had it all to themselves. Dryden, of course, had to give up the +laureateship; and, as William had but a small choice of poets, Shadwell +was put in his place. + +The concluding period of Dryden's career, extending from the Revolution to +his death in 1701, exhibits him as a Tory patriarch lingering in the midst +of a Whig generation, and still, despite the change of dynasty, retaining +his literary pre-eminence. For a while, of course, he was under a cloud; +but after it had passed away he was at liberty to make his own terms with +the public. The country could have no literature except what he and such +as he chose to furnish. Locke, Sir William Temple, and others, indeed, +were now in a position to bring forward speculations smothered during the +previous reigns, and to scatter seeds that might spring up in new +literary forms. Burnet, Tillotson, and others might represent Whiggism in +the Church. But all the especially literary men whose services were +available at the beginning of the new reign were men who, whatever might +be their voluntary relations to the new order of things, had been more or +less trained in the school of the Restoration, and accustomed to the +supremacy of Dryden. The Earl of Rochester, the Earl of Roscommon, the +Duke of Buckingham, Etherege, and poor Otway, were dead; but Shadwell, +Settle, Lee, Crowne, Tate, Wycherley, the Earl of Dorset, Tom D'Urfey, and +Sir Charles Sedley, were still alive. Shadwell, coarse and fat as ever, +enjoyed the laureateship till his death in 1692, when Nahum Tate was +appointed to succeed him. Settle had degenerated in the City showman. Lee, +liberated from Bedlam, continued to write tragedies till April 1692, when +he tumbled over a bulk going home drunk at night through Clare Market, and +was killed or stifled among the snow. "Little starched Johnny Crowne" kept +up the respectability of his character. Wycherley lived as a man of +fashion about town, and wrote no more. Sedley and the Earl of Dorset were +also idle; and Tom D'Urfey made small witticisms, and called them "pills +to purge melancholy." Among such men Dryden, so long as he cared to be +seen among them, held necessarily his old place. Nor were there any of +the younger men, as yet known, in whom the critics recognised, or who +recognised in themselves, any title to renounce allegiance to the +ex-laureate. Thomas Southerne had begun his prolific career as a dramatist +in 1682, when Dryden furnished him with a prologue to his first play; but, +though after the Revolution he made more money by his dramas than ever +Dryden had made by his, he was ashamed to admit the fact to Dryden +himself. Matthew Prior, twenty-four years of age at the Revolution, had +made his first literary appearance before it, in no less important a +character than that of one of Dryden's political antagonists; but, though +_The Town and Country Mouse_ had been a decided hit, and Dryden himself +was said to have winced under it, no one pretended that the author was +anything more than a clever young man who had sat in Dryden's company and +turned his opportunities to account. Five years after the Revolution, +Congreve produced his first comedy at the age of twenty-four; but it was +Congreve's greatest boast in after life that that comedy had won him the +warm praises of Dryden, and laid the foundation of the extraordinary +friendship which subsisted between them during Dryden's last years, when +they used to walk together and dine together as father and son. During +these last years Dryden, had he been willing to see merit in any other +comedies than those of his young friend Congreve, might have hailed his +equal in Vanbrugh, and his superior in Farquhar, then beginning to write +for the stage. Among their coevals, destined to some distinction, he might +have marked Colley Cibber, Nicholas Rowe, and John Philips, the pleasing +parodist of Milton. Of the epics of Blackmore he had quite enough, at +least three of those performances having been given to the world before +Dryden died. At the time of Dryden's death his kinsman, Jonathan Swift, +was thirty-three years of age; Richard Steele was thirty; Daniel Defoe was +thirty; Addison was twenty-nine; Shaftesbury, the essayist, was +twenty-nine; Bolingbroke was twenty-two; and Parnell, the poet, +twenty-one. With these men a new literary movement was to take its origin; +but they had hardly yet begun their work; and there was not one of them, +Swift excepted, that would not, in the height of his subsequent fame, have +been proud to acknowledge his obligations to Dryden. Alexander Pope, the +next Englishman that was to take a place in general literature as high as +that occupied by Dryden, had been born only in the year of the Revolution, +and was consequently but a precocious boy of thirteen when Dryden left the +scene. _Virgilium tantum vidit_, as he used himself to say. + +Living, a hale patriarch, among these newer men, Dryden partly influenced +them, and was partly influenced by them. On the one hand, it was from his +chair in Will's Coffee-house that those literary decrees were issued +which still ruled the judgment of the town; and for a young author, on +visiting Will's, to receive a pinch from Dryden's snuff-box was equivalent +to his formal admission into that society of wits. On the other hand, the +times were so changed and the men were so changed that Dryden, dictator +though he was, had to yield in some points, and defend himself in others. +His cousin Swift, whom he had offended by an unfavourable judgment given +in private on some of his poems, was the only man who would have made a +general attack upon his literary reputation; but the moral character of +his writings was a subject on which adverse criticism was likely to be +more general. At first, indeed, there was little perceptible improvement +in the moral tone of the literature of the Revolution, as compared with +that of the Restoration--the elder dramatists, such as Shadwell, still +writing in the fashion to which they had been accustomed, and the younger +ones, such as Congreve and Vanbrugh, deeming it a point of honour to be as +immoral as their predecessors. In the course of a few years, however, what +with the influence of a Whig court, what with other causes, a more +delicate taste crept in, and people became ashamed of what their fathers +had delighted in. Dryden lived to see the beginnings of this important +change, and, with many expressions of regret for his own past +delinquencies in this respect, to welcome the appearance of a purer +literature. + +Those of Dryden's writings which were produced during the twelve years of +his life subsequent to the Revolution constitute an important part of his +literary remains, not merely in point of bulk, but also in respect of a +certain general peculiarity of their character. They may be described as +for the most part belonging to the department of pure, as distinct from +that of controversial, literature. Dryden did not indeed wholly abandon +satire and controversy after the Revolution; but his aim after that period +seemed rather to be to produce such literature as would at once be +acceptable to the public and earn for himself most money with the least +trouble. Deprived of his laureateship, and so rendered almost entirely +dependent on his pen at a time when age was creeping upon him and the +expenses of his family were greater than ever, he was obliged to make +considerations of economy paramount in his choice of work. As was natural, +he fell back at first on the drama; and his five last plays, two of which +are tragedies, one an opera, and two comedies, were all produced between +1689 and 1694. The profits of these dramas, however, were insufficient; +and he was obliged to eke them out by all those devices of dedication to +private noblemen, execution of literary commissions for elegiac poems, and +the like, which then formed part of the professional author's means of +livelihood. Sums of 50_l._, 100_l._, and even, in one or two cases, +500_l._, were earned by Dryden in this disagreeable way from earls, +squires, and clubs of gentlemen. His poem of _Eleonora_ was a 500_l._ +commission, executed for the Earl of Abingdon, who wanted a poem in memory +of his deceased wife, and, without knowing anything of Dryden personally, +applied to him to write it, just as now, in a similar case, a commission +might be given to a popular sculptor for a _post mortem_ statue. In spite +of the utmost allowance for the custom of the time, no one knowing the +circumstances, can read the poem now, without disgust; and it does show a +certain lowness of mind in Dryden to have been able, under any pressure of +necessity, to write for hire such extravagances as that poem contains +respecting a person he had never seen. Far more honourable were Dryden's +earnings by work done for Jacob Tonson, the publisher. His dealings with +Tonson had begun before the Revolution; but after the Revolution Tonson +was his mainstay. First came several volumes of miscellanies, consisting +of select poems, published and unpublished, with scraps of prose and +translation. Then, catching at the hint furnished by the success of some +of the scraps of translation from the Latin and Greek poets, Dryden and +Tonson found it mutually advantageous to prosecute that vein. Juvenal and +Persius were translated under Dryden's care; and in 1697, after three +years of labour, he gave to the world his completed translation of +_Virgil_. Looking about for a task to succeed this, he undertook to +furnish Tonson with so many thousands of lines of narrative verse, to be +published under the title of _Fables_. Where the fables came from Tonson +did not care, provided they would sell; and Dryden, with his rapid powers +of versification, soon produced versions of some tales of Chaucer and +Boccaccio which answered the purpose exceedingly well. They were printed +in 1699. Of the other poems written by Dryden in his last years his +_Alexander's Feast_ is the most celebrated. He continued his literary +labours till within a few days of his death, which happened on the 1st of +May, 1701. + +When we inquire what it is that makes Dryden's name so important as to +entitle it to rank, as it seems to do, the fifth in the series of great +English poets after Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, we find +that it is nothing else than the fact, brought out in the preceding +sketch, that, steadily and industriously, for a period of forty-two years, +he kept in the front of the national literature, such as it then was. It +is because he represents the entire literary development of the +Restoration--it is because he fills up the whole interval between 1658 and +1701, thus connecting the age of Puritanism and Milton with the age of the +Queen Anne wits--that we give him such a place in such a list. The reason +is a chronological one, rather than one of strict comparison of personal +merits. Though we place Dryden fifth in the list, after Chaucer, Spenser, +Shakespeare, and Milton, it is not necessarily because we regard him as +the co-equal of those men in genius; it is only because, passing onward in +time, we find his the next name of very distinguished magnitude after +theirs. Personally there is no one that would compare Dryden with +Shakespeare or Milton; and there are not many now that would compare him +with Chaucer or Spenser. On the whole, if the estimate is one of general +intellectual strength, he takes rank only with the first of the second +class, as with the Jonsons, the Fletchers, and others of the Elizabethan +age; while, if the estimate have regard to genuine poetic or imaginative +power, he sinks below even these. Yet, if historical reasons only are +regarded, Dryden has perhaps a better right to his place in the list than +any of the others. At least as strictly as Chaucer is the representative +of the English literature of the latter half of the fourteenth century, +far more strictly than Spenser and Shakespeare are the representatives of +the literature of their times, and in a more broad and obvious manner than +Milton is the literary representative of the Commonwealth, Dryden +represents the literary activity of the reigns of Charles II. and James +II., and of the greater part of that of William III. Davenant, Butler, +Waller, Etherege, Otway, Wycherley, Southerne, Prior, and Congreve, are +names leading us over the same period, and illustrating perhaps more +exquisitely than Dryden some of its individual characteristics; but for a +solid representative of the period as a whole, resuming in himself all +its more prominent characteristics in one substantial aggregate, we are +obliged to take Dryden. Twelve years of his literary life he laboured as a +strong junior among the Davenants, the Butlers, and the Wallers, +qualifying himself to set them aside; eighteen years more were spent in +acknowledged lordship over the Ethereges, Otways, and Wycherleys, who +occupied the middle of the period; and during the twelve concluding years +he was a patriarch among the Southernes, and Priors, and Congreves, in +whose lives the period wove itself into the next. + +And yet, personally as well as historically, Dryden is a man of no mean +importance. Not only is he the largest figure in one era of our +literature; he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a +whole. To begin with the most obvious, but at the same time not the least +noteworthy, of his claims, the _quantity_ of his contributions to our +literature was large. He was a various and voluminous writer. In Scott's +collected edition of his works they fill seventeen octavo volumes. About +seven of these volumes consist of dramas, with accompanying prefaces and +dedications, the number of dramas being in all twenty-eight. Two volumes +more embrace the polemical poems, the satires, and the poems of +contemporary historical allusion, written chiefly between 1681 and 1683. +One volume is filled with odes, songs, and lyrical pieces, written at +various times. The Fables, or Metrical Tales, redacted in his old age from +Chaucer and Boccaccio, occupy a volume and a half. Three volumes and a +half are devoted to the translations from the classic poets, including the +Translation of Virgil. The remaining two volumes consist of miscellaneous +prologues, epilogues, and witty pieces of verse, and of miscellaneous +prose-writings, original and translated, including the critical Essay on +Dramatic Poetry. Considered as a whole, the matter of the seventeen +volumes is a goodly contribution from one man as respects both extent and +variety. Spread over forty-two years, it does not argue that excessive +industry which Scott, of all men in the world, has found in it; but it +fairly entitles Dryden to take his place among those writers who deserve +regard for the quantity of their writings, in addition to whatever regard +they may be entitled to on the score, of quality. And it is a fact worth +noting, and remarked by Scott more than once, that most writers who have +taken a high place in literature have been voluminous--have not only +written well, but also written much. Moreover there are two ways of +writing much. One may write much and variously, or one may write much all +of one kind. Dryden was various as well as voluminous. + +Of all that Dryden wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small +portion that has won for itself a permanent place in our literature; and +in this he differs from other writers that have been equally voluminous. +It is indeed a significant fact about Dryden that the proportion of that +part of his matter which survives, or deserves to survive, to that part +which was squandered away on the age it was first written for, and there +ended, is unusually small. In Shakespeare there is very little that is +felt to be of such inferior quality as not to be worth reading in due time +and place. In Milton there is, if we consider only his poetry, still less. +All Chaucer, almost, is felt to be worth preservation by those who like +Chaucer; all Wordsworth, almost, by those who like Wordsworth. But, except +for library purposes, there is no admirer of Dryden that would care to +save more than a small select portion of what he wrote. His satires and +polemical poems; one or two of his odes; his Translation of Virgil; his +fables; one of his comedies, and one of his tragedies, by way of specimen +of his dramatic powers; a complete set of his prologues, for the sake of +their allusions to contemporary manners and humours; and a few pieces of +his prose, to show his style of criticism:--these would together form a +collection not much more than a fourth part of the whole, and which would +require to be yet farther winnowed, were the purpose to leave only what is +sterling and in Dryden's best manner. Mr. Bell's edition, which comprise +in three volumes all Dryden's original non-dramatic poetry, and the best +collection of his prologues and epilogues yet made, is itself a surfeit of +matter. It is such an edition of Dryden as ought to be included in a +series of the English poets intended to be complete; but even in it there +is more of dross than of ore. + +What is the reason of this? How is it that in Dryden the proportion of +what is now rubbish to what is still precious as a literary possession is +so much greater than in most other writers of great celebrity? There are +two reasons for it. The first is, that originally, and in its own nature, +much of the matter that Dryden put forth was not of a kind for which his +genius was fitted. Whatever his own imagination constructed on the large +scale was mean and conventional. Wherever, as in his translations of +Virgil and his imitations of Chaucer and Boccaccio, he employed his powers +of language and verse in refurbishing matter invented by others, the +poetical substance of his writings is valuable; but the sheer produce of +his own imagination, as in his dramas, is in general such stuff as nature +disowns and no creature can take pleasure in. There is no fine power of +dramatic story, no exquisite invention of character or circumstance, no +truth to nature in ideal landscape: at the utmost, there is conventional +dramatic situation, with an occasional flash of splendid imagery such as +may be struck out in the heat of heroic declamation. Thus-- + + "I am as free as Nature first made man, + Ere the base laws of servitude began, + When wild in woods the noble savage ran." + +Dryden's natural powers, as all his critics have remarked, lay not so much +in the imaginative as in the didactic, the declamatory, and the +ratiocinative. What Johnson claims for him, and what seems to have been +claimed for him in his own lifetime, was the credit of being one of the +best reasoners in verse that ever wrote. Lord Macaulay means very much the +same thing when he calls Dryden a great "critical poet," and the founder +of the "critical school of English poetry." Probably Milton meant +something of the kind when he said that Dryden was a rhymer, but no poet. +It was in declamatory and didactic rhyme, with all that could consist with +it, that Dryden excelled. It was in the metrical utterance of weighty +sentences, in the metrical conduct of an argument, in vehement satirical +invective, and in such passages of lyric passion as depended for their +effect on rolling grandeur of sound, that he was pre-eminently great. Even +his imagination worked more powerfully, and his perceptions of physical +circumstance became keener and truer, under the influence of polemical +rage, the pursuit of terse maxim, or the passion for sonorous declamation. +Thus-- + + "And every shekel which he can receive + Shall cost a limb of his prerogative." + +Or, in his character of Shaftesbury,-- + + "Of these the false Achitophel was first: + A name to all succeeding ages curst; + For close designs and crooked counsels fit; + Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; + Restless, unfixed in principles and place; + In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; + A fiery soul, which, working out its way, + Fretted the pigmy body to decay, + And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. + A daring pilot in extremity, + Pleased with the danger when the waves went high, + He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, + Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. + Great wits are sure to madness near allied, + And thin partitions do their bounds divide." + +Or, in the lines which he sent to Tonson the publisher as a specimen of +what he could do in the way of portrait-painting if Tonson did not send +him supplies-- + + "With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, + With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair, + And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air." + +And, again, in almost every passage in the noble ode on Alexander's Feast, +_e.g._-- + + "With ravished ears + The monarch hears; + Assumes the god, + Affects to nod, + And seems to shake the spheres." + +In satire, in critical disquisition, in aphoristic verse, or in lyrical +grandiloquence, Dryden was in his natural element; and one reason why, of +all the matter of his voluminous works, so small a portion is of permanent +literary value, is that, in his attempts after literary variety, he could +not or would not restrict himself within these proper limits of his +genius. + +But, besides this, Dryden was a slovenly worker within his own field. Even +of what he could do best he did little continuously in a thoroughly +careful manner. In his best poem there are not twenty consecutive lines +without some logical incoherence, some confusion of metaphor, some +inaccuracy of language, or some evident strain of the meaning for the sake +of the metre. His strength lies in passages and weighty interspersed +lines, not in whole poems. Even in Dryden's lifetime this complaint was +made. It was hinted at in _The Rehearsal_; Rochester speaks of Dryden's +"slattern muse;" and Blackmore, who criticised Dryden in his old age, +expresses the common opinion distinctly and deliberately-- + + "Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes, + What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! + How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay + And wicked mixture shall be purged away! + When once his boasted heaps are melted down, + A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown; + But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear + The examination of the moot severe." + +This is true, though it was Blackmore who said it. Dryden's slovenliness, +however, consisted not so much in a disposition to spare pains as in a +constitutional robustness which rendered artistic perfection all but +impossible to him even when he laboured hardest to attain it. One's notion +of Dryden is that he was originally a _robust_ man, who, when he first +engaged in poetry, could produce nothing better than strong stanzas of +rather wooden sound and mechanism, but who, by perseverance and continual +work, drilled his genius into higher susceptibility and a conscious +aptitude and mastery in certain directions, so that, the older he grew, he +became mellower, more musical, and more imaginative, what had been +robustness at first having by long practice been subdued into flexibility +and nerve. It is stated of Dryden that, in his earlier life at least, he +used, as a preparation for writing, to induce on himself an artificial +state of languor by taking medicine or letting blood. The trait is +characteristic. Dryden's whole literary career was a metaphor of it. Had +he died before 1670, or even before 1681, when his _Annus Mirabilis_ was +still his most ambitious production, he would have been remembered as +little more than a robust versifier; but, living as he did till 1701, he +performed work which has entitled him to rank among English poets. As a +contributor to the actual body of our literature, and as a man who +produced by his influence a lasting effect on its literary methods, +Dryden's place is certainly high. + + + + +DEAN SWIFT. + + + + +DEAN SWIFT.[7] + + +In dividing the history of English literature into periods it is customary +to take the interval between the year 1688 and the year 1727 as +constituting one of those periods. This interval includes the reigns of +William III., Anne, and George I. If we do not bind ourselves too +precisely to the year 1727 as closing the period, the division is proper +enough. There _are_ characteristics about the time thus marked out which +distinguish it from previous and from subsequent portions of our literary +history. Dryden, Locke, and some other notabilities of the Restoration, +lived into this period, and may be regarded as partly belonging to it; but +the names more peculiarly representing it are those of Swift, Burnet, +Addison, Steele, Pope, Shaftesbury, Gay, Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Prior, +Parnell, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Rowe, Defoe, and +Cibber. The names in this cluster disperse themselves over the three +reigns which the period includes, some of them having already been known +as early as the accession of William, while others survived the first +George and continued to add to their celebrity during the reign of his +successor; but the most brilliant portion of the period was from 1702 to +1714, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Hence the name of "Wits of Queen +Anne's reign," commonly applied to the writers of the whole period. + +A while ago this used to be spoken of as the Golden or Augustan age of +English literature. We do not talk in that manner now. We feel that when +we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George +we are among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among +giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have +an immediate sensation of having left the region of "greatness" behind us. +We still find plenty of good writing, characterized by certain qualities +of trimness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before +attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and +strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole, +there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be +called "great." It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative +faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigour of speculative capacity, as +principally concerned in imparting the character of "greatness" to +literature. What of genius in the ideal survived the seventeenth century +in England contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and +circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral +quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy; and speculation did not +go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary +good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the +time of Milton than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind +of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and +his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armour of the old +literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope's days even the +affectation of the "great" had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem +of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth +tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to +prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly +and courageously to throw one's whole soul into a work of moral agitation +and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the +contrary, he was a wit, or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the +social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth in the easiest +manner little essays, squibs, and _jeux d'esprit_, pertinent to the rapid +occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much. +This was the time when that great distinction between Whiggism and +Toryism which for a century-and-a-half has existed in Great Britain as a +kind of permanent social condition, affecting the intellectual activity of +all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically +operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of +England to have had this necessity of being either a Whig or a Tory put so +prominently before it. Perhaps, in all times, some similar necessity of +taking one side or the other in some current form of controversy has +afflicted the leading minds, and tormented the more genial among them; but +we question if ever in this country in previous times there was a form of +controversy, so little to be identified, in real reason, with the one only +true controversy between good and evil, and so capable, therefore, of +breeding confusion and mischief, when so identified in practice, as this +poor controversy of Whig and Tory which came in with the Revolution. To be +called upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier--there was some +possibility of complying with _that_ call and still leading a tolerably +free and large intellectual life; though possibly it was one, cause of the +rich mental development of the Elizabethan era that the men of that time +were exempt from any personal obligation of attending even to this +distinction. But to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory--why, how +on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about him if society +is to hold him by the neck between two chairs such as these, pointing +alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on +which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard +adhesiveness to one or other of these chairs as the first rule of duty or +of prudence what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if +any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule? +Now-a-days, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both chairs +down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to +sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly it is that, in +recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the "great" or "sublime" in +literature--the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a +Tennyson. But in the interval between 1688 and 1727 there was not one wit +alive whom society let off from the necessity of being, and declaring +himself to be, either a Whig or a Tory. Constitutionally, and by +circumstances, Pope was the man who could have most easily obtained the +exemption; but even Pope professed himself a Tory. Addison and Steele were +Whigs. In short, every literary man was bound, by the strongest of all +motives, to keep in view, as a permanent fact qualifying his literary +undertakings, the distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, and to give to +at least a considerable part of his writings the character of pamphlets or +essays in the service of his party. To minister by the pen to the +occasions of Whiggism and Toryism was, therefore, the main business of the +wits both in prose and verse. Out of those occasions of ministration there +of course arose personal quarrels, and these furnished fresh opportunities +to the men of letters. Critics of previous writings could be satirized and +lampooned, and thus the circle of subjects was widened. Moreover, there +was abundant matter, capable of being treated consistently with either +Whiggism or Toryism, in the social foibles and peculiarities of the day, +as we see in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Nor could a genial mind +like that of Steele, a man of taste and fine thought like Addison, and an +intellect so keen, exquisite, and sensitive as that of Pope, fail to +variegate and surround all the duller and harder literature thus called +into being with more lasting touches of the humorous, the fanciful, the +sweet, the impassioned, the meditative, and the ideal. Thus from one was +obtained the character of a _Sir Roger de Coverley_, from another a +_Vision of Mirza_, and from the third a _Windsor Forest_, an _Epistle of +Héloïse_, and much else that delights us still. After all, however, it +remains true that the period of English literature now in question, +whatever admirable characteristics it may possess, exhibits a remarkable +deficiency of what, with recollections of former periods to guide us in +our use of epithets, we should call great or sublime. + +With the single exception of Pope, and that exception made from deference +to the peculiar position of Pope as the poet or metrical artist of his +day, the greatest name in the history of English literature during the +early part of last century is that of Swift. In certain fine and deep +qualities, Addison and Steele, and perhaps Farquhar, excelled him, just as +in the succeeding generation Goldsmith had a finer vein of genius than was +to be found in Johnson with all his massiveness; but in natural brawn and +strength, in original energy, force, and imperiousness of brain, he +excelled them all. It was about the year 1702, when he was already +thirty-five years of age, that this strangest specimen of an Irishman, or +of an Englishman born in Ireland, first attracted attention in London +literary circles. The scene of his first appearance was Button's +coffee-house: the witnesses were Addison, Ambrose Philips, and other wits +belonging to Addison's little senate, who used to assemble there. + + "They had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman + come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any + of those who frequented it, and whose custom it was to lay his hat + down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for + half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming + in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He + then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away + without opening his lips. After having observed this singular + behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; + and the name that he went by among them was that of 'the mad parson.' + This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one + evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him + cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be + just come out of the country, and at last advance towards him as + intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb + mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get + near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very + abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, 'Pray, sir, do + you remember any good weather in the world?' The country gentleman, + after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the + oddity of the question, answered 'Yes, sir, I thank God I remember a + great deal of good weather in my time.' 'That is more,' said Swift, + 'than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or + too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, + at the end of the year 'tis all very well.' Upon saying this, he took + up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least + notice of anyone, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those + who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and + still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad."--_Dr. + Sheridan's Life of Swift, quoted in Scott's Life._ + +If the company present had had sufficient means of information, they would +have found that the mad parson with the harsh, swarthy features, and eyes +"azure as the heavens," whose oddities thus amused them, was Jonathan +Swift, then clergyman of Laracor, a rural parish in the diocese of Meath +in Ireland. They would have found that he was an Irishman by birth, though +of pure English descent; that he could trace a relationship to Dryden; +that, having been born after his father's death, he had been educated, at +the expense of his relatives, at Trinity College, Dublin; that, leaving +Ireland in his twenty-second year, with but a sorry character from the +College authorities, he had been received as a humble dependent into the +family of Sir William Temple, at Sheen and Moorpark, near London, that +courtly Whig and ex-ambassador being distantly connected with his mother's +family; that here, while acting as Sir William's secretary, amanuensis, +librarian, and what not, he had begun to write verses and other trifles, +some of which he had shown to Dryden, who had told him in reply that they +were sad stuff, and that he would never be a poet; that still, being of a +restless, ambitious temper, he had not given up hopes of obtaining +introduction into public employment in England through Sir William +Temple's influence; that, at length, at the age of twenty-eight, +despairing of anything better, he had quarrelled with Sir William, +returned to Ireland, taken priest's orders, and settled in a living; and +that again, disgusted with Ireland and his prospects in that country, he +had come back to Moorpark, and resided there till 1699, when Sir +William's death had obliged him finally to return to Ireland, and accept +first a chaplaincy to Lord Justice Berkeley, and then his present living +in the diocese of Meath. If curious about the personal habits of this +restless Irish parson, they might have found that he had already won the +reputation of an eccentric in his own parish and district: performing his +parochial duties when at home with scrupulous care, yet by his language +and manners often shocking all ideas of clerical decorum and begetting a +doubt as to his sincerity in the religion he professed; boisterous, +fierce, overbearing, and insulting to all about him, yet often doing acts +of real kindness; exact and economical in his management of his income to +the verge of actual parsimony, yet sometimes spending money freely, and +never without pensioners living on his bounty. They would have found that +he was habitually irritable, and that he was subject to a recurring +giddiness of the head, or vertigo, which he had brought on, as he thought +himself, by a surfeit of fruit while he was staying with Sir William +Temple at Sheen. And, what might have been the best bit of gossip of all, +they would have found that, though unmarried, and entertaining a most +unaccountable and violent aversion to the very idea of marriage, he had +taken over to reside with him, or close to his neighbourhood, in Ireland, +a certain young and beautiful girl, named Hester Johnson, with whom he had +formed an acquaintance in Sir William Temple's house, where she had been +brought up, and where, though she passed as a daughter of Sir William's +steward, she was believed to be, in reality, a natural daughter of Sir +William himself. They would have found that his relations to this girl, +whom he had himself educated from her childhood at Sheen and Moorpark, +were of a very singular and puzzling kind; that on the one hand she was +devotedly attached to him, and on the other he cherished a passionate +affection for her, wrote and spoke of her as his "Stella," and liked +always to have her near him; yet that a marriage between them seemed not +to be thought of by either; and that, in order to have her near him +without giving rise to scandal, he had taken the precaution to bring over +an elderly maiden lady, called Mrs. Dingley, to reside with her as a +companion, and was most careful to be in her society only when this Mrs. +Dingley was present. + +There was mystery and romance enough, therefore, about the wild, +black-browed Irish parson, who attracted the regards of the wits in +Button's coffee-house. What had brought him there? That was partly a +mystery too; but the mystery would have been pretty well solved if it had +been known that, uncouth-looking clerical lout as he was, he was an author +like the rest of them, having just written a political pamphlet which was +making or was to make a good deal of noise in the world, and having at +that moment in his pocket at least one other piece which he was about to +publish. The political pamphlet was an _Essay on the Civil Discords in +Athens and Rome_, having an obvious bearing on certain dissensions then +threatening to break up the Whig party in Great Britain. It was received +as a vigorous piece of writing on the ministerial side, and was ascribed +by some to Lord Somers, and by others to Burnet. Swift had come over to +claim it, and to see what it and his former connexion with Temple could do +for him among the leading Whigs. For the truth was, an ambition equal to +his consciousness of power gnawed at the heart of this furious and gifted +man, whom a perverse fate had flung away into an obscure vicarage on the +wrong side of the channel. His books, his garden, his canal with its +willows at Laracor; his dearly-beloved Roger Coxe, and the other perplexed +and admiring parishioners of Laracor over whom he domineered; his clerical +colleagues in the neighbourhood; and even the society of Stella, the +wittiest and best of her sex, whom he loved better than any other creature +on earth: all these were insufficient to occupy the craving void in his +mind. He hated Ireland, and regarded his lot there as one of banishment; +he longed to be in London, and struggling in the centre of whatever was +going on. About the date of his appointment to the living of Laracor he +had lost the rich deanery of Derry, which Lord Berkeley had meant to give +him, in consequence of a notion on the part of the bishop of the diocese +that he was a restless, ingenious young man, who, instead of residing, +would be "eternally flying backwards and forwards to London." The bishop's +perception of his character was just. At or about the very time when the +wits at Button's saw him stalking up and down in the coffee-house, the +priest of Laracor was introducing himself to Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, +and others, and stating the terms on which he would support the Whigs with +his pen. Even then, it seems, he took high ground, and let it be known +that he was no mere hireling. The following, written at a much later +period, is his own explanation of the nature and limits of his Whiggism at +the time when he first offered the Whigs his services:-- + + "It was then (1701-2) I began to trouble myself with the differences + between the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed + myself in other, and, I think, much better speculations. I talked + often upon this subject with Lord Somers; told him that, having been + long conversant with the Greek and Latin authors, and therefore a + lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be what they call a + Whig in politics; and that, besides, I thought it impossible, upon + any other principles, to defend or submit to the Revolution; but, as + to religion, I confessed myself to be a High-Churchman, and that I + could not conceive how anyone who wore the habit of a clergyman could + be otherwise; that I had observed very well with what insolence and + haughtiness some lords of the High-Church party treated not only + their own chaplains, but all other clergymen whatsoever, and thought + this was sufficiently recompensed by their professions of zeal to the + Church: that I had likewise observed how the Whig lords took a direct + contrary measure, treated the persons of particular clergymen with + particular courtesy, but showed much contempt and ill-will for the + order in general: that I knew it was necessary for their party to + make their bottom as wide as they could, by taking all denominations + of Protestants to be members of their body: that I would not enter + into the mutual reproaches made by the violent men on either side; + but that the connivance or encouragement given by the Whigs to those + writers of pamphlets who reflected upon the whole body of the clergy, + without any exception, would unite the Church to one man to oppose + them; and that I doubted his lordship's friends did not consider the + consequences of this." + +Even with these limitations the assistance of so energetic a man as the +parson of Laracor was doubtless welcome to the Whigs. His former connexion +with the stately old Revolution Whig, Sir William Temple, may have +prepared the way for him, as it had already been the means of making him +known in some aristocratic families. But there was evidence in his +personal bearing and his writings that he was not a man to be neglected. +And, if there had been any doubt on the subject on his first presentation +of himself to ministers, the publication of his _Battle of the Books_ and +his _Tale of a Tub_ in 1703 and 1704 would have set it overwhelmingly at +rest. The author of these works (and, though they were anonymous, they +were at once referred to Swift) could not but be acknowledged as the first +prose satirist, and one of the most formidable writers, of the age. On his +subsequent visits to Button's, therefore (and they were frequent enough; +for, as the Bishop of Derry had foreseen, he was often an absentee from +his parish), the mad Irish parson was no longer a stranger to the company. +Addison, Steele, Tickell, Philips, and the other Whig wits came to know +him well, and to feel his weight among them in their daily convivial +meetings. "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest +friend, and the greatest genius of the age" was the inscription written by +Addison on a copy of his Travels presented to Swift; and it shows what +opinion Addison and those about him had formed of the author of the _Tale +of a Tub_. + +Thus, passing and repassing between Laracor and London, now lording it +over his Irish parishioners, and now filling the literary and Whig haunts +of the great metropolis with the terror of his merciless wit and with talk +behind his back of his eccentricities and rude manners, Swift spent the +interval between 1702 and 1710, or between his thirty-sixth and his +forty-fourth year. His position as a High-Church Whig, however, was an +anomalous one. In the first place, it was difficult to see how such a man +could honestly be in the Church at all. People were by no means strict in +those days in their notions of the clerical character; but the _Tale of a +Tub_ was a strong dose even then to have come from a clergyman. If +Voltaire afterwards recommended the book as a masterly satire against +religion in general, it cannot be wondered at that an outcry arose among +Swift's contemporaries respecting the profanity of the book. It is true, +Peter and Jack, as the representatives of Popery and Presbyterianism, came +in for the greatest share of the author's scurrility; and Martin, as the +representative of the Church of England, was left with the honours of the +story; but the whole structure and spirit of the story, to say nothing of +the oaths and other irreverences mingled with its language, were well +calculated to shock the more serious even of Martin's followers, who could +not but see that rank infidelity alone would be a gainer by the book. +Accordingly, despite all that Swift could afterwards do, the fact that he +had written this book left a public doubt as to his Christianity. It is +quite possible, however, that, with a very questionable kind of belief in +Christianity, he may have been a conscientious High-Churchman, zealous for +the social defence and aggrandisement of the ecclesiastical institution +with which he was connected. Whatever that institution was originally +based upon, it existed as part and parcel of the commonwealth of England, +rooted in men's habits and interests, and intertwined with the whole +system of social order; and, just as a Brahmin, lax enough in his own +speculative allegiance to the Brahminical faith, might still desire to +maintain Brahminism as a vast pervading establishment in Hindostan, so +might Swift, with a heart and a head dubious enough respecting men's +eternal interest in the facts of the Judæan record, see a use +notwithstanding in that fabric of bishoprics, deaneries, prebends, +parochial livings, and curacies, which ancient belief in those facts had +first created and put together. This kind of respect for the Church +Establishment is still very prevalent. It is a most excellent thing, it is +thought by many, to have a cleanly, cultured, gentlemanly man invested +with authority in every parish throughout the land, who can look after +what is going on, fill up schedules, give advice, and take the lead in all +parish business. That Swift's faith in the Church included no more than +this perception of its uses as a vast administrative and educational +establishment we will not say. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, openly avows his +opinion that Swift had no belief in the Christian religion. "Swift's," he +says, "was a reverent, was a pious spirit--he could love and could pray;" +but such religion as he had, Mr. Thackeray hints, was a kind of mad, +despairing Deism, and had nothing of Christianity in it. Hence, "having +put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands." The +question thus broached as to the nature of Swift's religion is too deep to +be discussed here. Though we would not exactly say, with Mr. Thackeray, +that Swift's was a "reverent" and "pious" spirit, there are, as he phrases +it, breakings out of "the stars of religion and love" shining in the +serene blue through "the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of +Swift's life;" and this, though vague, is about all that we have warrant +for saying. As to the zeal of his Churchmanship, however, there is no +doubt at all. There was not a man in the British realms more pugnacious in +the interests of his order, more resolute in defending the prerogatives of +the Church of England against Dissenters and others desirous of limiting +them, or more anxious to elevate the social position and intellectual +character of the clergy, than the author of the _Tale of a Tub_. No +veteran commander of a regiment could have had more of the military than +the parson of Laracor had of the ecclesiastical _esprit de corps_; and, +indeed, Swift's known dislike to the military may be best explained as the +natural jealousy of the surplice at the larger consideration accorded by +society to the scarlet coat. Almost all Swift's writings between 1702 and +1710 are assertions of his High-Church sentiments and vindications of the +Establishment against its assailants. Thus in 1708 came forth his _Letter +on the Sacramental Test_, a hot High-Church and anti-Dissenter pamphlet; +and this was followed in the same year by his _Sentiments of a Church of +England man with respect to Religion and Government_, and by his ironical +argument, aimed at free-thinkers and latitudinarians, entitled _Reasons +against Abolishing Christianity_. In 1709 he published a graver pamphlet, +under the name of _A Project for the Advancement of Religion_, in which he +urged certain measures for the reform of public morals and the +strengthening of the Establishment, recommending in particular a scheme of +Church-extension. Thus, with all his readiness to help the Whigs +politically, Swift was certainly faithful to his High-Church principles. +But, as we have said, a High-Church Whig was an anomaly which the Whigs +refused to comprehend. Latitudinarians, Low Churchmen, and Dissenters, did +not know what to make of a Whiggism in state-politics which was conjoined +with the strongest form of ecclesiastical Toryism. Hence, in spite of his +ability, Swift was not a man that the Whigs could patronise and prefer. +They were willing to have the benefit of his assistance, but their favours +were reserved for men more wholly their own. Various things were, indeed, +talked of for Swift--the secretaryship to the proposed embassy of Lord +Berkeley in Vienna, a prebend of Westminster, the office of +historiographer-royal; nay, even a bishopric in the American colonies: but +all came to nothing. Swift, at the age of forty-three, and certified by +Addison as "the greatest genius of the age," was still only an Irish +parson, with some 350_l._ or 400_l._ a year. How strange if the plan of +the Transatlantic bishopric had been carried out, and Swift had settled in +Virginia! + +Meanwhile, though neglected by the English Whigs, Swift had risen to be a +leader among the Irish clergy, a great man in their convocations and other +ecclesiastical assemblies. The object which the Irish clergy then had at +heart was to procure from the Government an extension to Ireland of a boon +granted several years before to the clergy of England: namely, the +remission of the tax levied by the Crown on the revenues of the Church +since the days of Henry VIII. in the shape of tenths and first-fruits. +This remission, which would have amounted to about 16,000_l._ a year, the +Whigs were not disposed to grant, the corresponding remission in the case +of England not having been followed by the expected benefits. Archbishop +King and the other prelates were glad to have Swift as their agent in this +business; and, accordingly, he was absent from Ireland for upwards of +twelve months continuously in the years 1708 and 1709. It was during this +period that he set London in a roar by his famous Bickerstaff hoax, in +which he first predicted the death of Partridge, the astrologer, at a +particular day and hour, and then nearly drove the wretched tradesman mad +by declaring, when the time was come, that the prophecy had been +fulfilled, and publishing a detailed account of the circumstances. Out of +this Bickerstaff hoax, and Swift's talk over it with Addison and Steele, +arose the _Tatler_, prolific parent of so many other periodicals. + +The year 1710 was an important one in the life of Swift. In that year he +came over to London, resolved in his own mind to have a settlement of +accounts with the Whigs, or to break with them for ever. The Irish +ecclesiastical business of the tenths and first-fruits was still his +pretext, but he had many other arrears to introduce into the account. +Accordingly, after some civil skirmishing with Somers, Halifax, and his +other old friends, then just turned out of office, he openly transferred +his allegiance to the new Tory administration of Harley and Bolingbroke. +The 4th of October, not quite a month after his arrival in London, was the +date of his first interview with Harley; and from that day forward till +the dissolution of Harley's administration by the death of Queen Anne, in +1714, Swift's relations with Harley, St. John, and the other ministers, +were more those of an intimate friend and adviser than a literary +dependent. How he dined almost daily with Harley or St. John; how he +bullied them, and made them beg his pardon when by chance they offended +him--either, as Harley once did, by offering him a fifty-pound note, or, +as St. John once did, by appearing cold and abstracted when Swift was his +guest at dinner; how he obtained from them not only the settlement of the +Irish business, but almost everything else he asked; how he used his +influence to prevent Steele, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and his other Whig +literary friends, from suffering loss of office by the change in the state +of politics, at the same time growing cooler in his private intercourse +with Addison and poor Dick, and tending more to young Tory writers, such +as Pope and Parnell; how, with Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, and St. John, +he formed the famous club of the _Scriblerus_ brotherhood, for the satire +of literary absurdities; how he wrote squibs, pamphlets, and lampoons +innumerable for the Tories and against the Whigs, and at one time actually +edited a Tory paper called the _Examiner_: all this is to be gathered, in +most interesting detail, from his epistolary journal to Stella, in which +he punctually kept her informed of all his doings during his long three +years of absence. The following is a description of him at the height of +his Court influence during this season of triumph, from the Whiggish, and +therefore somewhat adverse, pen of Bishop Kennet:-- + + "When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, + Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as + master of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to + his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place + established in the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in + that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published + sermons to pay the fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake + with my lord-treasurer that, according to his petition, he should + obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as minister of the English + church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the + red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to + him from my lord-treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant, + to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book, and wrote down + several things as _memoranda_ to do for him. He turned to the fire, + and took out his gold watch, and, telling him the time of day, + complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 'How + can I help it,' says the Doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch + that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman that the + best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a + translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them + all subscribe; 'for,' says he, 'the author shall not begin to print + till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord-treasurer, after + leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to + follow him: both went off just before prayers." + +Let us see, by a few pickings from the journal to Stella, in what manner +the black-browed Irish vicar, who was thus figuring in the mornings at +Court as the friend and confidant of Ministers, and almost as their +domineering colleague, was writing home from his lodging in the evenings +to the "dear girls" at Laracor. + + _Dec. 3, 1710._ "Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats + every night whether I will or no, let me have what business I will, + or come home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but it is an old + saying and a true one, 'Be you lords or be you earls, you must write + to naughty girls.' I was to-day at Court, and saw Raymond [an Irish + friend] among the beefeaters, staying to see the Queen; so I put him + in a better station, made two or three dozen bows, and went to + church, and then to Court again to pick up a dinner, as I did with + Sir John Stanley: and then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just + left him; and 'tis near eleven at night, young women, and methinks + this letter comes very near to the bottom," &c. &c. + + _Jan. 1, 1711._ Morning. "I wish my dearest pretty Dingley and Stella + a happy new year, and health, and mirth, and good stomachs, and + _Fr's_ company. Faith, I did not know how to write _Fr_. I wondered + what was the matter; but now I remember I always write _Pdfr_ [by + this combination of letters, or by the word _Presto_, Swift + designates himself in the Journal] * * Get the _Examiners_, and read + them; the last nine or ten are full of reasons for the late change + and of the abuses of the last ministry; and the great men assure me + that all are true. They were written by their encouragement and + direction. I must rise, and go see Sir Andrew Fountain; but perhaps + to-morrow I may answer _M.D.'s_ [Stella's designation in the Journal] + letter: so good morrow, my mistresses all, good morrow. I wish you + both a merry new year; roast beef, minced pies, and good strong beer; + and me a share of your good cheer; that I was there or you were here; + and you're a little saucy dear," &c. &c. + + _Jan. 13, 1711._ "O faith, I had an ugly giddy fit last night in my + chamber, and I have got a new box of pills to take, and I hope shall + have no more this good while. I would not tell you before, because it + would vex you, little rogues; but now it is better. I dined to-day + with Lord Shelburn," &c. &c. + + _Jan. 16, 1711._ "My service to Mrs. Stode and Walls. Has she a boy + or a girl? A girl, hmm!, and died in a week, hmmm!, and was poor + Stella forced to stand for godmother?--Let me know how accounts + stand, that you may have your money betimes. There's four months for + my lodging; that must be thought on too. And zoo go dine with Manley, + and lose your money, doo extravagant sluttikin? But don't fret. It + will just be three weeks when I have the next letter: that is, + to-morrow. Farewell, dearest beloved _M.D._, and love poor, poor + Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, as hope to + be saved." + + _March 7, 1711._ "I am weary of business and ministers. I don't go to + a coffee-house twice a month. I am very regular in going to sleep + before eleven. And so you say that Stella's a pretty girl; and so she + be; and methinks I see her just now, as handsome as the day's long. + Do you know what? When I am writing in our language [a kind of + baby-language of endearment used between him and Stella, and called + 'the little language'] I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking + it. I caught myself at it just now. * * Poor Stella, won't Dingley + leave her a little daylight to write to Presto? Well, well, we'll + have daylight shortly, spite of her teeth; and zoo must cly Zele, and + Hele, and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate _Pdfr_, pay? Iss, and so la + shall. And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood Mollow. [You must cry There + and Here and Here again. Must you imitate _Pdfr_, pray? Yes, and so + you shall. And so there's for the letter. Good morrow.]" + +And so on, through a series of daily letters, forming now a goodly octavo +volume or more, Swift chats and rattles away to the "dear absent girls," +giving them all the political gossip of the time, and informing them about +his own goings-out and comings-in, his dinings with Harley, St. John, and +occasionally with Addison and other old Whig friends, the state of his +health, his troubles with his drunken servant Patrick, his +lodging-expenses, and a host of other things. Such another journal has, +perhaps, never been given to the world; and but for it we should never +have known what depths of tenderness and power of affectionate prattle +there were in the heart of this harsh and savage man. + +Only on one topic, affecting himself during his long stay in London, is he +in any degree reserved. Among the acquaintanceships he had formed was one +with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a widowed lady of property, who had a family of +several daughters. The eldest of these, Hester Vanhomrigh, was a girl of +more than ordinary talent and accomplishments, and of enthusiastic and +impetuous character; and, as Swift acquired the habit of dropping in upon +the "Vans," as he called them, when he had no other dinner engagement, it +was not long before he and Miss Vanhomrigh fell into the relationship of +teacher and pupil. He taught her to think and to write verses; and, as +among Swift's peculiarities of opinion, one was that he entertained what +would even now be called very advanced notions as to the intellectual +capabilities and rights of women, he found no more pleasant amusement, in +the midst of his politics and other business, than that of superintending +the growth of so hopeful a mind. + + "His conduct might have made him styled + A father, and the nymph his child: + The innocent delight he took + To see the virgin mind her book + Was but the master's secret joy + In school to hear the finest boy." + +But, alas! Cupid got among the books. + + "Vanessa, not in years a score, + Dreams of a gown of forty-four; + Imaginary charms can find + In eyes with reading almost blind; + She fancies music in his tongue, + Nor farther looks, but thinks him young." + +Nay, more: one of Swift's lessons to her had been that frankness, whether +in man or women, was the chief of the virtues, and + + "That common forms were not design'd + Directors to a noble mind." + +"Then," said the nymph, + + "I'll let you see + My actions with your rules agree; + That I can vulgar forms despise, + And have no secrets to disguise." + +She told her love, and fairly argued it out with the startled tutor, +discussing every element in the question, whether for or against--the +disparity of their ages, her own five thousand guineas, their similarity +of tastes, his views of ambition, the judgment the world would form of the +match, and so on; and the end of it was that she reasoned so well that +Swift could not but admit that there would be nothing after all so very +incongruous in a marriage between him and Esther Vanhomrigh. So the matter +rested, Swift gently resisting the impetuosity of the young woman, when it +threatened to take him by storm, but not having the courage to adduce the +real and conclusive argument--the existence on the other side of the +channel of another and a dearer Esther. Stella, on her side, knew that +Swift visited a family called the "Vans"; she divined that something was +wrong; but that was all. + +That Swift, the Mentor of ministers, their daily companion, at whose +bidding they dispensed their patronage and their favour, should himself be +suffered to remain a mere vicar of an Irish parish, was, of course, +impossible. Vehement and even boisterous and overdone as was his zeal for +his own independence--"If we let these great ministers pretend too much, +there will be no governing them," was his maxim; and, in order to act up +to it, he used to treat Dukes and Earls as if they were dogs--there were +yet means of honourably acknowledging his services in a way to which he +would have taken no exception. Nor can we doubt that Oxford and St. John, +who were really and heartily his admirers, were anxious to promote him in +some suitable manner. An English bishopric was certainly what he coveted, +and what they would at once have given him. But, though the bishopric of +Hereford fell vacant in 1712, there was, as Sir Walter Scott says, "a lion +in the path." Queen Anne, honest dowdy woman,--her instinctive dislike of +Swift strengthened by the private influence of the Archbishop of York, and +that of the Duchess of Somerset, whose red hair Swift had +lampooned--obstinately refused to make the author of the _Tale of a Tub_ a +bishop. Even an English deanery could not be found for so questionable a +Christian; and in 1713 Swift was obliged to accept, as the best thing he +could get, the Deanery of St. Patrick's in his native city of Dublin. He +hurried over to Ireland to be installed, and came back just in time to +partake in the last struggles and dissensions of the Tory administration +before Queen Anne's death. By his personal exertions with ministers, and +his pamphlet entitled _Public Spirit of the Whigs_, he tried to buoy up +the sinking Tory cause. But the Queen's death destroyed all; with George +I. the Whigs came in again; the late Tory ministers were dispersed and +disgraced, and Swift shared their fall. "Dean Swift," says Arbuthnot, +"keeps up his noble spirit; and, though like a man knocked down, you may +behold him still with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his +adversaries." He returned, with rage and grief in his heart, to Ireland, a +disgraced man, and in danger of arrest on account of his connexion with +the late ministers. Even in Dublin he was insulted as he walked in the +streets. + +For twelve years--that is, from 1714 to 1726--Swift did not quit Ireland. +At his first coming, as he tells us in one of his letters, he was +"horribly melancholy;" but the melancholy began to wear off; and, having +made up his mind to his exile in the country of his detestation, he fell +gradually into the routine of his duties as Dean. How he boarded in a +private family in the town, stipulating for leave to invite his friends to +dinner at so much a head, and only having two evenings a week at the +deanery for larger receptions; how he brought Stella and Mrs. Dingley from +Laracor, and settled them in lodgings on the other side of the Liffey, +keeping up the same precautions in his intercourse with them as before, +but devolving the management of his receptions at the deanery upon Stella, +who did all the honours of the house; how he had his own way in all +cathedral business, and had always a few clergymen and others in his +train, who toadied him, and took part in the facetious horse-play of which +he was fond; how gradually his physiognomy became known to the citizens, +and his eccentricities familiar to them, till the "Dean" became the lion +of Dublin, and everybody turned to look at him as he walked in the +streets; how, among the Dean's other oddities, he was popularly charged +with stinginess in his entertainments and a sharp look-out after the wine; +how sometimes he would fly off from town, and take refuge in some +country-seat of a friendly Irish nobleman; how all this while he was +reading books of all kinds, writing notes and jottings, and corresponding +with Pope, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Oxford, Bolingbroke, and other literary +and political friends in London or abroad: these are matters in the +recollection of all who have read any of the biographies of Swift. It is +also known that it was during this period that the Stella-and-Vanessa +imbroglio reached its highest degree of entanglement. Scarcely had the +Dean located Stella and Mrs. Dingley in their lodging in Dublin when, as +he had feared, the impetuous Vanessa crossed the Channel to be near him +too. Her mother's death, and the fact that she and her younger sister had +a small property in Ireland, were pretext enough. A scrap or two from +surviving letters will tell the sequel, and will suggest the state of the +relations at this time between Swift and this unhappy and certainly very +extraordinary, woman:-- + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: London, Aug. 12, 1714._ "I had your letter + last post, and before you can send me another I shall set out for + Ireland. * * * If you are in Ireland when I am there, I shall see you + very seldom. It is not a place for any freedom, but where everything + is known in a week, and magnified a hundred degrees. These are + rigorous laws that must be passed through; but it is probable we may + meet in London in winter; or, if not, leave all to fate." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714_ (_some time after August_). + "You once had a maxim, which was to act what was right, and not mind + what the world would say. I wish you would keep to it now. Pray, what + can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman? I cannot + imagine. You cannot but know that your frowns make my life + unsupportable. You have taught me to distinguish, and then you leave + me miserable." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714._ "You bid me be easy, and + you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said as + often as you could get the better of your inclinations so much, or as + often as you remembered there was such a one in the world. If you + continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me + long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw + you last. I am sure I could have bore the rack much better than those + killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die + without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did + not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts + one to find relief in this world. I must give way to it, and beg + you'd see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn + any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason + I write to you is because I cannot tell it to you should I see you. + For, when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is + something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb." + +Here a gap intervenes, which record fills up with but an indication here +and there. Swift saw Vanessa, sometimes with that "something awful in his +looks which struck her dumb," sometimes with words of perplexed kindness; +he persuaded her to go out, to read, to amuse herself; he introduced +clergymen to her--one of them afterwards Archbishop of Cashel--as suitors +for her hand; he induced her to leave Dublin, and go to her property at +Selbridge, about twelve miles from Dublin, where now and then he went to +visit her, where she used to plant laurels against every time of his +coming, and where "Vanessa's bower," in which she and the Dean used to +sit, with books and writing materials before them, during those happy +visits, was long an object of interest to tourists; he wrote kindly +letters to her, some in French, praising her talents, her conversation, +and her writing, and saying that he found in her "_tout ce que la nature +a donnée à un mortel, l'honneur, la vertu, le bon sens, l'esprit, la +douceur, l'agrément et la fermeté d'âme_." All did not suffice; and one +has to fancy, during those long years, the restless beatings, on the one +hand, of that impassioned woman's heart, now lying as cold +undistinguishable ashes in some Irish grave, and, on the other hand, the +distraction, and anger, and daily terror, of the man she clung to. For, +somehow or other, there _was_ an element of terror mingled with the +affair. What it was is beyond easy scrutiny, though possibly the data +exist if they were well sifted. The ordinary story is that some time in +the midst of those entanglements with Vanessa, and in consequence of their +effects on the rival-relationship--Stella having been brought almost to +death's door by the anxieties caused her by Vanessa's proximity, and by +her own equivocal position in society--the form of marriage was gone +through by Swift and Stella, and they became legally husband and wife, +although with an engagement that the matter should remain secret, and that +there should be no change in their manner of living. The year 1716, when +Swift was forty-nine years of age, and Stella thirty-two, is assigned as +the date of this event; and the ceremony is said to have been performed in +the garden of the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher. But more mystery +remains. "Immediately subsequent to the ceremony," says Sir Walter Scott, +"Swift's state of mind appears to have been dreadful. Delany (as I have +learned from a friend of his widow) said that about the time it was +supposed to have taken place he observed Swift to be extremely gloomy and +agitated--so much so that he went to Archbishop King to mention his +apprehensions. On entering the library, Swift rushed out with a +countenance of distraction, and passed him without speaking. He found the +archbishop in tears, and, upon asking the reason, he said, 'You have just +met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness +you must never ask a question.'" What are we to make of this? Nay more, +what are we to make of it when we find that the alleged marriage of Swift +with Stella, with which Scott connects the story, is after all denied by +some as resting on no sufficient evidence: even Dr. Delany, though he +believed in the marriage, and supposed it to have taken place about the +time of this remarkable interview with the archbishop, having no certain +information on the subject? If we assume a secret marriage with Stella, +indeed, the subsequent portion of the Vanessa story becomes more +explicable. On this assumption we are to imagine Swift continuing his +letters to Vanessa, and his occasional visits to her at Selbridge on the +old footing, for some years after the marriage, with the undivulged secret +ever in his mind, increasing tenfold his former awkwardness in +encountering her presence. And so we come to the year 1720, when, as the +following scraps will show, a new paroxysm on the part of Vanessa brought +on a new crisis in their relations. + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ "Believe me, it is with + the utmost regret that I now write to you, because I know your + good-nature such that you cannot see any human creature miserable + without being sensibly touched. Yet what can I do? I must either + unload my heart, and tell you all its griefs, or sink under the + inexpressible distress I now suffer by your prodigious neglect of me. + It is now ten long weeks since I saw you, and in all that time I have + never received but one letter from you, and a little note with an + excuse. Oh, have you forgot me? You endeavour by severities to force + me from you. Nor can I blame you; for, with the utmost distress and + confusion, I behold myself the cause of uneasy reflections to you. + Yet I cannot comfort you, but here declare that it is not in the + power of art, time, or accident, to lessen the inexpressible passion + I have for ----. Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me + as distant from you as the earth will allow; yet you cannot banish + those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the + use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul; for + there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it. + Therefore do not flatter yourself that separation will ever change my + sentiments; for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my + heart is at once pierced with sorrow and love. For Heaven's sake, + tell me what has caused this prodigious change in you which I have + found of late." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1720._ * * "I believe you thought + I only rallied when I told you the other night that I would pester + you with letters. Once more I advise you, if you have any regard for + your quiet, to alter your behaviour quickly; for I do assure you I + have too much spirit to sit down contented with this treatment. + Because I love frankness extremely, I here tell you now that I have + determined to try all manner of human arts to reclaim you; and, if + all these fail, I am resolved to have recourse to the black one, + which, it is said, never does. Now see what inconveniency you will + bring both yourself and me unto * *. When I undertake a thing, I + don't love to do it by halves." + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "If you write as you do, I + shall come the seldomer on purpose to be pleased with your letters, + which I never look into without wondering how a brat that cannot read + can possibly write so well. * * Raillery apart, I think it + inconvenient, for a hundred reasons, that I should make your house a + sort of constant dwelling-place. I will certainly come as often as I + conveniently can; but my health and the perpetual run of ill weather + hinder me from going out in the morning, and my afternoons are taken + up I know not how; so that I am in rebellion with a hundred people + besides yourself for not seeing them. For the rest, you need make use + of no other black art besides your ink. It is a pity your eyes are + not black, or I would have said the same; but you are a white witch, + and can do no mischief." + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "I received your letter + when some company was with me on Saturday night, and it put me in + such confusion that I could not tell what to do. This morning a woman + who does business for me told me she heard I was in love with one, + naming you, and twenty particulars; that little master ---- and I + visited you, and that the Archbishop did so; and that you had + abundance of wit, &c. I ever feared the tattle of this nasty town, + and told you so; and that was the reason why I said to you long ago + that I would see you seldom when you were in Ireland; and I must beg + you to be easy, if, for some time, I visit you seldomer, and not in + so particular a manner." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ * * "Solitude is + unsupportable to a mind which is not easy. I have worn out my days in + sighing and my nights in watching and thinking of ----, who thinks + not of me. How many letters shall I send you before I receive an + answer? * * Oh that I could hope to see you here, or that I could go + to you! I was born with violent passions, which terminate all in + one--that inexpressible passion I have for you. * * Surely you cannot + possibly be so taken up but you might command a moment to write to me + and force your inclinations to so great a charity. I firmly believe, + if I could know your thoughts (which no human creature is capable of + guessing at, because never anyone living thought like you), I should + find you had often in a rage wished me religious, hoping then I + should have paid my devotions to Heaven. But that would not spare + you; for, were I an enthusiast, still you'd be the deity I should + worship. What marks are there of a deity but what you are to be known + by? You are present everywhere; your dear image is always before my + eyes. Sometimes you strike me with that prodigious awe I tremble with + fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your + countenance, which revives my soul. Is it not more reasonable to + adore a radiant form one has seen than one only described?" + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, October 15, 1720._ "All the + morning I am plagued with impertinent visits, below any man of sense + or honour to endure, if it were any way avoidable. Afternoons and + evenings are spent abroad in walking to keep off and avoid spleen as + far as I can; so that, when I am not so good a correspondent as I + could wish, you are not to quarrel and be governor, but to impute it + to my situation, and to conclude infallibly that I have the same + respect and kindness for you I ever professed to have." + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Gaullstoun, July 5, 1721._ * * "Settle + your affairs, and quit this scoundrel-island, and things will be as + you desire. I can say no more, being called away. _Mais soyez assurée + que jamais personne au monde n'a été aimée, honorée, estimée, adorée + par votre ami que vous._" + +Vanessa did not quit the "scoundrel-island;" but, on the contrary, +remained in it, unmanageable as ever. In 1722, about a year after the date +of the last scrap, the catastrophe came. In a wild fit Vanessa, as the +story is, took the bold step of writing to Stella, insisting on an +explanation of the nature of Swift's engagements to her; Stella placed +the letter in Swift's hands; and Swift, in a paroxysm of fury, rode +instantly to Selbridge, saw Vanessa without speaking, laid a letter on her +table, and rode off again. The letter was Vanessa's death-warrant. Within +a few weeks she was dead, having previously revoked a will in which she +had bequeathed all her fortune to Swift. + +Whatever may have been the purport of Vanessa's communication to Stella, +it produced no change in Swift's relations to the latter. The pale pensive +face of Hester Johnson, with her "fine dark eyes" and hair "black as a +raven," was still to be seen on reception-evenings at the deanery, where +also she and Mrs. Dingley would sometimes take up their abode when Swift +was suffering from one of his attacks of vertigo and required to be +nursed. Nay, during those very years in which, as we have just seen, Swift +was attending to the movements to and fro of the more imperious Vanessa in +the background, and assuaging her passion by visits and letters, and +praises of her powers, and professions of his admiration of her beyond all +her sex, he was all the while keeping up the same affectionate style of +intercourse as ever with the more gentle Stella, whose happier lot it was +to be stationed in the centre of his domestic circle, and addressing to +her, in a less forced manner, praises singularly like those he addressed +to her rival. Thus, every year, on Stella's birth-day, he wrote a little +poem in honour of the occasion. Take the one for 1718, beginning thus:-- + + "Stella this day is thirty-four + (We sha'n't dispute a year or more): + However, Stella, be not troubled; + Although thy size and years be doubled + Since first I saw thee at sixteen, + The brightest virgin on the green, + So little is thy form declined, + Made up so largely in thy mind." + +Stella would reciprocate these compliments by verses on the Dean's +birth-day; and one is struck with the similarity of her acknowledgments of +what the Dean had taught her and done for her to those of Vanessa. Thus, +in 1721,-- + + "When men began to call me fair, + You interposed your timely care; + You early taught me to despise + The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes; + Show'd where my judgment was misplaced, + Refined my fancy and my taste. + You taught how I might youth prolong + By knowing what was right and wrong; + How from my heart to bring supplies + Of lustre to my fading eyes; + How soon a beauteous mind repairs + The loss of changed or falling hairs; + How wit and virtue from within + Send out a smoothness o'er the skin: + Your lectures could my fancy fix, + And I can please at thirty-six." + +The death of Vanessa in 1722 left Swift from that time entirely Stella's. +How she got over the Vanessa affair in her own mind, when the full extent +of the facts became known to her, can only be guessed. When some one +alluded to the fact that Swift had written beautifully about Vanessa, she +is reported to have said "That doesn't signify, for we all know the Dean +could write beautifully about a broomstick." "A woman, a true woman!" is +Mr. Thackeray's characteristic comment. + +To the world's end those who take interest in Swift's life will range +themselves either on the side of Stella or on that of Vanessa. Mr. +Thackeray prefers Stella, but admits that, in doing so, though the +majority of men may be on his side, he will have most women against him. +Which way Swift's _heart_ inclined him it is not difficult to see. Stella +was the main influence of his life; the intimacy with Vanessa was but an +episode. And yet, when he speaks of the two women as a critic, there is a +curious equality in his appreciation of them. Of Stella he used to say +that her wit and judgment were such that "she never failed to say the best +thing that was said wherever she was in company;" and one of his +epistolary compliments to Vanessa is that he had "always remarked that, +neither in general nor in particular conversation, had any word ever +escaped her lips that could by possibility have been better." Some little +differences in his preceptorial treatment of them may be discerned--as +when he finds it necessary to admonish poor Stella for her incorrigibly +bad spelling, no such admonition, apparently, being required for Vanessa; +or when, in praising Stella, he dwells chiefly on her honour and gentle +kindliness, whereas in praising Vanessa he dwells chiefly on her genius +and force of mind. But it is distinctly on record that his regard for both +was founded on his belief that in respect of intellect and culture both +were above the majority of their sex. And here it may be repeated that, +not only from the evidence afforded by the whole story of Swift's +relations to these two women, but also from the evidence of distinct +doctrinal passages scattered through his works, it appears that those who +in the present day maintain the co-equality of the two sexes, and the +right of women to as full and varied an education, and as free a social +use of their powers, as is allowed to men, may claim Swift as a pioneer in +their cause. Both Stella and Vanessa have left their testimony that from +the very first Swift took care to indoctrinate them with peculiar views on +this subject; and both thank him for having done so. Stella even goes +further, and almost urges Swift to do on the great scale what he had done +for her individually:-- + + "O turn your precepts into laws; + Redeem the woman's ruin'd cause; + Retrieve lost empire to our sex, + That men may bow their rebel necks." + +This fact that Swift had a _theory_ on the subject of the proper mode of +treating and educating women, which theory was in antagonism to the ideas +of his time, explains much both in his conduct as a man and in his habits +as a writer. + + * * * * * + +For the first six years of his exile in Ireland after the death of Queen +Anne, Swift had published nothing of any consequence, and had kept aloof +from politics, except when they were brought to his door by local +quarrels. In 1720, however, he again flashed forth as a political +luminary, in a character that could hardly have been anticipated--that of +an Irish patriot. Taking up the cause of the "scoundrel-island," to which +he belonged by birth, if not by affection, and to which fate had consigned +him in spite of all his efforts, he made that cause his own. Virtually +saying to his old Whig enemies, then in power on the other side of the +water, "Yes, I am an Irishman, and I will show you what an Irishman is," +he constituted himself the representative of the island, and hurled it, +with all its pent-up mass of rage and wrongs, against Walpole and his +administration. First, in revenge for the commercial wrongs of Ireland +came his _Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, utterly +Rejecting and Renouncing Everything Wearable that comes from England_; +then, amidst the uproar and danger excited by this proposal, other and +other defiances in the same tone; and lastly, in 1723, on the occasion of +the royal patent to poor William Wood to supply Ireland, without her own +consent, with a hundred and eight thousand pounds' worth of copper +half-pence of English manufacture, the unparalleled _Drapier's Letters_, +which blasted the character of the coppers and asserted the nationality of +Ireland. All Ireland, Catholic as well as Protestant, blessed the Dean of +St. Patrick's; associations were formed for the defence of his person; +and, had Walpole and his Whigs succeeded in bringing him to trial, it +would have been at the expense of an Irish rebellion. From that time till +his death Swift was the true King of Ireland; only when O'Connell arose +did the heart of the nation yield equal veneration to any single chief; +and even at this day the grateful Irish, forgetting his gibes against +them, and forgetting his continual habit of distinguishing between the +Irish population as a whole and the English and Protestant part of it to +which he belonged himself, cherish his memory with loving enthusiasm, and +speak of him as the "great Irishman." Among the phases of Swift's life +this of his having been an Irish patriot and agitator deserves to be +particularly remembered. + +In the year 1726 Swift, then in his sixtieth year, and in the full flush +of his new popularity as the champion of Irish nationality, visited +England for the first time since Queen Anne's death. Once there, he was +loth to return; and a considerable portion of the years 1726 and 1727 was +spent by him in or near London. This was the time of the publication of +_Gulliver's Travels_, which had been written some years before, and also +of some _Miscellanies_, which were edited for him by Pope. It was at +Pope's villa at Twickenham that most of his time was spent; and it was +there and at this time that the long friendship between Swift and Pope +ripened into that extreme and affectionate intimacy which they both lived +to acknowledge. Gay, Arbuthnot, and Bolingbroke, now returned from exile, +joined Pope in welcoming their friend. Addison had been dead several +years. Prior was dead, and also Vanbrugh and Parnell. Steele was yet +alive; but between him and Swift there was no longer any tie. Political +and aristocratic acquaintances, old and new, there were in abundance, all +anxious once again to have Swift among them to fight their battles. Old +George I. had not long to live, and the Tories were trying again to come +into power in the train of the Prince of Wales. There were even chances of +an arrangement with Walpole, with possibilities, in that or in some other +way, that Swift should not die a mere Irish dean. These prospects were but +temporary. The old King died; and, contrary to expectation, George II. +retained Walpole and his Whig colleagues. In October, 1727, Swift left +England for the last time. He returned to Dublin just in time to watch +over the death-bed of Stella, who expired, after a lingering illness, in +January, 1728. Swift was then in his sixty-second year. + + * * * * * + +The story of the remaining seventeen years of Swift's life--for, with all +his maladies, bodily and mental, his strong frame withstood, for all that +time of solitude and gloom, the wear of mortality--is perhaps better known +than any other part of his biography. How his irritability and +eccentricities and avarice grew upon him, so that his friends and servants +had a hard task in humouring him, we learn from the traditions of others; +how his memory began to fail, and other signs of breaking-up began to +appear, we learn from himself;-- + + "See how the Dean begins to break! + Poor gentleman he droops apace; + You plainly find it in his face. + That old vertigo in his head + Will never leave him till he's dead. + Besides, his memory decays; + He recollects not what he says; + He cannot call his friends to mind, + Forgets the place where last he dined, + Plies you with stories o'er and o'er; + He told them fifty times before." + +The fire of his genius, however, was not yet burnt out. Between 1729 and +1736 he continued to throw out satires and lampoons in profusion, +referring to the men and topics of the day, and particularly to the +political affairs of Ireland; and it was during this time that his +_Directions to Servants_, his _Polite Conversation_, and other well-known +facetiæ, first saw the light. From the year 1736, however, it was well +known in Dublin that the Dean was no more what he had been, and that his +recovery was not to be looked for. The rest will be best told in the words +of Sir Walter Scott:-- + + "The last scene was now rapidly approaching, and the stage darkened + ere the curtain fell. From 1736 onward the Dean's fits of periodical + giddiness and deafness had returned with violence; he could neither + enjoy conversation nor amuse himself with writing, and an obstinate + resolution which he had formed not to wear glasses prevented him from + reading. The following dismal letter to Mrs. Whiteway [his cousin, + and chief attendant in his last days] in 1740 is almost the last + document which we possess of the celebrated Swift as a rational and + reflecting being. It awfully foretells the catastrophe which shortly + after took place. + + 'I have been very miserable all night, and to-day extremely deaf + and full of pain. I am so stupid and confounded that I cannot + express the mortification I am under both in body and mind. All + I can say is that I am not in torture, but I daily and hourly + expect it. Pray let me know how your health is and your family. + I hardly understand one word I write. I am sure my days will be + very few; few and miserable they must be. + + 'I am, for these few days, + 'Yours entirely, + 'J. SWIFT.' + + 'If I do not blunder, it is Saturday, July 26th, 1740.' + + "His understanding having totally failed soon after these melancholy + expressions of grief and affection, his first state was that of + violent and furious lunacy. His estate was put under the management + of trustees, and his person confided to the care of Dr. Lyons, a + respectable clergyman, curate to the Rev. Robert King, prebendary of + Dunlavin, one of Swift's executors. This gentleman discharged his + melancholy task with great fidelity, being much and gratefully + attached to the object of his care. From a state of outrageous + frenzy, aggravated by severe bodily suffering, the illustrious Dean + of St. Patrick's sank into the situation of a helpless changeling. In + the course of about three years he is only known to have spoken once + or twice. At length, when this awful moral lesson had subsisted from + 1743 until the 19th of October, 1745, it pleased God to release him + from this calamitous situation. He died upon that day without a + single pang, so gently that his attendants were scarce aware of the + moment of his dissolution." + +Swift was seventy-eight years of age at the time of his death, having +outlived all his contemporaries of the Queen Anne cluster of wits, with +the exception of Bolingbroke, Ambrose Philips, and Cibber. Congreve had +died in 1729; Steele in the same year; Defoe in 1731; Gay in 1732; +Arbuthnot in 1735; Tickell in 1740; and Pope, who was Swift's junior by +twenty-one years, in 1744. Swift, therefore, is entitled in our literary +histories to the place of patriarch as well as to that of chief among the +Wits of Queen Anne's reign; and he stands nearest to our own day of any of +them whose writings we still read. As late as the year 1820 a person was +alive who had seen Swift as he lay dead in the deanery before his burial, +great crowds going to take their last look of him. "The coffin was open; +he had on his head neither cap nor wig; there was not much hair on the +front or very top, but it was long and thick behind, very white, and was +like flax upon the pillow." Such is the last glimpse we have of Swift on +earth. Exactly ninety years afterwards the coffin was taken up from its +resting-place in the aisle of the cathedral; and the skull of Swift, the +white locks now all mouldered away from it, became an object of +scientific curiosity. Phrenologically, it was a disappointment, the +extreme lowness of the forehead striking everyone, and the so-called +organs of wit, causality, and comparison being scarcely developed at all. +There were peculiarities, however, in the shape of the interior, +indicating larger capacity of brain than would have been inferred from the +external aspect. Stella's coffin was exhumed, and her skull examined at +the same time. The examiners found the skull "a perfect model of symmetry +and beauty." + + * * * * * + +Have we said too much in declaring that of all the men who illustrated +that period of our literary history which lies between the Revolution of +1688 and the beginning or middle of the reign of George II. Swift alone +(Pope excepted, and he only on certain definite and peculiar grounds) +fulfils to any tolerable extent those conditions which would entitle him +to the epithet of "great," already refused to his age as a whole? We do +not think so. Swift _was_ a great genius; nay, if by _greatness_ we +understand general mass and energy rather than any preconceived +peculiarity of quality, he was the greatest genius of his age. Neither +Addison, nor Steele, nor Pope, nor Defoe, possessed, in anything like the +same degree, that which Goethe and Niebuhr, seeking a name for a certain +attribute found often present, as they thought, in the higher and more +forcible order of historic characters, agreed to call the _demonic_ +element. Indeed very few men in our literature, from first to last, have +had so much of this element in them--perhaps the sign and source of all +real greatness--as Swift. In him it was so obvious as to attract notice at +once. "There is something in your looks," wrote Vanessa to him, "so awful +that it strikes me dumb;" and again, "Sometimes you strike me with that +prodigious awe I tremble with fear;" and again, "What marks are there of a +deity that you are not known by?" True, these are the words of a woman +infatuated with love; but there is evidence that, wherever Swift went, and +in whatever society he was, there was this magnetic power in his presence. +Pope felt it; Addison felt it; they all felt it. We question if, among all +our literary celebrities, from first to last, there has been one more +distinguished for being personally formidable to all who came near him. + +And yet, in calling Swift a great genius, we clearly do not mean to rank +him in the same order of greatness with such men among his predecessors as +Spenser, or Shakespeare, or Milton, or such men among his successors as +Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. We even retain instinctively the right +of not according to him a certain kind of admiration which we bestow on +such men of his own generation as Pope, Steele, and Addison. How is this? +What is the drawback about Swift's genius which prevents us from +referring him to that highest order of literary greatness to which we do +refer others who in respect of hard general capacity were apparently not +superior to him, and on the borders of which we also place some who in +that respect were certainly his inferiors? To make the question more +special, why do we call Milton great in quite a different sense from that +in which we consent to confer the same epithet on Swift? + +Altogether, it will be said, Milton was a greater man than Swift; his +intellect was higher, richer, deeper, grander, his views of things were +more profound, grave, stately, and exalted. This is a true enough +statement of the case; and one likes that comprehensive use of the word +intellect which it implies, wrapping up, as it were, all that is in and +about a man in this one word, so as to dispense with the distinctions +between imaginative and non-imaginative, spiritual and unspiritual +natures, and make every possible question about a man a mere question in +the end as to the size or degree of his intellect. But such a mode of +speaking is too violent and recondite for common purposes. According to +the common use of the word intellect, it might be maintained (we do not +say it would) that Swift's intellect, his strength of mental grasp, was +equal to Milton's, and yet that, by reason of the fact that his +intellectual style was different, or that he did not grasp things +precisely in the Miltonic way, a distinction might be drawn unfavourable +to his genius as compared with that of Milton. According to such a view, +we must seek for that in Swift's genius upon which it depends that, while +we accord to it all the admiration we bestow on strength, our sympathies +with height or sublimity are left unmoved. Nor have we far to seek. When +Goethe and Niebuhr generalized in the phrase "the demonic element" that +mystic something which they seemed to detect in men of unusual potency +among their fellows, they used the word "demonic," not in its English +sense, as signifying what appertains specially to the demons or powers of +darkness, but in its Greek sense, as equally implying the unseen agencies +of light and good. The demonic element in a man, therefore, may in one +case be the demonic of the etherial and celestial, in another the +demonic of the Tartarean and infernal. There is a demonic of the +_super_natural--angels, and seraphs, and white-winged airy messengers, +swaying men's phantasies from above; and there is a demonic of the +_infra_-natural--fiends and shapes of horror tugging at men's thoughts +from beneath. The demonic in Swift was of the latter kind. It is false, it +would be an entire mistake as to his genius, to say that he regarded, or +was inspired by, only the worldly and the secular--that men, women, and +their relations in the little world of visible life, were all that his +intellect cared to recognise. He also, like our Miltons and our +Shakespeares, and all our men who have been anything more than prudential +and pleasant writers, had his being anchored in things and imaginations +beyond the visible verge. But, while it was given to them to hold rather +by things and imaginations belonging to the region of the celestial, to +hear angelic music and the rustling of seraphic wings, it was his +unhappier lot to be related rather to the darker and subterranean +mysteries. One might say of Swift that he had far less of belief in a God +than of belief in a Devil. He is like a man walking on the earth and among +the busy haunts of his fellow-mortals, observing them and their ways, and +taking his part in the bustle, all the while, however, conscious of the +tuggings downward of secret chains reaching into the world of the demons. +Hence his ferocity, his misanthropy, his _sæva indignatio_, all of them +true forms of energy, imparting unusual potency to a life, but forms of +energy bred of communion with what outlies nature on the lower or infernal +side. + +Swift, doubtless, had this melancholic tendency in him constitutionally +from the beginning. From the first we see him an unruly, rebellious, +gloomy, revengeful, unforgiving spirit, loyal to no authority, and +gnashing under every restraint. With nothing small or weak in his nature, +too proud to be dishonest, bold and fearless in his opinions, capable of +strong attachments and of hatred as strong, it was to be predicted that, +if the swarthy Irish youth, whom Sir William Temple received into his +house when his college had all but expelled him for contumacy, should ever +be eminent in the world, it would be for fierce and controversial, and not +for beautiful or harmonious, activity. It is clear, however, on a survey +of Swift's career, that the gloom and melancholy which characterized it +were not altogether congenital, but, in part at least, grew out of some +special circumstance, or set of circumstances, having a precise date and +locality among the facts of his life. In other words, there was some +secret in Swift's life, some root of bitterness or remorse, diffusing a +black poison throughout his whole existence. That communion with the +invisible almost exclusively on the infernal side--that consciousness of +chains wound round his own moving frame at the one end, and at the other +held by demons in the depths of their populous pit, while no cords of love +were felt sustaining him from the countervailing heaven--had its origin, +in part at least, in some one recollection or cause of dread. It was some +one demon down in that pit that held the chains; the others but assisted +him. Thackeray's perception seems to us exact when he says of Swift that +"he goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil;" or +again, changing the form of the figure, that "like Abudah, in the Arabian +story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night +will come, and the inevitable hag with it." What was this Fury, this hag +that duly came in the night, making the mornings horrible by the terrors +of recollection, the evenings horrible by those of anticipation, and +leaving but a calm hour at full mid-day? There was a secret in Swift's +life: what was it? His biographers as yet have failed to agree on this +dark topic. Thackeray's hypothesis, that the cause of Swift's despair was +chiefly his consciousness of disbelief in the creed to which he had sworn +his professional faith, does not seem to us sufficient. In Swift's days, +and even with his frank nature, we think that difficulty could have been +got over. There was nothing, at least, so unique in the case as to justify +the supposition that this was what Archbishop King referred to in that +memorable saying to Dr. Delany, "You have just met the most miserable man +on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a +question." Had Swift made a confession of scepticism to the Archbishop, we +do not think the prelate would have been taken so very much by surprise. +Nor can we think, with some, that Swift's vertigo (now pronounced to have +been increasing congestion of the brain), and his life-long certainty that +it would end in idiocy or madness, are the true explanation of this +interview and of the mystery which it shrouds. There was cause enough for +melancholy here, but not exactly the cause that meets the case. Another +hypothesis there is of a physical kind, which Scott and others hint at, +and which finds great acceptance with the medical philosophers. Swift, it +is said, was of "a cold temperament," &c., &c. But why a confession on the +part of Swift that he was not a marriageable man, even had he added that +he desired, above all things in the world, to be a person of that sort, +should have so moved the heart of an Archbishop as to make him shed tears, +one cannot conceive. Besides, although this hypothesis might explain much +of the Stella and Vanessa imbroglio, it would not explain all; nor do we +see on what foundation it could rest. Scott's assertion that all through +Swift's writings there is no evidence of his having felt the tender +passion is simply untrue. On the whole, the hypothesis which has been +started of a too near consanguinity between Swift and Stella, either known +from the first to one or both, or discovered too late, would most nearly +suit the conditions of the case. And yet, as far as we have seen, this +hypothesis also rests on air, with no one fact to support it. Could we +suppose that Swift, like another Eugene Aram, went through the world with +a murder on his mind, it might be taken as a solution of the mystery; but, +as we cannot do this, we must be content with supposing that either some +one of the foregoing hypotheses, or some combination of them, is to be +accepted, or that the matter is altogether inscrutable. + +Such by constitution as we have described him--with an intellect strong as +iron, much acquired knowledge, an ambition all but insatiable, and a +decided desire to be wealthy--Swift, almost as a matter of course, flung +himself impetuously into that Whig and Tory controversy which was the +question paramount in his time. In that he laboured as only a man of his +powers could, bringing to the side of the controversy on which he chanced +to be (and we believe when he was on a side it was honestly because he +found a certain preponderance of right in it) a hard and ruthless vigour +which served it immensely. But from the first, or at all events after the +disappointments of a political career had been experienced by him, his +nature would not work merely in the narrow warfare of Whiggism and +Toryism, but overflowed in general bitterness of reflection on all the +customs and ways of humanity. The following passage in _Gulliver's Voyage +to Brobdingnag_, describing how the politics of Europe appeared to the +King of Brobdingnag, shows us Swift himself in his larger mood of thought. + + "This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into + the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; + wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was + so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise + reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess that, + after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved + country, of our trade, and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in + religion and parties in the state, the prejudices of his education + prevailed so far that he could not forbear taking me up in his right + hand, and, stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of + laughing asking me whether _I_ was a Whig or Tory. Then, turning to + his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff nearly + as tall as the mainmast of the 'Royal Sovereign,' he observed how + contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by + such diminutive insects as I; 'And yet,' says he, 'I dare engage + these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they + contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; + they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they + dispute, they cheat, they betray.' And thus he continued on, while my + colour came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble + country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the + arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, truth, the + pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated." + +Swift's writings, accordingly, divide themselves, in the main, into two +classes,--pamphlets, tracts, lampoons, and the like, bearing directly on +persons and topics of the day, and written with the ordinary purpose of a +partisan; and satires of a more general aim, directed, in the spirit of a +cynic philosopher, against humanity on the whole, or against particular +human classes, arrangements, and modes of thinking. In some of his +writings the politician and the general satirist are seen together. The +_Drapier's Letters_ and most of the poetical lampoons exhibit Swift in his +direct character as a party-writer; in the _Tale of a Tub_ we have the +ostensible purpose of a partisan masking a reserve of general scepticism; +in the _Battle of the Books_ we have a satire partly personal to +individuals, partly with a reference to a prevailing tone of opinion; in +the _Voyage to Laputa_ we have a satire on a great class of men; and in +the _Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag_, and still more in the story of +the _Houyhnhnms_ and _Yahoos_, we have human nature itself analysed and +laid bare. + +Swift took no care of his writings, never acknowledged some of them, never +collected them, and suffered them to find their way about the world as +chance, demand, and the piracy of publishers, directed. As all know, it is +in his character as a humourist, an inventor of the preposterous as a +medium for the reflective, and above all as a master of irony, that he +takes his place as one of the chiefs of English literature. There can be +no doubt that, as regards the literary form which he affected most, he +took hints from Rabelais as the greatest original in the realm of the +absurd. Sometimes, as in his description of the Strulbrugs in the _Voyage +to Laputa_, he approaches the ghastly power of that writer; but on the +whole there is more of stern English realism in him, and less of sheer +riot and wildness. Sometimes, however, Swift throws off the disguise of +the humourist, and speaks seriously and in his own name. On such occasions +we find ourselves in the presence of a man of strong, sagacious, and +thoroughly English mind, content, as is the habit of most Englishmen, with +vigorous proximate sense, expressed in plain and rather coarse idiom. For +the speculative he shows in these cases neither liking nor aptitude: he +takes obvious reasons and arguments as they come to hand, and uses them in +a robust, downright, Saxon manner. In one respect he stands out +conspicuously even among plain Saxon writers--his total freedom from cant. +Johnson's advice to Boswell, "above all things to clear his mind of cant," +was perhaps never better illustrated than in the case of Dean Swift. +Indeed, it might be given as a summary definition of Swift's character +that he had cleared his mind of cant without having succeeded in filling +the void with song. It was Swift's intense hatred of cant--cant in +religion, cant in morality, cant in literature--that occasioned many of +those peculiarities which shock people in his writings. His principle +being to view things as they are, with no regard to the accumulated cant +of orators and poets, he naturally prosecuted his investigations into +those classes of facts which orators and poets have omitted as unsuitable +for their purposes. If they had viewed men as Angels, he would view them +as Yahoos. If they had placed the springs of action among the fine +phrases and the sublimities, he would trace them down into their secret +connections with the bestial and the obscene. Hence, as much as for any of +those physiological reasons which some of his biographers assign for it, +his undisguised delight in filth. And hence, also, probably--since among +the forms of cant he included the traditional manner of speaking of women +in their relations to men--his studious contempt, whether in writing for +men or for women, of all the accustomed decencies. It was not only the +more obvious forms of cant, however, that Swift had in aversion. Even to +that minor form of cant which consists in the "trite" he gave no quarter. +Whatever was habitually said by the majority of people seemed to him, for +that very reason, not worthy of being said at all, much less put into +print. A considerable portion of his writings, as, for example, his +_Tritical Essay on the Faculties of the Mind_, and his _Art of Polite +Conversation_--in the one of which he strings together a series of the +most threadbare maxims and quotations to be found in books, offering the +compilation as a gravely original disquisition, while in the other he +imitates the insipidity of ordinary table-talk in society--may be regarded +as showing a systematic determination on his part to turn the trite into +ridicule. Hence, in his own writings, though he refrains from the +profound, he never falls into the commonplace. Apart from Swift's other +views, there are to be found scattered through his writings not a few +distinct propositions of an innovative character respecting our social +arrangements. We have seen his doctrine as to the education of women; and +we may mention, as another instance of the same kind, his denunciation of +the system of standing armies as incompatible with freedom. Curiously +enough, also, it was Swift's belief that, Yahoos though we are, the world +is always in the right. + + + + +HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY. + + + + +HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY.[8] + + +Some of the ways in which Literature may illustrate History are obvious +enough. In the poems, the songs, the dramas, the novels, the satires, the +speeches, even the speculative treatises, of any time or nation, there is +imbedded a wealth of direct particulars respecting persons and events, +additional to the information that has been transmitted in the formal +records of that time or nation, or in its express histories of itself. "It +has often come to my ears that it is a saying too frequently in your mouth +that you have lived long enough for yourself:" so did Cicero, if the +speech in which the passage occurs is really his, address Cæsar face to +face, in the height of his power, and not long before his assassination, +remonstrating with him on his melancholy, and his carelessness of a life +so precious to Rome and to the world. If the words are any way authentic, +what a flash they are into the mind of the great Roman in his last years, +when, _blasé_ with wars and victories, and all the sensations that the +largest life on earth could afford, he walked about the streets of Rome, +consenting to live on so long as there might be need, but, so far as he +himself was concerned, heedless when the end might come, the conspirators +in a ring round him, the short scuffle, the first sharp stab of the +murderous knife! + +Let this pass as one instance of a valuable illustration of Biography and +History derived from casual reading. Literature teems with such: no one +can tell what particles of direct historical and biographical information +lie yet undiscovered and unappropriated in miscellaneous books. But there +is an extension of the use for the historian of the general literature of +the time with which he may be concerned. Not only does Literature teem +with yet unappropriated anecdotes respecting the persons and events of +most prominent interest in the consecutive history of the world; but quite +apart from this, the books, and especially the popular books, of any time, +are the richest possible storehouses of the kind of information the +historian wants. Whatever may be the main thread of his narrative, he has +to re-imagine more or less vividly what is called the general life of the +time, its manners, customs, humours, ways of thinking, the working of its +institutions, all the peculiarities of that patch of the never-ending, +ever-changing rush and bustle of human affairs, to-day above the ground, +and to-morrow under. Well, here in the books of the time he has his +materials and aids. They were formed in the conditions of the time; the +time played itself into them; they are saturated with its spirit; and +costumes, customs, modes of eating and drinking, town-life, country life, +the traveller on horseback to his inn, the shoutings of mobs in riot, what +grieved them, what they hated, what they laughed at, all are there. No +matter of what kind the book is, or what was its author's aim; it is, in +spite of itself, a bequest out of the very body and being of that time, +reminding us thereof by its structure through and through, and by a crust +of innumerable allusions. It has been remarked by Hallam, and by others, +how particularly useful in this way for the historian, as furnishing him +with social details of past times, are popular books more especially of +the humorous order--comic dramas and farces, poems of occasion, and novels +and works of prose-fiction generally. How the plays of Aristophanes admit +us to the public life of Athens! How, as we read the Satires and Epistles +of Horace, we see old Rome, like another huge London, only with taller +houses, and the masons mending the houses, and the poet himself, like a +modern official in Somerset House, trudging along to his office, jostled +by the crowds, and having to get out of the way of the ladders and the +falling rubbish, thinking all the while of his appointment with Mæcenas! +Or, if it is the reign of George II. in Britain that we are studying, +where shall we find better illustration of much of the life, and +especially the London life, of that coarse, wig-wearing age, than in the +novels of Fielding and Smollett? + + * * * * * + +These, and perhaps other ways in which Literature may illustrate History, +are tolerably obvious, and need no farther exposition. There is, however, +a higher and somewhat more subtle service which Literature may perform +towards illustrating History and modifying our ideas of the Past. + +What the historian chiefly and finally wants to get at, through all his +researches, and by all his methods of research, is the _mind_ of the time +that interests him, its mode of thinking and feeling. Through all the +trappings, all the colours, all the costumes, all those circumstances of +the picturesque which delight us in our recollections of the past, this is +what we seek, or ought to seek. The trappings and picturesque +circumstances are but our optical helps in our quest of this; they are the +thickets of metaphor through which we push the quest, interpreting as we +go. The metaphors resolve themselves; and at last it is as if we had +reached that vital and essential something--a clear transparency, we seem +to fancy it, and yet a kind of throbbing transparency, a transparency +with pulses and powers--which we call the mind or spirit of the time. As +in the case of the individual, so in that of a time or a people, we seem +to have got at the end of our language when we use this word, mind or +spirit. We know what we mean, and it is the last thing that we can mean; +but, just on that account, it eludes description or definition. At best we +can go to and fro among a few convenient synonyms and images. Soul, mind, +spirit, these old and simple words are the strongest, the profoundest, the +surest; age cannot antiquate them, nor science undo them; they last with +the rocks, and still go beyond. But, having in view rather the operation +than the cause, we find a use also in such alternative phrases as "mode of +thinking," "mode of feeling and thinking," "habit of thought," "moral and +intellectual character or constitution," and the like. Or, again, if we +will have an image of that which from its nature is unimaginable, then, in +our efforts to be as pure and abstract as possible, we find ourselves +driven, as I have said, into a fancy of mind as a kind of clear aërial +transparency, unbounded or of indefinite bounds, and yet not a dead +transparency, but a transparency full of pulses, powers, motions, and +whirls, capable in a moment of clouding itself, ceasing to be a +transparency, and becoming some strange solid phantasmagory, as of a +landscape smiling in sunshine or a sky dark with a storm. Yet again there +is another and more mechanical conception of mind which may be of +occasional use. The thinking power, the thinking principle, the substance +which feels and thinks, are phrases for mind from of old: what if we were +to agree, for a momentary advantage, to call mind rudely the thinking +apparatus? What the advantage may be will presently appear. + +Mind, mode of thinking, mode of thinking and feeling, moral and +intellectual constitution, that mystic transparency full of pulses and +motions, this thinking apparatus,--whichever phrase or image we adopt, +there are certain appertaining considerations which we have to take along +with us. + +(1.) There is the consideration of differences of degree, quality, and +worth. Mind may be great or small, noble or mean, strong or weak; the mode +of thinking of one person or one time may be higher, finer, grander than +that of another; the moral and intellectual constitutions of diverse +individuals or peoples may present all varieties of the admirable and +lovely or the despicable and unlovely; the pulses and motions in that +mystic transparency which we fancy as one man's mind may be more vehement, +more awful, more rhythmical and musical, than are known in that which we +fancy as the mind of some other; the thinking apparatus which A possesses, +and by which he performs the business of his life, may be more massive, +more complex, more exquisite, capable of longer reaches and more superb +combinations, than that which has fallen to the lot of B. All this is +taken for granted everywhere; all our speech and conduct proceed on the +assumption. + +(2.) Somewhat less familiar, but not unimportant, is a consideration which +I may express by calling it the necessary instability of mind, its +variability from moment to moment. Your mind, my mind, every mind, is +continually sustaining modifications, disintegrations, reconstructions, by +all that acts upon it, by all it comes to know. We are much in the habit, +indeed, of speaking of experience, of different kinds of knowledge, as so +much material for the mind--material delivered into it, outspread as it +were on its floor, and which it, the lord and master, may survey, let lie +there for occasion, and now and then select from and employ. True! but not +the whole truth! The mind does not stand amid what it knows, as something +distinct and untouched; the mind is actually composed at any one moment of +all that it has learnt or felt up to that moment. Every new information +received, every piece of knowledge gained, every joy enjoyed, every sorrow +suffered, is then and there transmuted into mind, and becomes incorporate +with the prior central substance. To resort now to that mechanical figure +which I said might be found useful: every new piece of information, every +fact that one comes to apprehend, every probability brought before one in +the course of life, is not only so much new matter for the thinking +apparatus to lay hold of and work into the warp and woof of thought; it is +actually also a modification of the thinking apparatus itself. The mind +thinks _with_ what it knows; and, if you alter the knowledge in any one +whit, you alter the thinking instrumentality in proportion. Our whole +practice of education is based on this idea, and yet somehow the idea is +allowed to lurk. It may be brought out best perhaps by thinking what may +happen to a mind that has passed the period of education in the ordinary +sense. A person of mature age, let us say, betakes himself, for the first +time, to the study of geology. He gains thereby so much new and important +knowledge of a particular kind. Yes! but he does more. He modifies his +previous mind; he introduces a difference into his mode of thinking by a +positive addition to that instrumentality of notions _with_ which he +thinks. The geological conceptions which he has acquired become an organic +part of that reason, that intellect, which he applies to all things +whatsoever; he will think and imagine thenceforward with the help of an +added potency, and, consequently, never again precisely as he did before. +Generalize this hint, and let it run through history. The mind of Man +cannot remain the same through two consecutive generations, if only +because the knowledge which feeds and makes mind, the notions that +constitute the thinking power, are continually varying. In this age of a +hundred sciences, all tramping on Nature's outside with their flags up, +and marching her round and round, and searching her through and through +for her secrets, and flinging into the public forum their heaps of +results, how is it possible to call mind the same as it was a generation +or two ago, when the sciences were fewer, their industry more leisurely, +and their discoveries less frequent? Nay, but we may go back not a +generation or two only, but to generation beyond generation through a long +series, still, as we ascend, finding the sciences fewer, earth's load of +knowledge lighter, and man's very imagination of the physical universe +which he tenants cruder and more diminutive. Till two hundred years ago +the Mundus, or physical system of things, to even the most learned of men, +with scarcely an exception, was a finite spectacular sphere, or succession +of spheres, that of the fixed stars nearly outermost, wheeling round the +central earth for her pleasure; as we penetrate through still prior +centuries, even this finite spherical Mundus is seen to shrink and shrink +in men's fancies of it till a radius of some hundreds of miles would sweep +from the earth to the starry roof; back beyond that again the very notion +of sphericity disappears, and men were walking, as it seemed, on the upper +side of a flat disc, close under a concave of blue, travelled by fiery +caprices. How is it possible to regard man's mode of thinking and +feeling, man's mind, as in any way constant through such vicissitude in +man's notions respecting his very housing in space, and the whole +encircling touch of his physical belongings? + +(3.) A third consideration, however, administers a kind of corrective to +the last. It is that, though the last consideration is not unimportant, +its importance practically, and as far as the range of historic time is +concerned, may be easily exaggerated. We have supposed a person betaking +himself to the study of geology, and have truly said that his very mode of +thinking would be thereby affected, that his geological knowledge would +pass into his reason, and determine so far the very cast of his mind, the +form of his ability. Well, but he might have betaken himself to something +else; and who can tell, without definite investigation, but that out of +that something else he might have derived as much increase of his mental +power, or even greater? There are thousands of employments for all minds, +and, though all may select, and select differently, there are thousands +for all in common. Life itself, all the inevitable activity of life, is +one vast and most complex schooling. Books or no books, sciences or no +sciences, we live, we look, we love, we laugh, we fear, we hate, we +wonder; we are sons, we are brothers, we have friends; the seasons return, +the sun shines, the moon walks in beauty, the sea roars and beats the +land, the winds blow, the leaves fall; we are young, we grow old; we +commit others to their graves, we see somewhere the little grassy mound +which shall conceal ourselves:--is not this a large enough primary school +for all and sundry; are not these sufficient and everlasting rudiments? +That so it is we all recognise. Given some original force or goodness of +nature, and out of even this primary school, and from the teaching of +these common rudiments, may there not come, do there not come, minds +worthy of mark--the shrewd, keen wit, the upright and robust judgment, the +disposition tender and true, the bold and honest man? And though, for +perfection, the books and the sciences must be superadded, yet do not the +rudiments persist in constant over-proportion and incessant compulsory +repetition through all the process of culture, and is not the great result +of culture itself a reaction on the rudiments? And so, without prejudice +to our foregone conclusion that mind is variable with knowledge, that +every new science or body of notions conquered for the world modifies the +world's mode of thinking and feeling, alters the cast and the working +trick of its reason and imagination, we can yet fall back, for historic +time at least, on the notion of a human mind so essentially permanent and +traditional that we cannot decide by mere chronology where we may justly +be fondest of it, and certainly cannot assume that its latest individual +specimens, with all their advantages, are necessarily the ablest, the +noblest, or the cleverest. In fact, however we may reconcile it with our +theories of vital evolution and progressive civilization, we all +instinctively agree in this style of sentiment. Shakespeare lived and +died, we may say, in the pre-scientific period; he lived and died in the +belief of the fixedness of our earth in space and the diurnal wheeling +round her of the ten spectacular spheres. Not the less was he Shakespeare; +and none of us dares to say that there is now in the world, or has +recently been, a more superb thinking apparatus of its order than his mind +was, a spiritual transparency of larger diameter, or vivid with grander +gleamings and pulses. Two hundred and fifty years, therefore, chock-full +though they are of new knowledges and discoveries, have not been a single +knife-edge of visible advance in the world's power of producing splendid +individuals; and, if we add two hundred and fifty to that, and again two +hundred and fifty, and four times two hundred and fifty more without +stopping, still we cannot discern that there has been a knife-edge of +advance in that particular. For at this last remove we are among the +Romans, and beyond them there lie the Greeks; and side by side with both, +and beyond both, are other Mediterranean Indo-Europeans, and, away in +Asia, clumps and masses of various Orientals. For ease of reference, let +us go no farther than the Greeks. Thinking apparatuses of first-rate grip! +mental transparencies of large diameter and tremulous with great powers +and pulses! What do we say to Homer, Plato, Æschylus, Sophocles, +Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and the rest +of the great Hellenic cluster which these represent! True, their cosmology +was in a muddle (perhaps _ours_ is in a muddle too, for as little as we +think so); but somehow they contrived to be such that the world doubts to +this day whether, on the whole, at any time since, it has exhibited, in +such close grouping, such a constellation of spirits of the highest +magnitude. And the lesson enforced by this Greek instance may be enforced, +less blazingly perhaps, but still clearly, as by the light of scattered +stars, by instances from the whole course of historic time. Within that +range, despite the vicissitudes of the mode of human thought caused by +continued inquisitiveness and its results in new knowledges, despite the +change from age to age in mankind's very image of its own whereabouts in +space, and the extent of that whereabouts, and the complexity of the +entanglement in which it rolls, it is still true that you may probe at any +point with the sure expectation of finding at least _some_ minds as good +intrinsically, as strong, as noble, as valiant, as inventive, as any in +our own age of latest appearances and all the newest lights. I am aware, +of course, where the compensation may be sought. The philosophical +historian may contend that, though some minds of early ages have been as +able intrinsically as any minds of later ages, these later minds being +themselves the critics and judges, yet an enormous general progress may be +made out in the increased _number_ in the later ages of minds tolerably +able, in the heightening of the general level, in the more equable +diffusion of intelligence, in the gradual extension of freedom, and the +humanizing of manners and institutions. On that question I am not called +upon to enter now, nor is my opinion on it to be inferred from anything I +am now saying. I limit myself to the assertion that within historic time +we find what we are obliged to call an intrinsic co-equality of _some_ +minds at various successive points and at long-separated intervals, and +that consequently, if the human race _is_ gradually acquiring a power of +producing individuals more able than their ablest predecessors, the rate +of its law in this respect is so slow that 2,500 years have not made the +advance appreciable. The assertion is limited; it is reconcilable, I +believe, with the most absolute and extreme doctrine of evolution; but it +seems to be both important and curious, inasmuch as it has not yet been +sufficiently attended to in any of the phrasings of that doctrine that +have been speculatively put forward. No doctrine is rightly phrased, I +would submit, when, if it were true according to that phrasing, it would +be man's highest duty to proceed as if it weren't. + +History itself, the mere tradition and records of the human race, would +have authorized our assertion. Pericles, Epaminondas, Alexander the Great, +Hannibal, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne: would not the authenticated tradition +of the lives and actions of those men, and others of their order, or of +other orders, prove that possible capacity of the individual mind has not, +for the last 2,500 years of our earth's history, been a mere affair of +chronological date? But it is Literature that reads us the lesson most +fully and convincingly. Some of those great men of action have left little +or no direct speech of themselves. They mingled their minds with the rage +of things around them; they worked, and strove, and died. But the books we +have from all periods, the poems, the songs, the treatises, the +pleadings--some of them from men great also in the world of action, but +most from men who only looked on, and thought, and tried to rule the +spirit, or to find how it might be ruled--these remain with us and can be +studied yet microscopically. If what the Historian wants to get at is the +mind of the time that interests him, or of the past generally, here it is +for him in no disguised form, but in actual specimens. Poems, treatises, +and the like, are actual transmitted _bits_ of the mind of the past; +every fragment of verse or prose from a former period preserves something +of the thought and sentiment of that period expressed by some one +belonging to it; the masterpieces of the world's literature are the +thought and feeling of successive generations expressed, in and for each +generation, by those who could express them best. What a purblind +perversity then it is for History, professing that its aim is to know the +mind or real life of the past, to be fumbling for that mind or life amid +old daggers, rusty iron caps and jingling jackets, and other such material +relics as the past has transmitted, or even groping for it, as ought to be +done most strictly, in statutes and charters and records, if all the while +those literary remains of the past are neglected from which the very thing +searched for stares us face to face! + + * * * * * + +There is a small corollary to our main proposition. It is that ages which +we are accustomed to regard as crude, barbarous, and uncivilized, may turn +out perhaps, on due investigation and a better construction of the +records, to have been not so crude and barbarous after all, but to have +contained a great deal of intrinsic humanity, interesting to us yet, and +capable, through all intervening time and difference, of folding itself +round our hearts. And here I will quit those great, but perhaps too +continually obtrusive, Greeks and Romans, and will take my examples, all +the homelier though they must be, from our own land and kindred. + +The Fourteenth Century in our island was not what we should now hold up as +a model age, a soft age, an orderly age, an instructed age, a pleasant age +for a lady or gentleman that has been accustomed to modern ideas and +modern comforts to be transferred back into. It was the age of the three +first Edwards, Richard II., and Henry IV. in England, and of the Wallace +Interregnum, Bruce, David II., and the two first Stuarts in Scotland. Much +was done in it, as these names will suggest, that has come down as +picturesque story and stirring popular legend. It is an age, on that +account, in which schoolboys and other plain uncritical readers of both +nations revel with peculiar relish. Critical inquirers, too, and real +students of history, especially of late, have found it an age worth their +while, and have declared it full of important facts and powerful +characters. Not the less the inveterate impression among a large number of +persons of a rapid modern way of thinking is that all this interesting +vision of the England and Scotland of the fourteenth century is mere +poetical glamour or antiquarian make-believe, and that the real state of +affairs was one of mud, mindlessness, fighting and scramble generally, no +tea and no newspapers, but plenty of hanging, and murder almost _ad +libitum_. Now these are most wrong-headed persons, and they might be +beaten black and blue by sheer force of records. But out of kindliness one +may take a gentler method with them, and try to bring them right by +æsthetic suasion. It so chances, for example, that there are literary +remains of the fourteenth century, both English and Scottish, and that the +authors of the chief of these were Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English +literature proper, and John Barbour, the father of the English literature +of North Britain. Let us take a few bits from Chaucer and Barbour. +Purposely, we shall take bits that may be already familiar. + +Here is Chaucer's often-quoted description of the scholar, or typical +student of Oxford University, from the Prologue to his _Canterbury +Tales_:-- + + A Clerk there was of Oxenford also, + That unto logic haddè long ygo, + As leanè was his horse as is a rake, + And _he_ was not right fat, I undertake; + But lookèd hollow, and thereto soberly. + Full threadbare was his overest courtepy; + For he had getten him yet no benefice, + Ne was so worldly for to have office; + For him was liefer have at his bed's head + A twenty books, clothèd in black and red, + Of Aristotle and his philosophie + Than robès rich, or fiddle, or sautrie. + But, albe that he was a philosópher, + Yet had he but a little gold in coffer; + But all that he might of his friendès hent + On bookès and on learning he it spent, + And busily gan for the soulès pray + Of hem that gave him wherewith to scholay. + Of study took he most cure and most heed; + Not oe word spak he morè than was need; + And that was said in form and reverence, + And short and quick, and full of high sentence; + Souning in moral virtue was his speech, + And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach. + +Or take an out-of-doors' scene from one of Chaucer's reputed minor poems. +It is a description of a grove or wood in spring, or early summer:-- + + In which were oakès great, straight as a line, + Under the which the grass, so fresh of hue, + Was newly sprung, and an eight foot or nine + Every tree well fro his fellow grew, + With branches broad, laden with leavès new, + That sprungen out agen the sunnè sheen, + Some very red, and some a glad light green. + +Or, for a tidy scene indoors, take this from another poem:-- + + And, sooth to sayen, my chamber was + Full well depainted, and with glass + Were all the windows well yglazed + Full clear, and not an hole ycrased, + That to behold it was great joy; + For wholly all the story of Troy + Was in the glazing ywrought thus, + Of Hector and of King Priamus, + Of Achilles and of King Laomedon, + And eke of Medea and Jason, + Of Paris, Helen, and Lavine; + And all the walls with colours fine + Weren paint, both text and glose, + And all the Rómaunt of the Rose: + My windows weren shut each one, + And through the glass the sunnè shone + Upon my bed with brighte beams. + +Or take these stanzas of weighty ethical sententiousness (usually printed +as Chaucer's, but whether his or not does not matter):-- + + Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness; + Suffice unto thy good, though it be small; + For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness, + Press hath envy, and weal is blent in all; + Savour no more than thee behovè shall; + Rede well thyself that other folk canst rede; + And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede. + + Painè thee not each crooked to redress + In trust of her that turneth as a ball. + Great rest standeth in little business; + Beware also to spurn against an awl; + Strive not as doth a crockè with a wall; + Deemè thyself that deemest others dead; + And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede. + + That thee is sent receive in buxomness; + The wrestling of this world asketh a fall; + Here is no home, here is but wilderness: + Forth, pilgrim! forth, beast, out of thy stall! + Look up on high, and thankè God of all: + Waivè thy lusts, and let thy ghost thee lead; + And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede. + +Or, finally, take a little bit of Chaucer's deep, keen slyness, when he is +speaking smilingly about himself and his own poetry. He has represented +himself as standing in the House or Temple of Fame, observing company +after company going up to the goddess, and petitioning for renown in the +world for what they have done. Some she grants what they ask, others she +dismisses crestfallen, and Chaucer thinks the _levée_ over:-- + + With that I gan about to wend, + For one that stood right at my back + Methought full goodly to me spak, + And said, "Friend, what is thy name? + Art _thou_ come hither to have fame?" + "Nay, forsoothè, friend," quoth I; + "I came not hither, grammercy, + For no such causè, by my head. + Sufficeth me, as I were dead, + That no wight have _my_ name in hand: + I wot myself best how I stand; + For what I dree or what I think + I will myselfè all it drink, + Certain for the morè part, + As farforth as I ken mine art!" + +Chaucer ranks to this day as one of the very greatest and finest minds in +the entire literature of the English speech, and stands therefore on a +level far higher than can be assumed for his contemporary Barbour. But +Barbour was a most creditable old worthy too. Let us have a scrap or two +from his _Bruce_. Who does not know the famous passage which is the very +key-note of that poem? One is never tired of quoting it:-- + + Ah! freedom is a noble thing; + Freedom makes man to have liking: + Freedom all solace to man gives; + He lives at ease that freely lives. + A noble heart may have nane ease, + Ne ellys nought that may him please + Gif freedom faileth; for free liking + Is yearnit ower all other thing; + Nor he that aye has livit free + May not know weel the propertie, + The anger, ne the wretched doom, + That is couplit to foul thirldom; + But, gif he had essayit it, + Then all perquére he suld it wit, + And suld think freedom mair to prize + Than all the gold in the warld that is. + +Or take the portrait of the good Sir James, called "The Black Douglas," +the chief companion and adherent of Bruce, introduced near the beginning +of the poem, where he is described as a young man living moodily at St. +Andrews before the Bruce revolt:-- + + Ane weel great while there dwellit he: + All men loved him for his bountie; + For he was of full fair effere, + Wise, courteous, and debonair; + Large and lovand also was he, + And ower all thing loved loyauty. + Loyautie to love is gretumly; + Through loyautie men lives richtwisely; + With a virtue of loyautie + Ane man may yet sufficiand be; + And, but loyautie, may nane have prize, + Whether he be wicht or be he wise; + For, where _it_ failis, nae virtue + May be of prize, ne of value + To mak ane man sae good that he + May simply callit good man be. + He was in all his deedès leal; + For him dedeignit not to deal + With treachery ne with falsét. + His heart on high honóur was set, + And him contened in sic manére + That all him loved that war him near. + But he was not sae fair that we + Suld speak greatly of his beautíe. + In visage was he somedeal grey, + And had black hair, as I heard say; + But of his limbs he was well made, + With banès great and shoulders braid; + His body was well made leanlie, + As they that saw him said to me. + When he was blythe, he was lovely + And meek and sweet in company; + But wha in battle micht him see + All other countenance had he. + And in speech lispit he somedeal; + But that set him richt wonder weel. + To Good Hector of Troy micht he + In mony thingès likenit be. + Hector had black hair as he had, + And stark limbès and richt weel made, + And lispit also as did he, + And was fulfillit of loyautie, + And was courteous, and wise, and wicht. + +My purpose in quoting these passages from Chaucer and Barbour will have +been anticipated. Let me, however, state it in brief. We hear sometimes in +these days of a certain science, or rather portion of a more general +science, which takes to itself the name of _Social Statics_, and +professes, under that name, to have for its business--I give the very +phrase of those who define it--the investigation of "possible social +simultaneities." That is to say, there may be a science of what can +possibly go along with what in any social state or stage; or, to put it +otherwise, any one fact or condition of a state of society being given, +there may be inferred from that fact or condition some of the other facts +and conditions that must necessarily have co-existed with it. Thus at +length perhaps, by continued inference, the whole state of an old society +might be imaged out, just as Cuvier, from the sight of one bone, could +infer with tolerable accuracy the general structure of the animal. Well, +will _Social Statics_ be so good as to take the foregoing passages, and +whirr out of them their "possible social simultaneities"? Were this done, +I should be surprised if the England and Scotland of the fourteenth +century were to turn out so very unlovely, so atrociously barbarian, after +all. These passages are actual transmitted bits of the English and +Scottish mind of that age, and surely the substance from which they are +extracts cannot have been so very coarse or bad. Where such sentiments +existed and were expressed, where the men that could express them lived +and were appreciated, the surrounding medium of thought, of institutions, +and of customs, must have been to correspond. There must have been truth, +and honour, and courtesy, and culture, round those men; there must have +been high heart, shrewd sense, delicate art, gentle behaviour, and, in one +part of the island at least, a luxuriant complexity of most subtle and +exquisite circumstance. + + * * * * * + +The conclusion which we have thus reached vindicates that mood of mind +towards the whole historical past which we find to have been actually the +mood of all the great masters of literature whenever they have ranged back +in the past for their themes. When Shakespeare writes of Richard II., who +lived two hundred years before his own time, does he not overleap those +two hundred years as a mere nothing, plunge in among Richard's Englishmen +as intrinsically not different from so many great Elizabethans, make them +talk and act as co-equals in whom Elizabethans could take an interest, and +even fill the mouth of the weak monarch himself with soliloquies of +philosophic melancholy and the kingliest verbal splendours? And so when +the same poet goes back into a still remoter antique, as in the council of +the Greek chiefs in his _Troilus and Cressida_. We speak of Shakespeare's +anachronisms in such cases. There they are certainly for the critic to +note; but they only serve to bring out more clearly his main principle in +his art--his sense or instinct, for all historic time, of a grand +over-matching synchronism. And, indeed, without something of this +instinct--this sense of an intrinsic traditional humanity persisting +through particular progressive variations, this belief in a co-equality of +at least some minds through all the succession of human ages in what we +call the historic period--what were the past of mankind to us much more +than a history of dogs or ruminants? Nay, and with that measure with which +we mete out to others, with the same measure shall it not be meted out to +ourselves? If to be dead is to be inferior, and if to be long dead is to +be despicable, to the generation in possession, shall not we who are in +possession now have passed into the state of inferiority to-morrow, with +all the other defunct beyond us, and will not a time come when some far +future generation will lord it on the earth, and _we_ shall lie deep, deep +down, among the strata of the despicable? + + +THE END. + + +LONDON; R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS. + + + + +Footnotes: + +[1] _Fraser's Magazine_, Dec. 1844. + +[2] _British Quarterly Review_, November, 1852.--1. "Shakspeare and His +Times." By M. Guizot. 1852.--2. "Shakspeare's Dramatic Art; and his +Relation to Calderon and Goethe." Translated from the German of Dr. +Hermann Ulrici. 1846.--3. "Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and +Soret." Translated from the German by John Oxenford. 2 vols. 1850. + +[3] According to Mr. Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, it is a mistake to +fancy that Goethe was tall. He seemed taller than he really was. + +[4] This saying of Steevens, though still repeated in books, has lost its +force with the public. The Lives of Shakespeare by Mr. Halliwell and Mr. +Charles Knight, written on such different principles, have effectually +dissipated the old impression. Mr. Knight, by his use of the principle of +synchronism, and his accumulation of picturesque details, in his Biography +of Shakespeare, has left the public without excuse, if they still believe +in Steevens. + +[5] _North British Review_, February 1852:--"The Works of John Milton." 8 +vols. London: Pickering. 1851. + +[6] _British Quarterly Review_, July, 1854. The Annotated Edition of the +English Poets: Edited by Robert Bell. "Poetical Works of John Dryden." 3 +vols. London. 1854. + +[7] _British Quarterly Review_, October 1854.--1. "The English Humourists +of the Eighteenth Century." A Series of Lectures. By W. M. Thackeray. +London: 1853. 2. "The Life of Swift." By Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh: +1848. + +[8] _Macmillan's Magazine_, July 1871. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + +The following misprints have been corrected: + "entersprie" corrected to "enterprise" (page 20) + "ancy" corrected to "fancy" (page 66) + "extravagan s" corrected to "extravagances" (page 222) + "hpyotheses" corrected to "hypotheses" (page 292) + +Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and +hyphenation have been retained from the original. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, +MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S*** + + +******* This file should be named 35438-8.txt or 35438-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/4/3/35438 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's</p> +<p> With Other Essays</p> +<p>Author: David Masson</p> +<p>Release Date: March 1, 2011 [eBook #35438]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/American Libraries<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/threedevilsluthe00mass"> + http://www.archive.org/details/threedevilsluthe00mass</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<p><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong> +Text underscored in gray indicates the site of a correction. Hover the cursor +over the marked text and the nature of the correction should appear. Otherwise +inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the +original.</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE THREE DEVILS:</span><br /> +<span class="huge">LUTHER’S, MILTON’S, AND GOETHE’S.</span><br /> +<span class="big"><i>WITH OTHER ESSAYS.</i></span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE THREE DEVILS:</span><br /> +<span class="huge">LUTHER’S, MILTON’S, AND GOETHE’S.</span><br /> +WITH<br /> +<span class="big"><i>OTHER ESSAYS</i>.</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BY<br /> +<span class="big">DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D.,</span><br /> +<i>Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh.</i></p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">London:<br />MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />1874.<br /><br /> +[<i>The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.</i>]</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><small>LONDON:<br /> +R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,<br /> +BREAD STREET HILL.</small></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<h2>PREFATORY NOTE.</h2> + +<div class="note"> +<p>The first five of the following Essays are reprinted from the Author’s +<i>Essays Biographical and Critical: chiefly on English Poets</i>, published in +1856. The present Volume and two similar Volumes issued separately (under +the titles “<i>Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays</i>” and +“<i>Chatterton: A Story of the Year 1770</i>”) may be taken together as forming +a new and somewhat enlarged edition of the older book. The addition in the +present Volume consists of the last Essay.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Edinburgh</span>:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>November 1874</i>.</span></p></div> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td>THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER’S, MILTON’S, AND GOETHE’S</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td>SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td>MILTON’S YOUTH</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td>DRYDEN AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td>DEAN SWIFT</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td>HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE THREE DEVILS:<br /> +LUTHER’S, MILTON’S, AND GOETHE’S.</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">THE THREE DEVILS:<br /> +LUTHER’S, MILTON’S, AND GOETHE’S.</span><small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small></p> + +<p>Luther, Milton, and Goethe: these are very strange names to bring +together. It strikes us, however, that the effect may not be uninteresting +if we connect the names of those three great men, as having each +represented to us the Principle of Evil, and each represented him in a +different way. Each of the three has left on record his conception of a +great accursed being, incessantly working in human affairs, and whose +function it is to produce evil. There is nothing more striking about +Luther than the amazing sincerity of his belief in the existence of such +an evil being, the great general enemy of mankind, and whose specific +object, in Luther’s time, it was to resist Luther’s movement, and, if +possible, “cut his soul out of God’s mercy.” What was Luther’s exact +conception of this being is to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> be gathered from his life and writings. +Again, we have Milton’s Satan. Lastly, we have Goethe’s Mephistopheles. +Nor is it possible to confound the three, or for a moment to mistake the +one for the other. They are as unlike as it is possible for three grand +conceptions of the same thing to be. May it not, then, be profitable to +make their peculiarities and their differences a subject of study? +Milton’s Satan and Goethe’s Mephistopheles have indeed been frequently +contrasted in a vague, antithetic way; for no writer could possibly give a +description of Goethe’s Mephistopheles without saying something or other +about Milton’s Satan. The exposition, however, of the difference between +the two has never been sufficient; and it may give the whole speculation +greater interest if, in addition to Milton’s Satan and Goethe’s +Mephistopheles, we include Luther’s Devil. It is scarcely necessary to +premise that here there is to be no theological discussion. All that we +propose is to compare, as we find them, three very striking delineations +of the Evil Principle, one of them experimental, the other two poetical.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>These last words indicate one respect in which, it will be perceived at +the outset, Luther’s conception of the Evil Principle on the one hand and +Milton’s and Goethe’s on the other are fundamentally distinguishable. All +the three, of course, are founded on the Scriptural<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> proposition of the +existence of a being whose express function it is to produce evil. Luther, +firmly believing every jot and tittle of Scripture, believed the +proposition about the Devil also; and so the whole of his experience of +evil in himself and others was cast into the shape of a verification of +that proposition. Had he started without such a preliminary conception, +his experience would have had to encounter the difficulty of expressing +itself in some other way; which, it is likely, would not have been nearly +so effective, or so Luther-like. Milton, too, borrows the elements of his +conception of Satan from Scripture. The Fallen Angel of the Bible is the +hero of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; and one of the most striking things about this +poem is that in it we see the grand imagination of the poet blazing in the +very track of the propositions of the theologian. And, though there can be +no doubt that Goethe’s Mephistopheles is conceived less in the spirit of +Scripture than either Milton’s Satan or Luther’s Devil, still even in +Mephistopheles we discern the lineaments of the same traditional being. +All the three, then, have this in common—that they are founded on the +Scriptural proposition of the existence of an accursed being whose +function it is to produce evil, and that, more or less, they adopt the +Scriptural account of that being. Still, as we have said, Luther’s +conception of this being belongs to one category; Milton’s and Goethe’s +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> another. Luther’s is a biographical phenomenon; Milton’s and Goethe’s +are literary performances. Luther illustrated the Evil Being of Scripture +to himself by means of his personal experience. Whatever resistance he met +with, whatever obstacle to Divine grace he found in his own heart or in +external circumstances, whatever event he saw plainly cast in the way of +the progress of the Gospel, whatever outbreak of a bad or unamiable spirit +occurred in the Church, whatever strange phenomenon of nature wore a +malevolent aspect,—out of that he obtained a clearer notion of the Devil. +In this way it might be said that Luther was all his life gaining a deeper +insight into the Devil’s character. On the other hand, Milton’s Satan and +Goethe’s Mephistopheles are poetical creations, the one epic, the other +dramatic. Borrowing the elements of his conception from Scripture, Milton +set himself to the task of describing the ruined Archangel as he may be +supposed to have existed at that epoch of the creation when he had hardly +decided his own function, as yet warring with the Almighty, or, in pursuit +of a gigantic scheme of revenge, travelling from star to star. Poetically +assuming the device of the same Scriptural proposition, Goethe set himself +to the task of representing the Spirit of Evil as he existed six thousand +years later, no longer gifted with the same powers of locomotion, or +struggling for admission into this part of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> universe, but plying his +understood function in crowded cities and on the minds of individuals.</p> + +<p>So far as the mere fact of Milton’s having made Satan the hero of his +epic, or of Goethe’s having made Mephistopheles a character in his drama, +qualifies us to speak of the theological opinions of the one or of the +other, we are not entitled to say that either Milton or Goethe believed in +a Devil at all as Luther did. Or, again, it is quite conceivable that +Milton might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did, and that +Goethe might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did also, and +yet that, in that case, the Devil which Milton believed in might not have +been the Satan of the <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and the Devil which Goethe believed +in might not have been the Mephistopheles of <i>Faust</i>. Of course, we have +other means of knowing whether Milton did actually believe in the +existence of the great accursed being whose fall he sings. It is also +plain that Goethe’s Mephistopheles resembles Luther’s Devil more than +Milton’s Satan does in this respect—that Mephistopheles is the expression +of a great deal of Goethe’s actual observation of life and experience in +human affairs. Still, neither the fact, on the one hand, that Milton did +believe in the existence of the Evil Spirit, nor the fact, on the other, +that Mephistopheles is an expression for the aggregate of much profound +thinking on the part of Goethe, is of force to obliterate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the fundamental +distinction between Luther’s Devil, as a biographical reality, and +Milton’s Satan and Goethe’s Mephistopheles, as two literary performances. +If we might risk summing up under the light of this preliminary +distinction, perhaps the following would be near the truth:—Luther had as +strong a faith as ever man had in the existence and activity of the Evil +Spirit of Scripture: he used to recognise the operation of this Spirit in +every individual instance of evil as it occurred; he used, moreover, to +conceive that this Spirit and he were personal antagonists; and so, just +as one man forms to himself a distinct idea of the character of another +man to whom he stands in an important relation, Luther came to form to +himself a distinct idea of the Devil, and what this idea was it seems +possible to find out by examining his writings. Milton, again, chose the +Scripture personage as the hero of an epic poem, and employed his grand +imagination in realizing the Scripture narrative: we have reason also to +know that he did actually believe in the Devil’s existence; and it agrees +with what we know of Milton’s character to suppose that the Devil thus +believed in would be pretty much the same magnificent being he has +described in his poem—though, on the whole, we should not say that Milton +was a man likely to carry about with him, in daily affairs, any constant +recognition of the Devil’s presence. Lastly, Goethe, adopting, for a +different<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> literary effect, the Scriptural and traditional account of the +same being, conceived his Mephistopheles. This Mephistopheles, there is no +doubt, had a real allegoric meaning with Goethe; he meant him to typify +the Evil Spirit in modern civilization; but whether Goethe did actually +believe in the existence of a supernatural intelligence whose function it +is to produce evil is a question which no one will feel himself called +upon to answer, although, if he did, it may be unhesitatingly asserted +that this supernatural intelligence cannot have been Mephistopheles.</p> + +<p>From all this it appears that Luther’s conception of the Evil Being +belongs to one category, Milton’s and Goethe’s to another. Let us +consider, <i>first</i>, Milton’s Satan, <i>secondly</i>, Goethe’s Mephistopheles, +and, <i>thirdly</i>, Luther’s Devil.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>The difficulties which Milton had to overcome in writing his <i>Paradise +Lost</i> were immense. The gist of those difficulties may be defined as +consisting in this, that the poet had at once to represent a supernatural +condition of being and to construct a story. He had to describe the +ongoings of Angels, and at the same time to make one event follow another. +It is comparatively easy for Milton to sustain his conception of those +superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena—to represent them flying +singly through space like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> huge black shadows, or standing opposite to +each other in hostile battalions; but to construct a story in which these +beings should be the agents, to exhibit these beings thinking, scheming, +blundering, in such a way as to produce a likely succession of events, was +enormously difficult. The difficulty was to make the course of events +correspond with the reputation of the objects. To do this perfectly was +literally impossible. It is possible for the human mind to conceive +twenty-four great supernatural beings existing together at any given +moment in space; but it is utterly impossible to conceive what would occur +among those twenty-four beings during twenty-four hours. The value of +time, the amount of history that can be transacted in a given period, +depends on the nature and prowess of the beings whose volitions make the +chain of events; and so a lower order of beings can have no idea at what +rate things happen in a higher. The mode of causation will be different +from that with which they are acquainted.</p> + +<p>This is the difficulty with which Milton had to struggle; or, rather, this +is the difficulty with which he did not struggle. He had to construct a +narrative; and so, while he represents to us the full stature of his +superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena, he does not attempt to +make events follow each other at a higher rate among those beings than +they do amongst ourselves, except in the single respect of their being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> +infinitely more powerful physical agents than we are. Whatever feeling of +inconsistency is experienced in reading the <i>Paradise Lost</i> may be traced, +perhaps, to the fact that the necessities of the story obliged the poet +not to attempt to make the rate of causation among those beings as +extraordinary as his description of them as phenomena. Such a feeling of +inconsistency there is; and yet Milton sustains his flight as nobly as +mortal could have done. Throughout the whole poem we see him recollecting +his original conception of Satan as an object:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,<br /> +With head uplift above the waves, and eyes<br /> +That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides,<br /> +Prone on the flood, extended long and large,<br /> +Lay floating many a rood.”</p> + +<p>And this is a great thing to have done. If the poet ever flags in his +conception of those superhuman beings as objects, it is when he finds it +necessary to describe a multitude of them assembled together in some +<i>place</i>; and his usual device then is to reduce the bulk of the greatest +number. This, too, is for the behoof of the story. If it is necessary, for +instance, to assemble the Angels to deliberate, this must be done in an +audience-hall, and the human mind refuses to go beyond certain limits in +its conception of what an audience-hall is. Again the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> gate of Hell is +described, although the Hell of Milton is a mere vague extent of fiery +element, which, in strict keeping, could not be described as having a +gate. The narrative, however, requires the conception. And so in other +cases. Still, consistency of description is well sustained.</p> + +<p>Nor is it merely as objects or phenomena that Milton sustains throughout +his whole poem a consistent conception of the Angels. He is likewise +consistent in his description of them as physical agents. Lofty stature +and appearance carry with them a promise of so much physical power; and +hence, in Milton’s case, the necessity of finding words and figures +capable of expressing modes and powers of mechanical action, on the part +of the Angels, as superhuman as the stature and appearance he has given to +them. This complicated his difficulties very much. It is quite conceivable +that a man should be able to describe the mere appearance of a gigantic +being standing up, as it were, with his back to a wall, and yet utterly +break down, and not be able to find words, when he tried to describe this +gigantic being stepping forth into colossal activity and doing some +characteristic thing. Milton has overcome the difficulty. His conception +of the Angels as physical agents does not fall beneath his conception of +them as mere objects. In his description, for instance, in the sixth book, +of the Angels tearing up mountains by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> roots and flinging them upon +each other, we have strength suggested corresponding to the reputed +stature of the beings. In extension of the same remark, we may observe how +skilfully Milton has aggrandized and eked out his conception of the +superhuman beings he is describing by endowing them with the power of +infinitely swift motion through space. On this point we offer our readers +an observation which they may verify for themselves:—Milton, we are +persuaded, had it vaguely in his mind, throughout <i>Paradise Lost</i>, that +the bounding peculiarity between the human condition of being and the +angelic one he is describing is the law of gravitation. We, and all that +is cognisable by us, are subject to this law; but Creation may be peopled +with beings who are not subject to it, and to us these beings are as if +they were not. But, whenever one of those beings becomes cognisable by us, +he instantly becomes subject to gravitation; and he must resume his own +mode of being ere he can be free from its consequences. The Angels were +not subject to gravitation; that is to say, they had the means of moving +in any direction at will. When they rebelled, and were punished by +expulsion from Heaven, they did not <i>fall</i> out; for, in fact, so far as +the description intimates, there existed no planet, no distinct material +element, towards which they could gravitate. They were <i>driven</i> out by a +pursuing fire. Then, after their fall, they had the power of rising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +upward, of navigating space, of quitting Hell, directing their flight to +one glittering planet, alighting on its rotund surface, and then bounding +off again, and away to another. A corollary of this fundamental difference +between the human condition of being and the angelic would be that angels +are capable of direct vertical action, whereas men are capable mainly of +horizontal. An army of men can exist only as a square, or other plane +figure, whereas an army of angels can exist as a cube or parallelopiped.</p> + +<p>Now, in everything relating to the physical action of the Angels, even in +carrying out this notion of their mode of being, Milton is most +consistent. But it was impossible to follow out the superiority of these +beings to its whole length. The attempt to do so would have made a +narrative impossible. Exalting our conception of these beings as mere +objects, or as mere physical agents, as much as he could, it would have +been suicidal in the poet to attempt to realize history as it must be +among such beings. No human mind could do it. He had, therefore, except +where the notion of physical superiority assisted him, to make events +follow each other just as they would in a human narrative. The motives, +the reasonings, the misconceptions of those beings, all that determined +the succession of events, he had to make substantially human. The whole +narrative, for instance, proceeds on the supposition that those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> +supernatural beings had no higher degree of knowledge than human beings, +with equal physical advantages, would have had under similar +circumstances. Credit the spirits with a greater degree of insight—credit +them even with such a strong conviction of the Divine omnipotence as, in +their reputed condition of being, we can hardly conceive them not +attaining—and the whole of Milton’s story is rendered impossible. The +crushing conviction of the Divine omnipotence would have prevented them +from rebelling with the alleged motive; or, after they had rebelled, it +would have prevented them from struggling with the alleged hope. In +<i>Paradise Lost</i> the working notion which the devils have about God is +exactly that which human beings have when they hope to succeed in a bad +enterprise. Otherwise the poem could not have been written. Suppose the +fallen Angels to have had a working notion of the Deity as superhuman as +their reputed appearance and physical greatness: then the events of the +<i>Paradise Lost</i> might have happened nevertheless, but the chain of +volitions would not have been the same, and it would have been impossible +for any human poet to realize the narrative.</p> + +<p>These remarks are necessary to prepare us for conceiving the Satan of +Milton. Except, as we have said, for an occasional feeling during a +perusal of the poem that the style of thinking and speculating about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> +issue of their enterprise is too meagre and human for a race of beings +physically so superhuman, one’s astonishment at the consistency of the +poet’s conceptions is unmitigated throughout. Such keeping is there +between one conception and another, such a distinct material grasp had the +poet of his whole subject, so little is there of the mystic or the hazy in +his descriptions from beginning to end, that it would be quite possible to +prefix to the <i>Paradise Lost</i> an illustrative diagram exhibiting the +universal space in which Milton conceived his beings moving to and fro, +divided, as he conceived it, at first into two or three, and afterwards +into four tropics or regions. Then his narrative is so clear that a brief +prose version of it would be a history of Satan in the interval between +his own fall and the fall of Man.</p> + +<p>It is to be noted that Milton as a poet proceeds on the Homeric method, +and not on the Shakespearian, devoting the whole strength of his genius to +the object, not of being discursive and original, not of making profound +remarks on everything as he goes along, but of carrying on a sublime and +stately narrative. We should hardly be led to assert, however, that the +difference between the epic and the drama lies in this, that the latter +may be discursive and reflective while the former cannot. We can conceive +an epic written after the Shakespearian method; that is,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> one which, while +strictly sustaining a narrative, should be profoundly expository in its +spirit. Certain it is, however, that Milton wrote after the Homeric +method, and did not exert himself chiefly in strewing his text with +luminous propositions. One consequence of this is that the way to obtain +an idea of Milton’s Satan is not to lay hold of specific sayings that fall +from his mouth, but to go through his history. Goethe’s Mephistopheles, we +shall find, on the other hand, reveals himself in the characteristic +propositions which he utters. Satan is to be studied by following his +progress; Mephistopheles by attending to his remarks.</p> + +<p>In the history of Milton’s Satan it is important to begin at the time of +his being an Archangel. Before the creation of our World, there existed, +according to Milton, a grand race of beings altogether different from what +we are. Those beings were Spirits. They did not lead a planetary +existence; they tenanted space in some strange, and, to us, inconceivable +way. Or, rather, they did not tenant all space, but only that upper and +illuminated part of infinity called Heaven. For Heaven, in Milton, is not +to be considered as a locality, but as a region stretching infinitely out +on all sides—an immense extent of continent and kingdom. The infinite +darkness, howling and blustering underneath Heaven, was Chaos or Night. +What was the exact mode of being of the Spirits who lived<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> in dispersion +through Heaven is unknown to us; but it was social. Moreover, there +subsisted between the multitudinous far-extending population of Spirits +and the Almighty Creator a relation closer, or at least more sensible and +immediate, than that which exists between human beings and Him. The best +way of expressing this relation in human language is by the idea of +physical nearness. They were God’s Angels. Pursuing, each individual among +them, a life of his own, agreeable to his wishes and his character, yet +they all recognised themselves as the Almighty’s ministering spirits. At +times they were summoned, from following their different occupations in +all the ends of Heaven, to assemble near the Divine presence. Among these +Angels there were degrees and differences. Some were, in their very +essence and constitution, grander and more sublime intelligences than the +rest; others, in the course of their long existence, had become noted for +their zeal and assiduity. Thus, although really a race of beings living on +their own account as men do, they constituted a hierarchy, and were called +Angels.</p> + +<p>Among all the vast angelic population three or four individuals stood +pre-eminent and unapproachable. These were the Archangels. Satan was one +of these: if not the highest Archangel in Heaven, he was one of the four +highest. After God, he could feel conscious of being the greatest being in +the Universe. But,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> although the relation between the Deity and the +angelic population was so close that we can only express it by having +recourse to the conception of physical nearness, yet even to the Angels +the Deity was so shrouded in clouds and mystery that the highest Archangel +might proceed on a wrong notion of his character, and, just as human +beings do, might believe the Divine omnipotence as a theological +proposition, and yet, in going about his enterprises, might not carry a +working consciousness of it along with him. There is something in the +exercise of power, in the mere feeling of existence, in the stretching out +of a limb, in the resisting of an obstacle, in being active in any way, +which generates a conviction that our powers are self-contained, hostile +to the recollection of inferiority or accountability. A messenger, +employed in his master’s business, becomes, in the very act of serving +him, forgetful of him. As the feeling of enjoyment in action grows strong, +the feeling of a dependent state of being, the feeling of being a +messenger, grows weak. Repose and physical weakness are favourable to the +recognition of a derived existence: hence the beauty of the feebleness of +old age preceding the approach of death. The feebleness of the body +weakens the self-sufficient feeling, and disposes to piety. The young man, +rejoicing in his strength, cannot believe that his breath is in his +nostrils. In some such way the Archangel fell. Rejoicing in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> his strength, +walking colossal through Heaven, gigantic in his conceptions, incessant in +his working, ever scheming, ever imagining new enterprises, Satan was in +his very nature the most active of God’s Archangels. He was ever doing +some great thing, and ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. And, +alas! his very wisdom became his folly. His notion of the Deity was higher +and grander than that of any other Angel: but, then, he was not a +contemplative spirit; and his feeling of derived existence grew weak in +the glow and excitement of constant occupation. As the feeling of +enjoyment in action grew strong, the feeling of being an Angel grew weak. +Thus the mere duration of his existence had undermined his strength and +prepared him for sin. Although the greatest Angel in Heaven—nay, just +because he was such—he was the readiest to fall.</p> + +<p>At last an occasion came. When the intimation was made by the Almighty in +the Congregation of the Angels that he had anointed his only-begotten Son +King on the holy hill of Zion, the Archangel frowned and became a rebel: +not because he had weighed the enterprise to which he was committing +himself, but because he was hurried on by the impetus of an over-wrought +nature. Even had he weighed the <ins class="correction" title="original: entersprie">enterprise</ins>, and found it wanting, he would +have been a rebel nevertheless; he would have rushed into ruin on the +wheels of his old impulses. He could not have said to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> himself “It is +useless to rebel, and I will not;” and, if he could, what a hypocrite to +have remained in Heaven! His revolt was the natural issue of the thoughts +to which he had accustomed himself; and his crime lay in having acquired a +rebellious constitution, in having pursued action too much, and spurned +worship and contemplation. Herein lay the difference between him and the +other Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael.</p> + +<p>Satan in his revolt carried a third part of the Angels with him. He had +accustomed many of the Angels to his mode of thinking. One of the ways in +which he gratified his desire for activity had been that of exerting a +moral and intellectual influence over the inferior Angels. A few of these +he had liked to associate with, discoursing with them, and observing how +they imbibed his ideas. His chief associate, almost his bosom-companion, +had been Beelzebub, a princely Angel. Moloch, Belial, and Mammon, had +likewise been admitted to his confidence. These five had constituted a +kind of clique in Heaven, giving the word to a whole multitude of inferior +Angels, all of them resembling their leader in being fonder of action than +of contemplation. Thus, in addition to the mere hankering after action, +there had grown up in Satan’s mind a love of power. This feeling that it +was a glorious thing to be a leader seems to have had much to do with his +voluntary sacrifice of happiness. We may conceive it to have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> +voluntary. Foreseeing never so much misery would not have prevented such a +spirit from rebelling. Having a third of the Angels away with him in some +dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, would have +seemed, even if he had foreseen it, infinitely preferable to the puny +sovereignty of an Archangel in that world of gold and emerald: “better to +reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Thus we conceive him to have faced +the anticipation of the future. It required little persuasion to gain over +the kindred spirit of Beelzebub. These two appear to have conceived the +enterprise from the beginning in a different light from that in which they +represented it to their followers. Happiness with the inferior Spirits was +a more important consideration than with such Spirits as Satan and +Beelzebub; and to have hinted the possibility of losing happiness in the +enterprise would have been to terrify them away. Satan and Beelzebub were +losing happiness to gain something which they thought better; to the +inferior Angels nothing could be mentioned that would appear better. +Again, the inferior Angels, judging from narrower premises, might indulge +in enthusiastic expectations which the greater knowledge of the leaders +would prevent them from entertaining. At all events, the effect of the +intercourse with the Angels was that a third of their number joined the +standard of Satan. Then began the wars in Heaven, related in the poem.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>It may be remarked that the carrying on those wars by Satan with the hope +of victory is not inconsistent with what has been said as to the +possibility of his not having proceeded on a false calculation. We are apt +to imagine those wars as wars between the rebel Angels and the armies of +God. Now this is true; but it is scarcely the proper idea in the +circumstances. How could Satan have hoped for victory in that case? You +can only suppose that he did so by lessening his intellect, by making him +a mere blundering Fury, and not a keen, far-seeing Intelligence. But in +warring with Michael and his followers he was, until the contrary should +be proved, warring merely against his fellow-beings of the same Heaven, +whose strength he knew and feared not. The idea of physical nearness +between the Almighty and the Angels confuses us here. Satan had heard the +threat which had accompanied the proclamation of the Messiah’s +sovereignty; but it may have been problematical in his mind whether the +way in which God would fulfil the threat would be to make Michael conquer +him. So he made war against Michael and his Angels. At last, when all +Heaven was in confusion, the Divine omnipotence interfered. On the third +day the Messiah rode forth in his strength, to end the wars and expel the +rebel host from Heaven. They fled, driven before his thunder. The crystal +wall of Heaven opened wide, and the two lips, rolling inward,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> disclosed a +spacious gap yawning into the wasteful Deep. The reeling Angels saw down, +and hung back affrighted; but the terror of the Lord was behind them: +headlong they threw themselves from the verge of Heaven into the +fathomless abyss, eternal wrath burning after them down through the +blackness like a hissing fiery funnel.</p> + +<p>And now the Almighty determined to create a new kind of World, and to +people it with a race of beings different from that already existing, +inferior in the meantime to the Angels, but with the power of working +themselves up into the Angelic mode of being. The Messiah, girt with +omnipotence, rode out on this creating errand. Heaven opened her +everlasting gates, moving on their golden hinges, and the King of Glory, +uplifted on the wings of Cherubim, rode on and on into Chaos. At last he +stayed his fervid wheels and took the golden compasses in his hand. +Centering one point where he stood, he turned the other silently and +slowly round through the profound obscurity. Thus were the limits of <i>our</i> +Universe marked out—that azure region in which the stars were to shine, +and the planets were to wheel. On the huge fragment of Chaos thus marked +out the Creating Spirit brooded, and the light gushed down. In six days +the work of creation was completed. In the centre of the new Universe hung +a silvery star. That was the Earth. Thereon, in a paradise of trees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> and +flowers, walked Adam and Eve, the last and the fairest of all God’s +creatures.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the rebel host lay rolling in the fiery gulf underneath Chaos. +The bottom of Chaos was Hell. Above it was Chaos proper, a thick, black, +sweltering confusion. Above it again was the new experimental World, cut +out of it like a mine, and brilliant with stars and galaxies. And high +over all, behind the stars and galaxies, was Heaven itself. Satan and his +crew lay rolling in Hell, the fiery element underneath Chaos. Chaos lay +between them and the new World. Satan was the first to awake out of stupor +and realize the whole state of the case—what had occurred, what was to be +their future condition of being, and what remained to be attempted. In the +first dialogue between him and Beelzebub we see that, even thus early, he +had ascertained what his function was to be for the future, and decided in +what precise mode of being he could make his existence most pungent and +perceptible.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Of this be sure,</span><br /> +To do aught good never will be our task,<br /> +But ever to do evil our sole delight,<br /> +As being the contrary to His high will<br /> +Whom we resist.”</p> + +<p>Here the ruined Archangel first strikes out the idea of existing for ever +after as the Devil. It is important to observe that his becoming a Devil +was not the mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> inevitable consequence of his being a ruined Archangel. +Beelzebub, for instance, could see in the future nothing but a prospect of +continued suffering, until Satan communicated to him his conception of a +way of enjoying action in the midst of suffering. Again, some of the +Angels appear to have been ruminating the possibility of retrieving their +former condition by patient enduring. The gigantic scheme of becoming a +Devil was Satan’s. At first it existed in his mind only as a vague +perception that the way in which he would be most likely to get the full +worth of his existence was to employ himself thenceforward in doing evil. +The idea afterwards became more definite. After glancing round their new +domain, Beelzebub and he aroused their abject followers. In the speech +which Satan addresses to them after they had all mustered in order we find +him hint an opening into a new career, as if the idea had just occurred to +him:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife<br /> +There went a fame in Heaven that He ere long<br /> +Intended to create, and therein plant<br /> +A generation whom His choice regard<br /> +Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven:<br /> +Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps<br /> +Our first eruption.”</p> + +<p>Here is an advance in definiteness upon the first proposal—that, namely, +of determining to spend the rest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> of existence in doing evil. Casting +about in his mind for some specific opening, Satan had recollected the +talk they used to have in Heaven about the new World that was to be cut +out of Chaos, and the new race of beings that was to be created to inhabit +it; and it instantly struck his scheming fancy that <i>this</i> would be the +weak point of the Universe. If he could but insert the wedge here! He did +not, however, announce the scheme fully at the moment, but went on +thinking. In the council of gods which was summoned some advised one +thing, some another. Moloch was for open war; Belial had great faith in +the force of circumstances; and Mammon was for organizing their new +kingdom so as to make it as comfortable as possible. No one, however, +could say the exact thing that was wanted. At last Beelzebub, prompted by +Satan, rose and detailed the project of their great leader:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“There is a place</span><br /> +(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven<br /> +Err not), another world, the happy seat<br /> +Of some new race called Man, about this time<br /> +To be created, like to us, though less<br /> +In power and excellence, but favoured more<br /> +Of Him who rules above. So was His will<br /> +Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath<br /> +That shook Heaven’s whole circumference confirmed.<br /> +Thither let us bend all our thoughts, and learn<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>What creatures there inhabit, of what mould<br /> +Or substance, how endued, and what their power<br /> +And where their weakness: how attempted best;<br /> +By force or subtlety.”</p> + +<p>This was Satan’s scheme. The more he had thought on it the more did it +recommend itself to him. It was more feasible than any other. It held out +an indefinite prospect of action. Success in it would be the addition of +another fragment of the Universe to Satan’s kingdom, mingling and +confounding the new World with Hell, and dragging down the new race of +beings to share the perdition of the old. The scheme was universally +applauded by the Angels; who seem to have differed from their leaders in +this, that they were sanguine of being able to better their condition, +whereas their leaders sought only the gratification of their desire of +action.</p> + +<p>The question next was, Who would venture out of Hell to explore the way to +the new World? Satan volunteered the perilous excursion. Immediately, +putting on his swiftest wings, he directs his solitary flight towards +Hell-gate, where sat Sin and Death. When, at length, the gate was opened +to give him exit, it was like a huge furnace-mouth, vomiting forth smoke +and flames into the womb of Chaos. Issuing thence, Satan spread his +sail-broad wings for flight, and began his toilsome way upward, half on +foot, half on wing, swimming, sinking, wading, climbing, flying, through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +the thick and turbid element. At last he emerged out of Chaos into the +glimmer surrounding the new Universe. Winging at leisure now through the +balmier ether, and still ascending, he could discern at last the whole +empyrean Heaven, his former home, with its opal towers and sapphire +battlements, and, depending thence by a golden chain, our little World or +Universe, like a star of smallest magnitude on the full moon’s edge. At +the point of suspension of this World from Heaven was an opening, and by +that opening Satan entered.</p> + +<p>When Satan thus arrived in the new Creation the whole phenomenon was +strange to him, and he had no idea what kind of a being Man was. He asked +Uriel, whom he found on the sun fulfilling some Divine errand, in which of +all the shining orbs round him Man had fixed his seat, or whether he had a +fixed seat at all, and was not at liberty to shift his residence, and +dwell now in one star, now in another. Uriel, deceived by the appearance +which Satan had assumed, pointed out the way to Paradise.</p> + +<p>Alighting on the surface of the Earth, Satan walks about immersed in +thought. Heaven’s gate was in view. Overhead and round him were the quiet +hills and the green fields. Oh, what an errand he had come upon! His +thoughts were sad and noble. Fallen as he was, all the Archangel stirred +within him. Oh, had he not been made so high, should he ever have fallen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +so low? Is there no hope even now, no room for repentance? Such were his +first thoughts. But he roused himself and shook them off. “The past is +gone and away; it is to the future that I must look. Perish the days of my +Archangelship! perish the name of Archangel! Such is my name no longer. My +future, if less happy, shall be more glorious. Ah, and this is the World I +have singled out for my experiment! Formerly, in the days of my +Archangelship, I ranged at will through infinity, doing one thing here and +another there. Now I must contract the sphere of my activity, and labour +nowhere but here. But it is better to apply myself to the task of +thoroughly impregnating one point of space with my presence than +henceforth to beat my wings vaguely all through infinitude. Ah, but may +not my nature suffer by the change? In thus selecting a specific aim, in +thus concerning myself exclusively with one point of space, and +forswearing all interest in the innumerable glorious things that may be +happening out of it, shall I not run the risk of degenerating into a +smaller and meaner being? In the course of ages of dealing with the puny +offspring of these new beings, may I not dwindle into a mere pungent, +pettifogging Spirit? What would Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael say, were +they to see their old co-mate changed into such a being? But be it so. If +I cannot cope with the Almighty on the grand scale of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> infinitude, I shall +at least make my existence felt by opposing His plans respecting this new +race of beings. Besides, by beginning with this, may I not worm my way to +a more effective position even in infinitude? At all events, I shall have +a scheme on hand, and be incessantly occupied. And, as time makes the +occupation more congenial, if I do become less magnanimous, I shall, at +the same time, become happier. And, whether my fears on this point are +visionary or not, it will, at least, be a noble thing to be able to say +that I have caused a whirlpool that shall suck down generation after +generation of these new beings, before their Maker’s eyes, into the same +wretched condition of being to which He has doomed us. It will be +something so to vitiate the Universe that, let Him create, create on, as +He chooses, it will be like pouring water into a broken vessel.”</p> + +<p>In the very course of this train of thinking Satan begins to degenerate +into a meaner being. He is on the very threshold of that career in which +he will cease for ever to be the Archangel and become irrevocably the +Devil. The very manner in which he tempts the first pair is devil-like. It +is in the shape of a cormorant on a tree that he sits watching his +victims. He sat at the ear of Eve “squat like a toad.” It was in the shape +of a serpent that he tempted her. And, when the evil was done, he slunk +away through the brushwood. In the very act of ruining Man he committed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +himself to a life of ignominious activity: he was to go on his belly and +eat dust all his days.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Such is the story of Milton’s Satan. It will be easy to express more +precisely the idea which we have acquired of him when we come to contrast +him with Goethe’s Mephistopheles. Meanwhile, we shall be much assisted in +our efforts to conceive Goethe’s Mephistopheles by keeping in mind what we +have been saying about Milton’s Satan.</p> + +<p>We do not think it possible to sum up in a single expression all that +Goethe meant to signify by his Mephistopheles. For one thing, it is +questionable whether Goethe kept strictly working out one specific meaning +and making it clearer all through Mephistopheles’s gambols and devilries, +or whether, having once for all allegorized the Spirit of Evil into a +living personage, he did not treat him just as he would have treated any +other of his characters, making him always consistent, always diabolic, +but not intent upon making his actions run parallel to any under-current +of exposition. It may be best, therefore, to take Mephistopheles as a +character in a drama which we wish to study. On the whole, perhaps, we +shall be on the right track if, in the first place, we establish a +relation between Satan and Mephistopheles by adopting the notion which we +have imagined Satan himself to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> entertained when engaged in scheming +out his future life, <i>i.e.</i> if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what Satan +has become after six thousand years. Milton’s Satan, then, is the ruined +Archangel deciding his future function, and forswearing all interest in +other regions of the universe, in order that he may more thoroughly +possess and impregnate this. Goethe’s Mephistopheles is this same being +after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years in his new +vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper and +cleverer. By way of corroboration of this view, we may refer, in passing, +to the Satan of the <i>Paradise Regained</i>; who, though still a sublime and +Miltonic being, dealing in high thoughts and high arguments, yet seems to +betray, in his demeanour, the effects of four thousand years spent in a +new walk. Is there not something Mephistopheles-like, for instance, in the +description of the Fiend’s appearance when he approached Christ to begin +his temptation? Christ was walking alone and thoughtful one evening in the +thick of the forest where he had lived fasting forty days, when he heard +the dry twigs behind him snapping beneath approaching footsteps. He turned +round, and</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“An aged man in rural weeds,</span><br /> +Following as seemed the quest of some stray ewe,<br /> +Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve<br /> +Against a winter’s day when winds blow keen<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>To warm him, wet returned from field at eve,<br /> +He saw approach; who first with curious eye<br /> +Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake.”</p> + +<p>Observe how all the particulars of this description are drawn out of the +very thick of the civilization of the past four thousand years, and how +the whole effect of the picture is to suggest a Mephistophelic-looking +man, whom it would be disagreeable to meet alone. Indeed, if one had +space, one could make more use of the <i>Paradise Regained</i> as exhibiting +the transition of Satan into Mephistopheles. But we must pass at once to +Goethe.</p> + +<p>Viewing Mephistopheles in the proposed light (of course it is not +pretended that Goethe himself had any such idea about his Mephistopheles), +we obtain a good deal of insight from the “Prologue in Heaven.” For here +we have Mephistopheles out of his element, and contrasted with his old +co-equals. The scene is Miltonic. The Heavenly Hosts are assembled round +the throne, and the three Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, come +forward to praise the Lord. The theme of their song is Creation—not, as +it would have been in Milton, as an event about to take place, and which +would vary the monotony of the universe, but as a thing existing and +grandly going on. It is to be noted too that, while Milton appeals chiefly +to the sight, and is clear and coherent in his imagery, Goethe produces a +similar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> effect in his own manner by appealing to sight and hearing +simultaneously, making sounds and metaphors dance and whirl through each +other, as in a wild, indistinct, but overpowering dream. Raphael describes +the Sun rolling on in thunder through the heavens, singing in chorus with +the kindred stars. Gabriel describes the Earth revolving on her axis, one +hemisphere glittering in the light, the other dipped in shadow. Michael in +continuation sings of the ensphering atmosphere and the storms that rage +in it, darting forth tongues of lightning, and howling in gusts over land +and sea. And then the three burst forth in symphony, exulting in their +nature as beings deriving strength from serene contemplation, and +proclaiming all God’s works to be as bright and glorious as on the day +they were created. Suddenly, while Heaven is still thrilling to the grand +undulation, another voice breaks in:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Da du, O Herr, dich einmal wieder nahst,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Und fragst wie alles sich bei uns befinde,</span><br /> +Und du mich sonst gewöhnlich gerne sahst,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So siehst du mich auch unter dem Gesinde.”</span></p> + +<p>Ugh! what a discord! The tone, the voice, the words, the very metre, so +horribly out of tune with what had gone before! Mephistopheles is the +speaker. He has been standing behind, looking about him and listening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> +with a sarcastic air to the song of the Archangels; and, when they have +done, he thinks it his turn to speak, and immediately begins. (We give the +passage in translation.)</p> + +<p class="poem">“Since thou, O Lord, approachest us once more,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And askest how affairs with us are going,</span><br /> +And commonly hast seen me here before,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To this my presence ’mid the rest is owing.</span><br /> +Excuse my plainness; I’m no hand at chaffing;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I <i>can’t</i> talk fine, though all around should scorn;</span><br /> +<i>My</i> pathos certainly would set thee laughing,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hadst thou not laughter long ago forborne.</span><br /> +Of suns and worlds deuce one word can <i>I</i> gabble;<br /> +I only know how men grow miserable.<br /> +The little god of Earth is still the same old clay,<br /> +And is as odd this hour as on Creation’s day.<br /> +Better somewhat his situation<br /> +Hadst thou not given him that same light of inspiration:<br /> +Reason he calls ’t, and uses ’t so that he<br /> +Grows but more beastly than the beasts to be;<br /> +He seems to me, begging your Grace’s pardon,<br /> +Like one of those long-legged things in a garden<br /> +That fly about and hop and spring,<br /> +And in the grass the same old chirrup sing.<br /> +Would I could say that here the story closes!<br /> +But in each filthy mess they thrust their noses.”</p> + +<p>And so shameless, and at the same time so voluble, is he that he would go +on longer in the same strain did not the Lord interrupt him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>Now this speech both announces and exhibits Mephistopheles’s nature. +Without even knowing the language, one could hardly hear the original read +as Mephistopheles’s without seeing in it shamelessness, impudence, +volubility, cleverness, a sneering, sarcastic disposition, want of heart, +want of sentiment, want of earnestness, want of purpose, complete, +confirmed, irrecoverable devilishness. And, besides, Mephistopheles +candidly describes himself in it. When, in sly and sarcastic allusion to +the song of the Archangels, he tells that <i>he</i> has not the gift of talking +fine, he announces in effect that he is not going to be Miltonic. <i>He</i> is +not going to speak of suns and universes, he says. Raphael, Gabriel, and +Michael, are at home in that sort of thing; but <i>he</i> is not. Leaving them, +therefore, to tell how the universe is flourishing on the grand scale, and +how the suns and the planets are going on as beautifully as ever, he will +just say a word or two as to how human nature is getting on down yonder; +and, to be sure, if comparison be the order of the day, the little godkin, +Man, is quite as odd as on the day he was made. And at once, with +astounding impudence, he launches into a train of remark the purport of +which is that everything down below is at sixes and sevens, and that in +his opinion human nature has turned out a failure. And, heedless of the +disgust of his audience, he would go on talking for ever, were he not +interrupted.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>And is this the Satan of the <i>Paradise Lost</i>? Is this the Archangel +ruined? Is this the being who warred against the Almighty, who lay +floating many a rood, who shot upwards like a pyramid of fire, who +navigated space wherever he chose, speeding on his errands from star to +star, and who finally conceived the gigantic scheme of assaulting the +universe where it was weakest, and impregnating the new creation with the +venom of his spirit? Yes, it is he; but oh, how changed! For six thousand +years he has been pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying +his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and +abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as +he himself anticipated, that his nature, once great and magnificent, has +become small, virulent, and shrunken,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Subdued</span><br /> +To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”</p> + +<p>As if he had been journeying through a wilderness of scorching sand, all +that was left of the Archangel has long since evaporated. He is now a dry, +shrivelled up, scoffing spirit. When, at the moment of scheming out his +future existence and determining to become a Devil, he anticipated the +ruin of his nature, he could not help thinking with what a strange feeling +he should then appear before his old co-equals, Raphael, Gabriel,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> and +Michael. But now he stands before them disgustingly unabashed, almost +ostentatious of not being any longer an Archangel. Even in the days of his +glory he was different from them. They luxuriated in contemplation; he in +the feeling of innate all-sufficient vigour. And lo, now! They are +unchanged, the servants of the Lord, revering the day’s gentle going. He, +the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured and civilized into +the clever cold-hearted Mephistopheles.</p> + +<p>Mephistopheles is the Spirit of Evil in modern society. Goethe’s <i>Faust</i> +is an illustration of this spirit’s working in the history of an +individual. The case selected is a noble one. Faust, a man of grand and +restless nature, is aspiring after universality of feeling. Utterly +dissatisfied and disgusted with all human method and all human +acquisition, nay, fretting at the constitution of human nature itself, he +longs to spill out his soul, so that, mingling with the winds, it may +become a part of the ever-thrilling spirit of the universe and know the +essence of everything. He has been contemplating suicide. To this great +nature struggling with itself Mephistopheles is linked. It is to be noted +that throughout the whole drama there is no evidence that it was an object +of very earnest solicitude with Mephistopheles to gain possession of the +soul of Faust. Of course, he desired this, and had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> it in view. Thus, he +exacted a bond from Faust; and we find him also now and then chuckling +when alone in anticipation of Faust’s ultimate ruin. But on the whole he +is constant to no earnest plan for effecting it. In fact, he is constant +to no single purpose whatever. The desire of doing devilry is his motive +all through. Going about with Faust was but being in the way of business +and having a companion at the same time. He studies his own gratification, +not Faust’s, in all that he does. Faust never gets what he had a right to +expect from him. He is dragged hither and thither through scenes he has no +anxiety to be in, merely that Mephistopheles may enjoy some new and +<i>piquant</i> piece of devilry. The moment he and Faust enter any place, he +quits Faust’s side and mixes with the persons present, to do some mischief +or other; and, when it is done, he comes back to Faust, who has been +standing, with his arms folded, gloomily looking on, and asks him if he +could desire any better amusement than this. Now this is not the conduct +of a devil intent upon nothing so much as gaining possession of the soul +of his victim. A Miltonic devil would have pressed on to the mark more. He +would have been more self-denying, and would have kept his victim in +better humour. But Mephistopheles is a devil to the very core. He is a +devil in his conduct to Faust. What he studies is not to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> gratify Faust, +but to find plenty of congenial occupation for himself, to perpetrate as +great a quantity of evil as possible in as short a time as possible. It +seems capable of being inferred from this peculiarity in the character of +Mephistopheles that Goethe had in his mind all through the poem a certain +under-current of allegoric meaning. One sees that Mephistopheles, though +acting as a dramatic personage, represents an abstract something or other.</p> + +<p>The character of Mephistopheles is brought out all through the drama. In +the first and second parts we have Faust and him brought into a great +variety of situations and into contact with a great variety of +individuals; and in watching how Mephistopheles conducts himself in these +we obtain more and more insight into his devilish nature. He manifests +himself in two ways—by his style of speaking, and by his style of acting. +That is to say, Mephistopheles, in the first place, has a habit of making +observations upon all subjects, and throwing out all kinds of general +propositions in the course of his conversation, and by attending to the +spirit of these one can perceive very distinctly his mode of looking at +things; and, in the second place, he acts a part in the drama, and this +part is, of course, characteristic.</p> + +<p>The distinguishing feature in Mephistopheles’s conversation is the amazing +intimacy which it displays<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> with all the conceivable ways in which crime +can be perpetrated. There is positively not a wrong thing that people are +in the habit of doing that he does not seem to be aware of. He is profound +in his acquaintance with iniquity. If there is a joint loose anywhere in +society, he knows of it; if the affairs of the State are going into +confusion because of some blockhead’s mismanagement, he knows of it. He is +versed in all the forms of professional quackery. He knows how pedants +hoodwink people, how priests act the hypocrite, how physicians act the +rake, how lawyers peculate. In all sorts of police information he is a +perfect Fouché. He has gone deep enough into one fell subject to be able +to write a book like Duchatelet’s. And not only has he accumulated a mass +of observations, but he has generalized those observations, and marked +evil in its grand educational sources. If the human mind is going out into +a hopeless track of speculation, he has observed and knows it. If the +universities are frittering away the intellect of the youth of a country +in useless and barren studies, he knows it. If atheistic politicians are +vehemently defending the religious institutions of a country, he has +marked the prognostication. Whatever promises to inflict misery, to lead +people astray, to break up beneficial alliances, to make men flounder on +in error, to cause them to die blaspheming at the last, he is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> thoroughly +cognisant of it all. He could draw up a catalogue of social vices. He +could point out the specific existing grievances to which the +disorganization of a people is owing, and lay his finger on the exact +parent evils which the philanthropist ought to exert himself in exposing +and making away with. But here lies the diabolical peculiarity of his +knowledge. It is not in the spirit of a philanthropist that he has +accumulated his information; it is in the spirit of a devil. It is not +with the benevolent motive of a Duchatelet that he has descended into the +lurking-places of iniquity; it is because he delights in knowing the whole +extent of human misery. The doing of evil being his function, it is but +natural that he should have a taste for even the minutest details of his +own profession. Nay more, as the Spirit of all evil, who had been working +from the beginning, how could he fail to be acquainted with all the +existing varieties of criminal occupation? It is but as if he kept a +diary. Now, in this combination of the knowledge of evil with the desire +of producing it lies the very essence of his character. The combination is +horrible, unnatural, unhuman. Generally the motive to investigate deeply +into what is wrong is the desire to rectify it; and it is rarely that +profligates possess very valuable information. But in every one of +Mephistopheles’s speeches there is some profound glimpse into the +rottenness of society,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> some masterly specification of an evil that ought +to be rooted out; and yet there is not one of those speeches in which the +language is not flippant and sarcastic, not one in which the tone is +sorrowful or philanthropic. Everything is going wrong in the world; +twaddle and quackery everywhere abounding; nothing to be seen under the +sun but hypocritical priests, sharking attorneys, unfaithful wives, +children crying for bread to eat, men and women cheating, robbing, +murdering each other: hurrah! This is exactly a burst of Mephistophelic +feeling. In fact it is an intellectual defect in Mephistopheles that his +having such an eye for evil and his taking such an interest in it prevent +him from allowing anything for good in his calculations. To Mephistopheles +the world seems going to perdition as fast as it can, while in the same +universal confusion beings like the Archangels recognise the good +struggling with the evil.</p> + +<p>Respecting the part which Mephistopheles performs in the drama we have +already said something. Going about the world, linked to Faust, is to him +only a racy way of acting the devil. Having as his companion a man so +flighty in his notions did but increase the flavour of whatever he engaged +in. All through he is laughing in secret at Faust, and deriving a keen +enjoyment from his transcendental style of thinking. Faust’s noble +qualities are all Greek and Gaelic to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> cold and devilish nature. He +has a contempt for all strong feeling, all sentiment, all evangelism. He +enjoys the Miltonic vastly. Thus in the “Prologue in Heaven” he quizzes +the Archangels about the grandiloquence of their song. Not that he does +not understand that sort of thing intellectually, but that it is not in +his nature to sympathize with anything like sentiment. Hence, when he +assumes the sentimental himself and mimicks any lofty strain, although he +does it full justice in as far as giving the whole intellectual extent of +meaning is concerned, yet he always does so in words so inappropriate +emotionally that the effect is a parody. He must have found amusement +enough in Faust’s company to have reconciled him in some measure to losing +him finally.</p> + +<p>But to go on. Mephistopheles acts the devil all through. In the first +place he acts the devil to Faust himself, for he is continually taking his +own way and starting difficulties whenever Faust proposes anything. Then +again in his conduct towards the other principal personages of the drama +it is the same. In the murder of poor Margaret, her mother, her child, and +her brother, we have as fiendish a series of acts as devil could be +supposed capable of perpetrating. And, lastly, in the mere filling up and +side play, it is the same. He is constantly doing unnecessary mischief. If +he enters Auerbach’s wine-cellar and introduces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> himself to the four +drinking companions, it is to set the poor brutes fighting and make them +cut off each other’s noses. If he spends a few minutes in talk with +Martha, it is to make the silly old woman expose her foibles. The Second +Part of Faust is devilry all through, a tissue of bewilderments and +devilries. And while doing all this Mephistopheles is still the same cold, +self-possessed, sarcastic being. If he exhibits any emotion at all, it is +a kind of devilish anger. Perhaps, too, once or twice we recognise +something like terror or flurry. But on the whole he is a spirit bereft of +feeling. What could indicate the heart of a devil more than his words to +Faust in the harrowing prison scene?</p> + +<p class="poem">“Komm, komm, ich lasse dich mit ihr im Stich.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>And now for a word or two describing Milton’s Satan and Goethe’s +Mephistopheles by each other:—Satan is a colossal figure; Mephistopheles +an elaborated portrait. Satan is a fallen Archangel scheming his future +existence; Mephistopheles is the modern Spirit of Evil. Mephistopheles has +a distinctly marked physiognomy; Satan has not. Satan has a sympathetic +knowledge of good; Mephistopheles knows good only as a phenomenon. Much of +what Satan says might be spoken by Raphael; a devilish spirit runs through +all that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Mephistopheles says. Satan’s bad actions are preceded by noble +reasonings; Mephistopheles does not reason. Satan’s bad actions are +followed by compunctious visitings; Mephistopheles never repents. Satan is +often “inly racked;” Mephistopheles can feel nothing more noble than +disappointment. Satan conducts an enterprise; Mephistopheles enjoys an +occupation. Satan has strength of purpose; Mephistopheles is volatile. +Satan feels anxiety; Mephistopheles lets things happen. Satan’s greatness +lies in the vastness of his motives; Mephistopheles’s in his intimate +acquaintance with everything. Satan has a few sublime conceptions; +Mephistopheles has accumulated a mass of observations. Satan declaims; +Mephistopheles puts in remarks. Satan is conversant with the moral aspects +of things and uses adjectives; Mephistopheles has a preference for nouns, +and uses adjectives only to convey significations which he <i>knows</i> to +exist. Satan may end in being a devil; Mephistopheles is a devil +irrecoverably.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Milton’s Satan and Goethe’s Mephistopheles are literary performances; and, +for what they prove, neither Milton nor Goethe need have believed in a +Devil at all. Luther’s Devil, on the other hand, was a being recognised by +him as actually existing—as existing, one might say, with a vengeance. +The strong conviction which Luther had on this point is a feature in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> +character. The narrative of his life abounds in anecdotes showing that the +Devil with him was no chimera, no mere orthodoxy, no fiction. In every +page of his writings we have the word <i>Teufel</i>, <i>Teufel</i>, repeated again +and again. Occasionally there occurs an express dissertation upon the +nature and functions of the Evil Spirit; and one of the longest chapters +in his <i>Table Talk</i> is that entitled “The Devil and his Works”—indicating +that his conversation with his friends often turned on the subject of +Satanic agency. <i>Teufel</i> was actually the strongest signification he had; +and, whenever he was excited to his highest emotional pitch, it came in to +assist his utterance at the climax, and give him a correspondingly +powerful expression. “This thing I will do,” it was common for him to say, +“in spite of all who may oppose me, be it duke, emperor, priest, bishop, +cardinal, pope, or Devil.” Man’s heart, he says, is a “Stock, Stein, +Eisen, Teufel, hart Herz,” (“a stock, stone, iron, Devil, hard heart”). +And it was not a mere vague conception he had of this being, such as +theology might oblige. On the contrary, he had observed him as a man would +his personal enemy, and in so doing had formed a great many conclusions +respecting his powers and his character. In general, Luther’s Devil may be +defined as a personification, in the spirit of Scripture, of the resisting +medium which Luther had to toil his way <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>through—spiritual fears, +passionate uprisings, fainting resolutions within himself; error, +weakness, envy, in those around him; and, without, a whole world howling +for his destruction. It is in effect as if Luther had said, “Scripture +reveals to me the existence of a great accursed Being, whose function it +is to produce evil. It is for me to ascertain the character of this Being, +whom I, of all men, have to deal with. And how am I to do so except by +observing him working? God knows I have not far to go in search of his +manifestations.” And thus Luther went on filling up the Scriptural +proposition with his daily experience. He was constantly gaining a clearer +conception of his great personal antagonist, constantly stumbling upon +some more concealed trait in the Spirit’s character. The Being himself was +invisible; but men were walking in the midst of his manifestations. It was +as if there were some Being whom we could not see, nor directly in the +ordinary way have any intercourse with, but who every morning, before it +was light, came and left at our doors some exquisite specimen of his +workmanship. It would, of course, be difficult under such disadvantages to +become acquainted with the character of our invisible correspondent and +nightly visitant; still we could arrive at a few conclusions respecting +him, and the more of his workmanship we saw the more insight we should +come to have. Or again, in striving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> to realize to himself the Scriptural +proposition about the Devil, Luther, to speak in the language of the +“Positive Philosophy,” was but striving to ascertain the laws according to +which evil happens. Only the Positive Philosophy would lay a veto on any +such speculation, and pronounce it fundamentally vicious in this +respect—that there are not two courses of events, separable from each +other, in history, the one good and the other evil, but that evil comes of +good and good of evil; so that, if we are to have a science of history at +all, the most we can have is a science of the laws according to which, not +evil follows evil, but events follow each other. But History to Luther was +not a physical course of events. It was God acting, and the Devil +opposing.</p> + +<p>So far Luther did not differ from his age. Belief in Satanic agency was +universal at that period. We have no idea now how powerful this belief +was. We realize something of the truth when we read the depositions in an +old book of trials for witchcraft. But it is sufficient to glance over any +writings of the period to see what a real meaning was then attached to the +words “Hell” and “Devil.” The spirit of these words has become obsolete, +chased away by the spirit of exposition. That was what M. Comte calls the +Theological period, when all the phenomena of mind and matter were +referred to the agency of Spirits. The going out of the belief in Satanic +agency (for even those who retain it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> in profession allow it no force in +practice) M. Comte would attribute to the progress of the spirit of that +philosophy of which he is the apostle. We do not think, however, that the +mere progress of the scientific spirit—that is, the mere disposition of +men to pursue one mode of thinking with respect to all classes of +phenomena—could have been sufficient of itself to work such an alteration +in the general mind. We are fond of accounting for it, in part at least, +by the going out, in the progress of civilization, of those sensations +which seem naturally fitted to nourish the belief in supernatural beings. +The tendency of civilization has been to diminish our opportunities of +feeling terror, of feeling strongly at all. The horrific plays a much less +important part in human experience than it once did. To mention but a +single instance: we are exempted now, by mechanical contrivances for +locomotion, &c., from the necessity of being much in darkness or wild +physical solitude. This is especially the case with those who dwell in +cities, and therefore exert most conspicuously an intellectual influence. +The moaning of the wind at night in winter is about their highest +experience of the kind; and is it not a corroboration of the view now +suggested that the belief in the supernatural is always strongest at the +moment of this experience? Scenes and situations our ancestors were in +every day are strange to us. We have not now to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> travel through forests at +the dead of night, nor to pass a lonely spot on a moor where a murderer’s +body is swinging from a gibbet. Tam o’ Shanter, even before he came to +Allowa’ Kirk, saw more than many of us see in a life-time.</p> + +<p class="poem">“By this time he was ’cross the ford<br /> +Whaur in the snaw the chapman smoored,<br /> +And past the birks and muckle stane<br /> +Whaur drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane,<br /> +And through the whins and by the cairn<br /> +Whaur hunters fand the murdered bairn,<br /> +And near the thorn aboon the well<br /> +Whaur Mungo’s mither hanged hersel’.”</p> + +<p>This effect of civilization in reducing all our sensations to those of +comfort is a somewhat alarming circumstance in the point of view we are +now taking. It is necessary, for many a reason, to resist the universal +application of the “Positive Philosophy,” even if we adopt and adore it as +an instrument of explication. The “Positive Philosophy” commands us to +forbear all speculation into the inexplicable. For the sake of many things +this order must be disregarded. Speculation into the metaphysical is the +invariable accompaniment of strong feeling; and the moral nature of man +would starve upon such chopped straw as the mere intellectual relations of +similitude and succession. Nor does it meet the demands of the case to say +that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> “Positive Philosophy” would be always far in arrear of the known +phenomena, and that here would be mystery enough. No! the “Positive +Philosophy” would require to strike a chasm in itself under the title of +the Liberty of Hypothesis. We do not mean the liberty of hypothesis merely +as a means of anticipating theory, but for spiritual and imaginative +purposes. It is in this light that one would welcome Animal Magnetism, or +any thing else whatever that would but knock a hole through the paper wall +that incloses our mode of being, snub the self-conceit of our present +knowledge, and give us other and more difficult phenomena to explain.</p> + +<p>But, though Luther and his age were not at variance in the belief in +Satanic agency, Luther, of course, did this as he did every thing else, +gigantically. The Devil, as Luther conceived him, was not the Satan of +Milton; although, had Luther set himself to realize the Miltonic +narrative, his conception might not have been dissimilar. But it was as +the enemy of mankind, working in human affairs, that Luther conceived the +Devil. We should expect his conception therefore to tally with Goethe’s in +some respects, but only as a conception of Luther’s would tally with one +of Goethe’s. Luther’s conception was truer to the strict Scriptural +definition than either Milton’s or Goethe’s. Mephistopheles being a +character in a drama, and apparently fully occupied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> in his part there, we +cannot bring ourselves to recognise in him that virtually omnipotent being +to whom all evil is owing, who is leavening the human mind everywhere as +if the atmosphere round the globe were charged with the venom of his +spirit. In the case of Milton’s Satan we have no such difficulty, because +in his case a whole planet is at stake, and there are only two individuals +on it. But Luther’s conception met the whole exigency of Scripture. His +conception was distinctly that of a being to whose operation all the evil +of all times and all places is owing, a veritable <ins class="correction" title="pneuma">πνευμα</ins> diffused +through the earth’s atmosphere. Hence his mind had to entertain the notion +of a plurality of devils; for he could conceive the Arch-Demon acting +corporeally only through imps or emanations. Goethe’s Mephistopheles might +pass for one of these.</p> + +<p>It would be possible farther to illustrate Luther’s conception of the Evil +Principle by quoting many of his specific sayings about diabolic agency. +It would be found from these that his conception was that of a being to +whom evil of all kinds was dear. The Devil with him was a meteorological +agent. Devils, he said, are in woods, and waters, and dark poolly places, +ready to hurt passers-by; there are devils also in the thick black clouds, +who cause hail and thunders and lightnings, and poison the air and the +fields and the pastures. “When such things happen, philosophers say they +are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> natural, and ascribe them to the planets, and I know not what all.” +The Devil he believed also to be the patron of witchcraft. The Devil, he +said, had the power of deceiving the senses, so that one should swear he +heard or saw something while really the whole was an illusion. The Devil +also was at the bottom of dreaming and somnambulism. He was likewise the +author of diseases. “I hold,” said Luther, “that the Devil sendeth all +heavy diseases and sicknesses upon people.” Diseases are, as it were, the +Devil striking people; only, in striking, he must use some natural +instrument, as a murderer uses a sword. When our sins get the upper hand, +and all is going wrong, then the Devil must be God’s hangman, to clear +away obstructions and to blast the earth with famines and pestilences. +Whatsoever procures death, that is the Devil’s trade. All sadness and +melancholy come of the Devil. So does insanity; but the Devil has no +farther power over the soul of a maniac. The Devil works in the affairs of +nations. He looks always upward, taking an interest in what is high and +pompous; he does not look downward, taking little interest in what is +insignificant and lowly. He likes to work on the great scale, to establish +an influence over the central minds which manage public affairs. The Devil +is also a spiritual tempter. He is the opponent of the Divine grace in the +hearts of individuals. This was the aspect of the doctrine of Satanic +agency which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> was most frequent in preaching; and, accordingly, Luther’s +propositions on the point are very specific. He had ascertained the laws +of Satanic operation upon the human spirit. The Devil, he said, knows +Scripture well, and uses it in argument. He shoots fearful thoughts, which +are his fiery darts, into the hearts of the godly. The Devil is acquainted +even with those mysterious enjoyments, those spiritual excitements, which +the Christian would suppose a being like him must be ignorant of. “What +gross inexperienced fellows,” Luther says, “are those Papist commentators! +They are for interpreting Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ to be merely fleshly +lust; because they know no other kind of tribulation than that.” But, +though the Devil has great power over the human mind, he is limited in +some respects. He has no means, for instance, of knowing the thoughts of +the faithful until they give them utterance. Again, if the Devil be once +foiled in argument, he cannot tempt that soul again on the same tack. The +Papacy being with Luther the grand existing form of evil, he of course +recognised the Devil in <i>it</i>. If the Papacy were once overthrown, Satan +would lose his stronghold. Never on earth again would he be able to pile +up such another edifice. No wonder, then, that at that moment all the +energies of the enraged and despairing Spirit were employed to prop up the +reeling and tottering fabric. Necessarily, therefore, Luther and Satan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> +were personal antagonists. Satan saw that the grand struggle was with +Luther. If he could but crush him by physical violence, or make him forget +God, then the world would be his own again. So, often did he wrestle with +Luther’s spirit; often in nightly heart-agonies did he try to shake +Luther’s faith in Christ. But he was never victorious. “All the Duke +Georges in the universe,” said Luther, “are not equal to a single Devil; +and I do not fear the Devil.” “I should wish,” he said, “to die rather by +the Devil’s hands than by the hands of Pope or Emperor; for then I should +die, at all events, by the hands of a great and mighty Prince of the +World: but, if I die through him, he shall eat such a bit of me as shall +be his suffocation; he shall spew me out again; and, at the last day, I, +in requital, shall devour him.” When all other means were unavailing, +Luther found that the Devil could not stand against humour. In his hours +of spiritual agony, he tells us, when the Devil was heaping up his sins +before him, so as to make him doubt whether he should be saved, and when +he could not drive the Devil away by uttering sentences of Holy Writ, or +by prayer, he used to address him thus: “Devil, if, as you say, Christ’s +blood, which was shed for my sins, be not sufficient to insure my +salvation, can’t you pray for me yourself, Devil?” At this the Devil +invariably fled, “<i>quia est superbus spiritus et non potest ferre +contemptum sui</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>What Luther called “wrestling with the Devil” we at this day call “low +spirits.” Life must be a much more insipid thing than it was then. O what +a soul that man must have had; under what a weight of feeling, that would +have crushed a thousand of us, <i>he</i> must have trod the earth!</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE.</span></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE.</span><small><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></small></p> + +<p>If there are any two portraits which we all expect to find hung up in the +rooms of those whose tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture, +they are the portraits of Shakespeare and Goethe.</p> + +<p>There are, indeed, many and various gods in our modern Pantheon of genius. +It contains rough gods and smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of +strength, gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, and +little cupids and toy-gods. Out of this variety each master of a household +will select his own Penates, the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece. +The roughest will find some to worship them, and the smallest shall not +want domestic adoration. But we suppose a dilettante of the first class, +one who, besides excluding from his range of choice the deities of war, +and cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> thought, and civic action, shall further exclude from it all +those even of the gods of modern literature who, whether by reason of +their inferior rank, or by reason of their peculiar attributes, fail as +models of universal stateliness. What we should expect to see over the +mantelpiece of such a rigorous person would be the images of the English +Shakespeare and the German Goethe.</p> + +<p>On the one side, we will suppose, fixed with due gance against the +luxurious crimson of the wall, would be a slab of black marble exhibiting +in relief a white plaster-cast of the face of Shakespeare as modelled from +the Stratford bust; on the other, in a similar setting, would be a copy, +if possible, of the mask of Goethe taken at Weimar after the poet’s death. +This would suffice; and the considerate beholder could find no fault with +such an arrangement. It is true, reasons might be assigned why a third +mask should have been added—that of the Italian Dante; in which case +Dante and Goethe should have occupied the sides, and Shakespeare should +have been placed higher up between. But the master of the house would +point out how, in that case, a fine taste would have been pained by the +inevitable sense of contrast between the genial mildness of the two +Teutonic faces and the severe and scornful melancholy of the poet of the +Inferno. The face of the Italian poet, as being so different in kind, must +either be reluctantly omitted, he would say, or transferred by itself to +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> other side of the room. Unless, indeed, with a view to satisfy the +claims both of degree and of kind, Shakespeare were to be placed alone +over the mantelpiece, and Dante and Goethe in company on the opposite +wall, where, there being but two, the contrast would be rather agreeable +than otherwise! On the whole, however, and without prejudice to new +arrangements in the course of future decorations, he is content that it +should be as it is.</p> + +<p>And so, reader, for the present are we. Let us enter together, then, if it +seems worth while, the room of this imaginary dilettante during his +absence; let us turn the key in the lock, so that he may not come in to +interrupt us; and let us look for a little time at the two masks he has +provided for us over the mantelpiece, receiving such reflections as they +may suggest. Doubtless we have often looked at the two masks before; but +that matters little.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>As we gaze at the first of the two masks, what is it that we see? A face +full in contour, of good oval shape, the individual features small in +proportion to the entire countenance, the greater part of which is made up +of an ample and rounded forehead and a somewhat abundant mouth and chin. +The general impression is that rather of rich, fine, and very mobile +tissue, than of large or decided bone. This, together with the length<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> of +the upper lip, and the absence of any set expression, imparts to the face +an air of lax and luxurious calmness. It is clearly a passive face rather +than an active face, a face across which moods may pass and repass rather +than a face grooved and charactered into any one permanent show of +relation to the outer world. Placed beside the mask of Cromwell, it would +fail to impress, not only as being less massive and energetic, but also as +being in every way less marked and determinate. It is the face, we repeat, +of a literary man, one of those faces which depend for their power to +impress less on the sculptor’s favourite circumstance of distinct osseous +form than on the changing hue and aspect of the living flesh. And yet it +is, even in form, quite a peculiar face. Instead of being, as in the +ordinary thousand and one portraits of Shakespeare, a mere general face +which anybody or nobody might have had, the face in the mask (and the +singular portrait in the first folio edition of the poet’s works +corroborates it) is a face which every call-boy about the Globe Theatre +must have carried about with him in his imagination, without any trouble, +as specifically Mr. Shakespeare’s face. In complexion, as we imagine it, +it was rather fair than dark; and yet not very fair either, if we are to +believe Shakespeare himself (Sonnet 62)—</p> + +<p class="poem">“But when my glass shows me myself indeed,<br /> +Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity—”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>a passage, however, in which, from the nature of the mood in which it was +written, we are to suppose exaggeration for the worse. In short, the face +of Shakespeare, so far as we can infer what it was from the homely +Stratford bust, was a genuine and even comely, but still unusual, English +face, distinguished by a kind of ripe intellectual fulness in the general +outline, comparative smallness in the individual features, and a look of +gentle and humane repose.</p> + +<p>Goethe’s face is different. The whole size of the head is perhaps less, +but the proportion of the face to the head is greater, and there is more +of that determinate form which arises from prominence and strength in the +bony structure. The features are individually larger, and present in their +combination more of that deliberate beauty of outline which can be +conveyed with effect in sculpture. The expression, however, is also that +of calm intellectual repose; and, in the absence of harshness or undue +concentration of the parts, one is at liberty to discover the proof that +this also was the face of a man whose life was spent rather in a career of +thought and literary effort than in a career of active and laborious +strife. Yet the face, with all its power of fine susceptibility, is not so +passive as that of Shakespeare. Its passiveness is more the passiveness of +self-control, and less that of natural constitution; the susceptibilities +pass and repass over a firmer basis of permanent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> character; the tremors +among the nervous tissues do not reach to such depths of sheer nervous +dissolution, but sooner make impact against the solid bone. The calm in +the one face is more that of habitual softness and ease of humour; the +calm in the other is more that of dignified, though tolerant, +self-composure. It would have been more easy, one thinks, to take +liberties with Shakespeare in his presence than to attempt a similar thing +in the presence of Goethe. The one carried himself with the air of a man +often diffident of himself, and whom, therefore, a foolish or impudent +stranger might very well mistake till he saw him roused; the other wore, +with all his kindness and blandness, a fixed stateliness of mien and look +that would have checked undue familiarity from the first. Add to all this +that the face of Goethe, at least in later life, was browner and more +wrinkled; his hair more dark; his eye also nearer the black and lustrous +in species, if less mysteriously vague and deep; and his person perhaps +the taller and more symmetrically made.<small><a name="f3.1" id="f3.1" href="#f3">[3]</a></small></p> + +<p>But a truce to these guesses! What do we actually know respecting those +two men, whose masks, the preserved similitudes of the living features +with which they once fronted the world, are now before us? Let us turn +first to the one and then to the other, till, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> we gaze at these poor +eyeless images, which are all we now have, some vision of the lives and +minds they typify shall swim into our ken.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Shakespeare, this Englishman who died two hundred and sixty years ago, +what is he now to us his countrymen, who ought to know him best? A great +name, in the first place, of which we are proud! That this little foggy +island of England should have given birth to such a man is of itself a +moiety of our acquittance among the nations. By Frenchmen Shakespeare is +accepted as at least equal to their own first; Italians waver between him +and Dante; Germans, by race more our brethren, worship him as their own +highest product too, though born by chance amongst us. All confess him to +have been one of those great spirits, occasionally created, in whom the +human faculties seem to have reached that extreme of expansion on the +slightest increase beyond which man would burst away into some other mode +of being and leave this behind. And why all this? What are the special +claims of Shakespeare to this high worship? Through what mode of activity, +practised while alive, has he won this immortality after he is dead? The +answer is simple. He was an artist, a poet, a dramatist. Having, during +some five-and-twenty years of a life not very long, written about forty +dramatic pieces, which, after being acted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> in several London theatres, +were printed either by himself or by his executors, he has, by this means, +bequeathed to the memory of the human race an immense number of verses, +and to its imagination a great variety of ideal characters and +creations—Lears, Othellos, Hamlets, Falstaffs, Shallows, Imogens, +Mirandas, Ariels, Calibans. This, understood in its fullest extent, is +what Shakespeare has done. Whatever blank in human affairs, as they now +are, would be produced by the immediate withdrawal of all this +intellectual capital, together with all the interest that has been +accumulated on it: <i>that</i> is the measure of what the world owes to +Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>This conception, however, while it serves vaguely to indicate to us the +greatness of the man, assists us very little in the task of defining his +character. In our attempts to do this—to ascend, as it were, to the +living spring from which have flowed those rich poetic streams—we +unavoidably rely upon two kinds of authority: the records which inform us +of the leading events of his life; and the casual allusions to his person +and habits left us by his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>To enumerate the ascertained events of Shakespeare’s life is unnecessary +here. How he was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April, +1564, the son of a respectable burgess who afterwards became poor; how, +having been educated with some care in his native<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> town, he married there, +at the age of eighteen, a farmer’s daughter eight years older than +himself; how, after employing himself as scrivener or schoolmaster, or +something of that kind, in his native county for a few years more, he at +length quitted it in his twenty-fourth year, and came up to London, +leaving his wife and three children at Stratford; how, connecting himself +with the Blackfriars theatre, he commenced the career of a poet and +play-writer; how he succeeded so well in this that, after having been a +flourishing actor and theatre-proprietor, and a most popular man of genius +about town for some seventeen years, he was able to leave the stage while +still under forty, and return to Stratford with property sufficient to +make him the most considerable man of the place; how he lived here for +some twelve years more in the midst of his family, sending up occasionally +a new play to town, and otherwise leading the even and tranquil existence +of a country gentleman; and how, after having buried his old mother, +married his daughters, and seen himself a grandfather at the age of +forty-three, he was cut off rather suddenly near his fifty-third birthday, +in the year 1616:—all this is, or ought to be, as familiar to educated +Englishmen of the present day as the letters of the English alphabet. M. +Guizot, with a little inaccuracy, has made these leading facts in the life +of the English poet tolerably familiar even to our French neighbours.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>But, while such facts, if conceived with sufficient distinctness, serve to +mark out the life of the poet in general outline, it is rather from the +few notices of him that have come down to us from his contemporaries that +we derive the more special impressions regarding his character and ways +with which we are accustomed to fill up this outline. These notices are +various; those of interest may, perhaps, be about a dozen in all; but the +only ones that take a very decided hold on the imagination are the three +following:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Fuller’s Fancy-picture of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at the Mermaid +Tavern.</i>—“Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; +which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English +man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in +learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the +English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could +turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by +the quickness of his wit and invention.”—<i>Written, about 1650, by +Thomas Fuller, born in 1608.</i></p> + +<p><i>Aubrey’s Sketch of Shakespeare at second hand.</i>—“This William, +being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I +guess, about 18; and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did +act exceedingly well. (Now B. Jonson was never a good actor, but an +excellent instructor.) He began early to make essays at dramatic +poetry, which at that time was very low; and his plays took well. He +was a handsome, well-shaped man; very good company, and of a very +ready<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and pleasant smooth wit. The humour of the constable in ‘<i>A +Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>,’ he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks, +which is the road from London to Stratford; and there was living that +constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of +that parish; and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of +men daily wherever they came.... He was wont to go to his native +country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 200<i>l.</i> or +300<i>l.</i> per annum, there and thereabout, to a sister. I have heard +Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell, who is accounted the +best comedian we have now, say that he had a most prodigious wit, and +did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He +was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life. Said +Ben Jonson, ‘I wish he had blotted out a thousand.’”—<i>Written, about +1680, by John Aubrey, born 1625.</i></p> + +<p><i>Ben Jonson’s own Sketch of Shakespeare.</i>—“I remember the players +have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his +writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer +hath been ‘Would he had blotted a thousand!’; which they thought a +malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their +ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by +wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved +the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as +any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an +excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he +flowed with that facility that <i>sometimes it was necessary he should +be stopped</i>: <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>‘<i>Sufflaminandus erat</i>,’ as Augustus said of Haterius. +His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! +Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as +when he said, in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, ‘Cæsar, +thou dost me wrong,’ he replied, ‘Cæsar did never wrong but with just +cause,’ and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his +vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than +to be pardoned.”—<i>Ben Jonson’s “Discoveries.”</i></p></div> + +<p>It is sheer nonsense, with these and other such passages accessible to +anybody, to go on repeating, as people seem determined to do, the +hackneyed saying of the commentator Steevens, that “all that we know of +Shakespeare is, that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon; married and had +children there; went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote plays +and poems; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried.”<small><a name="f4.1" id="f4.1" href="#f4">[4]</a></small> +It is our own fault, and not the fault of the materials, if we do not know +a great deal more about Shakespeare than that; if we do not realize, for +example, these distinct and indubitable facts about him—his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> special +reputation among the critics of his time, as a man not so much of +erudition as of prodigious natural genius; his gentleness and openness of +disposition; his popular and sociable habits; his extreme ease, and, as +some thought, negligence in composition; and, above all, and most +characteristic of all, his excessive fluency in speech. “He sometimes +required stopping,” is Ben Jonson’s expression; and whoever does not see a +whole volume of revelation respecting Shakespeare in that single trait has +no eye for seeing anything. Let no one ever lose sight of that phrase in +trying to imagine Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>Still, after all, we cannot be content thus. With regard to such a man we +cannot rest satisfied with a mere picture of his exterior in its aspect of +repose, or in a few of its common attitudes. We seek, as the phrase is, to +penetrate into his heart—to detect and to fix in everlasting portraiture +that mood of his soul which was ultimate and characteristic; in which, so +to speak, he came ready-fashioned from the Creator’s hands; towards which +he always sank when alone; and on the ground-melody of which all his +thoughts and actions were but voluntary variations. As far short of such a +result as would be any notion we could form of the poet Burns from a mere +chronological outline of his life, together with a few stories such as are +current about his moral irregularities, so far short of a true +appreciation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> of Shakespeare would be that idea of him which we could +derive from the scanty fund of the external evidence.</p> + +<p>And here it is that, in proceeding to make up the deficiency of the +external evidence by going to the only other available source of light on +the subject, namely the bequeathed writings of the man himself, we find +ourselves obstructed at the outset by an obvious difficulty, which does +not exist to the same extent in most other cases. We can, with comparative +ease, recognise Burns himself in his works; for Burns is a lyrist, pouring +out his own feelings in song, often alluding to himself, and generally +under personal agitation when he writes. Shakespeare, on the other hand, +is a dramatist, whose function it was not to communicate, but to create. +Had he been a dramatist of the same school as Ben Jonson, indeed—using +the drama as a means of spreading, or, at all events, as a medium through +which to insinuate, his opinions, and often indicating his purposes by the +very names of his <i>dramatis personæ</i> (as Downright, Merecraft, Eitherside, +and the like)—then the task would have been easier. But it is not so with +Shakespeare. Less than almost any man that ever wrote does he inculcate or +dogmatise. He is the very type of the poet. He paints, represents, +creates, holds the mirror up to nature; but from opinion, doctrine, +controversy, theory, he holds instinctively aloof. In each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> of his plays +there is a “central idea,” to use the favourite term of the German +critics—that is, a single thought round which all may be exhibited as +consciously or unconsciously crystallized; but there is no pervading +maxim, no point set forth to be argued or proved. Of none of all the plays +can it be said that it is more than any other a vehicle for fixed articles +in the creed of Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>One quality or attribute of Shakespeare’s genius we do, indeed, contrive +to seize out this very difficulty of seizing anything—that quality or +attribute of <i>many-sidedness</i> of which we have heard so much for the last +century and a half. The immense variety of his characters and conceptions, +embracing as it does Hamlets and Falstaffs, Kings and Clowns, Prosperos +and Dogberrys, and his apparently equal ease in handling them all, are +matters that have been noted by one and all of the critics. And thus, +while his own character is lost in his incessant shiftings through such a +succession of masks, we yet manage, as it were in revenge, to extract from +the very impossibility of describing him an adjective which does possess a +kind of quasi-descriptive value. It is as if of some one that had baffled +all our attempts to investigate him we were to console ourselves by saying +that he was a perfect Proteus. We call Shakespeare “many-sided;” not a +magazine, nor a young lady at a party, but tells you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> that; and in adding +this to our list of adjectives concerning him we find a certain +satisfaction, and even an increase of light.</p> + +<p>But it would be cowardice to stop here. The old sea-god Proteus himself, +despite his subtlety and versatility, had a real form and character of his +own, into which he could be compelled, if one only knew the way. Hear how +they served this old gentleman in the Odyssey:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“We at once,</span><br /> +Loud shouting, flew on him, and in our arms<br /> +Constrained him fast; nor the sea-prophet old<br /> +Called not incontinent his shifts to mind.<br /> +First he became a long-maned lion grim;<br /> +A dragon then, a panther, a huge boar,<br /> +A limpid stream, and an o’ershadowing tree.<br /> +We, persevering, held him; till, at length,<br /> +The subtle sage, his ineffectual arts<br /> +Resigning weary, questioned me and spoke.”</p> + +<p>And so with <i>our</i> Proteus. The many-sidedness of the dramatist, let it be +well believed and pondered, is but the versatility in form of a certain +personal and substantial being, which constitutes the specific mind of the +dramatist himself. Precisely as we have insisted that Shakespeare’s face, +as the best portraits represent it to us, is no mere general face or face +to let, but a good, decided, and even rather singular face, so, we would +insist, he had as specific a character, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> thoroughly a way of his own in +thinking about things and going through his morning and evening hours, as +any of ourselves. “Man is only many-sided,” says Goethe, “when he strives +after the highest because he <i>must</i>, and descends to the lesser because he +<i>will</i>;” that is, as we interpret, when he is borne on in a certain noble +direction in all that he does by the very structure of his mind, while, at +his option, he may keep planting this fixed path or not with a sportive +and flowery border. By the necessity of his nature, Shakespeare was +compelled in a certain earnest direction in all that he did; and it is our +part to search through the thickets of imagery and gratuitous fiction amid +which he spent his life, that this path may be discovered. As the lion, or +the limpid stream, or the overshadowing tree, into which Proteus turned +himself, was not a real lion, or a real stream, or a real tree, but only +Proteus as the one or as the other; so, involved in each of Shakespeare’s +characters,—in Hamlet, in Falstaff, or in Romeo,—involved in some deep +manner in each of these diverse characters, is Shakespeare’s own nature. +If Shakespeare had not been precisely and wholly Shakespeare, and not any +other man actual or conceivable, could Hamlet or Falstaff, or any other of +his creations, have been what they are?</p> + +<p>But how to evolve Shakespeare from his works, how to compel this Proteus +into his proper and native form,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> is still the question. It is a problem +of the highest difficulty. Something, indeed, of the poet’s personal +character and views we cannot help gathering as we read his dramas. +Passages again and again occur of which, from their peculiar effect upon +ourselves, from their conceivable reference to what we know of the poet’s +circumstances, or from their evident superfluousness and warmth, we do not +hesitate to aver “There speaks the poet’s own heart.” But to show +generally how much of the man has passed into the poet, and how it is that +his personal bent and peculiarities are to be surely detected inhering in +writings whose essential character it is to be arbitrary and universal, is +a task from which a critic might well shrink, were he left merely to the +ordinary resources of critical ingenuity without any positive and +ascertained clue.</p> + +<p>In this case, however, all the world ought to know, there is a positive +and ascertained clue. Shakespeare has left to us not merely a collection +of dramas, the exercises of his creative phantasy in a world of ideal +matter, but also certain poems which are assuredly and expressly +autobiographic. Criticism seems now pretty conclusively to have +determined, what it ought to have determined long ago, that the <i>Sonnets</i> +of Shakespeare are, and can possibly be, nothing else than a poetical +record of his own feelings and experience—a connected series of entries, +as it were, in his own <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>diary—during a certain period of his London life. +This, we say, is conclusively determined and agreed upon; and whoever does +not, to some extent, hold this view knows nothing about the subject. +Ulrici, who is a genuine investigator, as well as a profound critic, is, +of course, right on this point. So, also, in the main, is M. Guizot, +although he mars the worth of the conclusion by adducing the foolish +theory of <i>Euphuism</i>—that is, of the adoption of an affected style of +expression in vogue in Shakespeare’s age—in order to explain away that +which is precisely the most important thing about the Sonnets, and the +very thing <i>not</i> to be explained away: namely, the depth and strangeness +of their pervading sentiment, and the curious hyperbolism of their style. +In truth, it is the very closeness of the contact into which the right +view of the Sonnets brings us with Shakespeare, the very value of the +information respecting him to which it opens the way, that operates +against it. Where we have so eager a desire to know, there we fear to +believe, lest what we have once cherished on so great a subject we should +be obliged again to give up, or lest, if our imaginations should dare to +figure aught too exact and familiar regarding the traits and motions of so +royal a spirit, the question should be put to us, what <i>we</i> can know of +the halls of a palace, or the mantled tread of a king? Still the fact is +as it is. These Sonnets of Shakespeare <i>are</i> autobiographic—distinctly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> +intensely, painfully autobiographic, although in a style and after a +fashion of autobiography so peculiar that we can cite only Dante in his +<i>Vita Nuova</i>, and Tennyson in his <i>In Memoriam</i>, as having furnished +similar examples of it.</p> + +<p>We are not going to examine the Sonnets in detail here, nor to tell the +story which they involve as a whole. We will indicate generally, however, +the impression which, we think, a close investigation of them will +infallibly leave on any thoughtful reader, as to the characteristic +personal qualities of that mind the larger and more factitious emanations +from which still cover and astonish the world.</p> + +<p>The general and aggregate effect, then, of these Sonnets, as contributing +to our knowledge of Shakespeare as a man, is to antiquate, or at least to +reduce very much in value, the common idea of him implied in such phrases +as William the Calm, William the Cheerful, and the like. These phrases are +true, when understood in a certain very obvious sense; but, if we were to +select that designation which would, as we think, express Shakespeare in +his most intimate and private relations to man and nature, we should +rather say William the Meditative, William the Metaphysical, or William +the Melancholy. Let not the reader, full of the just idea of Shakespeare’s +wonderful concreteness as a poet, be staggered by the second of these +phrases.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> The phrase is a good phrase; etymologically, it is perhaps the +best phrase we could here use; and whatever of inappropriateness there may +seem to be in it proceeds from false associations, and will vanish, we +hope, before we have done with it. Nor let it be supposed that, in using, +as nearly synonymous, the word Melancholy, we mean anything so absurd as +that the author of Falstaff was a Werther. What we mean is that there is +evidence in the Sonnets, corroborated by other proof on all hands, that +the mind of Shakespeare, when left to itself, was apt to sink into that +state in which thoughts of what is sad and mysterious in the universe most +easily come and go.</p> + +<p>At no time, except during sleep, is the mind of any human being completely +idle. All men have some natural and congenial mood into which they fall +when they are left to talk with themselves. One man recounts the follies +of the past day, renewing the relish of them by the recollection; another +uses his leisure to hate his enemy and to scheme his discomfiture; a third +rehearses in imagination, in order to be prepared, the part which he is to +perform on the morrow. Now, at such moments, as we believe, it was the +habit of Shakespeare’s mind, obliged thereto by the necessity of its +structure, to ponder ceaselessly those quest ions relating to man, his +origin, and his destiny, in familiarity with which consists what is called +the spiritual element<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> in human nature. It was Shakespeare’s use, as it +seems to us, to revert, when he was alone, to that ultimate mood of the +soul in which one hovers wistfully on the borders of the finite, vainly +pressing against the barriers that separate it from the unknown; that mood +in which even what is common and under foot seems part of a vast current +mystery, and in which, like Arabian Job of old, one looks by turns at the +heaven above, the earth beneath, and one’s own moving body between, +interrogating whence it all is, why it all is, and whither it all tends. +And this, we say, is Melancholy. It is more. It is that mood of man, +which, most of all moods, is thoroughly, grandly, specifically human. That +which is the essence of all worth, all beauty, all humour, all genius, is +open or secret reference to the supernatural; and this is sorrow. The +attitude of a finite creature, contemplating the infinite, can only be +that of an exile, grief and wonder blending in a wistful longing for an +unknown home.</p> + +<p>As we consider this frame of mind to have been characteristic of +Shakespeare, so we find that as a poet he has not forgotten to represent +it. We have always fancied Hamlet to be a closer translation of +Shakespeare’s own character than any other of his personations. The same +meditativeness, the same morbid reference at all times to the +supernatural, the same inordinate development of the speculative faculty, +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> same intellectual melancholy, that are seen in the Prince of Denmark, +seem to have distinguished Shakespeare. Nor is it possible here to forget +that minor and lower form of the same fancy—the ornament of <i>As You Like +It</i>, the melancholy Jaques.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“<i>Jaques.</i> More, more, I prithee, more.</p> + +<p><i>Amiens.</i> It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.</p> + +<p><i>Jaques.</i> I thank it. More, I prithee, more! I can suck melancholy +out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More. I prithee, more!</p> + +<p><i>Amiens.</i> My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you.</p> + +<p><i>Jaques.</i> I do not desire you to please me; I desire you to sing.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span></p> + +<p><i>Rosalind.</i> They say you are a melancholy fellow.</p> + +<p><i>Jaques.</i> I am so; I do love it better than laughing.</p> + +<p><i>Rosalind.</i> Those that are in extremity of either are abominable +fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than +drunkards.</p> + +<p><i>Jaques.</i> Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing.</p> + +<p><i>Rosalind.</i> Why, then, ’tis good to be a post.</p> + +<p><i>Jaques.</i> I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is +emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the +courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; +nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; +nor the lover’s, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine +own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> objects, and +indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often +rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.”</p></div> + +<p>Jaques is not Shakespeare; but in writing this description of Jaques +Shakespeare drew from his knowledge of himself. His also was a “melancholy +of his own,” a “humorous sadness in which his often rumination wrapt him.” +In that declared power of Jaques of “sucking melancholy out of a song” the +reference of Shakespeare to himself seems almost direct. Nay more, as +Rosalind, in rating poor Jaques, tells him on one occasion that he is so +abject a fellow that she verily believes he is “out of love with his +nativity, and almost chides God <i>for making him of that countenance that +he is</i>,” so Shakespeare’s melancholy, in one of his Sonnets (No. 29), +takes exactly the same form of self-dissatisfaction.</p> + +<p class="poem">“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,<br /> +I all alone beweep my outcast state,<br /> +And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,<br /> +And look upon myself and curse my fate,<br /> +Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,<br /> +<i>Featured like him</i>, like him with friends possessed,<br /> +Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,<br /> +With what I most enjoy contented least;<br /> +Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising,<br /> +Haply I think on thee,” &c.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>Think of that, reader! That mask of Shakespeare’s face, which we have been +discussing, Shakespeare himself did not like; and there were moments in +which he was so abject as actually to wish that he had received from +Nature another man’s physical features!</p> + +<p>If Shakespeare’s melancholy was, like that of Jaques, a complex +melancholy, a melancholy “compounded of many simples”—extracted perhaps +at first from some root of bitter experience in his own life, and then +fed, as his Sonnets clearly state, by a habitual sense of his own +“outcast” condition in society, and by the sight of a hundred social +wrongs around him, into a kind of abject dissatisfaction with himself and +his fate—yet, in the end, and in its highest form, it was rather, as we +have already hinted, the melancholy of Hamlet, a meditative, contemplative +melancholy, embracing human life as a whole, the melancholy of a mind +incessantly tending from the real (<ins class="correction" title="ta physika">τα φυσικα</ins>) to the +metaphysical (<ins class="correction" title="ta meta ta physika">τα μετα τα +φυσικα</ins>), and only brought back by external occasion from the metaphysical to the real.</p> + +<p>Do not let us quarrel about the words, if we can agree about the thing. +Let any competent person whatever read the Sonnets, and then, with their +impression on him, pass to the plays, and he will inevitably become aware +of Shakespeare’s personal fondness for certain themes or trains of +thought, particularly that of the speed and destructiveness of time.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> +Death, vicissitude, the march and tramp of generations across life’s +stage, the rotting of human bodies in the earth—these and all the other +forms of the same thought were familiar to Shakespeare to a degree beyond +what is to be seen in the case of any other poet. It seems to have been a +habit of his mind, when left to its own tendency, ever to indulge by +preference in that oldest of human meditations, which is not yet trite: +“Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble; he +cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth as a shadow, and +continueth not.” Let us cite a few examples from the Sonnets:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“When I consider everything that grows<br /> +Holds in perfection but a little moment,<br /> +That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows<br /> +Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.”—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Sonnet 15.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +“If thou survive my well-contented clay,<br /> +When that churl Death my bones with dust shall<br /> +cover.”—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Sonnet 32.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +“No longer mourn for me when I am dead<br /> +Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell<br /> +Give warning to the world that I am fled<br /> +From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.”—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Sonnet 71.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +“The wrinkles, which thy glass will truly show,<br /> +Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;<br /> +Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth may’st know<br /> +Time’s thievish progress to eternity.”—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Sonnet 77.</i></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span><br /> +“Or I shall live your epitaph to make,<br /> +Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.”—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Sonnet 81.</i></span></p> + +<p>These are but one or two out of many such passages occurring in the +Sonnets. Indeed, it may be said that, whenever Shakespeare pronounces the +words time, age, death, and the like, it is with a deep and cutting +personal emphasis, quite different from the usual manner of poets in their +stereotyped allusions to mortality. Time, in particular, seems to have +tenanted his imagination as a kind of grim and hideous personal existence, +cruel out of mere malevolence of nature. Death, too, had become to him a +kind of actual being or fury, morally unamiable, and deserving of +reproach: “that churl Death.”</p> + +<p>If we turn to the plays of Shakespeare, we shall find that in them too the +same morbid sensitiveness to all associations with mortality is +continually breaking out. The vividness, for example, with which Juliet +describes the interior of a charnel-house partakes of a spirit of revenge, +as if Shakespeare were retaliating, through her, upon an object horrible +to himself:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,<br /> +O’ercovered quite with dead men’s rattling bones,<br /> +With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls.”</p> + +<p>More distinctly revengeful is Romeo’s ejaculation at the tomb:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +“Thou détestable maw, thou womb of Death,<br /> +Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,<br /> +Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open!”</p> + +<p>And who does not remember the famous passage in <i>Measure for Measure</i>?—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Claudio.</i><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Death is a fearful thing.</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Isabella.</i> And shamed life is hateful.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Claudio.</i> Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">This sensible warm motion to become</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">In thrilling regions of thick-ribbèd ice;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">And blown with restless violence round about</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">The pendent world; or to be worse than worst</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">The weariest and most loathed worldly life</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">Can lay on nature is a paradise</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">To what we fear of Death.”</span></p> + +<p>Again in the grave-digging scene in <i>Hamlet</i> we see the same fascinated +familiarity of the imagination with all that pertains to churchyards, +coffins, and the corruption within them.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“<i>Hamlet.</i> Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.</p> + +<p><i>Horatio.</i> What’s that, my lord?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span><i>Hamlet.</i> Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth?</p> + +<p><i>Horatio.</i> E’en so.</p> + +<p><i>Hamlet.</i> And smelt so? pah! (<i>Puts down the skull.</i>)</p> + +<p><i>Horatio.</i> E’en so, my lord!</p> + +<p><i>Hamlet.</i> To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not +imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it +stopping a bung-hole?</p> + +<p><i>Horatio.</i> ’Twere to reason too curiously to consider so.</p> + +<p><i>Hamlet.</i> No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with +modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus:—Alexander died; +Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; +of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted +might they not stop a beer-barrel?</p> + +<p class="poem">Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,<br /> +Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:<br /> +O that that earth which kept the world in awe<br /> +Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!”</p></div> + +<p>Observe how Shakespeare here defends, through Hamlet, his own tendency +“too curiously” to consider death. To sum up all, however, let us turn to +that unparalleled burst of language in the <i>Tempest</i>, in which the poet +has defeated Time itself by chivalrously proclaiming to all time what Time +can do:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,<br /> +The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,<br /> +The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,<br /> +And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,<br /> +Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<br /> +As dreams are made of; and our little life<br /> +Is rounded with a sleep.”</p> + +<p>This, we contend, is no mere poetic phrenzy, inserted because it was +dramatically suitable that Prospero should so express himself at that +place; it is the explosion into words of a feeling during which Prospero +was forgotten, and Shakespeare swooned into himself. And what is the +continuation of the passage but a kind of postscript, describing, under +the guise of Prospero, Shakespeare’s own agitation with what he had just +written?—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Sir, I am vexed;</span><br /> +Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:<br /> +Be not disturbed with my infirmity:<br /> +If you be pleased, retire into my cell,<br /> +And there repose: <i>a turn or two I’ll walk,<br /> +To still my beating mind</i>.”</p> + +<p>To our imagination the surmise is that Shakespeare here laid down his pen, +and began to pace his chamber, too agitated to write more that night.</p> + +<p>In this extreme familiarity with the conception of mortality in general, +and perhaps also in this extreme sensitiveness to the thought of death as +a matter of personal import, all great poets, and possibly all great men +whatever, have to some extent resembled Shakespeare. For these are the +feelings of our common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> nature on which religion and all solemn activity +have founded and maintained themselves. Space and Time are the largest and +the outermost of all human conceptions; to stand, therefore, incessantly +upon these extreme conceptions, as upon the perimeter of a figure, and to +view all inwards from them, is the highest exercise of thought to which a +human being can attain. Accordingly, in all great poets there may be +discerned this familiarity of the imagination with the world figured as a +poor little ball pendent in space and moving forward out of a dark past to +a future of light or gloom. But in this respect Shakespeare exceeds them +all; and in this respect, therefore, no poet is more religious, more +spiritual, more profoundly metaphysical, than he. Into an inordinate +amount of that outward pressure of the soul against the perimeter of +sensible things, infuse the peculiar <i>moral</i> germ of Christianity, and you +have the religion of Shakespeare. Thus:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">“And our little life</span><br /> +Is rounded with a sleep.”—<i>Tempest.</i></p> + +<p>Here the poetic imagination sweeps boldly round the universe, severing it +as by a soft cloud-line from the infinite Unknown.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Poor soul! the centre of my sinful earth,<br /> +Fooled by those rebel powers that lead thee ’stray!”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;"><i>Sonnet 146.</i></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>Here the soul, retracting its thoughts from the far and physical, dwells +disgustedly on itself.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">“The dread of something after death,</span><br /> +The undiscovered country from whose bourn<br /> +No traveller returns.”—<i>Hamlet.</i></p> + +<p>Here the soul, pierced with the new and awful thought of sin, wings out +again towards the Infinite, and finds all dark.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">“How would you be,</span><br /> +If He, which is the top of judgment, should<br /> +But judge you as you are?”—<i>Measure for Measure.</i></p> + +<p>Here the silver lamp of hope is hung up within the gloomy sphere, to burn +softly and faintly for ever!</p> + +<p>And so it is throughout Shakespeare’s writings. Whatever is special or +doctrinal is avoided; all that intellectual tackling, so to speak, is +struck away that would afford the soul any relief whatever from the whole +sensation of the supernatural. Although we cannot, therefore, in honest +keeping with popular language, call Shakespeare, as Ulrici does, the most +Christian of poets, we believe him to have been the man in modern times +who, breathing an atmosphere full of Christian conceptions, and walking +amid a civilization studded with Christian institutions, had his whole +being tied by the closest personal links to those highest generalities of +the universe which the greatest minds in all ages have ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> pondered and +meditated, and round which Christianity has thrown its clasp of gold.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare, then, we hold to have been essentially a meditative, +speculative, and even, in his solitary hours, an abject and melancholy +man, rather than a man of active, firm, and worldly disposition. Instead +of being a calm, stony observer of life and nature, as he has been +sometimes represented, we believe him to have been a man of the gentlest +and most troublesome affections, of sensibility abnormally keen and deep, +full of metaphysical longings, liable above most men to self-distrust, +despondency, and mental agitation from causes internal and external, and a +prey to many secret and severe experiences which he did not discuss at the +Mermaid tavern. This, we say, is no guess; it is a thing certified under +his own hand and seal. But, this being allowed, we are willing to agree +with all that is said of him, by way of indicating the immense variety of +faculties, dispositions, and acquirements, of which his character was +built up. Vast intellectual inquisitiveness, the readiest and most +universal humour, the truest sagacity and knowledge of the world, the +richest and deepest capacity of enjoying all that life presented: all +this, as applied to Shakespeare, is a mere string of undeniable +commonplaces. The man, as we fancy him, who of all others trod the +oftenest the extreme metaphysic walk which bounds our universe in, he was +also the man of all others<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> who was related most keenly by every fibre of +his being to all the world of the real and the concrete. Better than any +man he knew life to be a dream; with as vivid a relish as any man he did +his part as one of the dreamers. If at one moment life stood before his +mental gaze, an illuminated little speck or disc, softly rounded with +mysterious sleep, the next moment this mere span shot out into an +illimitable plain, whereon he himself stood—a plain covered with forests, +parted by seas, studded with cities and huge concourses of men, mapped out +into civilizations, over-canopied by stars. Nay, it was precisely because +he came and went with such instant transition between the two extremes +that he behaved so genially and sympathetically in the latter. It was +precisely because he had done the metaphysic feat so completely once for +all, and did not bungle on metaphysicizing bit by bit amid the real, that +he stood forth in the character of the most concrete of poets. Life is an +illusion, a show, a phantasm: well then, that is settled, and <i>I</i> belong +to that section of the illusion called London, the seventeenth century, +and woody Warwickshire! So he may have said; and he acted accordingly. He +walked amid the woods of Warwickshire, and listened to the birds singing +in their leafy retreats; he entered the Mermaid tavern with Ben Jonson +after the theatre was over, and found himself quite properly related, as +one item in the illusion, to that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> other item in it, a good supper and a +cup of canary. He accepted the world as it was, rejoiced in its joys, was +pained by its sorrows, reverenced its dignities, respected its laws, and +laughed at its whimsies. It was this very strength and intimacy and +universality of his relations to the concrete world of nature and life +that caused in him that spirit of acquiescence in things as they were, +that evident conservatism of temper, that indifference, or perhaps more, +to the specific contemporary forms of social and intellectual movement, +with which he has sometimes been charged as a fault. The habit of +attaching weight to what are called abstractions, of metaphysicizing bit +by bit amid the real, is almost an essential feature in the constitution +of men who are remarkable for their faith in social progress. It was +precisely, therefore, because Shakespeare was such a votary of the +concrete, because he walked so firmly on the green and solid sward of that +island of life which he knew to be surrounded by a metaphysic sea, that +this or that metaphysical proposal with respect to the island itself +occupied him but little.</p> + +<p>How, then, <i>did</i> Shakespeare relate himself to this concrete world of +nature and life in which his lot had been cast? What precise function with +regard to it, if not that of an active partisan of progress, did he accept +as devolving naturally on <i>him</i>? The answer is easy. Marked out by +circumstances, and by his own bent and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> inclination, from the vast +majority of men, who, with greater or less faculty, sometimes perhaps with +the greatest, pass their lives in silence, appearing in the world at their +time, enjoying it for a season, and returning to the earth again,—marked +out from among these, and appointed to be one of those whom the whole +earth should remember and think of; yet precluded, as we have seen, by his +constitution and fortune, from certain modes of attaining to this +honour—the special function which, in this high place, he saw himself +called upon to discharge, and by the discharge of which he has ensured his +place in perpetuity, was simply that of <i>expressing</i> what he felt and saw. +In other words, Shakespeare was specifically and transcendently a literary +man. To say that he was the greatest <i>man</i> that ever lived is to provoke a +useless controversy, and comparisons that lead to nothing, between +Shakespeare and Cæsar, Shakespeare and Charlemagne, Shakespeare and +Cromwell; to say that he was the greatest <i>intellect</i> that ever lived, is +to bring the shades of Aristotle and Plato, and Bacon and Newton, and all +the other systematic thinkers, grumbling about us, with demands for a +definition of intellect, which we are by no means in a position to give; +nay, finally, to say that he is the greatest <i>poet</i> that the world has +produced (a thing which we would certainly say, were we provoked to it,) +would be unnecessarily to hurt the feelings of Homer and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> Sophocles, Dante +and Milton. What we will say, then, and challenge the world to gainsay, is +that he was the greatest <i>expresser</i> that ever lived. This is glory +enough, and it leaves the other questions open. Other men may have led, on +the whole, greater and more impressive lives than he; other men, acting on +their fellows through the same medium of speech that he used, may have +expended a greater power of thought, and achieved a greater intellectual +effect, in one consistent direction; other men, too (though this is very +questionable), may have contrived to issue the matter which they did +address to the world in more compact and perfect artistic shapes. But no +man that ever lived said such splendid things on all subjects universally; +no man that ever lived had the faculty of pouring out on all occasions +such a flood of the richest and deepest language. He may have had rivals +in the art of imagining situations; he had no rival in the power of +sending a gush of the appropriate intellectual effusion over the image and +body of a situation once conceived. From a jewelled ring on an alderman’s +finger to the most mountainous thought or deed of man or demon, nothing +suggested itself that his speech could not envelope and enfold with ease. +That excessive fluency which astonished Ben Jonson when he listened to +Shakespeare in person astonishes the world yet. Abundance, ease, +redundance, a plenitude of word, sound, and imagery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> which, were the +intellect at work only a little less magnificent, would sometimes end in +sheer braggartism and bombast, are the characteristics of Shakespeare’s +style. Nothing is suppressed, nothing omitted, nothing cancelled. On and +on the poet flows; words, thoughts, and fancies crowding on him as fast as +he can write, all related to the matter on hand, and all poured forth +together, to rise and fall on the waves of an established cadence. Such +lightness and ease in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in +the matter, are combined in no other writer. How the matter was first +accumulated, what proportion of it was the acquired capital of former +efforts, and what proportion of it welled up in the poet’s mind during and +in virtue of the very act of speech, it is impossible to say; but this at +least may be affirmed without fear of contradiction, that there never was +a mind in the world from which, when it was pricked by any occasion +whatever, there poured forth on the instant such a stream of precious +substance intellectually related to it. By his powers of expression, in +fact, Shakespeare has beggared all his posterity, and left mere +practitioners of expression nothing possible to do. There is perhaps not a +thought, or feeling, or situation, really common and generic to human +life, on which he has not exercised his prerogative; and, wherever he has +once been, woe to the man that comes after him! He has overgrown the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> +whole system and face of things like a universal ivy, which has left no +wall uncovered, no pinnacle unclimbed, no chink unpenetrated. Since he +lived the concrete world has worn a richer surface. He found it great and +beautiful, with stripes here and there of the rough old coat seen through +the leafy labours of his predecessors; he left it clothed throughout with +the wealth and autumnal luxuriance of his own unparalleled language.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>This brings us, by a very natural connexion, to what we have to say of +Goethe. For, if, with the foregoing impressions on our mind respecting the +character and the function of the great English poet, we turn to the mask +of his German successor and admirer, which has been so long waiting our +notice, the first question must infallibly be What recognition is it +possible that, in such circumstances, we can have left for <i>him</i>? In other +words, the first consideration that must be taken into account in any +attempt to appreciate Goethe is that he came into a world in which +Shakespeare had been before him. For a man who, in the main, was to pursue +a course so similar to that which Shakespeare had pursued this was a +matter of incalculable importance. Either, on the one hand, the value of +all that the second man could do, if he adhered to a course very similar, +must suffer from the fact that he was following in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> footsteps of a +predecessor of such unapproachable excellence; or, on the other hand, the +consciousness of this, if it came in time, would be likely to <i>prevent</i> +too close a resemblance between the lives of the two men, by giving a +special direction and character to the efforts of the second. Hear Goethe +himself on this very point:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“We discoursed upon English literature, on the greatness of +Shakespeare, and on the unfavourable position held by all English +dramatic authors who had appeared after that poetical giant. ‘A +dramatic talent of any importance,’ said Goethe, ‘could not forbear +to notice Shakespeare’s works; nay, could not forbear to study them. +Having studied them, he must be aware that Shakespeare has already +exhausted the whole of human nature in all its tendencies, in all its +heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the +aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage to put +pen to paper, if one were conscious, in an earnest appreciating +spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellencies were +already in existence? It fared better with me fifty years ago in my +own dear Germany. I could soon come to an end with all that then +existed; it could not long awe me, or occupy my attention. I soon +left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my +thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went, in my own +natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of +epoch after epoch. And, at every step of life and development, my +standard of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>excellence was not much higher than what at such a step +I was able to attain. But, had I been born an Englishman, and had all +those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power +at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have +overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. I could not +have gone on with such fresh light-heartedness, but should have had +to bethink myself, and look about for a long time to find some new +outlet.’”—<i>Eckermann’s Conversations of Goethe</i>, i. pp. 114, 115.</p></div> + +<p>All this is very clear and happily expressed. Most Englishmen that have +written since Shakespeare <i>have</i> been overawed by the sense of his vast +superiority; and Goethe, if he had been an Englishman, would have partaken +of the same feeling, and would have been obliged, as he says, to look +about for some path in which competition with such a predecessor would +have been avoided. Being, however, a German, and coming at a time when +German literature had nothing so great to boast of but that an ardent +young man could hope to produce something as good or better, the way was +certainly open to him to the attainment, in his own nation, of a position +analogous to that which Shakespeare had occupied in his. Goethe might, if +he had chosen, have aspired to be the Shakespeare of Germany. Had his +tastes and faculties pointed in that direction, there was no reason, +special to his own nation, that would have made it very incumbent on him +to thwart the tendency<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> of his genius and seek about for a new outlet in +order to escape injurious comparisons. But, even in such circumstances, to +have pursued a course <i>very</i> similar to that of Shakespeare, and to have +been animated by a mere ambition to tread in the footsteps of that master, +would have been death to all chance of a reputation among the highest. +Great writers do not exclusively belong to the country of their birth; the +greatest of all are grouped together on a kind of central platform, in the +view of all peoples and tongues; and, as in this select assemblage no +duplicates are permitted, the man who does never so well a second time +that which the world has already canonized a man for doing once has little +chance of being admitted to co-equal honours. More especially in the +present case would too close a resemblance to the original, whether in +manner or in purpose, have been regarded in the end as a reason for +inferiority in place. As the poet of one branch of the great Germanic +family of mankind, Shakespeare belonged indirectly to the Germans, even +before they recognised him; in him all the genuine qualities of Teutonic +human nature, as well as the more special characteristics of English +genius, were embodied once for all in the particular form which had +chanced to be his; and, had Goethe been, in any marked sense, only a +repetition of the same form, he might have held his place for some time as +the wonder of Germany, but,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> as soon as the course of events had opened up +the communication which was sure to take place at some time between the +German and the English literatures, and so made his countrymen acquainted +with Shakespeare, he would have lost his extreme brilliance, and become +but a star of the second magnitude. In order, then, that Goethe might hold +permanently a first rank even among his own countrymen, it was necessary +that he should be a man of a genius quite distinct from that of +Shakespeare, a man who, having or not having certain Shakespearian +qualities, should at all events signalize such qualities as he had by a +marked character and function of his own. And, if this was necessary to +secure to Goethe a first rank in the literature of Germany, much more was +it necessary to ensure him a place as one of the intellectual potentates +of the whole modern world. If Goethe was to be admitted into this select +company at all, it could not be as a mere younger brother of Shakespeare, +but as a man whom Shakespeare himself, when he took him by the hand, would +look at with curiosity, as something new in species, produced in the earth +since his own time.</p> + +<p>Was this, then, the case? Was Goethe, with all his external resemblance in +some respects to Shakespeare, a man of such truly individual character, +and of so new and marked a function, as to deserve a place among the +highest, not in German literature alone, but in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> literature of the +world as a whole? We do not think that anyone competent to give an opinion +will reply in the negative.</p> + +<p>A glance at the external circumstances of Goethe’s life alone (and what a +contrast there is between the abundance of biographic material respecting +Goethe and the scantiness of our information respecting Shakespeare!) will +beget the impression that the man who led such a life must have had +opportunities for developing a very unusual character. The main facts in +the life of Goethe are:—that he was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in +1749, the only surviving son of parents who ranked among the wealthiest in +the town; that, having been educated with extreme care, and having +received whatever experience could be acquired by an impetuous +student-life, free from all ordinary forms of hardship, first at one +German town and then at another, he devoted himself, in accordance with +his tastes, to a career of literary activity; that, after unwinding +himself from several love-affairs, and travelling for the sake of farther +culture in Italy and other parts of Europe, he settled in early manhood at +Weimar, as the intimate friend and counsellor of the reigning duke of that +state; that there, during a long and honoured life, in the course of which +he married an inferior housekeeper kind of person, of whom we do not hear +much, he prosecuted his literary enterprise with unwearied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> industry, not +only producing poems, novels, dramas, essays, treatises, and criticisms in +great profusion from his own pen, but also acting, along with Schiller and +others, as a director and guide of the whole contemporary intellectual +movement of his native land; and that finally, having outlived all his +famous associates, become a widower and a grandfather, and attained the +position not only of the acknowledged king and patriarch of German +literature, but also, as some thought, of the wisest and most serene +intellect of Europe, he died so late as 1832, in the eighty-third year of +his age. All this, it will be observed, is very different from the life of +the prosperous Warwickshire player, whose existence had illustrated the +early part of the seventeenth century in England; and it necessarily +denoted, at the same time, a very different cast of mind and temper.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, such descriptions as we have of Goethe from those who knew +him best convey the idea of a character notably different from that of the +English poet. Of Shakespeare personally we have but one uniform +account—that he was a man of gentle presence and disposition, very good +company, and of such boundless fluency and intellectual inventiveness in +talk that his hearers could not always stand it, but had sometimes to +whistle him down in his flights. In Goethe’s case we have two distinct +pictures.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>In youth, as all accounts agree in stating, he was one of the most +impetuous, bounding, ennui-dispelling natures that ever broke in upon a +society of ordinary mortals assembled to kill time. “He came upon you,” +said one who knew him well at this period, “like a wolf in the night.” The +simile is a splendid one, and it agrees wonderfully with the more subdued +representations of his early years given by Goethe himself in his +Autobiography. Handsome as an Apollo and welcome everywhere, he bore all +before him wherever he went, not only by his talent, but also by an +exuberance of animal spirits which swept dulness itself along, took away +the breath of those who relied on sarcasm and their cool heads, inspired +life and animation into the whole circle, and most especially delighted +the ladies. This vivacity became even, at times, a reckless humour, +prolific in all kinds of mad freaks and extravagances. Whether this +impetuosity kept always within the bounds of mere innocent frolic is a +question which we need not here raise. Traditions are certainly afloat of +terrible domestic incidents connected with Goethe’s youth, both in +Frankfort and in Weimar; but to what extent those traditions are founded +on fact is a matter which we have never yet seen any attempt to decide +upon evidence. More authentic for us, and equally significant, if we could +be sure of our ability to appreciate them rightly, are the stories which +Goethe himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> tells of his various youthful attachments, and the various +ways in which they were concluded. In Goethe’s own narratives of these +affairs there is a confession of error, arising out of his disposition +passionately to abandon himself to the feelings of the moment without +looking forward to the consequences; but whether this confession is to be +converted by his critics into the harsher accusation of heartlessness and +want of principle is a thing not to be decided by any general rule as to +the matter of inconstancy, but by accurate knowledge in each case of the +whole circumstances of that case. One thing these love-romances of +Goethe’s early life make clear—that, for a being of such extreme +sensibility as he was, he had a very strong element of self-control. When +he gave up Rica or Lilli, it was with tears, and no end of sleepless +nights; and yet he gave them up. Shakespeare, we believe (and there is an +instance exactly in point in the story of his Sonnets), had no such power +of breaking clear from connexions which his judgment disapproved. Remorse +and return, self-reproaches for his weakness at one moment followed the +next by weakness more abject than before—such, by his own confession, was +the conduct, in one such case, of our more passive and gentle-hearted +poet. Where Shakespeare was “past cure,” and “frantic-mad with evermore +unrest,” Goethe but fell into “hypochondria,” which reason<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> and resolution +enabled him to overcome. Goethe at twenty-five gave up a young, beautiful +and innocent girl, from the conviction that it was better to do so. +Shakespeare at thirty-five was the abject slave of a dark-complexioned +woman, who was faithless to him, and whom he cursed in his heart. The +sensibilities in the German poet moved from the first, as we have already +said, over a firmer basis of permanent character.</p> + +<p>It is chiefly, however, the Goethe of later life that the world remembers +and thinks of. The bounding impetuosity is then gone; or rather it is kept +back and restrained, so as to form a calm and steady fund of internal +energy, capable sometimes of a flash and outbreak, but generally revealing +itself only in labour and its fruits. What was formerly the beauty of an +Apollo, graceful, light, and full of motion, is now the beauty of a +Jupiter, composed, stately, serene. “What a sublime form!” says Eckermann, +describing his first interview with him. “I forgot to speak for looking at +him: I could not look enough. His face is so powerful and brown, full of +wrinkles, and each wrinkle full of expression. And everywhere there is +such nobleness and firmness, such repose and greatness. He spoke in a +slow, composed manner, such as you would expect from an aged monarch.” +Such is Goethe, as he lasts now in the imagination of the world. Living +among statues, books, and pictures; daily doing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>something for his own +culture and for that of the world; daily receiving guests and visitors, +whom he entertained and instructed with his wise and deep, yet charming +and simple, converse; daily corresponding with friends and strangers, and +giving advice or doing a good turn to some young talent or other—never +was such a mind consecrated so perseveringly and exclusively to the +service of <i>Kunst</i> and <i>Literatur</i>. One almost begins to wonder if it was +altogether right that an old man should go on, morning after morning, and +evening after evening, in such a fashion, talking about art and science +and literature as if they were the only interests in the world, taking his +guests into corners to have quiet discussions with them on these subjects, +and always finding something new and nice to be said about them. Possibly, +indeed, this is the fault of those who have reported him, and who only +took notes when the discourse turned on what they considered the proper +Goethean themes. But that Goethe far outdid Shakespeare in this conscious +dedication of himself to a life of the intellect is as certain as the +testimony of likelihood can make it. Shakespeare did enjoy his art; it was +what, in his pensive hours, as he himself hints, he enjoyed most; and +whatever of intellectual ecstasy literary production can bring must surely +have been his in those hours when he composed <i>Hamlet</i> and the <i>Tempest</i>. +But Shakespeare’s was precisely one of those minds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> whose strength is a +revelation to themselves during the moment of its exercise, rather than a +chronic ascertained possession; and from this circumstance, as well as +from the attested fact of his carelessness as to the fate of his +compositions, we can very well conceive that literature and mental culture +formed but a small part of the general system of things in Shakespeare’s +daily thoughts, and that he would have been absolutely ashamed of himself +if, when anything else, from the state of the weather to the quality of +the wine, was within the circle of possible allusion, he had said a word +about his own plays. If he had not Sir Walter Scott’s positive conviction +that every man ought to be either a laird or a lawyer, casting in +authorship as a mere addition if it were to be practised at all, he at +least led so full and keen a life, and was drawn forth on so many sides by +nature, society, and the unseen, that Literature, out of the actual +moments in which he was engaged in it, must have seemed to him a mere +bagatelle, a mere fantastic echo of not a tithe of life. In his home in +London, or his retirement at Stratford, he wrote on and on, because he +could not help doing so, and because it was his business and his solace; +but no play seemed to him worth a day of the contemporary actions of men, +no description worth a single glance at the Thames or at the deer feeding +in the forest, no sonnet worth the tear it was made to embalm. Literature +was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> by no means to him, as it was to Goethe, the main interest of life; +nor was he a man so far master of himself as ever to be able to behave as +if it were so, and to accept, as Goethe did, all that occurred as so much +culture. Yet Shakespeare would have understood Goethe, and would have +regarded him, almost with envy, as one of those men who, as being “lords +and owners of their faces,” and not mere “stewards,” know how to husband +Nature’s gifts best.</p> + +<p class="poem">“They that have power to hurt and will do none,<br /> +That do not do the thing they most do show,<br /> +Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,<br /> +Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,<br /> +They rightly do inherit Heaven’s graces,<br /> +And husband nature’s riches from expense;<br /> +They are the lords and owners of their faces,<br /> +Others but stewards of their excellence.”—<i>Sonnet 94.</i></p> + +<p>If Goethe attained this character, however, it was not because, as it is +the fashion to say, he was by nature cold, heartless, and impassive, but +because, uniting will and wisdom to his wealth of sensibilities, he had +disciplined himself into what he was. A heartless man does not diffuse +geniality and kindliness around him, as Goethe did; and a statue is not +seized, as Goethe once was, with hæmorrhage in the night, the result of +suppressed grief.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>That which made Goethe what he was—namely, his philosophy of life—is to +be gathered, in the form of hints, from his various writings and +conversations. We present a few important passages here, in what seems +their philosophic connexion, as well as the order most suitable for +bringing out Goethe’s mode of thought in contrast with that of +Shakespeare.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Goethe’s Thoughts of Death.</i>—“We had gone round the thicket, and +had turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar-road, where we had a view of +the setting sun. Goethe was for a while lost in thought; he then said +to me, in the words of one of the ancients,</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Untergehend sogar ist’s immer dieselbige Sonne.’<br /> +(Still it continues the self-same sun, even while it is sinking.)</p> + +<p>‘At the age of seventy-five,’ continued he, with much cheerfulness, +‘one must, of course, think sometimes of death. But this thought +never gives me the least uneasiness, for I am fully convinced that +our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its +activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, +which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, +never sets, but shines on unceasingly.’”—<i>Eckermann’s Conversations +of Goethe</i>, vol. i. p. 161.</p> + +<p><i>Goethe’s Maxim with respect to Metaphysics.</i>—“Man is born not to +solve the problem of the universe, but to find out where the problem +begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the +comprehensible.”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. i. p. 272.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span><i>Goethe’s Theory of the intention of the Supernatural with regard to +the Visible.</i>—“After all, what does it all come to? God did not +retire to rest after the well-known six days of creation, but, on the +contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been +for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple +elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, +if He had not the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits +upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher +natures to attract the lower ones.”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. ii. p. 426.</p> + +<p><i>Goethe’s Doctrine of Immortality.</i>—“Kant has unquestionably done +the best service, by drawing the limits beyond which human intellect +is not able to penetrate, and leaving at rest the insoluble problems. +What a deal have people philosophised about immortality! and how far +have they got? I doubt not of our immortality, for nature cannot +dispense with the <i>entelecheia</i>. But we are not all, in like manner, +immortal; and he who would manifest himself in future as a great +<i>entelecheia</i> must be one now.... To me the eternal existence of my +soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work on incessantly +till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence +when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit.”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. +ii. pp. 193, 194, and p. 122.</p> + +<p><i>Goethe’s Image of Life.</i>—“Child, child, no more! The coursers of +Time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light +car of our destiny; and all that we can do is, in cool +self-possession, to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the +wheels, now to the left, now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> to the right, avoiding a stone here, or +a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying, who can tell? and who, +indeed, can remember the point from which it started?”—<i>Egmont.</i></p> + +<p><i>Man’s proper business.</i>—“It has at all times been said and repeated +that man should strive to know himself. This is a singular +requisition; with which no one complies, or indeed ever will comply. +Man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals—to the +world around him; and he has to know this so far, and to make it so +far serviceable, as he requires for his own ends. It is only when he +feels joy or sorrow that he knows anything about himself, and only by +joy or sorrow is he instructed what to seek and what to +shun.”—<i>Eckermann’s Conversations of Goethe</i>, vol. ii. p. 180.</p> + +<p><i>The Abstract and the Concrete, and the Subjective and the +Objective.</i>—“The Germans are certainly strange people. By their deep +thoughts and ideas, which they seek in everything, and fix upon +everything, they make life much more burdensome than is necessary. +Only have the courage to give yourself up to your impressions; allow +yourself to be delighted, moved, elevated—nay, instructed and +inspired by something great; but do not imagine all is vanity if it +is not abstract thought and idea.... It was not in my line, as a +poet, to strive to embody anything abstract. I received in my mind +impressions, and those of a sensual, animated, charming, varied, +hundred-fold kind, just as a lively imagination presented them; and I +had, as a poet, nothing more to do than artistically to round off and +elaborate such views and impressions, and by means of a lively +representation so to bring them forward that others might receive the +same impressions in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> hearing or reading my representation of them.... +A poet deserves not the name while he only speaks out his few +subjective feelings; but as soon as he can appropriate to himself and +express the world he is a poet. Then he is inexhaustible, and can be +always new; while a subjective nature has soon talked out his little +internal material, and is at last ruined by mannerism. People always +talk of the study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except +that it says ‘Turn your attention to the real world, and try to +express it, for that is what the ancients did when they were alive?’ +Goethe arose and walked to and fro, while I remained seated at the +table, as he likes to see me. He stood a moment at the stove, and +then, like one who has reflected, came to me, and, with his finger on +his lips, said to me, ‘I will now tell you something which you will +often find confirmed in your own experience. All eras in a state of +decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all +progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is +retrograde, for it is subjective; we see this not merely in poetry, +but also in painting and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the +contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you +will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of +progression, and all of an objective nature.’”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. i. pp. +415, 416, and pp. 283, 284.</p> + +<p><i>Rule of Individual Activity.</i>—“The most reasonable way is for every +man to follow his own vocation to which he has been born and which he +has learnt, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let +the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let +the king know how to govern; for this is also a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> business which must +be learned, and with which no one should meddle who does not +understand it.”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. i. p. 134.</p> + +<p><i>Right and Wrong: The habit of Controversy.</i>—“The end of all +opposition is negation, and negation is nothing. If I call <i>bad</i> bad, +what do I gain? But, if I call <i>good</i> bad, I do a great deal of +mischief. He who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble +himself at all about what is ill done, but only do well himself. For +the great point is not to pull down, but to build up; and in this +humanity finds pure joy.”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. i. p. 208.</p> + +<p><i>Goethe’s own Relation to the Disputes of his Time.</i>—“‘You have been +reproached,’ remarked I, rather inconsiderately, ‘for not taking up +arms at that great period [the war with Napoleon], or at least +co-operating as a poet.’ ‘Let us leave that point alone, my good +friend,’ returned Goethe. ‘It is an absurd world, which knows not +what it wants, and which one must allow to have its own way. How +could I take up arms without hatred, and how could I hate without +youth? If such an emergency had befallen me when twenty years old, I +should certainly not have been the last; but it found me as one who +had already passed the first sixties. Besides, we cannot all serve +our country in the same way; but each does his best, according as God +has endowed him. I have toiled hard enough during half a century. I +can say that, in those things which nature has appointed for my daily +work, I have permitted myself no relaxation night or day, but have +always striven, investigated, and done as much, and that as well, as +I could. If everyone can say the same of himself, it will prove well +with all. I will not say what I think. There is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> more ill-will +towards me hidden beneath that remark than you are aware of. I feel +therein a new form of the old hatred with which people have +persecuted me, and endeavoured quietly to wound me, for years. I know +very well that I am an eyesore to many; that they would all willingly +get rid of me; and that, since they cannot touch my talent, they aim +at my character. Now, it is said that I am proud; now, egotistical; +now, immersed in sensuality; now, without Christianity; and now, +without love for my native country and my own dear Germans. You have +now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk +is worth.... The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native +land; but the native land of his <i>poetic</i> powers and <i>poetic</i> action +is the good, noble, and beautiful: which is confined to no particular +province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he +finds them. Therein he is like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze +over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the +hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in +Saxony.’”—<i>Ibid.</i> vol. ii. pp. 257, 258, and p. 427.</p></div> + +<p>Whoever has read these sentences attentively, and penetrated their meaning +in connexion, will see that they reveal a mode of thought somewhat +resembling that which we have attributed to Shakespeare, and yet +essentially different from it. Both poets are distinguished by this, that +they abstained systematically during their lives from the abstract, the +dialectical, and the controversial, and devoted themselves, with true +feeling and enjoyment, to the concrete, the real, and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>unquestioned; +and so far there is an obvious resemblance between them. But the manner in +which this characteristic was attained was by no means the same in both +cases. In Shakespeare, as we have seen, there was a metaphysical longing, +a tendency towards the supersensible and invisible, absolutely morbid, if +we take ordinary constitutions as the standard of health in this respect; +and, if, with all this, he revelled with delight and moved with ease and +firmness in the sensuous and actual, it was because the very same soul +which pressed with such energy and wailing against the bounds of this life +of man was also related with inordinate keenness and intimacy to all that +this life spheres in. In Goethe, on the other hand, the tendency to the +real existed under easier constitutional conditions, and in a state of +such natural preponderance over any concomitant craving for the +metaphysical, that it necessarily took, German though he was, a higher +place in his estimate of what is desirable in a human character. That +world of the real in which Shakespeare delighted, and which he knew so +well, seemed to him, all this knowledge and delight notwithstanding, far +more evanescent, far more a mere filmy show, far less considerable a shred +of all that is, than it did to Goethe. To Shakespeare, as we have already +said, life was but as a little island on the bosom of a boundless sea: men +must needs know what the island contains, and act as those who have to +till and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> rule it; still, with that expanse of waters all round in view, +and that roar of waters ever in the ear, what can men call themselves or +pretend their realm to be? “Poor fools of Nature” is the poet’s own +phrase—the realm so small that it is pitiful to belong to it! Not so with +Goethe. To him also, of course, the thought was familiar of a vast region +of the supersensible outlying nature and life; but a higher value on the +whole was reserved for nature and life, even on the universal scale, by +his peculiar habit of conceiving them, not as distinct from the +supersensible and contemporaneously begirt by it, but rather, if we may so +speak, as a considerable portion, or even duration, of the +<i>quondam</i>-supersensible in the new form of the sensible. In other words, +Goethe was full of the notion of progress or evolution; the world was to +him not a mere spectacle and dominion for the supernatural, but an actual +manifestation of the substance of the supernatural itself, on its way +through time to new issues. Hence his peculiar notion of immortality; +hence his view as to the mere relativeness of the terms right and wrong, +good and bad, and the like; and hence also his resolute inculcation of the +doctrine, so unpalatable to his countrymen, that men ought to direct their +thoughts and efforts to the actual and the outward. Life being the current +phase of the universal mystery, the true duty of men could be but to +contribute in their various ways to the furtherance of life.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>And what then, finally, was Goethe’s <i>own</i> mode of activity in a life thus +defined in his general philosophy? Like Shakespeare, he was a literary +man; his function was literature. Yes, but in what respect, otherwise than +Shakespeare had done before him, did he fulfil this literary function in +reference to the world he lived in and enjoyed? In the first place, as all +know, he differed from Shakespeare in this, that he did not address the +world exclusively in the character of a poet. Besides his poetry, properly +so called, Goethe has left behind him numerous prose-writings, ranking +under very different heads, abounding with such deep and wise maxims and +perceptions, in reference to all things under the sun, as would have +entitled him, even had he been no poet, to rank as a sage. So great, +indeed, is Goethe as a thinker and a critic that it may very well be +disputed whether his prose-writings, as a whole, are not more precious +than his poems. But even if we set apart this difference, and regard the +two men in their special character as poets or artists, a marked +difference is still discernible. Hear Goethe’s own definition of his +poetical career and aim.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Thus began that tendency from which I could not deviate my whole +life through: namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a +poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied +me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> it, +that I might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set +my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing this was necessary +to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me +constantly from one extreme to the other. All, therefore, that has +been put forth by me consists of fragments of a great +confession.”—<i>Autobiography</i>, vol. i. p. 240.</p></div> + +<p>Shakespeare’s genius we defined to be the genius of universal expression, +of clothing objects, circumstances, and feelings with magnificent +language, of pouring over the image of any given situation, whether +suggested from within or from without, an effusion of the richest +intellectual matter that could possibly be related to it. Goethe’s genius, +as here defined by himself, was something different and narrower. It was +the genius of translation from the subjective into the objective, of +clothing real feelings with fictitious circumstance, of giving happy +intellectual form to states of mind, so as to dismiss and throw them off. +Let this distinction be sufficiently conceived and developed, and a full +idea will be obtained of the exact difference between the literary +many-sidedness attributed to Shakespeare and that also attributed to +Goethe.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">MILTON’S YOUTH.</span></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">MILTON’S YOUTH.</span><small><a name="f5.1" id="f5.1" href="#f5">[5]</a></small></p> + +<p>Never surely did a youth leave the academic halls of England more full of +fair promise than Milton, when, at the age of twenty-three, he quitted +Cambridge to reside at his father’s house, amid the quiet beauties of a +rural neighbourhood some twenty miles distant from London. Fair in person, +with a clear fresh complexion, light brown hair which parted in the middle +and fell in locks to his shoulders, clear grey eyes, and a well-knit frame +of moderate proportions—there could not have been found a finer picture +of pure and ingenuous English youth. And that health and beauty which +distinguished his outward appearance, and the effect of which was +increased by a voice surpassingly sweet and musical, indicated with +perfect truth the qualities of the mind within. Seriousness, studiousness, +fondness for flowers and music, fondness also for manly exercises in the +open air, courage and resolution of character, combined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> with the most +maiden purity and innocence of life—these were the traits conspicuous in +Milton in his early years. Of his accomplishments it is hardly necessary +to take particular note. Whatever of learning, of science, or of +discipline in logic or philosophy, the University at that time could give, +he had duly and in the largest measure acquired. No better Greek or Latin +scholar probably had the University in that age sent forth; he was +proficient in the Hebrew tongue, and in all the other customary aids to a +Biblical Theology; and he could speak and write well in French and +Italian. His acquaintance, obtained by independent reading, with the +history and with the whole body of the literature of ancient and modern +nations, was extensive and various. And, as nature had endowed him in no +ordinary degree with that most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the +passion for harmony, he had studied music as an art, and had taught +himself not only to sing in the society of others, but also to touch the +keys for his solitary pleasure.</p> + +<p>The instruments which Milton preferred as a musician were, his biographers +tell us, the organ and the bass-viol. This fact seems to us to be not +without its significance. Were we to define in one word our impression of +the prevailing tone, the characteristic mood and disposition of Milton’s +mind, even in his early youth, we should say that it consisted in a deep +and habitual <i>seriousness</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> We use the word in none of those special and +restricted senses that are sometimes given to it. We do not mean that +Milton, at the period of his early youth with which we are now concerned, +was, or accounted himself as being, a confessed member of that noble party +of English Puritans with which he afterwards became allied, and to which +he rendered such vast services. True, he himself tells us, in his account +of his education, that “care had ever been had of him, with his earliest +capacity, not to be negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian +religion;” and in the fact that his first tutor, selected for him by his +father, was one Thomas Young, a Scotchman of subsequent distinction among +the English Puritans, there is enough to prove that the formation of his +character in youth was aided expressly by Puritanical influences. But +Milton, if ever in a denominational sense he could be called a Puritan (he +wore his hair long, and in other respects did not conform to the usages of +the Puritan party), could hardly, with any propriety, be designated as a +Puritan in this sense, at the time when he left College. There is evidence +that at this time he had not given so much attention, on his own personal +account, to matters of religious doctrine as he afterwards bestowed. That +seriousness of which we speak was, therefore, rather a constitutional +seriousness, ratified and nourished by rational reflection, than the +assumed temper of a sect. “A certain reservedness of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> natural disposition, +and a moral discipline learnt out of the noblest philosophy”—such, in +Milton’s own words, were the causes which, apart from his Christian +training, would have always kept him, as he believed, above the vices that +debase youth. And herein the example of Milton contradicts much that is +commonly advanced by way of a theory of the poetical character.</p> + +<p>Poets and artists generally, it is held, are and ought to be distinguished +by a predominance of sensibility over principle, an excess of what +Coleridge called the spiritual over what he called the moral part of man. +A nature built on quicksands, an organization of nerve languid or +tempestuous with occasion, a soul falling and soaring, now subject to +ecstasies and now to remorses—such, it is supposed, and on no small +induction of actual instances, is the appropriate constitution of the +poet. Mobility, absolute and entire destitution of principle properly so +called, capacity for varying the mood indefinitely rather than for +retaining and keeping up one moral gesture or resolution through all +moods: this, say the theorists, is the essential thing in the structure of +the artist. Against the truth of this, however, as a maxim of universal +application, the character of Milton, as well as that of Wordsworth after +him, is a remarkable protest. Were it possible to place before the +theorists all the materials which exist for judging of Milton’s personal +disposition as a young man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> without exhibiting to them at the same time +the actual and early proofs of his poetical genius, their conclusion, were +they true to their theory, would necessarily be that the basis of his +nature was too solid and immovable, the platform of personal aims and +aspirations over which his thoughts moved and had footing too fixed and +firm, to permit that he should have been a poet. Nay, whosoever, even +appreciating Milton as a poet, shall come to the investigation of his +writings armed with that preconception of the poetical character which is +sure to be derived from an intimacy with the character of Shakespeare will +hardly escape some feeling of the same kind. Seriousness, we repeat, a +solemn and even austere demeanour of mind, was the characteristic of +Milton even in his youth. And the outward manifestation of this was a life +of pure and devout observance. This is a point that ought not to be +avoided, or dismissed in mere general language; for he who does not lay +stress on this knows not and loves not Milton. Accept, then, by way of +more particular statement, his own remarkable words in justifying himself +against an innuendo of one of his adversaries in later life, reflecting on +the tenor of his juvenile pursuits and behaviour. “A certain niceness of +nature,” he says, “an honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I +was, or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that +modesty whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> be excused +to make some beseeming profession, all these, uniting the supply of their +natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind +beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable +and unlawful prostitutions.” Fancy, ye to whom the moral frailty of genius +is a consolation, or to whom the association of virtue with youth and +Cambridge is a jest—fancy Milton, as this passage from his own pen +describes him at the age of twenty-three, returning to his father’s house +from the university, full of its accomplishments and its honours, an +auburn-haired youth, beautiful as the Apollo of a northern clime, and that +beautiful body the temple of a soul pure and unsoiled. Truly, a son for a +mother to take to her arms with joy and pride!</p> + +<p>Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in Milton even in +his youth, may be noted also, as indeed it is noted in the passage just +cited, a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his own +powers. Throughout all Milton’s works there may be discerned a vein of +this noble egotism, this unbashful self-assertion. Frequently, in arguing +with an opponent, or in setting forth his own views on any subject of +discussion, he passes, by a very slight topical connexion, into an account +of himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the matter in +question; and this sometimes so elaborately and at such length, that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +impression is as if he said to his readers, “Besides all my other +arguments, take this also as the chief and conclusive argument, that it is +<i>I</i>, a man of such and such antecedents, and with such and such powers to +perform far higher work than you see me now engaged in, who affirm and +maintain this.” In his later years Milton evidently believed himself to +be, if not the greatest man in England, at least the greatest writer, and +one whose <i>egomet dixi</i> was entitled to as much force in the intellectual +commonwealth as the decree of a civil magistrate is invested with in the +order of civil life. All that he said or wrote was backed in his own +consciousness by a sense of the independent importance of the fact that it +was he, Milton, who said or wrote it; and often, after arguing a point for +some time on a footing of ostensible equality with his readers, he seems +suddenly to stop, retire to the vantage-ground of his own thoughts, and +bid his readers follow him thither, if they would see the whole of that +authority which his words had failed to express.</p> + +<p>Such, we say, is Milton’s habit in his later writings. In his early life, +of course, the feeling which it shows existed rather as an undefined +consciousness of superior power, a tendency silently and with satisfaction +to compare his own intellectual measure with that of others, a resolute +ambition to be and to do something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> great. Now we cannot help thinking +that it will be found that this particular form of self-esteem goes along +with that moral austerity of character which we have alleged to be +discernible in Milton even in his youth, rather than with that temperament +of varying sensibility which is, according to the general theory, regarded +as characteristic of the poet. Men of this latter type, as they vary in +the entire mood of their mind, vary also in their estimate of themselves. +No permanent consciousness of their own destiny, or of their own worth in +comparison with others, belongs to them. In their moods of elevation they +are powers to move the world; but, while the impulse that has gone forth +from them in one of those moods may be still thrilling its way onward in +wider and wider circles through the hearts of myriads they have never +seen, they, the fountains of the impulse, the spirit being gone from them, +may be sitting alone in the very spot and amid the ashes of their triumph, +sunken and dead, despondent and self-accusing. It requires the evidence of +positive results, the assurance of other men’s praises, the visible +presentation of effects which they cannot but trace to themselves, to +convince such men that they are or can do anything. Whatever +manifestations of egotism, whatever strokes of self-assertion come from +such men, come in the very burst and phrenzy of their passing +resistlessness. The calm, deliberate, and unshaken knowledge of their own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> +superiority is not theirs. True, Shakespeare, the very type, if rightly +understood, of this class of minds, is supposed in his Sonnets to have +predicted, in the strongest and most deliberate terms, his own immortality +as a poet. It could be proved, however, were this the place for such an +investigation, that the common interpretation of those passages of the +Sonnets which are supposed to supply this trait in the character of +Shakespeare is nothing more nor less than a false reading of a very subtle +meaning which the critics have missed. Those other passages of the Sonnets +which breathe an abject melancholy and discontentment with self, which +exhibit the poet as “cursing his fate,” as “bewailing his outcast state,” +as looking about abasedly among his literary contemporaries, envying the +“art” of one, and the “scope” of another, and even wishing sometimes that +the very features of his face had been different from what they were and +like those of some he knew, are, in our opinion, of far greater +autobiographic value.</p> + +<p>Nothing of this kind is to be found in Milton. As a Christian, indeed, +humiliation before God was a duty the meaning of which he knew full well; +but, as a man moving among other men, he possessed, in that moral +seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which characterized him, a +spring of ever-present pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his +fellows, and at times<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> arousing him to a kingly intolerance. In short, +instead of that dissatisfaction with self which we trace as a not +unfrequent feeling with Shakespeare, we find in Milton, even in his early +youth, a recollection firm and habitual that he was one of those servants +to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of ten talents. In that very +sonnet, for example, written on his twenty-third birthday, in which he +laments that he had as yet achieved so little, his consolation is that the +power of achievement was still indubitably within him—</p> + +<p class="poem">“All is, if I have grace to use it so,<br /> +As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.”</p> + +<p>And what was that special mode of activity to which Milton, still in the +bloom and seed-time of his years, had chosen to dedicate the powers of +which he was so conscious? He had been destined by his parents for the +Church; but this opening into life he had definitively and deliberately +abandoned. With equal decision he renounced the profession of the Law; and +it does not seem to have been long after the conclusion of his career at +the university when he renounced the prospects of professional life +altogether. His reasons for this, which are to be gathered from various +passages of his writings, seem to have resolved themselves into a jealous +concern for his own absolute intellectual freedom. He had determined, as +he says, “to lay up, as the best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> treasure and solace of a good old age, +the honest liberty of free speech from his youth;” and neither the Church +nor the Bar of England, at the time when he formed that resolution, was a +place where he could hope to keep it. For a man so situated, the +alternative, then as now, was the practice or profession of literature. To +this, therefore, as soon as he was able to come to a decision on the +subject, Milton had implicitly, if not avowedly, dedicated himself. To +become a great writer, and, above all, a great poet; to teach the English +language a new strain and modulation; to elaborate and surrender over to +the English nation works that would make it more potent and wise in the +age that was passing, and more memorable and lordly in the ages to come: +such was the form which Milton’s ambition had assumed when, laying aside +his student’s garb, he went to reside under his father’s roof.</p> + +<p>Nor was this merely a choice of necessity, the reluctant determination of +a young soul “Church-outed by the prelates” and disgusted with the chances +of the Law. Milton, in the Church, would certainly have been such an +archbishop, mitred or unmitred, as England has never seen; and the very +passage of such a man across the sacred floor would have trampled into +timely extinction much that has since sprung up amongst us to trouble and +perplex, and would have modelled the ecclesiasticism of England into a +shape that the world might have gazed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> at with no truant glance backward +to the splendours of the Seven Hills. And, doubtless, even amid the +traditions of the Law, such a man would have performed the feats of a +Samson, albeit of a Samson in chains. An inward prompting, therefore, a +love secretly plighted to the Muse, and a sweet comfort and delight in her +sole society, which no other allurement, whether of profit or pastime, +could equal or diminish,—this, less formally perhaps, but as really as +care for his intellectual liberty, or distaste for the established +professions of his time, determined Milton’s early resolution as to his +future way of life. On this point it will be best to quote his own words. +“After I had,” he says, “from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence +and care of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the +tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and +teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether ought +was imposed upon me by them that had the overlooking or betaken to of mine +own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly +this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to +live.” The meaning of which sentence is that Milton, before his +three-and-twentieth year, knew himself to be a poet.</p> + +<p>He knew this, he says, by “certain vital signs” discernible in what he had +already written. What were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> those “vital signs,” those proofs indubitable +to Milton that he had the art and faculty of a poet? We need but refer the +reader for the answer to those smaller poetical compositions of Milton, +both in English and in Latin, which survive as specimens of his earliest +Muse. Of these, some three or four which happen to be specially +dated—such as the <i>Elegy on the Death of a Fair Infant</i>, written in 1626, +or the author’s eighteenth year; the well-known <i>Hymn on the Morning of +Christ’s Nativity</i>, written in 1629, when the author was just twenty-one; +and the often-quoted <i>Lines on Shakespeare</i>, written not much later—may +be cited as convenient materials from which anyone who would convince +himself minutely of Milton’s youthful vocation to poetry, rather than to +anything else, may derive proofs on that head. Here will be found power of +the most rare and beautiful conception, choice of words the most exact and +exquisite, the most perfect music and charm of verse. Above all, here will +be found that ineffable something—call it imagination or what we +will—wherein lies the intimate and ineradicable peculiarity of the poet: +the art to work on and on for ever in a purely ideal element, to chase and +marshal airy nothings according to a law totally unlike that of rational +association, never hastening to a logical end like the schoolboy when on +errand, but still lingering within the wood like the schoolboy during +holiday. This peculiar mental habit, nowhere better<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> described than by +Milton himself when he speaks of verse</p> + +<p class="poem">“Such as the meeting soul may pierce,<br /> +In notes with many a winding bout<br /> +Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out<br /> +With wanton heed and giddy cunning,”</p> + +<p>is so characteristic of the poetical disposition that, though in most of +the greatest poets, as, for example, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare in his +dramas, Chaucer, and almost all the ancient Greek poets, it is not +observable in any extraordinary degree, chiefly because in them the +element of direct reference to human life and its interests had fitting +preponderance, yet it may be affirmed that he who, tolerating or admiring +these poets, does not relish also such poetry as that of Spenser, Keats, +and Shakespeare in his minor pieces, but complains of it as wearisome and +sensuous, is wanting in a portion of the genuine poetic taste.</p> + +<p>There was but one “vital sign” the absence of which in Milton could, +according to any theory of the poetical character, have begotten doubts in +his own mind, or in the minds of his friends, whether poetry was his +peculiar and appropriate function. The single source of possible doubt on +this head could have been no other than that native austerity of feeling +and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> temper, that real though not formal Puritanism of heart and +intellect, which we have noticed as distinguishing Milton from his youth +upward. The poet, it is said in these days, when, by psychologizing a man, +it is supposed we can tell what course of life he is fit for—the poet +ought to be universally sympathetic; he ought to hate nothing, despise +nothing. And a notion equivalent to this, though by no means so +articulately expressed, was undoubtedly prevalent in Milton’s own time. As +the Puritans, on the one hand, had set their faces against all those +practices of profane singing, dancing, masquing, theatre-going, and the +like, in which the preservation of the spirit of the arts was supposed to +be involved, so the last party in the world from which the reputed +devotees of the arts in those days would have expected a poet to arise was +that of the Puritans. Even in Shakespeare, and much more in Ben Jonson, +Beaumont and Fletcher, and other poets of the Elizabethan age, may be +traced evidences of an instinctive enmity to that Puritanical mode of +thinking which was then on the increase in English society, and in the +triumph of which those great minds foresaw the proscription of their craft +and their pleasures. When Sir Toby says to Malvolio, “Dost thou think, +because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” and when +the Clown adds, “Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth +too,” it is the Knight and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> Clown on the one side against Malvolio the +Puritan on the other. That the defence of the festive in this passage is +not borne by more respectable personages than the two who speak is indeed +a kind of indication that Shakespeare’s personal feelings with regard to +the austere movement which he saw gathering around him were by no means so +deep or bitter as to discompose him; but, if his profounder soul could +behold such things with serenity, and even pronounce them good, they +assuredly met with enough of virulence and invective among his lesser +contemporaries. That literary crusade against the Puritans, as canting, +sour-visaged, mirth-forbidding, art-abhorring religionists, which came to +its height at the time when Butler wrote his <i>Hudibras</i>, and Wycherley his +plays, was already hot when the wits of King James’s days used to assemble +after the theatre, in their favourite taverns; and if, sallying out after +one of their merry evenings in their most favourite tavern of all, the +Mermaid in Bread Street, those assembled poets and dramatists had gone in +search of the youth who was likeliest to be the poet of the age then +beginning, they certainly would not have gone to that modest residence in +the same street where the son of the Puritanic scrivener, then preparing +for College, was busy over his books. Nay, if Ben Jonson, the last +twenty-nine years of whose life coincided with the first twenty-nine of +Milton’s,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> had followed the young student from the house where he was born +in Bread Street to his rooms at Cambridge, and had there become acquainted +with him and looked over his early poetical exercises, it is probable +enough that, while praising them so far, he would have constituted himself +the organ of that very opinion as to the requisites of the poetical +character which we are now discussing, and declared, in some strong phrase +or other, that the youth would have been all the more hopeful as a poet if +he had had a little more of the <i>bon vivant</i> in his constitution.</p> + +<p>This, then, is a point of no little importance, involving as it does the +relations of Milton as a poet to the age in which he lived, that splendid +age of Puritan mastery in England which came between the age of +Shakespeare and Elizabeth and the age of Dryden and the second Charles. +Milton was <i>the</i> poet of that intermediate era; that his character was +such as we have described it made him only the more truly a representative +of all that was then deepest in English society; and, in inquiring, +therefore, in what manner Milton’s austerity as a man affected his art as +a poet, we are, at the same time, investigating the <i>rationale</i> of that +remarkable fact in the history of English literature, the interpolation of +so original and isolated a development as the Miltonic poems between the +inventive luxuriousness of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>Elizabethan epoch and the witty +licentiousness that followed the Restoration.</p> + +<p>First, then, it was not <i>humour</i> that came to the rescue, in Milton’s +case, to help him out in those respects wherein, according to the theory +in question, the strictness and austerity of his own disposition would +have injured his capacity to be a poet. There are and have been men as +strict and austere as he, who yet, by means of this quality of humour, +have been able to reconcile themselves to much in human life lying far +away from, and even far beneath, the sphere of their own practice and +conscientious liking. As Pantagruel, the noble and meditative, endured and +even loved those immortal companions of his, the boisterous and profane +Friar John, and the cowardly and impish Panurge, so these men, remaining +themselves with all rigour and punctuality within the limits of sober and +exemplary life, are seen extending their regards to the persons and the +doings of a whole circle of reprobate Falstaffs, Pistols, Clowns, and Sir +Toby Belches. They cannot help it. They may and often do blame themselves +for it; they wish that, in their intercourse with the world, they could +more habitually turn the austere and judicial side of their character to +the scenes and incidents that there present themselves, simply saying of +each “That is right and worthy” or “That is wrong and unworthy,” and +treating it accordingly. But they break down in the trial.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Suddenly some +incident presents itself which is not only right but clumsy, or not only +wrong but comic, and straightway the austere side of their character +wheels round to the back, and judge, jury, and witnesses are convulsed +with untimely laughter. It was by no means so with Milton. As his critics +have generally remarked, he had little of humour, properly so called, in +his composition. His laughter is the laughter of scorn. With one unvarying +judicial look he confronted the actions of men, and, if ever his tone +altered as he uttered his judgments, it was only because something roused +him to a pitch of higher passion. Take, as characteristic, the following +passage, in which he replies to the taunt of an opponent who had asked +where <i>he</i>, the antagonist of profane amusements, had procured that +knowledge of theatres and their furniture which certain allusions in one +of his books showed him to possess:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a periwig, +or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what difficulty was +there in that, when in the colleges so many of the young divines, and +those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the +stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and +dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting +the shame of that ministry which either they had or were nigh having +to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with their grooms and +mademoiselles? There, whilst they acted and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>overacted, among other +young scholars, I was a spectator: they thought themselves gallant +men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they +mispronounced, and I misliked; and, to make up the atticism, they +were out, and I hissed.”—<i>Apology for Smectymnuus.</i></p></div> + +<p>Who can doubt that to a man to whom such a scene as this presented itself +in a light so different from that in which a Shakespeare would have viewed +it Friar John himself, if encountered in the real world, would have been +simply the profane and unendurable wearer of the sacred garb, Falstaff +only a foul and grey-haired iniquity, Pistol but a braggart and coward, +and Sir Toby Belch but a beastly sot?</p> + +<p>That office, however, which humour did not perform for Milton, in his +intercourse with the world of past and present things, was in part +performed by what he did in large measure possess—intellectual +<i>inquisitiveness</i>: respect for intellect, its accomplishments, and its +rights. If any quality in the actions or writings of other men could have +won Milton’s favourable regards, even where his moral sense condemned, +that quality, we believe, was intellectual greatness, and especially +greatness of his own stamp, or marked by any of his own features. Hence +that tone of almost pitying admiration which pervades his representation +of the ruined Archangel; hence his uniformly respectful references to the +great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> intellects of Paganism and of the Catholic world; and hence, we +think, his unbounded and, for a time at least, unqualified reverence for +Shakespeare. As by the direct exercise of his own intellect, on the one +hand, applied to the rational discrimination for himself of what was +really wrong from what was only ignorantly reputed to be so, he had kept +his mind clear, as Cromwell also did, from many of those sectarian +prejudices in the matter of moral observance which were current in his +time—justified, for example, his love of music, his liking for natural +beauty, his habits of cheerful recreation, his devotion to various +literature, and even, most questionable of all, as would then have been +thought, his affection for the massy pillars and storied windows of +ecclesiastical architecture,—so, reflexly, by a recognition of the +intellectual liberty of others, he seems to have distinctly apprehended +the fact that there might be legitimate manifestations of intellect of a +kind very different from his own. A Falstaff in real life, for example, +might have been to Milton the most unendurable of horrors, just as, +according to his own confession, a play-acting clergyman was his +abomination; and yet, in the pages of his honoured Shakespeare, Sir John +as mentor to the Prince, and Parson Hugh Evans as the Welch fairy among +the mummers, may have been creations he would con over and very dearly +appreciate. And this accounts for the multifarious and unrestricted +character of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> literary studies. Milton, we believe, was a man whose +intellectual inquisitiveness and respect for talent would have led him, in +other instances than that of the College theatricals, to see and hear much +that his heart derided, to study and know what he would not strictly have +wished to imitate. Ovid and Tibullus, for example, contain much that is +far from Miltonic; and yet that he read poets of this class with +particular pleasure let the following quotation prove:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I had my time, readers, as others have who have good learning +bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the opinion +was, it might be soonest attained; and, as the manner is, was not +unstudied in those authors which are most commended: whereof some +were grave orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved +indeed, but, as my age was, so I understood them; others were the +smooth elegiac poets whereof the schools are not scarce, whom, both +for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing (which, in +imitation, I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature’s part in +me) and for their matter (which, what it is, there be few who know +not), I was so allured to read that no recreation came to me more +welcome—for, that it was then those years with me which are excused +though they be least severe I may be saved the labour to remember +ye.”—<i>Apology for Smectymnuus.</i></p></div> + +<p>That Milton, then, notwithstanding his natural austerity and seriousness +even in youth, was led by his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> keen appreciation of literary beauty and +finish, and especially by his delight in sweet and melodious verse, to +read and enjoy the poetry of those writers who are usually quoted as +examples of the lusciousness and sensuousness of the poetic nature, and +even to prefer them to all others, is specially stated by himself. But let +the reader, if he should think he sees in this a ground for suspecting +that we have assigned too much importance to Milton’s personal seriousness +of disposition as a cause affecting his aims and art as a poet, distinctly +mark the continuation—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Whence, having observed them [the elegiac and love poets] to account +it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, +to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love, +those high perfections which, under one or other name, they took to +celebrate, I thought with myself, by every instinct and presage of +nature (which is not wont to be false), that what emboldened them to +this task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden me, and +that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share would herein best +appear, and best value itself, by how much more wisely and with more +love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent!) the object +of not unlike praises. For, albeit these thoughts to some will seem +virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort +perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. Nor +blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a +reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life +have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and +fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, +and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For, by the firm settling +of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a +proficient that, if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy +things of themselves, or unchaste those names which before they had +extolled, this effect it wrought in me: From that time forward their +art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all +preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never +wrote but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying +sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not +after when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be +frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things +ought himself to be a true poem—that is, a composition and pattern +of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high +praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the +experience and the practice of all that which is +praiseworthy.”—<i>Apology for Smectymnuus.</i></p></div> + +<p>Here, at last, therefore, we have Milton’s own judgment on the matter of +our inquiry. He had speculated himself on that subject; he had made it a +matter of conscious investigation what kind of moral tone and career would +best fit a man to be a poet, on the one hand, or would be most likely to +frustrate his hopes of writing well, on the other; and his conclusion, as +we see, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> dead against the “wild oats” theory. Had Ben Jonson, +according to our previous fancy, proffered him, out of kindly interest, a +touch of that theory, while criticising his juvenile poems, and telling +him how he might learn to write better, there would have descended on the +lecturer, as sure as fate, a rebuke, though from young lips, that would +have made his strong face blush. “<i>He who would not be frustrate of his +hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true +poem</i>:” fancy that sentence, an early and often pronounced formula of +Milton’s, as we may be sure it was, hurled some evening, could time and +chance have permitted it, into the midst of the assembled Elizabethan wits +at the Mermaid! What interruption of the jollity, what mingled uneasiness +and resentment, what turning of faces towards the new speaker, what forced +laughter to conceal consternation! Only Shakespeare, one thinks, had he +been present, would have fixed on the bold youth a mild and approving eye, +would have looked round the room thoroughly to observe the whole scene, +and, remembering some passages in his own life, would mayhap have had his +own thoughts! Certainly, at least, the essence of that wonderful and +special development of the literary genius of England which came between +the Elizabethan epoch and the epoch of the Restoration, and which was +represented and consummated in Milton himself, consisted in the fact that +then there was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> temporary protest, and by a man able to make it good, +against the theory of “wild oats,” current before and current since. The +nearest poet to Milton in this respect, since Milton’s time, has +undoubtedly been Wordsworth.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.</span></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.</span><small><a name="f6.1" id="f6.1" href="#f6">[6]</a></small></p> + +<p>It is a common remark that literature flourishes best in times of social +order and leisure, and suffers immediate depression whenever the public +mind is agitated by violent civil controversies. The remark is more true +than such popular inductions usually are. It is confirmed, on the small +scale, by what every one finds in his own experience. When a family is +agitated by any matter affecting its interests, there is an immediate +cessation from all the lighter luxuries of books and music wherewith it +used to beguile its leisure. All the members of the family are intent for +the time being on the matter in hand; if books are consulted it is for +some purpose of practical reference; and, if pens are active, it is in +writing letters of business. Not till the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> matter is fairly concluded are +the recreations of music and literature resumed; though then, possibly, +with a keener zest and a mind more full and fresh than before. Precisely +so it is on the large scale. If everything that is spoken or written be +called literature, there is probably always about the same amount of +literature going on in a community; or, if there is any increase or +decrease, it is but in proportion to the increase of the population. But, +if by literature we mean a certain peculiar kind and quality of spoken or +written matter, recognisable by its likeness to certain known precedents, +then, undoubtedly literature flourishes in times of quiet and security, +and wanes in times of convulsion and disorder. When the storm of some +great civil contest is blowing, it is impossible for even the serenest man +to shut himself quite in from the noise, and turn over the leaves of his +Horace, or practise his violin, as undistractedly as before. Great is the +power of <i>pococurantism</i>; and it is a noble sight to see, in the midst of +some Whig and Tory excitement which is throwing the general community into +sixes and sevens, and sending mobs along the streets, the calm devotee of +hard science, or the impassioned lover of the ideal, going on his way, +aloof from it all, and smiling at it all. But there are times when even +these obdurate gentlemen will be touched, in spite of themselves, to the +tune of what is going on; when the shouts of the mob will penetrate to the +closets<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> of the most studious; and when, as Archimedes of old had to leave +his darling diagrams and trudge along the Syracusan streets to superintend +the construction of rough cranes and catapults, so philosophers and poets +alike will have to quit their favourite occupations, and be whirled along +in the common agitation. Those are times when whatever literature there is +assumes a character of immediate and practical interest. Just as, in the +supposed case, the literary activity of the family is consumed in mere +letters of business, so, in this, the literary activity of the community +exhausts itself in newspaper articles, public speeches, and pamphlets, +more or less elaborate, on the present crisis. There may be a vast amount +of mind at work, and as much, on the whole, may be written as before; but +the very excess of what may be called the pamphlet literature, which is +perishable in its nature, will leave a deficiency in the various +departments of literature more strictly so called—philosophical or +expository literature, historical literature, and the literature of pure +imagination. Not till the turmoil is over, not till the battle has been +fairly fought out, and the mental activity involved in it has been let +loose for more scattered work, will the calmer muses resume their sway, +and the press send forth treatises and histories, poems and romances, as +well as pamphlets. Then, however, men may return to literature with a new +zest, and the very storm which has interrupted the course of pure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> +literature for a time may infuse into such literature, when it begins +again, a fresher and stronger spirit. If the battle has ended in a +victory, there will be a tone of joy, of exultation, and of scorn, in what +men think and write after it; if it has ended in a defeat, all that is +thought and written will be tinged by a deeper and finer sorrow.</p> + +<p>The history of English literature affords some curious illustrations of +this law. It has always puzzled historians, for example, to account for +such a great unoccupied gap in our literary progress as occurs between the +death of Chaucer and the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. From the year +1250, when the English language first makes its appearance in anything +like its present form, to the year 1400, when Chaucer died, forms, as all +know, the infant age of our literature. It was an age of great literary +activity; and how much was achieved in it remains apparent in the fact +that it culminated in a man like Chaucer—a man whom, without any drawback +for the early epoch at which he lived, we still regard as one of our +literary princes. Nor was Chaucer the solitary name of his age. He had +some notable contemporaries, both in verse and in prose. When we pass from +Chaucer’s age, however, we have to overleap nearly a hundred and eighty +years before we alight upon a period presenting anything like an adequate +show of literary continuation. A few smaller<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> names, like those of +Lydgate, Surrey, and Skelton, are all that can be cited as poetical +representatives of this sterile interval in the literary history of +England: whatever of Chaucer’s genius still lingered in the island seeming +to have travelled northward, and taken refuge in a series of Scottish +poets, excelling any of their English contemporaries. How is this to be +accounted for? Is it that really, during this period, there was less of +available mind than before in England, that the quality of the English +nerve had degenerated? By no means necessarily so. Englishmen, during this +period were engaged in enterprises requiring no small amount of +intellectual and moral vigour; and there remain to us, from the same +period, specimens of grave and serious prose, which, if we do not place +them among the gems of our literature, we at least regard as evidence that +our ancestors of those days were men of heart and wit and solid sense. In +short, we are driven to suppose that there was something in the social +circumstances of England during the long period in question which +prevented such talent as there was from assuming the particular form of +literature. Fully to make out what this “something” was may baffle us; +but, when we remember that this was the period of the Civil Wars of the +Roses, and also of the great Anglican Reformation, we have reason enough +to conclude that the dearth of pure literature may have been owing, in +part, to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> engrossing nature of those practical questions which then +disturbed English society. When Chaucer wrote, England, under the splendid +rule of the third Edward, was potent and triumphant abroad, but large and +leisurely at home; but scarcely had that monarch vacated the throne when a +series of civil jars began, which tore the nation into factions, and was +speedily followed by a religious movement as powerful in its effects. +Accordingly, though printing was introduced during this period, and thus +Englishmen had greater temptations to write, what they did write was +almost exclusively plain grave prose, intended for practical or polemical +occasions, and making no figure in a historical retrospect. How different +when, passing the controversial reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and +Mary, we come upon the golden days of Queen Bess! Controversy enough +remained to give occasion to plenty of polemical prose; but about the +middle of her reign, when England, once more great and powerful abroad as +in the time of the Edwards, settled down within herself into a new lease +of social order and leisure under an ascertained government, there began +an outburst of literary genius such as no age or country had ever before +witnessed. The literary fecundity of that period of English history which +embraces the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth and the whole of the +reign of James I. (1580-1625) is a perpetual astonishment to us all. In +the entire <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>preceding three centuries and a half we can with difficulty +name six men that can, by any charity of judgment, be regarded as stars in +our literature, and of these only one that is a star of the first +magnitude: whereas in this brief period of forty-five or fifty years we +can reckon up a host of poets and prose-writers all noticeable on high +literary grounds, and of whom at least thirty were men of extraordinary +dimensions. Indeed, in the contemplation of the intellectual abundance and +variety of this age—the age of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon, of +Raleigh and Hooker, of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Donne, Herbert, +Massinger, and their illustrious contemporaries—we feel ourselves driven +from the theory that so rich a literary crop could have resulted from that +mere access of social leisure after a long series of national broils to +which we do in part attribute it, and are obliged to suppose that there +must have been, along with this, an actually finer substance and +condition, for the time being, of the national nerve. The very brain of +England must have become more “quick, nimble, and forgetive,” before the +time of leisure came.</p> + +<p>We have spoken of this great age of English literature as terminating with +the reign of James I., in 1625. In point of fact, however, it extended +some way into the reign of his son, Charles I. Spenser had died in 1599, +before James had ascended the English throne; Shakespeare and Beaumont had +died in 1616, while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> James still reigned; Fletcher died in 1625; Bacon +died in 1626, when the crown had been but a year on Charles’s head. But, +while these great men and many of their contemporaries had vanished from +the scene before England had any experience of the first Charles, some of +their peers survived to tell what kind of men they had been. Ben Jonson +lived till 1637, and was poet-laureate to Charles I.; Donne and Drayton +lived till 1631; Herbert till 1632; Chapman till 1634; Dekker till 1638; +Ford till 1639; and Heywood and Massinger till 1640.</p> + +<p>There is one point in the reign of Charles, however, where a clear line +may be drawn separating the last of the Elizabethan giants from their +literary successors. This is the point at which the Civil War commences. +The whole of the earlier part of Charles’s reign was a preparation for +this war; but it cannot be said to have fairly begun till the meeting of +the Long Parliament in 1640, when Charles had been fifteen years on the +throne. If we select this year as the commencement of the great Puritan +and Republican Revolution in England, and the year 1660, when Charles II. +was restored, as the close of the same Revolution, we shall have a period +of twenty years to which, if there is any truth in the notion that the +Muses shun strife, this notion should be found peculiarly applicable. Is +it so? We think it is. In the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> place, as we have just said, the last +of the Elizabethan giants died off before this period began, as if killed +by the mere approach to an atmosphere so lurid and tempestuous. In the +second place, in the case of such writers as were old enough to have +learnt in the school of those giants and yet young enough to survive them +and enter on the period of struggle,—as for example, Herrick (1591-1660), +Shirley (1596-1666), Waller (1605-1687), Davenant (1605-1668), Suckling +(1608-1643), Milton (1608-1674), Butler (1612-1680), Cleveland +(1613-1658), Denham (1615-1668), and Cowley (1618-1667),—it will be +found, on examination, either that the time of their literary activity did +not coincide with the period of struggle, but came before it, or after it, +or lay on both sides of it; or that what they did write of a purely +literary character during this period was written in exile; or, lastly, +that what they did write at home of a genuine literary character during +this period is inconsiderable in quantity, and dashed with a vein of +polemical allusion rendering it hardly an exception to the rule. The +literary career of Milton illustrates very strikingly this fact of the all +but entire cessation of pure literature in England between 1640 and 1660. +Milton’s life consists of three distinctly marked periods—the first +ending with 1640, during which he composed his exquisite minor poems; the +second extending precisely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> from 1640 to 1660, during which he wrote no +poetry at all, except a few sonnets, but produced his various polemical +prose treatises or pamphlets, and served the state as a public +functionary; and the third, which may be called the period of his later +muse, extending from 1660 to his death in 1674, and famous for the +composition of his greater poems. Thus Milton’s prose-period, if we may so +term it, coincided exactly with the period of civil strife and Cromwellian +rule. And, if this was the case with Milton—if he, who was essentially +the poet of Puritanism, with his whole heart and soul in the struggle +which Cromwell led, was obliged, during the process of that struggle, to +lay aside his singing robes, postpone his plans of a great immortal poem, +and in the meanwhile drudge laboriously as a prose pamphleteer—how much +more must those have been reduced to silence, or brought down into +practical prose, who found no such inspiration in the movement as it gave +to the soul of Milton, but regarded it all as desolation and disaster! +Indeed, one large department of the national literature at this period was +proscribed by civil enactment. Stage-plays were prohibited in 1642, and it +was not till after the Restoration that the theatres were re-opened. Such +a prohibition, though it left the sublime muse of Milton at liberty, had +it cared to sing, was a virtual extinction for the time of all the +customary literature. In fine, if all the literary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> produce of England in +the interval between 1640 and 1660 is examined, it will be found to +consist in the main of a huge mass of controversial prose, by far the +greater proportion of which, though effective at the time, is little +better now than antiquarian rubbish, astonishing from its bulk, though +some small percentage including all that came from the terrible pen of +Milton is saved by reason of its strength and grandeur. The intellect of +England was as active and as abundant as ever, but it was all required for +the current service of the time. Perhaps the only exception of any +consequence was in the case of the philosophical and calm-minded Sir +Thomas Browne, author of the <i>Religio Medici</i>. While all England was in +throes and confusion Browne was quietly attending his patients, or +pottering along his garden at Norwich, or pursuing his meditations about +sepulchral urns and his inquiries respecting the Quincuncial Lozenge. His +views of things might have been considerably quickened by billeting upon +his household a few of the Ironsides.</p> + +<p>Had Cromwell lived longer, or had he established a dynasty capable of +maintaining itself, there can be little doubt that there would have come a +time of leisure during which, even under a Puritan rule, there would have +been a new outburst of English Literature. There were symptoms, towards +the close of the Protectorate that Cromwell, having now “reasonable good +leisure,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> was willing and even anxious that the nation should resume its +old literary industry and all its innocent liberties and pleasures. He +allowed Cowley, Waller, Denham, Davenant, and other Royalists, to come +over from France, and was glad to see them employed in writing verses. +Waller became one of his courtiers, and composed panegyrics on him. He +released Cleveland from prison in a very handsome manner, considering what +hard things the witty roysterer had written about “O.P.” and his “copper +nose.” He appears even to have winked at Davenant, when, in violation of +the act against stage-plays, that gentlemanly poet began to give private +theatrical entertainments under the name of operas. Davenant’s heretical +friend, Hobbes, too, already obnoxious by his opinions even to his own +political party, availed himself of the liberty of the press to issue some +fresh metaphysical essays, which the Protector may have read. In fact, had +Cromwell survived a few years, there would, in all probability, have +arisen, under his auspices, a new literature, of which his admirer and +secretary, Milton, would have been the laureate. What might have been the +characteristics of this literature of the Commonwealth, had it developed +itself to full form and proportions, we can but guess. That, in some +respects, it would not have been so broad and various as the literature +which took its rise from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> Restoration is very likely; for, so long as +the Puritan element remained dominant in English society, it was +impossible that, with any amount of liberty of the press, there should +have been such an outbreak of the merely comic spirit as did occur when +that element succumbed to its antagonist, and genius had official licence +to be as profligate as it chose. But, if less gay and riotous, it might +have been more earnest, powerful, and impressive. For its masterpiece it +would still have had <i>Paradise Lost</i>,—a work which, as it is, we must +regard as its peculiar offspring, though posthumously born; nor can we +doubt that, if influenced by the example and the recognised supremacy of +such a laureate as Milton, the younger literary men of the time would have +found themselves capable of other things than epigrams and farces.</p> + +<p>It was fated, however, that the national leisure requisite for a new +development of English literary genius should commence only with the +restoration of the Stuarts in 1660; and then it was a leisure secured in +very different circumstances from those which would have attended a +perpetuation of Cromwell’s rule. With Charles II. there came back into the +island, after many years of banishment, all the excesses of the cavalier +spirit, more reckless than before, and considerably changed by long +residence in continental cities, and especially in the French capital. +Cavalier noblemen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> and gentlemen came back, bringing with them French +tastes, French fashions, and foreign ladies of pleasure. As Charles II. +was a different man from his father, so the courtiers that gathered round +him at Whitehall were very different from those who had fought with +Charles I. against the Parliamentarians. Their political principles and +prejudices were nominally the same; but they were for the most part men of +a younger generation, less stiff and English in their demeanour, and more +openly dissolute in their morals. Such was the court the restoration of +which England virtually confessed to be necessary to prevent a new era of +anarchy. It was inaugurated amid the shouts of the multitude; and +Puritanism, already much weakened by defections before the event, hastened +to disappear from the public stage, diffusing itself once more as a mere +element of secret efficacy through the veins of the community, and +purchasing even this favour by the sacrifice of its most notorious +leaders.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Miserable in some respects as was this change for England, it offered, by +reason of the very unanimity with which it was effected, all the +conditions necessary for the forthcoming of a new literature. But where +were the materials for the commencement of this new literature?</p> + +<p>First, as regards <i>persons</i> fit to initiate it. There were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> all those who +had been left over from the Protectorate, together with such wits as the +Restoration itself had brought back, or called into being. There was the +old dramatist, Shirley, now in his sixty-fifth year, very glad, no doubt, +to come back to town, after his hard fare as a country-schoolmaster during +the eclipse of the stage, and to resume his former occupation as a writer +of plays in the style that had been in fashion thirty years before. There +was Hobbes, older still than Shirley, a tough old soul of seventy-three, +but with twenty more years of life in him, and, though not exactly a +literary man, yet sturdy enough to be whatever he liked within certain +limits. There was mild Izaak Walton, of Chancery-lane, only five years +younger than Hobbes, but destined to live as long, and capable of writing +very nicely if he could have been kept from sauntering into the fields to +fish. There was the gentlemanly Waller, now fifty-six years of age, quite +ready to be a poet about the court of Charles, and to write panegyrics on +the new side to atone for that on Cromwell. There was the no less +gentlemanly Davenant, also fifty-six years of age, steady to his royalist +principles, as became a man who had received the honour of knighthood from +the royal martyr, and enjoying a wide reputation, partly from his poetical +talents, and partly from his want of nose. There was Milton, in his +fifty-second year, blind, desolate, and stern, hiding in obscure lodgings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +till his defences of regicide should be sufficiently forgotten to save him +from molestation, and building up in imagination the scheme of his +promised epic. There was Butler, four years younger, brimful of hatred to +the Puritans, and already engaged on his poem of <i>Hudibras</i>, which was to +lash them so much to the popular taste. There was Denham, known as a +versifier little inferior to Waller, and with such superior claims on the +score of loyalty as to be considered worthy of knighthood and the first +vacant post. There was Cowley, still only in his forty-third year, and +with a ready-made reputation, both as a poet and as a prose-writer, such +as none of his contemporaries possessed, and such indeed as no English +writer had acquired since the days of Ben Jonson and Donne. Younger still, +and with his fame as a satirist not yet made, there was Milton’s friend, +honest Andrew Marvell, whom the people of Hull had chosen as their +representative in Parliament. Had the search been extended to theologians, +and such of them selected as were capable of influencing the literature by +the form of their writings, as distinct from their matter, Jeremy Taylor +would have been noted as still alive, though his work was nearly over, +while Richard Baxter, with a longer life before him, was in the prime of +his strength, and there was in Bedford an eccentric Baptist preacher, once +a tinker, who was to be the author, though no one supposed it, of the +greatest prose allegory in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> language. Close about the person of the +king, too, there were able men and wits, capable of writing themselves, or +of criticising what was written by others, from the famous Clarendon down +to such younger and lighter men as Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, Sackville, +Earl of Dorset, and Sir Charles Sedley. Lastly, not to extend the list +farther, there was then in London, aged twenty-nine, and going about in a +stout plain dress of grey drugget, a Northamptonshire squire’s son, named +John Dryden, who, after having been educated at Cambridge, had come up to +town in the last year of the Protectorate to push his fortune under a +Puritan relative then in office, and who had already once or twice tried +his hand at poetry. Like Waller, he had written and published a series of +panegyrical stanzas on Cromwell after his death; and, like Waller also, he +had attempted to atone for this miscalculation by writing another poem, +called <i>Astræa Redux</i>, to celebrate the return of Charles. As a taste of +what this poet, in particular, could do, take the last of his stanzas on +Cromwell:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His name a great example stands to show</span><br /> +How strangely high endeavours may be blessed,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where piety and valour jointly go”;</span></p> + +<p>or, in another metre and another strain of politics, the conclusion of the +poem addressed to Charles:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> +“The discontented now are only they<br /> +Whose crimes before did your just cause betray:<br /> +Of those your edicts some reclaim from sin,<br /> +But most your life and blest example win.<br /> +Oh happy prince! whom Heaven hath taught the way<br /> +By paying vows to have more vows to pay!<br /> +Oh happy age! Oh times like those alone<br /> +By fate reserved for great Augustus’ throne,<br /> +When the joint growth of arms and arts foreshow<br /> +The world a monarch, and that monarch you!”</p> + +<p>Such were the <i>personal elements</i>, if we may so call them, available at +the beginning of the reign of Charles II. for the commencement of a new +era in English literature. Let us see next what were the more pronounced +<i>tendencies</i> visible amid these personal elements—in other words, what +tone of moral sentiment, and what peculiarities of literary style and +method, were then in the ascendant, and likely to determine the character +of the budding authorship.</p> + +<p>It was pre-eminently clear that the forthcoming literature would be +Royalist and anti-Puritan. With the exception of Milton, there was not one +man of known literary power whose heart still beat as it did when Cromwell +sat on the throne, and whose muse magnanimously disdained the change that +had befallen the nation. Puritanism, as a whole, was driven back into the +concealed vitals of the community, to sustain itself meanwhile as a +sectarian theology lurking in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> chapels and conventicles, and only to +re-appear after a lapse of years as an ingredient in the philosophy of +Locke and his contemporaries. The literary men who stepped forward to lead +the literature of the Restoration were royalists and courtiers: some of +them honest cavaliers, rejoicing at being let loose from the restraints of +the Commonwealth; others timeservers, making up for delay by the fulsome +excess of their zeal for the new state of things. It was part of this +change that there should be an affectation, even where there was not the +reality, of lax morals. According to the sarcasm of the time, it was +necessary now for those who would escape the risk of being thought +Puritans to contract a habit of swearing and pretend to be great rakes. +And this increase, both in the practice and in the profession of +profligacy, at once connected itself with that institution of English +society which, from the very fact that it had been suppressed by the +Puritans, now became doubly attractive and popular. The same revolution +which restored royalty in England re-opened the play-houses; and in them, +as the established organs of popular sentiment, all the anti-Puritanic +tendencies of the time hastened to find vent. The custom of having female +actors on the stage for female parts, instead of boys as heretofore, was +now permanently introduced, and brought many scandals along with it. +Whether, as some surmise, the very suppression of the theatres<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> during the +reign of Puritanism contributed to their unusual corruptness when they +were again allowed by law—by damming up, as it were, a quantity of +pruriency which had afterwards to be let loose in a mass—it is not easy +to say; it is certain, however, that never in this country did impurity +run so openly at riot in literary guise as it did in the Drama of the +Restoration. To use a phrenological figure, it seemed as if the national +cranium of England had suddenly been contracted in every other direction +so as to permit an inordinate increase of that particular region which is +situated above the nape of the neck. This enormous preponderance of the +back of the head in literature was most conspicuously exhibited in Comedy. +Every comedy that was produced represented life as a meagre action of +persons and interests on a slight proscenium of streets and bits of green +field, behind which lay the real business, transacted in stews. To set +against this, it is true, there was a so-called Tragic Drama. The tragedy +that was now in favour, however, was no longer the old English tragedy of +rich and complex materials, but the French tragedy of heroic declamation. +Familiarized by their stay in France with the tragic style of Corneille +and other dramatists of the court of Louis XIV., the Royalists brought +back the taste with them into England; and the poets who catered for them +hastened to abandon the Shakespearian tragedy, with its large range of +time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> and action and its blank verse, and to put on the stage tragedies of +sustained and decorous declamation in the heroic or rhymed couplet, +conceived, as much as possible, after the model of Corneille. Natural to +the French, this classic or regular style accorded ill with English +faculties and habits; and Corneille himself would have been horrified at +the slovenly and laborious attempts of the English in imitation of his +masterpieces. The effect of French influence at this time, however, on +English literary taste, did not consist merely in the introduction of the +heroic or rhymed drama. The same influence extended, and in some respects +beneficially, to all departments of English literature. It helped, for +example, to correct that peculiar style of so-called “wit” which, +originating with the dregs of the Elizabethan age, had during a whole +generation infected English prose and poetry, but more especially the +latter. The characteristic of the “metaphysical school of poetry,” as it +is called, which took its rise in a literary vice perceptible even in the +great works of the Elizabethan age, and of which Donne and Cowley were the +most celebrated representatives, consisted in the identification of mere +intellectual subtlety with poetic genius. To spin out a fantastic conceit, +to pursue a thread of quaint thought as long as it could be held between +the fingers of the metre without snapping, and, in doing so, to wind it +about as many oddities of the real world as possible, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> introduce as +many verbal quibbles as possible, was the aim of the “metaphysical poets.” +Some of them, like Donne and Cowley, were men of independent merit; but +the style of poetry itself, as all modern readers confess by the alacrity +with which they avoid reprinted specimens of it, was as unprofitable an +investment of human ingenuity as ever was attempted. At the period of the +Restoration, and partly in consequence of French influence, this kind of +wit was falling into disrepute. There were still practitioners of it; but, +on the whole, a more direct, clear, and light manner of writing was coming +into fashion. Discourse became less stiff and pedantic; or, as Dryden +himself has expressed it, “the fire of English wit, which was before +stifled under a constrained melancholy way of breeding, began to display +its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of +our neighbours.” And the change in discourse passed without difficulty +into literature, calling into being a nimbler style of wit, a more direct, +rapid, and decisive manner of thought and expression, than had beseemed +authorship before. In particular, and apart from the tendency to greater +directness and concision of thought, there was an increased attention to +correctness of expression. The younger literary men began to object to +what they called the involved and incorrect syntax of the writers of the +previous age, and to pretend to greater neatness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> and accuracy in the +construction of their sentences. It was at this time, for example, that +the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition or other little word +began to be attended to. Whether the notion of correctness, implied in +this, and other such rules, was a true notion, and whether the writers of +the Restoration excelled their Elizabethan predecessors in this quality of +correctness, admits of being doubted. Certain it is, however, that a +change in the mechanism of writing—this change being on the whole towards +increased neatness—did become apparent about this time. The change was +visible in prose, but far more in verse. For, to conclude this enumeration +of the literary signs or tendencies of the age of the Restoration, it was +a firm belief of the writers of the period that then for the first time +was the art of correct English versification exemplified and appreciated. +It was, we say, a firm belief of the time, and indeed it has been a +common-place of criticism ever since, that Edmund Waller was the first +poet who wrote smooth and accurate verse, that in this he was followed by +Sir John Denham, and that these two men were reformers of English metre. +“Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known +till Mr. Waller introduced it,” is a deliberate statement of Dryden +himself, meant to apply especially to verse. Here, again, we have to +separate a matter of fact from a matter of doctrine. To aver, with such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +specimens of older English verse before us as the works of Chaucer and +Spenser, and the minor poems of Milton, that it was Waller or any other +petty writer of the Restoration that first taught us sweetness, or +smoothness, or even correctness of verse, is so ridiculous that the +currency of such a notion can only be accounted for by the servility with +which small critics go on repeating whatever any one big critic has said. +That Waller and Denham, however, did set the example of something new in +the manner of English versification,—which “something” Dryden, Pope, and +other poets who afterwards adopted it, regarded as an improvement,—needs +not be doubted. For us it is sufficient in the meantime to recognise the +change as an attempt after greater neatness of mechanical structure, +leaving open the question whether it was a change for the better.</p> + +<p>It was natural that the tendencies of English literature thus enumerated +should be represented in the poet-laureate for the time being. Who was the +fit man to be appointed laureate at the Restoration? Milton was out of the +question, having none of the requisites. Butler, the man of greatest +natural power of a different order, and possessing certainly as much of +the anti-Puritan sentiment as Charles and his courtiers could have desired +in their laureate, was not yet sufficiently known, and was, besides, +neither a dramatist nor a fine gentleman. Cowley, whom public opinion +would have pointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> out as best entitled to the honour, was somehow not in +much favour at court, and was spending the remainder of his days on a +little property near Chertsey. Waller and Denham were wealthy men, with +whom literature was but an amusement. On the whole, Sir William Davenant +was felt to be the proper man for the office. He was an approved royalist; +he had, in fact, been laureate to Charles I. after Ben Jonson’s death in +1637; and he had suffered much in the cause of the king. He was, moreover, +a literary man by profession. He had been an actor and a theatre-manager +before the Commonwealth; he had been the first to start a theatre after +the relaxed rule of Cromwell made it possible; and he was one of the first +to attempt heroic or rhymed tragedies after the French model. He was also, +far more than Cowley, a wit of the new school; and, as a versifier, he +practised, with no small reputation, the neat, lucid style introduced by +Denham and Waller. He was the author of an epic called <i>Gondibert</i>, +written in rhymed stanzas of four lines each, which Hobbes praised as +showing “more shape of art, health of morality, and vigour and beauty of +expression,” than any poem he had ever read. We defy anyone to read the +poem now; but there have been worse things written; and it has the merit +of being a careful and rather serious composition by a man who had +industry, education, and taste, without genius. There was but one +awkwardness in having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> such a man for laureate: he had no nose. This +awkwardness, however, had existed at the time of his first appointment in +the preceding reign. At least, Suckling adverts to it in the <i>Session of +the Poets</i>, where he makes the wits of that time contend for the bays—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischance,<br /> +That he had got lately, travelling in France,<br /> +Modestly hoped the handsomeness of ’s muse<br /> +Might any deformity about him excuse.<br /> +<br /> +“And surely the company would have been content,<br /> +If they could have found any precedent;<br /> +But in all their records, either in verse or prose,<br /> +There was not one laureate without a nose.”</p> + +<p>If the more decorous court of Charles I., however, overlooked this +deficiency, it was not for that of Charles II. to take objection to it. +After all, Davenant, notwithstanding his misfortune, seems to have been +not the worst gentleman about Charles’s court, either in morals or +manners. Milton is said to have known and liked him.</p> + +<p>Davenant’s laureateship extended over the first eight years of the +Restoration, or from 1660 to 1668. Much was done in those eight years both +by himself and others. Heroic plays and comedies were produced in +sufficient abundance to supply the two chief theatres then open in +London—one of them that of the Duke’s company, under Davenant’s +management; the other, that of the King’s company, under the management +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> an actor named Killigrew. The number of writers for the stage was very +great, including not only those whose names have been mentioned, but +others new to fame. The literature of the stage formed by far the largest +proportion of what was written, or even of what was published. Literary +efforts of other kinds, however, were not wanting. Of satires, and small +poems in the witty or amatory style, there was no end. The publication by +Butler of the first part of his <i>Hudibras</i> in 1663, and of the second in +1664, drew public attention, for the first time, to a man, already past +his fiftieth year, who had more true wit in him than all the aristocratic +poets put together. The poem was received by the king and the courtiers +with shouts of laughter; quotations from it were in everybody’s mouth; +but, notwithstanding large promises, nothing substantial was done for the +author. Meanwhile Milton, blind and gouty, and living in his house near +Bunhill Fields, where his visitors were hardly of the kind that admired +Butler’s poem, was calmly proceeding with his <i>Paradise Lost</i>. The poem +was finished and published in 1667, leaving Milton free for other work. +Cowley, who would have welcomed such a poem, and whose praise Milton would +have valued more than that of any other contemporary, died in the year of +its publication. Davenant may have read it before his death in the +following year; but perhaps the only poet of the time who hailed its +appearance with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> enthusiasm adequate to the occasion was Milton’s personal +friend Marvell. Gradually, however, copies of the poem found their way +about town, and drew public attention once more to Cromwell’s old +secretary.</p> + +<p>The laureateship remained vacant two years after Davenant’s death; and +then it was conferred—on whom? There can be little doubt that, of those +eligible to it, Butler had, in some respects, the best title. The author +of <i>Hudibras</i>, however, seems to have been one of those ill-conditioned +men whom patronage never comes near, and who are left, by a kind of +necessity, to the bitter enjoyment of their own humours. There does not +seem to have been even a question of appointing him; and the office, the +income of which would have been a competence to him, was conferred on a +man twenty years his junior, and whose circumstances required it +less—John Dryden. The appointment, which was made in August, 1670, +conferred on Dryden not only the laureateship, but also the office of +“historiographer royal,” which chanced to be vacant at the same time. The +income accruing from the two offices thus conjoined was 200<i>l.</i> a-year, +which was about as valuable then as 600<i>l.</i> a-year would be now; and it +was expressly stated in the deed of appointment that these emoluments were +conferred on Dryden “in consideration of his many acceptable services done +to his majesty, and from an observation of his learning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> and eminent +abilities, and his great skill and elegant style both in verse and prose.” +At the time of the Restoration, or even for a year or two after it, such +language could, by no stretch of courtesy, have been applied to Dryden. At +that time, as we have seen, though already past his thirtieth year, he was +certainly about the least distinguished person in the little band of wits +that were looking forward to the good time coming. He was a stout, +fresh-complexioned man, in grey drugget, who had written some robust +stanzas on Cromwell’s death, and a short poem, also robust, but rather +wooden, on Charles’s return. That was about all that was then known about +him. What had he done, in the interval, to raise him so high, and to make +it natural for the Court to prefer him to what was in fact the titular +supremacy of English literature, over the heads of others who might be +supposed to have claims, and especially over poor battered old Butler? A +glance at Dryden’s life during Davenant’s laureateship, or between 1660 +and 1670, will answer this question.</p> + +<p>Dryden’s connexion with the politics of the Protectorate had not been such +as to make his immediate and cordial attachment to the cause of restored +Royalty either very strange or very unhandsome. Not committed either by +strong personal convictions, or by acts, to the Puritan side, he hastened +to show that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> whatever the older Northamptonshire Drydens and their +relatives might think of the matter, he, for one, was willing to be a +loyal subject of Charles, both in church and in state. This main point +being settled, he had only farther to consider into what particular walk +of industry, now that official employment under government was cut off, he +should carry his loyalty and his powers. The choice was not difficult. +There was but one career open for him, or suitable to his tastes and +qualifications—that of general authorship. We say “general authorship;” +for it is important to remark that Dryden was by no means nice in his +choice of work. He was ready for anything of a literary kind to which he +was, or could make himself, competent. He had probably a preference for +verse; but he had no disinclination to prose, if that article was in +demand in the market. He had a store of acquirements, academic and other, +that fitted him for an intelligent apprehension of whatever was going on +in any of the London circles of that day—the circle of the scholars, that +of the amateurs of natural science, or that of the mere wits and men of +letters. He was, in fact, a man of general intellectual strength, which he +was willing to let out in any kind of tolerably honest intellectual +service that might be in fashion. This being the case, he set the right +way to work to make himself known in quarters where such service<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> was +going on. He had about 40<i>l.</i> a-year of inherited fortune; which means +something more than 120<i>l.</i> a-year with us. With this income to supply his +immediate wants, he went to live with Herringman, a bookseller and +publisher in the New Exchange. What was the precise nature of his +agreement with Herringman cannot be ascertained. His literary enemies used +afterwards to say that he was Herringman’s hack and wrote prefaces for +him. However this may be, there were higher conveniences in being +connected with Herringman. He was one of the best known of the London +publishers of the day, was a personal friend of Davenant, and had almost +all the wits of the day as his customers and occasional visitors. Through +him, in all probability, Dryden first became acquainted with some of these +men, including Davenant himself, Cowley, and a third person of +considerable note at that time as an aristocratic dabbler in +literature—Sir Robert Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire. That the +impression he made on these men, and on others in or out of the Herringman +circle, was no mean one, is proved by the fact that in 1663 we find him a +member of the Royal Society, the foundation of which by royal charter had +taken place in the previous year. The number of members was then one +hundred and fifteen, including such scientific celebrities of the time as +Boyle, Wallis, Wilkins, Christopher Wren, Dr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Isaac Barrow, Evelyn, and +Hooke, besides such titled amateurs of experimental science as the Duke of +Buckingham, the Marquis of Dorchester, the Earls of Devonshire, Crawford, +and Northampton, and Lords Brouncker, Cavendish, and Berkeley. Among the +more purely literary members were Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Sprat, +afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The admission of Dryden into such company +is a proof that already he was socially a man of mark. As we have Dryden’s +own confession that he was somewhat dull and sluggish in conversation, and +the testimony of others that he was the very reverse of a bustling or +pushing man, and rather avoided society than sought it, we must suppose +that he had been found out in spite of himself. We can fancy him at +Herringman’s, or elsewhere, sitting as one of a group with Davenant, +Howard, and others, taking snuff and listening, rather than speaking, and +yet, when he did speak, doing so with such judgment as to make his chair +one of the most important in the room, and impress all with the conviction +that he was a solid fellow. He seems also to have taken an interest in the +scientific gossip of the day about magnetism, the circulation of the +blood, and the prospects of the Baconian system of philosophy; and this +may have helped to bring him into contact with men like Boyle, Wren, and +Wallis. At all events, if the Society elected him on trust, he soon +justified<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> their choice by taking his place among the best known members +of what was then the most important class of literary men—the writers for +the stage. His first drama, a lumbering prose-comedy entitled <i>The Wild +Gallant</i>, was produced at Killigrew’s Theatre in February, 1662-3; and, +though its success was very indifferent, he was not discouraged from a +second venture in a tragi-comedy, entitled <i>The Rival Ladies</i>, written +partly in blank verse, partly in heroic rhyme, and produced at the same +theatre. This attempt was more successful; and in 1664 there was produced, +as the joint composition of Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, an attempt in +the style of the regular heroic or rhymed tragedy, called <i>The Indian +Queen</i>. The date of this effort of literary co-partnership between Dryden +and his aristocratic friend coincides with the formation of a more +intimate connexion between them, by Dryden’s marriage with Sir Robert’s +sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard. The marriage (the result, it would seem, of +a visit of the poet, in the company of Sir Robert, to the Earl of +Berkshire’s seat in Wilts) took place in November, 1663; so that, when +<i>The Indian Queen</i> was written, the two authors were already +brothers-in-law. The marriage of a man in the poet’s circumstances with an +earl’s daughter was neither altogether strange nor altogether such as to +preclude remark. The earl was poor, and able to afford his daughter but a +small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> settlement; and Dryden was a man of sufficiently good family, his +grandfather having been a baronet, and some of his living relations having +landed property in Northamptonshire. The property remaining for the +support of Dryden’s brothers and sisters, however, after the subduction of +his own share, had been too scanty to keep them all in their original +station; and some of them had fallen a little lower in the world. One +sister, in particular, had married a tobacconist in London—a connexion +not likely to be agreeable to the Earl of Berkshire and his sons, if they +took the trouble to become cognisant of it. Dryden himself probably moved +conveniently enough between the one relationship and the other. If his +aristocratic brother-in-law, Sir Robert, could write plays with him, his +other brother-in-law, the tobacconist of Newgate-street, may have +administered to his comfort in other ways. It is known that the poet, in +his later life at least, was peculiarly fastidious in the article of +snuff, abhorring all ordinary snuffs, and satisfied only with a mixture +which he prepared himself; and it is not unlikely that the foundation of +this fastidiousness may have been laid in the facilities afforded him +originally in his brother-in-law’s shop. The tobacconist’s wife, of +course, would be pleased now and then to have a visit from her brother +John; but whether Lady Elizabeth ever went to see her is rather doubtful. +According to all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> accounts, Dryden’s experience of this lady was not such +as to improve his ideas of the matrimonial state, or to give encouragement +to future poets to marry earls’ daughters.</p> + +<p>In consequence of the ravages of the Great Plague in 1665 and the +subsequent disaster of the Great Fire in 1666 there was for some time a +total cessation in London of theatrical performances and all other +amusements. Dryden, like most other persons who were not tied to town by +business, spent the greater part of this gloomy period in the country. He +availed himself of the interruption thus given to his dramatic labours to +produce his first writings of any moment out of that field, his <i>Annus +Mirabilis</i> and his <i>Essay on Dramatic Poesy</i>. The first, an attempt to +invest with heroic interest, and celebrate in sonorous stanzas, the events +of the famous years 1665-6, including not only the Great Fire, but also +the incidents of a naval war then going on against the Dutch, must have +done more to bring Dryden into the favourable notice of the King, the Duke +of York, and other high personages eulogized in it, than anything he had +yet written. It was, in fact, a kind of short epic on the topics of the +year, such as Dryden might have been expected to write if he had been +already doing laureate’s duty; and, unless Sir William Davenant was of +very easy temper, he must have been rather annoyed at so obvious an +invasion of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> his province, notwithstanding the compliment the poet had +paid him by adopting the stanza of his <i>Gondibert</i>, and imitating his +manner. Scarcely less effective in another way must have been the prose +<i>Essay on Dramatic Poesy</i>—a vigorous treatise on various matters of +poetry and criticism then much discussed. It contained, among other +things, a defence of the Heroic or Rhymed Tragedy against those who +preferred the older Elizabethan Tragedy of blank verse; and so powerful a +contribution was it to this great controversy of the day that it produced +an immediate sensation in all literary circles. Sir Robert Howard, who now +ranked himself among the partisans of blank verse, took occasion to +express his dissent from some of the opinions expounded in it; and, as +Dryden replied rather tartly, a temporary quarrel ensued between the two +brothers-in-law.</p> + +<p>On the re-opening of the theatres in 1667 Dryden, his reputation increased +by the two performances just mentioned, stepped forward again as a +dramatist. A heroic tragedy called <i>The Indian Emperor</i>, which he had +prepared before the recess, and which, indeed, had then been acted, was +reproduced with great success, and established Dryden’s position as a +practitioner of heroic and rhymed tragedy. This was followed by a comedy, +in mixed blank verse and prose, called <i>The Maiden Queen</i>; this by a +prose-comedy called <i>Sir Martin Mar-all</i>; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> this again, by an +adaptation, in conjunction with Sir William Davenant, of Shakespeare’s +<i>Tempest</i>. The two last were produced at Davenant’s theatre, whereas all +Dryden’s former pieces had been written for Killigrew’s, or the King’s +company. About this time, however, an arrangement was made which secured +Dryden’s services exclusively for Killigrew’s house. By the terms of the +agreement, Dryden engaged to supply the house with three plays every year, +in return for which, he was admitted a shareholder in the profits of the +theatre to the extent of one share and a-half. The first fruits of the +bargain were a prose-comedy called <i>The Mock Astrologer</i> and two heroic +tragedies entitled <i>Tyrannic Love</i> and <i>The Conquest of Granada</i>, the +latter being in two parts. These were all produced between 1668 and 1670, +and the tragedies, in particular, seem to have taken the town by storm, +and placed Dryden, beyond dispute, at the head of all the heroic +playwrights of the day.</p> + +<p>The extent and nature of Dryden’s popularity as a dramatist about this +time may be judged by the following extract from the diary of the +omnipresent Pepys, referring to the first performance of the <i>Maiden +Queen</i>:—“After dinner, with my wife to see the <i>Maiden Queene</i>, a new +play by Dryden, mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the +strain and wit; and the truth is, the comical part done by Nell [Nell +Gwynn], which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> is Florimell, that I never can hope to see the like done +again by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so +great a performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world +before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all +when she comes in like a young gallant and hath the motions and carriage +of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, +admire her.” But even Nell’s performance in this comedy was nothing +compared to one part of her performance afterwards in the tragedy of +<i>Tyrannic Love</i>. Probably there was never such a scene of ecstasy in a +theatre as when Nell, after acting the character of a tragic princess in +this play, and killing herself at the close in a grand passage of heroism +and supernatural virtue, had to start up as she was being borne off the +stage dead, and resume her natural character, first addressing her bearer +in these words:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Hold! are you mad? you d——d confounded dog:<br /> +I am to rise and speak the epilogue.”,</p> + +<p>and then running to the footlights and beginning her speech to the +audience:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye:<br /> +I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.<br /> +Sweet ladies, be not frighted; I’ll be civil:<br /> +I’m what I was, a little harmless devil.” &c. &c.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>It is a tradition that it was this epilogue that effected Nell’s conquest +of the king, and that he was so fascinated with her manner of delivering +it, that he went behind the scenes after the play was over and carried her +off. Ah! and it is two hundred years since that fascinating run to the +footlights took place, and the swarthy face of the monarch was seen +laughing, and the audience shrieked and clapped with delight, and Pepys +bustled about the boxes, and Dryden sat looking placidly on, contented +with his success, and wondering how much of it was owing to Nelly!</p> + +<p>One can see how, even if the choice had been made strictly with a +reference to the claims of the candidates, it would have been felt that +Dryden, and not Butler, was the proper man to succeed Davenant in the +laureateship. If Butler had shewn the more original vein of talent in one +peculiar walk, Dryden had proved himself the man of greatest general +strength, in whom were more broadly represented the various literary +tendencies of his time. The author of ten plays, four of which were +stately rhymed tragedies, and the rest comedies in prose and blank verse; +the author, also, of various occasional poems, one of which, the <i>Annus +Mirabilis</i>, was noticeable on its own account as the best poem of current +history; the author, moreover, of one express prose-treatise, and of +various shorter prose dissertations in the shape of prefaces and the like +prefixed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> to his separate plays and poems, in which the principles of +literature were discussed in a manner at once masterly and adapted to the +prevailing taste: Dryden was, on the whole, far more likely to perform +well that part of a laureate’s duties which consisted in supervising and +leading the general literature of his age than a man whose reputation, +though justly great, had been acquired by one continuous effort in the +single department of burlesque. Accordingly, Dryden was promoted to the +post, and Butler was left to finish, on his own scanty resources, the +remaining portion of his <i>Hudibras</i>, varying the occupation by jotting +down those scraps of cynical thought which were found among his posthumous +papers, and which show that towards the end of his days there were other +things that he hated and would have lashed besides Puritanism. Thus:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“’Tis a strange age we’ve lived in and a lewd<br /> +As e’er the sun in all his travels viewed.”</p> + +<p>Again:</p> + +<p class="poem">“The greatest saints and sinners have been made<br /> +Of proselytes of one another’s trade.”</p> + +<p>Again:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Authority is a disease and cure<br /> +Which men can neither want nor well endure.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>And again, with an obvious reference to his own case:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Dame Fortune, some men’s titular,<br /> +Takes charge of them without their care,<br /> +Does all their drudgery and work,<br /> +Like fairies, for them in the dark;<br /> +Conducts them blindfold, and advances<br /> +The naturals by blinder chances;<br /> +While others by desert and wit<br /> +Could never make the matter hit,<br /> +But still, the better they deserve,<br /> +Are but the abler thought to starve.”</p> + +<p>Dryden, at the time of his appointment to the laureateship, was in his +fortieth year. This is worth noting, if we would realize his position +among his literary contemporaries. Of those contemporaries there were some +who, as being his seniors, would feel themselves free from all obligations +to pay him respect. To octogenarians like Hobbes and Izaak Walton he was +but a boy; and even from Waller, Milton, Butler, and Marvel, all of whom +lived to see him in the laureate’s chair, he could only look for that +approving recognition, totally distinct from reverence, which men of +sixty-five, sixty, and fifty-five, bestow on their full-grown juniors. +Such an amount of recognition he seems to have received from all of them. +Butler, indeed, does not seem to have taken very kindly to him; and it +stands on record, as Milton’s opinion of Dryden’s powers about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> this +period, that he thought him “a rhymer but no poet.” But Butler, who went +about snarling at most things, and was irreverent enough to think the +Royal Society itself little better than a humbug, was not the man from +whom a laudatory estimate of anybody was to be expected; and, though +Milton’s criticism is too precious to be thrown away, and will even be +found on investigation to be not so far amiss, if the moment at which it +was given is duly borne in mind, yet it is, after all, not Milton’s +opinion of Dryden’s general literary capacity, but only his opinion of +Dryden’s claims to be called a poet. Dryden, on his part, to whose charge +any want of veneration for his great literary predecessors cannot be +imputed, and whose faculty of appreciating the most various kinds of +excellence was conspicuously large, would probably have been more grieved +than indignant at this indifference of men like Butler and Milton to his +rising fame. He had an unfeigned admiration for the author of <i>Hudibras</i>; +and there was not a man in England who more profoundly revered the poet of +<i>Paradise Lost</i>, or more dutifully testified this reverence both by acts +of personal attention and by written expressions of allegiance to him +while he was yet alive. It would have pained Dryden much, we believe, to +know that the great Puritan poet, whom he made it a point of duty to go +and see now and then in his solitude, and of whom he is reported to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> have +said, on reading the <i>Paradise Lost</i>, “This man cuts us all out, and the +ancients too,” thought no better of him than that he was a rhymer. But, +however he may have felt himself related to those seniors who were +vanishing from the stage, or whose literary era was in the past, it was in +a conscious spirit of superiority that he confronted the generation of his +coevals and juniors, the natural subjects of his laureateship. If we set +aside such men as Locke and Barrow, belonging more to other departments +than to that of literature proper, there were none of these coevals or +juniors who were entitled to dispute his authority. There was the Duke of +Buckingham, a year or two older than Dryden, at once the greatest wit and +the greatest profligate about Charles’s court, but whose attempts in the +comic drama were little more than occasional eccentricities. There were +the Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, both about Dryden’s age, and both +cultivated men and respectable versifiers. There was Thomas Sprat, +afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and now chaplain to his grace of +Buckingham, five years younger than Dryden, his fellow-member in the Royal +Society, and with considerable pretensions to literary excellence. There +was the witty rake, Sir Charles Sedley, a man of frolic, like Buckingham, +some seven years Dryden’s junior, and the author of at least three +comedies and three tragedies. There was the still more witty rake, Sir +George Etherege, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> about the same age, the author of two comedies, +produced between 1660 and 1670, which, for ease and sprightly fluency, +surpassed anything that Dryden had done in the comic style. But “gentle +George,” as he was called, was incorrigibly lazy; and it did not seem as +if the public would get anything more from him. In his place had come +another gentleman-writer, young William Wycherley, whose first comedy had +been written before Dryden’s laureateship, though it was not acted till +1672, and who was already famous as a wit. Of precisely the same age as +Wycherley, and with a far greater <i>quantity</i> of comic writing in him, +whatever might be thought of the quality, was Thomas Shadwell, whose bulky +body was a perpetual source of jest against him, though he himself vaunted +it as one of his many resemblances to Ben Jonson. The contemporary opinion +of these two last-named comic poets, Wycherley and Shadwell, after they +came to be better known, is expressed in these lines from a poem of +Rochester’s:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Of all our modern wits none seem to me<br /> +Once to have touched upon true comedy<br /> +But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley.<br /> +Shadwell’s unfinished works do yet impart<br /> +Great proofs of force of Nature, none of Art.<br /> +With just bold strokes he dashes here and there,<br /> +Showing great mastery with little care;<br /> +Scorning to varnish his good touches o’er,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>To make the fools and women praise the more.<br /> +But Wycherley earns hard whate’er he gains;<br /> +He wants no judgment, and he spares no pains;<br /> +He frequently excels, and, at the least,<br /> +Makes fewer faults than any of the rest.”</p> + +<p>The author of these lines, the notorious Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was +also one of Dryden’s literary subjects. He was but twenty-two years of age +when Dryden became laureate; but before ten years of that laureateship +were over he had blazed out, in rapid debauchery, his wretchedly-spent +life. Younger by three years than Rochester, and also destined to a short +life, though more of misery than of crime, was Thomas Otway, of whose six +tragedies and four comedies, all produced during the laureateship of +Dryden, one at least has taken a place in our dramatic literature, and is +read still for its power and pathos. Associated with Otway’s name is that +of Nat. Lee, more than Otway’s match in fury, and who, after a brief +career as a tragic dramatist and drunkard, became an inmate of Bedlam. +Another writer of tragedy, whose career began with Dryden’s laureateship, +was John Crowne, “little starched Johnny Crowne,” as Rochester calls him, +but whom so good a judge as Charles Lamb has thought worthy of +commemoration as having written some really fine things. Finally, the list +includes a few Nahum Tates, Elkanah Settles, Tom D’Urfeys, and other small +celebrities, in whose company we may place Aphra Behn, the poetess.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>Doing our best to fancy this cluster of wits and play-writers, in the +midst of which, from his appointment to the laureateship in 1670, at the +age of thirty-nine, to his deposition from that office in 1688, at the age +of fifty-eight, Dryden is historically the principal figure, we can very +well see that not one of them all could wrest the dictatorship from him. +With an income from various sources, including his salary as laureate and +historiographer and his receipts from his engagement with Killigrew’s +company, amounting in all to about 600<i>l.</i> a-year—which, according to Sir +Walter Scott’s computation, means about 1,800<i>l.</i> in our value—he had, +during a portion of this time at least, all the means of external +respectability in sufficient abundance. His reputation as the first +dramatic author of the day was already made; and if, as yet, there were +others who had done as well or better as poets out of the dramatic walk, +he more than made up for this by the excellence of his prologues and +epilogues, and by his readiness and power as a prose-critic of general +literature. No one could deny that, though a rather heavy man in private +society, and so slow and silent among the wits of the coffee-house that, +but for the pleasure of seeing his placid face, the deeply indented +leather chair on which he sat would have done as well to represent +literature there as his own presence in it, John Dryden was, all in all, +the first wit of the age. There was not a Buckingham, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> an Etherege, +nor a Shadwell, nor a starched Johnny Crowne, of them all, that singly +would have dared to dispute his supremacy. And yet, as will happen, what +his subjects could not dare to do singly, or ostensibly, some of them +tried to compass by cabal and systematic depreciation on particular +points. In fact, Dryden had to fight pretty hard to maintain his place, +and had to make an example or two of a rebel subject before the rest were +terrified into submission.</p> + +<p>He was first attacked in the very field of his greatest triumphs, the +drama. The attack was partly directed against himself personally, partly +against that style of heroic or rhymed tragedy of which he was the +advocate and representative. There had always been dissenters from this +new fashion; and among these was the Duke of Buckingham, who had a natural +genius for making fun of anything. Assisted, it is said, by his chaplain +Sprat, and by Butler, who had already satirized this style of tragedy by +writing a dialogue in which two cats are made to caterwaul to each other +in heroics, the duke had amused his leisure by preparing a farce in which +heroic plays were held up to ridicule. In the original draft of the farce +Davenant was made the butt under the name of Bilboa; but, after Davenant’s +death, the farce was recast, and Dryden substituted under the name of +Bayes. The plot of this famous farce, <i>The Rehearsal</i>, is much the same as +that of Sheridan’s <i>Critic</i>. The poet Bayes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> invites two friends, Smith +and Johnson, to be present at the rehearsal of a heroic play which he is +on the point of bringing out, and the humour consists in the supposed +representation of this heroic play, while Bayes alternately directs the +actors, and expounds the drift of the play and its beauties to Smith and +Johnson, who all the while are laughing at him, and thinking it monstrous +rubbish. Conceive a farce like this, written with amazing cleverness, and +full of absurdities, produced in the very theatre where the echoes of +Dryden’s last sonorous heroics were still lingering, and acted by the same +actors; conceive it interspersed with parodies of well-known passages from +Dryden’s plays, and with allusions to characters in those plays; conceive +the actor who played the part of Bayes dressed to look as like Dryden as +possible, instructed by the duke to mimic Dryden’s voice, and using +phrases like “i’gad” and “i’fackins,” which Dryden was in the habit of +using in familiar conversation; and an idea may be formed of the sensation +made by <i>The Rehearsal</i> in all theatrical circles on its first performance +in the winter of 1671. Its effect, though not immediate, was decisive. +From that time the heroic or rhymed tragedy was felt to be doomed. Dryden, +indeed, did not at once recant his opinion in favour of rhymed tragedies; +but he yielded so far to the sentence pronounced against them as to write +only one more of the kind.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>Though thus driven out of his favourite style of the rhymed tragedy, he +was not driven from the stage. Bound by his agreement with the King’s +Company to furnish three plays a-year, he continued to make dramatic +writing his chief occupation; and almost his sole productions during the +first ten years of his laureateship were ten plays. Three of these were +prose-comedies; one, a tragi-comedy, in blank verse and prose; one, an +opera in rhyme; five, tragedies in blank verse; and one, the rhymed +tragedy above referred to. It will be observed that this was at the rate +of only one play a-year, whereas, by his engagement, he was to furnish +three. The fact was that the company were very indulgent to him, and let +him have his full share of the receipts, averaging 300<i>l.</i> a-year, in +return for but a third of the stipulated work. Notwithstanding this, we +find them complaining, in 1679, that Dryden had behaved unhandsomely to +them in carrying one of his plays to the other theatre, and so injuring +their interests. As, from that year, none of Dryden’s plays were produced +at the King’s Theatre, but all at the Duke’s, till 1682, when the two +companies were united, it is probable that in that year the bargain made +with Killigrew terminated. It deserves notice, by the way, that the +so-called “opera” was one entitled <i>The State of Innocence; or, The Fall +of Man</i>, founded on Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and brought out in 1674-5, +immediately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> after Milton’s death. That this was an equivocal compliment +to Milton’s memory Dryden himself lived to acknowledge. He confessed to +Dennis, twenty years afterwards, that at the time when he wrote that opera +“he knew not half the extent of Milton’s excellence.” A striking proof of +Dryden’s veneration for Milton, when we consider how high his admiration +of Milton had been even while Milton was alive!</p> + +<p>Of these dramatic productions of Dryden during the first ten years of his +laureateship some were very carefully written. Thus <i>Marriage à-la-mode</i>, +performed in 1672, is esteemed one of his best comedies; and of the rhymed +tragedy, <i>Aurung-Zebe</i>, performed in 1675, he himself says in the +Prologue—</p> + +<p class="poem">“What verse can do he has performed in this,<br /> +Which he presumes the most correct of his.”</p> + +<p>The tragedy of <i>All for Love</i>, which followed <i>Aurung-Zebe</i>, in 1678, and +in which he falls back on blank verse, is pronounced by many critics to be +the very best of all his dramas; and perhaps none of his plays has been +more read than the <i>Spanish Friar</i>, written in 1680. Yet it may be doubted +if in any of these plays Dryden achieved a degree of immediate success +equal to that which had attended his <i>Tyrannic Love</i> and his <i>Conquest of +Granada</i>, written before his laureateship. This was not owing so much to +the single blow struck at his fame by Buckingham’s <i>Rehearsal</i> as to the +growth of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> that general spirit of criticism and disaffection which pursues +every author after the public have become sufficiently acquainted with his +style to expect the good, and look rather for the bad, in what he writes. +Thus, we find one critic of the day, Martin Clifford, who was a man of +some note, addressing Dryden, a year or two after his laureateship, in +this polite fashion: “You do live in as much ignorance and darkness as you +did in the womb; your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades’ shop; they +have a variety, but nothing of value; and, if thou art not the dullest +plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with +are strangely mistaken in thee.” This onslaught of Mr. Clifford’s is +clearly to be regarded as only that gentleman’s; but what young Rochester +said and thought about Dryden at this time is more likely to have been +what was said and thought generally by the critical part of the town.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Well sir, ’tis granted: I said Dryden’s rhymes<br /> +Were stolen, unequal—nay, dull, many times.<br /> +What foolish patron is there found of his<br /> +So blindly partial to deny me this?<br /> +But that his plays, embroidered up and down<br /> +With wit and learning, justly pleased the town,<br /> +In the same paper I as freely own.<br /> +Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass<br /> +That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass.<br /> +<span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> +But, to be just, ’twill to his praise be found<br /> +His excellencies more than faults abound;<br /> +Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear<br /> +The laurel which he best deserves to wear.<br /> +<span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><span class="spacer">*</span><br /> +And may I not have leave impartially<br /> +To search and censure Dryden’s works, and try<br /> +If these gross faults his choice pen doth commit<br /> +Proceed from want of judgment or of wit,<br /> +Or if his lumpish fancy doth refuse<br /> +Spirit and grace to his loose slattern muse?”</p> + +<p>We have no doubt the opinion thus expressed by the scapegrace young earl +was very general. Dryden’s own prose disquisitions on the principles of +poetry may have helped to diffuse many of those notions of genuine +poetical merit by which he was now tried. But, undoubtedly, what most of +all tended to expose Dryden’s reputation to the perils of criticism was +the increasing number of his dramatic competitors and the evident ability +of some of them. True, most of those competitors were Dryden’s personal +friends, and some of the younger of them, as Lee, Shadwell, Crowne, and +Tate, were in the habit of coming to him for prologues and epilogues, with +which to increase the attractions of their plays. On more than one +occasion, too, Dryden clubbed with Lee or Shadwell in the composition of a +dramatic piece. But, though thus on a friendly footing with most of his +contemporary dramatists, and almost in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> fatherly relation to some of +them, Dryden found his popularity not the less affected by their +competition. In the department of prose comedy, Etherege, whose last and +best comedy, <i>Sir Fopling Flutter</i>, was produced in 1676, and Wycherley, +whose four celebrated comedies were all produced between 1672 and 1677, +had introduced a style compared with which Dryden’s best comic attempts +were but heavy horse-play. Even the hulking Shadwell, who dashed off his +comedies as fast as he could write, had a vein of coarse natural humour +which Dryden lacked. It was in vain that Dryden tried to keep his +pre-eminence against these rivals by increased strength of language, +increased intricacy of plot, and an increased use of those indecencies +upon which they all relied so much in their efforts to please. One comedy +in which Dryden, trusting too confidently to this last element of success, +pushed grossness to the utmost conceivable limit, was hissed off the +stage. In tragedy, it is true, his position was more firm. But even in +this department some niches were cut in the body of his fame. His friend +Nat. Lee had produced one or two tragedies displaying a tenderness and a +wild force of passion to which Dryden’s more masculine genius could not +pretend; Crowne had also done one or two things of a superior character; +and, though it was not till 1682 that Otway produced his <i>Venice +Preserved</i>, he had already given evidence of his mastery of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>dramatic +pathos. All this Dryden might have seen without allowing himself to be +much disturbed, conscious as he must have been that in general strength he +was still superior to all about him, however they might rival him in +particulars. The deliberate resolution, however, of Rochester and some +other aristocratic leaders of the fashion to make good their criticisms on +his writings, by setting up first one and then another of the dramatists +of the day as patterns of a higher style of art than his, provoked him out +of his composure. To show what he could do, if called upon to defend his +rights against pretenders, he made a terrible example of one poor wretch, +who had been puffed for the moment into undue popularity. This unfortunate +was Elkanah Settle, and the occasion of the attack was a heroic tragedy +written by Settle, acted with great success both on the stage and at +Whitehall, and published with illustrative woodcuts. On this performance +Dryden made a most merciless onslaught in a prose-criticism prefixed to +his next published play, tearing Settle’s metaphors and grammar to pieces. +Settle replied with some spirit, but little effect, and was, in fact, +“settled” for ever. Rochester next patronized Crowne and Otway for a time, +but soon gave them up, and contented himself with assailing Dryden more +directly in such lampoons as we have quoted. In the year 1679, however, +suspecting Dryden to have had a share in the authorship<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> of a poem, then +circulating in manuscript, in which certain liberties were taken with his +name, he caused him to be way-laid and beaten as he was going home one +evening through Rose-alley to his house in Gerard-street. The poem, +entitled <i>An Essay on Satire</i>, is usually printed among Dryden’s works; +but it remains uncertain whether Dryden was really the author.</p> + +<p>It was fortunate for Dryden and for English literature that, just about +this time, when he was beginning to be regarded as a veteran among the +dramatists, whose farther services in that department the town could +afford to spare, circumstances led him, almost without any wish of his +own, into a new path of literature. He was now arrived at the ripe age of +fifty years, and, if an inventory had been made of his writings, they +would have been found to consist of twenty-one dramas, with a series of +critical prose-essays for the most part bound up with these dramas, but +nothing in the nature of non-dramatic poetry, except a few occasional +pieces, of which the <i>Annus Mirabilis</i> was still the chief. Had a +discerning critic examined those works with a view to discover in what +peculiar vein of verse Dryden, if he abandoned the drama, might still do +justice to his powers, he would certainly have selected the vein of +reflective satire. Of the most nervous and emphatic lines that could have +been quoted from his plays a large proportion would have been found to +consist of what may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> be called <i>maxim</i> metrically expressed; while in his +dramatic prologues and epilogues, which were always thought among the +happiest efforts of his pen, the excellence would have been found to +consist in very much the same power of direct didactic declamation applied +satirically to the humours, manners, and opinions of the day. Whether any +critic, observing all this, would have been bold enough to advise Dryden +to take the hint, and quit the drama for satirical, controversial, and +didactic poetry, we need not inquire. Circumstances compelled what advice +might have failed to bring about. After some twenty years of political +stagnation, or rather of political confusion, relieved only by the +occasional cabals of leading statesmen, and by rumours of Catholic and +Protestant plots, the old Puritan feeling and the general spirit of civil +liberty which the Restoration had but pent up within the vitals of England +broke forth in a regular and organized form as modern English Whiggism. +The controversy had many ramifications; but its immediate phase at that +moment was an antagonism of two parties on the question of the succession +to the crown after Charles should die—the Tories and Catholics +maintaining the rights of the Duke of York as the legal heir, and the +Whigs and Protestants rallying, for want of a better man, round Charles’s +illegitimate son, the handsome and popular Duke of Monmouth, then a puppet +in the hands of Shaftesbury, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> recognised leader of the Opposition. +Charles himself was forced by reasons of state to take part with his +brother, and to frown on Monmouth; but this did not prevent the lords and +wits of the time from distributing themselves pretty equally between the +two parties, and fighting out the dispute with all the weapons of intrigue +and ridicule. Shadwell, Settle, and some other minor poets, lent their +pens to the Whigs, and wrote squibs and satires in the Whig service. Lee, +Otway, Tate, and others, worked for the Court party. Dryden, as laureate +and Tory, had but one course to take. He plunged into the controversy with +the whole force of his genius; and in November, 1681, when the nation was +waiting for the trial of Shaftesbury, then a prisoner in the Tower, he +published his satire of <i>Absalom and Achitophel</i>, in which, under the thin +veil of a story of Absalom’s rebellion against his father David, the +existing political state of England was represented from the Tory point of +view. Among the characters portrayed in it Dryden had the satisfaction of +introducing his old critic, the Duke of Buckingham, upon whom he now took +ample revenge.</p> + +<p>The satire of <i>Absalom and Achitophel</i>, than which nothing finer of the +kind had ever appeared in England, and which indeed surpassed all that +could have been expected even from Dryden at that time, was the first of a +series of polemical or satirical poems the composition of which occupied +the last eight years of his laureateship.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> <i>The Medal, a Satire against +Sedition</i>, appeared in March, 1682, as the poet’s comment on the popular +enthusiasm occasioned by the acquittal of Shaftesbury; <i>Mac Flecknoe</i>, in +which Shadwell, as poet-in-chief of the Whigs, received a thrashing all to +himself, was published in October in the same year; and, a month later, +there appeared the so-called <i>Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel</i>, +written by Nahum Tate, under Dryden’s superintendence, and with +interpolations from Dryden’s pen. In the same avowed character, as +literary champion of the government and the party of the Duke of York, +Dryden continued to labour during the remainder of the reign of Charles. +His <i>Religio Laici</i>, indeed, produced early in 1683, and forming a +metrical statement of the grounds and extent of his own attachment to the +Church of England, can hardly have been destined for immediate political +service. But the solitary play which he wrote about this period—a tragedy +called <i>The Duke of Guise</i>—was certainly intended for political effect, +as was also a translation from the French of a work on the history of +French Calvinism.</p> + +<p>How ill-requited Dryden was for these services appears but too clearly +from evidence proving that, at this time, he was in great pecuniary +difficulties. At the time when the king’s cast-off mistresses were +receiving pensions of 10,000<i>l.</i> a-year, and when 130,000<i>l.</i> or more was +squandered every year on secret <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>court-purposes, Dryden’s salary as +laureate remained unpaid for four years; and when, in consequence of his +repeated solicitations, an order for part-payment of the arrears was at +last issued in May 1684, it was for the miserable pittance of one +quarter’s salary, due at midsummer 1680, leaving fifteen quarters, or +750<i>l.</i> still in arrears. It appears, however, from a document published +for the first time by Mr. Bell, that an additional pension of 100<i>l.</i> +a-year was at this time conferred on Dryden—that pension to date +retrospectively from 1680, and the arrears to be paid, as convenient, +along with the larger arrears of salary. How far Dryden benefited by this +nominal increase of his emoluments from government, or whether any further +portion of the arrears was paid up while Charles continued on the throne, +can hardly be ascertained. Charles died in February, 1684-5, and Dryden, +as in duty bound, wrote his funeral panegyric. In this Pindaric, which is +entitled <i>Threnodia Augustalis</i>, the poet seems to hint, as delicately as +the occasion would permit, at the limited extent of his pecuniary +obligations to the deceased monarch.</p> + +<p class="poem">“As, when the new-born phœnix takes his way<br /> +His rich paternal regions to survey,<br /> +Of airy choristers a numerous train<br /> +Attends his wondrous progress o’er the plain,<br /> +So, rising from his father’s urn,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>So glorious did our Charles return.<br /> +The officious muses came along—<br /> +A gay harmonious choir, like angels ever young;<br /> +The muse that mourns him now his happy triumph sung.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Even they could thrive in his auspicious reign;</span><br /> +And such a plenteous crop they bore<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of purest and well-winnowed grain</span><br /> +As Britain never knew before:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though little was their hire, and light their gain,</span><br /> +Yet somewhat to their share he threw.<br /> +Fed from his hand, they sung and flew,<br /> +Like birds of Paradise, that lived on morning dew.<br /> +Oh, never let their lays his name forget:<br /> +The pension of a prince’s praise is great.”</p> + +<p>If there was any literary man in whose favour James II., on his accession, +might have been expected to relax his parsimonious habits, it was Dryden. +The poet had praised him and made a hero of him for twenty years, and had +during the last four years been working for him incessantly. In +acknowledgment of these services, James could not do otherwise than +continue him in the laureateship; but this was all that he seemed inclined +to do. In the new patent issued for the purpose, not only was there no +renewal of the deceased king’s private grant of 100<i>l.</i> a-year, but even +the annual butt of sherry, hitherto forming part of the laureate’s +allowance, was discontinued, and the salary limited to the precise money +payment of 200<i>l.</i> a-year. If, as is probable, the salary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> was now more +punctually paid than it had been under Charles, the reduction may have +been of less consequence. In March 1685-6, however, James opened his +purse, and, by fresh letters patent, conferred on Dryden a permanent +additional salary of 100<i>l.</i> a-year, thus raising the annual income of the +laureateship to 300<i>l.</i> The explanation of this unusual piece of +liberality on the part of James has been generally supposed to lie in the +fact that, in the course of the preceding year, Dryden had proved the +thorough and unstinted character of his loyalty by declaring himself a +convert to the king’s religion. That Dryden’s passing over to the Catholic +church was contemporaneous with the increase of his pension is a fact; but +what may have been the exact relation between the two events is a question +which one ought to be cautious in answering. Lord Macaulay’s view of the +case is harsh enough. “Finding,” he says, “that, if he continued to call +himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared +himself a Papist. The king’s parsimony instantly relaxed Dryden was +gratified with a pension of one hundred pounds a-year, and was employed to +defend his new religion both in prose and verse.” Sir Walter Scott’s view +is more charitable, and, we believe, more just. He regards Dryden’s +conversion as having been, in the main, honest to the extent professed by +himself, though his situation and expectations may have co-operated to +effect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> it. In support of this view Mr. Bell points out the fact that the +pension granted by James was, after all, only a renewal of a pension +granted by Charles, and which, not being secured by letters patent, had +lapsed on that king’s decease. Dryden, it is also to be remarked, remained +sufficiently staunch to his new faith during the rest of his life, and +seems even to have felt a kind of comfort in it. Probably, therefore, the +true state of the case is that conformity to the Catholic religion, at the +time when Dryden embraced it, was the least troublesome mode of +systematizing for his own mind a number of diverse speculations, personal +and political, that were then perplexing him, and that, afterwards, in +consequence of the very obloquy which his change of religion drew upon him +from all quarters, he hugged his new creed more closely, so as to coil +round him, for the first time in his life, a few threads of private +theological conviction. This is not very different from the notion +entertained by Sir Walter Scott, who argues that Dryden’s conversion was +not, except in outward profession, a change from Protestant to Catholic +belief, but rather, like that of Gibbon, a choice of Catholicism as the +most convenient resting-place for a mind tired of Pyrrhonism, and disposed +to cut short the process of emancipation from it by taking a decisive step +at once.</p> + +<p>At all events, Dryden showed sufficient polemical energy in the service of +the religion which he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> adopted. He became James’s literary factotum, +the defender in prose and in verse of the worst measures of his rule; and +he was ready to do battle with Stillingfleet, Burnet, or anyone else that +dared to use a pen on the other side. As if to make the highest display of +his powers as a versifier at a time when his character as a man was +lowest, he published in 1687 his controversial allegory of <i>The Hind and +the Panther</i>, by far the largest and most elaborate of his original poems. +In this poem, in which the various churches and sects of the day figure as +beasts—the Church of Rome as a “milk-white hind,” innocent and unchanged; +the Church of England as a “panther,” spotted, but still beautiful; +Presbyterianism as a haggard ugly “wolf;” Independency as the “bloody +bear;” the Baptists as the “bristled boar;” the Unitarians as the “false +fox;” the Freethinkers as the “buffoon ape;” and the Quakers as the timid +“hare”—Dryden showed that, whatever his new faith had done for him, it +had not changed his genius for satire. In fact, precisely as during +James’s reign Dryden appears personally as a solitary giant, warring on +the wrong side, so this poem remains as the sole literary work of any +excellence in which the wretched spirit of that reign is fully +represented. Dryden himself, as if he had thrown all his force into it, +wrote little else in verse till the year 1688, when, on the occasion of +the birth of James’s son, afterwards the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> Pretender, he made himself the +spokesman of the exulting Catholics, and published his <i>Britannia +Rediviva</i>.</p> + +<p class="poem">“See how the venerable infant lies<br /> +In early pomp; how through the mother’s eyes<br /> +The father’s soul, with an undaunted view,<br /> +Looks out, and takes our homage as his due.<br /> +See on his future subjects how he smiles,<br /> +Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles;<br /> +But with an open face, as on his throne,<br /> +Assures our birthrights, and secures his own.”</p> + +<p>Within a few months after these lines were written, the father, the +mother, and the baby, were out of England, Dutch William was king, and the +Whigs had it all to themselves. Dryden, of course, had to give up the +laureateship; and, as William had but a small choice of poets, Shadwell +was put in his place.</p> + +<p>The concluding period of Dryden’s career, extending from the Revolution to +his death in 1701, exhibits him as a Tory patriarch lingering in the midst +of a Whig generation, and still, despite the change of dynasty, retaining +his literary pre-eminence. For a while, of course, he was under a cloud; +but after it had passed away he was at liberty to make his own terms with +the public. The country could have no literature except what he and such +as he chose to furnish. Locke, Sir William Temple, and others, indeed, +were now in a position to bring forward speculations smothered during the +previous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> reigns, and to scatter seeds that might spring up in new +literary forms. Burnet, Tillotson, and others might represent Whiggism in +the Church. But all the especially literary men whose services were +available at the beginning of the new reign were men who, whatever might +be their voluntary relations to the new order of things, had been more or +less trained in the school of the Restoration, and accustomed to the +supremacy of Dryden. The Earl of Rochester, the Earl of Roscommon, the +Duke of Buckingham, Etherege, and poor Otway, were dead; but Shadwell, +Settle, Lee, Crowne, Tate, Wycherley, the Earl of Dorset, Tom D’Urfey, and +Sir Charles Sedley, were still alive. Shadwell, coarse and fat as ever, +enjoyed the laureateship till his death in 1692, when Nahum Tate was +appointed to succeed him. Settle had degenerated in the City showman. Lee, +liberated from Bedlam, continued to write tragedies till April 1692, when +he tumbled over a bulk going home drunk at night through Clare Market, and +was killed or stifled among the snow. “Little starched Johnny Crowne” kept +up the respectability of his character. Wycherley lived as a man of +fashion about town, and wrote no more. Sedley and the Earl of Dorset were +also idle; and Tom D’Urfey made small witticisms, and called them “pills +to purge melancholy.” Among such men Dryden, so long as he cared to be +seen among them, held necessarily his old place. Nor were there any of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> +the younger men, as yet known, in whom the critics recognised, or who +recognised in themselves, any title to renounce allegiance to the +ex-laureate. Thomas Southerne had begun his prolific career as a dramatist +in 1682, when Dryden furnished him with a prologue to his first play; but, +though after the Revolution he made more money by his dramas than ever +Dryden had made by his, he was ashamed to admit the fact to Dryden +himself. Matthew Prior, twenty-four years of age at the Revolution, had +made his first literary appearance before it, in no less important a +character than that of one of Dryden’s political antagonists; but, though +<i>The Town and Country Mouse</i> had been a decided hit, and Dryden himself +was said to have winced under it, no one pretended that the author was +anything more than a clever young man who had sat in Dryden’s company and +turned his opportunities to account. Five years after the Revolution, +Congreve produced his first comedy at the age of twenty-four; but it was +Congreve’s greatest boast in after life that that comedy had won him the +warm praises of Dryden, and laid the foundation of the extraordinary +friendship which subsisted between them during Dryden’s last years, when +they used to walk together and dine together as father and son. During +these last years Dryden, had he been willing to see merit in any other +comedies than those of his young friend Congreve, might have hailed his +equal in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>Vanbrugh, and his superior in Farquhar, then beginning to write +for the stage. Among their coevals, destined to some distinction, he might +have marked Colley Cibber, Nicholas Rowe, and John Philips, the pleasing +parodist of Milton. Of the epics of Blackmore he had quite enough, at +least three of those performances having been given to the world before +Dryden died. At the time of Dryden’s death his kinsman, Jonathan Swift, +was thirty-three years of age; Richard Steele was thirty; Daniel Defoe was +thirty; Addison was twenty-nine; Shaftesbury, the essayist, was +twenty-nine; Bolingbroke was twenty-two; and Parnell, the poet, +twenty-one. With these men a new literary movement was to take its origin; +but they had hardly yet begun their work; and there was not one of them, +Swift excepted, that would not, in the height of his subsequent fame, have +been proud to acknowledge his obligations to Dryden. Alexander Pope, the +next Englishman that was to take a place in general literature as high as +that occupied by Dryden, had been born only in the year of the Revolution, +and was consequently but a precocious boy of thirteen when Dryden left the +scene. <i>Virgilium tantum vidit</i>, as he used himself to say.</p> + +<p>Living, a hale patriarch, among these newer men, Dryden partly influenced +them, and was partly influenced by them. On the one hand, it was from his +chair in Will’s Coffee-house that those literary decrees were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> issued +which still ruled the judgment of the town; and for a young author, on +visiting Will’s, to receive a pinch from Dryden’s snuff-box was equivalent +to his formal admission into that society of wits. On the other hand, the +times were so changed and the men were so changed that Dryden, dictator +though he was, had to yield in some points, and defend himself in others. +His cousin Swift, whom he had offended by an unfavourable judgment given +in private on some of his poems, was the only man who would have made a +general attack upon his literary reputation; but the moral character of +his writings was a subject on which adverse criticism was likely to be +more general. At first, indeed, there was little perceptible improvement +in the moral tone of the literature of the Revolution, as compared with +that of the Restoration—the elder dramatists, such as Shadwell, still +writing in the fashion to which they had been accustomed, and the younger +ones, such as Congreve and Vanbrugh, deeming it a point of honour to be as +immoral as their predecessors. In the course of a few years, however, what +with the influence of a Whig court, what with other causes, a more +delicate taste crept in, and people became ashamed of what their fathers +had delighted in. Dryden lived to see the beginnings of this important +change, and, with many expressions of regret for his own past +delinquencies in this respect, to welcome the appearance of a purer +literature.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>Those of Dryden’s writings which were produced during the twelve years of +his life subsequent to the Revolution constitute an important part of his +literary remains, not merely in point of bulk, but also in respect of a +certain general peculiarity of their character. They may be described as +for the most part belonging to the department of pure, as distinct from +that of controversial, literature. Dryden did not indeed wholly abandon +satire and controversy after the Revolution; but his aim after that period +seemed rather to be to produce such literature as would at once be +acceptable to the public and earn for himself most money with the least +trouble. Deprived of his laureateship, and so rendered almost entirely +dependent on his pen at a time when age was creeping upon him and the +expenses of his family were greater than ever, he was obliged to make +considerations of economy paramount in his choice of work. As was natural, +he fell back at first on the drama; and his five last plays, two of which +are tragedies, one an opera, and two comedies, were all produced between +1689 and 1694. The profits of these dramas, however, were insufficient; +and he was obliged to eke them out by all those devices of dedication to +private noblemen, execution of literary commissions for elegiac poems, and +the like, which then formed part of the professional author’s means of +livelihood. Sums of 50<i>l.</i>, 100<i>l.</i>, and even, in one or two cases, +500<i>l.</i>, were earned by Dryden in this disagreeable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> way from earls, +squires, and clubs of gentlemen. His poem of <i>Eleonora</i> was a 500<i>l.</i> +commission, executed for the Earl of Abingdon, who wanted a poem in memory +of his deceased wife, and, without knowing anything of Dryden personally, +applied to him to write it, just as now, in a similar case, a commission +might be given to a popular sculptor for a <i>post mortem</i> statue. In spite +of the utmost allowance for the custom of the time, no one knowing the +circumstances, can read the poem now, without disgust; and it does show a +certain lowness of mind in Dryden to have been able, under any pressure of +necessity, to write for hire such <ins class="correction" title="original: extravagan s">extravagances</ins> as that poem contains +respecting a person he had never seen. Far more honourable were Dryden’s +earnings by work done for Jacob Tonson, the publisher. His dealings with +Tonson had begun before the Revolution; but after the Revolution Tonson +was his mainstay. First came several volumes of miscellanies, consisting +of select poems, published and unpublished, with scraps of prose and +translation. Then, catching at the hint furnished by the success of some +of the scraps of translation from the Latin and Greek poets, Dryden and +Tonson found it mutually advantageous to prosecute that vein. Juvenal and +Persius were translated under Dryden’s care; and in 1697, after three +years of labour, he gave to the world his completed translation of +<i>Virgil</i>. Looking about for a task to succeed this, he undertook<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> to +furnish Tonson with so many thousands of lines of narrative verse, to be +published under the title of <i>Fables</i>. Where the fables came from Tonson +did not care, provided they would sell; and Dryden, with his rapid powers +of versification, soon produced versions of some tales of Chaucer and +Boccaccio which answered the purpose exceedingly well. They were printed +in 1699. Of the other poems written by Dryden in his last years his +<i>Alexander’s Feast</i> is the most celebrated. He continued his literary +labours till within a few days of his death, which happened on the 1st of +May, 1701.</p> + +<p>When we inquire what it is that makes Dryden’s name so important as to +entitle it to rank, as it seems to do, the fifth in the series of great +English poets after Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, we find +that it is nothing else than the fact, brought out in the preceding +sketch, that, steadily and industriously, for a period of forty-two years, +he kept in the front of the national literature, such as it then was. It +is because he represents the entire literary development of the +Restoration—it is because he fills up the whole interval between 1658 and +1701, thus connecting the age of Puritanism and Milton with the age of the +Queen Anne wits—that we give him such a place in such a list. The reason +is a chronological one, rather than one of strict comparison of personal +merits. Though we place Dryden fifth in the list, after Chaucer, Spenser, +Shakespeare, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> Milton, it is not necessarily because we regard him as +the co-equal of those men in genius; it is only because, passing onward in +time, we find his the next name of very distinguished magnitude after +theirs. Personally there is no one that would compare Dryden with +Shakespeare or Milton; and there are not many now that would compare him +with Chaucer or Spenser. On the whole, if the estimate is one of general +intellectual strength, he takes rank only with the first of the second +class, as with the Jonsons, the Fletchers, and others of the Elizabethan +age; while, if the estimate have regard to genuine poetic or imaginative +power, he sinks below even these. Yet, if historical reasons only are +regarded, Dryden has perhaps a better right to his place in the list than +any of the others. At least as strictly as Chaucer is the representative +of the English literature of the latter half of the fourteenth century, +far more strictly than Spenser and Shakespeare are the representatives of +the literature of their times, and in a more broad and obvious manner than +Milton is the literary representative of the Commonwealth, Dryden +represents the literary activity of the reigns of Charles II. and James +II., and of the greater part of that of William III. Davenant, Butler, +Waller, Etherege, Otway, Wycherley, Southerne, Prior, and Congreve, are +names leading us over the same period, and illustrating perhaps more +exquisitely than Dryden some of its individual characteristics; but for a +solid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> representative of the period as a whole, resuming in himself all +its more prominent characteristics in one substantial aggregate, we are +obliged to take Dryden. Twelve years of his literary life he laboured as a +strong junior among the Davenants, the Butlers, and the Wallers, +qualifying himself to set them aside; eighteen years more were spent in +acknowledged lordship over the Ethereges, Otways, and Wycherleys, who +occupied the middle of the period; and during the twelve concluding years +he was a patriarch among the Southernes, and Priors, and Congreves, in +whose lives the period wove itself into the next.</p> + +<p>And yet, personally as well as historically, Dryden is a man of no mean +importance. Not only is he the largest figure in one era of our +literature; he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a +whole. To begin with the most obvious, but at the same time not the least +noteworthy, of his claims, the <i>quantity</i> of his contributions to our +literature was large. He was a various and voluminous writer. In Scott’s +collected edition of his works they fill seventeen octavo volumes. About +seven of these volumes consist of dramas, with accompanying prefaces and +dedications, the number of dramas being in all twenty-eight. Two volumes +more embrace the polemical poems, the satires, and the poems of +contemporary historical allusion, written chiefly between 1681 and 1683. +One volume is filled with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> odes, songs, and lyrical pieces, written at +various times. The Fables, or Metrical Tales, redacted in his old age from +Chaucer and Boccaccio, occupy a volume and a half. Three volumes and a +half are devoted to the translations from the classic poets, including the +Translation of Virgil. The remaining two volumes consist of miscellaneous +prologues, epilogues, and witty pieces of verse, and of miscellaneous +prose-writings, original and translated, including the critical Essay on +Dramatic Poetry. Considered as a whole, the matter of the seventeen +volumes is a goodly contribution from one man as respects both extent and +variety. Spread over forty-two years, it does not argue that excessive +industry which Scott, of all men in the world, has found in it; but it +fairly entitles Dryden to take his place among those writers who deserve +regard for the quantity of their writings, in addition to whatever regard +they may be entitled to on the score, of quality. And it is a fact worth +noting, and remarked by Scott more than once, that most writers who have +taken a high place in literature have been voluminous—have not only +written well, but also written much. Moreover there are two ways of +writing much. One may write much and variously, or one may write much all +of one kind. Dryden was various as well as voluminous.</p> + +<p>Of all that Dryden wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small +portion that has won for itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> a permanent place in our literature; and +in this he differs from other writers that have been equally voluminous. +It is indeed a significant fact about Dryden that the proportion of that +part of his matter which survives, or deserves to survive, to that part +which was squandered away on the age it was first written for, and there +ended, is unusually small. In Shakespeare there is very little that is +felt to be of such inferior quality as not to be worth reading in due time +and place. In Milton there is, if we consider only his poetry, still less. +All Chaucer, almost, is felt to be worth preservation by those who like +Chaucer; all Wordsworth, almost, by those who like Wordsworth. But, except +for library purposes, there is no admirer of Dryden that would care to +save more than a small select portion of what he wrote. His satires and +polemical poems; one or two of his odes; his Translation of Virgil; his +fables; one of his comedies, and one of his tragedies, by way of specimen +of his dramatic powers; a complete set of his prologues, for the sake of +their allusions to contemporary manners and humours; and a few pieces of +his prose, to show his style of criticism:—these would together form a +collection not much more than a fourth part of the whole, and which would +require to be yet farther winnowed, were the purpose to leave only what is +sterling and in Dryden’s best manner. Mr. Bell’s edition, which comprise +in three volumes all Dryden’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> original non-dramatic poetry, and the best +collection of his prologues and epilogues yet made, is itself a surfeit of +matter. It is such an edition of Dryden as ought to be included in a +series of the English poets intended to be complete; but even in it there +is more of dross than of ore.</p> + +<p>What is the reason of this? How is it that in Dryden the proportion of +what is now rubbish to what is still precious as a literary possession is +so much greater than in most other writers of great celebrity? There are +two reasons for it. The first is, that originally, and in its own nature, +much of the matter that Dryden put forth was not of a kind for which his +genius was fitted. Whatever his own imagination constructed on the large +scale was mean and conventional. Wherever, as in his translations of +Virgil and his imitations of Chaucer and Boccaccio, he employed his powers +of language and verse in refurbishing matter invented by others, the +poetical substance of his writings is valuable; but the sheer produce of +his own imagination, as in his dramas, is in general such stuff as nature +disowns and no creature can take pleasure in. There is no fine power of +dramatic story, no exquisite invention of character or circumstance, no +truth to nature in ideal landscape: at the utmost, there is conventional +dramatic situation, with an occasional flash of splendid imagery such as +may be struck out in the heat of heroic declamation. Thus—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +“I am as free as Nature first made man,<br /> +Ere the base laws of servitude began,<br /> +When wild in woods the noble savage ran.”</p> + +<p>Dryden’s natural powers, as all his critics have remarked, lay not so much +in the imaginative as in the didactic, the declamatory, and the +ratiocinative. What Johnson claims for him, and what seems to have been +claimed for him in his own lifetime, was the credit of being one of the +best reasoners in verse that ever wrote. Lord Macaulay means very much the +same thing when he calls Dryden a great “critical poet,” and the founder +of the “critical school of English poetry.” Probably Milton meant +something of the kind when he said that Dryden was a rhymer, but no poet. +It was in declamatory and didactic rhyme, with all that could consist with +it, that Dryden excelled. It was in the metrical utterance of weighty +sentences, in the metrical conduct of an argument, in vehement satirical +invective, and in such passages of lyric passion as depended for their +effect on rolling grandeur of sound, that he was pre-eminently great. Even +his imagination worked more powerfully, and his perceptions of physical +circumstance became keener and truer, under the influence of polemical +rage, the pursuit of terse maxim, or the passion for sonorous declamation. +Thus—</p> + +<p class="poem">“And every shekel which he can receive<br /> +Shall cost a limb of his prerogative.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>Or, in his character of Shaftesbury,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Of these the false Achitophel was first:<br /> +A name to all succeeding ages curst;<br /> +For close designs and crooked counsels fit;<br /> +Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;<br /> +Restless, unfixed in principles and place;<br /> +In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;<br /> +A fiery soul, which, working out its way,<br /> +Fretted the pigmy body to decay,<br /> +And o’er-informed the tenement of clay.<br /> +A daring pilot in extremity,<br /> +Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,<br /> +He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,<br /> +Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.<br /> +Great wits are sure to madness near allied,<br /> +And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”</p> + +<p>Or, in the lines which he sent to Tonson the publisher as a specimen of +what he could do in the way of portrait-painting if Tonson did not send +him supplies—</p> + +<p class="poem">“With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,<br /> +With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,<br /> +And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air.”</p> + +<p>And, again, in almost every passage in the noble ode on Alexander’s Feast, +<i>e.g.</i>—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“With ravished ears</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The monarch hears;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Assumes the god,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Affects to nod,</span><br /> +And seems to shake the spheres.”</p> + +<p>In satire, in critical disquisition, in aphoristic verse, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> in lyrical +grandiloquence, Dryden was in his natural element; and one reason why, of +all the matter of his voluminous works, so small a portion is of permanent +literary value, is that, in his attempts after literary variety, he could +not or would not restrict himself within these proper limits of his +genius.</p> + +<p>But, besides this, Dryden was a slovenly worker within his own field. Even +of what he could do best he did little continuously in a thoroughly +careful manner. In his best poem there are not twenty consecutive lines +without some logical incoherence, some confusion of metaphor, some +inaccuracy of language, or some evident strain of the meaning for the sake +of the metre. His strength lies in passages and weighty interspersed +lines, not in whole poems. Even in Dryden’s lifetime this complaint was +made. It was hinted at in <i>The Rehearsal</i>; Rochester speaks of Dryden’s +“slattern muse;” and Blackmore, who criticised Dryden in his old age, +expresses the common opinion distinctly and deliberately—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,<br /> +What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!<br /> +How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay<br /> +And wicked mixture shall be purged away!<br /> +When once his boasted heaps are melted down,<br /> +A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown;<br /> +But what remains will be so pure, ’twill bear<br /> +The examination of the moot severe.”</p> + +<p>This is true, though it was Blackmore who said it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> Dryden’s slovenliness, +however, consisted not so much in a disposition to spare pains as in a +constitutional robustness which rendered artistic perfection all but +impossible to him even when he laboured hardest to attain it. One’s notion +of Dryden is that he was originally a <i>robust</i> man, who, when he first +engaged in poetry, could produce nothing better than strong stanzas of +rather wooden sound and mechanism, but who, by perseverance and continual +work, drilled his genius into higher susceptibility and a conscious +aptitude and mastery in certain directions, so that, the older he grew, he +became mellower, more musical, and more imaginative, what had been +robustness at first having by long practice been subdued into flexibility +and nerve. It is stated of Dryden that, in his earlier life at least, he +used, as a preparation for writing, to induce on himself an artificial +state of languor by taking medicine or letting blood. The trait is +characteristic. Dryden’s whole literary career was a metaphor of it. Had +he died before 1670, or even before 1681, when his <i>Annus Mirabilis</i> was +still his most ambitious production, he would have been remembered as +little more than a robust versifier; but, living as he did till 1701, he +performed work which has entitled him to rank among English poets. As a +contributor to the actual body of our literature, and as a man who +produced by his influence a lasting effect on its literary methods, +Dryden’s place is certainly high.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">DEAN SWIFT.</span></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">DEAN SWIFT.</span><small><a name="f7.1" id="f7.1" href="#f7">[7]</a></small></p> + +<p>In dividing the history of English literature into periods it is customary +to take the interval between the year 1688 and the year 1727 as +constituting one of those periods. This interval includes the reigns of +William III., Anne, and George I. If we do not bind ourselves too +precisely to the year 1727 as closing the period, the division is proper +enough. There <i>are</i> characteristics about the time thus marked out which +distinguish it from previous and from subsequent portions of our literary +history. Dryden, Locke, and some other notabilities of the Restoration, +lived into this period, and may be regarded as partly belonging to it; but +the names more peculiarly representing it are those of Swift, Burnet, +Addison, Steele, Pope, Shaftesbury, Gay, Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Prior, +Parnell, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Rowe, Defoe, and +Cibber. The names in this cluster disperse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> themselves over the three +reigns which the period includes, some of them having already been known +as early as the accession of William, while others survived the first +George and continued to add to their celebrity during the reign of his +successor; but the most brilliant portion of the period was from 1702 to +1714, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Hence the name of “Wits of Queen +Anne’s reign,” commonly applied to the writers of the whole period.</p> + +<p>A while ago this used to be spoken of as the Golden or Augustan age of +English literature. We do not talk in that manner now. We feel that when +we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George +we are among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among +giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have +an immediate sensation of having left the region of “greatness” behind us. +We still find plenty of good writing, characterized by certain qualities +of trimness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before +attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and +strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole, +there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be +called “great.” It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative +faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigour of speculative capacity, as +principally concerned in imparting the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> character of “greatness” to +literature. What of genius in the ideal survived the seventeenth century +in England contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and +circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral +quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy; and speculation did not +go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary +good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the +time of Milton than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind +of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and +his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armour of the old +literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope’s days even the +affectation of the “great” had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem +of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth +tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to +prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly +and courageously to throw one’s whole soul into a work of moral agitation +and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the +contrary, he was a wit, or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the +social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth in the easiest +manner little essays, squibs, and <i>jeux d’esprit</i>, pertinent to the rapid +occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much. +This was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> time when that great distinction between Whiggism and +Toryism which for a century-and-a-half has existed in Great Britain as a +kind of permanent social condition, affecting the intellectual activity of +all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically +operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of +England to have had this necessity of being either a Whig or a Tory put so +prominently before it. Perhaps, in all times, some similar necessity of +taking one side or the other in some current form of controversy has +afflicted the leading minds, and tormented the more genial among them; but +we question if ever in this country in previous times there was a form of +controversy, so little to be identified, in real reason, with the one only +true controversy between good and evil, and so capable, therefore, of +breeding confusion and mischief, when so identified in practice, as this +poor controversy of Whig and Tory which came in with the Revolution. To be +called upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier—there was some +possibility of complying with <i>that</i> call and still leading a tolerably +free and large intellectual life; though possibly it was one, cause of the +rich mental development of the Elizabethan era that the men of that time +were exempt from any personal obligation of attending even to this +distinction. But to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory—why, how +on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> him if society +is to hold him by the neck between two chairs such as these, pointing +alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on +which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard +adhesiveness to one or other of these chairs as the first rule of duty or +of prudence what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if +any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule? +Now-a-days, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both chairs +down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to +sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly it is that, in +recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the “great” or “sublime” in +literature—the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a +Tennyson. But in the interval between 1688 and 1727 there was not one wit +alive whom society let off from the necessity of being, and declaring +himself to be, either a Whig or a Tory. Constitutionally, and by +circumstances, Pope was the man who could have most easily obtained the +exemption; but even Pope professed himself a Tory. Addison and Steele were +Whigs. In short, every literary man was bound, by the strongest of all +motives, to keep in view, as a permanent fact qualifying his literary +undertakings, the distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, and to give to +at least a considerable part of his writings the character of pamphlets or +essays in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> service of his party. To minister by the pen to the +occasions of Whiggism and Toryism was, therefore, the main business of the +wits both in prose and verse. Out of those occasions of ministration there +of course arose personal quarrels, and these furnished fresh opportunities +to the men of letters. Critics of previous writings could be satirized and +lampooned, and thus the circle of subjects was widened. Moreover, there +was abundant matter, capable of being treated consistently with either +Whiggism or Toryism, in the social foibles and peculiarities of the day, +as we see in the <i>Tatler</i> and the <i>Spectator</i>. Nor could a genial mind +like that of Steele, a man of taste and fine thought like Addison, and an +intellect so keen, exquisite, and sensitive as that of Pope, fail to +variegate and surround all the duller and harder literature thus called +into being with more lasting touches of the humorous, the fanciful, the +sweet, the impassioned, the meditative, and the ideal. Thus from one was +obtained the character of a <i>Sir Roger de Coverley</i>, from another a +<i>Vision of Mirza</i>, and from the third a <i>Windsor Forest</i>, an <i>Epistle of +Héloïse</i>, and much else that delights us still. After all, however, it +remains true that the period of English literature now in question, +whatever admirable characteristics it may possess, exhibits a remarkable +deficiency of what, with recollections of former periods to guide us in +our use of epithets, we should call great or sublime.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>With the single exception of Pope, and that exception made from deference +to the peculiar position of Pope as the poet or metrical artist of his +day, the greatest name in the history of English literature during the +early part of last century is that of Swift. In certain fine and deep +qualities, Addison and Steele, and perhaps Farquhar, excelled him, just as +in the succeeding generation Goldsmith had a finer vein of genius than was +to be found in Johnson with all his massiveness; but in natural brawn and +strength, in original energy, force, and imperiousness of brain, he +excelled them all. It was about the year 1702, when he was already +thirty-five years of age, that this strangest specimen of an Irishman, or +of an Englishman born in Ireland, first attracted attention in London +literary circles. The scene of his first appearance was Button’s +coffee-house: the witnesses were Addison, Ambrose Philips, and other wits +belonging to Addison’s little senate, who used to assemble there.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“They had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman +come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any +of those who frequented it, and whose custom it was to lay his hat +down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for +half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming +in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He +then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away +without opening his lips. After having observed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> this singular +behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; +and the name that he went by among them was that of ‘the mad parson.’ +This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one +evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him +cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be +just come out of the country, and at last advance towards him as +intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb +mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get +near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very +abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, ‘Pray, sir, do +you remember any good weather in the world?’ The country gentleman, +after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the +oddity of the question, answered ‘Yes, sir, I thank God I remember a +great deal of good weather in my time.’ ‘That is more,’ said Swift, +‘than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or +too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, +at the end of the year ’tis all very well.’ Upon saying this, he took +up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least +notice of anyone, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those +who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and +still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad.”—<i>Dr. +Sheridan’s Life of Swift, quoted in Scott’s Life.</i></p></div> + +<p>If the company present had had sufficient means of information, they would +have found that the mad parson with the harsh, swarthy features, and eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> +“azure as the heavens,” whose oddities thus amused them, was Jonathan +Swift, then clergyman of Laracor, a rural parish in the diocese of Meath +in Ireland. They would have found that he was an Irishman by birth, though +of pure English descent; that he could trace a relationship to Dryden; +that, having been born after his father’s death, he had been educated, at +the expense of his relatives, at Trinity College, Dublin; that, leaving +Ireland in his twenty-second year, with but a sorry character from the +College authorities, he had been received as a humble dependent into the +family of Sir William Temple, at Sheen and Moorpark, near London, that +courtly Whig and ex-ambassador being distantly connected with his mother’s +family; that here, while acting as Sir William’s secretary, amanuensis, +librarian, and what not, he had begun to write verses and other trifles, +some of which he had shown to Dryden, who had told him in reply that they +were sad stuff, and that he would never be a poet; that still, being of a +restless, ambitious temper, he had not given up hopes of obtaining +introduction into public employment in England through Sir William +Temple’s influence; that, at length, at the age of twenty-eight, +despairing of anything better, he had quarrelled with Sir William, +returned to Ireland, taken priest’s orders, and settled in a living; and +that again, disgusted with Ireland and his prospects in that country, he +had come back to Moorpark, and resided there till<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> 1699, when Sir +William’s death had obliged him finally to return to Ireland, and accept +first a chaplaincy to Lord Justice Berkeley, and then his present living +in the diocese of Meath. If curious about the personal habits of this +restless Irish parson, they might have found that he had already won the +reputation of an eccentric in his own parish and district: performing his +parochial duties when at home with scrupulous care, yet by his language +and manners often shocking all ideas of clerical decorum and begetting a +doubt as to his sincerity in the religion he professed; boisterous, +fierce, overbearing, and insulting to all about him, yet often doing acts +of real kindness; exact and economical in his management of his income to +the verge of actual parsimony, yet sometimes spending money freely, and +never without pensioners living on his bounty. They would have found that +he was habitually irritable, and that he was subject to a recurring +giddiness of the head, or vertigo, which he had brought on, as he thought +himself, by a surfeit of fruit while he was staying with Sir William +Temple at Sheen. And, what might have been the best bit of gossip of all, +they would have found that, though unmarried, and entertaining a most +unaccountable and violent aversion to the very idea of marriage, he had +taken over to reside with him, or close to his neighbourhood, in Ireland, +a certain young and beautiful girl, named Hester Johnson, with whom he had +formed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> an acquaintance in Sir William Temple’s house, where she had been +brought up, and where, though she passed as a daughter of Sir William’s +steward, she was believed to be, in reality, a natural daughter of Sir +William himself. They would have found that his relations to this girl, +whom he had himself educated from her childhood at Sheen and Moorpark, +were of a very singular and puzzling kind; that on the one hand she was +devotedly attached to him, and on the other he cherished a passionate +affection for her, wrote and spoke of her as his “Stella,” and liked +always to have her near him; yet that a marriage between them seemed not +to be thought of by either; and that, in order to have her near him +without giving rise to scandal, he had taken the precaution to bring over +an elderly maiden lady, called Mrs. Dingley, to reside with her as a +companion, and was most careful to be in her society only when this Mrs. +Dingley was present.</p> + +<p>There was mystery and romance enough, therefore, about the wild, +black-browed Irish parson, who attracted the regards of the wits in +Button’s coffee-house. What had brought him there? That was partly a +mystery too; but the mystery would have been pretty well solved if it had +been known that, uncouth-looking clerical lout as he was, he was an author +like the rest of them, having just written a political pamphlet which was +making or was to make a good deal of noise in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> world, and having at +that moment in his pocket at least one other piece which he was about to +publish. The political pamphlet was an <i>Essay on the Civil Discords in +Athens and Rome</i>, having an obvious bearing on certain dissensions then +threatening to break up the Whig party in Great Britain. It was received +as a vigorous piece of writing on the ministerial side, and was ascribed +by some to Lord Somers, and by others to Burnet. Swift had come over to +claim it, and to see what it and his former connexion with Temple could do +for him among the leading Whigs. For the truth was, an ambition equal to +his consciousness of power gnawed at the heart of this furious and gifted +man, whom a perverse fate had flung away into an obscure vicarage on the +wrong side of the channel. His books, his garden, his canal with its +willows at Laracor; his dearly-beloved Roger Coxe, and the other perplexed +and admiring parishioners of Laracor over whom he domineered; his clerical +colleagues in the neighbourhood; and even the society of Stella, the +wittiest and best of her sex, whom he loved better than any other creature +on earth: all these were insufficient to occupy the craving void in his +mind. He hated Ireland, and regarded his lot there as one of banishment; +he longed to be in London, and struggling in the centre of whatever was +going on. About the date of his appointment to the living of Laracor he +had lost the rich deanery of Derry, which Lord Berkeley had meant to give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> +him, in consequence of a notion on the part of the bishop of the diocese +that he was a restless, ingenious young man, who, instead of residing, +would be “eternally flying backwards and forwards to London.” The bishop’s +perception of his character was just. At or about the very time when the +wits at Button’s saw him stalking up and down in the coffee-house, the +priest of Laracor was introducing himself to Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, +and others, and stating the terms on which he would support the Whigs with +his pen. Even then, it seems, he took high ground, and let it be known +that he was no mere hireling. The following, written at a much later +period, is his own explanation of the nature and limits of his Whiggism at +the time when he first offered the Whigs his services:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“It was then (1701-2) I began to trouble myself with the differences +between the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed +myself in other, and, I think, much better speculations. I talked +often upon this subject with Lord Somers; told him that, having been +long conversant with the Greek and Latin authors, and therefore a +lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be what they call a +Whig in politics; and that, besides, I thought it impossible, upon +any other principles, to defend or submit to the Revolution; but, as +to religion, I confessed myself to be a High-Churchman, and that I +could not conceive how anyone who wore the habit of a clergyman could +be otherwise; that I had observed very well with what insolence and +haughtiness some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> lords of the High-Church party treated not only +their own chaplains, but all other clergymen whatsoever, and thought +this was sufficiently recompensed by their professions of zeal to the +Church: that I had likewise observed how the Whig lords took a direct +contrary measure, treated the persons of particular clergymen with +particular courtesy, but showed much contempt and ill-will for the +order in general: that I knew it was necessary for their party to +make their bottom as wide as they could, by taking all denominations +of Protestants to be members of their body: that I would not enter +into the mutual reproaches made by the violent men on either side; +but that the connivance or encouragement given by the Whigs to those +writers of pamphlets who reflected upon the whole body of the clergy, +without any exception, would unite the Church to one man to oppose +them; and that I doubted his lordship’s friends did not consider the +consequences of this.”</p></div> + +<p>Even with these limitations the assistance of so energetic a man as the +parson of Laracor was doubtless welcome to the Whigs. His former connexion +with the stately old Revolution Whig, Sir William Temple, may have +prepared the way for him, as it had already been the means of making him +known in some aristocratic families. But there was evidence in his +personal bearing and his writings that he was not a man to be neglected. +And, if there had been any doubt on the subject on his first presentation +of himself to ministers, the publication of his <i>Battle of the Books</i> and +his <i>Tale of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> Tub</i> in 1703 and 1704 would have set it overwhelmingly at +rest. The author of these works (and, though they were anonymous, they +were at once referred to Swift) could not but be acknowledged as the first +prose satirist, and one of the most formidable writers, of the age. On his +subsequent visits to Button’s, therefore (and they were frequent enough; +for, as the Bishop of Derry had foreseen, he was often an absentee from +his parish), the mad Irish parson was no longer a stranger to the company. +Addison, Steele, Tickell, Philips, and the other Whig wits came to know +him well, and to feel his weight among them in their daily convivial +meetings. “To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest +friend, and the greatest genius of the age” was the inscription written by +Addison on a copy of his Travels presented to Swift; and it shows what +opinion Addison and those about him had formed of the author of the <i>Tale +of a Tub</i>.</p> + +<p>Thus, passing and repassing between Laracor and London, now lording it +over his Irish parishioners, and now filling the literary and Whig haunts +of the great metropolis with the terror of his merciless wit and with talk +behind his back of his eccentricities and rude manners, Swift spent the +interval between 1702 and 1710, or between his thirty-sixth and his +forty-fourth year. His position as a High-Church Whig, however, was an +anomalous one. In the first place, it was difficult<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> to see how such a man +could honestly be in the Church at all. People were by no means strict in +those days in their notions of the clerical character; but the <i>Tale of a +Tub</i> was a strong dose even then to have come from a clergyman. If +Voltaire afterwards recommended the book as a masterly satire against +religion in general, it cannot be wondered at that an outcry arose among +Swift’s contemporaries respecting the profanity of the book. It is true, +Peter and Jack, as the representatives of Popery and Presbyterianism, came +in for the greatest share of the author’s scurrility; and Martin, as the +representative of the Church of England, was left with the honours of the +story; but the whole structure and spirit of the story, to say nothing of +the oaths and other irreverences mingled with its language, were well +calculated to shock the more serious even of Martin’s followers, who could +not but see that rank infidelity alone would be a gainer by the book. +Accordingly, despite all that Swift could afterwards do, the fact that he +had written this book left a public doubt as to his Christianity. It is +quite possible, however, that, with a very questionable kind of belief in +Christianity, he may have been a conscientious High-Churchman, zealous for +the social defence and aggrandisement of the ecclesiastical institution +with which he was connected. Whatever that institution was originally +based upon, it existed as part and parcel of the commonwealth of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> England, +rooted in men’s habits and interests, and intertwined with the whole +system of social order; and, just as a Brahmin, lax enough in his own +speculative allegiance to the Brahminical faith, might still desire to +maintain Brahminism as a vast pervading establishment in Hindostan, so +might Swift, with a heart and a head dubious enough respecting men’s +eternal interest in the facts of the Judæan record, see a use +notwithstanding in that fabric of bishoprics, deaneries, prebends, +parochial livings, and curacies, which ancient belief in those facts had +first created and put together. This kind of respect for the Church +Establishment is still very prevalent. It is a most excellent thing, it is +thought by many, to have a cleanly, cultured, gentlemanly man invested +with authority in every parish throughout the land, who can look after +what is going on, fill up schedules, give advice, and take the lead in all +parish business. That Swift’s faith in the Church included no more than +this perception of its uses as a vast administrative and educational +establishment we will not say. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, openly avows his +opinion that Swift had no belief in the Christian religion. “Swift’s,” he +says, “was a reverent, was a pious spirit—he could love and could pray;” +but such religion as he had, Mr. Thackeray hints, was a kind of mad, +despairing Deism, and had nothing of Christianity in it. Hence, “having +put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> in his bands.” The +question thus broached as to the nature of Swift’s religion is too deep to +be discussed here. Though we would not exactly say, with Mr. Thackeray, +that Swift’s was a “reverent” and “pious” spirit, there are, as he phrases +it, breakings out of “the stars of religion and love” shining in the +serene blue through “the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of +Swift’s life;” and this, though vague, is about all that we have warrant +for saying. As to the zeal of his Churchmanship, however, there is no +doubt at all. There was not a man in the British realms more pugnacious in +the interests of his order, more resolute in defending the prerogatives of +the Church of England against Dissenters and others desirous of limiting +them, or more anxious to elevate the social position and intellectual +character of the clergy, than the author of the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>. No +veteran commander of a regiment could have had more of the military than +the parson of Laracor had of the ecclesiastical <i>esprit de corps</i>; and, +indeed, Swift’s known dislike to the military may be best explained as the +natural jealousy of the surplice at the larger consideration accorded by +society to the scarlet coat. Almost all Swift’s writings between 1702 and +1710 are assertions of his High-Church sentiments and vindications of the +Establishment against its assailants. Thus in 1708 came forth his <i>Letter +on the Sacramental Test</i>, a hot High-Church and anti-Dissenter pamphlet;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> +and this was followed in the same year by his <i>Sentiments of a Church of +England man with respect to Religion and Government</i>, and by his ironical +argument, aimed at free-thinkers and latitudinarians, entitled <i>Reasons +against Abolishing Christianity</i>. In 1709 he published a graver pamphlet, +under the name of <i>A Project for the Advancement of Religion</i>, in which he +urged certain measures for the reform of public morals and the +strengthening of the Establishment, recommending in particular a scheme of +Church-extension. Thus, with all his readiness to help the Whigs +politically, Swift was certainly faithful to his High-Church principles. +But, as we have said, a High-Church Whig was an anomaly which the Whigs +refused to comprehend. Latitudinarians, Low Churchmen, and Dissenters, did +not know what to make of a Whiggism in state-politics which was conjoined +with the strongest form of ecclesiastical Toryism. Hence, in spite of his +ability, Swift was not a man that the Whigs could patronise and prefer. +They were willing to have the benefit of his assistance, but their favours +were reserved for men more wholly their own. Various things were, indeed, +talked of for Swift—the secretaryship to the proposed embassy of Lord +Berkeley in Vienna, a prebend of Westminster, the office of +historiographer-royal; nay, even a bishopric in the American colonies: but +all came to nothing. Swift, at the age of forty-three, and certified<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> by +Addison as “the greatest genius of the age,” was still only an Irish +parson, with some 350<i>l.</i> or 400<i>l.</i> a year. How strange if the plan of +the Transatlantic bishopric had been carried out, and Swift had settled in +Virginia!</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, though neglected by the English Whigs, Swift had risen to be a +leader among the Irish clergy, a great man in their convocations and other +ecclesiastical assemblies. The object which the Irish clergy then had at +heart was to procure from the Government an extension to Ireland of a boon +granted several years before to the clergy of England: namely, the +remission of the tax levied by the Crown on the revenues of the Church +since the days of Henry VIII. in the shape of tenths and first-fruits. +This remission, which would have amounted to about 16,000<i>l.</i> a year, the +Whigs were not disposed to grant, the corresponding remission in the case +of England not having been followed by the expected benefits. Archbishop +King and the other prelates were glad to have Swift as their agent in this +business; and, accordingly, he was absent from Ireland for upwards of +twelve months continuously in the years 1708 and 1709. It was during this +period that he set London in a roar by his famous Bickerstaff hoax, in +which he first predicted the death of Partridge, the astrologer, at a +particular day and hour, and then nearly drove the wretched tradesman mad +by declaring, when the time was come, that the prophecy had been +fulfilled,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> and publishing a detailed account of the circumstances. Out of +this Bickerstaff hoax, and Swift’s talk over it with Addison and Steele, +arose the <i>Tatler</i>, prolific parent of so many other periodicals.</p> + +<p>The year 1710 was an important one in the life of Swift. In that year he +came over to London, resolved in his own mind to have a settlement of +accounts with the Whigs, or to break with them for ever. The Irish +ecclesiastical business of the tenths and first-fruits was still his +pretext, but he had many other arrears to introduce into the account. +Accordingly, after some civil skirmishing with Somers, Halifax, and his +other old friends, then just turned out of office, he openly transferred +his allegiance to the new Tory administration of Harley and Bolingbroke. +The 4th of October, not quite a month after his arrival in London, was the +date of his first interview with Harley; and from that day forward till +the dissolution of Harley’s administration by the death of Queen Anne, in +1714, Swift’s relations with Harley, St. John, and the other ministers, +were more those of an intimate friend and adviser than a literary +dependent. How he dined almost daily with Harley or St. John; how he +bullied them, and made them beg his pardon when by chance they offended +him—either, as Harley once did, by offering him a fifty-pound note, or, +as St. John once did, by appearing cold and abstracted when Swift was his +guest at dinner; how he obtained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> from them not only the settlement of the +Irish business, but almost everything else he asked; how he used his +influence to prevent Steele, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and his other Whig +literary friends, from suffering loss of office by the change in the state +of politics, at the same time growing cooler in his private intercourse +with Addison and poor Dick, and tending more to young Tory writers, such +as Pope and Parnell; how, with Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, and St. John, +he formed the famous club of the <i>Scriblerus</i> brotherhood, for the satire +of literary absurdities; how he wrote squibs, pamphlets, and lampoons +innumerable for the Tories and against the Whigs, and at one time actually +edited a Tory paper called the <i>Examiner</i>: all this is to be gathered, in +most interesting detail, from his epistolary journal to Stella, in which +he punctually kept her informed of all his doings during his long three +years of absence. The following is a description of him at the height of +his Court influence during this season of triumph, from the Whiggish, and +therefore somewhat adverse, pen of Bishop Kennet:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, +Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as +master of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to +his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain’s place +established in the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in +that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> +sermons to pay the fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake +with my lord-treasurer that, according to his petition, he should +obtain a salary of 200<i>l.</i> per annum as minister of the English +church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the +red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to +him from my lord-treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant, +to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book, and wrote down +several things as <i>memoranda</i> to do for him. He turned to the fire, +and took out his gold watch, and, telling him the time of day, +complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. ‘How +can I help it,’ says the Doctor, ‘if the courtiers give me a watch +that won’t go right?’ Then he instructed a young nobleman that the +best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a +translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them +all subscribe; ‘for,’ says he, ‘the author shall not begin to print +till I have a thousand guineas for him.’ Lord-treasurer, after +leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to +follow him: both went off just before prayers.”</p></div> + +<p>Let us see, by a few pickings from the journal to Stella, in what manner +the black-browed Irish vicar, who was thus figuring in the mornings at +Court as the friend and confidant of Ministers, and almost as their +domineering colleague, was writing home from his lodging in the evenings +to the “dear girls” at Laracor.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span><i>Dec. 3, 1710.</i> “Pshaw, I must +be writing to those dear saucy brats every night whether I will or no, let me have what business I will, +or come home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but it is an old +saying and a true one, ‘Be you lords or be you earls, you must write +to naughty girls.’ I was to-day at Court, and saw Raymond [an Irish +friend] among the beefeaters, staying to see the Queen; so I put him +in a better station, made two or three dozen bows, and went to +church, and then to Court again to pick up a dinner, as I did with +Sir John Stanley: and then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just +left him; and ’tis near eleven at night, young women, and methinks +this letter comes very near to the bottom,” &c. &c.</p> + +<p><i>Jan. 1, 1711.</i> Morning. “I wish my dearest pretty Dingley and Stella +a happy new year, and health, and mirth, and good stomachs, and +<i>Fr’s</i> company. Faith, I did not know how to write <i>Fr</i>. I wondered +what was the matter; but now I remember I always write <i>Pdfr</i> [by +this combination of letters, or by the word <i>Presto</i>, Swift +designates himself in the Journal] * * Get the <i>Examiners</i>, and read +them; the last nine or ten are full of reasons for the late change +and of the abuses of the last ministry; and the great men assure me +that all are true. They were written by their encouragement and +direction. I must rise, and go see Sir Andrew Fountain; but perhaps +to-morrow I may answer <i>M.D.’s</i> [Stella’s designation in the Journal] +letter: so good morrow, my mistresses all, good morrow. I wish you +both a merry new year; roast beef, minced pies, and good strong beer; +and me a share of your good cheer; that I was there or you were here; +and you’re a little saucy dear,” &c. &c.</p> + +<p><i>Jan. 13, 1711.</i> “O faith, I had an ugly giddy fit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> last night in my +chamber, and I have got a new box of pills to take, and I hope shall +have no more this good while. I would not tell you before, because it +would vex you, little rogues; but now it is better. I dined to-day +with Lord Shelburn,” &c. &c.</p> + +<p><i>Jan. 16, 1711.</i> “My service to Mrs. Stode and Walls. Has she a boy +or a girl? A girl, hmm!, and died in a week, hmmm!, and was poor +Stella forced to stand for godmother?—Let me know how accounts +stand, that you may have your money betimes. There’s four months for +my lodging; that must be thought on too. And zoo go dine with Manley, +and lose your money, doo extravagant sluttikin? But don’t fret. It +will just be three weeks when I have the next letter: that is, +to-morrow. Farewell, dearest beloved <i>M.D.</i>, and love poor, poor +Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, as hope to +be saved.”</p> + +<p><i>March 7, 1711.</i> “I am weary of business and ministers. I don’t go to +a coffee-house twice a month. I am very regular in going to sleep +before eleven. And so you say that Stella’s a pretty girl; and so she +be; and methinks I see her just now, as handsome as the day’s long. +Do you know what? When I am writing in our language [a kind of +baby-language of endearment used between him and Stella, and called +‘the little language’] I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking +it. I caught myself at it just now. * * Poor Stella, won’t Dingley +leave her a little daylight to write to Presto? Well, well, we’ll +have daylight shortly, spite of her teeth; and zoo must cly Zele, and +Hele, and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate <i>Pdfr</i>, pay? Iss, and so la +shall. And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood Mollow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> [You must cry There +and Here and Here again. Must you imitate <i>Pdfr</i>, pray? Yes, and so +you shall. And so there’s for the letter. Good morrow.]”</p></div> + +<p>And so on, through a series of daily letters, forming now a goodly octavo +volume or more, Swift chats and rattles away to the “dear absent girls,” +giving them all the political gossip of the time, and informing them about +his own goings-out and comings-in, his dinings with Harley, St. John, and +occasionally with Addison and other old Whig friends, the state of his +health, his troubles with his drunken servant Patrick, his +lodging-expenses, and a host of other things. Such another journal has, +perhaps, never been given to the world; and but for it we should never +have known what depths of tenderness and power of affectionate prattle +there were in the heart of this harsh and savage man.</p> + +<p>Only on one topic, affecting himself during his long stay in London, is he +in any degree reserved. Among the acquaintanceships he had formed was one +with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a widowed lady of property, who had a family of +several daughters. The eldest of these, Hester Vanhomrigh, was a girl of +more than ordinary talent and accomplishments, and of enthusiastic and +impetuous character; and, as Swift acquired the habit of dropping in upon +the “Vans,” as he called them, when he had no other dinner engagement, it +was not long before he and Miss Vanhomrigh fell into the relationship of +teacher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> and pupil. He taught her to think and to write verses; and, as +among Swift’s peculiarities of opinion, one was that he entertained what +would even now be called very advanced notions as to the intellectual +capabilities and rights of women, he found no more pleasant amusement, in +the midst of his politics and other business, than that of superintending +the growth of so hopeful a mind.</p> + +<p class="poem">“His conduct might have made him styled<br /> +A father, and the nymph his child:<br /> +The innocent delight he took<br /> +To see the virgin mind her book<br /> +Was but the master’s secret joy<br /> +In school to hear the finest boy.”</p> + +<p>But, alas! Cupid got among the books.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Vanessa, not in years a score,<br /> +Dreams of a gown of forty-four;<br /> +Imaginary charms can find<br /> +In eyes with reading almost blind;<br /> +She fancies music in his tongue,<br /> +Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.”</p> + +<p>Nay, more: one of Swift’s lessons to her had been that frankness, whether +in man or women, was the chief of the virtues, and</p> + +<p class="poem">“That common forms were not design’d<br /> +Directors to a noble mind.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>“Then,” said the nymph,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">“I’ll let you see</span><br /> +My actions with your rules agree;<br /> +That I can vulgar forms despise,<br /> +And have no secrets to disguise.”</p> + +<p>She told her love, and fairly argued it out with the startled tutor, +discussing every element in the question, whether for or against—the +disparity of their ages, her own five thousand guineas, their similarity +of tastes, his views of ambition, the judgment the world would form of the +match, and so on; and the end of it was that she reasoned so well that +Swift could not but admit that there would be nothing after all so very +incongruous in a marriage between him and Esther Vanhomrigh. So the matter +rested, Swift gently resisting the impetuosity of the young woman, when it +threatened to take him by storm, but not having the courage to adduce the +real and conclusive argument—the existence on the other side of the +channel of another and a dearer Esther. Stella, on her side, knew that +Swift visited a family called the “Vans”; she divined that something was +wrong; but that was all.</p> + +<p>That Swift, the Mentor of ministers, their daily companion, at whose +bidding they dispensed their patronage and their favour, should himself be +suffered to remain a mere vicar of an Irish parish, was, of course, +impossible. Vehement and even boisterous and overdone as was his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> zeal for +his own independence—“If we let these great ministers pretend too much, +there will be no governing them,” was his maxim; and, in order to act up +to it, he used to treat Dukes and Earls as if they were dogs—there were +yet means of honourably acknowledging his services in a way to which he +would have taken no exception. Nor can we doubt that Oxford and St. John, +who were really and heartily his admirers, were anxious to promote him in +some suitable manner. An English bishopric was certainly what he coveted, +and what they would at once have given him. But, though the bishopric of +Hereford fell vacant in 1712, there was, as Sir Walter Scott says, “a lion +in the path.” Queen Anne, honest dowdy woman,—her instinctive dislike of +Swift strengthened by the private influence of the Archbishop of York, and +that of the Duchess of Somerset, whose red hair Swift had +lampooned—obstinately refused to make the author of the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> a +bishop. Even an English deanery could not be found for so questionable a +Christian; and in 1713 Swift was obliged to accept, as the best thing he +could get, the Deanery of St. Patrick’s in his native city of Dublin. He +hurried over to Ireland to be installed, and came back just in time to +partake in the last struggles and dissensions of the Tory administration +before Queen Anne’s death. By his personal exertions with ministers, and +his pamphlet entitled <i>Public Spirit of the Whigs</i>, he tried to buoy up +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> sinking Tory cause. But the Queen’s death destroyed all; with George +I. the Whigs came in again; the late Tory ministers were dispersed and +disgraced, and Swift shared their fall. “Dean Swift,” says Arbuthnot, +“keeps up his noble spirit; and, though like a man knocked down, you may +behold him still with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his +adversaries.” He returned, with rage and grief in his heart, to Ireland, a +disgraced man, and in danger of arrest on account of his connexion with +the late ministers. Even in Dublin he was insulted as he walked in the +streets.</p> + +<p>For twelve years—that is, from 1714 to 1726—Swift did not quit Ireland. +At his first coming, as he tells us in one of his letters, he was +“horribly melancholy;” but the melancholy began to wear off; and, having +made up his mind to his exile in the country of his detestation, he fell +gradually into the routine of his duties as Dean. How he boarded in a +private family in the town, stipulating for leave to invite his friends to +dinner at so much a head, and only having two evenings a week at the +deanery for larger receptions; how he brought Stella and Mrs. Dingley from +Laracor, and settled them in lodgings on the other side of the Liffey, +keeping up the same precautions in his intercourse with them as before, +but devolving the management of his receptions at the deanery upon Stella, +who did all the honours of the house; how he had his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> way in all +cathedral business, and had always a few clergymen and others in his +train, who toadied him, and took part in the facetious horse-play of which +he was fond; how gradually his physiognomy became known to the citizens, +and his eccentricities familiar to them, till the “Dean” became the lion +of Dublin, and everybody turned to look at him as he walked in the +streets; how, among the Dean’s other oddities, he was popularly charged +with stinginess in his entertainments and a sharp look-out after the wine; +how sometimes he would fly off from town, and take refuge in some +country-seat of a friendly Irish nobleman; how all this while he was +reading books of all kinds, writing notes and jottings, and corresponding +with Pope, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Oxford, Bolingbroke, and other literary +and political friends in London or abroad: these are matters in the +recollection of all who have read any of the biographies of Swift. It is +also known that it was during this period that the Stella-and-Vanessa +imbroglio reached its highest degree of entanglement. Scarcely had the +Dean located Stella and Mrs. Dingley in their lodging in Dublin when, as +he had feared, the impetuous Vanessa crossed the Channel to be near him +too. Her mother’s death, and the fact that she and her younger sister had +a small property in Ireland, were pretext enough. A scrap or two from +surviving letters will tell the sequel, and will suggest the state of the +relations at this time between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> Swift and this unhappy and certainly very +extraordinary, woman:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: London, Aug. 12, 1714.</i> “I had your letter +last post, and before you can send me another I shall set out for +Ireland. * * * If you are in Ireland when I am there, I shall see you +very seldom. It is not a place for any freedom, but where everything +is known in a week, and magnified a hundred degrees. These are +rigorous laws that must be passed through; but it is probable we may +meet in London in winter; or, if not, leave all to fate.”</p> + +<p><i>Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714</i> (<i>some time after August</i>). +“You once had a maxim, which was to act what was right, and not mind +what the world would say. I wish you would keep to it now. Pray, what +can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman? I cannot +imagine. You cannot but know that your frowns make my life +unsupportable. You have taught me to distinguish, and then you leave +me miserable.”</p> + +<p><i>Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714.</i> “You bid me be easy, and +you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said as +often as you could get the better of your inclinations so much, or as +often as you remembered there was such a one in the world. If you +continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me +long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw +you last. I am sure I could have bore the rack much better than those +killing, killing words of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die +without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did +not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts +one to find relief in this world. I must give way to it, and beg +you’d see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you’d not condemn +any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason +I write to you is because I cannot tell it to you should I see you. +For, when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is +something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb.”</p></div> + +<p>Here a gap intervenes, which record fills up with but an indication here +and there. Swift saw Vanessa, sometimes with that “something awful in his +looks which struck her dumb,” sometimes with words of perplexed kindness; +he persuaded her to go out, to read, to amuse herself; he introduced +clergymen to her—one of them afterwards Archbishop of Cashel—as suitors +for her hand; he induced her to leave Dublin, and go to her property at +Selbridge, about twelve miles from Dublin, where now and then he went to +visit her, where she used to plant laurels against every time of his +coming, and where “Vanessa’s bower,” in which she and the Dean used to +sit, with books and writing materials before them, during those happy +visits, was long an object of interest to tourists; he wrote kindly +letters to her, some in French, praising her talents, her conversation, +and her writing, and saying that he found in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> “<i>tout ce que la nature +a donnée à un mortel, l’honneur, la vertu, le bon sens, l’esprit, la +douceur, l’agrément et la fermeté d’âme</i>.” All did not suffice; and one +has to fancy, during those long years, the restless beatings, on the one +hand, of that impassioned woman’s heart, now lying as cold +undistinguishable ashes in some Irish grave, and, on the other hand, the +distraction, and anger, and daily terror, of the man she clung to. For, +somehow or other, there <i>was</i> an element of terror mingled with the +affair. What it was is beyond easy scrutiny, though possibly the data +exist if they were well sifted. The ordinary story is that some time in +the midst of those entanglements with Vanessa, and in consequence of their +effects on the rival-relationship—Stella having been brought almost to +death’s door by the anxieties caused her by Vanessa’s proximity, and by +her own equivocal position in society—the form of marriage was gone +through by Swift and Stella, and they became legally husband and wife, +although with an engagement that the matter should remain secret, and that +there should be no change in their manner of living. The year 1716, when +Swift was forty-nine years of age, and Stella thirty-two, is assigned as +the date of this event; and the ceremony is said to have been performed in +the garden of the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher. But more mystery +remains. “Immediately subsequent to the ceremony,” says Sir Walter Scott, +“Swift’s state of mind appears to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> been dreadful. Delany (as I have +learned from a friend of his widow) said that about the time it was +supposed to have taken place he observed Swift to be extremely gloomy and +agitated—so much so that he went to Archbishop King to mention his +apprehensions. On entering the library, Swift rushed out with a +countenance of distraction, and passed him without speaking. He found the +archbishop in tears, and, upon asking the reason, he said, ‘You have just +met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness +you must never ask a question.’” What are we to make of this? Nay more, +what are we to make of it when we find that the alleged marriage of Swift +with Stella, with which Scott connects the story, is after all denied by +some as resting on no sufficient evidence: even Dr. Delany, though he +believed in the marriage, and supposed it to have taken place about the +time of this remarkable interview with the archbishop, having no certain +information on the subject? If we assume a secret marriage with Stella, +indeed, the subsequent portion of the Vanessa story becomes more +explicable. On this assumption we are to imagine Swift continuing his +letters to Vanessa, and his occasional visits to her at Selbridge on the +old footing, for some years after the marriage, with the undivulged secret +ever in his mind, increasing tenfold his former awkwardness in +encountering her presence. And so we come to the year 1720,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> when, as the +following scraps will show, a new paroxysm on the part of Vanessa brought +on a new crisis in their relations.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720.</i> “Believe me, it is with +the utmost regret that I now write to you, because I know your +good-nature such that you cannot see any human creature miserable +without being sensibly touched. Yet what can I do? I must either +unload my heart, and tell you all its griefs, or sink under the +inexpressible distress I now suffer by your prodigious neglect of me. +It is now ten long weeks since I saw you, and in all that time I have +never received but one letter from you, and a little note with an +excuse. Oh, have you forgot me? You endeavour by severities to force +me from you. Nor can I blame you; for, with the utmost distress and +confusion, I behold myself the cause of uneasy reflections to you. +Yet I cannot comfort you, but here declare that it is not in the +power of art, time, or accident, to lessen the inexpressible passion +I have for ——. Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me +as distant from you as the earth will allow; yet you cannot banish +those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the +use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul; for +there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it. +Therefore do not flatter yourself that separation will ever change my +sentiments; for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my +heart is at once pierced with sorrow and love. For Heaven’s sake, +tell me what has caused this prodigious change in you which I have +found of late.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span><i>Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1720.</i> * * “I believe you thought +I only rallied when I told you the other night that I would pester +you with letters. Once more I advise you, if you have any regard for +your quiet, to alter your behaviour quickly; for I do assure you I +have too much spirit to sit down contented with this treatment. +Because I love frankness extremely, I here tell you now that I have +determined to try all manner of human arts to reclaim you; and, if +all these fail, I am resolved to have recourse to the black one, +which, it is said, never does. Now see what inconveniency you will +bring both yourself and me unto * *. When I undertake a thing, I +don’t love to do it by halves.”</p> + +<p><i>Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720.</i> “If you write as you do, I +shall come the seldomer on purpose to be pleased with your letters, +which I never look into without wondering how a brat that cannot read +can possibly write so well. * * Raillery apart, I think it +inconvenient, for a hundred reasons, that I should make your house a +sort of constant dwelling-place. I will certainly come as often as I +conveniently can; but my health and the perpetual run of ill weather +hinder me from going out in the morning, and my afternoons are taken +up I know not how; so that I am in rebellion with a hundred people +besides yourself for not seeing them. For the rest, you need make use +of no other black art besides your ink. It is a pity your eyes are +not black, or I would have said the same; but you are a white witch, +and can do no mischief.”</p> + +<p><i>Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720.</i> “I received your letter +when some company was with me on Saturday<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> night, and it put me in +such confusion that I could not tell what to do. This morning a woman +who does business for me told me she heard I was in love with one, +naming you, and twenty particulars; that little master —— and I +visited you, and that the Archbishop did so; and that you had +abundance of wit, &c. I ever feared the tattle of this nasty town, +and told you so; and that was the reason why I said to you long ago +that I would see you seldom when you were in Ireland; and I must beg +you to be easy, if, for some time, I visit you seldomer, and not in +so particular a manner.”</p> + +<p><i>Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720.</i> * * “Solitude is +unsupportable to a mind which is not easy. I have worn out my days in +sighing and my nights in watching and thinking of ——, who thinks +not of me. How many letters shall I send you before I receive an +answer? * * Oh that I could hope to see you here, or that I could go +to you! I was born with violent passions, which terminate all in +one—that inexpressible passion I have for you. * * Surely you cannot +possibly be so taken up but you might command a moment to write to me +and force your inclinations to so great a charity. I firmly believe, +if I could know your thoughts (which no human creature is capable of +guessing at, because never anyone living thought like you), I should +find you had often in a rage wished me religious, hoping then I +should have paid my devotions to Heaven. But that would not spare +you; for, were I an enthusiast, still you’d be the deity I should +worship. What marks are there of a deity but what you are to be known +by? You are present everywhere; your dear <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>image is always before my +eyes. Sometimes you strike me with that prodigious awe I tremble with +fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your +countenance, which revives my soul. Is it not more reasonable to +adore a radiant form one has seen than one only described?”</p> + +<p><i>Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, October 15, 1720.</i> “All the +morning I am plagued with impertinent visits, below any man of sense +or honour to endure, if it were any way avoidable. Afternoons and +evenings are spent abroad in walking to keep off and avoid spleen as +far as I can; so that, when I am not so good a correspondent as I +could wish, you are not to quarrel and be governor, but to impute it +to my situation, and to conclude infallibly that I have the same +respect and kindness for you I ever professed to have.”</p> + +<p><i>Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Gaullstoun, July 5, 1721.</i> * * “Settle +your affairs, and quit this scoundrel-island, and things will be as +you desire. I can say no more, being called away. <i>Mais soyez assurée +que jamais personne au monde n’a été aimée, honorée, estimée, adorée +par votre ami que vous.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>Vanessa did not quit the “scoundrel-island;” but, on the contrary, +remained in it, unmanageable as ever. In 1722, about a year after the date +of the last scrap, the catastrophe came. In a wild fit Vanessa, as the +story is, took the bold step of writing to Stella, insisting on an +explanation of the nature of Swift’s engagements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> to her; Stella placed +the letter in Swift’s hands; and Swift, in a paroxysm of fury, rode +instantly to Selbridge, saw Vanessa without speaking, laid a letter on her +table, and rode off again. The letter was Vanessa’s death-warrant. Within +a few weeks she was dead, having previously revoked a will in which she +had bequeathed all her fortune to Swift.</p> + +<p>Whatever may have been the purport of Vanessa’s communication to Stella, +it produced no change in Swift’s relations to the latter. The pale pensive +face of Hester Johnson, with her “fine dark eyes” and hair “black as a +raven,” was still to be seen on reception-evenings at the deanery, where +also she and Mrs. Dingley would sometimes take up their abode when Swift +was suffering from one of his attacks of vertigo and required to be +nursed. Nay, during those very years in which, as we have just seen, Swift +was attending to the movements to and fro of the more imperious Vanessa in +the background, and assuaging her passion by visits and letters, and +praises of her powers, and professions of his admiration of her beyond all +her sex, he was all the while keeping up the same affectionate style of +intercourse as ever with the more gentle Stella, whose happier lot it was +to be stationed in the centre of his domestic circle, and addressing to +her, in a less forced manner, praises singularly like those he addressed +to her rival. Thus, every year, on Stella’s birth-day, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> wrote a little +poem in honour of the occasion. Take the one for 1718, beginning thus:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Stella this day is thirty-four<br /> +(We sha’n’t dispute a year or more):<br /> +However, Stella, be not troubled;<br /> +Although thy size and years be doubled<br /> +Since first I saw thee at sixteen,<br /> +The brightest virgin on the green,<br /> +So little is thy form declined,<br /> +Made up so largely in thy mind.”</p> + +<p>Stella would reciprocate these compliments by verses on the Dean’s +birth-day; and one is struck with the similarity of her acknowledgments of +what the Dean had taught her and done for her to those of Vanessa. Thus, +in 1721,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“When men began to call me fair,<br /> +You interposed your timely care;<br /> +You early taught me to despise<br /> +The ogling of a coxcomb’s eyes;<br /> +Show’d where my judgment was misplaced,<br /> +Refined my fancy and my taste.<br /> +You taught how I might youth prolong<br /> +By knowing what was right and wrong;<br /> +How from my heart to bring supplies<br /> +Of lustre to my fading eyes;<br /> +How soon a beauteous mind repairs<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>The loss of changed or falling hairs;<br /> +How wit and virtue from within<br /> +Send out a smoothness o’er the skin:<br /> +Your lectures could my fancy fix,<br /> +And I can please at thirty-six.”</p> + +<p>The death of Vanessa in 1722 left Swift from that time entirely Stella’s. +How she got over the Vanessa affair in her own mind, when the full extent +of the facts became known to her, can only be guessed. When some one +alluded to the fact that Swift had written beautifully about Vanessa, she +is reported to have said “That doesn’t signify, for we all know the Dean +could write beautifully about a broomstick.” “A woman, a true woman!” is +Mr. Thackeray’s characteristic comment.</p> + +<p>To the world’s end those who take interest in Swift’s life will range +themselves either on the side of Stella or on that of Vanessa. Mr. +Thackeray prefers Stella, but admits that, in doing so, though the +majority of men may be on his side, he will have most women against him. +Which way Swift’s <i>heart</i> inclined him it is not difficult to see. Stella +was the main influence of his life; the intimacy with Vanessa was but an +episode. And yet, when he speaks of the two women as a critic, there is a +curious equality in his appreciation of them. Of Stella he used to say +that her wit and judgment were such that “she never failed to say the best +thing that was said wherever she was in company;” and one of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> +epistolary compliments to Vanessa is that he had “always remarked that, +neither in general nor in particular conversation, had any word ever +escaped her lips that could by possibility have been better.” Some little +differences in his preceptorial treatment of them may be discerned—as +when he finds it necessary to admonish poor Stella for her incorrigibly +bad spelling, no such admonition, apparently, being required for Vanessa; +or when, in praising Stella, he dwells chiefly on her honour and gentle +kindliness, whereas in praising Vanessa he dwells chiefly on her genius +and force of mind. But it is distinctly on record that his regard for both +was founded on his belief that in respect of intellect and culture both +were above the majority of their sex. And here it may be repeated that, +not only from the evidence afforded by the whole story of Swift’s +relations to these two women, but also from the evidence of distinct +doctrinal passages scattered through his works, it appears that those who +in the present day maintain the co-equality of the two sexes, and the +right of women to as full and varied an education, and as free a social +use of their powers, as is allowed to men, may claim Swift as a pioneer in +their cause. Both Stella and Vanessa have left their testimony that from +the very first Swift took care to indoctrinate them with peculiar views on +this subject; and both thank him for having done so. Stella even goes +further, and almost urges Swift to do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> on the great scale what he had done +for her individually:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“O turn your precepts into laws;<br /> +Redeem the woman’s ruin’d cause;<br /> +Retrieve lost empire to our sex,<br /> +That men may bow their rebel necks.”</p> + +<p>This fact that Swift had a <i>theory</i> on the subject of the proper mode of +treating and educating women, which theory was in antagonism to the ideas +of his time, explains much both in his conduct as a man and in his habits +as a writer.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>For the first six years of his exile in Ireland after the death of Queen +Anne, Swift had published nothing of any consequence, and had kept aloof +from politics, except when they were brought to his door by local +quarrels. In 1720, however, he again flashed forth as a political +luminary, in a character that could hardly have been anticipated—that of +an Irish patriot. Taking up the cause of the “scoundrel-island,” to which +he belonged by birth, if not by affection, and to which fate had consigned +him in spite of all his efforts, he made that cause his own. Virtually +saying to his old Whig enemies, then in power on the other side of the +water, “Yes, I am an Irishman, and I will show you what an Irishman is,” +he constituted himself the representative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> of the island, and hurled it, +with all its pent-up mass of rage and wrongs, against Walpole and his +administration. First, in revenge for the commercial wrongs of Ireland +came his <i>Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, utterly +Rejecting and Renouncing Everything Wearable that comes from England</i>; +then, amidst the uproar and danger excited by this proposal, other and +other defiances in the same tone; and lastly, in 1723, on the occasion of +the royal patent to poor William Wood to supply Ireland, without her own +consent, with a hundred and eight thousand pounds’ worth of copper +half-pence of English manufacture, the unparalleled <i>Drapier’s Letters</i>, +which blasted the character of the coppers and asserted the nationality of +Ireland. All Ireland, Catholic as well as Protestant, blessed the Dean of +St. Patrick’s; associations were formed for the defence of his person; +and, had Walpole and his Whigs succeeded in bringing him to trial, it +would have been at the expense of an Irish rebellion. From that time till +his death Swift was the true King of Ireland; only when O’Connell arose +did the heart of the nation yield equal veneration to any single chief; +and even at this day the grateful Irish, forgetting his gibes against +them, and forgetting his continual habit of distinguishing between the +Irish population as a whole and the English and Protestant part of it to +which he belonged himself, cherish his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> memory with loving enthusiasm, and +speak of him as the “great Irishman.” Among the phases of Swift’s life +this of his having been an Irish patriot and agitator deserves to be +particularly remembered.</p> + +<p>In the year 1726 Swift, then in his sixtieth year, and in the full flush +of his new popularity as the champion of Irish nationality, visited +England for the first time since Queen Anne’s death. Once there, he was +loth to return; and a considerable portion of the years 1726 and 1727 was +spent by him in or near London. This was the time of the publication of +<i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, which had been written some years before, and also +of some <i>Miscellanies</i>, which were edited for him by Pope. It was at +Pope’s villa at Twickenham that most of his time was spent; and it was +there and at this time that the long friendship between Swift and Pope +ripened into that extreme and affectionate intimacy which they both lived +to acknowledge. Gay, Arbuthnot, and Bolingbroke, now returned from exile, +joined Pope in welcoming their friend. Addison had been dead several +years. Prior was dead, and also Vanbrugh and Parnell. Steele was yet +alive; but between him and Swift there was no longer any tie. Political +and aristocratic acquaintances, old and new, there were in abundance, all +anxious once again to have Swift among them to fight their battles. Old +George I. had not long to live, and the Tories were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> trying again to come +into power in the train of the Prince of Wales. There were even chances of +an arrangement with Walpole, with possibilities, in that or in some other +way, that Swift should not die a mere Irish dean. These prospects were but +temporary. The old King died; and, contrary to expectation, George II. +retained Walpole and his Whig colleagues. In October, 1727, Swift left +England for the last time. He returned to Dublin just in time to watch +over the death-bed of Stella, who expired, after a lingering illness, in +January, 1728. Swift was then in his sixty-second year.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>The story of the remaining seventeen years of Swift’s life—for, with all +his maladies, bodily and mental, his strong frame withstood, for all that +time of solitude and gloom, the wear of mortality—is perhaps better known +than any other part of his biography. How his irritability and +eccentricities and avarice grew upon him, so that his friends and servants +had a hard task in humouring him, we learn from the traditions of others; +how his memory began to fail, and other signs of breaking-up began to +appear, we learn from himself;—</p> + +<p class="poem">“See how the Dean begins to break!<br /> +Poor gentleman he droops apace;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>You plainly find it in his face.<br /> +That old vertigo in his head<br /> +Will never leave him till he’s dead.<br /> +Besides, his memory decays;<br /> +He recollects not what he says;<br /> +He cannot call his friends to mind,<br /> +Forgets the place where last he dined,<br /> +Plies you with stories o’er and o’er;<br /> +He told them fifty times before.”</p> + +<p>The fire of his genius, however, was not yet burnt out. Between 1729 and +1736 he continued to throw out satires and lampoons in profusion, +referring to the men and topics of the day, and particularly to the +political affairs of Ireland; and it was during this time that his +<i>Directions to Servants</i>, his <i>Polite Conversation</i>, and other well-known +facetiæ, first saw the light. From the year 1736, however, it was well +known in Dublin that the Dean was no more what he had been, and that his +recovery was not to be looked for. The rest will be best told in the words +of Sir Walter Scott:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The last scene was now rapidly approaching, and the stage darkened +ere the curtain fell. From 1736 onward the Dean’s fits of periodical +giddiness and deafness had returned with violence; he could neither +enjoy conversation nor amuse himself with writing, and an obstinate +resolution which he had formed not to wear glasses prevented him from +reading. The following dismal letter to Mrs. Whiteway [his cousin, +and chief attendant in his last days] in 1740 is almost the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> +document which we possess of the celebrated Swift as a rational and +reflecting being. It awfully foretells the catastrophe which shortly +after took place.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">‘I have been very miserable all night, and to-day extremely deaf and +full of pain. I am so stupid and confounded that I cannot express the +mortification I am under both in body and mind. All I can say is that +I am not in torture, but I daily and hourly expect it. Pray let me +know how your health is and your family. I hardly understand one word +I write. I am sure my days will be very few; few and miserable they +must be.</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">‘I am, for these few days,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">‘Yours entirely,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">‘<span class="smcap">J. Swift.</span>’</span></p> + +<p class="blockquot">‘If I do not blunder, it is Saturday, July 26th, 1740.’</p> + +<p>“His understanding having totally failed soon after these melancholy +expressions of grief and affection, his first state was that of +violent and furious lunacy. His estate was put under the management +of trustees, and his person confided to the care of Dr. Lyons, a +respectable clergyman, curate to the Rev. Robert King, prebendary of +Dunlavin, one of Swift’s executors. This gentleman discharged his +melancholy task with great fidelity, being much and gratefully +attached to the object of his care. From a state of outrageous +frenzy, aggravated by severe bodily suffering, the illustrious Dean +of St. Patrick’s sank into the situation of a helpless changeling. In +the course of about three years he is only known to have spoken once +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>or twice. At length, when this awful moral lesson had subsisted from +1743 until the 19th of October, 1745, it pleased God to release him +from this calamitous situation. He died upon that day without a +single pang, so gently that his attendants were scarce aware of the +moment of his dissolution.”</p></div> + +<p>Swift was seventy-eight years of age at the time of his death, having +outlived all his contemporaries of the Queen Anne cluster of wits, with +the exception of Bolingbroke, Ambrose Philips, and Cibber. Congreve had +died in 1729; Steele in the same year; Defoe in 1731; Gay in 1732; +Arbuthnot in 1735; Tickell in 1740; and Pope, who was Swift’s junior by +twenty-one years, in 1744. Swift, therefore, is entitled in our literary +histories to the place of patriarch as well as to that of chief among the +Wits of Queen Anne’s reign; and he stands nearest to our own day of any of +them whose writings we still read. As late as the year 1820 a person was +alive who had seen Swift as he lay dead in the deanery before his burial, +great crowds going to take their last look of him. “The coffin was open; +he had on his head neither cap nor wig; there was not much hair on the +front or very top, but it was long and thick behind, very white, and was +like flax upon the pillow.” Such is the last glimpse we have of Swift on +earth. Exactly ninety years afterwards the coffin was taken up from its +resting-place in the aisle of the cathedral; and the skull of Swift, the +white locks now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> all mouldered away from it, became an object of +scientific curiosity. Phrenologically, it was a disappointment, the +extreme lowness of the forehead striking everyone, and the so-called +organs of wit, causality, and comparison being scarcely developed at all. +There were peculiarities, however, in the shape of the interior, +indicating larger capacity of brain than would have been inferred from the +external aspect. Stella’s coffin was exhumed, and her skull examined at +the same time. The examiners found the skull “a perfect model of symmetry +and beauty.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Have we said too much in declaring that of all the men who illustrated +that period of our literary history which lies between the Revolution of +1688 and the beginning or middle of the reign of George II. Swift alone +(Pope excepted, and he only on certain definite and peculiar grounds) +fulfils to any tolerable extent those conditions which would entitle him +to the epithet of “great,” already refused to his age as a whole? We do +not think so. Swift <i>was</i> a great genius; nay, if by <i>greatness</i> we +understand general mass and energy rather than any preconceived +peculiarity of quality, he was the greatest genius of his age. Neither +Addison, nor Steele, nor Pope, nor Defoe, possessed, in anything like the +same degree, that which Goethe and Niebuhr, seeking a name for a certain +attribute found often present, as they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> thought, in the higher and more +forcible order of historic characters, agreed to call the <i>demonic</i> +element. Indeed very few men in our literature, from first to last, have +had so much of this element in them—perhaps the sign and source of all +real greatness—as Swift. In him it was so obvious as to attract notice at +once. “There is something in your looks,” wrote Vanessa to him, “so awful +that it strikes me dumb;” and again, “Sometimes you strike me with that +prodigious awe I tremble with fear;” and again, “What marks are there of a +deity that you are not known by?” True, these are the words of a woman +infatuated with love; but there is evidence that, wherever Swift went, and +in whatever society he was, there was this magnetic power in his presence. +Pope felt it; Addison felt it; they all felt it. We question if, among all +our literary celebrities, from first to last, there has been one more +distinguished for being personally formidable to all who came near him.</p> + +<p>And yet, in calling Swift a great genius, we clearly do not mean to rank +him in the same order of greatness with such men among his predecessors as +Spenser, or Shakespeare, or Milton, or such men among his successors as +Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. We even retain instinctively the right +of not according to him a certain kind of admiration which we bestow on +such men of his own generation as Pope, Steele, and Addison. How is this? +What is the drawback about Swift’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> genius which prevents us from +referring him to that highest order of literary greatness to which we do +refer others who in respect of hard general capacity were apparently not +superior to him, and on the borders of which we also place some who in +that respect were certainly his inferiors? To make the question more +special, why do we call Milton great in quite a different sense from that +in which we consent to confer the same epithet on Swift?</p> + +<p>Altogether, it will be said, Milton was a greater man than Swift; his +intellect was higher, richer, deeper, grander, his views of things were +more profound, grave, stately, and exalted. This is a true enough +statement of the case; and one likes that comprehensive use of the word +intellect which it implies, wrapping up, as it were, all that is in and +about a man in this one word, so as to dispense with the distinctions +between imaginative and non-imaginative, spiritual and unspiritual +natures, and make every possible question about a man a mere question in +the end as to the size or degree of his intellect. But such a mode of +speaking is too violent and recondite for common purposes. According to +the common use of the word intellect, it might be maintained (we do not +say it would) that Swift’s intellect, his strength of mental grasp, was +equal to Milton’s, and yet that, by reason of the fact that his +intellectual style was different, or that he did not grasp things +precisely in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> Miltonic way, a distinction might be drawn unfavourable +to his genius as compared with that of Milton. According to such a view, +we must seek for that in Swift’s genius upon which it depends that, while +we accord to it all the admiration we bestow on strength, our sympathies +with height or sublimity are left unmoved. Nor have we far to seek. When +Goethe and Niebuhr generalized in the phrase “the demonic element” that +mystic something which they seemed to detect in men of unusual potency +among their fellows, they used the word “demonic,” not in its English +sense, as signifying what appertains specially to the demons or powers of +darkness, but in its Greek sense, as equally implying the unseen agencies +of light and good. The demonic element in a man, therefore, may in one +case be the demonic of the etherial and celestial, in another the demonic +of the Tartarean and infernal. There is a demonic of the +<i>super</i>natural—angels, and seraphs, and white-winged airy messengers, +swaying men’s phantasies from above; and there is a demonic of the +<i>infra</i>-natural—fiends and shapes of horror tugging at men’s thoughts +from beneath. The demonic in Swift was of the latter kind. It is false, it +would be an entire mistake as to his genius, to say that he regarded, or +was inspired by, only the worldly and the secular—that men, women, and +their relations in the little world of visible life, were all that his +intellect cared to recognise. He also, like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> our Miltons and our +Shakespeares, and all our men who have been anything more than prudential +and pleasant writers, had his being anchored in things and imaginations +beyond the visible verge. But, while it was given to them to hold rather +by things and imaginations belonging to the region of the celestial, to +hear angelic music and the rustling of seraphic wings, it was his +unhappier lot to be related rather to the darker and subterranean +mysteries. One might say of Swift that he had far less of belief in a God +than of belief in a Devil. He is like a man walking on the earth and among +the busy haunts of his fellow-mortals, observing them and their ways, and +taking his part in the bustle, all the while, however, conscious of the +tuggings downward of secret chains reaching into the world of the demons. +Hence his ferocity, his misanthropy, his <i>sæva indignatio</i>, all of them +true forms of energy, imparting unusual potency to a life, but forms of +energy bred of communion with what outlies nature on the lower or infernal +side.</p> + +<p>Swift, doubtless, had this melancholic tendency in him constitutionally +from the beginning. From the first we see him an unruly, rebellious, +gloomy, revengeful, unforgiving spirit, loyal to no authority, and +gnashing under every restraint. With nothing small or weak in his nature, +too proud to be dishonest, bold and fearless in his opinions, capable of +strong attachments and of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> hatred as strong, it was to be predicted that, +if the swarthy Irish youth, whom Sir William Temple received into his +house when his college had all but expelled him for contumacy, should ever +be eminent in the world, it would be for fierce and controversial, and not +for beautiful or harmonious, activity. It is clear, however, on a survey +of Swift’s career, that the gloom and melancholy which characterized it +were not altogether congenital, but, in part at least, grew out of some +special circumstance, or set of circumstances, having a precise date and +locality among the facts of his life. In other words, there was some +secret in Swift’s life, some root of bitterness or remorse, diffusing a +black poison throughout his whole existence. That communion with the +invisible almost exclusively on the infernal side—that consciousness of +chains wound round his own moving frame at the one end, and at the other +held by demons in the depths of their populous pit, while no cords of love +were felt sustaining him from the countervailing heaven—had its origin, +in part at least, in some one recollection or cause of dread. It was some +one demon down in that pit that held the chains; the others but assisted +him. Thackeray’s perception seems to us exact when he says of Swift that +“he goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil;” or +again, changing the form of the figure, that “like Abudah, in the Arabian +story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> night +will come, and the inevitable hag with it.” What was this Fury, this hag +that duly came in the night, making the mornings horrible by the terrors +of recollection, the evenings horrible by those of anticipation, and +leaving but a calm hour at full mid-day? There was a secret in Swift’s +life: what was it? His biographers as yet have failed to agree on this +dark topic. Thackeray’s hypothesis, that the cause of Swift’s despair was +chiefly his consciousness of disbelief in the creed to which he had sworn +his professional faith, does not seem to us sufficient. In Swift’s days, +and even with his frank nature, we think that difficulty could have been +got over. There was nothing, at least, so unique in the case as to justify +the supposition that this was what Archbishop King referred to in that +memorable saying to Dr. Delany, “You have just met the most miserable man +on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a +question.” Had Swift made a confession of scepticism to the Archbishop, we +do not think the prelate would have been taken so very much by surprise. +Nor can we think, with some, that Swift’s vertigo (now pronounced to have +been increasing congestion of the brain), and his life-long certainty that +it would end in idiocy or madness, are the true explanation of this +interview and of the mystery which it shrouds. There was cause enough for +melancholy here, but not exactly the cause that meets<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> the case. Another +hypothesis there is of a physical kind, which Scott and others hint at, +and which finds great acceptance with the medical philosophers. Swift, it +is said, was of “a cold temperament,” &c., &c. But why a confession on the +part of Swift that he was not a marriageable man, even had he added that +he desired, above all things in the world, to be a person of that sort, +should have so moved the heart of an Archbishop as to make him shed tears, +one cannot conceive. Besides, although this hypothesis might explain much +of the Stella and Vanessa imbroglio, it would not explain all; nor do we +see on what foundation it could rest. Scott’s assertion that all through +Swift’s writings there is no evidence of his having felt the tender +passion is simply untrue. On the whole, the hypothesis which has been +started of a too near consanguinity between Swift and Stella, either known +from the first to one or both, or discovered too late, would most nearly +suit the conditions of the case. And yet, as far as we have seen, this +hypothesis also rests on air, with no one fact to support it. Could we +suppose that Swift, like another Eugene Aram, went through the world with +a murder on his mind, it might be taken as a solution of the mystery; but, +as we cannot do this, we must be content with supposing that either some +one of the foregoing <ins class="correction" title="original: hpyotheses">hypotheses</ins>, or some combination of them, is to be +accepted, or that the matter is altogether inscrutable.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>Such by constitution as we have described him—with an intellect strong as +iron, much acquired knowledge, an ambition all but insatiable, and a +decided desire to be wealthy—Swift, almost as a matter of course, flung +himself impetuously into that Whig and Tory controversy which was the +question paramount in his time. In that he laboured as only a man of his +powers could, bringing to the side of the controversy on which he chanced +to be (and we believe when he was on a side it was honestly because he +found a certain preponderance of right in it) a hard and ruthless vigour +which served it immensely. But from the first, or at all events after the +disappointments of a political career had been experienced by him, his +nature would not work merely in the narrow warfare of Whiggism and +Toryism, but overflowed in general bitterness of reflection on all the +customs and ways of humanity. The following passage in <i>Gulliver’s Voyage +to Brobdingnag</i>, describing how the politics of Europe appeared to the +King of Brobdingnag, shows us Swift himself in his larger mood of thought.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into +the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; +wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was +so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise +reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess that, +after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved +country, of our trade, and wars by sea and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>land, of our schisms in +religion and parties in the state, the prejudices of his education +prevailed so far that he could not forbear taking me up in his right +hand, and, stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of +laughing asking me whether <i>I</i> was a Whig or Tory. Then, turning to +his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff nearly +as tall as the mainmast of the ‘Royal Sovereign,’ he observed how +contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by +such diminutive insects as I; ‘And yet,’ says he, ‘I dare engage +these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they +contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; +they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they +dispute, they cheat, they betray.’ And thus he continued on, while my +colour came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble +country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the +arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, truth, the +pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated.”</p></div> + +<p>Swift’s writings, accordingly, divide themselves, in the main, into two +classes,—pamphlets, tracts, lampoons, and the like, bearing directly on +persons and topics of the day, and written with the ordinary purpose of a +partisan; and satires of a more general aim, directed, in the spirit of a +cynic philosopher, against humanity on the whole, or against particular +human classes, arrangements, and modes of thinking. In some of his +writings the politician and the general satirist<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> are seen together. The +<i>Drapier’s Letters</i> and most of the poetical lampoons exhibit Swift in his +direct character as a party-writer; in the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> we have the +ostensible purpose of a partisan masking a reserve of general scepticism; +in the <i>Battle of the Books</i> we have a satire partly personal to +individuals, partly with a reference to a prevailing tone of opinion; in +the <i>Voyage to Laputa</i> we have a satire on a great class of men; and in +the <i>Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag</i>, and still more in the story of +the <i>Houyhnhnms</i> and <i>Yahoos</i>, we have human nature itself analysed and +laid bare.</p> + +<p>Swift took no care of his writings, never acknowledged some of them, never +collected them, and suffered them to find their way about the world as +chance, demand, and the piracy of publishers, directed. As all know, it is +in his character as a humourist, an inventor of the preposterous as a +medium for the reflective, and above all as a master of irony, that he +takes his place as one of the chiefs of English literature. There can be +no doubt that, as regards the literary form which he affected most, he +took hints from Rabelais as the greatest original in the realm of the +absurd. Sometimes, as in his description of the Strulbrugs in the <i>Voyage +to Laputa</i>, he approaches the ghastly power of that writer; but on the +whole there is more of stern English realism in him, and less of sheer +riot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> and wildness. Sometimes, however, Swift throws off the disguise of +the humourist, and speaks seriously and in his own name. On such occasions +we find ourselves in the presence of a man of strong, sagacious, and +thoroughly English mind, content, as is the habit of most Englishmen, with +vigorous proximate sense, expressed in plain and rather coarse idiom. For +the speculative he shows in these cases neither liking nor aptitude: he +takes obvious reasons and arguments as they come to hand, and uses them in +a robust, downright, Saxon manner. In one respect he stands out +conspicuously even among plain Saxon writers—his total freedom from cant. +Johnson’s advice to Boswell, “above all things to clear his mind of cant,” +was perhaps never better illustrated than in the case of Dean Swift. +Indeed, it might be given as a summary definition of Swift’s character +that he had cleared his mind of cant without having succeeded in filling +the void with song. It was Swift’s intense hatred of cant—cant in +religion, cant in morality, cant in literature—that occasioned many of +those peculiarities which shock people in his writings. His principle +being to view things as they are, with no regard to the accumulated cant +of orators and poets, he naturally prosecuted his investigations into +those classes of facts which orators and poets have omitted as unsuitable +for their purposes. If they had viewed men as Angels, he would view them +as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> Yahoos. If they had placed the springs of action among the fine +phrases and the sublimities, he would trace them down into their secret +connections with the bestial and the obscene. Hence, as much as for any of +those physiological reasons which some of his biographers assign for it, +his undisguised delight in filth. And hence, also, probably—since among +the forms of cant he included the traditional manner of speaking of women +in their relations to men—his studious contempt, whether in writing for +men or for women, of all the accustomed decencies. It was not only the +more obvious forms of cant, however, that Swift had in aversion. Even to +that minor form of cant which consists in the “trite” he gave no quarter. +Whatever was habitually said by the majority of people seemed to him, for +that very reason, not worthy of being said at all, much less put into +print. A considerable portion of his writings, as, for example, his +<i>Tritical Essay on the Faculties of the Mind</i>, and his <i>Art of Polite +Conversation</i>—in the one of which he strings together a series of the +most threadbare maxims and quotations to be found in books, offering the +compilation as a gravely original disquisition, while in the other he +imitates the insipidity of ordinary table-talk in society—may be regarded +as showing a systematic determination on his part to turn the trite into +ridicule. Hence, in his own writings, though he refrains from the +profound, he never falls into the commonplace.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Apart from Swift’s other +views, there are to be found scattered through his writings not a few +distinct propositions of an innovative character respecting our social +arrangements. We have seen his doctrine as to the education of women; and +we may mention, as another instance of the same kind, his denunciation of +the system of standing armies as incompatible with freedom. Curiously +enough, also, it was Swift’s belief that, Yahoos though we are, the world +is always in the right.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY.</span></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="big">HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY.</span><small><a name="f8.1" id="f8.1" href="#f8">[8]</a></small></p> + +<p>Some of the ways in which Literature may illustrate History are obvious +enough. In the poems, the songs, the dramas, the novels, the satires, the +speeches, even the speculative treatises, of any time or nation, there is +imbedded a wealth of direct particulars respecting persons and events, +additional to the information that has been transmitted in the formal +records of that time or nation, or in its express histories of itself. “It +has often come to my ears that it is a saying too frequently in your mouth +that you have lived long enough for yourself:” so did Cicero, if the +speech in which the passage occurs is really his, address Cæsar face to +face, in the height of his power, and not long before his assassination, +remonstrating with him on his melancholy, and his carelessness of a life +so precious to Rome and to the world. If the words are any way authentic, +what a flash they are into the mind of the great Roman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> in his last years, +when, <i>blasé</i> with wars and victories, and all the sensations that the +largest life on earth could afford, he walked about the streets of Rome, +consenting to live on so long as there might be need, but, so far as he +himself was concerned, heedless when the end might come, the conspirators +in a ring round him, the short scuffle, the first sharp stab of the +murderous knife!</p> + +<p>Let this pass as one instance of a valuable illustration of Biography and +History derived from casual reading. Literature teems with such: no one +can tell what particles of direct historical and biographical information +lie yet undiscovered and unappropriated in miscellaneous books. But there +is an extension of the use for the historian of the general literature of +the time with which he may be concerned. Not only does Literature teem +with yet unappropriated anecdotes respecting the persons and events of +most prominent interest in the consecutive history of the world; but quite +apart from this, the books, and especially the popular books, of any time, +are the richest possible storehouses of the kind of information the +historian wants. Whatever may be the main thread of his narrative, he has +to re-imagine more or less vividly what is called the general life of the +time, its manners, customs, humours, ways of thinking, the working of its +institutions, all the peculiarities of that patch of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>never-ending, +ever-changing rush and bustle of human affairs, to-day above the ground, +and to-morrow under. Well, here in the books of the time he has his +materials and aids. They were formed in the conditions of the time; the +time played itself into them; they are saturated with its spirit; and +costumes, customs, modes of eating and drinking, town-life, country life, +the traveller on horseback to his inn, the shoutings of mobs in riot, what +grieved them, what they hated, what they laughed at, all are there. No +matter of what kind the book is, or what was its author’s aim; it is, in +spite of itself, a bequest out of the very body and being of that time, +reminding us thereof by its structure through and through, and by a crust +of innumerable allusions. It has been remarked by Hallam, and by others, +how particularly useful in this way for the historian, as furnishing him +with social details of past times, are popular books more especially of +the humorous order—comic dramas and farces, poems of occasion, and novels +and works of prose-fiction generally. How the plays of Aristophanes admit +us to the public life of Athens! How, as we read the Satires and Epistles +of Horace, we see old Rome, like another huge London, only with taller +houses, and the masons mending the houses, and the poet himself, like a +modern official in Somerset House, trudging along to his office, jostled +by the crowds, and having to get out of the way of the ladders<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> and the +falling rubbish, thinking all the while of his appointment with Mæcenas! +Or, if it is the reign of George II. in Britain that we are studying, +where shall we find better illustration of much of the life, and +especially the London life, of that coarse, wig-wearing age, than in the +novels of Fielding and Smollett?</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>These, and perhaps other ways in which Literature may illustrate History, +are tolerably obvious, and need no farther exposition. There is, however, +a higher and somewhat more subtle service which Literature may perform +towards illustrating History and modifying our ideas of the Past.</p> + +<p>What the historian chiefly and finally wants to get at, through all his +researches, and by all his methods of research, is the <i>mind</i> of the time +that interests him, its mode of thinking and feeling. Through all the +trappings, all the colours, all the costumes, all those circumstances of +the picturesque which delight us in our recollections of the past, this is +what we seek, or ought to seek. The trappings and picturesque +circumstances are but our optical helps in our quest of this; they are the +thickets of metaphor through which we push the quest, interpreting as we +go. The metaphors resolve themselves; and at last it is as if we had +reached that vital and essential something—a clear transparency, we seem +to fancy it, and yet a kind of throbbing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>transparency, a transparency +with pulses and powers—which we call the mind or spirit of the time. As +in the case of the individual, so in that of a time or a people, we seem +to have got at the end of our language when we use this word, mind or +spirit. We know what we mean, and it is the last thing that we can mean; +but, just on that account, it eludes description or definition. At best we +can go to and fro among a few convenient synonyms and images. Soul, mind, +spirit, these old and simple words are the strongest, the profoundest, the +surest; age cannot antiquate them, nor science undo them; they last with +the rocks, and still go beyond. But, having in view rather the operation +than the cause, we find a use also in such alternative phrases as “mode of +thinking,” “mode of feeling and thinking,” “habit of thought,” “moral and +intellectual character or constitution,” and the like. Or, again, if we +will have an image of that which from its nature is unimaginable, then, in +our efforts to be as pure and abstract as possible, we find ourselves +driven, as I have said, into a fancy of mind as a kind of clear aërial +transparency, unbounded or of indefinite bounds, and yet not a dead +transparency, but a transparency full of pulses, powers, motions, and +whirls, capable in a moment of clouding itself, ceasing to be a +transparency, and becoming some strange solid phantasmagory, as of a +landscape smiling in sunshine or a sky dark with a storm. Yet again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> there +is another and more mechanical conception of mind which may be of +occasional use. The thinking power, the thinking principle, the substance +which feels and thinks, are phrases for mind from of old: what if we were +to agree, for a momentary advantage, to call mind rudely the thinking +apparatus? What the advantage may be will presently appear.</p> + +<p>Mind, mode of thinking, mode of thinking and feeling, moral and +intellectual constitution, that mystic transparency full of pulses and +motions, this thinking apparatus,—whichever phrase or image we adopt, +there are certain appertaining considerations which we have to take along +with us.</p> + +<p>(1.) There is the consideration of differences of degree, quality, and +worth. Mind may be great or small, noble or mean, strong or weak; the mode +of thinking of one person or one time may be higher, finer, grander than +that of another; the moral and intellectual constitutions of diverse +individuals or peoples may present all varieties of the admirable and +lovely or the despicable and unlovely; the pulses and motions in that +mystic transparency which we fancy as one man’s mind may be more vehement, +more awful, more rhythmical and musical, than are known in that which we +fancy as the mind of some other; the thinking apparatus which A possesses, +and by which he performs the business of his life, may be more massive, +more complex, more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>exquisite, capable of longer reaches and more superb +combinations, than that which has fallen to the lot of B. All this is +taken for granted everywhere; all our speech and conduct proceed on the +assumption.</p> + +<p>(2.) Somewhat less familiar, but not unimportant, is a consideration which +I may express by calling it the necessary instability of mind, its +variability from moment to moment. Your mind, my mind, every mind, is +continually sustaining modifications, disintegrations, reconstructions, by +all that acts upon it, by all it comes to know. We are much in the habit, +indeed, of speaking of experience, of different kinds of knowledge, as so +much material for the mind—material delivered into it, outspread as it +were on its floor, and which it, the lord and master, may survey, let lie +there for occasion, and now and then select from and employ. True! but not +the whole truth! The mind does not stand amid what it knows, as something +distinct and untouched; the mind is actually composed at any one moment of +all that it has learnt or felt up to that moment. Every new information +received, every piece of knowledge gained, every joy enjoyed, every sorrow +suffered, is then and there transmuted into mind, and becomes incorporate +with the prior central substance. To resort now to that mechanical figure +which I said might be found useful: every new piece of information, every +fact that one comes to apprehend, every probability brought <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>before one in +the course of life, is not only so much new matter for the thinking +apparatus to lay hold of and work into the warp and woof of thought; it is +actually also a modification of the thinking apparatus itself. The mind +thinks <i>with</i> what it knows; and, if you alter the knowledge in any one +whit, you alter the thinking instrumentality in proportion. Our whole +practice of education is based on this idea, and yet somehow the idea is +allowed to lurk. It may be brought out best perhaps by thinking what may +happen to a mind that has passed the period of education in the ordinary +sense. A person of mature age, let us say, betakes himself, for the first +time, to the study of geology. He gains thereby so much new and important +knowledge of a particular kind. Yes! but he does more. He modifies his +previous mind; he introduces a difference into his mode of thinking by a +positive addition to that instrumentality of notions <i>with</i> which he +thinks. The geological conceptions which he has acquired become an organic +part of that reason, that intellect, which he applies to all things +whatsoever; he will think and imagine thenceforward with the help of an +added potency, and, consequently, never again precisely as he did before. +Generalize this hint, and let it run through history. The mind of Man +cannot remain the same through two consecutive generations, if only +because the knowledge which feeds and makes mind, the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>notions that +constitute the thinking power, are continually varying. In this age of a +hundred sciences, all tramping on Nature’s outside with their flags up, +and marching her round and round, and searching her through and through +for her secrets, and flinging into the public forum their heaps of +results, how is it possible to call mind the same as it was a generation +or two ago, when the sciences were fewer, their industry more leisurely, +and their discoveries less frequent? Nay, but we may go back not a +generation or two only, but to generation beyond generation through a long +series, still, as we ascend, finding the sciences fewer, earth’s load of +knowledge lighter, and man’s very imagination of the physical universe +which he tenants cruder and more diminutive. Till two hundred years ago +the Mundus, or physical system of things, to even the most learned of men, +with scarcely an exception, was a finite spectacular sphere, or succession +of spheres, that of the fixed stars nearly outermost, wheeling round the +central earth for her pleasure; as we penetrate through still prior +centuries, even this finite spherical Mundus is seen to shrink and shrink +in men’s fancies of it till a radius of some hundreds of miles would sweep +from the earth to the starry roof; back beyond that again the very notion +of sphericity disappears, and men were walking, as it seemed, on the upper +side of a flat disc, close under a concave of blue, travelled by fiery +caprices. How is it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> possible to regard man’s mode of thinking and +feeling, man’s mind, as in any way constant through such vicissitude in +man’s notions respecting his very housing in space, and the whole +encircling touch of his physical belongings?</p> + +<p>(3.) A third consideration, however, administers a kind of corrective to +the last. It is that, though the last consideration is not unimportant, +its importance practically, and as far as the range of historic time is +concerned, may be easily exaggerated. We have supposed a person betaking +himself to the study of geology, and have truly said that his very mode of +thinking would be thereby affected, that his geological knowledge would +pass into his reason, and determine so far the very cast of his mind, the +form of his ability. Well, but he might have betaken himself to something +else; and who can tell, without definite investigation, but that out of +that something else he might have derived as much increase of his mental +power, or even greater? There are thousands of employments for all minds, +and, though all may select, and select differently, there are thousands +for all in common. Life itself, all the inevitable activity of life, is +one vast and most complex schooling. Books or no books, sciences or no +sciences, we live, we look, we love, we laugh, we fear, we hate, we +wonder; we are sons, we are brothers, we have friends; the seasons return, +the sun shines, the moon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> walks in beauty, the sea roars and beats the +land, the winds blow, the leaves fall; we are young, we grow old; we +commit others to their graves, we see somewhere the little grassy mound +which shall conceal ourselves:—is not this a large enough primary school +for all and sundry; are not these sufficient and everlasting rudiments? +That so it is we all recognise. Given some original force or goodness of +nature, and out of even this primary school, and from the teaching of +these common rudiments, may there not come, do there not come, minds +worthy of mark—the shrewd, keen wit, the upright and robust judgment, the +disposition tender and true, the bold and honest man? And though, for +perfection, the books and the sciences must be superadded, yet do not the +rudiments persist in constant over-proportion and incessant compulsory +repetition through all the process of culture, and is not the great result +of culture itself a reaction on the rudiments? And so, without prejudice +to our foregone conclusion that mind is variable with knowledge, that +every new science or body of notions conquered for the world modifies the +world’s mode of thinking and feeling, alters the cast and the working +trick of its reason and imagination, we can yet fall back, for historic +time at least, on the notion of a human mind so essentially permanent and +traditional that we cannot decide by mere chronology where we may justly +be fondest of it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> and certainly cannot assume that its latest individual +specimens, with all their advantages, are necessarily the ablest, the +noblest, or the cleverest. In fact, however we may reconcile it with our +theories of vital evolution and progressive civilization, we all +instinctively agree in this style of sentiment. Shakespeare lived and +died, we may say, in the pre-scientific period; he lived and died in the +belief of the fixedness of our earth in space and the diurnal wheeling +round her of the ten spectacular spheres. Not the less was he Shakespeare; +and none of us dares to say that there is now in the world, or has +recently been, a more superb thinking apparatus of its order than his mind +was, a spiritual transparency of larger diameter, or vivid with grander +gleamings and pulses. Two hundred and fifty years, therefore, chock-full +though they are of new knowledges and discoveries, have not been a single +knife-edge of visible advance in the world’s power of producing splendid +individuals; and, if we add two hundred and fifty to that, and again two +hundred and fifty, and four times two hundred and fifty more without +stopping, still we cannot discern that there has been a knife-edge of +advance in that particular. For at this last remove we are among the +Romans, and beyond them there lie the Greeks; and side by side with both, +and beyond both, are other Mediterranean Indo-Europeans, and, away in +Asia, clumps and masses of various Orientals. For<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> ease of reference, let +us go no farther than the Greeks. Thinking apparatuses of first-rate grip! +mental transparencies of large diameter and tremulous with great powers +and pulses! What do we say to Homer, Plato, Æschylus, Sophocles, +Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and the rest +of the great Hellenic cluster which these represent! True, their cosmology +was in a muddle (perhaps <i>ours</i> is in a muddle too, for as little as we +think so); but somehow they contrived to be such that the world doubts to +this day whether, on the whole, at any time since, it has exhibited, in +such close grouping, such a constellation of spirits of the highest +magnitude. And the lesson enforced by this Greek instance may be enforced, +less blazingly perhaps, but still clearly, as by the light of scattered +stars, by instances from the whole course of historic time. Within that +range, despite the vicissitudes of the mode of human thought caused by +continued inquisitiveness and its results in new knowledges, despite the +change from age to age in mankind’s very image of its own whereabouts in +space, and the extent of that whereabouts, and the complexity of the +entanglement in which it rolls, it is still true that you may probe at any +point with the sure expectation of finding at least <i>some</i> minds as good +intrinsically, as strong, as noble, as valiant, as inventive, as any in +our own age of latest appearances and all the newest lights.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> I am aware, +of course, where the compensation may be sought. The philosophical +historian may contend that, though some minds of early ages have been as +able intrinsically as any minds of later ages, these later minds being +themselves the critics and judges, yet an enormous general progress may be +made out in the increased <i>number</i> in the later ages of minds tolerably +able, in the heightening of the general level, in the more equable +diffusion of intelligence, in the gradual extension of freedom, and the +humanizing of manners and institutions. On that question I am not called +upon to enter now, nor is my opinion on it to be inferred from anything I +am now saying. I limit myself to the assertion that within historic time +we find what we are obliged to call an intrinsic co-equality of <i>some</i> +minds at various successive points and at long-separated intervals, and +that consequently, if the human race <i>is</i> gradually acquiring a power of +producing individuals more able than their ablest predecessors, the rate +of its law in this respect is so slow that 2,500 years have not made the +advance appreciable. The assertion is limited; it is reconcilable, I +believe, with the most absolute and extreme doctrine of evolution; but it +seems to be both important and curious, inasmuch as it has not yet been +sufficiently attended to in any of the phrasings of that doctrine that +have been speculatively put forward. No doctrine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> is rightly phrased, I +would submit, when, if it were true according to that phrasing, it would +be man’s highest duty to proceed as if it weren’t.</p> + +<p>History itself, the mere tradition and records of the human race, would +have authorized our assertion. Pericles, Epaminondas, Alexander the Great, +Hannibal, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne: would not the authenticated tradition +of the lives and actions of those men, and others of their order, or of +other orders, prove that possible capacity of the individual mind has not, +for the last 2,500 years of our earth’s history, been a mere affair of +chronological date? But it is Literature that reads us the lesson most +fully and convincingly. Some of those great men of action have left little +or no direct speech of themselves. They mingled their minds with the rage +of things around them; they worked, and strove, and died. But the books we +have from all periods, the poems, the songs, the treatises, the +pleadings—some of them from men great also in the world of action, but +most from men who only looked on, and thought, and tried to rule the +spirit, or to find how it might be ruled—these remain with us and can be +studied yet microscopically. If what the Historian wants to get at is the +mind of the time that interests him, or of the past generally, here it is +for him in no disguised form, but in actual specimens. Poems, treatises, +and the like, are actual transmitted <i>bits</i> of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> mind of the past; +every fragment of verse or prose from a former period preserves something +of the thought and sentiment of that period expressed by some one +belonging to it; the masterpieces of the world’s literature are the +thought and feeling of successive generations expressed, in and for each +generation, by those who could express them best. What a purblind +perversity then it is for History, professing that its aim is to know the +mind or real life of the past, to be fumbling for that mind or life amid +old daggers, rusty iron caps and jingling jackets, and other such material +relics as the past has transmitted, or even groping for it, as ought to be +done most strictly, in statutes and charters and records, if all the while +those literary remains of the past are neglected from which the very thing +searched for stares us face to face!</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>There is a small corollary to our main proposition. It is that ages which +we are accustomed to regard as crude, barbarous, and uncivilized, may turn +out perhaps, on due investigation and a better construction of the +records, to have been not so crude and barbarous after all, but to have +contained a great deal of intrinsic humanity, interesting to us yet, and +capable, through all intervening time and difference, of folding itself +round our hearts. And here I will quit those great, but perhaps too +continually obtrusive, Greeks and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> Romans, and will take my examples, all +the homelier though they must be, from our own land and kindred.</p> + +<p>The Fourteenth Century in our island was not what we should now hold up as +a model age, a soft age, an orderly age, an instructed age, a pleasant age +for a lady or gentleman that has been accustomed to modern ideas and +modern comforts to be transferred back into. It was the age of the three +first Edwards, Richard II., and Henry IV. in England, and of the Wallace +Interregnum, Bruce, David II., and the two first Stuarts in Scotland. Much +was done in it, as these names will suggest, that has come down as +picturesque story and stirring popular legend. It is an age, on that +account, in which schoolboys and other plain uncritical readers of both +nations revel with peculiar relish. Critical inquirers, too, and real +students of history, especially of late, have found it an age worth their +while, and have declared it full of important facts and powerful +characters. Not the less the inveterate impression among a large number of +persons of a rapid modern way of thinking is that all this interesting +vision of the England and Scotland of the fourteenth century is mere +poetical glamour or antiquarian make-believe, and that the real state of +affairs was one of mud, mindlessness, fighting and scramble generally, no +tea and no newspapers, but plenty of hanging, and murder almost <i>ad +libitum</i>. Now these are most wrong-headed persons,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> and they might be +beaten black and blue by sheer force of records. But out of kindliness one +may take a gentler method with them, and try to bring them right by +æsthetic suasion. It so chances, for example, that there are literary +remains of the fourteenth century, both English and Scottish, and that the +authors of the chief of these were Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English +literature proper, and John Barbour, the father of the English literature +of North Britain. Let us take a few bits from Chaucer and Barbour. +Purposely, we shall take bits that may be already familiar.</p> + +<p>Here is Chaucer’s often-quoted description of the scholar, or typical +student of Oxford University, from the Prologue to his <i>Canterbury +Tales</i>:—</p> + +<p class="poem">A Clerk there was of Oxenford also,<br /> +That unto logic haddè long ygo,<br /> +As leanè was his horse as is a rake,<br /> +And <i>he</i> was not right fat, I undertake;<br /> +But lookèd hollow, and thereto soberly.<br /> +Full threadbare was his overest courtepy;<br /> +For he had getten him yet no benefice,<br /> +Ne was so worldly for to have office;<br /> +For him was liefer have at his bed’s head<br /> +A twenty books, clothèd in black and red,<br /> +Of Aristotle and his philosophie<br /> +Than robès rich, or fiddle, or sautrie.<br /> +But, albe that he was a philosópher,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>Yet had he but a little gold in coffer;<br /> +But all that he might of his friendès hent<br /> +On bookès and on learning he it spent,<br /> +And busily gan for the soulès pray<br /> +Of hem that gave him wherewith to scholay.<br /> +Of study took he most cure and most heed;<br /> +Not oe word spak he morè than was need;<br /> +And that was said in form and reverence,<br /> +And short and quick, and full of high sentence;<br /> +Souning in moral virtue was his speech,<br /> +And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.</p> + +<p>Or take an out-of-doors’ scene from one of Chaucer’s reputed minor poems. +It is a description of a grove or wood in spring, or early summer:—</p> + +<p class="poem">In which were oakès great, straight as a line,<br /> +Under the which the grass, so fresh of hue,<br /> +Was newly sprung, and an eight foot or nine<br /> +Every tree well fro his fellow grew,<br /> +With branches broad, laden with leavès new,<br /> +That sprungen out agen the sunnè sheen,<br /> +Some very red, and some a glad light green.</p> + +<p>Or, for a tidy scene indoors, take this from another poem:—</p> + +<p class="poem">And, sooth to sayen, my chamber was<br /> +Full well depainted, and with glass<br /> +Were all the windows well yglazed<br /> +Full clear, and not an hole ycrased,<br /> +That to behold it was great joy;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>For wholly all the story of Troy<br /> +Was in the glazing ywrought thus,<br /> +Of Hector and of King Priamus,<br /> +Of Achilles and of King Laomedon,<br /> +And eke of Medea and Jason,<br /> +Of Paris, Helen, and Lavine;<br /> +And all the walls with colours fine<br /> +Weren paint, both text and glose,<br /> +And all the Rómaunt of the Rose:<br /> +My windows weren shut each one,<br /> +And through the glass the sunnè shone<br /> +Upon my bed with brighte beams.</p> + +<p>Or take these stanzas of weighty ethical sententiousness (usually printed +as Chaucer’s, but whether his or not does not matter):—</p> + +<p class="poem">Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness;<br /> +Suffice unto thy good, though it be small;<br /> +For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness,<br /> +Press hath envy, and weal is blent in all;<br /> +Savour no more than thee behovè shall;<br /> +Rede well thyself that other folk canst rede;<br /> +And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede.<br /> +<br /> +Painè thee not each crooked to redress<br /> +In trust of her that turneth as a ball.<br /> +Great rest standeth in little business;<br /> +Beware also to spurn against an awl;<br /> +Strive not as doth a crockè with a wall;<br /> +Deemè thyself that deemest others dead;<br /> +And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span><br /> +That thee is sent receive in buxomness;<br /> +The wrestling of this world asketh a fall;<br /> +Here is no home, here is but wilderness:<br /> +Forth, pilgrim! forth, beast, out of thy stall!<br /> +Look up on high, and thankè God of all:<br /> +Waivè thy lusts, and let thy ghost thee lead;<br /> +And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede.</p> + +<p>Or, finally, take a little bit of Chaucer’s deep, keen slyness, when he is +speaking smilingly about himself and his own poetry. He has represented +himself as standing in the House or Temple of Fame, observing company +after company going up to the goddess, and petitioning for renown in the +world for what they have done. Some she grants what they ask, others she +dismisses crestfallen, and Chaucer thinks the <i>levée</i> over:—</p> + +<p class="poem">With that I gan about to wend,<br /> +For one that stood right at my back<br /> +Methought full goodly to me spak,<br /> +And said, “Friend, what is thy name?<br /> +Art <i>thou</i> come hither to have fame?”<br /> +“Nay, forsoothè, friend,” quoth I;<br /> +“I came not hither, grammercy,<br /> +For no such causè, by my head.<br /> +Sufficeth me, as I were dead,<br /> +That no wight have <i>my</i> name in hand:<br /> +I wot myself best how I stand;<br /> +For what I dree or what I think<br /> +I will myselfè all it drink,<br /> +Certain for the morè part,<br /> +As farforth as I ken mine art!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>Chaucer ranks to this day as one of the very greatest and finest minds in +the entire literature of the English speech, and stands therefore on a +level far higher than can be assumed for his contemporary Barbour. But +Barbour was a most creditable old worthy too. Let us have a scrap or two +from his <i>Bruce</i>. Who does not know the famous passage which is the very +key-note of that poem? One is never tired of quoting it:—</p> + +<p class="poem">Ah! freedom is a noble thing;<br /> +Freedom makes man to have liking:<br /> +Freedom all solace to man gives;<br /> +He lives at ease that freely lives.<br /> +A noble heart may have nane ease,<br /> +Ne ellys nought that may him please<br /> +Gif freedom faileth; for free liking<br /> +Is yearnit ower all other thing;<br /> +Nor he that aye has livit free<br /> +May not know weel the propertie,<br /> +The anger, ne the wretched doom,<br /> +That is couplit to foul thirldom;<br /> +But, gif he had essayit it,<br /> +Then all perquére he suld it wit,<br /> +And suld think freedom mair to prize<br /> +Than all the gold in the warld that is.</p> + +<p>Or take the portrait of the good Sir James, called “The Black Douglas,” +the chief companion and adherent of Bruce, introduced near the beginning +of the poem, where he is described as a young man living moodily at St. +Andrews before the Bruce revolt:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ane weel great while there dwellit he:</span><br /> +All men loved him for his bountie;<br /> +For he was of full fair effere,<br /> +Wise, courteous, and debonair;<br /> +Large and lovand also was he,<br /> +And ower all thing loved loyauty.<br /> +Loyautie to love is gretumly;<br /> +Through loyautie men lives richtwisely;<br /> +With a virtue of loyautie<br /> +Ane man may yet sufficiand be;<br /> +And, but loyautie, may nane have prize,<br /> +Whether he be wicht or be he wise;<br /> +For, where <i>it</i> failis, nae virtue<br /> +May be of prize, ne of value<br /> +To mak ane man sae good that he<br /> +May simply callit good man be.<br /> +He was in all his deedès leal;<br /> +For him dedeignit not to deal<br /> +With treachery ne with falsét.<br /> +His heart on high honóur was set,<br /> +And him contened in sic manére<br /> +That all him loved that war him near.<br /> +But he was not sae fair that we<br /> +Suld speak greatly of his beautíe.<br /> +In visage was he somedeal grey,<br /> +And had black hair, as I heard say;<br /> +But of his limbs he was well made,<br /> +With banès great and shoulders braid;<br /> +His body was well made leanlie,<br /> +As they that saw him said to me.<br /> +When he was blythe, he was lovely<br /> +And meek and sweet in company;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>But wha in battle micht him see<br /> +All other countenance had he.<br /> +And in speech lispit he somedeal;<br /> +But that set him richt wonder weel.<br /> +To Good Hector of Troy micht he<br /> +In mony thingès likenit be.<br /> +Hector had black hair as he had,<br /> +And stark limbès and richt weel made,<br /> +And lispit also as did he,<br /> +And was fulfillit of loyautie,<br /> +And was courteous, and wise, and wicht.</p> + +<p>My purpose in quoting these passages from Chaucer and Barbour will have +been anticipated. Let me, however, state it in brief. We hear sometimes in +these days of a certain science, or rather portion of a more general +science, which takes to itself the name of <i>Social Statics</i>, and +professes, under that name, to have for its business—I give the very +phrase of those who define it—the investigation of “possible social +simultaneities.” That is to say, there may be a science of what can +possibly go along with what in any social state or stage; or, to put it +otherwise, any one fact or condition of a state of society being given, +there may be inferred from that fact or condition some of the other facts +and conditions that must necessarily have co-existed with it. Thus at +length perhaps, by continued inference, the whole state of an old society +might be imaged out, just as Cuvier, from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> sight of one bone, could +infer with tolerable accuracy the general structure of the animal. Well, +will <i>Social Statics</i> be so good as to take the foregoing passages, and +whirr out of them their “possible social simultaneities”? Were this done, +I should be surprised if the England and Scotland of the fourteenth +century were to turn out so very unlovely, so atrociously barbarian, after +all. These passages are actual transmitted bits of the English and +Scottish mind of that age, and surely the substance from which they are +extracts cannot have been so very coarse or bad. Where such sentiments +existed and were expressed, where the men that could express them lived +and were appreciated, the surrounding medium of thought, of institutions, +and of customs, must have been to correspond. There must have been truth, +and honour, and courtesy, and culture, round those men; there must have +been high heart, shrewd sense, delicate art, gentle behaviour, and, in one +part of the island at least, a luxuriant complexity of most subtle and +exquisite circumstance.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>The conclusion which we have thus reached vindicates that mood of mind +towards the whole historical past which we find to have been actually the +mood of all the great masters of literature whenever they have ranged back +in the past for their themes. When<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> Shakespeare writes of Richard II., who +lived two hundred years before his own time, does he not overleap those +two hundred years as a mere nothing, plunge in among Richard’s Englishmen +as intrinsically not different from so many great Elizabethans, make them +talk and act as co-equals in whom Elizabethans could take an interest, and +even fill the mouth of the weak monarch himself with soliloquies of +philosophic melancholy and the kingliest verbal splendours? And so when +the same poet goes back into a still remoter antique, as in the council of +the Greek chiefs in his <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>. We speak of Shakespeare’s +anachronisms in such cases. There they are certainly for the critic to +note; but they only serve to bring out more clearly his main principle in +his art—his sense or instinct, for all historic time, of a grand +over-matching synchronism. And, indeed, without something of this +instinct—this sense of an intrinsic traditional humanity persisting +through particular progressive variations, this belief in a co-equality of +at least some minds through all the succession of human ages in what we +call the historic period—what were the past of mankind to us much more +than a history of dogs or ruminants? Nay, and with that measure with which +we mete out to others, with the same measure shall it not be meted out to +ourselves? If to be dead is to be inferior, and if to be long dead is to +be despicable, to the generation in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> possession, shall not we who are in +possession now have passed into the state of inferiority to-morrow, with +all the other defunct beyond us, and will not a time come when some far +future generation will lord it on the earth, and <i>we</i> shall lie deep, deep +down, among the strata of the despicable?</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">THE END.</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">LONDON; R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i>, Dec. 1844.</p> + +<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> <i>British Quarterly Review</i>, November, 1852.—1. “Shakspeare and His +Times.” By M. Guizot. 1852.—2. “Shakspeare’s Dramatic Art; and his +Relation to Calderon and Goethe.” Translated from the German of Dr. +Hermann Ulrici. 1846.—3. “Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and +Soret.” Translated from the German by John Oxenford. 2 vols. 1850.</p> + +<p><a name="f3" id="f3" href="#f3.1">[3]</a> According to Mr. Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, it is a mistake to +<ins class="correction" title="original: ancy">fancy</ins> that Goethe was tall. He seemed taller than he really was.</p> + +<p><a name="f4" id="f4" href="#f4.1">[4]</a> This saying of Steevens, though still repeated in books, has lost its +force with the public. The Lives of Shakespeare by Mr. Halliwell and Mr. +Charles Knight, written on such different principles, have effectually +dissipated the old impression. Mr. Knight, by his use of the principle of +synchronism, and his accumulation of picturesque details, in his Biography +of Shakespeare, has left the public without excuse, if they still believe +in Steevens.</p> + +<p><a name="f5" id="f5" href="#f5.1">[5]</a> <i>North British Review</i>, February 1852:—“The Works of John Milton.” 8 +vols. London: Pickering. 1851.</p> + +<p><a name="f6" id="f6" href="#f6.1">[6]</a> <i>British Quarterly Review</i>, July, 1854. The Annotated Edition of the +English Poets: Edited by Robert Bell. “Poetical Works of John Dryden.” 3 +vols. London. 1854.</p> + +<p><a name="f7" id="f7" href="#f7.1">[7]</a> <i>British Quarterly Review</i>, October 1854.—1. “The English Humourists +of the Eighteenth Century.” A Series of Lectures. By W. M. Thackeray. +London: 1853. 2. “The Life of Swift.” By Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh: +1848.</p> + +<p><a name="f8" id="f8" href="#f8.1">[8]</a> <i>Macmillan’s Magazine</i>, July 1871.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 35438-h.txt or 35438-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/4/3/35438">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/4/3/35438</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's + With Other Essays + + +Author: David Masson + + + +Release Date: March 1, 2011 [eBook #35438] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, +MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S*** + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/threedevilsluthe00mass + + + + + +THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S. + +With Other Essays. + +by + +DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D., +Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the +University of Edinburgh. + + + + + + + +London: +Macmillan And Co. +1874. + +[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.] + +London: +R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers, +Bread Street Hill. + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE. + + +The first five of the following Essays are reprinted from the Author's +_Essays Biographical and Critical: chiefly on English Poets_, published in +1856. The present Volume and two similar Volumes issued separately (under +the titles "_Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays_" and +"_Chatterton: A Story of the Year 1770_") may be taken together as forming +a new and somewhat enlarged edition of the older book. The addition in the +present Volume consists of the last Essay. + + EDINBURGH: + _November 1874_. + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + I. THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S 1 + + II. SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE 61 + + III. MILTON'S YOUTH 125 + + IV. DRYDEN AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION 153 + + V. DEAN SWIFT 235 + + VI. HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY 301 + + + + +THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S. + + + + +THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S.[1] + + +Luther, Milton, and Goethe: these are very strange names to bring +together. It strikes us, however, that the effect may not be uninteresting +if we connect the names of those three great men, as having each +represented to us the Principle of Evil, and each represented him in a +different way. Each of the three has left on record his conception of a +great accursed being, incessantly working in human affairs, and whose +function it is to produce evil. There is nothing more striking about +Luther than the amazing sincerity of his belief in the existence of such +an evil being, the great general enemy of mankind, and whose specific +object, in Luther's time, it was to resist Luther's movement, and, if +possible, "cut his soul out of God's mercy." What was Luther's exact +conception of this being is to be gathered from his life and writings. +Again, we have Milton's Satan. Lastly, we have Goethe's Mephistopheles. +Nor is it possible to confound the three, or for a moment to mistake the +one for the other. They are as unlike as it is possible for three grand +conceptions of the same thing to be. May it not, then, be profitable to +make their peculiarities and their differences a subject of study? +Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles have indeed been frequently +contrasted in a vague, antithetic way; for no writer could possibly give a +description of Goethe's Mephistopheles without saying something or other +about Milton's Satan. The exposition, however, of the difference between +the two has never been sufficient; and it may give the whole speculation +greater interest if, in addition to Milton's Satan and Goethe's +Mephistopheles, we include Luther's Devil. It is scarcely necessary to +premise that here there is to be no theological discussion. All that we +propose is to compare, as we find them, three very striking delineations +of the Evil Principle, one of them experimental, the other two poetical. + + * * * * * + +These last words indicate one respect in which, it will be perceived at +the outset, Luther's conception of the Evil Principle on the one hand and +Milton's and Goethe's on the other are fundamentally distinguishable. All +the three, of course, are founded on the Scriptural proposition of the +existence of a being whose express function it is to produce evil. Luther, +firmly believing every jot and tittle of Scripture, believed the +proposition about the Devil also; and so the whole of his experience of +evil in himself and others was cast into the shape of a verification of +that proposition. Had he started without such a preliminary conception, +his experience would have had to encounter the difficulty of expressing +itself in some other way; which, it is likely, would not have been nearly +so effective, or so Luther-like. Milton, too, borrows the elements of his +conception of Satan from Scripture. The Fallen Angel of the Bible is the +hero of _Paradise Lost_; and one of the most striking things about this +poem is that in it we see the grand imagination of the poet blazing in the +very track of the propositions of the theologian. And, though there can be +no doubt that Goethe's Mephistopheles is conceived less in the spirit of +Scripture than either Milton's Satan or Luther's Devil, still even in +Mephistopheles we discern the lineaments of the same traditional being. +All the three, then, have this in common--that they are founded on the +Scriptural proposition of the existence of an accursed being whose +function it is to produce evil, and that, more or less, they adopt the +Scriptural account of that being. Still, as we have said, Luther's +conception of this being belongs to one category; Milton's and Goethe's +to another. Luther's is a biographical phenomenon; Milton's and Goethe's +are literary performances. Luther illustrated the Evil Being of Scripture +to himself by means of his personal experience. Whatever resistance he met +with, whatever obstacle to Divine grace he found in his own heart or in +external circumstances, whatever event he saw plainly cast in the way of +the progress of the Gospel, whatever outbreak of a bad or unamiable spirit +occurred in the Church, whatever strange phenomenon of nature wore a +malevolent aspect,--out of that he obtained a clearer notion of the Devil. +In this way it might be said that Luther was all his life gaining a deeper +insight into the Devil's character. On the other hand, Milton's Satan and +Goethe's Mephistopheles are poetical creations, the one epic, the other +dramatic. Borrowing the elements of his conception from Scripture, Milton +set himself to the task of describing the ruined Archangel as he may be +supposed to have existed at that epoch of the creation when he had hardly +decided his own function, as yet warring with the Almighty, or, in pursuit +of a gigantic scheme of revenge, travelling from star to star. Poetically +assuming the device of the same Scriptural proposition, Goethe set himself +to the task of representing the Spirit of Evil as he existed six thousand +years later, no longer gifted with the same powers of locomotion, or +struggling for admission into this part of the universe, but plying his +understood function in crowded cities and on the minds of individuals. + +So far as the mere fact of Milton's having made Satan the hero of his +epic, or of Goethe's having made Mephistopheles a character in his drama, +qualifies us to speak of the theological opinions of the one or of the +other, we are not entitled to say that either Milton or Goethe believed in +a Devil at all as Luther did. Or, again, it is quite conceivable that +Milton might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did, and that +Goethe might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did also, and +yet that, in that case, the Devil which Milton believed in might not have +been the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_, and the Devil which Goethe believed +in might not have been the Mephistopheles of _Faust_. Of course, we have +other means of knowing whether Milton did actually believe in the +existence of the great accursed being whose fall he sings. It is also +plain that Goethe's Mephistopheles resembles Luther's Devil more than +Milton's Satan does in this respect--that Mephistopheles is the expression +of a great deal of Goethe's actual observation of life and experience in +human affairs. Still, neither the fact, on the one hand, that Milton did +believe in the existence of the Evil Spirit, nor the fact, on the other, +that Mephistopheles is an expression for the aggregate of much profound +thinking on the part of Goethe, is of force to obliterate the fundamental +distinction between Luther's Devil, as a biographical reality, and +Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles, as two literary performances. +If we might risk summing up under the light of this preliminary +distinction, perhaps the following would be near the truth:--Luther had as +strong a faith as ever man had in the existence and activity of the Evil +Spirit of Scripture: he used to recognise the operation of this Spirit in +every individual instance of evil as it occurred; he used, moreover, to +conceive that this Spirit and he were personal antagonists; and so, just +as one man forms to himself a distinct idea of the character of another +man to whom he stands in an important relation, Luther came to form to +himself a distinct idea of the Devil, and what this idea was it seems +possible to find out by examining his writings. Milton, again, chose the +Scripture personage as the hero of an epic poem, and employed his grand +imagination in realizing the Scripture narrative: we have reason also to +know that he did actually believe in the Devil's existence; and it agrees +with what we know of Milton's character to suppose that the Devil thus +believed in would be pretty much the same magnificent being he has +described in his poem--though, on the whole, we should not say that Milton +was a man likely to carry about with him, in daily affairs, any constant +recognition of the Devil's presence. Lastly, Goethe, adopting, for a +different literary effect, the Scriptural and traditional account of the +same being, conceived his Mephistopheles. This Mephistopheles, there is no +doubt, had a real allegoric meaning with Goethe; he meant him to typify +the Evil Spirit in modern civilization; but whether Goethe did actually +believe in the existence of a supernatural intelligence whose function it +is to produce evil is a question which no one will feel himself called +upon to answer, although, if he did, it may be unhesitatingly asserted +that this supernatural intelligence cannot have been Mephistopheles. + +From all this it appears that Luther's conception of the Evil Being +belongs to one category, Milton's and Goethe's to another. Let us +consider, _first_, Milton's Satan, _secondly_, Goethe's Mephistopheles, +and, _thirdly_, Luther's Devil. + + * * * * * + +The difficulties which Milton had to overcome in writing his _Paradise +Lost_ were immense. The gist of those difficulties may be defined as +consisting in this, that the poet had at once to represent a supernatural +condition of being and to construct a story. He had to describe the +ongoings of Angels, and at the same time to make one event follow another. +It is comparatively easy for Milton to sustain his conception of those +superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena--to represent them flying +singly through space like huge black shadows, or standing opposite to +each other in hostile battalions; but to construct a story in which these +beings should be the agents, to exhibit these beings thinking, scheming, +blundering, in such a way as to produce a likely succession of events, was +enormously difficult. The difficulty was to make the course of events +correspond with the reputation of the objects. To do this perfectly was +literally impossible. It is possible for the human mind to conceive +twenty-four great supernatural beings existing together at any given +moment in space; but it is utterly impossible to conceive what would occur +among those twenty-four beings during twenty-four hours. The value of +time, the amount of history that can be transacted in a given period, +depends on the nature and prowess of the beings whose volitions make the +chain of events; and so a lower order of beings can have no idea at what +rate things happen in a higher. The mode of causation will be different +from that with which they are acquainted. + +This is the difficulty with which Milton had to struggle; or, rather, this +is the difficulty with which he did not struggle. He had to construct a +narrative; and so, while he represents to us the full stature of his +superhuman beings as mere objects or phenomena, he does not attempt to +make events follow each other at a higher rate among those beings than +they do amongst ourselves, except in the single respect of their being +infinitely more powerful physical agents than we are. Whatever feeling of +inconsistency is experienced in reading the _Paradise Lost_ may be traced, +perhaps, to the fact that the necessities of the story obliged the poet +not to attempt to make the rate of causation among those beings as +extraordinary as his description of them as phenomena. Such a feeling of +inconsistency there is; and yet Milton sustains his flight as nobly as +mortal could have done. Throughout the whole poem we see him recollecting +his original conception of Satan as an object:-- + + "Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, + With head uplift above the waves, and eyes + That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides, + Prone on the flood, extended long and large, + Lay floating many a rood." + +And this is a great thing to have done. If the poet ever flags in his +conception of those superhuman beings as objects, it is when he finds it +necessary to describe a multitude of them assembled together in some +_place_; and his usual device then is to reduce the bulk of the greatest +number. This, too, is for the behoof of the story. If it is necessary, for +instance, to assemble the Angels to deliberate, this must be done in an +audience-hall, and the human mind refuses to go beyond certain limits in +its conception of what an audience-hall is. Again the gate of Hell is +described, although the Hell of Milton is a mere vague extent of fiery +element, which, in strict keeping, could not be described as having a +gate. The narrative, however, requires the conception. And so in other +cases. Still, consistency of description is well sustained. + +Nor is it merely as objects or phenomena that Milton sustains throughout +his whole poem a consistent conception of the Angels. He is likewise +consistent in his description of them as physical agents. Lofty stature +and appearance carry with them a promise of so much physical power; and +hence, in Milton's case, the necessity of finding words and figures +capable of expressing modes and powers of mechanical action, on the part +of the Angels, as superhuman as the stature and appearance he has given to +them. This complicated his difficulties very much. It is quite conceivable +that a man should be able to describe the mere appearance of a gigantic +being standing up, as it were, with his back to a wall, and yet utterly +break down, and not be able to find words, when he tried to describe this +gigantic being stepping forth into colossal activity and doing some +characteristic thing. Milton has overcome the difficulty. His conception +of the Angels as physical agents does not fall beneath his conception of +them as mere objects. In his description, for instance, in the sixth book, +of the Angels tearing up mountains by the roots and flinging them upon +each other, we have strength suggested corresponding to the reputed +stature of the beings. In extension of the same remark, we may observe how +skilfully Milton has aggrandized and eked out his conception of the +superhuman beings he is describing by endowing them with the power of +infinitely swift motion through space. On this point we offer our readers +an observation which they may verify for themselves:--Milton, we are +persuaded, had it vaguely in his mind, throughout _Paradise Lost_, that +the bounding peculiarity between the human condition of being and the +angelic one he is describing is the law of gravitation. We, and all that +is cognisable by us, are subject to this law; but Creation may be peopled +with beings who are not subject to it, and to us these beings are as if +they were not. But, whenever one of those beings becomes cognisable by us, +he instantly becomes subject to gravitation; and he must resume his own +mode of being ere he can be free from its consequences. The Angels were +not subject to gravitation; that is to say, they had the means of moving +in any direction at will. When they rebelled, and were punished by +expulsion from Heaven, they did not _fall_ out; for, in fact, so far as +the description intimates, there existed no planet, no distinct material +element, towards which they could gravitate. They were _driven_ out by a +pursuing fire. Then, after their fall, they had the power of rising +upward, of navigating space, of quitting Hell, directing their flight to +one glittering planet, alighting on its rotund surface, and then bounding +off again, and away to another. A corollary of this fundamental difference +between the human condition of being and the angelic would be that angels +are capable of direct vertical action, whereas men are capable mainly of +horizontal. An army of men can exist only as a square, or other plane +figure, whereas an army of angels can exist as a cube or parallelopiped. + +Now, in everything relating to the physical action of the Angels, even in +carrying out this notion of their mode of being, Milton is most +consistent. But it was impossible to follow out the superiority of these +beings to its whole length. The attempt to do so would have made a +narrative impossible. Exalting our conception of these beings as mere +objects, or as mere physical agents, as much as he could, it would have +been suicidal in the poet to attempt to realize history as it must be +among such beings. No human mind could do it. He had, therefore, except +where the notion of physical superiority assisted him, to make events +follow each other just as they would in a human narrative. The motives, +the reasonings, the misconceptions of those beings, all that determined +the succession of events, he had to make substantially human. The whole +narrative, for instance, proceeds on the supposition that those +supernatural beings had no higher degree of knowledge than human beings, +with equal physical advantages, would have had under similar +circumstances. Credit the spirits with a greater degree of insight--credit +them even with such a strong conviction of the Divine omnipotence as, in +their reputed condition of being, we can hardly conceive them not +attaining--and the whole of Milton's story is rendered impossible. The +crushing conviction of the Divine omnipotence would have prevented them +from rebelling with the alleged motive; or, after they had rebelled, it +would have prevented them from struggling with the alleged hope. In +_Paradise Lost_ the working notion which the devils have about God is +exactly that which human beings have when they hope to succeed in a bad +enterprise. Otherwise the poem could not have been written. Suppose the +fallen Angels to have had a working notion of the Deity as superhuman as +their reputed appearance and physical greatness: then the events of the +_Paradise Lost_ might have happened nevertheless, but the chain of +volitions would not have been the same, and it would have been impossible +for any human poet to realize the narrative. + +These remarks are necessary to prepare us for conceiving the Satan of +Milton. Except, as we have said, for an occasional feeling during a +perusal of the poem that the style of thinking and speculating about the +issue of their enterprise is too meagre and human for a race of beings +physically so superhuman, one's astonishment at the consistency of the +poet's conceptions is unmitigated throughout. Such keeping is there +between one conception and another, such a distinct material grasp had the +poet of his whole subject, so little is there of the mystic or the hazy in +his descriptions from beginning to end, that it would be quite possible to +prefix to the _Paradise Lost_ an illustrative diagram exhibiting the +universal space in which Milton conceived his beings moving to and fro, +divided, as he conceived it, at first into two or three, and afterwards +into four tropics or regions. Then his narrative is so clear that a brief +prose version of it would be a history of Satan in the interval between +his own fall and the fall of Man. + +It is to be noted that Milton as a poet proceeds on the Homeric method, +and not on the Shakespearian, devoting the whole strength of his genius to +the object, not of being discursive and original, not of making profound +remarks on everything as he goes along, but of carrying on a sublime and +stately narrative. We should hardly be led to assert, however, that the +difference between the epic and the drama lies in this, that the latter +may be discursive and reflective while the former cannot. We can conceive +an epic written after the Shakespearian method; that is, one which, while +strictly sustaining a narrative, should be profoundly expository in its +spirit. Certain it is, however, that Milton wrote after the Homeric +method, and did not exert himself chiefly in strewing his text with +luminous propositions. One consequence of this is that the way to obtain +an idea of Milton's Satan is not to lay hold of specific sayings that fall +from his mouth, but to go through his history. Goethe's Mephistopheles, we +shall find, on the other hand, reveals himself in the characteristic +propositions which he utters. Satan is to be studied by following his +progress; Mephistopheles by attending to his remarks. + +In the history of Milton's Satan it is important to begin at the time of +his being an Archangel. Before the creation of our World, there existed, +according to Milton, a grand race of beings altogether different from what +we are. Those beings were Spirits. They did not lead a planetary +existence; they tenanted space in some strange, and, to us, inconceivable +way. Or, rather, they did not tenant all space, but only that upper and +illuminated part of infinity called Heaven. For Heaven, in Milton, is not +to be considered as a locality, but as a region stretching infinitely out +on all sides--an immense extent of continent and kingdom. The infinite +darkness, howling and blustering underneath Heaven, was Chaos or Night. +What was the exact mode of being of the Spirits who lived in dispersion +through Heaven is unknown to us; but it was social. Moreover, there +subsisted between the multitudinous far-extending population of Spirits +and the Almighty Creator a relation closer, or at least more sensible and +immediate, than that which exists between human beings and Him. The best +way of expressing this relation in human language is by the idea of +physical nearness. They were God's Angels. Pursuing, each individual among +them, a life of his own, agreeable to his wishes and his character, yet +they all recognised themselves as the Almighty's ministering spirits. At +times they were summoned, from following their different occupations in +all the ends of Heaven, to assemble near the Divine presence. Among these +Angels there were degrees and differences. Some were, in their very +essence and constitution, grander and more sublime intelligences than the +rest; others, in the course of their long existence, had become noted for +their zeal and assiduity. Thus, although really a race of beings living on +their own account as men do, they constituted a hierarchy, and were called +Angels. + +Among all the vast angelic population three or four individuals stood +pre-eminent and unapproachable. These were the Archangels. Satan was one +of these: if not the highest Archangel in Heaven, he was one of the four +highest. After God, he could feel conscious of being the greatest being in +the Universe. But, although the relation between the Deity and the +angelic population was so close that we can only express it by having +recourse to the conception of physical nearness, yet even to the Angels +the Deity was so shrouded in clouds and mystery that the highest Archangel +might proceed on a wrong notion of his character, and, just as human +beings do, might believe the Divine omnipotence as a theological +proposition, and yet, in going about his enterprises, might not carry a +working consciousness of it along with him. There is something in the +exercise of power, in the mere feeling of existence, in the stretching out +of a limb, in the resisting of an obstacle, in being active in any way, +which generates a conviction that our powers are self-contained, hostile +to the recollection of inferiority or accountability. A messenger, +employed in his master's business, becomes, in the very act of serving +him, forgetful of him. As the feeling of enjoyment in action grows strong, +the feeling of a dependent state of being, the feeling of being a +messenger, grows weak. Repose and physical weakness are favourable to the +recognition of a derived existence: hence the beauty of the feebleness of +old age preceding the approach of death. The feebleness of the body +weakens the self-sufficient feeling, and disposes to piety. The young man, +rejoicing in his strength, cannot believe that his breath is in his +nostrils. In some such way the Archangel fell. Rejoicing in his strength, +walking colossal through Heaven, gigantic in his conceptions, incessant in +his working, ever scheming, ever imagining new enterprises, Satan was in +his very nature the most active of God's Archangels. He was ever doing +some great thing, and ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. And, +alas! his very wisdom became his folly. His notion of the Deity was higher +and grander than that of any other Angel: but, then, he was not a +contemplative spirit; and his feeling of derived existence grew weak in +the glow and excitement of constant occupation. As the feeling of +enjoyment in action grew strong, the feeling of being an Angel grew weak. +Thus the mere duration of his existence had undermined his strength and +prepared him for sin. Although the greatest Angel in Heaven--nay, just +because he was such--he was the readiest to fall. + +At last an occasion came. When the intimation was made by the Almighty in +the Congregation of the Angels that he had anointed his only-begotten Son +King on the holy hill of Zion, the Archangel frowned and became a rebel: +not because he had weighed the enterprise to which he was committing +himself, but because he was hurried on by the impetus of an over-wrought +nature. Even had he weighed the enterprise, and found it wanting, he would +have been a rebel nevertheless; he would have rushed into ruin on the +wheels of his old impulses. He could not have said to himself "It is +useless to rebel, and I will not;" and, if he could, what a hypocrite to +have remained in Heaven! His revolt was the natural issue of the thoughts +to which he had accustomed himself; and his crime lay in having acquired a +rebellious constitution, in having pursued action too much, and spurned +worship and contemplation. Herein lay the difference between him and the +other Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael. + +Satan in his revolt carried a third part of the Angels with him. He had +accustomed many of the Angels to his mode of thinking. One of the ways in +which he gratified his desire for activity had been that of exerting a +moral and intellectual influence over the inferior Angels. A few of these +he had liked to associate with, discoursing with them, and observing how +they imbibed his ideas. His chief associate, almost his bosom-companion, +had been Beelzebub, a princely Angel. Moloch, Belial, and Mammon, had +likewise been admitted to his confidence. These five had constituted a +kind of clique in Heaven, giving the word to a whole multitude of inferior +Angels, all of them resembling their leader in being fonder of action than +of contemplation. Thus, in addition to the mere hankering after action, +there had grown up in Satan's mind a love of power. This feeling that it +was a glorious thing to be a leader seems to have had much to do with his +voluntary sacrifice of happiness. We may conceive it to have been +voluntary. Foreseeing never so much misery would not have prevented such a +spirit from rebelling. Having a third of the Angels away with him in some +dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, would have +seemed, even if he had foreseen it, infinitely preferable to the puny +sovereignty of an Archangel in that world of gold and emerald: "better to +reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Thus we conceive him to have faced +the anticipation of the future. It required little persuasion to gain over +the kindred spirit of Beelzebub. These two appear to have conceived the +enterprise from the beginning in a different light from that in which they +represented it to their followers. Happiness with the inferior Spirits was +a more important consideration than with such Spirits as Satan and +Beelzebub; and to have hinted the possibility of losing happiness in the +enterprise would have been to terrify them away. Satan and Beelzebub were +losing happiness to gain something which they thought better; to the +inferior Angels nothing could be mentioned that would appear better. +Again, the inferior Angels, judging from narrower premises, might indulge +in enthusiastic expectations which the greater knowledge of the leaders +would prevent them from entertaining. At all events, the effect of the +intercourse with the Angels was that a third of their number joined the +standard of Satan. Then began the wars in Heaven, related in the poem. + +It may be remarked that the carrying on those wars by Satan with the hope +of victory is not inconsistent with what has been said as to the +possibility of his not having proceeded on a false calculation. We are apt +to imagine those wars as wars between the rebel Angels and the armies of +God. Now this is true; but it is scarcely the proper idea in the +circumstances. How could Satan have hoped for victory in that case? You +can only suppose that he did so by lessening his intellect, by making him +a mere blundering Fury, and not a keen, far-seeing Intelligence. But in +warring with Michael and his followers he was, until the contrary should +be proved, warring merely against his fellow-beings of the same Heaven, +whose strength he knew and feared not. The idea of physical nearness +between the Almighty and the Angels confuses us here. Satan had heard the +threat which had accompanied the proclamation of the Messiah's +sovereignty; but it may have been problematical in his mind whether the +way in which God would fulfil the threat would be to make Michael conquer +him. So he made war against Michael and his Angels. At last, when all +Heaven was in confusion, the Divine omnipotence interfered. On the third +day the Messiah rode forth in his strength, to end the wars and expel the +rebel host from Heaven. They fled, driven before his thunder. The crystal +wall of Heaven opened wide, and the two lips, rolling inward, disclosed a +spacious gap yawning into the wasteful Deep. The reeling Angels saw down, +and hung back affrighted; but the terror of the Lord was behind them: +headlong they threw themselves from the verge of Heaven into the +fathomless abyss, eternal wrath burning after them down through the +blackness like a hissing fiery funnel. + +And now the Almighty determined to create a new kind of World, and to +people it with a race of beings different from that already existing, +inferior in the meantime to the Angels, but with the power of working +themselves up into the Angelic mode of being. The Messiah, girt with +omnipotence, rode out on this creating errand. Heaven opened her +everlasting gates, moving on their golden hinges, and the King of Glory, +uplifted on the wings of Cherubim, rode on and on into Chaos. At last he +stayed his fervid wheels and took the golden compasses in his hand. +Centering one point where he stood, he turned the other silently and +slowly round through the profound obscurity. Thus were the limits of _our_ +Universe marked out--that azure region in which the stars were to shine, +and the planets were to wheel. On the huge fragment of Chaos thus marked +out the Creating Spirit brooded, and the light gushed down. In six days +the work of creation was completed. In the centre of the new Universe hung +a silvery star. That was the Earth. Thereon, in a paradise of trees and +flowers, walked Adam and Eve, the last and the fairest of all God's +creatures. + +Meanwhile the rebel host lay rolling in the fiery gulf underneath Chaos. +The bottom of Chaos was Hell. Above it was Chaos proper, a thick, black, +sweltering confusion. Above it again was the new experimental World, cut +out of it like a mine, and brilliant with stars and galaxies. And high +over all, behind the stars and galaxies, was Heaven itself. Satan and his +crew lay rolling in Hell, the fiery element underneath Chaos. Chaos lay +between them and the new World. Satan was the first to awake out of stupor +and realize the whole state of the case--what had occurred, what was to be +their future condition of being, and what remained to be attempted. In the +first dialogue between him and Beelzebub we see that, even thus early, he +had ascertained what his function was to be for the future, and decided in +what precise mode of being he could make his existence most pungent and +perceptible. + + "Of this be sure, + To do aught good never will be our task, + But ever to do evil our sole delight, + As being the contrary to His high will + Whom we resist." + +Here the ruined Archangel first strikes out the idea of existing for ever +after as the Devil. It is important to observe that his becoming a Devil +was not the mere inevitable consequence of his being a ruined Archangel. +Beelzebub, for instance, could see in the future nothing but a prospect of +continued suffering, until Satan communicated to him his conception of a +way of enjoying action in the midst of suffering. Again, some of the +Angels appear to have been ruminating the possibility of retrieving their +former condition by patient enduring. The gigantic scheme of becoming a +Devil was Satan's. At first it existed in his mind only as a vague +perception that the way in which he would be most likely to get the full +worth of his existence was to employ himself thenceforward in doing evil. +The idea afterwards became more definite. After glancing round their new +domain, Beelzebub and he aroused their abject followers. In the speech +which Satan addresses to them after they had all mustered in order we find +him hint an opening into a new career, as if the idea had just occurred to +him:-- + + "Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife + There went a fame in Heaven that He ere long + Intended to create, and therein plant + A generation whom His choice regard + Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven: + Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps + Our first eruption." + +Here is an advance in definiteness upon the first proposal--that, namely, +of determining to spend the rest of existence in doing evil. Casting +about in his mind for some specific opening, Satan had recollected the +talk they used to have in Heaven about the new World that was to be cut +out of Chaos, and the new race of beings that was to be created to inhabit +it; and it instantly struck his scheming fancy that _this_ would be the +weak point of the Universe. If he could but insert the wedge here! He did +not, however, announce the scheme fully at the moment, but went on +thinking. In the council of gods which was summoned some advised one +thing, some another. Moloch was for open war; Belial had great faith in +the force of circumstances; and Mammon was for organizing their new +kingdom so as to make it as comfortable as possible. No one, however, +could say the exact thing that was wanted. At last Beelzebub, prompted by +Satan, rose and detailed the project of their great leader:-- + + "There is a place + (If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven + Err not), another world, the happy seat + Of some new race called Man, about this time + To be created, like to us, though less + In power and excellence, but favoured more + Of Him who rules above. So was His will + Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath + That shook Heaven's whole circumference confirmed. + Thither let us bend all our thoughts, and learn + What creatures there inhabit, of what mould + Or substance, how endued, and what their power + And where their weakness: how attempted best; + By force or subtlety." + +This was Satan's scheme. The more he had thought on it the more did it +recommend itself to him. It was more feasible than any other. It held out +an indefinite prospect of action. Success in it would be the addition of +another fragment of the Universe to Satan's kingdom, mingling and +confounding the new World with Hell, and dragging down the new race of +beings to share the perdition of the old. The scheme was universally +applauded by the Angels; who seem to have differed from their leaders in +this, that they were sanguine of being able to better their condition, +whereas their leaders sought only the gratification of their desire of +action. + +The question next was, Who would venture out of Hell to explore the way to +the new World? Satan volunteered the perilous excursion. Immediately, +putting on his swiftest wings, he directs his solitary flight towards +Hell-gate, where sat Sin and Death. When, at length, the gate was opened +to give him exit, it was like a huge furnace-mouth, vomiting forth smoke +and flames into the womb of Chaos. Issuing thence, Satan spread his +sail-broad wings for flight, and began his toilsome way upward, half on +foot, half on wing, swimming, sinking, wading, climbing, flying, through +the thick and turbid element. At last he emerged out of Chaos into the +glimmer surrounding the new Universe. Winging at leisure now through the +balmier ether, and still ascending, he could discern at last the whole +empyrean Heaven, his former home, with its opal towers and sapphire +battlements, and, depending thence by a golden chain, our little World or +Universe, like a star of smallest magnitude on the full moon's edge. At +the point of suspension of this World from Heaven was an opening, and by +that opening Satan entered. + +When Satan thus arrived in the new Creation the whole phenomenon was +strange to him, and he had no idea what kind of a being Man was. He asked +Uriel, whom he found on the sun fulfilling some Divine errand, in which of +all the shining orbs round him Man had fixed his seat, or whether he had a +fixed seat at all, and was not at liberty to shift his residence, and +dwell now in one star, now in another. Uriel, deceived by the appearance +which Satan had assumed, pointed out the way to Paradise. + +Alighting on the surface of the Earth, Satan walks about immersed in +thought. Heaven's gate was in view. Overhead and round him were the quiet +hills and the green fields. Oh, what an errand he had come upon! His +thoughts were sad and noble. Fallen as he was, all the Archangel stirred +within him. Oh, had he not been made so high, should he ever have fallen +so low? Is there no hope even now, no room for repentance? Such were his +first thoughts. But he roused himself and shook them off. "The past is +gone and away; it is to the future that I must look. Perish the days of my +Archangelship! perish the name of Archangel! Such is my name no longer. My +future, if less happy, shall be more glorious. Ah, and this is the World I +have singled out for my experiment! Formerly, in the days of my +Archangelship, I ranged at will through infinity, doing one thing here and +another there. Now I must contract the sphere of my activity, and labour +nowhere but here. But it is better to apply myself to the task of +thoroughly impregnating one point of space with my presence than +henceforth to beat my wings vaguely all through infinitude. Ah, but may +not my nature suffer by the change? In thus selecting a specific aim, in +thus concerning myself exclusively with one point of space, and +forswearing all interest in the innumerable glorious things that may be +happening out of it, shall I not run the risk of degenerating into a +smaller and meaner being? In the course of ages of dealing with the puny +offspring of these new beings, may I not dwindle into a mere pungent, +pettifogging Spirit? What would Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael say, were +they to see their old co-mate changed into such a being? But be it so. If +I cannot cope with the Almighty on the grand scale of infinitude, I shall +at least make my existence felt by opposing His plans respecting this new +race of beings. Besides, by beginning with this, may I not worm my way to +a more effective position even in infinitude? At all events, I shall have +a scheme on hand, and be incessantly occupied. And, as time makes the +occupation more congenial, if I do become less magnanimous, I shall, at +the same time, become happier. And, whether my fears on this point are +visionary or not, it will, at least, be a noble thing to be able to say +that I have caused a whirlpool that shall suck down generation after +generation of these new beings, before their Maker's eyes, into the same +wretched condition of being to which He has doomed us. It will be +something so to vitiate the Universe that, let Him create, create on, as +He chooses, it will be like pouring water into a broken vessel." + +In the very course of this train of thinking Satan begins to degenerate +into a meaner being. He is on the very threshold of that career in which +he will cease for ever to be the Archangel and become irrevocably the +Devil. The very manner in which he tempts the first pair is devil-like. It +is in the shape of a cormorant on a tree that he sits watching his +victims. He sat at the ear of Eve "squat like a toad." It was in the shape +of a serpent that he tempted her. And, when the evil was done, he slunk +away through the brushwood. In the very act of ruining Man he committed +himself to a life of ignominious activity: he was to go on his belly and +eat dust all his days. + + * * * * * + +Such is the story of Milton's Satan. It will be easy to express more +precisely the idea which we have acquired of him when we come to contrast +him with Goethe's Mephistopheles. Meanwhile, we shall be much assisted in +our efforts to conceive Goethe's Mephistopheles by keeping in mind what we +have been saying about Milton's Satan. + +We do not think it possible to sum up in a single expression all that +Goethe meant to signify by his Mephistopheles. For one thing, it is +questionable whether Goethe kept strictly working out one specific meaning +and making it clearer all through Mephistopheles's gambols and devilries, +or whether, having once for all allegorized the Spirit of Evil into a +living personage, he did not treat him just as he would have treated any +other of his characters, making him always consistent, always diabolic, +but not intent upon making his actions run parallel to any under-current +of exposition. It may be best, therefore, to take Mephistopheles as a +character in a drama which we wish to study. On the whole, perhaps, we +shall be on the right track if, in the first place, we establish a +relation between Satan and Mephistopheles by adopting the notion which we +have imagined Satan himself to have entertained when engaged in scheming +out his future life, _i.e._ if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what Satan +has become after six thousand years. Milton's Satan, then, is the ruined +Archangel deciding his future function, and forswearing all interest in +other regions of the universe, in order that he may more thoroughly +possess and impregnate this. Goethe's Mephistopheles is this same being +after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years in his new +vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper and +cleverer. By way of corroboration of this view, we may refer, in passing, +to the Satan of the _Paradise Regained_; who, though still a sublime and +Miltonic being, dealing in high thoughts and high arguments, yet seems to +betray, in his demeanour, the effects of four thousand years spent in a +new walk. Is there not something Mephistopheles-like, for instance, in the +description of the Fiend's appearance when he approached Christ to begin +his temptation? Christ was walking alone and thoughtful one evening in the +thick of the forest where he had lived fasting forty days, when he heard +the dry twigs behind him snapping beneath approaching footsteps. He turned +round, and + + "An aged man in rural weeds, + Following as seemed the quest of some stray ewe, + Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve + Against a winter's day when winds blow keen + To warm him, wet returned from field at eve, + He saw approach; who first with curious eye + Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake." + +Observe how all the particulars of this description are drawn out of the +very thick of the civilization of the past four thousand years, and how +the whole effect of the picture is to suggest a Mephistophelic-looking +man, whom it would be disagreeable to meet alone. Indeed, if one had +space, one could make more use of the _Paradise Regained_ as exhibiting +the transition of Satan into Mephistopheles. But we must pass at once to +Goethe. + +Viewing Mephistopheles in the proposed light (of course it is not +pretended that Goethe himself had any such idea about his Mephistopheles), +we obtain a good deal of insight from the "Prologue in Heaven." For here +we have Mephistopheles out of his element, and contrasted with his old +co-equals. The scene is Miltonic. The Heavenly Hosts are assembled round +the throne, and the three Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, come +forward to praise the Lord. The theme of their song is Creation--not, as +it would have been in Milton, as an event about to take place, and which +would vary the monotony of the universe, but as a thing existing and +grandly going on. It is to be noted too that, while Milton appeals chiefly +to the sight, and is clear and coherent in his imagery, Goethe produces a +similar effect in his own manner by appealing to sight and hearing +simultaneously, making sounds and metaphors dance and whirl through each +other, as in a wild, indistinct, but overpowering dream. Raphael describes +the Sun rolling on in thunder through the heavens, singing in chorus with +the kindred stars. Gabriel describes the Earth revolving on her axis, one +hemisphere glittering in the light, the other dipped in shadow. Michael in +continuation sings of the ensphering atmosphere and the storms that rage +in it, darting forth tongues of lightning, and howling in gusts over land +and sea. And then the three burst forth in symphony, exulting in their +nature as beings deriving strength from serene contemplation, and +proclaiming all God's works to be as bright and glorious as on the day +they were created. Suddenly, while Heaven is still thrilling to the grand +undulation, another voice breaks in: + + "Da du, O Herr, dich einmal wieder nahst, + Und fragst wie alles sich bei uns befinde, + Und du mich sonst gewoehnlich gerne sahst, + So siehst du mich auch unter dem Gesinde." + +Ugh! what a discord! The tone, the voice, the words, the very metre, so +horribly out of tune with what had gone before! Mephistopheles is the +speaker. He has been standing behind, looking about him and listening +with a sarcastic air to the song of the Archangels; and, when they have +done, he thinks it his turn to speak, and immediately begins. (We give the +passage in translation.) + + "Since thou, O Lord, approachest us once more, + And askest how affairs with us are going, + And commonly hast seen me here before, + To this my presence 'mid the rest is owing. + Excuse my plainness; I'm no hand at chaffing; + I _can't_ talk fine, though all around should scorn; + _My_ pathos certainly would set thee laughing, + Hadst thou not laughter long ago forborne. + Of suns and worlds deuce one word can _I_ gabble; + I only know how men grow miserable. + The little god of Earth is still the same old clay, + And is as odd this hour as on Creation's day. + Better somewhat his situation + Hadst thou not given him that same light of inspiration: + Reason he calls 't, and uses 't so that he + Grows but more beastly than the beasts to be; + He seems to me, begging your Grace's pardon, + Like one of those long-legged things in a garden + That fly about and hop and spring, + And in the grass the same old chirrup sing. + Would I could say that here the story closes! + But in each filthy mess they thrust their noses." + +And so shameless, and at the same time so voluble, is he that he would go +on longer in the same strain did not the Lord interrupt him. + +Now this speech both announces and exhibits Mephistopheles's nature. +Without even knowing the language, one could hardly hear the original read +as Mephistopheles's without seeing in it shamelessness, impudence, +volubility, cleverness, a sneering, sarcastic disposition, want of heart, +want of sentiment, want of earnestness, want of purpose, complete, +confirmed, irrecoverable devilishness. And, besides, Mephistopheles +candidly describes himself in it. When, in sly and sarcastic allusion to +the song of the Archangels, he tells that _he_ has not the gift of talking +fine, he announces in effect that he is not going to be Miltonic. _He_ is +not going to speak of suns and universes, he says. Raphael, Gabriel, and +Michael, are at home in that sort of thing; but _he_ is not. Leaving them, +therefore, to tell how the universe is flourishing on the grand scale, and +how the suns and the planets are going on as beautifully as ever, he will +just say a word or two as to how human nature is getting on down yonder; +and, to be sure, if comparison be the order of the day, the little godkin, +Man, is quite as odd as on the day he was made. And at once, with +astounding impudence, he launches into a train of remark the purport of +which is that everything down below is at sixes and sevens, and that in +his opinion human nature has turned out a failure. And, heedless of the +disgust of his audience, he would go on talking for ever, were he not +interrupted. + +And is this the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_? Is this the Archangel +ruined? Is this the being who warred against the Almighty, who lay +floating many a rood, who shot upwards like a pyramid of fire, who +navigated space wherever he chose, speeding on his errands from star to +star, and who finally conceived the gigantic scheme of assaulting the +universe where it was weakest, and impregnating the new creation with the +venom of his spirit? Yes, it is he; but oh, how changed! For six thousand +years he has been pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying +his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and +abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as +he himself anticipated, that his nature, once great and magnificent, has +become small, virulent, and shrunken, + + "Subdued + To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." + +As if he had been journeying through a wilderness of scorching sand, all +that was left of the Archangel has long since evaporated. He is now a dry, +shrivelled up, scoffing spirit. When, at the moment of scheming out his +future existence and determining to become a Devil, he anticipated the +ruin of his nature, he could not help thinking with what a strange feeling +he should then appear before his old co-equals, Raphael, Gabriel, and +Michael. But now he stands before them disgustingly unabashed, almost +ostentatious of not being any longer an Archangel. Even in the days of his +glory he was different from them. They luxuriated in contemplation; he in +the feeling of innate all-sufficient vigour. And lo, now! They are +unchanged, the servants of the Lord, revering the day's gentle going. He, +the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured and civilized into +the clever cold-hearted Mephistopheles. + +Mephistopheles is the Spirit of Evil in modern society. Goethe's _Faust_ +is an illustration of this spirit's working in the history of an +individual. The case selected is a noble one. Faust, a man of grand and +restless nature, is aspiring after universality of feeling. Utterly +dissatisfied and disgusted with all human method and all human +acquisition, nay, fretting at the constitution of human nature itself, he +longs to spill out his soul, so that, mingling with the winds, it may +become a part of the ever-thrilling spirit of the universe and know the +essence of everything. He has been contemplating suicide. To this great +nature struggling with itself Mephistopheles is linked. It is to be noted +that throughout the whole drama there is no evidence that it was an object +of very earnest solicitude with Mephistopheles to gain possession of the +soul of Faust. Of course, he desired this, and had it in view. Thus, he +exacted a bond from Faust; and we find him also now and then chuckling +when alone in anticipation of Faust's ultimate ruin. But on the whole he +is constant to no earnest plan for effecting it. In fact, he is constant +to no single purpose whatever. The desire of doing devilry is his motive +all through. Going about with Faust was but being in the way of business +and having a companion at the same time. He studies his own gratification, +not Faust's, in all that he does. Faust never gets what he had a right to +expect from him. He is dragged hither and thither through scenes he has no +anxiety to be in, merely that Mephistopheles may enjoy some new and +_piquant_ piece of devilry. The moment he and Faust enter any place, he +quits Faust's side and mixes with the persons present, to do some mischief +or other; and, when it is done, he comes back to Faust, who has been +standing, with his arms folded, gloomily looking on, and asks him if he +could desire any better amusement than this. Now this is not the conduct +of a devil intent upon nothing so much as gaining possession of the soul +of his victim. A Miltonic devil would have pressed on to the mark more. He +would have been more self-denying, and would have kept his victim in +better humour. But Mephistopheles is a devil to the very core. He is a +devil in his conduct to Faust. What he studies is not to gratify Faust, +but to find plenty of congenial occupation for himself, to perpetrate as +great a quantity of evil as possible in as short a time as possible. It +seems capable of being inferred from this peculiarity in the character of +Mephistopheles that Goethe had in his mind all through the poem a certain +under-current of allegoric meaning. One sees that Mephistopheles, though +acting as a dramatic personage, represents an abstract something or other. + +The character of Mephistopheles is brought out all through the drama. In +the first and second parts we have Faust and him brought into a great +variety of situations and into contact with a great variety of +individuals; and in watching how Mephistopheles conducts himself in these +we obtain more and more insight into his devilish nature. He manifests +himself in two ways--by his style of speaking, and by his style of acting. +That is to say, Mephistopheles, in the first place, has a habit of making +observations upon all subjects, and throwing out all kinds of general +propositions in the course of his conversation, and by attending to the +spirit of these one can perceive very distinctly his mode of looking at +things; and, in the second place, he acts a part in the drama, and this +part is, of course, characteristic. + +The distinguishing feature in Mephistopheles's conversation is the amazing +intimacy which it displays with all the conceivable ways in which crime +can be perpetrated. There is positively not a wrong thing that people are +in the habit of doing that he does not seem to be aware of. He is profound +in his acquaintance with iniquity. If there is a joint loose anywhere in +society, he knows of it; if the affairs of the State are going into +confusion because of some blockhead's mismanagement, he knows of it. He is +versed in all the forms of professional quackery. He knows how pedants +hoodwink people, how priests act the hypocrite, how physicians act the +rake, how lawyers peculate. In all sorts of police information he is a +perfect Fouche. He has gone deep enough into one fell subject to be able +to write a book like Duchatelet's. And not only has he accumulated a mass +of observations, but he has generalized those observations, and marked +evil in its grand educational sources. If the human mind is going out into +a hopeless track of speculation, he has observed and knows it. If the +universities are frittering away the intellect of the youth of a country +in useless and barren studies, he knows it. If atheistic politicians are +vehemently defending the religious institutions of a country, he has +marked the prognostication. Whatever promises to inflict misery, to lead +people astray, to break up beneficial alliances, to make men flounder on +in error, to cause them to die blaspheming at the last, he is thoroughly +cognisant of it all. He could draw up a catalogue of social vices. He +could point out the specific existing grievances to which the +disorganization of a people is owing, and lay his finger on the exact +parent evils which the philanthropist ought to exert himself in exposing +and making away with. But here lies the diabolical peculiarity of his +knowledge. It is not in the spirit of a philanthropist that he has +accumulated his information; it is in the spirit of a devil. It is not +with the benevolent motive of a Duchatelet that he has descended into the +lurking-places of iniquity; it is because he delights in knowing the whole +extent of human misery. The doing of evil being his function, it is but +natural that he should have a taste for even the minutest details of his +own profession. Nay more, as the Spirit of all evil, who had been working +from the beginning, how could he fail to be acquainted with all the +existing varieties of criminal occupation? It is but as if he kept a +diary. Now, in this combination of the knowledge of evil with the desire +of producing it lies the very essence of his character. The combination is +horrible, unnatural, unhuman. Generally the motive to investigate deeply +into what is wrong is the desire to rectify it; and it is rarely that +profligates possess very valuable information. But in every one of +Mephistopheles's speeches there is some profound glimpse into the +rottenness of society, some masterly specification of an evil that ought +to be rooted out; and yet there is not one of those speeches in which the +language is not flippant and sarcastic, not one in which the tone is +sorrowful or philanthropic. Everything is going wrong in the world; +twaddle and quackery everywhere abounding; nothing to be seen under the +sun but hypocritical priests, sharking attorneys, unfaithful wives, +children crying for bread to eat, men and women cheating, robbing, +murdering each other: hurrah! This is exactly a burst of Mephistophelic +feeling. In fact it is an intellectual defect in Mephistopheles that his +having such an eye for evil and his taking such an interest in it prevent +him from allowing anything for good in his calculations. To Mephistopheles +the world seems going to perdition as fast as it can, while in the same +universal confusion beings like the Archangels recognise the good +struggling with the evil. + +Respecting the part which Mephistopheles performs in the drama we have +already said something. Going about the world, linked to Faust, is to him +only a racy way of acting the devil. Having as his companion a man so +flighty in his notions did but increase the flavour of whatever he engaged +in. All through he is laughing in secret at Faust, and deriving a keen +enjoyment from his transcendental style of thinking. Faust's noble +qualities are all Greek and Gaelic to his cold and devilish nature. He +has a contempt for all strong feeling, all sentiment, all evangelism. He +enjoys the Miltonic vastly. Thus in the "Prologue in Heaven" he quizzes +the Archangels about the grandiloquence of their song. Not that he does +not understand that sort of thing intellectually, but that it is not in +his nature to sympathize with anything like sentiment. Hence, when he +assumes the sentimental himself and mimicks any lofty strain, although he +does it full justice in as far as giving the whole intellectual extent of +meaning is concerned, yet he always does so in words so inappropriate +emotionally that the effect is a parody. He must have found amusement +enough in Faust's company to have reconciled him in some measure to losing +him finally. + +But to go on. Mephistopheles acts the devil all through. In the first +place he acts the devil to Faust himself, for he is continually taking his +own way and starting difficulties whenever Faust proposes anything. Then +again in his conduct towards the other principal personages of the drama +it is the same. In the murder of poor Margaret, her mother, her child, and +her brother, we have as fiendish a series of acts as devil could be +supposed capable of perpetrating. And, lastly, in the mere filling up and +side play, it is the same. He is constantly doing unnecessary mischief. If +he enters Auerbach's wine-cellar and introduces himself to the four +drinking companions, it is to set the poor brutes fighting and make them +cut off each other's noses. If he spends a few minutes in talk with +Martha, it is to make the silly old woman expose her foibles. The Second +Part of Faust is devilry all through, a tissue of bewilderments and +devilries. And while doing all this Mephistopheles is still the same cold, +self-possessed, sarcastic being. If he exhibits any emotion at all, it is +a kind of devilish anger. Perhaps, too, once or twice we recognise +something like terror or flurry. But on the whole he is a spirit bereft of +feeling. What could indicate the heart of a devil more than his words to +Faust in the harrowing prison scene? + + "Komm, komm, ich lasse dich mit ihr im Stich." + + * * * * * + +And now for a word or two describing Milton's Satan and Goethe's +Mephistopheles by each other:--Satan is a colossal figure; Mephistopheles +an elaborated portrait. Satan is a fallen Archangel scheming his future +existence; Mephistopheles is the modern Spirit of Evil. Mephistopheles has +a distinctly marked physiognomy; Satan has not. Satan has a sympathetic +knowledge of good; Mephistopheles knows good only as a phenomenon. Much of +what Satan says might be spoken by Raphael; a devilish spirit runs through +all that Mephistopheles says. Satan's bad actions are preceded by noble +reasonings; Mephistopheles does not reason. Satan's bad actions are +followed by compunctious visitings; Mephistopheles never repents. Satan is +often "inly racked;" Mephistopheles can feel nothing more noble than +disappointment. Satan conducts an enterprise; Mephistopheles enjoys an +occupation. Satan has strength of purpose; Mephistopheles is volatile. +Satan feels anxiety; Mephistopheles lets things happen. Satan's greatness +lies in the vastness of his motives; Mephistopheles's in his intimate +acquaintance with everything. Satan has a few sublime conceptions; +Mephistopheles has accumulated a mass of observations. Satan declaims; +Mephistopheles puts in remarks. Satan is conversant with the moral aspects +of things and uses adjectives; Mephistopheles has a preference for nouns, +and uses adjectives only to convey significations which he _knows_ to +exist. Satan may end in being a devil; Mephistopheles is a devil +irrecoverably. + + * * * * * + +Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles are literary performances; and, +for what they prove, neither Milton nor Goethe need have believed in a +Devil at all. Luther's Devil, on the other hand, was a being recognised by +him as actually existing--as existing, one might say, with a vengeance. +The strong conviction which Luther had on this point is a feature in his +character. The narrative of his life abounds in anecdotes showing that the +Devil with him was no chimera, no mere orthodoxy, no fiction. In every +page of his writings we have the word _Teufel_, _Teufel_, repeated again +and again. Occasionally there occurs an express dissertation upon the +nature and functions of the Evil Spirit; and one of the longest chapters +in his _Table Talk_ is that entitled "The Devil and his Works"--indicating +that his conversation with his friends often turned on the subject of +Satanic agency. _Teufel_ was actually the strongest signification he had; +and, whenever he was excited to his highest emotional pitch, it came in to +assist his utterance at the climax, and give him a correspondingly +powerful expression. "This thing I will do," it was common for him to say, +"in spite of all who may oppose me, be it duke, emperor, priest, bishop, +cardinal, pope, or Devil." Man's heart, he says, is a "Stock, Stein, +Eisen, Teufel, hart Herz," ("a stock, stone, iron, Devil, hard heart"). +And it was not a mere vague conception he had of this being, such as +theology might oblige. On the contrary, he had observed him as a man would +his personal enemy, and in so doing had formed a great many conclusions +respecting his powers and his character. In general, Luther's Devil may be +defined as a personification, in the spirit of Scripture, of the resisting +medium which Luther had to toil his way through--spiritual fears, +passionate uprisings, fainting resolutions within himself; error, +weakness, envy, in those around him; and, without, a whole world howling +for his destruction. It is in effect as if Luther had said, "Scripture +reveals to me the existence of a great accursed Being, whose function it +is to produce evil. It is for me to ascertain the character of this Being, +whom I, of all men, have to deal with. And how am I to do so except by +observing him working? God knows I have not far to go in search of his +manifestations." And thus Luther went on filling up the Scriptural +proposition with his daily experience. He was constantly gaining a clearer +conception of his great personal antagonist, constantly stumbling upon +some more concealed trait in the Spirit's character. The Being himself was +invisible; but men were walking in the midst of his manifestations. It was +as if there were some Being whom we could not see, nor directly in the +ordinary way have any intercourse with, but who every morning, before it +was light, came and left at our doors some exquisite specimen of his +workmanship. It would, of course, be difficult under such disadvantages to +become acquainted with the character of our invisible correspondent and +nightly visitant; still we could arrive at a few conclusions respecting +him, and the more of his workmanship we saw the more insight we should +come to have. Or again, in striving to realize to himself the Scriptural +proposition about the Devil, Luther, to speak in the language of the +"Positive Philosophy," was but striving to ascertain the laws according to +which evil happens. Only the Positive Philosophy would lay a veto on any +such speculation, and pronounce it fundamentally vicious in this +respect--that there are not two courses of events, separable from each +other, in history, the one good and the other evil, but that evil comes of +good and good of evil; so that, if we are to have a science of history at +all, the most we can have is a science of the laws according to which, not +evil follows evil, but events follow each other. But History to Luther was +not a physical course of events. It was God acting, and the Devil +opposing. + +So far Luther did not differ from his age. Belief in Satanic agency was +universal at that period. We have no idea now how powerful this belief +was. We realize something of the truth when we read the depositions in an +old book of trials for witchcraft. But it is sufficient to glance over any +writings of the period to see what a real meaning was then attached to the +words "Hell" and "Devil." The spirit of these words has become obsolete, +chased away by the spirit of exposition. That was what M. Comte calls the +Theological period, when all the phenomena of mind and matter were +referred to the agency of Spirits. The going out of the belief in Satanic +agency (for even those who retain it in profession allow it no force in +practice) M. Comte would attribute to the progress of the spirit of that +philosophy of which he is the apostle. We do not think, however, that the +mere progress of the scientific spirit--that is, the mere disposition of +men to pursue one mode of thinking with respect to all classes of +phenomena--could have been sufficient of itself to work such an alteration +in the general mind. We are fond of accounting for it, in part at least, +by the going out, in the progress of civilization, of those sensations +which seem naturally fitted to nourish the belief in supernatural beings. +The tendency of civilization has been to diminish our opportunities of +feeling terror, of feeling strongly at all. The horrific plays a much less +important part in human experience than it once did. To mention but a +single instance: we are exempted now, by mechanical contrivances for +locomotion, &c., from the necessity of being much in darkness or wild +physical solitude. This is especially the case with those who dwell in +cities, and therefore exert most conspicuously an intellectual influence. +The moaning of the wind at night in winter is about their highest +experience of the kind; and is it not a corroboration of the view now +suggested that the belief in the supernatural is always strongest at the +moment of this experience? Scenes and situations our ancestors were in +every day are strange to us. We have not now to travel through forests at +the dead of night, nor to pass a lonely spot on a moor where a murderer's +body is swinging from a gibbet. Tam o' Shanter, even before he came to +Allowa' Kirk, saw more than many of us see in a life-time. + + "By this time he was 'cross the ford + Whaur in the snaw the chapman smoored, + And past the birks and muckle stane + Whaur drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane, + And through the whins and by the cairn + Whaur hunters fand the murdered bairn, + And near the thorn aboon the well + Whaur Mungo's mither hanged hersel'." + +This effect of civilization in reducing all our sensations to those of +comfort is a somewhat alarming circumstance in the point of view we are +now taking. It is necessary, for many a reason, to resist the universal +application of the "Positive Philosophy," even if we adopt and adore it as +an instrument of explication. The "Positive Philosophy" commands us to +forbear all speculation into the inexplicable. For the sake of many things +this order must be disregarded. Speculation into the metaphysical is the +invariable accompaniment of strong feeling; and the moral nature of man +would starve upon such chopped straw as the mere intellectual relations of +similitude and succession. Nor does it meet the demands of the case to say +that the "Positive Philosophy" would be always far in arrear of the known +phenomena, and that here would be mystery enough. No! the "Positive +Philosophy" would require to strike a chasm in itself under the title of +the Liberty of Hypothesis. We do not mean the liberty of hypothesis merely +as a means of anticipating theory, but for spiritual and imaginative +purposes. It is in this light that one would welcome Animal Magnetism, or +any thing else whatever that would but knock a hole through the paper wall +that incloses our mode of being, snub the self-conceit of our present +knowledge, and give us other and more difficult phenomena to explain. + +But, though Luther and his age were not at variance in the belief in +Satanic agency, Luther, of course, did this as he did every thing else, +gigantically. The Devil, as Luther conceived him, was not the Satan of +Milton; although, had Luther set himself to realize the Miltonic +narrative, his conception might not have been dissimilar. But it was as +the enemy of mankind, working in human affairs, that Luther conceived the +Devil. We should expect his conception therefore to tally with Goethe's in +some respects, but only as a conception of Luther's would tally with one +of Goethe's. Luther's conception was truer to the strict Scriptural +definition than either Milton's or Goethe's. Mephistopheles being a +character in a drama, and apparently fully occupied in his part there, we +cannot bring ourselves to recognise in him that virtually omnipotent being +to whom all evil is owing, who is leavening the human mind everywhere as +if the atmosphere round the globe were charged with the venom of his +spirit. In the case of Milton's Satan we have no such difficulty, because +in his case a whole planet is at stake, and there are only two individuals +on it. But Luther's conception met the whole exigency of Scripture. His +conception was distinctly that of a being to whose operation all the evil +of all times and all places is owing, a veritable [Greek: pneuma] diffused +through the earth's atmosphere. Hence his mind had to entertain the notion +of a plurality of devils; for he could conceive the Arch-Demon acting +corporeally only through imps or emanations. Goethe's Mephistopheles might +pass for one of these. + +It would be possible farther to illustrate Luther's conception of the Evil +Principle by quoting many of his specific sayings about diabolic agency. +It would be found from these that his conception was that of a being to +whom evil of all kinds was dear. The Devil with him was a meteorological +agent. Devils, he said, are in woods, and waters, and dark poolly places, +ready to hurt passers-by; there are devils also in the thick black clouds, +who cause hail and thunders and lightnings, and poison the air and the +fields and the pastures. "When such things happen, philosophers say they +are natural, and ascribe them to the planets, and I know not what all." +The Devil he believed also to be the patron of witchcraft. The Devil, he +said, had the power of deceiving the senses, so that one should swear he +heard or saw something while really the whole was an illusion. The Devil +also was at the bottom of dreaming and somnambulism. He was likewise the +author of diseases. "I hold," said Luther, "that the Devil sendeth all +heavy diseases and sicknesses upon people." Diseases are, as it were, the +Devil striking people; only, in striking, he must use some natural +instrument, as a murderer uses a sword. When our sins get the upper hand, +and all is going wrong, then the Devil must be God's hangman, to clear +away obstructions and to blast the earth with famines and pestilences. +Whatsoever procures death, that is the Devil's trade. All sadness and +melancholy come of the Devil. So does insanity; but the Devil has no +farther power over the soul of a maniac. The Devil works in the affairs of +nations. He looks always upward, taking an interest in what is high and +pompous; he does not look downward, taking little interest in what is +insignificant and lowly. He likes to work on the great scale, to establish +an influence over the central minds which manage public affairs. The Devil +is also a spiritual tempter. He is the opponent of the Divine grace in the +hearts of individuals. This was the aspect of the doctrine of Satanic +agency which was most frequent in preaching; and, accordingly, Luther's +propositions on the point are very specific. He had ascertained the laws +of Satanic operation upon the human spirit. The Devil, he said, knows +Scripture well, and uses it in argument. He shoots fearful thoughts, which +are his fiery darts, into the hearts of the godly. The Devil is acquainted +even with those mysterious enjoyments, those spiritual excitements, which +the Christian would suppose a being like him must be ignorant of. "What +gross inexperienced fellows," Luther says, "are those Papist commentators! +They are for interpreting Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' to be merely fleshly +lust; because they know no other kind of tribulation than that." But, +though the Devil has great power over the human mind, he is limited in +some respects. He has no means, for instance, of knowing the thoughts of +the faithful until they give them utterance. Again, if the Devil be once +foiled in argument, he cannot tempt that soul again on the same tack. The +Papacy being with Luther the grand existing form of evil, he of course +recognised the Devil in _it_. If the Papacy were once overthrown, Satan +would lose his stronghold. Never on earth again would he be able to pile +up such another edifice. No wonder, then, that at that moment all the +energies of the enraged and despairing Spirit were employed to prop up the +reeling and tottering fabric. Necessarily, therefore, Luther and Satan +were personal antagonists. Satan saw that the grand struggle was with +Luther. If he could but crush him by physical violence, or make him forget +God, then the world would be his own again. So, often did he wrestle with +Luther's spirit; often in nightly heart-agonies did he try to shake +Luther's faith in Christ. But he was never victorious. "All the Duke +Georges in the universe," said Luther, "are not equal to a single Devil; +and I do not fear the Devil." "I should wish," he said, "to die rather by +the Devil's hands than by the hands of Pope or Emperor; for then I should +die, at all events, by the hands of a great and mighty Prince of the +World: but, if I die through him, he shall eat such a bit of me as shall +be his suffocation; he shall spew me out again; and, at the last day, I, +in requital, shall devour him." When all other means were unavailing, +Luther found that the Devil could not stand against humour. In his hours +of spiritual agony, he tells us, when the Devil was heaping up his sins +before him, so as to make him doubt whether he should be saved, and when +he could not drive the Devil away by uttering sentences of Holy Writ, or +by prayer, he used to address him thus: "Devil, if, as you say, Christ's +blood, which was shed for my sins, be not sufficient to insure my +salvation, can't you pray for me yourself, Devil?" At this the Devil +invariably fled, "_quia est superbus spiritus et non potest ferre +contemptum sui_." + +What Luther called "wrestling with the Devil" we at this day call "low +spirits." Life must be a much more insipid thing than it was then. O what +a soul that man must have had; under what a weight of feeling, that would +have crushed a thousand of us, _he_ must have trod the earth! + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE.[2] + + +If there are any two portraits which we all expect to find hung up in the +rooms of those whose tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture, +they are the portraits of Shakespeare and Goethe. + +There are, indeed, many and various gods in our modern Pantheon of genius. +It contains rough gods and smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of +strength, gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, and +little cupids and toy-gods. Out of this variety each master of a household +will select his own Penates, the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece. +The roughest will find some to worship them, and the smallest shall not +want domestic adoration. But we suppose a dilettante of the first class, +one who, besides excluding from his range of choice the deities of war, +and cold thought, and civic action, shall further exclude from it all +those even of the gods of modern literature who, whether by reason of +their inferior rank, or by reason of their peculiar attributes, fail as +models of universal stateliness. What we should expect to see over the +mantelpiece of such a rigorous person would be the images of the English +Shakespeare and the German Goethe. + +On the one side, we will suppose, fixed with due gance against the +luxurious crimson of the wall, would be a slab of black marble exhibiting +in relief a white plaster-cast of the face of Shakespeare as modelled from +the Stratford bust; on the other, in a similar setting, would be a copy, +if possible, of the mask of Goethe taken at Weimar after the poet's death. +This would suffice; and the considerate beholder could find no fault with +such an arrangement. It is true, reasons might be assigned why a third +mask should have been added--that of the Italian Dante; in which case +Dante and Goethe should have occupied the sides, and Shakespeare should +have been placed higher up between. But the master of the house would +point out how, in that case, a fine taste would have been pained by the +inevitable sense of contrast between the genial mildness of the two +Teutonic faces and the severe and scornful melancholy of the poet of the +Inferno. The face of the Italian poet, as being so different in kind, must +either be reluctantly omitted, he would say, or transferred by itself to +the other side of the room. Unless, indeed, with a view to satisfy the +claims both of degree and of kind, Shakespeare were to be placed alone +over the mantelpiece, and Dante and Goethe in company on the opposite +wall, where, there being but two, the contrast would be rather agreeable +than otherwise! On the whole, however, and without prejudice to new +arrangements in the course of future decorations, he is content that it +should be as it is. + +And so, reader, for the present are we. Let us enter together, then, if it +seems worth while, the room of this imaginary dilettante during his +absence; let us turn the key in the lock, so that he may not come in to +interrupt us; and let us look for a little time at the two masks he has +provided for us over the mantelpiece, receiving such reflections as they +may suggest. Doubtless we have often looked at the two masks before; but +that matters little. + + * * * * * + +As we gaze at the first of the two masks, what is it that we see? A face +full in contour, of good oval shape, the individual features small in +proportion to the entire countenance, the greater part of which is made up +of an ample and rounded forehead and a somewhat abundant mouth and chin. +The general impression is that rather of rich, fine, and very mobile +tissue, than of large or decided bone. This, together with the length of +the upper lip, and the absence of any set expression, imparts to the face +an air of lax and luxurious calmness. It is clearly a passive face rather +than an active face, a face across which moods may pass and repass rather +than a face grooved and charactered into any one permanent show of +relation to the outer world. Placed beside the mask of Cromwell, it would +fail to impress, not only as being less massive and energetic, but also as +being in every way less marked and determinate. It is the face, we repeat, +of a literary man, one of those faces which depend for their power to +impress less on the sculptor's favourite circumstance of distinct osseous +form than on the changing hue and aspect of the living flesh. And yet it +is, even in form, quite a peculiar face. Instead of being, as in the +ordinary thousand and one portraits of Shakespeare, a mere general face +which anybody or nobody might have had, the face in the mask (and the +singular portrait in the first folio edition of the poet's works +corroborates it) is a face which every call-boy about the Globe Theatre +must have carried about with him in his imagination, without any trouble, +as specifically Mr. Shakespeare's face. In complexion, as we imagine it, +it was rather fair than dark; and yet not very fair either, if we are to +believe Shakespeare himself (Sonnet 62)-- + + "But when my glass shows me myself indeed, + Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity--" + +a passage, however, in which, from the nature of the mood in which it was +written, we are to suppose exaggeration for the worse. In short, the face +of Shakespeare, so far as we can infer what it was from the homely +Stratford bust, was a genuine and even comely, but still unusual, English +face, distinguished by a kind of ripe intellectual fulness in the general +outline, comparative smallness in the individual features, and a look of +gentle and humane repose. + +Goethe's face is different. The whole size of the head is perhaps less, +but the proportion of the face to the head is greater, and there is more +of that determinate form which arises from prominence and strength in the +bony structure. The features are individually larger, and present in their +combination more of that deliberate beauty of outline which can be +conveyed with effect in sculpture. The expression, however, is also that +of calm intellectual repose; and, in the absence of harshness or undue +concentration of the parts, one is at liberty to discover the proof that +this also was the face of a man whose life was spent rather in a career of +thought and literary effort than in a career of active and laborious +strife. Yet the face, with all its power of fine susceptibility, is not so +passive as that of Shakespeare. Its passiveness is more the passiveness of +self-control, and less that of natural constitution; the susceptibilities +pass and repass over a firmer basis of permanent character; the tremors +among the nervous tissues do not reach to such depths of sheer nervous +dissolution, but sooner make impact against the solid bone. The calm in +the one face is more that of habitual softness and ease of humour; the +calm in the other is more that of dignified, though tolerant, +self-composure. It would have been more easy, one thinks, to take +liberties with Shakespeare in his presence than to attempt a similar thing +in the presence of Goethe. The one carried himself with the air of a man +often diffident of himself, and whom, therefore, a foolish or impudent +stranger might very well mistake till he saw him roused; the other wore, +with all his kindness and blandness, a fixed stateliness of mien and look +that would have checked undue familiarity from the first. Add to all this +that the face of Goethe, at least in later life, was browner and more +wrinkled; his hair more dark; his eye also nearer the black and lustrous +in species, if less mysteriously vague and deep; and his person perhaps +the taller and more symmetrically made.[3] + +But a truce to these guesses! What do we actually know respecting those +two men, whose masks, the preserved similitudes of the living features +with which they once fronted the world, are now before us? Let us turn +first to the one and then to the other, till, as we gaze at these poor +eyeless images, which are all we now have, some vision of the lives and +minds they typify shall swim into our ken. + + * * * * * + +Shakespeare, this Englishman who died two hundred and sixty years ago, +what is he now to us his countrymen, who ought to know him best? A great +name, in the first place, of which we are proud! That this little foggy +island of England should have given birth to such a man is of itself a +moiety of our acquittance among the nations. By Frenchmen Shakespeare is +accepted as at least equal to their own first; Italians waver between him +and Dante; Germans, by race more our brethren, worship him as their own +highest product too, though born by chance amongst us. All confess him to +have been one of those great spirits, occasionally created, in whom the +human faculties seem to have reached that extreme of expansion on the +slightest increase beyond which man would burst away into some other mode +of being and leave this behind. And why all this? What are the special +claims of Shakespeare to this high worship? Through what mode of activity, +practised while alive, has he won this immortality after he is dead? The +answer is simple. He was an artist, a poet, a dramatist. Having, during +some five-and-twenty years of a life not very long, written about forty +dramatic pieces, which, after being acted in several London theatres, +were printed either by himself or by his executors, he has, by this means, +bequeathed to the memory of the human race an immense number of verses, +and to its imagination a great variety of ideal characters and +creations--Lears, Othellos, Hamlets, Falstaffs, Shallows, Imogens, +Mirandas, Ariels, Calibans. This, understood in its fullest extent, is +what Shakespeare has done. Whatever blank in human affairs, as they now +are, would be produced by the immediate withdrawal of all this +intellectual capital, together with all the interest that has been +accumulated on it: _that_ is the measure of what the world owes to +Shakespeare. + +This conception, however, while it serves vaguely to indicate to us the +greatness of the man, assists us very little in the task of defining his +character. In our attempts to do this--to ascend, as it were, to the +living spring from which have flowed those rich poetic streams--we +unavoidably rely upon two kinds of authority: the records which inform us +of the leading events of his life; and the casual allusions to his person +and habits left us by his contemporaries. + +To enumerate the ascertained events of Shakespeare's life is unnecessary +here. How he was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April, +1564, the son of a respectable burgess who afterwards became poor; how, +having been educated with some care in his native town, he married there, +at the age of eighteen, a farmer's daughter eight years older than +himself; how, after employing himself as scrivener or schoolmaster, or +something of that kind, in his native county for a few years more, he at +length quitted it in his twenty-fourth year, and came up to London, +leaving his wife and three children at Stratford; how, connecting himself +with the Blackfriars theatre, he commenced the career of a poet and +play-writer; how he succeeded so well in this that, after having been a +flourishing actor and theatre-proprietor, and a most popular man of genius +about town for some seventeen years, he was able to leave the stage while +still under forty, and return to Stratford with property sufficient to +make him the most considerable man of the place; how he lived here for +some twelve years more in the midst of his family, sending up occasionally +a new play to town, and otherwise leading the even and tranquil existence +of a country gentleman; and how, after having buried his old mother, +married his daughters, and seen himself a grandfather at the age of +forty-three, he was cut off rather suddenly near his fifty-third birthday, +in the year 1616:--all this is, or ought to be, as familiar to educated +Englishmen of the present day as the letters of the English alphabet. M. +Guizot, with a little inaccuracy, has made these leading facts in the life +of the English poet tolerably familiar even to our French neighbours. + +But, while such facts, if conceived with sufficient distinctness, serve to +mark out the life of the poet in general outline, it is rather from the +few notices of him that have come down to us from his contemporaries that +we derive the more special impressions regarding his character and ways +with which we are accustomed to fill up this outline. These notices are +various; those of interest may, perhaps, be about a dozen in all; but the +only ones that take a very decided hold on the imagination are the three +following:-- + + _Fuller's Fancy-picture of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at the Mermaid + Tavern._--"Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; + which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English + man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in + learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the + English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could + turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by + the quickness of his wit and invention."--_Written, about 1650, by + Thomas Fuller, born in 1608._ + + _Aubrey's Sketch of Shakespeare at second hand._--"This William, + being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I + guess, about 18; and was an actor at one of the play-houses, and did + act exceedingly well. (Now B. Jonson was never a good actor, but an + excellent instructor.) He began early to make essays at dramatic + poetry, which at that time was very low; and his plays took well. He + was a handsome, well-shaped man; very good company, and of a very + ready and pleasant smooth wit. The humour of the constable in '_A + Midsummer Night's Dream_,' he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks, + which is the road from London to Stratford; and there was living that + constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Mr. Jos. Howe is of + that parish; and knew him. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of + men daily wherever they came.... He was wont to go to his native + country once a year. I think I have been told that he left 200_l._ or + 300_l._ per annum, there and thereabout, to a sister. I have heard + Sir William Davenant and Mr. Thomas Shadwell, who is accounted the + best comedian we have now, say that he had a most prodigious wit, and + did admire his natural parts beyond all other dramatical writers. He + was wont to say that he never blotted out a line in his life. Said + Ben Jonson, 'I wish he had blotted out a thousand.'"--_Written, about + 1680, by John Aubrey, born 1625._ + + _Ben Jonson's own Sketch of Shakespeare._--"I remember the players + have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his + writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer + hath been 'Would he had blotted a thousand!'; which they thought a + malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their + ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by + wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved + the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as + any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an + excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he + flowed with that facility that _sometimes it was necessary he should + be stopped_: '_Sufflaminandus erat_,' as Augustus said of Haterius. + His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too! + Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as + when he said, in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, 'Caesar, + thou dost me wrong,' he replied, 'Caesar did never wrong but with just + cause,' and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his + vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than + to be pardoned."--_Ben Jonson's "Discoveries."_ + +It is sheer nonsense, with these and other such passages accessible to +anybody, to go on repeating, as people seem determined to do, the +hackneyed saying of the commentator Steevens, that "all that we know of +Shakespeare is, that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon; married and had +children there; went to London, where he commenced actor, and wrote plays +and poems; returned to Stratford, made his will, died, and was buried."[4] +It is our own fault, and not the fault of the materials, if we do not know +a great deal more about Shakespeare than that; if we do not realize, for +example, these distinct and indubitable facts about him--his special +reputation among the critics of his time, as a man not so much of +erudition as of prodigious natural genius; his gentleness and openness of +disposition; his popular and sociable habits; his extreme ease, and, as +some thought, negligence in composition; and, above all, and most +characteristic of all, his excessive fluency in speech. "He sometimes +required stopping," is Ben Jonson's expression; and whoever does not see a +whole volume of revelation respecting Shakespeare in that single trait has +no eye for seeing anything. Let no one ever lose sight of that phrase in +trying to imagine Shakespeare. + +Still, after all, we cannot be content thus. With regard to such a man we +cannot rest satisfied with a mere picture of his exterior in its aspect of +repose, or in a few of its common attitudes. We seek, as the phrase is, to +penetrate into his heart--to detect and to fix in everlasting portraiture +that mood of his soul which was ultimate and characteristic; in which, so +to speak, he came ready-fashioned from the Creator's hands; towards which +he always sank when alone; and on the ground-melody of which all his +thoughts and actions were but voluntary variations. As far short of such a +result as would be any notion we could form of the poet Burns from a mere +chronological outline of his life, together with a few stories such as are +current about his moral irregularities, so far short of a true +appreciation of Shakespeare would be that idea of him which we could +derive from the scanty fund of the external evidence. + +And here it is that, in proceeding to make up the deficiency of the +external evidence by going to the only other available source of light on +the subject, namely the bequeathed writings of the man himself, we find +ourselves obstructed at the outset by an obvious difficulty, which does +not exist to the same extent in most other cases. We can, with comparative +ease, recognise Burns himself in his works; for Burns is a lyrist, pouring +out his own feelings in song, often alluding to himself, and generally +under personal agitation when he writes. Shakespeare, on the other hand, +is a dramatist, whose function it was not to communicate, but to create. +Had he been a dramatist of the same school as Ben Jonson, indeed--using +the drama as a means of spreading, or, at all events, as a medium through +which to insinuate, his opinions, and often indicating his purposes by the +very names of his _dramatis personae_ (as Downright, Merecraft, Eitherside, +and the like)--then the task would have been easier. But it is not so with +Shakespeare. Less than almost any man that ever wrote does he inculcate or +dogmatise. He is the very type of the poet. He paints, represents, +creates, holds the mirror up to nature; but from opinion, doctrine, +controversy, theory, he holds instinctively aloof. In each of his plays +there is a "central idea," to use the favourite term of the German +critics--that is, a single thought round which all may be exhibited as +consciously or unconsciously crystallized; but there is no pervading +maxim, no point set forth to be argued or proved. Of none of all the plays +can it be said that it is more than any other a vehicle for fixed articles +in the creed of Shakespeare. + +One quality or attribute of Shakespeare's genius we do, indeed, contrive +to seize out this very difficulty of seizing anything--that quality or +attribute of _many-sidedness_ of which we have heard so much for the last +century and a half. The immense variety of his characters and conceptions, +embracing as it does Hamlets and Falstaffs, Kings and Clowns, Prosperos +and Dogberrys, and his apparently equal ease in handling them all, are +matters that have been noted by one and all of the critics. And thus, +while his own character is lost in his incessant shiftings through such a +succession of masks, we yet manage, as it were in revenge, to extract from +the very impossibility of describing him an adjective which does possess a +kind of quasi-descriptive value. It is as if of some one that had baffled +all our attempts to investigate him we were to console ourselves by saying +that he was a perfect Proteus. We call Shakespeare "many-sided;" not a +magazine, nor a young lady at a party, but tells you that; and in adding +this to our list of adjectives concerning him we find a certain +satisfaction, and even an increase of light. + +But it would be cowardice to stop here. The old sea-god Proteus himself, +despite his subtlety and versatility, had a real form and character of his +own, into which he could be compelled, if one only knew the way. Hear how +they served this old gentleman in the Odyssey: + + "We at once, + Loud shouting, flew on him, and in our arms + Constrained him fast; nor the sea-prophet old + Called not incontinent his shifts to mind. + First he became a long-maned lion grim; + A dragon then, a panther, a huge boar, + A limpid stream, and an o'ershadowing tree. + We, persevering, held him; till, at length, + The subtle sage, his ineffectual arts + Resigning weary, questioned me and spoke." + +And so with _our_ Proteus. The many-sidedness of the dramatist, let it be +well believed and pondered, is but the versatility in form of a certain +personal and substantial being, which constitutes the specific mind of the +dramatist himself. Precisely as we have insisted that Shakespeare's face, +as the best portraits represent it to us, is no mere general face or face +to let, but a good, decided, and even rather singular face, so, we would +insist, he had as specific a character, as thoroughly a way of his own in +thinking about things and going through his morning and evening hours, as +any of ourselves. "Man is only many-sided," says Goethe, "when he strives +after the highest because he _must_, and descends to the lesser because he +_will_;" that is, as we interpret, when he is borne on in a certain noble +direction in all that he does by the very structure of his mind, while, at +his option, he may keep planting this fixed path or not with a sportive +and flowery border. By the necessity of his nature, Shakespeare was +compelled in a certain earnest direction in all that he did; and it is our +part to search through the thickets of imagery and gratuitous fiction amid +which he spent his life, that this path may be discovered. As the lion, or +the limpid stream, or the overshadowing tree, into which Proteus turned +himself, was not a real lion, or a real stream, or a real tree, but only +Proteus as the one or as the other; so, involved in each of Shakespeare's +characters,--in Hamlet, in Falstaff, or in Romeo,--involved in some deep +manner in each of these diverse characters, is Shakespeare's own nature. +If Shakespeare had not been precisely and wholly Shakespeare, and not any +other man actual or conceivable, could Hamlet or Falstaff, or any other of +his creations, have been what they are? + +But how to evolve Shakespeare from his works, how to compel this Proteus +into his proper and native form, is still the question. It is a problem +of the highest difficulty. Something, indeed, of the poet's personal +character and views we cannot help gathering as we read his dramas. +Passages again and again occur of which, from their peculiar effect upon +ourselves, from their conceivable reference to what we know of the poet's +circumstances, or from their evident superfluousness and warmth, we do not +hesitate to aver "There speaks the poet's own heart." But to show +generally how much of the man has passed into the poet, and how it is that +his personal bent and peculiarities are to be surely detected inhering in +writings whose essential character it is to be arbitrary and universal, is +a task from which a critic might well shrink, were he left merely to the +ordinary resources of critical ingenuity without any positive and +ascertained clue. + +In this case, however, all the world ought to know, there is a positive +and ascertained clue. Shakespeare has left to us not merely a collection +of dramas, the exercises of his creative phantasy in a world of ideal +matter, but also certain poems which are assuredly and expressly +autobiographic. Criticism seems now pretty conclusively to have +determined, what it ought to have determined long ago, that the _Sonnets_ +of Shakespeare are, and can possibly be, nothing else than a poetical +record of his own feelings and experience--a connected series of entries, +as it were, in his own diary--during a certain period of his London life. +This, we say, is conclusively determined and agreed upon; and whoever does +not, to some extent, hold this view knows nothing about the subject. +Ulrici, who is a genuine investigator, as well as a profound critic, is, +of course, right on this point. So, also, in the main, is M. Guizot, +although he mars the worth of the conclusion by adducing the foolish +theory of _Euphuism_--that is, of the adoption of an affected style of +expression in vogue in Shakespeare's age--in order to explain away that +which is precisely the most important thing about the Sonnets, and the +very thing _not_ to be explained away: namely, the depth and strangeness +of their pervading sentiment, and the curious hyperbolism of their style. +In truth, it is the very closeness of the contact into which the right +view of the Sonnets brings us with Shakespeare, the very value of the +information respecting him to which it opens the way, that operates +against it. Where we have so eager a desire to know, there we fear to +believe, lest what we have once cherished on so great a subject we should +be obliged again to give up, or lest, if our imaginations should dare to +figure aught too exact and familiar regarding the traits and motions of so +royal a spirit, the question should be put to us, what _we_ can know of +the halls of a palace, or the mantled tread of a king? Still the fact is +as it is. These Sonnets of Shakespeare _are_ autobiographic--distinctly, +intensely, painfully autobiographic, although in a style and after a +fashion of autobiography so peculiar that we can cite only Dante in his +_Vita Nuova_, and Tennyson in his _In Memoriam_, as having furnished +similar examples of it. + +We are not going to examine the Sonnets in detail here, nor to tell the +story which they involve as a whole. We will indicate generally, however, +the impression which, we think, a close investigation of them will +infallibly leave on any thoughtful reader, as to the characteristic +personal qualities of that mind the larger and more factitious emanations +from which still cover and astonish the world. + +The general and aggregate effect, then, of these Sonnets, as contributing +to our knowledge of Shakespeare as a man, is to antiquate, or at least to +reduce very much in value, the common idea of him implied in such phrases +as William the Calm, William the Cheerful, and the like. These phrases are +true, when understood in a certain very obvious sense; but, if we were to +select that designation which would, as we think, express Shakespeare in +his most intimate and private relations to man and nature, we should +rather say William the Meditative, William the Metaphysical, or William +the Melancholy. Let not the reader, full of the just idea of Shakespeare's +wonderful concreteness as a poet, be staggered by the second of these +phrases. The phrase is a good phrase; etymologically, it is perhaps the +best phrase we could here use; and whatever of inappropriateness there may +seem to be in it proceeds from false associations, and will vanish, we +hope, before we have done with it. Nor let it be supposed that, in using, +as nearly synonymous, the word Melancholy, we mean anything so absurd as +that the author of Falstaff was a Werther. What we mean is that there is +evidence in the Sonnets, corroborated by other proof on all hands, that +the mind of Shakespeare, when left to itself, was apt to sink into that +state in which thoughts of what is sad and mysterious in the universe most +easily come and go. + +At no time, except during sleep, is the mind of any human being completely +idle. All men have some natural and congenial mood into which they fall +when they are left to talk with themselves. One man recounts the follies +of the past day, renewing the relish of them by the recollection; another +uses his leisure to hate his enemy and to scheme his discomfiture; a third +rehearses in imagination, in order to be prepared, the part which he is to +perform on the morrow. Now, at such moments, as we believe, it was the +habit of Shakespeare's mind, obliged thereto by the necessity of its +structure, to ponder ceaselessly those quest ions relating to man, his +origin, and his destiny, in familiarity with which consists what is called +the spiritual element in human nature. It was Shakespeare's use, as it +seems to us, to revert, when he was alone, to that ultimate mood of the +soul in which one hovers wistfully on the borders of the finite, vainly +pressing against the barriers that separate it from the unknown; that mood +in which even what is common and under foot seems part of a vast current +mystery, and in which, like Arabian Job of old, one looks by turns at the +heaven above, the earth beneath, and one's own moving body between, +interrogating whence it all is, why it all is, and whither it all tends. +And this, we say, is Melancholy. It is more. It is that mood of man, +which, most of all moods, is thoroughly, grandly, specifically human. That +which is the essence of all worth, all beauty, all humour, all genius, is +open or secret reference to the supernatural; and this is sorrow. The +attitude of a finite creature, contemplating the infinite, can only be +that of an exile, grief and wonder blending in a wistful longing for an +unknown home. + +As we consider this frame of mind to have been characteristic of +Shakespeare, so we find that as a poet he has not forgotten to represent +it. We have always fancied Hamlet to be a closer translation of +Shakespeare's own character than any other of his personations. The same +meditativeness, the same morbid reference at all times to the +supernatural, the same inordinate development of the speculative faculty, +the same intellectual melancholy, that are seen in the Prince of Denmark, +seem to have distinguished Shakespeare. Nor is it possible here to forget +that minor and lower form of the same fancy--the ornament of _As You Like +It_, the melancholy Jaques. + + "_Jaques._ More, more, I prithee, more. + + _Amiens._ It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques. + + _Jaques._ I thank it. More, I prithee, more! I can suck melancholy + out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More. I prithee, more! + + _Amiens._ My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you. + + _Jaques._ I do not desire you to please me; I desire you to sing. + + * * * * * + + _Rosalind._ They say you are a melancholy fellow. + + _Jaques._ I am so; I do love it better than laughing. + + _Rosalind._ Those that are in extremity of either are abominable + fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than + drunkards. + + _Jaques._ Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. + + _Rosalind._ Why, then, 'tis good to be a post. + + _Jaques._ I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is + emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the + courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; + nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; + nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine + own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and + indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often + rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness." + +Jaques is not Shakespeare; but in writing this description of Jaques +Shakespeare drew from his knowledge of himself. His also was a "melancholy +of his own," a "humorous sadness in which his often rumination wrapt him." +In that declared power of Jaques of "sucking melancholy out of a song" the +reference of Shakespeare to himself seems almost direct. Nay more, as +Rosalind, in rating poor Jaques, tells him on one occasion that he is so +abject a fellow that she verily believes he is "out of love with his +nativity, and almost chides God _for making him of that countenance that +he is_," so Shakespeare's melancholy, in one of his Sonnets (No. 29), +takes exactly the same form of self-dissatisfaction. + + "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, + I all alone beweep my outcast state, + And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, + And look upon myself and curse my fate, + Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, + _Featured like him_, like him with friends possessed, + Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, + With what I most enjoy contented least; + Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising, + Haply I think on thee," &c. + +Think of that, reader! That mask of Shakespeare's face, which we have been +discussing, Shakespeare himself did not like; and there were moments in +which he was so abject as actually to wish that he had received from +Nature another man's physical features! + +If Shakespeare's melancholy was, like that of Jaques, a complex +melancholy, a melancholy "compounded of many simples"--extracted perhaps +at first from some root of bitter experience in his own life, and then +fed, as his Sonnets clearly state, by a habitual sense of his own +"outcast" condition in society, and by the sight of a hundred social +wrongs around him, into a kind of abject dissatisfaction with himself and +his fate--yet, in the end, and in its highest form, it was rather, as we +have already hinted, the melancholy of Hamlet, a meditative, contemplative +melancholy, embracing human life as a whole, the melancholy of a mind +incessantly tending from the real ([Greek: ta physika]) to the +metaphysical ([Greek: ta meta ta physika]), and only brought back by +external occasion from the metaphysical to the real. + +Do not let us quarrel about the words, if we can agree about the thing. +Let any competent person whatever read the Sonnets, and then, with their +impression on him, pass to the plays, and he will inevitably become aware +of Shakespeare's personal fondness for certain themes or trains of +thought, particularly that of the speed and destructiveness of time. +Death, vicissitude, the march and tramp of generations across life's +stage, the rotting of human bodies in the earth--these and all the other +forms of the same thought were familiar to Shakespeare to a degree beyond +what is to be seen in the case of any other poet. It seems to have been a +habit of his mind, when left to its own tendency, ever to indulge by +preference in that oldest of human meditations, which is not yet trite: +"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble; he +cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth as a shadow, and +continueth not." Let us cite a few examples from the Sonnets:-- + + "When I consider everything that grows + Holds in perfection but a little moment, + That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows + Whereon the stars in secret influence comment."-- + _Sonnet 15._ + + "If thou survive my well-contented clay, + When that churl Death my bones with dust shall + cover."-- _Sonnet 32._ + + "No longer mourn for me when I am dead + Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell + Give warning to the world that I am fled + From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell."-- + _Sonnet 71._ + + "The wrinkles, which thy glass will truly show, + Of mouthed graves will give thee memory; + Thou by thy dial's shady stealth may'st know + Time's thievish progress to eternity."-- + _Sonnet 77._ + + "Or I shall live your epitaph to make, + Or you survive when I in earth am rotten."-- + _Sonnet 81._ + +These are but one or two out of many such passages occurring in the +Sonnets. Indeed, it may be said that, whenever Shakespeare pronounces the +words time, age, death, and the like, it is with a deep and cutting +personal emphasis, quite different from the usual manner of poets in their +stereotyped allusions to mortality. Time, in particular, seems to have +tenanted his imagination as a kind of grim and hideous personal existence, +cruel out of mere malevolence of nature. Death, too, had become to him a +kind of actual being or fury, morally unamiable, and deserving of +reproach: "that churl Death." + +If we turn to the plays of Shakespeare, we shall find that in them too the +same morbid sensitiveness to all associations with mortality is +continually breaking out. The vividness, for example, with which Juliet +describes the interior of a charnel-house partakes of a spirit of revenge, +as if Shakespeare were retaliating, through her, upon an object horrible +to himself:-- + + "Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house, + O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones, + With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls." + +More distinctly revengeful is Romeo's ejaculation at the tomb:-- + + "Thou detestable maw, thou womb of Death, + Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, + Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open!" + +And who does not remember the famous passage in _Measure for Measure_?-- + + "_Claudio._ Death is a fearful thing. + + _Isabella._ And shamed life is hateful. + + _Claudio._ Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; + To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; + This sensible warm motion to become + A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit + To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside + In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; + To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, + And blown with restless violence round about + The pendent world; or to be worse than worst + Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts + Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! + The weariest and most loathed worldly life + That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment, + Can lay on nature is a paradise + To what we fear of Death." + +Again in the grave-digging scene in _Hamlet_ we see the same fascinated +familiarity of the imagination with all that pertains to churchyards, +coffins, and the corruption within them. + + "_Hamlet._ Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. + + _Horatio._ What's that, my lord? + + _Hamlet._ Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the + earth? + + _Horatio._ E'en so. + + _Hamlet._ And smelt so? pah! (_Puts down the skull._) + + _Horatio._ E'en so, my lord! + + _Hamlet._ To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not + imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it + stopping a bung-hole? + + _Horatio._ 'Twere to reason too curiously to consider so. + + _Hamlet._ No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with + modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus:--Alexander died; + Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; + of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted + might they not stop a beer-barrel? + + Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, + Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: + O that that earth which kept the world in awe + Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!" + +Observe how Shakespeare here defends, through Hamlet, his own tendency +"too curiously" to consider death. To sum up all, however, let us turn to +that unparalleled burst of language in the _Tempest_, in which the poet +has defeated Time itself by chivalrously proclaiming to all time what Time +can do:-- + + "And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, + The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, + And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff + As dreams are made of; and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + +This, we contend, is no mere poetic phrenzy, inserted because it was +dramatically suitable that Prospero should so express himself at that +place; it is the explosion into words of a feeling during which Prospero +was forgotten, and Shakespeare swooned into himself. And what is the +continuation of the passage but a kind of postscript, describing, under +the guise of Prospero, Shakespeare's own agitation with what he had just +written?-- + + "Sir, I am vexed; + Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled: + Be not disturbed with my infirmity: + If you be pleased, retire into my cell, + And there repose: _a turn or two I'll walk, + To still my beating mind_." + +To our imagination the surmise is that Shakespeare here laid down his pen, +and began to pace his chamber, too agitated to write more that night. + +In this extreme familiarity with the conception of mortality in general, +and perhaps also in this extreme sensitiveness to the thought of death as +a matter of personal import, all great poets, and possibly all great men +whatever, have to some extent resembled Shakespeare. For these are the +feelings of our common nature on which religion and all solemn activity +have founded and maintained themselves. Space and Time are the largest and +the outermost of all human conceptions; to stand, therefore, incessantly +upon these extreme conceptions, as upon the perimeter of a figure, and to +view all inwards from them, is the highest exercise of thought to which a +human being can attain. Accordingly, in all great poets there may be +discerned this familiarity of the imagination with the world figured as a +poor little ball pendent in space and moving forward out of a dark past to +a future of light or gloom. But in this respect Shakespeare exceeds them +all; and in this respect, therefore, no poet is more religious, more +spiritual, more profoundly metaphysical, than he. Into an inordinate +amount of that outward pressure of the soul against the perimeter of +sensible things, infuse the peculiar _moral_ germ of Christianity, and you +have the religion of Shakespeare. Thus:-- + + "And our little life + Is rounded with a sleep."--_Tempest._ + +Here the poetic imagination sweeps boldly round the universe, severing it +as by a soft cloud-line from the infinite Unknown. + + "Poor soul! the centre of my sinful earth, + Fooled by those rebel powers that lead thee 'stray!" + _Sonnet 146._ + +Here the soul, retracting its thoughts from the far and physical, dwells +disgustedly on itself. + + "The dread of something after death, + The undiscovered country from whose bourn + No traveller returns."--_Hamlet._ + +Here the soul, pierced with the new and awful thought of sin, wings out +again towards the Infinite, and finds all dark. + + "How would you be, + If He, which is the top of judgment, should + But judge you as you are?"--_Measure for Measure._ + +Here the silver lamp of hope is hung up within the gloomy sphere, to burn +softly and faintly for ever! + +And so it is throughout Shakespeare's writings. Whatever is special or +doctrinal is avoided; all that intellectual tackling, so to speak, is +struck away that would afford the soul any relief whatever from the whole +sensation of the supernatural. Although we cannot, therefore, in honest +keeping with popular language, call Shakespeare, as Ulrici does, the most +Christian of poets, we believe him to have been the man in modern times +who, breathing an atmosphere full of Christian conceptions, and walking +amid a civilization studded with Christian institutions, had his whole +being tied by the closest personal links to those highest generalities of +the universe which the greatest minds in all ages have ever pondered and +meditated, and round which Christianity has thrown its clasp of gold. + +Shakespeare, then, we hold to have been essentially a meditative, +speculative, and even, in his solitary hours, an abject and melancholy +man, rather than a man of active, firm, and worldly disposition. Instead +of being a calm, stony observer of life and nature, as he has been +sometimes represented, we believe him to have been a man of the gentlest +and most troublesome affections, of sensibility abnormally keen and deep, +full of metaphysical longings, liable above most men to self-distrust, +despondency, and mental agitation from causes internal and external, and a +prey to many secret and severe experiences which he did not discuss at the +Mermaid tavern. This, we say, is no guess; it is a thing certified under +his own hand and seal. But, this being allowed, we are willing to agree +with all that is said of him, by way of indicating the immense variety of +faculties, dispositions, and acquirements, of which his character was +built up. Vast intellectual inquisitiveness, the readiest and most +universal humour, the truest sagacity and knowledge of the world, the +richest and deepest capacity of enjoying all that life presented: all +this, as applied to Shakespeare, is a mere string of undeniable +commonplaces. The man, as we fancy him, who of all others trod the +oftenest the extreme metaphysic walk which bounds our universe in, he was +also the man of all others who was related most keenly by every fibre of +his being to all the world of the real and the concrete. Better than any +man he knew life to be a dream; with as vivid a relish as any man he did +his part as one of the dreamers. If at one moment life stood before his +mental gaze, an illuminated little speck or disc, softly rounded with +mysterious sleep, the next moment this mere span shot out into an +illimitable plain, whereon he himself stood--a plain covered with forests, +parted by seas, studded with cities and huge concourses of men, mapped out +into civilizations, over-canopied by stars. Nay, it was precisely because +he came and went with such instant transition between the two extremes +that he behaved so genially and sympathetically in the latter. It was +precisely because he had done the metaphysic feat so completely once for +all, and did not bungle on metaphysicizing bit by bit amid the real, that +he stood forth in the character of the most concrete of poets. Life is an +illusion, a show, a phantasm: well then, that is settled, and _I_ belong +to that section of the illusion called London, the seventeenth century, +and woody Warwickshire! So he may have said; and he acted accordingly. He +walked amid the woods of Warwickshire, and listened to the birds singing +in their leafy retreats; he entered the Mermaid tavern with Ben Jonson +after the theatre was over, and found himself quite properly related, as +one item in the illusion, to that other item in it, a good supper and a +cup of canary. He accepted the world as it was, rejoiced in its joys, was +pained by its sorrows, reverenced its dignities, respected its laws, and +laughed at its whimsies. It was this very strength and intimacy and +universality of his relations to the concrete world of nature and life +that caused in him that spirit of acquiescence in things as they were, +that evident conservatism of temper, that indifference, or perhaps more, +to the specific contemporary forms of social and intellectual movement, +with which he has sometimes been charged as a fault. The habit of +attaching weight to what are called abstractions, of metaphysicizing bit +by bit amid the real, is almost an essential feature in the constitution +of men who are remarkable for their faith in social progress. It was +precisely, therefore, because Shakespeare was such a votary of the +concrete, because he walked so firmly on the green and solid sward of that +island of life which he knew to be surrounded by a metaphysic sea, that +this or that metaphysical proposal with respect to the island itself +occupied him but little. + +How, then, _did_ Shakespeare relate himself to this concrete world of +nature and life in which his lot had been cast? What precise function with +regard to it, if not that of an active partisan of progress, did he accept +as devolving naturally on _him_? The answer is easy. Marked out by +circumstances, and by his own bent and inclination, from the vast +majority of men, who, with greater or less faculty, sometimes perhaps with +the greatest, pass their lives in silence, appearing in the world at their +time, enjoying it for a season, and returning to the earth again,--marked +out from among these, and appointed to be one of those whom the whole +earth should remember and think of; yet precluded, as we have seen, by his +constitution and fortune, from certain modes of attaining to this +honour--the special function which, in this high place, he saw himself +called upon to discharge, and by the discharge of which he has ensured his +place in perpetuity, was simply that of _expressing_ what he felt and saw. +In other words, Shakespeare was specifically and transcendently a literary +man. To say that he was the greatest _man_ that ever lived is to provoke a +useless controversy, and comparisons that lead to nothing, between +Shakespeare and Caesar, Shakespeare and Charlemagne, Shakespeare and +Cromwell; to say that he was the greatest _intellect_ that ever lived, is +to bring the shades of Aristotle and Plato, and Bacon and Newton, and all +the other systematic thinkers, grumbling about us, with demands for a +definition of intellect, which we are by no means in a position to give; +nay, finally, to say that he is the greatest _poet_ that the world has +produced (a thing which we would certainly say, were we provoked to it,) +would be unnecessarily to hurt the feelings of Homer and Sophocles, Dante +and Milton. What we will say, then, and challenge the world to gainsay, is +that he was the greatest _expresser_ that ever lived. This is glory +enough, and it leaves the other questions open. Other men may have led, on +the whole, greater and more impressive lives than he; other men, acting on +their fellows through the same medium of speech that he used, may have +expended a greater power of thought, and achieved a greater intellectual +effect, in one consistent direction; other men, too (though this is very +questionable), may have contrived to issue the matter which they did +address to the world in more compact and perfect artistic shapes. But no +man that ever lived said such splendid things on all subjects universally; +no man that ever lived had the faculty of pouring out on all occasions +such a flood of the richest and deepest language. He may have had rivals +in the art of imagining situations; he had no rival in the power of +sending a gush of the appropriate intellectual effusion over the image and +body of a situation once conceived. From a jewelled ring on an alderman's +finger to the most mountainous thought or deed of man or demon, nothing +suggested itself that his speech could not envelope and enfold with ease. +That excessive fluency which astonished Ben Jonson when he listened to +Shakespeare in person astonishes the world yet. Abundance, ease, +redundance, a plenitude of word, sound, and imagery, which, were the +intellect at work only a little less magnificent, would sometimes end in +sheer braggartism and bombast, are the characteristics of Shakespeare's +style. Nothing is suppressed, nothing omitted, nothing cancelled. On and +on the poet flows; words, thoughts, and fancies crowding on him as fast as +he can write, all related to the matter on hand, and all poured forth +together, to rise and fall on the waves of an established cadence. Such +lightness and ease in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in +the matter, are combined in no other writer. How the matter was first +accumulated, what proportion of it was the acquired capital of former +efforts, and what proportion of it welled up in the poet's mind during and +in virtue of the very act of speech, it is impossible to say; but this at +least may be affirmed without fear of contradiction, that there never was +a mind in the world from which, when it was pricked by any occasion +whatever, there poured forth on the instant such a stream of precious +substance intellectually related to it. By his powers of expression, in +fact, Shakespeare has beggared all his posterity, and left mere +practitioners of expression nothing possible to do. There is perhaps not a +thought, or feeling, or situation, really common and generic to human +life, on which he has not exercised his prerogative; and, wherever he has +once been, woe to the man that comes after him! He has overgrown the +whole system and face of things like a universal ivy, which has left no +wall uncovered, no pinnacle unclimbed, no chink unpenetrated. Since he +lived the concrete world has worn a richer surface. He found it great and +beautiful, with stripes here and there of the rough old coat seen through +the leafy labours of his predecessors; he left it clothed throughout with +the wealth and autumnal luxuriance of his own unparalleled language. + + * * * * * + +This brings us, by a very natural connexion, to what we have to say of +Goethe. For, if, with the foregoing impressions on our mind respecting the +character and the function of the great English poet, we turn to the mask +of his German successor and admirer, which has been so long waiting our +notice, the first question must infallibly be What recognition is it +possible that, in such circumstances, we can have left for _him_? In other +words, the first consideration that must be taken into account in any +attempt to appreciate Goethe is that he came into a world in which +Shakespeare had been before him. For a man who, in the main, was to pursue +a course so similar to that which Shakespeare had pursued this was a +matter of incalculable importance. Either, on the one hand, the value of +all that the second man could do, if he adhered to a course very similar, +must suffer from the fact that he was following in the footsteps of a +predecessor of such unapproachable excellence; or, on the other hand, the +consciousness of this, if it came in time, would be likely to _prevent_ +too close a resemblance between the lives of the two men, by giving a +special direction and character to the efforts of the second. Hear Goethe +himself on this very point:-- + + "We discoursed upon English literature, on the greatness of + Shakespeare, and on the unfavourable position held by all English + dramatic authors who had appeared after that poetical giant. 'A + dramatic talent of any importance,' said Goethe, 'could not forbear + to notice Shakespeare's works; nay, could not forbear to study them. + Having studied them, he must be aware that Shakespeare has already + exhausted the whole of human nature in all its tendencies, in all its + heights and depths, and that, in fact, there remains for him, the + aftercomer, nothing more to do. And how could one get courage to put + pen to paper, if one were conscious, in an earnest appreciating + spirit, that such unfathomable and unattainable excellencies were + already in existence? It fared better with me fifty years ago in my + own dear Germany. I could soon come to an end with all that then + existed; it could not long awe me, or occupy my attention. I soon + left behind me German literature, and the study of it, and turned my + thoughts to life and to production. So on and on I went, in my own + natural development, and on and on I fashioned the productions of + epoch after epoch. And, at every step of life and development, my + standard of excellence was not much higher than what at such a step + I was able to attain. But, had I been born an Englishman, and had all + those numerous masterpieces been brought before me in all their power + at my first dawn of youthful consciousness, they would have + overpowered me, and I should not have known what to do. I could not + have gone on with such fresh light-heartedness, but should have had + to bethink myself, and look about for a long time to find some new + outlet.'"--_Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe_, i. pp. 114, 115. + +All this is very clear and happily expressed. Most Englishmen that have +written since Shakespeare _have_ been overawed by the sense of his vast +superiority; and Goethe, if he had been an Englishman, would have partaken +of the same feeling, and would have been obliged, as he says, to look +about for some path in which competition with such a predecessor would +have been avoided. Being, however, a German, and coming at a time when +German literature had nothing so great to boast of but that an ardent +young man could hope to produce something as good or better, the way was +certainly open to him to the attainment, in his own nation, of a position +analogous to that which Shakespeare had occupied in his. Goethe might, if +he had chosen, have aspired to be the Shakespeare of Germany. Had his +tastes and faculties pointed in that direction, there was no reason, +special to his own nation, that would have made it very incumbent on him +to thwart the tendency of his genius and seek about for a new outlet in +order to escape injurious comparisons. But, even in such circumstances, to +have pursued a course _very_ similar to that of Shakespeare, and to have +been animated by a mere ambition to tread in the footsteps of that master, +would have been death to all chance of a reputation among the highest. +Great writers do not exclusively belong to the country of their birth; the +greatest of all are grouped together on a kind of central platform, in the +view of all peoples and tongues; and, as in this select assemblage no +duplicates are permitted, the man who does never so well a second time +that which the world has already canonized a man for doing once has little +chance of being admitted to co-equal honours. More especially in the +present case would too close a resemblance to the original, whether in +manner or in purpose, have been regarded in the end as a reason for +inferiority in place. As the poet of one branch of the great Germanic +family of mankind, Shakespeare belonged indirectly to the Germans, even +before they recognised him; in him all the genuine qualities of Teutonic +human nature, as well as the more special characteristics of English +genius, were embodied once for all in the particular form which had +chanced to be his; and, had Goethe been, in any marked sense, only a +repetition of the same form, he might have held his place for some time as +the wonder of Germany, but, as soon as the course of events had opened up +the communication which was sure to take place at some time between the +German and the English literatures, and so made his countrymen acquainted +with Shakespeare, he would have lost his extreme brilliance, and become +but a star of the second magnitude. In order, then, that Goethe might hold +permanently a first rank even among his own countrymen, it was necessary +that he should be a man of a genius quite distinct from that of +Shakespeare, a man who, having or not having certain Shakespearian +qualities, should at all events signalize such qualities as he had by a +marked character and function of his own. And, if this was necessary to +secure to Goethe a first rank in the literature of Germany, much more was +it necessary to ensure him a place as one of the intellectual potentates +of the whole modern world. If Goethe was to be admitted into this select +company at all, it could not be as a mere younger brother of Shakespeare, +but as a man whom Shakespeare himself, when he took him by the hand, would +look at with curiosity, as something new in species, produced in the earth +since his own time. + +Was this, then, the case? Was Goethe, with all his external resemblance in +some respects to Shakespeare, a man of such truly individual character, +and of so new and marked a function, as to deserve a place among the +highest, not in German literature alone, but in the literature of the +world as a whole? We do not think that anyone competent to give an opinion +will reply in the negative. + +A glance at the external circumstances of Goethe's life alone (and what a +contrast there is between the abundance of biographic material respecting +Goethe and the scantiness of our information respecting Shakespeare!) will +beget the impression that the man who led such a life must have had +opportunities for developing a very unusual character. The main facts in +the life of Goethe are:--that he was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in +1749, the only surviving son of parents who ranked among the wealthiest in +the town; that, having been educated with extreme care, and having +received whatever experience could be acquired by an impetuous +student-life, free from all ordinary forms of hardship, first at one +German town and then at another, he devoted himself, in accordance with +his tastes, to a career of literary activity; that, after unwinding +himself from several love-affairs, and travelling for the sake of farther +culture in Italy and other parts of Europe, he settled in early manhood at +Weimar, as the intimate friend and counsellor of the reigning duke of that +state; that there, during a long and honoured life, in the course of which +he married an inferior housekeeper kind of person, of whom we do not hear +much, he prosecuted his literary enterprise with unwearied industry, not +only producing poems, novels, dramas, essays, treatises, and criticisms in +great profusion from his own pen, but also acting, along with Schiller and +others, as a director and guide of the whole contemporary intellectual +movement of his native land; and that finally, having outlived all his +famous associates, become a widower and a grandfather, and attained the +position not only of the acknowledged king and patriarch of German +literature, but also, as some thought, of the wisest and most serene +intellect of Europe, he died so late as 1832, in the eighty-third year of +his age. All this, it will be observed, is very different from the life of +the prosperous Warwickshire player, whose existence had illustrated the +early part of the seventeenth century in England; and it necessarily +denoted, at the same time, a very different cast of mind and temper. + +Accordingly, such descriptions as we have of Goethe from those who knew +him best convey the idea of a character notably different from that of the +English poet. Of Shakespeare personally we have but one uniform +account--that he was a man of gentle presence and disposition, very good +company, and of such boundless fluency and intellectual inventiveness in +talk that his hearers could not always stand it, but had sometimes to +whistle him down in his flights. In Goethe's case we have two distinct +pictures. + +In youth, as all accounts agree in stating, he was one of the most +impetuous, bounding, ennui-dispelling natures that ever broke in upon a +society of ordinary mortals assembled to kill time. "He came upon you," +said one who knew him well at this period, "like a wolf in the night." The +simile is a splendid one, and it agrees wonderfully with the more subdued +representations of his early years given by Goethe himself in his +Autobiography. Handsome as an Apollo and welcome everywhere, he bore all +before him wherever he went, not only by his talent, but also by an +exuberance of animal spirits which swept dulness itself along, took away +the breath of those who relied on sarcasm and their cool heads, inspired +life and animation into the whole circle, and most especially delighted +the ladies. This vivacity became even, at times, a reckless humour, +prolific in all kinds of mad freaks and extravagances. Whether this +impetuosity kept always within the bounds of mere innocent frolic is a +question which we need not here raise. Traditions are certainly afloat of +terrible domestic incidents connected with Goethe's youth, both in +Frankfort and in Weimar; but to what extent those traditions are founded +on fact is a matter which we have never yet seen any attempt to decide +upon evidence. More authentic for us, and equally significant, if we could +be sure of our ability to appreciate them rightly, are the stories which +Goethe himself tells of his various youthful attachments, and the various +ways in which they were concluded. In Goethe's own narratives of these +affairs there is a confession of error, arising out of his disposition +passionately to abandon himself to the feelings of the moment without +looking forward to the consequences; but whether this confession is to be +converted by his critics into the harsher accusation of heartlessness and +want of principle is a thing not to be decided by any general rule as to +the matter of inconstancy, but by accurate knowledge in each case of the +whole circumstances of that case. One thing these love-romances of +Goethe's early life make clear--that, for a being of such extreme +sensibility as he was, he had a very strong element of self-control. When +he gave up Rica or Lilli, it was with tears, and no end of sleepless +nights; and yet he gave them up. Shakespeare, we believe (and there is an +instance exactly in point in the story of his Sonnets), had no such power +of breaking clear from connexions which his judgment disapproved. Remorse +and return, self-reproaches for his weakness at one moment followed the +next by weakness more abject than before--such, by his own confession, was +the conduct, in one such case, of our more passive and gentle-hearted +poet. Where Shakespeare was "past cure," and "frantic-mad with evermore +unrest," Goethe but fell into "hypochondria," which reason and resolution +enabled him to overcome. Goethe at twenty-five gave up a young, beautiful +and innocent girl, from the conviction that it was better to do so. +Shakespeare at thirty-five was the abject slave of a dark-complexioned +woman, who was faithless to him, and whom he cursed in his heart. The +sensibilities in the German poet moved from the first, as we have already +said, over a firmer basis of permanent character. + +It is chiefly, however, the Goethe of later life that the world remembers +and thinks of. The bounding impetuosity is then gone; or rather it is kept +back and restrained, so as to form a calm and steady fund of internal +energy, capable sometimes of a flash and outbreak, but generally revealing +itself only in labour and its fruits. What was formerly the beauty of an +Apollo, graceful, light, and full of motion, is now the beauty of a +Jupiter, composed, stately, serene. "What a sublime form!" says Eckermann, +describing his first interview with him. "I forgot to speak for looking at +him: I could not look enough. His face is so powerful and brown, full of +wrinkles, and each wrinkle full of expression. And everywhere there is +such nobleness and firmness, such repose and greatness. He spoke in a +slow, composed manner, such as you would expect from an aged monarch." +Such is Goethe, as he lasts now in the imagination of the world. Living +among statues, books, and pictures; daily doing something for his own +culture and for that of the world; daily receiving guests and visitors, +whom he entertained and instructed with his wise and deep, yet charming +and simple, converse; daily corresponding with friends and strangers, and +giving advice or doing a good turn to some young talent or other--never +was such a mind consecrated so perseveringly and exclusively to the +service of _Kunst_ and _Literatur_. One almost begins to wonder if it was +altogether right that an old man should go on, morning after morning, and +evening after evening, in such a fashion, talking about art and science +and literature as if they were the only interests in the world, taking his +guests into corners to have quiet discussions with them on these subjects, +and always finding something new and nice to be said about them. Possibly, +indeed, this is the fault of those who have reported him, and who only +took notes when the discourse turned on what they considered the proper +Goethean themes. But that Goethe far outdid Shakespeare in this conscious +dedication of himself to a life of the intellect is as certain as the +testimony of likelihood can make it. Shakespeare did enjoy his art; it was +what, in his pensive hours, as he himself hints, he enjoyed most; and +whatever of intellectual ecstasy literary production can bring must surely +have been his in those hours when he composed _Hamlet_ and the _Tempest_. +But Shakespeare's was precisely one of those minds whose strength is a +revelation to themselves during the moment of its exercise, rather than a +chronic ascertained possession; and from this circumstance, as well as +from the attested fact of his carelessness as to the fate of his +compositions, we can very well conceive that literature and mental culture +formed but a small part of the general system of things in Shakespeare's +daily thoughts, and that he would have been absolutely ashamed of himself +if, when anything else, from the state of the weather to the quality of +the wine, was within the circle of possible allusion, he had said a word +about his own plays. If he had not Sir Walter Scott's positive conviction +that every man ought to be either a laird or a lawyer, casting in +authorship as a mere addition if it were to be practised at all, he at +least led so full and keen a life, and was drawn forth on so many sides by +nature, society, and the unseen, that Literature, out of the actual +moments in which he was engaged in it, must have seemed to him a mere +bagatelle, a mere fantastic echo of not a tithe of life. In his home in +London, or his retirement at Stratford, he wrote on and on, because he +could not help doing so, and because it was his business and his solace; +but no play seemed to him worth a day of the contemporary actions of men, +no description worth a single glance at the Thames or at the deer feeding +in the forest, no sonnet worth the tear it was made to embalm. Literature +was by no means to him, as it was to Goethe, the main interest of life; +nor was he a man so far master of himself as ever to be able to behave as +if it were so, and to accept, as Goethe did, all that occurred as so much +culture. Yet Shakespeare would have understood Goethe, and would have +regarded him, almost with envy, as one of those men who, as being "lords +and owners of their faces," and not mere "stewards," know how to husband +Nature's gifts best. + + "They that have power to hurt and will do none, + That do not do the thing they most do show, + Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, + Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, + They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, + And husband nature's riches from expense; + They are the lords and owners of their faces, + Others but stewards of their excellence."--_Sonnet 94._ + +If Goethe attained this character, however, it was not because, as it is +the fashion to say, he was by nature cold, heartless, and impassive, but +because, uniting will and wisdom to his wealth of sensibilities, he had +disciplined himself into what he was. A heartless man does not diffuse +geniality and kindliness around him, as Goethe did; and a statue is not +seized, as Goethe once was, with haemorrhage in the night, the result of +suppressed grief. + +That which made Goethe what he was--namely, his philosophy of life--is to +be gathered, in the form of hints, from his various writings and +conversations. We present a few important passages here, in what seems +their philosophic connexion, as well as the order most suitable for +bringing out Goethe's mode of thought in contrast with that of +Shakespeare. + + _Goethe's Thoughts of Death._--"We had gone round the thicket, and + had turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar-road, where we had a view of + the setting sun. Goethe was for a while lost in thought; he then said + to me, in the words of one of the ancients, + + 'Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne.' + (Still it continues the self-same sun, even while it is sinking.) + + 'At the age of seventy-five,' continued he, with much cheerfulness, + 'one must, of course, think sometimes of death. But this thought + never gives me the least uneasiness, for I am fully convinced that + our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its + activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, + which seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, + never sets, but shines on unceasingly.'"--_Eckermann's Conversations + of Goethe_, vol. i. p. 161. + + _Goethe's Maxim with respect to Metaphysics._--"Man is born not to + solve the problem of the universe, but to find out where the problem + begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the + comprehensible."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 272. + + _Goethe's Theory of the intention of the Supernatural with regard to + the Visible._--"After all, what does it all come to? God did not + retire to rest after the well-known six days of creation, but, on the + contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been + for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple + elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, + if He had not the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits + upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher + natures to attract the lower ones."--_Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 426. + + _Goethe's Doctrine of Immortality._--"Kant has unquestionably done + the best service, by drawing the limits beyond which human intellect + is not able to penetrate, and leaving at rest the insoluble problems. + What a deal have people philosophised about immortality! and how far + have they got? I doubt not of our immortality, for nature cannot + dispense with the _entelecheia_. But we are not all, in like manner, + immortal; and he who would manifest himself in future as a great + _entelecheia_ must be one now.... To me the eternal existence of my + soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work on incessantly + till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence + when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit."--_Ibid._ vol. + ii. pp. 193, 194, and p. 122. + + _Goethe's Image of Life._--"Child, child, no more! The coursers of + Time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light + car of our destiny; and all that we can do is, in cool + self-possession, to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the + wheels, now to the left, now to the right, avoiding a stone here, or + a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying, who can tell? and who, + indeed, can remember the point from which it started?"--_Egmont._ + + _Man's proper business._--"It has at all times been said and repeated + that man should strive to know himself. This is a singular + requisition; with which no one complies, or indeed ever will comply. + Man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals--to the + world around him; and he has to know this so far, and to make it so + far serviceable, as he requires for his own ends. It is only when he + feels joy or sorrow that he knows anything about himself, and only by + joy or sorrow is he instructed what to seek and what to + shun."--_Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe_, vol. ii. p. 180. + + _The Abstract and the Concrete, and the Subjective and the + Objective._--"The Germans are certainly strange people. By their deep + thoughts and ideas, which they seek in everything, and fix upon + everything, they make life much more burdensome than is necessary. + Only have the courage to give yourself up to your impressions; allow + yourself to be delighted, moved, elevated--nay, instructed and + inspired by something great; but do not imagine all is vanity if it + is not abstract thought and idea.... It was not in my line, as a + poet, to strive to embody anything abstract. I received in my mind + impressions, and those of a sensual, animated, charming, varied, + hundred-fold kind, just as a lively imagination presented them; and I + had, as a poet, nothing more to do than artistically to round off and + elaborate such views and impressions, and by means of a lively + representation so to bring them forward that others might receive the + same impressions in hearing or reading my representation of them.... + A poet deserves not the name while he only speaks out his few + subjective feelings; but as soon as he can appropriate to himself and + express the world he is a poet. Then he is inexhaustible, and can be + always new; while a subjective nature has soon talked out his little + internal material, and is at last ruined by mannerism. People always + talk of the study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except + that it says 'Turn your attention to the real world, and try to + express it, for that is what the ancients did when they were alive?' + Goethe arose and walked to and fro, while I remained seated at the + table, as he likes to see me. He stood a moment at the stove, and + then, like one who has reflected, came to me, and, with his finger on + his lips, said to me, 'I will now tell you something which you will + often find confirmed in your own experience. All eras in a state of + decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all + progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is + retrograde, for it is subjective; we see this not merely in poetry, + but also in painting and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the + contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you + will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of + progression, and all of an objective nature.'"--_Ibid._ vol. i. pp. + 415, 416, and pp. 283, 284. + + _Rule of Individual Activity._--"The most reasonable way is for every + man to follow his own vocation to which he has been born and which he + has learnt, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let + the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let + the king know how to govern; for this is also a business which must + be learned, and with which no one should meddle who does not + understand it."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 134. + + _Right and Wrong: The habit of Controversy._--"The end of all + opposition is negation, and negation is nothing. If I call _bad_ bad, + what do I gain? But, if I call _good_ bad, I do a great deal of + mischief. He who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble + himself at all about what is ill done, but only do well himself. For + the great point is not to pull down, but to build up; and in this + humanity finds pure joy."--_Ibid._ vol. i. p. 208. + + _Goethe's own Relation to the Disputes of his Time._--"'You have been + reproached,' remarked I, rather inconsiderately, 'for not taking up + arms at that great period [the war with Napoleon], or at least + co-operating as a poet.' 'Let us leave that point alone, my good + friend,' returned Goethe. 'It is an absurd world, which knows not + what it wants, and which one must allow to have its own way. How + could I take up arms without hatred, and how could I hate without + youth? If such an emergency had befallen me when twenty years old, I + should certainly not have been the last; but it found me as one who + had already passed the first sixties. Besides, we cannot all serve + our country in the same way; but each does his best, according as God + has endowed him. I have toiled hard enough during half a century. I + can say that, in those things which nature has appointed for my daily + work, I have permitted myself no relaxation night or day, but have + always striven, investigated, and done as much, and that as well, as + I could. If everyone can say the same of himself, it will prove well + with all. I will not say what I think. There is more ill-will + towards me hidden beneath that remark than you are aware of. I feel + therein a new form of the old hatred with which people have + persecuted me, and endeavoured quietly to wound me, for years. I know + very well that I am an eyesore to many; that they would all willingly + get rid of me; and that, since they cannot touch my talent, they aim + at my character. Now, it is said that I am proud; now, egotistical; + now, immersed in sensuality; now, without Christianity; and now, + without love for my native country and my own dear Germans. You have + now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk + is worth.... The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native + land; but the native land of his _poetic_ powers and _poetic_ action + is the good, noble, and beautiful: which is confined to no particular + province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he + finds them. Therein he is like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze + over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the + hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in + Saxony.'"--_Ibid._ vol. ii. pp. 257, 258, and p. 427. + +Whoever has read these sentences attentively, and penetrated their meaning +in connexion, will see that they reveal a mode of thought somewhat +resembling that which we have attributed to Shakespeare, and yet +essentially different from it. Both poets are distinguished by this, that +they abstained systematically during their lives from the abstract, the +dialectical, and the controversial, and devoted themselves, with true +feeling and enjoyment, to the concrete, the real, and the unquestioned; +and so far there is an obvious resemblance between them. But the manner in +which this characteristic was attained was by no means the same in both +cases. In Shakespeare, as we have seen, there was a metaphysical longing, +a tendency towards the supersensible and invisible, absolutely morbid, if +we take ordinary constitutions as the standard of health in this respect; +and, if, with all this, he revelled with delight and moved with ease and +firmness in the sensuous and actual, it was because the very same soul +which pressed with such energy and wailing against the bounds of this life +of man was also related with inordinate keenness and intimacy to all that +this life spheres in. In Goethe, on the other hand, the tendency to the +real existed under easier constitutional conditions, and in a state of +such natural preponderance over any concomitant craving for the +metaphysical, that it necessarily took, German though he was, a higher +place in his estimate of what is desirable in a human character. That +world of the real in which Shakespeare delighted, and which he knew so +well, seemed to him, all this knowledge and delight notwithstanding, far +more evanescent, far more a mere filmy show, far less considerable a shred +of all that is, than it did to Goethe. To Shakespeare, as we have already +said, life was but as a little island on the bosom of a boundless sea: men +must needs know what the island contains, and act as those who have to +till and rule it; still, with that expanse of waters all round in view, +and that roar of waters ever in the ear, what can men call themselves or +pretend their realm to be? "Poor fools of Nature" is the poet's own +phrase--the realm so small that it is pitiful to belong to it! Not so with +Goethe. To him also, of course, the thought was familiar of a vast region +of the supersensible outlying nature and life; but a higher value on the +whole was reserved for nature and life, even on the universal scale, by +his peculiar habit of conceiving them, not as distinct from the +supersensible and contemporaneously begirt by it, but rather, if we may so +speak, as a considerable portion, or even duration, of the +_quondam_-supersensible in the new form of the sensible. In other words, +Goethe was full of the notion of progress or evolution; the world was to +him not a mere spectacle and dominion for the supernatural, but an actual +manifestation of the substance of the supernatural itself, on its way +through time to new issues. Hence his peculiar notion of immortality; +hence his view as to the mere relativeness of the terms right and wrong, +good and bad, and the like; and hence also his resolute inculcation of the +doctrine, so unpalatable to his countrymen, that men ought to direct their +thoughts and efforts to the actual and the outward. Life being the current +phase of the universal mystery, the true duty of men could be but to +contribute in their various ways to the furtherance of life. + +And what then, finally, was Goethe's _own_ mode of activity in a life thus +defined in his general philosophy? Like Shakespeare, he was a literary +man; his function was literature. Yes, but in what respect, otherwise than +Shakespeare had done before him, did he fulfil this literary function in +reference to the world he lived in and enjoyed? In the first place, as all +know, he differed from Shakespeare in this, that he did not address the +world exclusively in the character of a poet. Besides his poetry, properly +so called, Goethe has left behind him numerous prose-writings, ranking +under very different heads, abounding with such deep and wise maxims and +perceptions, in reference to all things under the sun, as would have +entitled him, even had he been no poet, to rank as a sage. So great, +indeed, is Goethe as a thinker and a critic that it may very well be +disputed whether his prose-writings, as a whole, are not more precious +than his poems. But even if we set apart this difference, and regard the +two men in their special character as poets or artists, a marked +difference is still discernible. Hear Goethe's own definition of his +poetical career and aim. + + "Thus began that tendency from which I could not deviate my whole + life through: namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a + poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied + me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon it, + that I might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set + my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing this was necessary + to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me + constantly from one extreme to the other. All, therefore, that has + been put forth by me consists of fragments of a great + confession."--_Autobiography_, vol. i. p. 240. + +Shakespeare's genius we defined to be the genius of universal expression, +of clothing objects, circumstances, and feelings with magnificent +language, of pouring over the image of any given situation, whether +suggested from within or from without, an effusion of the richest +intellectual matter that could possibly be related to it. Goethe's genius, +as here defined by himself, was something different and narrower. It was +the genius of translation from the subjective into the objective, of +clothing real feelings with fictitious circumstance, of giving happy +intellectual form to states of mind, so as to dismiss and throw them off. +Let this distinction be sufficiently conceived and developed, and a full +idea will be obtained of the exact difference between the literary +many-sidedness attributed to Shakespeare and that also attributed to +Goethe. + + + + +MILTON'S YOUTH. + + + + +MILTON'S YOUTH.[5] + + +Never surely did a youth leave the academic halls of England more full of +fair promise than Milton, when, at the age of twenty-three, he quitted +Cambridge to reside at his father's house, amid the quiet beauties of a +rural neighbourhood some twenty miles distant from London. Fair in person, +with a clear fresh complexion, light brown hair which parted in the middle +and fell in locks to his shoulders, clear grey eyes, and a well-knit frame +of moderate proportions--there could not have been found a finer picture +of pure and ingenuous English youth. And that health and beauty which +distinguished his outward appearance, and the effect of which was +increased by a voice surpassingly sweet and musical, indicated with +perfect truth the qualities of the mind within. Seriousness, studiousness, +fondness for flowers and music, fondness also for manly exercises in the +open air, courage and resolution of character, combined with the most +maiden purity and innocence of life--these were the traits conspicuous in +Milton in his early years. Of his accomplishments it is hardly necessary +to take particular note. Whatever of learning, of science, or of +discipline in logic or philosophy, the University at that time could give, +he had duly and in the largest measure acquired. No better Greek or Latin +scholar probably had the University in that age sent forth; he was +proficient in the Hebrew tongue, and in all the other customary aids to a +Biblical Theology; and he could speak and write well in French and +Italian. His acquaintance, obtained by independent reading, with the +history and with the whole body of the literature of ancient and modern +nations, was extensive and various. And, as nature had endowed him in no +ordinary degree with that most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the +passion for harmony, he had studied music as an art, and had taught +himself not only to sing in the society of others, but also to touch the +keys for his solitary pleasure. + +The instruments which Milton preferred as a musician were, his biographers +tell us, the organ and the bass-viol. This fact seems to us to be not +without its significance. Were we to define in one word our impression of +the prevailing tone, the characteristic mood and disposition of Milton's +mind, even in his early youth, we should say that it consisted in a deep +and habitual _seriousness_. We use the word in none of those special and +restricted senses that are sometimes given to it. We do not mean that +Milton, at the period of his early youth with which we are now concerned, +was, or accounted himself as being, a confessed member of that noble party +of English Puritans with which he afterwards became allied, and to which +he rendered such vast services. True, he himself tells us, in his account +of his education, that "care had ever been had of him, with his earliest +capacity, not to be negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian +religion;" and in the fact that his first tutor, selected for him by his +father, was one Thomas Young, a Scotchman of subsequent distinction among +the English Puritans, there is enough to prove that the formation of his +character in youth was aided expressly by Puritanical influences. But +Milton, if ever in a denominational sense he could be called a Puritan (he +wore his hair long, and in other respects did not conform to the usages of +the Puritan party), could hardly, with any propriety, be designated as a +Puritan in this sense, at the time when he left College. There is evidence +that at this time he had not given so much attention, on his own personal +account, to matters of religious doctrine as he afterwards bestowed. That +seriousness of which we speak was, therefore, rather a constitutional +seriousness, ratified and nourished by rational reflection, than the +assumed temper of a sect. "A certain reservedness of natural disposition, +and a moral discipline learnt out of the noblest philosophy"--such, in +Milton's own words, were the causes which, apart from his Christian +training, would have always kept him, as he believed, above the vices that +debase youth. And herein the example of Milton contradicts much that is +commonly advanced by way of a theory of the poetical character. + +Poets and artists generally, it is held, are and ought to be distinguished +by a predominance of sensibility over principle, an excess of what +Coleridge called the spiritual over what he called the moral part of man. +A nature built on quicksands, an organization of nerve languid or +tempestuous with occasion, a soul falling and soaring, now subject to +ecstasies and now to remorses--such, it is supposed, and on no small +induction of actual instances, is the appropriate constitution of the +poet. Mobility, absolute and entire destitution of principle properly so +called, capacity for varying the mood indefinitely rather than for +retaining and keeping up one moral gesture or resolution through all +moods: this, say the theorists, is the essential thing in the structure of +the artist. Against the truth of this, however, as a maxim of universal +application, the character of Milton, as well as that of Wordsworth after +him, is a remarkable protest. Were it possible to place before the +theorists all the materials which exist for judging of Milton's personal +disposition as a young man, without exhibiting to them at the same time +the actual and early proofs of his poetical genius, their conclusion, were +they true to their theory, would necessarily be that the basis of his +nature was too solid and immovable, the platform of personal aims and +aspirations over which his thoughts moved and had footing too fixed and +firm, to permit that he should have been a poet. Nay, whosoever, even +appreciating Milton as a poet, shall come to the investigation of his +writings armed with that preconception of the poetical character which is +sure to be derived from an intimacy with the character of Shakespeare will +hardly escape some feeling of the same kind. Seriousness, we repeat, a +solemn and even austere demeanour of mind, was the characteristic of +Milton even in his youth. And the outward manifestation of this was a life +of pure and devout observance. This is a point that ought not to be +avoided, or dismissed in mere general language; for he who does not lay +stress on this knows not and loves not Milton. Accept, then, by way of +more particular statement, his own remarkable words in justifying himself +against an innuendo of one of his adversaries in later life, reflecting on +the tenor of his juvenile pursuits and behaviour. "A certain niceness of +nature," he says, "an honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I +was, or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that +modesty whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused +to make some beseeming profession, all these, uniting the supply of their +natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind +beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable +and unlawful prostitutions." Fancy, ye to whom the moral frailty of genius +is a consolation, or to whom the association of virtue with youth and +Cambridge is a jest--fancy Milton, as this passage from his own pen +describes him at the age of twenty-three, returning to his father's house +from the university, full of its accomplishments and its honours, an +auburn-haired youth, beautiful as the Apollo of a northern clime, and that +beautiful body the temple of a soul pure and unsoiled. Truly, a son for a +mother to take to her arms with joy and pride! + +Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in Milton even in +his youth, may be noted also, as indeed it is noted in the passage just +cited, a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his own +powers. Throughout all Milton's works there may be discerned a vein of +this noble egotism, this unbashful self-assertion. Frequently, in arguing +with an opponent, or in setting forth his own views on any subject of +discussion, he passes, by a very slight topical connexion, into an account +of himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the matter in +question; and this sometimes so elaborately and at such length, that the +impression is as if he said to his readers, "Besides all my other +arguments, take this also as the chief and conclusive argument, that it is +_I_, a man of such and such antecedents, and with such and such powers to +perform far higher work than you see me now engaged in, who affirm and +maintain this." In his later years Milton evidently believed himself to +be, if not the greatest man in England, at least the greatest writer, and +one whose _egomet dixi_ was entitled to as much force in the intellectual +commonwealth as the decree of a civil magistrate is invested with in the +order of civil life. All that he said or wrote was backed in his own +consciousness by a sense of the independent importance of the fact that it +was he, Milton, who said or wrote it; and often, after arguing a point for +some time on a footing of ostensible equality with his readers, he seems +suddenly to stop, retire to the vantage-ground of his own thoughts, and +bid his readers follow him thither, if they would see the whole of that +authority which his words had failed to express. + +Such, we say, is Milton's habit in his later writings. In his early life, +of course, the feeling which it shows existed rather as an undefined +consciousness of superior power, a tendency silently and with satisfaction +to compare his own intellectual measure with that of others, a resolute +ambition to be and to do something great. Now we cannot help thinking +that it will be found that this particular form of self-esteem goes along +with that moral austerity of character which we have alleged to be +discernible in Milton even in his youth, rather than with that temperament +of varying sensibility which is, according to the general theory, regarded +as characteristic of the poet. Men of this latter type, as they vary in +the entire mood of their mind, vary also in their estimate of themselves. +No permanent consciousness of their own destiny, or of their own worth in +comparison with others, belongs to them. In their moods of elevation they +are powers to move the world; but, while the impulse that has gone forth +from them in one of those moods may be still thrilling its way onward in +wider and wider circles through the hearts of myriads they have never +seen, they, the fountains of the impulse, the spirit being gone from them, +may be sitting alone in the very spot and amid the ashes of their triumph, +sunken and dead, despondent and self-accusing. It requires the evidence of +positive results, the assurance of other men's praises, the visible +presentation of effects which they cannot but trace to themselves, to +convince such men that they are or can do anything. Whatever +manifestations of egotism, whatever strokes of self-assertion come from +such men, come in the very burst and phrenzy of their passing +resistlessness. The calm, deliberate, and unshaken knowledge of their own +superiority is not theirs. True, Shakespeare, the very type, if rightly +understood, of this class of minds, is supposed in his Sonnets to have +predicted, in the strongest and most deliberate terms, his own immortality +as a poet. It could be proved, however, were this the place for such an +investigation, that the common interpretation of those passages of the +Sonnets which are supposed to supply this trait in the character of +Shakespeare is nothing more nor less than a false reading of a very subtle +meaning which the critics have missed. Those other passages of the Sonnets +which breathe an abject melancholy and discontentment with self, which +exhibit the poet as "cursing his fate," as "bewailing his outcast state," +as looking about abasedly among his literary contemporaries, envying the +"art" of one, and the "scope" of another, and even wishing sometimes that +the very features of his face had been different from what they were and +like those of some he knew, are, in our opinion, of far greater +autobiographic value. + +Nothing of this kind is to be found in Milton. As a Christian, indeed, +humiliation before God was a duty the meaning of which he knew full well; +but, as a man moving among other men, he possessed, in that moral +seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which characterized him, a +spring of ever-present pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his +fellows, and at times arousing him to a kingly intolerance. In short, +instead of that dissatisfaction with self which we trace as a not +unfrequent feeling with Shakespeare, we find in Milton, even in his early +youth, a recollection firm and habitual that he was one of those servants +to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of ten talents. In that very +sonnet, for example, written on his twenty-third birthday, in which he +laments that he had as yet achieved so little, his consolation is that the +power of achievement was still indubitably within him-- + + "All is, if I have grace to use it so, + As ever in my great Task-Master's eye." + +And what was that special mode of activity to which Milton, still in the +bloom and seed-time of his years, had chosen to dedicate the powers of +which he was so conscious? He had been destined by his parents for the +Church; but this opening into life he had definitively and deliberately +abandoned. With equal decision he renounced the profession of the Law; and +it does not seem to have been long after the conclusion of his career at +the university when he renounced the prospects of professional life +altogether. His reasons for this, which are to be gathered from various +passages of his writings, seem to have resolved themselves into a jealous +concern for his own absolute intellectual freedom. He had determined, as +he says, "to lay up, as the best treasure and solace of a good old age, +the honest liberty of free speech from his youth;" and neither the Church +nor the Bar of England, at the time when he formed that resolution, was a +place where he could hope to keep it. For a man so situated, the +alternative, then as now, was the practice or profession of literature. To +this, therefore, as soon as he was able to come to a decision on the +subject, Milton had implicitly, if not avowedly, dedicated himself. To +become a great writer, and, above all, a great poet; to teach the English +language a new strain and modulation; to elaborate and surrender over to +the English nation works that would make it more potent and wise in the +age that was passing, and more memorable and lordly in the ages to come: +such was the form which Milton's ambition had assumed when, laying aside +his student's garb, he went to reside under his father's roof. + +Nor was this merely a choice of necessity, the reluctant determination of +a young soul "Church-outed by the prelates" and disgusted with the chances +of the Law. Milton, in the Church, would certainly have been such an +archbishop, mitred or unmitred, as England has never seen; and the very +passage of such a man across the sacred floor would have trampled into +timely extinction much that has since sprung up amongst us to trouble and +perplex, and would have modelled the ecclesiasticism of England into a +shape that the world might have gazed at with no truant glance backward +to the splendours of the Seven Hills. And, doubtless, even amid the +traditions of the Law, such a man would have performed the feats of a +Samson, albeit of a Samson in chains. An inward prompting, therefore, a +love secretly plighted to the Muse, and a sweet comfort and delight in her +sole society, which no other allurement, whether of profit or pastime, +could equal or diminish,--this, less formally perhaps, but as really as +care for his intellectual liberty, or distaste for the established +professions of his time, determined Milton's early resolution as to his +future way of life. On this point it will be best to quote his own words. +"After I had," he says, "from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence +and care of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the +tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and +teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether ought +was imposed upon me by them that had the overlooking or betaken to of mine +own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly +this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to +live." The meaning of which sentence is that Milton, before his +three-and-twentieth year, knew himself to be a poet. + +He knew this, he says, by "certain vital signs" discernible in what he had +already written. What were those "vital signs," those proofs indubitable +to Milton that he had the art and faculty of a poet? We need but refer the +reader for the answer to those smaller poetical compositions of Milton, +both in English and in Latin, which survive as specimens of his earliest +Muse. Of these, some three or four which happen to be specially +dated--such as the _Elegy on the Death of a Fair Infant_, written in 1626, +or the author's eighteenth year; the well-known _Hymn on the Morning of +Christ's Nativity_, written in 1629, when the author was just twenty-one; +and the often-quoted _Lines on Shakespeare_, written not much later--may +be cited as convenient materials from which anyone who would convince +himself minutely of Milton's youthful vocation to poetry, rather than to +anything else, may derive proofs on that head. Here will be found power of +the most rare and beautiful conception, choice of words the most exact and +exquisite, the most perfect music and charm of verse. Above all, here will +be found that ineffable something--call it imagination or what we +will--wherein lies the intimate and ineradicable peculiarity of the poet: +the art to work on and on for ever in a purely ideal element, to chase and +marshal airy nothings according to a law totally unlike that of rational +association, never hastening to a logical end like the schoolboy when on +errand, but still lingering within the wood like the schoolboy during +holiday. This peculiar mental habit, nowhere better described than by +Milton himself when he speaks of verse + + "Such as the meeting soul may pierce, + In notes with many a winding bout + Of linked sweetness long drawn out + With wanton heed and giddy cunning," + +is so characteristic of the poetical disposition that, though in most of +the greatest poets, as, for example, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare in his +dramas, Chaucer, and almost all the ancient Greek poets, it is not +observable in any extraordinary degree, chiefly because in them the +element of direct reference to human life and its interests had fitting +preponderance, yet it may be affirmed that he who, tolerating or admiring +these poets, does not relish also such poetry as that of Spenser, Keats, +and Shakespeare in his minor pieces, but complains of it as wearisome and +sensuous, is wanting in a portion of the genuine poetic taste. + +There was but one "vital sign" the absence of which in Milton could, +according to any theory of the poetical character, have begotten doubts in +his own mind, or in the minds of his friends, whether poetry was his +peculiar and appropriate function. The single source of possible doubt on +this head could have been no other than that native austerity of feeling +and temper, that real though not formal Puritanism of heart and +intellect, which we have noticed as distinguishing Milton from his youth +upward. The poet, it is said in these days, when, by psychologizing a man, +it is supposed we can tell what course of life he is fit for--the poet +ought to be universally sympathetic; he ought to hate nothing, despise +nothing. And a notion equivalent to this, though by no means so +articulately expressed, was undoubtedly prevalent in Milton's own time. As +the Puritans, on the one hand, had set their faces against all those +practices of profane singing, dancing, masquing, theatre-going, and the +like, in which the preservation of the spirit of the arts was supposed to +be involved, so the last party in the world from which the reputed +devotees of the arts in those days would have expected a poet to arise was +that of the Puritans. Even in Shakespeare, and much more in Ben Jonson, +Beaumont and Fletcher, and other poets of the Elizabethan age, may be +traced evidences of an instinctive enmity to that Puritanical mode of +thinking which was then on the increase in English society, and in the +triumph of which those great minds foresaw the proscription of their craft +and their pleasures. When Sir Toby says to Malvolio, "Dost thou think, +because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" and when +the Clown adds, "Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth +too," it is the Knight and the Clown on the one side against Malvolio the +Puritan on the other. That the defence of the festive in this passage is +not borne by more respectable personages than the two who speak is indeed +a kind of indication that Shakespeare's personal feelings with regard to +the austere movement which he saw gathering around him were by no means so +deep or bitter as to discompose him; but, if his profounder soul could +behold such things with serenity, and even pronounce them good, they +assuredly met with enough of virulence and invective among his lesser +contemporaries. That literary crusade against the Puritans, as canting, +sour-visaged, mirth-forbidding, art-abhorring religionists, which came to +its height at the time when Butler wrote his _Hudibras_, and Wycherley his +plays, was already hot when the wits of King James's days used to assemble +after the theatre, in their favourite taverns; and if, sallying out after +one of their merry evenings in their most favourite tavern of all, the +Mermaid in Bread Street, those assembled poets and dramatists had gone in +search of the youth who was likeliest to be the poet of the age then +beginning, they certainly would not have gone to that modest residence in +the same street where the son of the Puritanic scrivener, then preparing +for College, was busy over his books. Nay, if Ben Jonson, the last +twenty-nine years of whose life coincided with the first twenty-nine of +Milton's, had followed the young student from the house where he was born +in Bread Street to his rooms at Cambridge, and had there become acquainted +with him and looked over his early poetical exercises, it is probable +enough that, while praising them so far, he would have constituted himself +the organ of that very opinion as to the requisites of the poetical +character which we are now discussing, and declared, in some strong phrase +or other, that the youth would have been all the more hopeful as a poet if +he had had a little more of the _bon vivant_ in his constitution. + +This, then, is a point of no little importance, involving as it does the +relations of Milton as a poet to the age in which he lived, that splendid +age of Puritan mastery in England which came between the age of +Shakespeare and Elizabeth and the age of Dryden and the second Charles. +Milton was _the_ poet of that intermediate era; that his character was +such as we have described it made him only the more truly a representative +of all that was then deepest in English society; and, in inquiring, +therefore, in what manner Milton's austerity as a man affected his art as +a poet, we are, at the same time, investigating the _rationale_ of that +remarkable fact in the history of English literature, the interpolation of +so original and isolated a development as the Miltonic poems between the +inventive luxuriousness of the Elizabethan epoch and the witty +licentiousness that followed the Restoration. + +First, then, it was not _humour_ that came to the rescue, in Milton's +case, to help him out in those respects wherein, according to the theory +in question, the strictness and austerity of his own disposition would +have injured his capacity to be a poet. There are and have been men as +strict and austere as he, who yet, by means of this quality of humour, +have been able to reconcile themselves to much in human life lying far +away from, and even far beneath, the sphere of their own practice and +conscientious liking. As Pantagruel, the noble and meditative, endured and +even loved those immortal companions of his, the boisterous and profane +Friar John, and the cowardly and impish Panurge, so these men, remaining +themselves with all rigour and punctuality within the limits of sober and +exemplary life, are seen extending their regards to the persons and the +doings of a whole circle of reprobate Falstaffs, Pistols, Clowns, and Sir +Toby Belches. They cannot help it. They may and often do blame themselves +for it; they wish that, in their intercourse with the world, they could +more habitually turn the austere and judicial side of their character to +the scenes and incidents that there present themselves, simply saying of +each "That is right and worthy" or "That is wrong and unworthy," and +treating it accordingly. But they break down in the trial. Suddenly some +incident presents itself which is not only right but clumsy, or not only +wrong but comic, and straightway the austere side of their character +wheels round to the back, and judge, jury, and witnesses are convulsed +with untimely laughter. It was by no means so with Milton. As his critics +have generally remarked, he had little of humour, properly so called, in +his composition. His laughter is the laughter of scorn. With one unvarying +judicial look he confronted the actions of men, and, if ever his tone +altered as he uttered his judgments, it was only because something roused +him to a pitch of higher passion. Take, as characteristic, the following +passage, in which he replies to the taunt of an opponent who had asked +where _he_, the antagonist of profane amusements, had procured that +knowledge of theatres and their furniture which certain allusions in one +of his books showed him to possess:-- + + "Since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire, a periwig, + or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what difficulty was + there in that, when in the colleges so many of the young divines, and + those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the + stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and + dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting + the shame of that ministry which either they had or were nigh having + to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, with their grooms and + mademoiselles? There, whilst they acted and overacted, among other + young scholars, I was a spectator: they thought themselves gallant + men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they + mispronounced, and I misliked; and, to make up the atticism, they + were out, and I hissed."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._ + +Who can doubt that to a man to whom such a scene as this presented itself +in a light so different from that in which a Shakespeare would have viewed +it Friar John himself, if encountered in the real world, would have been +simply the profane and unendurable wearer of the sacred garb, Falstaff +only a foul and grey-haired iniquity, Pistol but a braggart and coward, +and Sir Toby Belch but a beastly sot? + +That office, however, which humour did not perform for Milton, in his +intercourse with the world of past and present things, was in part +performed by what he did in large measure possess--intellectual +_inquisitiveness_: respect for intellect, its accomplishments, and its +rights. If any quality in the actions or writings of other men could have +won Milton's favourable regards, even where his moral sense condemned, +that quality, we believe, was intellectual greatness, and especially +greatness of his own stamp, or marked by any of his own features. Hence +that tone of almost pitying admiration which pervades his representation +of the ruined Archangel; hence his uniformly respectful references to the +great intellects of Paganism and of the Catholic world; and hence, we +think, his unbounded and, for a time at least, unqualified reverence for +Shakespeare. As by the direct exercise of his own intellect, on the one +hand, applied to the rational discrimination for himself of what was +really wrong from what was only ignorantly reputed to be so, he had kept +his mind clear, as Cromwell also did, from many of those sectarian +prejudices in the matter of moral observance which were current in his +time--justified, for example, his love of music, his liking for natural +beauty, his habits of cheerful recreation, his devotion to various +literature, and even, most questionable of all, as would then have been +thought, his affection for the massy pillars and storied windows of +ecclesiastical architecture,--so, reflexly, by a recognition of the +intellectual liberty of others, he seems to have distinctly apprehended +the fact that there might be legitimate manifestations of intellect of a +kind very different from his own. A Falstaff in real life, for example, +might have been to Milton the most unendurable of horrors, just as, +according to his own confession, a play-acting clergyman was his +abomination; and yet, in the pages of his honoured Shakespeare, Sir John +as mentor to the Prince, and Parson Hugh Evans as the Welch fairy among +the mummers, may have been creations he would con over and very dearly +appreciate. And this accounts for the multifarious and unrestricted +character of his literary studies. Milton, we believe, was a man whose +intellectual inquisitiveness and respect for talent would have led him, in +other instances than that of the College theatricals, to see and hear much +that his heart derided, to study and know what he would not strictly have +wished to imitate. Ovid and Tibullus, for example, contain much that is +far from Miltonic; and yet that he read poets of this class with +particular pleasure let the following quotation prove:-- + + "I had my time, readers, as others have who have good learning + bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the opinion + was, it might be soonest attained; and, as the manner is, was not + unstudied in those authors which are most commended: whereof some + were grave orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved + indeed, but, as my age was, so I understood them; others were the + smooth elegiac poets whereof the schools are not scarce, whom, both + for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing (which, in + imitation, I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in + me) and for their matter (which, what it is, there be few who know + not), I was so allured to read that no recreation came to me more + welcome--for, that it was then those years with me which are excused + though they be least severe I may be saved the labour to remember + ye."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._ + +That Milton, then, notwithstanding his natural austerity and seriousness +even in youth, was led by his keen appreciation of literary beauty and +finish, and especially by his delight in sweet and melodious verse, to +read and enjoy the poetry of those writers who are usually quoted as +examples of the lusciousness and sensuousness of the poetic nature, and +even to prefer them to all others, is specially stated by himself. But let +the reader, if he should think he sees in this a ground for suspecting +that we have assigned too much importance to Milton's personal seriousness +of disposition as a cause affecting his aims and art as a poet, distinctly +mark the continuation-- + + "Whence, having observed them [the elegiac and love poets] to account + it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, + to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love, + those high perfections which, under one or other name, they took to + celebrate, I thought with myself, by every instinct and presage of + nature (which is not wont to be false), that what emboldened them to + this task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden me, and + that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share would herein best + appear, and best value itself, by how much more wisely and with more + love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent!) the object + of not unlike praises. For, albeit these thoughts to some will seem + virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort + perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. Nor + blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a + reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life + have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and + fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, + and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For, by the firm settling + of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a + proficient that, if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy + things of themselves, or unchaste those names which before they had + extolled, this effect it wrought in me: From that time forward their + art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all + preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never + wrote but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying + sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not + after when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be + frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things + ought himself to be a true poem--that is, a composition and pattern + of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high + praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the + experience and the practice of all that which is + praiseworthy."--_Apology for Smectymnuus._ + +Here, at last, therefore, we have Milton's own judgment on the matter of +our inquiry. He had speculated himself on that subject; he had made it a +matter of conscious investigation what kind of moral tone and career would +best fit a man to be a poet, on the one hand, or would be most likely to +frustrate his hopes of writing well, on the other; and his conclusion, as +we see, was dead against the "wild oats" theory. Had Ben Jonson, +according to our previous fancy, proffered him, out of kindly interest, a +touch of that theory, while criticising his juvenile poems, and telling +him how he might learn to write better, there would have descended on the +lecturer, as sure as fate, a rebuke, though from young lips, that would +have made his strong face blush. "_He who would not be frustrate of his +hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true +poem_:" fancy that sentence, an early and often pronounced formula of +Milton's, as we may be sure it was, hurled some evening, could time and +chance have permitted it, into the midst of the assembled Elizabethan wits +at the Mermaid! What interruption of the jollity, what mingled uneasiness +and resentment, what turning of faces towards the new speaker, what forced +laughter to conceal consternation! Only Shakespeare, one thinks, had he +been present, would have fixed on the bold youth a mild and approving eye, +would have looked round the room thoroughly to observe the whole scene, +and, remembering some passages in his own life, would mayhap have had his +own thoughts! Certainly, at least, the essence of that wonderful and +special development of the literary genius of England which came between +the Elizabethan epoch and the epoch of the Restoration, and which was +represented and consummated in Milton himself, consisted in the fact that +then there was a temporary protest, and by a man able to make it good, +against the theory of "wild oats," current before and current since. The +nearest poet to Milton in this respect, since Milton's time, has +undoubtedly been Wordsworth. + + + + +DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION. + + + + +DRYDEN, AND THE LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION.[6] + + +It is a common remark that literature flourishes best in times of social +order and leisure, and suffers immediate depression whenever the public +mind is agitated by violent civil controversies. The remark is more true +than such popular inductions usually are. It is confirmed, on the small +scale, by what every one finds in his own experience. When a family is +agitated by any matter affecting its interests, there is an immediate +cessation from all the lighter luxuries of books and music wherewith it +used to beguile its leisure. All the members of the family are intent for +the time being on the matter in hand; if books are consulted it is for +some purpose of practical reference; and, if pens are active, it is in +writing letters of business. Not till the matter is fairly concluded are +the recreations of music and literature resumed; though then, possibly, +with a keener zest and a mind more full and fresh than before. Precisely +so it is on the large scale. If everything that is spoken or written be +called literature, there is probably always about the same amount of +literature going on in a community; or, if there is any increase or +decrease, it is but in proportion to the increase of the population. But, +if by literature we mean a certain peculiar kind and quality of spoken or +written matter, recognisable by its likeness to certain known precedents, +then, undoubtedly literature flourishes in times of quiet and security, +and wanes in times of convulsion and disorder. When the storm of some +great civil contest is blowing, it is impossible for even the serenest man +to shut himself quite in from the noise, and turn over the leaves of his +Horace, or practise his violin, as undistractedly as before. Great is the +power of _pococurantism_; and it is a noble sight to see, in the midst of +some Whig and Tory excitement which is throwing the general community into +sixes and sevens, and sending mobs along the streets, the calm devotee of +hard science, or the impassioned lover of the ideal, going on his way, +aloof from it all, and smiling at it all. But there are times when even +these obdurate gentlemen will be touched, in spite of themselves, to the +tune of what is going on; when the shouts of the mob will penetrate to the +closets of the most studious; and when, as Archimedes of old had to leave +his darling diagrams and trudge along the Syracusan streets to superintend +the construction of rough cranes and catapults, so philosophers and poets +alike will have to quit their favourite occupations, and be whirled along +in the common agitation. Those are times when whatever literature there is +assumes a character of immediate and practical interest. Just as, in the +supposed case, the literary activity of the family is consumed in mere +letters of business, so, in this, the literary activity of the community +exhausts itself in newspaper articles, public speeches, and pamphlets, +more or less elaborate, on the present crisis. There may be a vast amount +of mind at work, and as much, on the whole, may be written as before; but +the very excess of what may be called the pamphlet literature, which is +perishable in its nature, will leave a deficiency in the various +departments of literature more strictly so called--philosophical or +expository literature, historical literature, and the literature of pure +imagination. Not till the turmoil is over, not till the battle has been +fairly fought out, and the mental activity involved in it has been let +loose for more scattered work, will the calmer muses resume their sway, +and the press send forth treatises and histories, poems and romances, as +well as pamphlets. Then, however, men may return to literature with a new +zest, and the very storm which has interrupted the course of pure +literature for a time may infuse into such literature, when it begins +again, a fresher and stronger spirit. If the battle has ended in a +victory, there will be a tone of joy, of exultation, and of scorn, in what +men think and write after it; if it has ended in a defeat, all that is +thought and written will be tinged by a deeper and finer sorrow. + +The history of English literature affords some curious illustrations of +this law. It has always puzzled historians, for example, to account for +such a great unoccupied gap in our literary progress as occurs between the +death of Chaucer and the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. From the year +1250, when the English language first makes its appearance in anything +like its present form, to the year 1400, when Chaucer died, forms, as all +know, the infant age of our literature. It was an age of great literary +activity; and how much was achieved in it remains apparent in the fact +that it culminated in a man like Chaucer--a man whom, without any drawback +for the early epoch at which he lived, we still regard as one of our +literary princes. Nor was Chaucer the solitary name of his age. He had +some notable contemporaries, both in verse and in prose. When we pass from +Chaucer's age, however, we have to overleap nearly a hundred and eighty +years before we alight upon a period presenting anything like an adequate +show of literary continuation. A few smaller names, like those of +Lydgate, Surrey, and Skelton, are all that can be cited as poetical +representatives of this sterile interval in the literary history of +England: whatever of Chaucer's genius still lingered in the island seeming +to have travelled northward, and taken refuge in a series of Scottish +poets, excelling any of their English contemporaries. How is this to be +accounted for? Is it that really, during this period, there was less of +available mind than before in England, that the quality of the English +nerve had degenerated? By no means necessarily so. Englishmen, during this +period were engaged in enterprises requiring no small amount of +intellectual and moral vigour; and there remain to us, from the same +period, specimens of grave and serious prose, which, if we do not place +them among the gems of our literature, we at least regard as evidence that +our ancestors of those days were men of heart and wit and solid sense. In +short, we are driven to suppose that there was something in the social +circumstances of England during the long period in question which +prevented such talent as there was from assuming the particular form of +literature. Fully to make out what this "something" was may baffle us; +but, when we remember that this was the period of the Civil Wars of the +Roses, and also of the great Anglican Reformation, we have reason enough +to conclude that the dearth of pure literature may have been owing, in +part, to the engrossing nature of those practical questions which then +disturbed English society. When Chaucer wrote, England, under the splendid +rule of the third Edward, was potent and triumphant abroad, but large and +leisurely at home; but scarcely had that monarch vacated the throne when a +series of civil jars began, which tore the nation into factions, and was +speedily followed by a religious movement as powerful in its effects. +Accordingly, though printing was introduced during this period, and thus +Englishmen had greater temptations to write, what they did write was +almost exclusively plain grave prose, intended for practical or polemical +occasions, and making no figure in a historical retrospect. How different +when, passing the controversial reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and +Mary, we come upon the golden days of Queen Bess! Controversy enough +remained to give occasion to plenty of polemical prose; but about the +middle of her reign, when England, once more great and powerful abroad as +in the time of the Edwards, settled down within herself into a new lease +of social order and leisure under an ascertained government, there began +an outburst of literary genius such as no age or country had ever before +witnessed. The literary fecundity of that period of English history which +embraces the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth and the whole of the +reign of James I. (1580-1625) is a perpetual astonishment to us all. In +the entire preceding three centuries and a half we can with difficulty +name six men that can, by any charity of judgment, be regarded as stars in +our literature, and of these only one that is a star of the first +magnitude: whereas in this brief period of forty-five or fifty years we +can reckon up a host of poets and prose-writers all noticeable on high +literary grounds, and of whom at least thirty were men of extraordinary +dimensions. Indeed, in the contemplation of the intellectual abundance and +variety of this age--the age of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon, of +Raleigh and Hooker, of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Donne, Herbert, +Massinger, and their illustrious contemporaries--we feel ourselves driven +from the theory that so rich a literary crop could have resulted from that +mere access of social leisure after a long series of national broils to +which we do in part attribute it, and are obliged to suppose that there +must have been, along with this, an actually finer substance and +condition, for the time being, of the national nerve. The very brain of +England must have become more "quick, nimble, and forgetive," before the +time of leisure came. + +We have spoken of this great age of English literature as terminating with +the reign of James I., in 1625. In point of fact, however, it extended +some way into the reign of his son, Charles I. Spenser had died in 1599, +before James had ascended the English throne; Shakespeare and Beaumont had +died in 1616, while James still reigned; Fletcher died in 1625; Bacon +died in 1626, when the crown had been but a year on Charles's head. But, +while these great men and many of their contemporaries had vanished from +the scene before England had any experience of the first Charles, some of +their peers survived to tell what kind of men they had been. Ben Jonson +lived till 1637, and was poet-laureate to Charles I.; Donne and Drayton +lived till 1631; Herbert till 1632; Chapman till 1634; Dekker till 1638; +Ford till 1639; and Heywood and Massinger till 1640. + +There is one point in the reign of Charles, however, where a clear line +may be drawn separating the last of the Elizabethan giants from their +literary successors. This is the point at which the Civil War commences. +The whole of the earlier part of Charles's reign was a preparation for +this war; but it cannot be said to have fairly begun till the meeting of +the Long Parliament in 1640, when Charles had been fifteen years on the +throne. If we select this year as the commencement of the great Puritan +and Republican Revolution in England, and the year 1660, when Charles II. +was restored, as the close of the same Revolution, we shall have a period +of twenty years to which, if there is any truth in the notion that the +Muses shun strife, this notion should be found peculiarly applicable. Is +it so? We think it is. In the first place, as we have just said, the last +of the Elizabethan giants died off before this period began, as if killed +by the mere approach to an atmosphere so lurid and tempestuous. In the +second place, in the case of such writers as were old enough to have +learnt in the school of those giants and yet young enough to survive them +and enter on the period of struggle,--as for example, Herrick (1591-1660), +Shirley (1596-1666), Waller (1605-1687), Davenant (1605-1668), Suckling +(1608-1643), Milton (1608-1674), Butler (1612-1680), Cleveland +(1613-1658), Denham (1615-1668), and Cowley (1618-1667),--it will be +found, on examination, either that the time of their literary activity did +not coincide with the period of struggle, but came before it, or after it, +or lay on both sides of it; or that what they did write of a purely +literary character during this period was written in exile; or, lastly, +that what they did write at home of a genuine literary character during +this period is inconsiderable in quantity, and dashed with a vein of +polemical allusion rendering it hardly an exception to the rule. The +literary career of Milton illustrates very strikingly this fact of the all +but entire cessation of pure literature in England between 1640 and 1660. +Milton's life consists of three distinctly marked periods--the first +ending with 1640, during which he composed his exquisite minor poems; the +second extending precisely from 1640 to 1660, during which he wrote no +poetry at all, except a few sonnets, but produced his various polemical +prose treatises or pamphlets, and served the state as a public +functionary; and the third, which may be called the period of his later +muse, extending from 1660 to his death in 1674, and famous for the +composition of his greater poems. Thus Milton's prose-period, if we may so +term it, coincided exactly with the period of civil strife and Cromwellian +rule. And, if this was the case with Milton--if he, who was essentially +the poet of Puritanism, with his whole heart and soul in the struggle +which Cromwell led, was obliged, during the process of that struggle, to +lay aside his singing robes, postpone his plans of a great immortal poem, +and in the meanwhile drudge laboriously as a prose pamphleteer--how much +more must those have been reduced to silence, or brought down into +practical prose, who found no such inspiration in the movement as it gave +to the soul of Milton, but regarded it all as desolation and disaster! +Indeed, one large department of the national literature at this period was +proscribed by civil enactment. Stage-plays were prohibited in 1642, and it +was not till after the Restoration that the theatres were re-opened. Such +a prohibition, though it left the sublime muse of Milton at liberty, had +it cared to sing, was a virtual extinction for the time of all the +customary literature. In fine, if all the literary produce of England in +the interval between 1640 and 1660 is examined, it will be found to +consist in the main of a huge mass of controversial prose, by far the +greater proportion of which, though effective at the time, is little +better now than antiquarian rubbish, astonishing from its bulk, though +some small percentage including all that came from the terrible pen of +Milton is saved by reason of its strength and grandeur. The intellect of +England was as active and as abundant as ever, but it was all required for +the current service of the time. Perhaps the only exception of any +consequence was in the case of the philosophical and calm-minded Sir +Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio Medici_. While all England was in +throes and confusion Browne was quietly attending his patients, or +pottering along his garden at Norwich, or pursuing his meditations about +sepulchral urns and his inquiries respecting the Quincuncial Lozenge. His +views of things might have been considerably quickened by billeting upon +his household a few of the Ironsides. + +Had Cromwell lived longer, or had he established a dynasty capable of +maintaining itself, there can be little doubt that there would have come a +time of leisure during which, even under a Puritan rule, there would have +been a new outburst of English Literature. There were symptoms, towards +the close of the Protectorate that Cromwell, having now "reasonable good +leisure," was willing and even anxious that the nation should resume its +old literary industry and all its innocent liberties and pleasures. He +allowed Cowley, Waller, Denham, Davenant, and other Royalists, to come +over from France, and was glad to see them employed in writing verses. +Waller became one of his courtiers, and composed panegyrics on him. He +released Cleveland from prison in a very handsome manner, considering what +hard things the witty roysterer had written about "O.P." and his "copper +nose." He appears even to have winked at Davenant, when, in violation of +the act against stage-plays, that gentlemanly poet began to give private +theatrical entertainments under the name of operas. Davenant's heretical +friend, Hobbes, too, already obnoxious by his opinions even to his own +political party, availed himself of the liberty of the press to issue some +fresh metaphysical essays, which the Protector may have read. In fact, had +Cromwell survived a few years, there would, in all probability, have +arisen, under his auspices, a new literature, of which his admirer and +secretary, Milton, would have been the laureate. What might have been the +characteristics of this literature of the Commonwealth, had it developed +itself to full form and proportions, we can but guess. That, in some +respects, it would not have been so broad and various as the literature +which took its rise from the Restoration is very likely; for, so long as +the Puritan element remained dominant in English society, it was +impossible that, with any amount of liberty of the press, there should +have been such an outbreak of the merely comic spirit as did occur when +that element succumbed to its antagonist, and genius had official licence +to be as profligate as it chose. But, if less gay and riotous, it might +have been more earnest, powerful, and impressive. For its masterpiece it +would still have had _Paradise Lost_,--a work which, as it is, we must +regard as its peculiar offspring, though posthumously born; nor can we +doubt that, if influenced by the example and the recognised supremacy of +such a laureate as Milton, the younger literary men of the time would have +found themselves capable of other things than epigrams and farces. + +It was fated, however, that the national leisure requisite for a new +development of English literary genius should commence only with the +restoration of the Stuarts in 1660; and then it was a leisure secured in +very different circumstances from those which would have attended a +perpetuation of Cromwell's rule. With Charles II. there came back into the +island, after many years of banishment, all the excesses of the cavalier +spirit, more reckless than before, and considerably changed by long +residence in continental cities, and especially in the French capital. +Cavalier noblemen and gentlemen came back, bringing with them French +tastes, French fashions, and foreign ladies of pleasure. As Charles II. +was a different man from his father, so the courtiers that gathered round +him at Whitehall were very different from those who had fought with +Charles I. against the Parliamentarians. Their political principles and +prejudices were nominally the same; but they were for the most part men of +a younger generation, less stiff and English in their demeanour, and more +openly dissolute in their morals. Such was the court the restoration of +which England virtually confessed to be necessary to prevent a new era of +anarchy. It was inaugurated amid the shouts of the multitude; and +Puritanism, already much weakened by defections before the event, hastened +to disappear from the public stage, diffusing itself once more as a mere +element of secret efficacy through the veins of the community, and +purchasing even this favour by the sacrifice of its most notorious +leaders. + + * * * * * + +Miserable in some respects as was this change for England, it offered, by +reason of the very unanimity with which it was effected, all the +conditions necessary for the forthcoming of a new literature. But where +were the materials for the commencement of this new literature? + +First, as regards _persons_ fit to initiate it. There were all those who +had been left over from the Protectorate, together with such wits as the +Restoration itself had brought back, or called into being. There was the +old dramatist, Shirley, now in his sixty-fifth year, very glad, no doubt, +to come back to town, after his hard fare as a country-schoolmaster during +the eclipse of the stage, and to resume his former occupation as a writer +of plays in the style that had been in fashion thirty years before. There +was Hobbes, older still than Shirley, a tough old soul of seventy-three, +but with twenty more years of life in him, and, though not exactly a +literary man, yet sturdy enough to be whatever he liked within certain +limits. There was mild Izaak Walton, of Chancery-lane, only five years +younger than Hobbes, but destined to live as long, and capable of writing +very nicely if he could have been kept from sauntering into the fields to +fish. There was the gentlemanly Waller, now fifty-six years of age, quite +ready to be a poet about the court of Charles, and to write panegyrics on +the new side to atone for that on Cromwell. There was the no less +gentlemanly Davenant, also fifty-six years of age, steady to his royalist +principles, as became a man who had received the honour of knighthood from +the royal martyr, and enjoying a wide reputation, partly from his poetical +talents, and partly from his want of nose. There was Milton, in his +fifty-second year, blind, desolate, and stern, hiding in obscure lodgings +till his defences of regicide should be sufficiently forgotten to save him +from molestation, and building up in imagination the scheme of his +promised epic. There was Butler, four years younger, brimful of hatred to +the Puritans, and already engaged on his poem of _Hudibras_, which was to +lash them so much to the popular taste. There was Denham, known as a +versifier little inferior to Waller, and with such superior claims on the +score of loyalty as to be considered worthy of knighthood and the first +vacant post. There was Cowley, still only in his forty-third year, and +with a ready-made reputation, both as a poet and as a prose-writer, such +as none of his contemporaries possessed, and such indeed as no English +writer had acquired since the days of Ben Jonson and Donne. Younger still, +and with his fame as a satirist not yet made, there was Milton's friend, +honest Andrew Marvell, whom the people of Hull had chosen as their +representative in Parliament. Had the search been extended to theologians, +and such of them selected as were capable of influencing the literature by +the form of their writings, as distinct from their matter, Jeremy Taylor +would have been noted as still alive, though his work was nearly over, +while Richard Baxter, with a longer life before him, was in the prime of +his strength, and there was in Bedford an eccentric Baptist preacher, once +a tinker, who was to be the author, though no one supposed it, of the +greatest prose allegory in the language. Close about the person of the +king, too, there were able men and wits, capable of writing themselves, or +of criticising what was written by others, from the famous Clarendon down +to such younger and lighter men as Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, Sackville, +Earl of Dorset, and Sir Charles Sedley. Lastly, not to extend the list +farther, there was then in London, aged twenty-nine, and going about in a +stout plain dress of grey drugget, a Northamptonshire squire's son, named +John Dryden, who, after having been educated at Cambridge, had come up to +town in the last year of the Protectorate to push his fortune under a +Puritan relative then in office, and who had already once or twice tried +his hand at poetry. Like Waller, he had written and published a series of +panegyrical stanzas on Cromwell after his death; and, like Waller also, he +had attempted to atone for this miscalculation by writing another poem, +called _Astraea Redux_, to celebrate the return of Charles. As a taste of +what this poet, in particular, could do, take the last of his stanzas on +Cromwell:-- + + "His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest; + His name a great example stands to show + How strangely high endeavours may be blessed, + Where piety and valour jointly go"; + +or, in another metre and another strain of politics, the conclusion of the +poem addressed to Charles:-- + + "The discontented now are only they + Whose crimes before did your just cause betray: + Of those your edicts some reclaim from sin, + But most your life and blest example win. + Oh happy prince! whom Heaven hath taught the way + By paying vows to have more vows to pay! + Oh happy age! Oh times like those alone + By fate reserved for great Augustus' throne, + When the joint growth of arms and arts foreshow + The world a monarch, and that monarch you!" + +Such were the _personal elements_, if we may so call them, available at +the beginning of the reign of Charles II. for the commencement of a new +era in English literature. Let us see next what were the more pronounced +_tendencies_ visible amid these personal elements--in other words, what +tone of moral sentiment, and what peculiarities of literary style and +method, were then in the ascendant, and likely to determine the character +of the budding authorship. + +It was pre-eminently clear that the forthcoming literature would be +Royalist and anti-Puritan. With the exception of Milton, there was not one +man of known literary power whose heart still beat as it did when Cromwell +sat on the throne, and whose muse magnanimously disdained the change that +had befallen the nation. Puritanism, as a whole, was driven back into the +concealed vitals of the community, to sustain itself meanwhile as a +sectarian theology lurking in chapels and conventicles, and only to +re-appear after a lapse of years as an ingredient in the philosophy of +Locke and his contemporaries. The literary men who stepped forward to lead +the literature of the Restoration were royalists and courtiers: some of +them honest cavaliers, rejoicing at being let loose from the restraints of +the Commonwealth; others timeservers, making up for delay by the fulsome +excess of their zeal for the new state of things. It was part of this +change that there should be an affectation, even where there was not the +reality, of lax morals. According to the sarcasm of the time, it was +necessary now for those who would escape the risk of being thought +Puritans to contract a habit of swearing and pretend to be great rakes. +And this increase, both in the practice and in the profession of +profligacy, at once connected itself with that institution of English +society which, from the very fact that it had been suppressed by the +Puritans, now became doubly attractive and popular. The same revolution +which restored royalty in England re-opened the play-houses; and in them, +as the established organs of popular sentiment, all the anti-Puritanic +tendencies of the time hastened to find vent. The custom of having female +actors on the stage for female parts, instead of boys as heretofore, was +now permanently introduced, and brought many scandals along with it. +Whether, as some surmise, the very suppression of the theatres during the +reign of Puritanism contributed to their unusual corruptness when they +were again allowed by law--by damming up, as it were, a quantity of +pruriency which had afterwards to be let loose in a mass--it is not easy +to say; it is certain, however, that never in this country did impurity +run so openly at riot in literary guise as it did in the Drama of the +Restoration. To use a phrenological figure, it seemed as if the national +cranium of England had suddenly been contracted in every other direction +so as to permit an inordinate increase of that particular region which is +situated above the nape of the neck. This enormous preponderance of the +back of the head in literature was most conspicuously exhibited in Comedy. +Every comedy that was produced represented life as a meagre action of +persons and interests on a slight proscenium of streets and bits of green +field, behind which lay the real business, transacted in stews. To set +against this, it is true, there was a so-called Tragic Drama. The tragedy +that was now in favour, however, was no longer the old English tragedy of +rich and complex materials, but the French tragedy of heroic declamation. +Familiarized by their stay in France with the tragic style of Corneille +and other dramatists of the court of Louis XIV., the Royalists brought +back the taste with them into England; and the poets who catered for them +hastened to abandon the Shakespearian tragedy, with its large range of +time and action and its blank verse, and to put on the stage tragedies of +sustained and decorous declamation in the heroic or rhymed couplet, +conceived, as much as possible, after the model of Corneille. Natural to +the French, this classic or regular style accorded ill with English +faculties and habits; and Corneille himself would have been horrified at +the slovenly and laborious attempts of the English in imitation of his +masterpieces. The effect of French influence at this time, however, on +English literary taste, did not consist merely in the introduction of the +heroic or rhymed drama. The same influence extended, and in some respects +beneficially, to all departments of English literature. It helped, for +example, to correct that peculiar style of so-called "wit" which, +originating with the dregs of the Elizabethan age, had during a whole +generation infected English prose and poetry, but more especially the +latter. The characteristic of the "metaphysical school of poetry," as it +is called, which took its rise in a literary vice perceptible even in the +great works of the Elizabethan age, and of which Donne and Cowley were the +most celebrated representatives, consisted in the identification of mere +intellectual subtlety with poetic genius. To spin out a fantastic conceit, +to pursue a thread of quaint thought as long as it could be held between +the fingers of the metre without snapping, and, in doing so, to wind it +about as many oddities of the real world as possible, and introduce as +many verbal quibbles as possible, was the aim of the "metaphysical poets." +Some of them, like Donne and Cowley, were men of independent merit; but +the style of poetry itself, as all modern readers confess by the alacrity +with which they avoid reprinted specimens of it, was as unprofitable an +investment of human ingenuity as ever was attempted. At the period of the +Restoration, and partly in consequence of French influence, this kind of +wit was falling into disrepute. There were still practitioners of it; but, +on the whole, a more direct, clear, and light manner of writing was coming +into fashion. Discourse became less stiff and pedantic; or, as Dryden +himself has expressed it, "the fire of English wit, which was before +stifled under a constrained melancholy way of breeding, began to display +its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of +our neighbours." And the change in discourse passed without difficulty +into literature, calling into being a nimbler style of wit, a more direct, +rapid, and decisive manner of thought and expression, than had beseemed +authorship before. In particular, and apart from the tendency to greater +directness and concision of thought, there was an increased attention to +correctness of expression. The younger literary men began to object to +what they called the involved and incorrect syntax of the writers of the +previous age, and to pretend to greater neatness and accuracy in the +construction of their sentences. It was at this time, for example, that +the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition or other little word +began to be attended to. Whether the notion of correctness, implied in +this, and other such rules, was a true notion, and whether the writers of +the Restoration excelled their Elizabethan predecessors in this quality of +correctness, admits of being doubted. Certain it is, however, that a +change in the mechanism of writing--this change being on the whole towards +increased neatness--did become apparent about this time. The change was +visible in prose, but far more in verse. For, to conclude this enumeration +of the literary signs or tendencies of the age of the Restoration, it was +a firm belief of the writers of the period that then for the first time +was the art of correct English versification exemplified and appreciated. +It was, we say, a firm belief of the time, and indeed it has been a +common-place of criticism ever since, that Edmund Waller was the first +poet who wrote smooth and accurate verse, that in this he was followed by +Sir John Denham, and that these two men were reformers of English metre. +"Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was not known +till Mr. Waller introduced it," is a deliberate statement of Dryden +himself, meant to apply especially to verse. Here, again, we have to +separate a matter of fact from a matter of doctrine. To aver, with such +specimens of older English verse before us as the works of Chaucer and +Spenser, and the minor poems of Milton, that it was Waller or any other +petty writer of the Restoration that first taught us sweetness, or +smoothness, or even correctness of verse, is so ridiculous that the +currency of such a notion can only be accounted for by the servility with +which small critics go on repeating whatever any one big critic has said. +That Waller and Denham, however, did set the example of something new in +the manner of English versification,--which "something" Dryden, Pope, and +other poets who afterwards adopted it, regarded as an improvement,--needs +not be doubted. For us it is sufficient in the meantime to recognise the +change as an attempt after greater neatness of mechanical structure, +leaving open the question whether it was a change for the better. + +It was natural that the tendencies of English literature thus enumerated +should be represented in the poet-laureate for the time being. Who was the +fit man to be appointed laureate at the Restoration? Milton was out of the +question, having none of the requisites. Butler, the man of greatest +natural power of a different order, and possessing certainly as much of +the anti-Puritan sentiment as Charles and his courtiers could have desired +in their laureate, was not yet sufficiently known, and was, besides, +neither a dramatist nor a fine gentleman. Cowley, whom public opinion +would have pointed out as best entitled to the honour, was somehow not in +much favour at court, and was spending the remainder of his days on a +little property near Chertsey. Waller and Denham were wealthy men, with +whom literature was but an amusement. On the whole, Sir William Davenant +was felt to be the proper man for the office. He was an approved royalist; +he had, in fact, been laureate to Charles I. after Ben Jonson's death in +1637; and he had suffered much in the cause of the king. He was, moreover, +a literary man by profession. He had been an actor and a theatre-manager +before the Commonwealth; he had been the first to start a theatre after +the relaxed rule of Cromwell made it possible; and he was one of the first +to attempt heroic or rhymed tragedies after the French model. He was also, +far more than Cowley, a wit of the new school; and, as a versifier, he +practised, with no small reputation, the neat, lucid style introduced by +Denham and Waller. He was the author of an epic called _Gondibert_, +written in rhymed stanzas of four lines each, which Hobbes praised as +showing "more shape of art, health of morality, and vigour and beauty of +expression," than any poem he had ever read. We defy anyone to read the +poem now; but there have been worse things written; and it has the merit +of being a careful and rather serious composition by a man who had +industry, education, and taste, without genius. There was but one +awkwardness in having such a man for laureate: he had no nose. This +awkwardness, however, had existed at the time of his first appointment in +the preceding reign. At least, Suckling adverts to it in the _Session of +the Poets_, where he makes the wits of that time contend for the bays-- + + "Will Davenant, ashamed of a foolish mischance, + That he had got lately, travelling in France, + Modestly hoped the handsomeness of 's muse + Might any deformity about him excuse. + + "And surely the company would have been content, + If they could have found any precedent; + But in all their records, either in verse or prose, + There was not one laureate without a nose." + +If the more decorous court of Charles I., however, overlooked this +deficiency, it was not for that of Charles II. to take objection to it. +After all, Davenant, notwithstanding his misfortune, seems to have been +not the worst gentleman about Charles's court, either in morals or +manners. Milton is said to have known and liked him. + +Davenant's laureateship extended over the first eight years of the +Restoration, or from 1660 to 1668. Much was done in those eight years both +by himself and others. Heroic plays and comedies were produced in +sufficient abundance to supply the two chief theatres then open in +London--one of them that of the Duke's company, under Davenant's +management; the other, that of the King's company, under the management +of an actor named Killigrew. The number of writers for the stage was very +great, including not only those whose names have been mentioned, but +others new to fame. The literature of the stage formed by far the largest +proportion of what was written, or even of what was published. Literary +efforts of other kinds, however, were not wanting. Of satires, and small +poems in the witty or amatory style, there was no end. The publication by +Butler of the first part of his _Hudibras_ in 1663, and of the second in +1664, drew public attention, for the first time, to a man, already past +his fiftieth year, who had more true wit in him than all the aristocratic +poets put together. The poem was received by the king and the courtiers +with shouts of laughter; quotations from it were in everybody's mouth; +but, notwithstanding large promises, nothing substantial was done for the +author. Meanwhile Milton, blind and gouty, and living in his house near +Bunhill Fields, where his visitors were hardly of the kind that admired +Butler's poem, was calmly proceeding with his _Paradise Lost_. The poem +was finished and published in 1667, leaving Milton free for other work. +Cowley, who would have welcomed such a poem, and whose praise Milton would +have valued more than that of any other contemporary, died in the year of +its publication. Davenant may have read it before his death in the +following year; but perhaps the only poet of the time who hailed its +appearance with enthusiasm adequate to the occasion was Milton's personal +friend Marvell. Gradually, however, copies of the poem found their way +about town, and drew public attention once more to Cromwell's old +secretary. + +The laureateship remained vacant two years after Davenant's death; and +then it was conferred--on whom? There can be little doubt that, of those +eligible to it, Butler had, in some respects, the best title. The author +of _Hudibras_, however, seems to have been one of those ill-conditioned +men whom patronage never comes near, and who are left, by a kind of +necessity, to the bitter enjoyment of their own humours. There does not +seem to have been even a question of appointing him; and the office, the +income of which would have been a competence to him, was conferred on a +man twenty years his junior, and whose circumstances required it +less--John Dryden. The appointment, which was made in August, 1670, +conferred on Dryden not only the laureateship, but also the office of +"historiographer royal," which chanced to be vacant at the same time. The +income accruing from the two offices thus conjoined was 200_l._ a-year, +which was about as valuable then as 600_l._ a-year would be now; and it +was expressly stated in the deed of appointment that these emoluments were +conferred on Dryden "in consideration of his many acceptable services done +to his majesty, and from an observation of his learning and eminent +abilities, and his great skill and elegant style both in verse and prose." +At the time of the Restoration, or even for a year or two after it, such +language could, by no stretch of courtesy, have been applied to Dryden. At +that time, as we have seen, though already past his thirtieth year, he was +certainly about the least distinguished person in the little band of wits +that were looking forward to the good time coming. He was a stout, +fresh-complexioned man, in grey drugget, who had written some robust +stanzas on Cromwell's death, and a short poem, also robust, but rather +wooden, on Charles's return. That was about all that was then known about +him. What had he done, in the interval, to raise him so high, and to make +it natural for the Court to prefer him to what was in fact the titular +supremacy of English literature, over the heads of others who might be +supposed to have claims, and especially over poor battered old Butler? A +glance at Dryden's life during Davenant's laureateship, or between 1660 +and 1670, will answer this question. + +Dryden's connexion with the politics of the Protectorate had not been such +as to make his immediate and cordial attachment to the cause of restored +Royalty either very strange or very unhandsome. Not committed either by +strong personal convictions, or by acts, to the Puritan side, he hastened +to show that, whatever the older Northamptonshire Drydens and their +relatives might think of the matter, he, for one, was willing to be a +loyal subject of Charles, both in church and in state. This main point +being settled, he had only farther to consider into what particular walk +of industry, now that official employment under government was cut off, he +should carry his loyalty and his powers. The choice was not difficult. +There was but one career open for him, or suitable to his tastes and +qualifications--that of general authorship. We say "general authorship;" +for it is important to remark that Dryden was by no means nice in his +choice of work. He was ready for anything of a literary kind to which he +was, or could make himself, competent. He had probably a preference for +verse; but he had no disinclination to prose, if that article was in +demand in the market. He had a store of acquirements, academic and other, +that fitted him for an intelligent apprehension of whatever was going on +in any of the London circles of that day--the circle of the scholars, that +of the amateurs of natural science, or that of the mere wits and men of +letters. He was, in fact, a man of general intellectual strength, which he +was willing to let out in any kind of tolerably honest intellectual +service that might be in fashion. This being the case, he set the right +way to work to make himself known in quarters where such service was +going on. He had about 40_l._ a-year of inherited fortune; which means +something more than 120_l._ a-year with us. With this income to supply his +immediate wants, he went to live with Herringman, a bookseller and +publisher in the New Exchange. What was the precise nature of his +agreement with Herringman cannot be ascertained. His literary enemies used +afterwards to say that he was Herringman's hack and wrote prefaces for +him. However this may be, there were higher conveniences in being +connected with Herringman. He was one of the best known of the London +publishers of the day, was a personal friend of Davenant, and had almost +all the wits of the day as his customers and occasional visitors. Through +him, in all probability, Dryden first became acquainted with some of these +men, including Davenant himself, Cowley, and a third person of +considerable note at that time as an aristocratic dabbler in +literature--Sir Robert Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire. That the +impression he made on these men, and on others in or out of the Herringman +circle, was no mean one, is proved by the fact that in 1663 we find him a +member of the Royal Society, the foundation of which by royal charter had +taken place in the previous year. The number of members was then one +hundred and fifteen, including such scientific celebrities of the time as +Boyle, Wallis, Wilkins, Christopher Wren, Dr. Isaac Barrow, Evelyn, and +Hooke, besides such titled amateurs of experimental science as the Duke of +Buckingham, the Marquis of Dorchester, the Earls of Devonshire, Crawford, +and Northampton, and Lords Brouncker, Cavendish, and Berkeley. Among the +more purely literary members were Waller, Denham, Cowley, and Sprat, +afterwards Bishop of Rochester. The admission of Dryden into such company +is a proof that already he was socially a man of mark. As we have Dryden's +own confession that he was somewhat dull and sluggish in conversation, and +the testimony of others that he was the very reverse of a bustling or +pushing man, and rather avoided society than sought it, we must suppose +that he had been found out in spite of himself. We can fancy him at +Herringman's, or elsewhere, sitting as one of a group with Davenant, +Howard, and others, taking snuff and listening, rather than speaking, and +yet, when he did speak, doing so with such judgment as to make his chair +one of the most important in the room, and impress all with the conviction +that he was a solid fellow. He seems also to have taken an interest in the +scientific gossip of the day about magnetism, the circulation of the +blood, and the prospects of the Baconian system of philosophy; and this +may have helped to bring him into contact with men like Boyle, Wren, and +Wallis. At all events, if the Society elected him on trust, he soon +justified their choice by taking his place among the best known members +of what was then the most important class of literary men--the writers for +the stage. His first drama, a lumbering prose-comedy entitled _The Wild +Gallant_, was produced at Killigrew's Theatre in February, 1662-3; and, +though its success was very indifferent, he was not discouraged from a +second venture in a tragi-comedy, entitled _The Rival Ladies_, written +partly in blank verse, partly in heroic rhyme, and produced at the same +theatre. This attempt was more successful; and in 1664 there was produced, +as the joint composition of Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, an attempt in +the style of the regular heroic or rhymed tragedy, called _The Indian +Queen_. The date of this effort of literary co-partnership between Dryden +and his aristocratic friend coincides with the formation of a more +intimate connexion between them, by Dryden's marriage with Sir Robert's +sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard. The marriage (the result, it would seem, of +a visit of the poet, in the company of Sir Robert, to the Earl of +Berkshire's seat in Wilts) took place in November, 1663; so that, when +_The Indian Queen_ was written, the two authors were already +brothers-in-law. The marriage of a man in the poet's circumstances with an +earl's daughter was neither altogether strange nor altogether such as to +preclude remark. The earl was poor, and able to afford his daughter but a +small settlement; and Dryden was a man of sufficiently good family, his +grandfather having been a baronet, and some of his living relations having +landed property in Northamptonshire. The property remaining for the +support of Dryden's brothers and sisters, however, after the subduction of +his own share, had been too scanty to keep them all in their original +station; and some of them had fallen a little lower in the world. One +sister, in particular, had married a tobacconist in London--a connexion +not likely to be agreeable to the Earl of Berkshire and his sons, if they +took the trouble to become cognisant of it. Dryden himself probably moved +conveniently enough between the one relationship and the other. If his +aristocratic brother-in-law, Sir Robert, could write plays with him, his +other brother-in-law, the tobacconist of Newgate-street, may have +administered to his comfort in other ways. It is known that the poet, in +his later life at least, was peculiarly fastidious in the article of +snuff, abhorring all ordinary snuffs, and satisfied only with a mixture +which he prepared himself; and it is not unlikely that the foundation of +this fastidiousness may have been laid in the facilities afforded him +originally in his brother-in-law's shop. The tobacconist's wife, of +course, would be pleased now and then to have a visit from her brother +John; but whether Lady Elizabeth ever went to see her is rather doubtful. +According to all accounts, Dryden's experience of this lady was not such +as to improve his ideas of the matrimonial state, or to give encouragement +to future poets to marry earls' daughters. + +In consequence of the ravages of the Great Plague in 1665 and the +subsequent disaster of the Great Fire in 1666 there was for some time a +total cessation in London of theatrical performances and all other +amusements. Dryden, like most other persons who were not tied to town by +business, spent the greater part of this gloomy period in the country. He +availed himself of the interruption thus given to his dramatic labours to +produce his first writings of any moment out of that field, his _Annus +Mirabilis_ and his _Essay on Dramatic Poesy_. The first, an attempt to +invest with heroic interest, and celebrate in sonorous stanzas, the events +of the famous years 1665-6, including not only the Great Fire, but also +the incidents of a naval war then going on against the Dutch, must have +done more to bring Dryden into the favourable notice of the King, the Duke +of York, and other high personages eulogized in it, than anything he had +yet written. It was, in fact, a kind of short epic on the topics of the +year, such as Dryden might have been expected to write if he had been +already doing laureate's duty; and, unless Sir William Davenant was of +very easy temper, he must have been rather annoyed at so obvious an +invasion of his province, notwithstanding the compliment the poet had +paid him by adopting the stanza of his _Gondibert_, and imitating his +manner. Scarcely less effective in another way must have been the prose +_Essay on Dramatic Poesy_--a vigorous treatise on various matters of +poetry and criticism then much discussed. It contained, among other +things, a defence of the Heroic or Rhymed Tragedy against those who +preferred the older Elizabethan Tragedy of blank verse; and so powerful a +contribution was it to this great controversy of the day that it produced +an immediate sensation in all literary circles. Sir Robert Howard, who now +ranked himself among the partisans of blank verse, took occasion to +express his dissent from some of the opinions expounded in it; and, as +Dryden replied rather tartly, a temporary quarrel ensued between the two +brothers-in-law. + +On the re-opening of the theatres in 1667 Dryden, his reputation increased +by the two performances just mentioned, stepped forward again as a +dramatist. A heroic tragedy called _The Indian Emperor_, which he had +prepared before the recess, and which, indeed, had then been acted, was +reproduced with great success, and established Dryden's position as a +practitioner of heroic and rhymed tragedy. This was followed by a comedy, +in mixed blank verse and prose, called _The Maiden Queen_; this by a +prose-comedy called _Sir Martin Mar-all_; and this again, by an +adaptation, in conjunction with Sir William Davenant, of Shakespeare's +_Tempest_. The two last were produced at Davenant's theatre, whereas all +Dryden's former pieces had been written for Killigrew's, or the King's +company. About this time, however, an arrangement was made which secured +Dryden's services exclusively for Killigrew's house. By the terms of the +agreement, Dryden engaged to supply the house with three plays every year, +in return for which, he was admitted a shareholder in the profits of the +theatre to the extent of one share and a-half. The first fruits of the +bargain were a prose-comedy called _The Mock Astrologer_ and two heroic +tragedies entitled _Tyrannic Love_ and _The Conquest of Granada_, the +latter being in two parts. These were all produced between 1668 and 1670, +and the tragedies, in particular, seem to have taken the town by storm, +and placed Dryden, beyond dispute, at the head of all the heroic +playwrights of the day. + +The extent and nature of Dryden's popularity as a dramatist about this +time may be judged by the following extract from the diary of the +omnipresent Pepys, referring to the first performance of the _Maiden +Queen_:--"After dinner, with my wife to see the _Maiden Queene_, a new +play by Dryden, mightily commended for the regularity of it, and the +strain and wit; and the truth is, the comical part done by Nell [Nell +Gwynn], which is Florimell, that I never can hope to see the like done +again by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so +great a performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world +before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all +when she comes in like a young gallant and hath the motions and carriage +of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, +admire her." But even Nell's performance in this comedy was nothing +compared to one part of her performance afterwards in the tragedy of +_Tyrannic Love_. Probably there was never such a scene of ecstasy in a +theatre as when Nell, after acting the character of a tragic princess in +this play, and killing herself at the close in a grand passage of heroism +and supernatural virtue, had to start up as she was being borne off the +stage dead, and resume her natural character, first addressing her bearer +in these words:-- + + "Hold! are you mad? you d----d confounded dog: + I am to rise and speak the epilogue.", + +and then running to the footlights and beginning her speech to the +audience:-- + + "I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye: + I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly. + Sweet ladies, be not frighted; I'll be civil: + I'm what I was, a little harmless devil." &c. &c. + +It is a tradition that it was this epilogue that effected Nell's conquest +of the king, and that he was so fascinated with her manner of delivering +it, that he went behind the scenes after the play was over and carried her +off. Ah! and it is two hundred years since that fascinating run to the +footlights took place, and the swarthy face of the monarch was seen +laughing, and the audience shrieked and clapped with delight, and Pepys +bustled about the boxes, and Dryden sat looking placidly on, contented +with his success, and wondering how much of it was owing to Nelly! + +One can see how, even if the choice had been made strictly with a +reference to the claims of the candidates, it would have been felt that +Dryden, and not Butler, was the proper man to succeed Davenant in the +laureateship. If Butler had shewn the more original vein of talent in one +peculiar walk, Dryden had proved himself the man of greatest general +strength, in whom were more broadly represented the various literary +tendencies of his time. The author of ten plays, four of which were +stately rhymed tragedies, and the rest comedies in prose and blank verse; +the author, also, of various occasional poems, one of which, the _Annus +Mirabilis_, was noticeable on its own account as the best poem of current +history; the author, moreover, of one express prose-treatise, and of +various shorter prose dissertations in the shape of prefaces and the like +prefixed to his separate plays and poems, in which the principles of +literature were discussed in a manner at once masterly and adapted to the +prevailing taste: Dryden was, on the whole, far more likely to perform +well that part of a laureate's duties which consisted in supervising and +leading the general literature of his age than a man whose reputation, +though justly great, had been acquired by one continuous effort in the +single department of burlesque. Accordingly, Dryden was promoted to the +post, and Butler was left to finish, on his own scanty resources, the +remaining portion of his _Hudibras_, varying the occupation by jotting +down those scraps of cynical thought which were found among his posthumous +papers, and which show that towards the end of his days there were other +things that he hated and would have lashed besides Puritanism. Thus:-- + + "'Tis a strange age we've lived in and a lewd + As e'er the sun in all his travels viewed." + +Again: + + "The greatest saints and sinners have been made + Of proselytes of one another's trade." + +Again: + + "Authority is a disease and cure + Which men can neither want nor well endure." + +And again, with an obvious reference to his own case:-- + + "Dame Fortune, some men's titular, + Takes charge of them without their care, + Does all their drudgery and work, + Like fairies, for them in the dark; + Conducts them blindfold, and advances + The naturals by blinder chances; + While others by desert and wit + Could never make the matter hit, + But still, the better they deserve, + Are but the abler thought to starve." + +Dryden, at the time of his appointment to the laureateship, was in his +fortieth year. This is worth noting, if we would realize his position +among his literary contemporaries. Of those contemporaries there were some +who, as being his seniors, would feel themselves free from all obligations +to pay him respect. To octogenarians like Hobbes and Izaak Walton he was +but a boy; and even from Waller, Milton, Butler, and Marvel, all of whom +lived to see him in the laureate's chair, he could only look for that +approving recognition, totally distinct from reverence, which men of +sixty-five, sixty, and fifty-five, bestow on their full-grown juniors. +Such an amount of recognition he seems to have received from all of them. +Butler, indeed, does not seem to have taken very kindly to him; and it +stands on record, as Milton's opinion of Dryden's powers about this +period, that he thought him "a rhymer but no poet." But Butler, who went +about snarling at most things, and was irreverent enough to think the +Royal Society itself little better than a humbug, was not the man from +whom a laudatory estimate of anybody was to be expected; and, though +Milton's criticism is too precious to be thrown away, and will even be +found on investigation to be not so far amiss, if the moment at which it +was given is duly borne in mind, yet it is, after all, not Milton's +opinion of Dryden's general literary capacity, but only his opinion of +Dryden's claims to be called a poet. Dryden, on his part, to whose charge +any want of veneration for his great literary predecessors cannot be +imputed, and whose faculty of appreciating the most various kinds of +excellence was conspicuously large, would probably have been more grieved +than indignant at this indifference of men like Butler and Milton to his +rising fame. He had an unfeigned admiration for the author of _Hudibras_; +and there was not a man in England who more profoundly revered the poet of +_Paradise Lost_, or more dutifully testified this reverence both by acts +of personal attention and by written expressions of allegiance to him +while he was yet alive. It would have pained Dryden much, we believe, to +know that the great Puritan poet, whom he made it a point of duty to go +and see now and then in his solitude, and of whom he is reported to have +said, on reading the _Paradise Lost_, "This man cuts us all out, and the +ancients too," thought no better of him than that he was a rhymer. But, +however he may have felt himself related to those seniors who were +vanishing from the stage, or whose literary era was in the past, it was in +a conscious spirit of superiority that he confronted the generation of his +coevals and juniors, the natural subjects of his laureateship. If we set +aside such men as Locke and Barrow, belonging more to other departments +than to that of literature proper, there were none of these coevals or +juniors who were entitled to dispute his authority. There was the Duke of +Buckingham, a year or two older than Dryden, at once the greatest wit and +the greatest profligate about Charles's court, but whose attempts in the +comic drama were little more than occasional eccentricities. There were +the Earls of Dorset and Roscommon, both about Dryden's age, and both +cultivated men and respectable versifiers. There was Thomas Sprat, +afterwards Bishop of Rochester, and now chaplain to his grace of +Buckingham, five years younger than Dryden, his fellow-member in the Royal +Society, and with considerable pretensions to literary excellence. There +was the witty rake, Sir Charles Sedley, a man of frolic, like Buckingham, +some seven years Dryden's junior, and the author of at least three +comedies and three tragedies. There was the still more witty rake, Sir +George Etherege, of about the same age, the author of two comedies, +produced between 1660 and 1670, which, for ease and sprightly fluency, +surpassed anything that Dryden had done in the comic style. But "gentle +George," as he was called, was incorrigibly lazy; and it did not seem as +if the public would get anything more from him. In his place had come +another gentleman-writer, young William Wycherley, whose first comedy had +been written before Dryden's laureateship, though it was not acted till +1672, and who was already famous as a wit. Of precisely the same age as +Wycherley, and with a far greater _quantity_ of comic writing in him, +whatever might be thought of the quality, was Thomas Shadwell, whose bulky +body was a perpetual source of jest against him, though he himself vaunted +it as one of his many resemblances to Ben Jonson. The contemporary opinion +of these two last-named comic poets, Wycherley and Shadwell, after they +came to be better known, is expressed in these lines from a poem of +Rochester's:-- + + "Of all our modern wits none seem to me + Once to have touched upon true comedy + But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley. + Shadwell's unfinished works do yet impart + Great proofs of force of Nature, none of Art. + With just bold strokes he dashes here and there, + Showing great mastery with little care; + Scorning to varnish his good touches o'er, + To make the fools and women praise the more. + But Wycherley earns hard whate'er he gains; + He wants no judgment, and he spares no pains; + He frequently excels, and, at the least, + Makes fewer faults than any of the rest." + +The author of these lines, the notorious Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was +also one of Dryden's literary subjects. He was but twenty-two years of age +when Dryden became laureate; but before ten years of that laureateship +were over he had blazed out, in rapid debauchery, his wretchedly-spent +life. Younger by three years than Rochester, and also destined to a short +life, though more of misery than of crime, was Thomas Otway, of whose six +tragedies and four comedies, all produced during the laureateship of +Dryden, one at least has taken a place in our dramatic literature, and is +read still for its power and pathos. Associated with Otway's name is that +of Nat. Lee, more than Otway's match in fury, and who, after a brief +career as a tragic dramatist and drunkard, became an inmate of Bedlam. +Another writer of tragedy, whose career began with Dryden's laureateship, +was John Crowne, "little starched Johnny Crowne," as Rochester calls him, +but whom so good a judge as Charles Lamb has thought worthy of +commemoration as having written some really fine things. Finally, the list +includes a few Nahum Tates, Elkanah Settles, Tom D'Urfeys, and other small +celebrities, in whose company we may place Aphra Behn, the poetess. + +Doing our best to fancy this cluster of wits and play-writers, in the +midst of which, from his appointment to the laureateship in 1670, at the +age of thirty-nine, to his deposition from that office in 1688, at the age +of fifty-eight, Dryden is historically the principal figure, we can very +well see that not one of them all could wrest the dictatorship from him. +With an income from various sources, including his salary as laureate and +historiographer and his receipts from his engagement with Killigrew's +company, amounting in all to about 600_l._ a-year--which, according to Sir +Walter Scott's computation, means about 1,800_l._ in our value--he had, +during a portion of this time at least, all the means of external +respectability in sufficient abundance. His reputation as the first +dramatic author of the day was already made; and if, as yet, there were +others who had done as well or better as poets out of the dramatic walk, +he more than made up for this by the excellence of his prologues and +epilogues, and by his readiness and power as a prose-critic of general +literature. No one could deny that, though a rather heavy man in private +society, and so slow and silent among the wits of the coffee-house that, +but for the pleasure of seeing his placid face, the deeply indented +leather chair on which he sat would have done as well to represent +literature there as his own presence in it, John Dryden was, all in all, +the first wit of the age. There was not a Buckingham, nor an Etherege, +nor a Shadwell, nor a starched Johnny Crowne, of them all, that singly +would have dared to dispute his supremacy. And yet, as will happen, what +his subjects could not dare to do singly, or ostensibly, some of them +tried to compass by cabal and systematic depreciation on particular +points. In fact, Dryden had to fight pretty hard to maintain his place, +and had to make an example or two of a rebel subject before the rest were +terrified into submission. + +He was first attacked in the very field of his greatest triumphs, the +drama. The attack was partly directed against himself personally, partly +against that style of heroic or rhymed tragedy of which he was the +advocate and representative. There had always been dissenters from this +new fashion; and among these was the Duke of Buckingham, who had a natural +genius for making fun of anything. Assisted, it is said, by his chaplain +Sprat, and by Butler, who had already satirized this style of tragedy by +writing a dialogue in which two cats are made to caterwaul to each other +in heroics, the duke had amused his leisure by preparing a farce in which +heroic plays were held up to ridicule. In the original draft of the farce +Davenant was made the butt under the name of Bilboa; but, after Davenant's +death, the farce was recast, and Dryden substituted under the name of +Bayes. The plot of this famous farce, _The Rehearsal_, is much the same as +that of Sheridan's _Critic_. The poet Bayes invites two friends, Smith +and Johnson, to be present at the rehearsal of a heroic play which he is +on the point of bringing out, and the humour consists in the supposed +representation of this heroic play, while Bayes alternately directs the +actors, and expounds the drift of the play and its beauties to Smith and +Johnson, who all the while are laughing at him, and thinking it monstrous +rubbish. Conceive a farce like this, written with amazing cleverness, and +full of absurdities, produced in the very theatre where the echoes of +Dryden's last sonorous heroics were still lingering, and acted by the same +actors; conceive it interspersed with parodies of well-known passages from +Dryden's plays, and with allusions to characters in those plays; conceive +the actor who played the part of Bayes dressed to look as like Dryden as +possible, instructed by the duke to mimic Dryden's voice, and using +phrases like "i'gad" and "i'fackins," which Dryden was in the habit of +using in familiar conversation; and an idea may be formed of the sensation +made by _The Rehearsal_ in all theatrical circles on its first performance +in the winter of 1671. Its effect, though not immediate, was decisive. +From that time the heroic or rhymed tragedy was felt to be doomed. Dryden, +indeed, did not at once recant his opinion in favour of rhymed tragedies; +but he yielded so far to the sentence pronounced against them as to write +only one more of the kind. + +Though thus driven out of his favourite style of the rhymed tragedy, he +was not driven from the stage. Bound by his agreement with the King's +Company to furnish three plays a-year, he continued to make dramatic +writing his chief occupation; and almost his sole productions during the +first ten years of his laureateship were ten plays. Three of these were +prose-comedies; one, a tragi-comedy, in blank verse and prose; one, an +opera in rhyme; five, tragedies in blank verse; and one, the rhymed +tragedy above referred to. It will be observed that this was at the rate +of only one play a-year, whereas, by his engagement, he was to furnish +three. The fact was that the company were very indulgent to him, and let +him have his full share of the receipts, averaging 300_l._ a-year, in +return for but a third of the stipulated work. Notwithstanding this, we +find them complaining, in 1679, that Dryden had behaved unhandsomely to +them in carrying one of his plays to the other theatre, and so injuring +their interests. As, from that year, none of Dryden's plays were produced +at the King's Theatre, but all at the Duke's, till 1682, when the two +companies were united, it is probable that in that year the bargain made +with Killigrew terminated. It deserves notice, by the way, that the +so-called "opera" was one entitled _The State of Innocence; or, The Fall +of Man_, founded on Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and brought out in 1674-5, +immediately after Milton's death. That this was an equivocal compliment +to Milton's memory Dryden himself lived to acknowledge. He confessed to +Dennis, twenty years afterwards, that at the time when he wrote that opera +"he knew not half the extent of Milton's excellence." A striking proof of +Dryden's veneration for Milton, when we consider how high his admiration +of Milton had been even while Milton was alive! + +Of these dramatic productions of Dryden during the first ten years of his +laureateship some were very carefully written. Thus _Marriage a-la-mode_, +performed in 1672, is esteemed one of his best comedies; and of the rhymed +tragedy, _Aurung-Zebe_, performed in 1675, he himself says in the +Prologue-- + + "What verse can do he has performed in this, + Which he presumes the most correct of his." + +The tragedy of _All for Love_, which followed _Aurung-Zebe_, in 1678, and +in which he falls back on blank verse, is pronounced by many critics to be +the very best of all his dramas; and perhaps none of his plays has been +more read than the _Spanish Friar_, written in 1680. Yet it may be doubted +if in any of these plays Dryden achieved a degree of immediate success +equal to that which had attended his _Tyrannic Love_ and his _Conquest of +Granada_, written before his laureateship. This was not owing so much to +the single blow struck at his fame by Buckingham's _Rehearsal_ as to the +growth of that general spirit of criticism and disaffection which pursues +every author after the public have become sufficiently acquainted with his +style to expect the good, and look rather for the bad, in what he writes. +Thus, we find one critic of the day, Martin Clifford, who was a man of +some note, addressing Dryden, a year or two after his laureateship, in +this polite fashion: "You do live in as much ignorance and darkness as you +did in the womb; your writings are like a Jack-of-all-trades' shop; they +have a variety, but nothing of value; and, if thou art not the dullest +plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all that I have conversed with +are strangely mistaken in thee." This onslaught of Mr. Clifford's is +clearly to be regarded as only that gentleman's; but what young Rochester +said and thought about Dryden at this time is more likely to have been +what was said and thought generally by the critical part of the town. + + "Well sir, 'tis granted: I said Dryden's rhymes + Were stolen, unequal--nay, dull, many times. + What foolish patron is there found of his + So blindly partial to deny me this? + But that his plays, embroidered up and down + With wit and learning, justly pleased the town, + In the same paper I as freely own. + Yet, having this allowed, the heavy mass + That stuffs up his loose volumes must not pass. + + * * * * * + + But, to be just, 'twill to his praise be found + His excellencies more than faults abound; + Nor dare I from his sacred temples tear + The laurel which he best deserves to wear. + + * * * * * + + And may I not have leave impartially + To search and censure Dryden's works, and try + If these gross faults his choice pen doth commit + Proceed from want of judgment or of wit, + Or if his lumpish fancy doth refuse + Spirit and grace to his loose slattern muse?" + +We have no doubt the opinion thus expressed by the scapegrace young earl +was very general. Dryden's own prose disquisitions on the principles of +poetry may have helped to diffuse many of those notions of genuine +poetical merit by which he was now tried. But, undoubtedly, what most of +all tended to expose Dryden's reputation to the perils of criticism was +the increasing number of his dramatic competitors and the evident ability +of some of them. True, most of those competitors were Dryden's personal +friends, and some of the younger of them, as Lee, Shadwell, Crowne, and +Tate, were in the habit of coming to him for prologues and epilogues, with +which to increase the attractions of their plays. On more than one +occasion, too, Dryden clubbed with Lee or Shadwell in the composition of a +dramatic piece. But, though thus on a friendly footing with most of his +contemporary dramatists, and almost in a fatherly relation to some of +them, Dryden found his popularity not the less affected by their +competition. In the department of prose comedy, Etherege, whose last and +best comedy, _Sir Fopling Flutter_, was produced in 1676, and Wycherley, +whose four celebrated comedies were all produced between 1672 and 1677, +had introduced a style compared with which Dryden's best comic attempts +were but heavy horse-play. Even the hulking Shadwell, who dashed off his +comedies as fast as he could write, had a vein of coarse natural humour +which Dryden lacked. It was in vain that Dryden tried to keep his +pre-eminence against these rivals by increased strength of language, +increased intricacy of plot, and an increased use of those indecencies +upon which they all relied so much in their efforts to please. One comedy +in which Dryden, trusting too confidently to this last element of success, +pushed grossness to the utmost conceivable limit, was hissed off the +stage. In tragedy, it is true, his position was more firm. But even in +this department some niches were cut in the body of his fame. His friend +Nat. Lee had produced one or two tragedies displaying a tenderness and a +wild force of passion to which Dryden's more masculine genius could not +pretend; Crowne had also done one or two things of a superior character; +and, though it was not till 1682 that Otway produced his _Venice +Preserved_, he had already given evidence of his mastery of dramatic +pathos. All this Dryden might have seen without allowing himself to be +much disturbed, conscious as he must have been that in general strength he +was still superior to all about him, however they might rival him in +particulars. The deliberate resolution, however, of Rochester and some +other aristocratic leaders of the fashion to make good their criticisms on +his writings, by setting up first one and then another of the dramatists +of the day as patterns of a higher style of art than his, provoked him out +of his composure. To show what he could do, if called upon to defend his +rights against pretenders, he made a terrible example of one poor wretch, +who had been puffed for the moment into undue popularity. This unfortunate +was Elkanah Settle, and the occasion of the attack was a heroic tragedy +written by Settle, acted with great success both on the stage and at +Whitehall, and published with illustrative woodcuts. On this performance +Dryden made a most merciless onslaught in a prose-criticism prefixed to +his next published play, tearing Settle's metaphors and grammar to pieces. +Settle replied with some spirit, but little effect, and was, in fact, +"settled" for ever. Rochester next patronized Crowne and Otway for a time, +but soon gave them up, and contented himself with assailing Dryden more +directly in such lampoons as we have quoted. In the year 1679, however, +suspecting Dryden to have had a share in the authorship of a poem, then +circulating in manuscript, in which certain liberties were taken with his +name, he caused him to be way-laid and beaten as he was going home one +evening through Rose-alley to his house in Gerard-street. The poem, +entitled _An Essay on Satire_, is usually printed among Dryden's works; +but it remains uncertain whether Dryden was really the author. + +It was fortunate for Dryden and for English literature that, just about +this time, when he was beginning to be regarded as a veteran among the +dramatists, whose farther services in that department the town could +afford to spare, circumstances led him, almost without any wish of his +own, into a new path of literature. He was now arrived at the ripe age of +fifty years, and, if an inventory had been made of his writings, they +would have been found to consist of twenty-one dramas, with a series of +critical prose-essays for the most part bound up with these dramas, but +nothing in the nature of non-dramatic poetry, except a few occasional +pieces, of which the _Annus Mirabilis_ was still the chief. Had a +discerning critic examined those works with a view to discover in what +peculiar vein of verse Dryden, if he abandoned the drama, might still do +justice to his powers, he would certainly have selected the vein of +reflective satire. Of the most nervous and emphatic lines that could have +been quoted from his plays a large proportion would have been found to +consist of what may be called _maxim_ metrically expressed; while in his +dramatic prologues and epilogues, which were always thought among the +happiest efforts of his pen, the excellence would have been found to +consist in very much the same power of direct didactic declamation applied +satirically to the humours, manners, and opinions of the day. Whether any +critic, observing all this, would have been bold enough to advise Dryden +to take the hint, and quit the drama for satirical, controversial, and +didactic poetry, we need not inquire. Circumstances compelled what advice +might have failed to bring about. After some twenty years of political +stagnation, or rather of political confusion, relieved only by the +occasional cabals of leading statesmen, and by rumours of Catholic and +Protestant plots, the old Puritan feeling and the general spirit of civil +liberty which the Restoration had but pent up within the vitals of England +broke forth in a regular and organized form as modern English Whiggism. +The controversy had many ramifications; but its immediate phase at that +moment was an antagonism of two parties on the question of the succession +to the crown after Charles should die--the Tories and Catholics +maintaining the rights of the Duke of York as the legal heir, and the +Whigs and Protestants rallying, for want of a better man, round Charles's +illegitimate son, the handsome and popular Duke of Monmouth, then a puppet +in the hands of Shaftesbury, the recognised leader of the Opposition. +Charles himself was forced by reasons of state to take part with his +brother, and to frown on Monmouth; but this did not prevent the lords and +wits of the time from distributing themselves pretty equally between the +two parties, and fighting out the dispute with all the weapons of intrigue +and ridicule. Shadwell, Settle, and some other minor poets, lent their +pens to the Whigs, and wrote squibs and satires in the Whig service. Lee, +Otway, Tate, and others, worked for the Court party. Dryden, as laureate +and Tory, had but one course to take. He plunged into the controversy with +the whole force of his genius; and in November, 1681, when the nation was +waiting for the trial of Shaftesbury, then a prisoner in the Tower, he +published his satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, in which, under the thin +veil of a story of Absalom's rebellion against his father David, the +existing political state of England was represented from the Tory point of +view. Among the characters portrayed in it Dryden had the satisfaction of +introducing his old critic, the Duke of Buckingham, upon whom he now took +ample revenge. + +The satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, than which nothing finer of the +kind had ever appeared in England, and which indeed surpassed all that +could have been expected even from Dryden at that time, was the first of a +series of polemical or satirical poems the composition of which occupied +the last eight years of his laureateship. _The Medal, a Satire against +Sedition_, appeared in March, 1682, as the poet's comment on the popular +enthusiasm occasioned by the acquittal of Shaftesbury; _Mac Flecknoe_, in +which Shadwell, as poet-in-chief of the Whigs, received a thrashing all to +himself, was published in October in the same year; and, a month later, +there appeared the so-called _Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel_, +written by Nahum Tate, under Dryden's superintendence, and with +interpolations from Dryden's pen. In the same avowed character, as +literary champion of the government and the party of the Duke of York, +Dryden continued to labour during the remainder of the reign of Charles. +His _Religio Laici_, indeed, produced early in 1683, and forming a +metrical statement of the grounds and extent of his own attachment to the +Church of England, can hardly have been destined for immediate political +service. But the solitary play which he wrote about this period--a tragedy +called _The Duke of Guise_--was certainly intended for political effect, +as was also a translation from the French of a work on the history of +French Calvinism. + +How ill-requited Dryden was for these services appears but too clearly +from evidence proving that, at this time, he was in great pecuniary +difficulties. At the time when the king's cast-off mistresses were +receiving pensions of 10,000_l._ a-year, and when 130,000_l._ or more was +squandered every year on secret court-purposes, Dryden's salary as +laureate remained unpaid for four years; and when, in consequence of his +repeated solicitations, an order for part-payment of the arrears was at +last issued in May 1684, it was for the miserable pittance of one +quarter's salary, due at midsummer 1680, leaving fifteen quarters, or +750_l._ still in arrears. It appears, however, from a document published +for the first time by Mr. Bell, that an additional pension of 100_l._ +a-year was at this time conferred on Dryden--that pension to date +retrospectively from 1680, and the arrears to be paid, as convenient, +along with the larger arrears of salary. How far Dryden benefited by this +nominal increase of his emoluments from government, or whether any further +portion of the arrears was paid up while Charles continued on the throne, +can hardly be ascertained. Charles died in February, 1684-5, and Dryden, +as in duty bound, wrote his funeral panegyric. In this Pindaric, which is +entitled _Threnodia Augustalis_, the poet seems to hint, as delicately as +the occasion would permit, at the limited extent of his pecuniary +obligations to the deceased monarch. + + "As, when the new-born phoenix takes his way + His rich paternal regions to survey, + Of airy choristers a numerous train + Attends his wondrous progress o'er the plain, + So, rising from his father's urn, + So glorious did our Charles return. + The officious muses came along-- + A gay harmonious choir, like angels ever young; + The muse that mourns him now his happy triumph sung. + Even they could thrive in his auspicious reign; + And such a plenteous crop they bore + Of purest and well-winnowed grain + As Britain never knew before: + Though little was their hire, and light their gain, + Yet somewhat to their share he threw. + Fed from his hand, they sung and flew, + Like birds of Paradise, that lived on morning dew. + Oh, never let their lays his name forget: + The pension of a prince's praise is great." + +If there was any literary man in whose favour James II., on his accession, +might have been expected to relax his parsimonious habits, it was Dryden. +The poet had praised him and made a hero of him for twenty years, and had +during the last four years been working for him incessantly. In +acknowledgment of these services, James could not do otherwise than +continue him in the laureateship; but this was all that he seemed inclined +to do. In the new patent issued for the purpose, not only was there no +renewal of the deceased king's private grant of 100_l._ a-year, but even +the annual butt of sherry, hitherto forming part of the laureate's +allowance, was discontinued, and the salary limited to the precise money +payment of 200_l._ a-year. If, as is probable, the salary was now more +punctually paid than it had been under Charles, the reduction may have +been of less consequence. In March 1685-6, however, James opened his +purse, and, by fresh letters patent, conferred on Dryden a permanent +additional salary of 100_l._ a-year, thus raising the annual income of the +laureateship to 300_l._ The explanation of this unusual piece of +liberality on the part of James has been generally supposed to lie in the +fact that, in the course of the preceding year, Dryden had proved the +thorough and unstinted character of his loyalty by declaring himself a +convert to the king's religion. That Dryden's passing over to the Catholic +church was contemporaneous with the increase of his pension is a fact; but +what may have been the exact relation between the two events is a question +which one ought to be cautious in answering. Lord Macaulay's view of the +case is harsh enough. "Finding," he says, "that, if he continued to call +himself a Protestant, his services would be overlooked, he declared +himself a Papist. The king's parsimony instantly relaxed Dryden was +gratified with a pension of one hundred pounds a-year, and was employed to +defend his new religion both in prose and verse." Sir Walter Scott's view +is more charitable, and, we believe, more just. He regards Dryden's +conversion as having been, in the main, honest to the extent professed by +himself, though his situation and expectations may have co-operated to +effect it. In support of this view Mr. Bell points out the fact that the +pension granted by James was, after all, only a renewal of a pension +granted by Charles, and which, not being secured by letters patent, had +lapsed on that king's decease. Dryden, it is also to be remarked, remained +sufficiently staunch to his new faith during the rest of his life, and +seems even to have felt a kind of comfort in it. Probably, therefore, the +true state of the case is that conformity to the Catholic religion, at the +time when Dryden embraced it, was the least troublesome mode of +systematizing for his own mind a number of diverse speculations, personal +and political, that were then perplexing him, and that, afterwards, in +consequence of the very obloquy which his change of religion drew upon him +from all quarters, he hugged his new creed more closely, so as to coil +round him, for the first time in his life, a few threads of private +theological conviction. This is not very different from the notion +entertained by Sir Walter Scott, who argues that Dryden's conversion was +not, except in outward profession, a change from Protestant to Catholic +belief, but rather, like that of Gibbon, a choice of Catholicism as the +most convenient resting-place for a mind tired of Pyrrhonism, and disposed +to cut short the process of emancipation from it by taking a decisive step +at once. + +At all events, Dryden showed sufficient polemical energy in the service of +the religion which he had adopted. He became James's literary factotum, +the defender in prose and in verse of the worst measures of his rule; and +he was ready to do battle with Stillingfleet, Burnet, or anyone else that +dared to use a pen on the other side. As if to make the highest display of +his powers as a versifier at a time when his character as a man was +lowest, he published in 1687 his controversial allegory of _The Hind and +the Panther_, by far the largest and most elaborate of his original poems. +In this poem, in which the various churches and sects of the day figure as +beasts--the Church of Rome as a "milk-white hind," innocent and unchanged; +the Church of England as a "panther," spotted, but still beautiful; +Presbyterianism as a haggard ugly "wolf;" Independency as the "bloody +bear;" the Baptists as the "bristled boar;" the Unitarians as the "false +fox;" the Freethinkers as the "buffoon ape;" and the Quakers as the timid +"hare"--Dryden showed that, whatever his new faith had done for him, it +had not changed his genius for satire. In fact, precisely as during +James's reign Dryden appears personally as a solitary giant, warring on +the wrong side, so this poem remains as the sole literary work of any +excellence in which the wretched spirit of that reign is fully +represented. Dryden himself, as if he had thrown all his force into it, +wrote little else in verse till the year 1688, when, on the occasion of +the birth of James's son, afterwards the Pretender, he made himself the +spokesman of the exulting Catholics, and published his _Britannia +Rediviva_. + + "See how the venerable infant lies + In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes + The father's soul, with an undaunted view, + Looks out, and takes our homage as his due. + See on his future subjects how he smiles, + Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles; + But with an open face, as on his throne, + Assures our birthrights, and secures his own." + +Within a few months after these lines were written, the father, the +mother, and the baby, were out of England, Dutch William was king, and the +Whigs had it all to themselves. Dryden, of course, had to give up the +laureateship; and, as William had but a small choice of poets, Shadwell +was put in his place. + +The concluding period of Dryden's career, extending from the Revolution to +his death in 1701, exhibits him as a Tory patriarch lingering in the midst +of a Whig generation, and still, despite the change of dynasty, retaining +his literary pre-eminence. For a while, of course, he was under a cloud; +but after it had passed away he was at liberty to make his own terms with +the public. The country could have no literature except what he and such +as he chose to furnish. Locke, Sir William Temple, and others, indeed, +were now in a position to bring forward speculations smothered during the +previous reigns, and to scatter seeds that might spring up in new +literary forms. Burnet, Tillotson, and others might represent Whiggism in +the Church. But all the especially literary men whose services were +available at the beginning of the new reign were men who, whatever might +be their voluntary relations to the new order of things, had been more or +less trained in the school of the Restoration, and accustomed to the +supremacy of Dryden. The Earl of Rochester, the Earl of Roscommon, the +Duke of Buckingham, Etherege, and poor Otway, were dead; but Shadwell, +Settle, Lee, Crowne, Tate, Wycherley, the Earl of Dorset, Tom D'Urfey, and +Sir Charles Sedley, were still alive. Shadwell, coarse and fat as ever, +enjoyed the laureateship till his death in 1692, when Nahum Tate was +appointed to succeed him. Settle had degenerated in the City showman. Lee, +liberated from Bedlam, continued to write tragedies till April 1692, when +he tumbled over a bulk going home drunk at night through Clare Market, and +was killed or stifled among the snow. "Little starched Johnny Crowne" kept +up the respectability of his character. Wycherley lived as a man of +fashion about town, and wrote no more. Sedley and the Earl of Dorset were +also idle; and Tom D'Urfey made small witticisms, and called them "pills +to purge melancholy." Among such men Dryden, so long as he cared to be +seen among them, held necessarily his old place. Nor were there any of +the younger men, as yet known, in whom the critics recognised, or who +recognised in themselves, any title to renounce allegiance to the +ex-laureate. Thomas Southerne had begun his prolific career as a dramatist +in 1682, when Dryden furnished him with a prologue to his first play; but, +though after the Revolution he made more money by his dramas than ever +Dryden had made by his, he was ashamed to admit the fact to Dryden +himself. Matthew Prior, twenty-four years of age at the Revolution, had +made his first literary appearance before it, in no less important a +character than that of one of Dryden's political antagonists; but, though +_The Town and Country Mouse_ had been a decided hit, and Dryden himself +was said to have winced under it, no one pretended that the author was +anything more than a clever young man who had sat in Dryden's company and +turned his opportunities to account. Five years after the Revolution, +Congreve produced his first comedy at the age of twenty-four; but it was +Congreve's greatest boast in after life that that comedy had won him the +warm praises of Dryden, and laid the foundation of the extraordinary +friendship which subsisted between them during Dryden's last years, when +they used to walk together and dine together as father and son. During +these last years Dryden, had he been willing to see merit in any other +comedies than those of his young friend Congreve, might have hailed his +equal in Vanbrugh, and his superior in Farquhar, then beginning to write +for the stage. Among their coevals, destined to some distinction, he might +have marked Colley Cibber, Nicholas Rowe, and John Philips, the pleasing +parodist of Milton. Of the epics of Blackmore he had quite enough, at +least three of those performances having been given to the world before +Dryden died. At the time of Dryden's death his kinsman, Jonathan Swift, +was thirty-three years of age; Richard Steele was thirty; Daniel Defoe was +thirty; Addison was twenty-nine; Shaftesbury, the essayist, was +twenty-nine; Bolingbroke was twenty-two; and Parnell, the poet, +twenty-one. With these men a new literary movement was to take its origin; +but they had hardly yet begun their work; and there was not one of them, +Swift excepted, that would not, in the height of his subsequent fame, have +been proud to acknowledge his obligations to Dryden. Alexander Pope, the +next Englishman that was to take a place in general literature as high as +that occupied by Dryden, had been born only in the year of the Revolution, +and was consequently but a precocious boy of thirteen when Dryden left the +scene. _Virgilium tantum vidit_, as he used himself to say. + +Living, a hale patriarch, among these newer men, Dryden partly influenced +them, and was partly influenced by them. On the one hand, it was from his +chair in Will's Coffee-house that those literary decrees were issued +which still ruled the judgment of the town; and for a young author, on +visiting Will's, to receive a pinch from Dryden's snuff-box was equivalent +to his formal admission into that society of wits. On the other hand, the +times were so changed and the men were so changed that Dryden, dictator +though he was, had to yield in some points, and defend himself in others. +His cousin Swift, whom he had offended by an unfavourable judgment given +in private on some of his poems, was the only man who would have made a +general attack upon his literary reputation; but the moral character of +his writings was a subject on which adverse criticism was likely to be +more general. At first, indeed, there was little perceptible improvement +in the moral tone of the literature of the Revolution, as compared with +that of the Restoration--the elder dramatists, such as Shadwell, still +writing in the fashion to which they had been accustomed, and the younger +ones, such as Congreve and Vanbrugh, deeming it a point of honour to be as +immoral as their predecessors. In the course of a few years, however, what +with the influence of a Whig court, what with other causes, a more +delicate taste crept in, and people became ashamed of what their fathers +had delighted in. Dryden lived to see the beginnings of this important +change, and, with many expressions of regret for his own past +delinquencies in this respect, to welcome the appearance of a purer +literature. + +Those of Dryden's writings which were produced during the twelve years of +his life subsequent to the Revolution constitute an important part of his +literary remains, not merely in point of bulk, but also in respect of a +certain general peculiarity of their character. They may be described as +for the most part belonging to the department of pure, as distinct from +that of controversial, literature. Dryden did not indeed wholly abandon +satire and controversy after the Revolution; but his aim after that period +seemed rather to be to produce such literature as would at once be +acceptable to the public and earn for himself most money with the least +trouble. Deprived of his laureateship, and so rendered almost entirely +dependent on his pen at a time when age was creeping upon him and the +expenses of his family were greater than ever, he was obliged to make +considerations of economy paramount in his choice of work. As was natural, +he fell back at first on the drama; and his five last plays, two of which +are tragedies, one an opera, and two comedies, were all produced between +1689 and 1694. The profits of these dramas, however, were insufficient; +and he was obliged to eke them out by all those devices of dedication to +private noblemen, execution of literary commissions for elegiac poems, and +the like, which then formed part of the professional author's means of +livelihood. Sums of 50_l._, 100_l._, and even, in one or two cases, +500_l._, were earned by Dryden in this disagreeable way from earls, +squires, and clubs of gentlemen. His poem of _Eleonora_ was a 500_l._ +commission, executed for the Earl of Abingdon, who wanted a poem in memory +of his deceased wife, and, without knowing anything of Dryden personally, +applied to him to write it, just as now, in a similar case, a commission +might be given to a popular sculptor for a _post mortem_ statue. In spite +of the utmost allowance for the custom of the time, no one knowing the +circumstances, can read the poem now, without disgust; and it does show a +certain lowness of mind in Dryden to have been able, under any pressure of +necessity, to write for hire such extravagances as that poem contains +respecting a person he had never seen. Far more honourable were Dryden's +earnings by work done for Jacob Tonson, the publisher. His dealings with +Tonson had begun before the Revolution; but after the Revolution Tonson +was his mainstay. First came several volumes of miscellanies, consisting +of select poems, published and unpublished, with scraps of prose and +translation. Then, catching at the hint furnished by the success of some +of the scraps of translation from the Latin and Greek poets, Dryden and +Tonson found it mutually advantageous to prosecute that vein. Juvenal and +Persius were translated under Dryden's care; and in 1697, after three +years of labour, he gave to the world his completed translation of +_Virgil_. Looking about for a task to succeed this, he undertook to +furnish Tonson with so many thousands of lines of narrative verse, to be +published under the title of _Fables_. Where the fables came from Tonson +did not care, provided they would sell; and Dryden, with his rapid powers +of versification, soon produced versions of some tales of Chaucer and +Boccaccio which answered the purpose exceedingly well. They were printed +in 1699. Of the other poems written by Dryden in his last years his +_Alexander's Feast_ is the most celebrated. He continued his literary +labours till within a few days of his death, which happened on the 1st of +May, 1701. + +When we inquire what it is that makes Dryden's name so important as to +entitle it to rank, as it seems to do, the fifth in the series of great +English poets after Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, we find +that it is nothing else than the fact, brought out in the preceding +sketch, that, steadily and industriously, for a period of forty-two years, +he kept in the front of the national literature, such as it then was. It +is because he represents the entire literary development of the +Restoration--it is because he fills up the whole interval between 1658 and +1701, thus connecting the age of Puritanism and Milton with the age of the +Queen Anne wits--that we give him such a place in such a list. The reason +is a chronological one, rather than one of strict comparison of personal +merits. Though we place Dryden fifth in the list, after Chaucer, Spenser, +Shakespeare, and Milton, it is not necessarily because we regard him as +the co-equal of those men in genius; it is only because, passing onward in +time, we find his the next name of very distinguished magnitude after +theirs. Personally there is no one that would compare Dryden with +Shakespeare or Milton; and there are not many now that would compare him +with Chaucer or Spenser. On the whole, if the estimate is one of general +intellectual strength, he takes rank only with the first of the second +class, as with the Jonsons, the Fletchers, and others of the Elizabethan +age; while, if the estimate have regard to genuine poetic or imaginative +power, he sinks below even these. Yet, if historical reasons only are +regarded, Dryden has perhaps a better right to his place in the list than +any of the others. At least as strictly as Chaucer is the representative +of the English literature of the latter half of the fourteenth century, +far more strictly than Spenser and Shakespeare are the representatives of +the literature of their times, and in a more broad and obvious manner than +Milton is the literary representative of the Commonwealth, Dryden +represents the literary activity of the reigns of Charles II. and James +II., and of the greater part of that of William III. Davenant, Butler, +Waller, Etherege, Otway, Wycherley, Southerne, Prior, and Congreve, are +names leading us over the same period, and illustrating perhaps more +exquisitely than Dryden some of its individual characteristics; but for a +solid representative of the period as a whole, resuming in himself all +its more prominent characteristics in one substantial aggregate, we are +obliged to take Dryden. Twelve years of his literary life he laboured as a +strong junior among the Davenants, the Butlers, and the Wallers, +qualifying himself to set them aside; eighteen years more were spent in +acknowledged lordship over the Ethereges, Otways, and Wycherleys, who +occupied the middle of the period; and during the twelve concluding years +he was a patriarch among the Southernes, and Priors, and Congreves, in +whose lives the period wove itself into the next. + +And yet, personally as well as historically, Dryden is a man of no mean +importance. Not only is he the largest figure in one era of our +literature; he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a +whole. To begin with the most obvious, but at the same time not the least +noteworthy, of his claims, the _quantity_ of his contributions to our +literature was large. He was a various and voluminous writer. In Scott's +collected edition of his works they fill seventeen octavo volumes. About +seven of these volumes consist of dramas, with accompanying prefaces and +dedications, the number of dramas being in all twenty-eight. Two volumes +more embrace the polemical poems, the satires, and the poems of +contemporary historical allusion, written chiefly between 1681 and 1683. +One volume is filled with odes, songs, and lyrical pieces, written at +various times. The Fables, or Metrical Tales, redacted in his old age from +Chaucer and Boccaccio, occupy a volume and a half. Three volumes and a +half are devoted to the translations from the classic poets, including the +Translation of Virgil. The remaining two volumes consist of miscellaneous +prologues, epilogues, and witty pieces of verse, and of miscellaneous +prose-writings, original and translated, including the critical Essay on +Dramatic Poetry. Considered as a whole, the matter of the seventeen +volumes is a goodly contribution from one man as respects both extent and +variety. Spread over forty-two years, it does not argue that excessive +industry which Scott, of all men in the world, has found in it; but it +fairly entitles Dryden to take his place among those writers who deserve +regard for the quantity of their writings, in addition to whatever regard +they may be entitled to on the score, of quality. And it is a fact worth +noting, and remarked by Scott more than once, that most writers who have +taken a high place in literature have been voluminous--have not only +written well, but also written much. Moreover there are two ways of +writing much. One may write much and variously, or one may write much all +of one kind. Dryden was various as well as voluminous. + +Of all that Dryden wrote, however, there is but a comparatively small +portion that has won for itself a permanent place in our literature; and +in this he differs from other writers that have been equally voluminous. +It is indeed a significant fact about Dryden that the proportion of that +part of his matter which survives, or deserves to survive, to that part +which was squandered away on the age it was first written for, and there +ended, is unusually small. In Shakespeare there is very little that is +felt to be of such inferior quality as not to be worth reading in due time +and place. In Milton there is, if we consider only his poetry, still less. +All Chaucer, almost, is felt to be worth preservation by those who like +Chaucer; all Wordsworth, almost, by those who like Wordsworth. But, except +for library purposes, there is no admirer of Dryden that would care to +save more than a small select portion of what he wrote. His satires and +polemical poems; one or two of his odes; his Translation of Virgil; his +fables; one of his comedies, and one of his tragedies, by way of specimen +of his dramatic powers; a complete set of his prologues, for the sake of +their allusions to contemporary manners and humours; and a few pieces of +his prose, to show his style of criticism:--these would together form a +collection not much more than a fourth part of the whole, and which would +require to be yet farther winnowed, were the purpose to leave only what is +sterling and in Dryden's best manner. Mr. Bell's edition, which comprise +in three volumes all Dryden's original non-dramatic poetry, and the best +collection of his prologues and epilogues yet made, is itself a surfeit of +matter. It is such an edition of Dryden as ought to be included in a +series of the English poets intended to be complete; but even in it there +is more of dross than of ore. + +What is the reason of this? How is it that in Dryden the proportion of +what is now rubbish to what is still precious as a literary possession is +so much greater than in most other writers of great celebrity? There are +two reasons for it. The first is, that originally, and in its own nature, +much of the matter that Dryden put forth was not of a kind for which his +genius was fitted. Whatever his own imagination constructed on the large +scale was mean and conventional. Wherever, as in his translations of +Virgil and his imitations of Chaucer and Boccaccio, he employed his powers +of language and verse in refurbishing matter invented by others, the +poetical substance of his writings is valuable; but the sheer produce of +his own imagination, as in his dramas, is in general such stuff as nature +disowns and no creature can take pleasure in. There is no fine power of +dramatic story, no exquisite invention of character or circumstance, no +truth to nature in ideal landscape: at the utmost, there is conventional +dramatic situation, with an occasional flash of splendid imagery such as +may be struck out in the heat of heroic declamation. Thus-- + + "I am as free as Nature first made man, + Ere the base laws of servitude began, + When wild in woods the noble savage ran." + +Dryden's natural powers, as all his critics have remarked, lay not so much +in the imaginative as in the didactic, the declamatory, and the +ratiocinative. What Johnson claims for him, and what seems to have been +claimed for him in his own lifetime, was the credit of being one of the +best reasoners in verse that ever wrote. Lord Macaulay means very much the +same thing when he calls Dryden a great "critical poet," and the founder +of the "critical school of English poetry." Probably Milton meant +something of the kind when he said that Dryden was a rhymer, but no poet. +It was in declamatory and didactic rhyme, with all that could consist with +it, that Dryden excelled. It was in the metrical utterance of weighty +sentences, in the metrical conduct of an argument, in vehement satirical +invective, and in such passages of lyric passion as depended for their +effect on rolling grandeur of sound, that he was pre-eminently great. Even +his imagination worked more powerfully, and his perceptions of physical +circumstance became keener and truer, under the influence of polemical +rage, the pursuit of terse maxim, or the passion for sonorous declamation. +Thus-- + + "And every shekel which he can receive + Shall cost a limb of his prerogative." + +Or, in his character of Shaftesbury,-- + + "Of these the false Achitophel was first: + A name to all succeeding ages curst; + For close designs and crooked counsels fit; + Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; + Restless, unfixed in principles and place; + In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; + A fiery soul, which, working out its way, + Fretted the pigmy body to decay, + And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. + A daring pilot in extremity, + Pleased with the danger when the waves went high, + He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, + Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. + Great wits are sure to madness near allied, + And thin partitions do their bounds divide." + +Or, in the lines which he sent to Tonson the publisher as a specimen of +what he could do in the way of portrait-painting if Tonson did not send +him supplies-- + + "With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, + With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair, + And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air." + +And, again, in almost every passage in the noble ode on Alexander's Feast, +_e.g._-- + + "With ravished ears + The monarch hears; + Assumes the god, + Affects to nod, + And seems to shake the spheres." + +In satire, in critical disquisition, in aphoristic verse, or in lyrical +grandiloquence, Dryden was in his natural element; and one reason why, of +all the matter of his voluminous works, so small a portion is of permanent +literary value, is that, in his attempts after literary variety, he could +not or would not restrict himself within these proper limits of his +genius. + +But, besides this, Dryden was a slovenly worker within his own field. Even +of what he could do best he did little continuously in a thoroughly +careful manner. In his best poem there are not twenty consecutive lines +without some logical incoherence, some confusion of metaphor, some +inaccuracy of language, or some evident strain of the meaning for the sake +of the metre. His strength lies in passages and weighty interspersed +lines, not in whole poems. Even in Dryden's lifetime this complaint was +made. It was hinted at in _The Rehearsal_; Rochester speaks of Dryden's +"slattern muse;" and Blackmore, who criticised Dryden in his old age, +expresses the common opinion distinctly and deliberately-- + + "Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes, + What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! + How will he shrink, when all his lewd allay + And wicked mixture shall be purged away! + When once his boasted heaps are melted down, + A chest-full scarce will yield one sterling crown; + But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear + The examination of the moot severe." + +This is true, though it was Blackmore who said it. Dryden's slovenliness, +however, consisted not so much in a disposition to spare pains as in a +constitutional robustness which rendered artistic perfection all but +impossible to him even when he laboured hardest to attain it. One's notion +of Dryden is that he was originally a _robust_ man, who, when he first +engaged in poetry, could produce nothing better than strong stanzas of +rather wooden sound and mechanism, but who, by perseverance and continual +work, drilled his genius into higher susceptibility and a conscious +aptitude and mastery in certain directions, so that, the older he grew, he +became mellower, more musical, and more imaginative, what had been +robustness at first having by long practice been subdued into flexibility +and nerve. It is stated of Dryden that, in his earlier life at least, he +used, as a preparation for writing, to induce on himself an artificial +state of languor by taking medicine or letting blood. The trait is +characteristic. Dryden's whole literary career was a metaphor of it. Had +he died before 1670, or even before 1681, when his _Annus Mirabilis_ was +still his most ambitious production, he would have been remembered as +little more than a robust versifier; but, living as he did till 1701, he +performed work which has entitled him to rank among English poets. As a +contributor to the actual body of our literature, and as a man who +produced by his influence a lasting effect on its literary methods, +Dryden's place is certainly high. + + + + +DEAN SWIFT. + + + + +DEAN SWIFT.[7] + + +In dividing the history of English literature into periods it is customary +to take the interval between the year 1688 and the year 1727 as +constituting one of those periods. This interval includes the reigns of +William III., Anne, and George I. If we do not bind ourselves too +precisely to the year 1727 as closing the period, the division is proper +enough. There _are_ characteristics about the time thus marked out which +distinguish it from previous and from subsequent portions of our literary +history. Dryden, Locke, and some other notabilities of the Restoration, +lived into this period, and may be regarded as partly belonging to it; but +the names more peculiarly representing it are those of Swift, Burnet, +Addison, Steele, Pope, Shaftesbury, Gay, Arbuthnot, Atterbury, Prior, +Parnell, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Rowe, Defoe, and +Cibber. The names in this cluster disperse themselves over the three +reigns which the period includes, some of them having already been known +as early as the accession of William, while others survived the first +George and continued to add to their celebrity during the reign of his +successor; but the most brilliant portion of the period was from 1702 to +1714, when Queen Anne was on the throne. Hence the name of "Wits of Queen +Anne's reign," commonly applied to the writers of the whole period. + +A while ago this used to be spoken of as the Golden or Augustan age of +English literature. We do not talk in that manner now. We feel that when +we get among the authors of the times of Queen Anne and the first George +we are among very pleasant and very clever men, but by no means among +giants. In coming down to this period from those going before it, we have +an immediate sensation of having left the region of "greatness" behind us. +We still find plenty of good writing, characterized by certain qualities +of trimness, artificial grace, and the like, to a degree not before +attained; here and there also, we discern something like real power and +strength, breaking through the prevailing element; but, on the whole, +there is an absence of what, except by a compromise of language, could be +called "great." It is the same whether we regard largeness of imaginative +faculty, loftiness of moral spirit, or vigour of speculative capacity, as +principally concerned in imparting the character of "greatness" to +literature. What of genius in the ideal survived the seventeenth century +in England contented itself with nice little imaginations of scenes and +circumstances connected with the artificial life of the time; the moral +quality most in repute was kindliness or courtesy; and speculation did not +go beyond that point where thought retains the form either of ordinary +good sense, or of keen momentary wit. No sooner, in fact, do we pass the +time of Milton than we feel that we have done with the sublimities. A kind +of lumbering largeness does remain in the intellectual gait of Dryden and +his contemporaries, as if the age still wore the armour of the old +literary forms, though not at home in it; but in Pope's days even the +affectation of the "great" had ceased. Not slowly to build up a grand poem +of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth +tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to +prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly +and courageously to throw one's whole soul into a work of moral agitation +and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. On the +contrary, he was a wit, or a literary man, who, living in the midst of the +social bustle, or on the skirts of it, could throw forth in the easiest +manner little essays, squibs, and _jeux d'esprit_, pertinent to the rapid +occasions of the hour, and never tasking the mind too long or too much. +This was the time when that great distinction between Whiggism and +Toryism which for a century-and-a-half has existed in Great Britain as a +kind of permanent social condition, affecting the intellectual activity of +all natives from the moment of their birth, first began to be practically +operative. It has, on the whole, been a wretched thing for the mind of +England to have had this necessity of being either a Whig or a Tory put so +prominently before it. Perhaps, in all times, some similar necessity of +taking one side or the other in some current form of controversy has +afflicted the leading minds, and tormented the more genial among them; but +we question if ever in this country in previous times there was a form of +controversy, so little to be identified, in real reason, with the one only +true controversy between good and evil, and so capable, therefore, of +breeding confusion and mischief, when so identified in practice, as this +poor controversy of Whig and Tory which came in with the Revolution. To be +called upon to be either a Puritan or a Cavalier--there was some +possibility of complying with _that_ call and still leading a tolerably +free and large intellectual life; though possibly it was one, cause of the +rich mental development of the Elizabethan era that the men of that time +were exempt from any personal obligation of attending even to this +distinction. But to be called upon to be either a Whig or a Tory--why, how +on earth can one retain any of the larger humanities about him if society +is to hold him by the neck between two chairs such as these, pointing +alternately to the one and to the other, and incessantly asking him on +which of the two he means to sit? Into a mind trained to regard +adhesiveness to one or other of these chairs as the first rule of duty or +of prudence what thoughts of any high interest can find their way? Or, if +any such do find their way, how are they to be adjusted to so mean a rule? +Now-a-days, our higher spirits solve the difficulty by kicking both chairs +down, and plainly telling society that they will not bind themselves to +sit on either, or even on both put together. Hence partly it is that, in +recent times, we have had renewed specimens of the "great" or "sublime" in +literature--the poetry, for example, of a Byron, a Wordsworth, or a +Tennyson. But in the interval between 1688 and 1727 there was not one wit +alive whom society let off from the necessity of being, and declaring +himself to be, either a Whig or a Tory. Constitutionally, and by +circumstances, Pope was the man who could have most easily obtained the +exemption; but even Pope professed himself a Tory. Addison and Steele were +Whigs. In short, every literary man was bound, by the strongest of all +motives, to keep in view, as a permanent fact qualifying his literary +undertakings, the distinction between Whiggism and Toryism, and to give to +at least a considerable part of his writings the character of pamphlets or +essays in the service of his party. To minister by the pen to the +occasions of Whiggism and Toryism was, therefore, the main business of the +wits both in prose and verse. Out of those occasions of ministration there +of course arose personal quarrels, and these furnished fresh opportunities +to the men of letters. Critics of previous writings could be satirized and +lampooned, and thus the circle of subjects was widened. Moreover, there +was abundant matter, capable of being treated consistently with either +Whiggism or Toryism, in the social foibles and peculiarities of the day, +as we see in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Nor could a genial mind +like that of Steele, a man of taste and fine thought like Addison, and an +intellect so keen, exquisite, and sensitive as that of Pope, fail to +variegate and surround all the duller and harder literature thus called +into being with more lasting touches of the humorous, the fanciful, the +sweet, the impassioned, the meditative, and the ideal. Thus from one was +obtained the character of a _Sir Roger de Coverley_, from another a +_Vision of Mirza_, and from the third a _Windsor Forest_, an _Epistle of +Heloise_, and much else that delights us still. After all, however, it +remains true that the period of English literature now in question, +whatever admirable characteristics it may possess, exhibits a remarkable +deficiency of what, with recollections of former periods to guide us in +our use of epithets, we should call great or sublime. + +With the single exception of Pope, and that exception made from deference +to the peculiar position of Pope as the poet or metrical artist of his +day, the greatest name in the history of English literature during the +early part of last century is that of Swift. In certain fine and deep +qualities, Addison and Steele, and perhaps Farquhar, excelled him, just as +in the succeeding generation Goldsmith had a finer vein of genius than was +to be found in Johnson with all his massiveness; but in natural brawn and +strength, in original energy, force, and imperiousness of brain, he +excelled them all. It was about the year 1702, when he was already +thirty-five years of age, that this strangest specimen of an Irishman, or +of an Englishman born in Ireland, first attracted attention in London +literary circles. The scene of his first appearance was Button's +coffee-house: the witnesses were Addison, Ambrose Philips, and other wits +belonging to Addison's little senate, who used to assemble there. + + "They had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman + come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any + of those who frequented it, and whose custom it was to lay his hat + down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for + half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming + in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He + then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away + without opening his lips. After having observed this singular + behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; + and the name that he went by among them was that of 'the mad parson.' + This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one + evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him + cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be + just come out of the country, and at last advance towards him as + intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb + mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get + near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very + abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, 'Pray, sir, do + you remember any good weather in the world?' The country gentleman, + after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the + oddity of the question, answered 'Yes, sir, I thank God I remember a + great deal of good weather in my time.' 'That is more,' said Swift, + 'than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot or + too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, + at the end of the year 'tis all very well.' Upon saying this, he took + up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least + notice of anyone, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those + who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and + still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad."--_Dr. + Sheridan's Life of Swift, quoted in Scott's Life._ + +If the company present had had sufficient means of information, they would +have found that the mad parson with the harsh, swarthy features, and eyes +"azure as the heavens," whose oddities thus amused them, was Jonathan +Swift, then clergyman of Laracor, a rural parish in the diocese of Meath +in Ireland. They would have found that he was an Irishman by birth, though +of pure English descent; that he could trace a relationship to Dryden; +that, having been born after his father's death, he had been educated, at +the expense of his relatives, at Trinity College, Dublin; that, leaving +Ireland in his twenty-second year, with but a sorry character from the +College authorities, he had been received as a humble dependent into the +family of Sir William Temple, at Sheen and Moorpark, near London, that +courtly Whig and ex-ambassador being distantly connected with his mother's +family; that here, while acting as Sir William's secretary, amanuensis, +librarian, and what not, he had begun to write verses and other trifles, +some of which he had shown to Dryden, who had told him in reply that they +were sad stuff, and that he would never be a poet; that still, being of a +restless, ambitious temper, he had not given up hopes of obtaining +introduction into public employment in England through Sir William +Temple's influence; that, at length, at the age of twenty-eight, +despairing of anything better, he had quarrelled with Sir William, +returned to Ireland, taken priest's orders, and settled in a living; and +that again, disgusted with Ireland and his prospects in that country, he +had come back to Moorpark, and resided there till 1699, when Sir +William's death had obliged him finally to return to Ireland, and accept +first a chaplaincy to Lord Justice Berkeley, and then his present living +in the diocese of Meath. If curious about the personal habits of this +restless Irish parson, they might have found that he had already won the +reputation of an eccentric in his own parish and district: performing his +parochial duties when at home with scrupulous care, yet by his language +and manners often shocking all ideas of clerical decorum and begetting a +doubt as to his sincerity in the religion he professed; boisterous, +fierce, overbearing, and insulting to all about him, yet often doing acts +of real kindness; exact and economical in his management of his income to +the verge of actual parsimony, yet sometimes spending money freely, and +never without pensioners living on his bounty. They would have found that +he was habitually irritable, and that he was subject to a recurring +giddiness of the head, or vertigo, which he had brought on, as he thought +himself, by a surfeit of fruit while he was staying with Sir William +Temple at Sheen. And, what might have been the best bit of gossip of all, +they would have found that, though unmarried, and entertaining a most +unaccountable and violent aversion to the very idea of marriage, he had +taken over to reside with him, or close to his neighbourhood, in Ireland, +a certain young and beautiful girl, named Hester Johnson, with whom he had +formed an acquaintance in Sir William Temple's house, where she had been +brought up, and where, though she passed as a daughter of Sir William's +steward, she was believed to be, in reality, a natural daughter of Sir +William himself. They would have found that his relations to this girl, +whom he had himself educated from her childhood at Sheen and Moorpark, +were of a very singular and puzzling kind; that on the one hand she was +devotedly attached to him, and on the other he cherished a passionate +affection for her, wrote and spoke of her as his "Stella," and liked +always to have her near him; yet that a marriage between them seemed not +to be thought of by either; and that, in order to have her near him +without giving rise to scandal, he had taken the precaution to bring over +an elderly maiden lady, called Mrs. Dingley, to reside with her as a +companion, and was most careful to be in her society only when this Mrs. +Dingley was present. + +There was mystery and romance enough, therefore, about the wild, +black-browed Irish parson, who attracted the regards of the wits in +Button's coffee-house. What had brought him there? That was partly a +mystery too; but the mystery would have been pretty well solved if it had +been known that, uncouth-looking clerical lout as he was, he was an author +like the rest of them, having just written a political pamphlet which was +making or was to make a good deal of noise in the world, and having at +that moment in his pocket at least one other piece which he was about to +publish. The political pamphlet was an _Essay on the Civil Discords in +Athens and Rome_, having an obvious bearing on certain dissensions then +threatening to break up the Whig party in Great Britain. It was received +as a vigorous piece of writing on the ministerial side, and was ascribed +by some to Lord Somers, and by others to Burnet. Swift had come over to +claim it, and to see what it and his former connexion with Temple could do +for him among the leading Whigs. For the truth was, an ambition equal to +his consciousness of power gnawed at the heart of this furious and gifted +man, whom a perverse fate had flung away into an obscure vicarage on the +wrong side of the channel. His books, his garden, his canal with its +willows at Laracor; his dearly-beloved Roger Coxe, and the other perplexed +and admiring parishioners of Laracor over whom he domineered; his clerical +colleagues in the neighbourhood; and even the society of Stella, the +wittiest and best of her sex, whom he loved better than any other creature +on earth: all these were insufficient to occupy the craving void in his +mind. He hated Ireland, and regarded his lot there as one of banishment; +he longed to be in London, and struggling in the centre of whatever was +going on. About the date of his appointment to the living of Laracor he +had lost the rich deanery of Derry, which Lord Berkeley had meant to give +him, in consequence of a notion on the part of the bishop of the diocese +that he was a restless, ingenious young man, who, instead of residing, +would be "eternally flying backwards and forwards to London." The bishop's +perception of his character was just. At or about the very time when the +wits at Button's saw him stalking up and down in the coffee-house, the +priest of Laracor was introducing himself to Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, +and others, and stating the terms on which he would support the Whigs with +his pen. Even then, it seems, he took high ground, and let it be known +that he was no mere hireling. The following, written at a much later +period, is his own explanation of the nature and limits of his Whiggism at +the time when he first offered the Whigs his services:-- + + "It was then (1701-2) I began to trouble myself with the differences + between the principles of Whig and Tory; having formerly employed + myself in other, and, I think, much better speculations. I talked + often upon this subject with Lord Somers; told him that, having been + long conversant with the Greek and Latin authors, and therefore a + lover of liberty, I found myself much inclined to be what they call a + Whig in politics; and that, besides, I thought it impossible, upon + any other principles, to defend or submit to the Revolution; but, as + to religion, I confessed myself to be a High-Churchman, and that I + could not conceive how anyone who wore the habit of a clergyman could + be otherwise; that I had observed very well with what insolence and + haughtiness some lords of the High-Church party treated not only + their own chaplains, but all other clergymen whatsoever, and thought + this was sufficiently recompensed by their professions of zeal to the + Church: that I had likewise observed how the Whig lords took a direct + contrary measure, treated the persons of particular clergymen with + particular courtesy, but showed much contempt and ill-will for the + order in general: that I knew it was necessary for their party to + make their bottom as wide as they could, by taking all denominations + of Protestants to be members of their body: that I would not enter + into the mutual reproaches made by the violent men on either side; + but that the connivance or encouragement given by the Whigs to those + writers of pamphlets who reflected upon the whole body of the clergy, + without any exception, would unite the Church to one man to oppose + them; and that I doubted his lordship's friends did not consider the + consequences of this." + +Even with these limitations the assistance of so energetic a man as the +parson of Laracor was doubtless welcome to the Whigs. His former connexion +with the stately old Revolution Whig, Sir William Temple, may have +prepared the way for him, as it had already been the means of making him +known in some aristocratic families. But there was evidence in his +personal bearing and his writings that he was not a man to be neglected. +And, if there had been any doubt on the subject on his first presentation +of himself to ministers, the publication of his _Battle of the Books_ and +his _Tale of a Tub_ in 1703 and 1704 would have set it overwhelmingly at +rest. The author of these works (and, though they were anonymous, they +were at once referred to Swift) could not but be acknowledged as the first +prose satirist, and one of the most formidable writers, of the age. On his +subsequent visits to Button's, therefore (and they were frequent enough; +for, as the Bishop of Derry had foreseen, he was often an absentee from +his parish), the mad Irish parson was no longer a stranger to the company. +Addison, Steele, Tickell, Philips, and the other Whig wits came to know +him well, and to feel his weight among them in their daily convivial +meetings. "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest +friend, and the greatest genius of the age" was the inscription written by +Addison on a copy of his Travels presented to Swift; and it shows what +opinion Addison and those about him had formed of the author of the _Tale +of a Tub_. + +Thus, passing and repassing between Laracor and London, now lording it +over his Irish parishioners, and now filling the literary and Whig haunts +of the great metropolis with the terror of his merciless wit and with talk +behind his back of his eccentricities and rude manners, Swift spent the +interval between 1702 and 1710, or between his thirty-sixth and his +forty-fourth year. His position as a High-Church Whig, however, was an +anomalous one. In the first place, it was difficult to see how such a man +could honestly be in the Church at all. People were by no means strict in +those days in their notions of the clerical character; but the _Tale of a +Tub_ was a strong dose even then to have come from a clergyman. If +Voltaire afterwards recommended the book as a masterly satire against +religion in general, it cannot be wondered at that an outcry arose among +Swift's contemporaries respecting the profanity of the book. It is true, +Peter and Jack, as the representatives of Popery and Presbyterianism, came +in for the greatest share of the author's scurrility; and Martin, as the +representative of the Church of England, was left with the honours of the +story; but the whole structure and spirit of the story, to say nothing of +the oaths and other irreverences mingled with its language, were well +calculated to shock the more serious even of Martin's followers, who could +not but see that rank infidelity alone would be a gainer by the book. +Accordingly, despite all that Swift could afterwards do, the fact that he +had written this book left a public doubt as to his Christianity. It is +quite possible, however, that, with a very questionable kind of belief in +Christianity, he may have been a conscientious High-Churchman, zealous for +the social defence and aggrandisement of the ecclesiastical institution +with which he was connected. Whatever that institution was originally +based upon, it existed as part and parcel of the commonwealth of England, +rooted in men's habits and interests, and intertwined with the whole +system of social order; and, just as a Brahmin, lax enough in his own +speculative allegiance to the Brahminical faith, might still desire to +maintain Brahminism as a vast pervading establishment in Hindostan, so +might Swift, with a heart and a head dubious enough respecting men's +eternal interest in the facts of the Judaean record, see a use +notwithstanding in that fabric of bishoprics, deaneries, prebends, +parochial livings, and curacies, which ancient belief in those facts had +first created and put together. This kind of respect for the Church +Establishment is still very prevalent. It is a most excellent thing, it is +thought by many, to have a cleanly, cultured, gentlemanly man invested +with authority in every parish throughout the land, who can look after +what is going on, fill up schedules, give advice, and take the lead in all +parish business. That Swift's faith in the Church included no more than +this perception of its uses as a vast administrative and educational +establishment we will not say. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, openly avows his +opinion that Swift had no belief in the Christian religion. "Swift's," he +says, "was a reverent, was a pious spirit--he could love and could pray;" +but such religion as he had, Mr. Thackeray hints, was a kind of mad, +despairing Deism, and had nothing of Christianity in it. Hence, "having +put that cassock on, it poisoned him; he was strangled in his bands." The +question thus broached as to the nature of Swift's religion is too deep to +be discussed here. Though we would not exactly say, with Mr. Thackeray, +that Swift's was a "reverent" and "pious" spirit, there are, as he phrases +it, breakings out of "the stars of religion and love" shining in the +serene blue through "the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of +Swift's life;" and this, though vague, is about all that we have warrant +for saying. As to the zeal of his Churchmanship, however, there is no +doubt at all. There was not a man in the British realms more pugnacious in +the interests of his order, more resolute in defending the prerogatives of +the Church of England against Dissenters and others desirous of limiting +them, or more anxious to elevate the social position and intellectual +character of the clergy, than the author of the _Tale of a Tub_. No +veteran commander of a regiment could have had more of the military than +the parson of Laracor had of the ecclesiastical _esprit de corps_; and, +indeed, Swift's known dislike to the military may be best explained as the +natural jealousy of the surplice at the larger consideration accorded by +society to the scarlet coat. Almost all Swift's writings between 1702 and +1710 are assertions of his High-Church sentiments and vindications of the +Establishment against its assailants. Thus in 1708 came forth his _Letter +on the Sacramental Test_, a hot High-Church and anti-Dissenter pamphlet; +and this was followed in the same year by his _Sentiments of a Church of +England man with respect to Religion and Government_, and by his ironical +argument, aimed at free-thinkers and latitudinarians, entitled _Reasons +against Abolishing Christianity_. In 1709 he published a graver pamphlet, +under the name of _A Project for the Advancement of Religion_, in which he +urged certain measures for the reform of public morals and the +strengthening of the Establishment, recommending in particular a scheme of +Church-extension. Thus, with all his readiness to help the Whigs +politically, Swift was certainly faithful to his High-Church principles. +But, as we have said, a High-Church Whig was an anomaly which the Whigs +refused to comprehend. Latitudinarians, Low Churchmen, and Dissenters, did +not know what to make of a Whiggism in state-politics which was conjoined +with the strongest form of ecclesiastical Toryism. Hence, in spite of his +ability, Swift was not a man that the Whigs could patronise and prefer. +They were willing to have the benefit of his assistance, but their favours +were reserved for men more wholly their own. Various things were, indeed, +talked of for Swift--the secretaryship to the proposed embassy of Lord +Berkeley in Vienna, a prebend of Westminster, the office of +historiographer-royal; nay, even a bishopric in the American colonies: but +all came to nothing. Swift, at the age of forty-three, and certified by +Addison as "the greatest genius of the age," was still only an Irish +parson, with some 350_l._ or 400_l._ a year. How strange if the plan of +the Transatlantic bishopric had been carried out, and Swift had settled in +Virginia! + +Meanwhile, though neglected by the English Whigs, Swift had risen to be a +leader among the Irish clergy, a great man in their convocations and other +ecclesiastical assemblies. The object which the Irish clergy then had at +heart was to procure from the Government an extension to Ireland of a boon +granted several years before to the clergy of England: namely, the +remission of the tax levied by the Crown on the revenues of the Church +since the days of Henry VIII. in the shape of tenths and first-fruits. +This remission, which would have amounted to about 16,000_l._ a year, the +Whigs were not disposed to grant, the corresponding remission in the case +of England not having been followed by the expected benefits. Archbishop +King and the other prelates were glad to have Swift as their agent in this +business; and, accordingly, he was absent from Ireland for upwards of +twelve months continuously in the years 1708 and 1709. It was during this +period that he set London in a roar by his famous Bickerstaff hoax, in +which he first predicted the death of Partridge, the astrologer, at a +particular day and hour, and then nearly drove the wretched tradesman mad +by declaring, when the time was come, that the prophecy had been +fulfilled, and publishing a detailed account of the circumstances. Out of +this Bickerstaff hoax, and Swift's talk over it with Addison and Steele, +arose the _Tatler_, prolific parent of so many other periodicals. + +The year 1710 was an important one in the life of Swift. In that year he +came over to London, resolved in his own mind to have a settlement of +accounts with the Whigs, or to break with them for ever. The Irish +ecclesiastical business of the tenths and first-fruits was still his +pretext, but he had many other arrears to introduce into the account. +Accordingly, after some civil skirmishing with Somers, Halifax, and his +other old friends, then just turned out of office, he openly transferred +his allegiance to the new Tory administration of Harley and Bolingbroke. +The 4th of October, not quite a month after his arrival in London, was the +date of his first interview with Harley; and from that day forward till +the dissolution of Harley's administration by the death of Queen Anne, in +1714, Swift's relations with Harley, St. John, and the other ministers, +were more those of an intimate friend and adviser than a literary +dependent. How he dined almost daily with Harley or St. John; how he +bullied them, and made them beg his pardon when by chance they offended +him--either, as Harley once did, by offering him a fifty-pound note, or, +as St. John once did, by appearing cold and abstracted when Swift was his +guest at dinner; how he obtained from them not only the settlement of the +Irish business, but almost everything else he asked; how he used his +influence to prevent Steele, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, and his other Whig +literary friends, from suffering loss of office by the change in the state +of politics, at the same time growing cooler in his private intercourse +with Addison and poor Dick, and tending more to young Tory writers, such +as Pope and Parnell; how, with Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, and St. John, +he formed the famous club of the _Scriblerus_ brotherhood, for the satire +of literary absurdities; how he wrote squibs, pamphlets, and lampoons +innumerable for the Tories and against the Whigs, and at one time actually +edited a Tory paper called the _Examiner_: all this is to be gathered, in +most interesting detail, from his epistolary journal to Stella, in which +he punctually kept her informed of all his doings during his long three +years of absence. The following is a description of him at the height of +his Court influence during this season of triumph, from the Whiggish, and +therefore somewhat adverse, pen of Bishop Kennet:-- + + "When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, + Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as + master of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to + his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place + established in the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in + that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published + sermons to pay the fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake + with my lord-treasurer that, according to his petition, he should + obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as minister of the English + church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the + red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to + him from my lord-treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant, + to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book, and wrote down + several things as _memoranda_ to do for him. He turned to the fire, + and took out his gold watch, and, telling him the time of day, + complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. 'How + can I help it,' says the Doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch + that won't go right?' Then he instructed a young nobleman that the + best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a + translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them + all subscribe; 'for,' says he, 'the author shall not begin to print + till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord-treasurer, after + leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to + follow him: both went off just before prayers." + +Let us see, by a few pickings from the journal to Stella, in what manner +the black-browed Irish vicar, who was thus figuring in the mornings at +Court as the friend and confidant of Ministers, and almost as their +domineering colleague, was writing home from his lodging in the evenings +to the "dear girls" at Laracor. + + _Dec. 3, 1710._ "Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats + every night whether I will or no, let me have what business I will, + or come home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but it is an old + saying and a true one, 'Be you lords or be you earls, you must write + to naughty girls.' I was to-day at Court, and saw Raymond [an Irish + friend] among the beefeaters, staying to see the Queen; so I put him + in a better station, made two or three dozen bows, and went to + church, and then to Court again to pick up a dinner, as I did with + Sir John Stanley: and then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just + left him; and 'tis near eleven at night, young women, and methinks + this letter comes very near to the bottom," &c. &c. + + _Jan. 1, 1711._ Morning. "I wish my dearest pretty Dingley and Stella + a happy new year, and health, and mirth, and good stomachs, and + _Fr's_ company. Faith, I did not know how to write _Fr_. I wondered + what was the matter; but now I remember I always write _Pdfr_ [by + this combination of letters, or by the word _Presto_, Swift + designates himself in the Journal] * * Get the _Examiners_, and read + them; the last nine or ten are full of reasons for the late change + and of the abuses of the last ministry; and the great men assure me + that all are true. They were written by their encouragement and + direction. I must rise, and go see Sir Andrew Fountain; but perhaps + to-morrow I may answer _M.D.'s_ [Stella's designation in the Journal] + letter: so good morrow, my mistresses all, good morrow. I wish you + both a merry new year; roast beef, minced pies, and good strong beer; + and me a share of your good cheer; that I was there or you were here; + and you're a little saucy dear," &c. &c. + + _Jan. 13, 1711._ "O faith, I had an ugly giddy fit last night in my + chamber, and I have got a new box of pills to take, and I hope shall + have no more this good while. I would not tell you before, because it + would vex you, little rogues; but now it is better. I dined to-day + with Lord Shelburn," &c. &c. + + _Jan. 16, 1711._ "My service to Mrs. Stode and Walls. Has she a boy + or a girl? A girl, hmm!, and died in a week, hmmm!, and was poor + Stella forced to stand for godmother?--Let me know how accounts + stand, that you may have your money betimes. There's four months for + my lodging; that must be thought on too. And zoo go dine with Manley, + and lose your money, doo extravagant sluttikin? But don't fret. It + will just be three weeks when I have the next letter: that is, + to-morrow. Farewell, dearest beloved _M.D._, and love poor, poor + Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, as hope to + be saved." + + _March 7, 1711._ "I am weary of business and ministers. I don't go to + a coffee-house twice a month. I am very regular in going to sleep + before eleven. And so you say that Stella's a pretty girl; and so she + be; and methinks I see her just now, as handsome as the day's long. + Do you know what? When I am writing in our language [a kind of + baby-language of endearment used between him and Stella, and called + 'the little language'] I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking + it. I caught myself at it just now. * * Poor Stella, won't Dingley + leave her a little daylight to write to Presto? Well, well, we'll + have daylight shortly, spite of her teeth; and zoo must cly Zele, and + Hele, and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate _Pdfr_, pay? Iss, and so la + shall. And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood Mollow. [You must cry There + and Here and Here again. Must you imitate _Pdfr_, pray? Yes, and so + you shall. And so there's for the letter. Good morrow.]" + +And so on, through a series of daily letters, forming now a goodly octavo +volume or more, Swift chats and rattles away to the "dear absent girls," +giving them all the political gossip of the time, and informing them about +his own goings-out and comings-in, his dinings with Harley, St. John, and +occasionally with Addison and other old Whig friends, the state of his +health, his troubles with his drunken servant Patrick, his +lodging-expenses, and a host of other things. Such another journal has, +perhaps, never been given to the world; and but for it we should never +have known what depths of tenderness and power of affectionate prattle +there were in the heart of this harsh and savage man. + +Only on one topic, affecting himself during his long stay in London, is he +in any degree reserved. Among the acquaintanceships he had formed was one +with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a widowed lady of property, who had a family of +several daughters. The eldest of these, Hester Vanhomrigh, was a girl of +more than ordinary talent and accomplishments, and of enthusiastic and +impetuous character; and, as Swift acquired the habit of dropping in upon +the "Vans," as he called them, when he had no other dinner engagement, it +was not long before he and Miss Vanhomrigh fell into the relationship of +teacher and pupil. He taught her to think and to write verses; and, as +among Swift's peculiarities of opinion, one was that he entertained what +would even now be called very advanced notions as to the intellectual +capabilities and rights of women, he found no more pleasant amusement, in +the midst of his politics and other business, than that of superintending +the growth of so hopeful a mind. + + "His conduct might have made him styled + A father, and the nymph his child: + The innocent delight he took + To see the virgin mind her book + Was but the master's secret joy + In school to hear the finest boy." + +But, alas! Cupid got among the books. + + "Vanessa, not in years a score, + Dreams of a gown of forty-four; + Imaginary charms can find + In eyes with reading almost blind; + She fancies music in his tongue, + Nor farther looks, but thinks him young." + +Nay, more: one of Swift's lessons to her had been that frankness, whether +in man or women, was the chief of the virtues, and + + "That common forms were not design'd + Directors to a noble mind." + +"Then," said the nymph, + + "I'll let you see + My actions with your rules agree; + That I can vulgar forms despise, + And have no secrets to disguise." + +She told her love, and fairly argued it out with the startled tutor, +discussing every element in the question, whether for or against--the +disparity of their ages, her own five thousand guineas, their similarity +of tastes, his views of ambition, the judgment the world would form of the +match, and so on; and the end of it was that she reasoned so well that +Swift could not but admit that there would be nothing after all so very +incongruous in a marriage between him and Esther Vanhomrigh. So the matter +rested, Swift gently resisting the impetuosity of the young woman, when it +threatened to take him by storm, but not having the courage to adduce the +real and conclusive argument--the existence on the other side of the +channel of another and a dearer Esther. Stella, on her side, knew that +Swift visited a family called the "Vans"; she divined that something was +wrong; but that was all. + +That Swift, the Mentor of ministers, their daily companion, at whose +bidding they dispensed their patronage and their favour, should himself be +suffered to remain a mere vicar of an Irish parish, was, of course, +impossible. Vehement and even boisterous and overdone as was his zeal for +his own independence--"If we let these great ministers pretend too much, +there will be no governing them," was his maxim; and, in order to act up +to it, he used to treat Dukes and Earls as if they were dogs--there were +yet means of honourably acknowledging his services in a way to which he +would have taken no exception. Nor can we doubt that Oxford and St. John, +who were really and heartily his admirers, were anxious to promote him in +some suitable manner. An English bishopric was certainly what he coveted, +and what they would at once have given him. But, though the bishopric of +Hereford fell vacant in 1712, there was, as Sir Walter Scott says, "a lion +in the path." Queen Anne, honest dowdy woman,--her instinctive dislike of +Swift strengthened by the private influence of the Archbishop of York, and +that of the Duchess of Somerset, whose red hair Swift had +lampooned--obstinately refused to make the author of the _Tale of a Tub_ a +bishop. Even an English deanery could not be found for so questionable a +Christian; and in 1713 Swift was obliged to accept, as the best thing he +could get, the Deanery of St. Patrick's in his native city of Dublin. He +hurried over to Ireland to be installed, and came back just in time to +partake in the last struggles and dissensions of the Tory administration +before Queen Anne's death. By his personal exertions with ministers, and +his pamphlet entitled _Public Spirit of the Whigs_, he tried to buoy up +the sinking Tory cause. But the Queen's death destroyed all; with George +I. the Whigs came in again; the late Tory ministers were dispersed and +disgraced, and Swift shared their fall. "Dean Swift," says Arbuthnot, +"keeps up his noble spirit; and, though like a man knocked down, you may +behold him still with a stern countenance, and aiming a blow at his +adversaries." He returned, with rage and grief in his heart, to Ireland, a +disgraced man, and in danger of arrest on account of his connexion with +the late ministers. Even in Dublin he was insulted as he walked in the +streets. + +For twelve years--that is, from 1714 to 1726--Swift did not quit Ireland. +At his first coming, as he tells us in one of his letters, he was +"horribly melancholy;" but the melancholy began to wear off; and, having +made up his mind to his exile in the country of his detestation, he fell +gradually into the routine of his duties as Dean. How he boarded in a +private family in the town, stipulating for leave to invite his friends to +dinner at so much a head, and only having two evenings a week at the +deanery for larger receptions; how he brought Stella and Mrs. Dingley from +Laracor, and settled them in lodgings on the other side of the Liffey, +keeping up the same precautions in his intercourse with them as before, +but devolving the management of his receptions at the deanery upon Stella, +who did all the honours of the house; how he had his own way in all +cathedral business, and had always a few clergymen and others in his +train, who toadied him, and took part in the facetious horse-play of which +he was fond; how gradually his physiognomy became known to the citizens, +and his eccentricities familiar to them, till the "Dean" became the lion +of Dublin, and everybody turned to look at him as he walked in the +streets; how, among the Dean's other oddities, he was popularly charged +with stinginess in his entertainments and a sharp look-out after the wine; +how sometimes he would fly off from town, and take refuge in some +country-seat of a friendly Irish nobleman; how all this while he was +reading books of all kinds, writing notes and jottings, and corresponding +with Pope, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Oxford, Bolingbroke, and other literary +and political friends in London or abroad: these are matters in the +recollection of all who have read any of the biographies of Swift. It is +also known that it was during this period that the Stella-and-Vanessa +imbroglio reached its highest degree of entanglement. Scarcely had the +Dean located Stella and Mrs. Dingley in their lodging in Dublin when, as +he had feared, the impetuous Vanessa crossed the Channel to be near him +too. Her mother's death, and the fact that she and her younger sister had +a small property in Ireland, were pretext enough. A scrap or two from +surviving letters will tell the sequel, and will suggest the state of the +relations at this time between Swift and this unhappy and certainly very +extraordinary, woman:-- + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: London, Aug. 12, 1714._ "I had your letter + last post, and before you can send me another I shall set out for + Ireland. * * * If you are in Ireland when I am there, I shall see you + very seldom. It is not a place for any freedom, but where everything + is known in a week, and magnified a hundred degrees. These are + rigorous laws that must be passed through; but it is probable we may + meet in London in winter; or, if not, leave all to fate." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714_ (_some time after August_). + "You once had a maxim, which was to act what was right, and not mind + what the world would say. I wish you would keep to it now. Pray, what + can be wrong in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman? I cannot + imagine. You cannot but know that your frowns make my life + unsupportable. You have taught me to distinguish, and then you leave + me miserable." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1714._ "You bid me be easy, and + you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said as + often as you could get the better of your inclinations so much, or as + often as you remembered there was such a one in the world. If you + continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me + long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw + you last. I am sure I could have bore the rack much better than those + killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die + without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did + not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts + one to find relief in this world. I must give way to it, and beg + you'd see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn + any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason + I write to you is because I cannot tell it to you should I see you. + For, when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is + something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb." + +Here a gap intervenes, which record fills up with but an indication here +and there. Swift saw Vanessa, sometimes with that "something awful in his +looks which struck her dumb," sometimes with words of perplexed kindness; +he persuaded her to go out, to read, to amuse herself; he introduced +clergymen to her--one of them afterwards Archbishop of Cashel--as suitors +for her hand; he induced her to leave Dublin, and go to her property at +Selbridge, about twelve miles from Dublin, where now and then he went to +visit her, where she used to plant laurels against every time of his +coming, and where "Vanessa's bower," in which she and the Dean used to +sit, with books and writing materials before them, during those happy +visits, was long an object of interest to tourists; he wrote kindly +letters to her, some in French, praising her talents, her conversation, +and her writing, and saying that he found in her "_tout ce que la nature +a donnee a un mortel, l'honneur, la vertu, le bon sens, l'esprit, la +douceur, l'agrement et la fermete d'ame_." All did not suffice; and one +has to fancy, during those long years, the restless beatings, on the one +hand, of that impassioned woman's heart, now lying as cold +undistinguishable ashes in some Irish grave, and, on the other hand, the +distraction, and anger, and daily terror, of the man she clung to. For, +somehow or other, there _was_ an element of terror mingled with the +affair. What it was is beyond easy scrutiny, though possibly the data +exist if they were well sifted. The ordinary story is that some time in +the midst of those entanglements with Vanessa, and in consequence of their +effects on the rival-relationship--Stella having been brought almost to +death's door by the anxieties caused her by Vanessa's proximity, and by +her own equivocal position in society--the form of marriage was gone +through by Swift and Stella, and they became legally husband and wife, +although with an engagement that the matter should remain secret, and that +there should be no change in their manner of living. The year 1716, when +Swift was forty-nine years of age, and Stella thirty-two, is assigned as +the date of this event; and the ceremony is said to have been performed in +the garden of the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher. But more mystery +remains. "Immediately subsequent to the ceremony," says Sir Walter Scott, +"Swift's state of mind appears to have been dreadful. Delany (as I have +learned from a friend of his widow) said that about the time it was +supposed to have taken place he observed Swift to be extremely gloomy and +agitated--so much so that he went to Archbishop King to mention his +apprehensions. On entering the library, Swift rushed out with a +countenance of distraction, and passed him without speaking. He found the +archbishop in tears, and, upon asking the reason, he said, 'You have just +met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness +you must never ask a question.'" What are we to make of this? Nay more, +what are we to make of it when we find that the alleged marriage of Swift +with Stella, with which Scott connects the story, is after all denied by +some as resting on no sufficient evidence: even Dr. Delany, though he +believed in the marriage, and supposed it to have taken place about the +time of this remarkable interview with the archbishop, having no certain +information on the subject? If we assume a secret marriage with Stella, +indeed, the subsequent portion of the Vanessa story becomes more +explicable. On this assumption we are to imagine Swift continuing his +letters to Vanessa, and his occasional visits to her at Selbridge on the +old footing, for some years after the marriage, with the undivulged secret +ever in his mind, increasing tenfold his former awkwardness in +encountering her presence. And so we come to the year 1720, when, as the +following scraps will show, a new paroxysm on the part of Vanessa brought +on a new crisis in their relations. + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ "Believe me, it is with + the utmost regret that I now write to you, because I know your + good-nature such that you cannot see any human creature miserable + without being sensibly touched. Yet what can I do? I must either + unload my heart, and tell you all its griefs, or sink under the + inexpressible distress I now suffer by your prodigious neglect of me. + It is now ten long weeks since I saw you, and in all that time I have + never received but one letter from you, and a little note with an + excuse. Oh, have you forgot me? You endeavour by severities to force + me from you. Nor can I blame you; for, with the utmost distress and + confusion, I behold myself the cause of uneasy reflections to you. + Yet I cannot comfort you, but here declare that it is not in the + power of art, time, or accident, to lessen the inexpressible passion + I have for ----. Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me + as distant from you as the earth will allow; yet you cannot banish + those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the + use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul; for + there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it. + Therefore do not flatter yourself that separation will ever change my + sentiments; for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my + heart is at once pierced with sorrow and love. For Heaven's sake, + tell me what has caused this prodigious change in you which I have + found of late." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1720._ * * "I believe you thought + I only rallied when I told you the other night that I would pester + you with letters. Once more I advise you, if you have any regard for + your quiet, to alter your behaviour quickly; for I do assure you I + have too much spirit to sit down contented with this treatment. + Because I love frankness extremely, I here tell you now that I have + determined to try all manner of human arts to reclaim you; and, if + all these fail, I am resolved to have recourse to the black one, + which, it is said, never does. Now see what inconveniency you will + bring both yourself and me unto * *. When I undertake a thing, I + don't love to do it by halves." + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "If you write as you do, I + shall come the seldomer on purpose to be pleased with your letters, + which I never look into without wondering how a brat that cannot read + can possibly write so well. * * Raillery apart, I think it + inconvenient, for a hundred reasons, that I should make your house a + sort of constant dwelling-place. I will certainly come as often as I + conveniently can; but my health and the perpetual run of ill weather + hinder me from going out in the morning, and my afternoons are taken + up I know not how; so that I am in rebellion with a hundred people + besides yourself for not seeing them. For the rest, you need make use + of no other black art besides your ink. It is a pity your eyes are + not black, or I would have said the same; but you are a white witch, + and can do no mischief." + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "I received your letter + when some company was with me on Saturday night, and it put me in + such confusion that I could not tell what to do. This morning a woman + who does business for me told me she heard I was in love with one, + naming you, and twenty particulars; that little master ---- and I + visited you, and that the Archbishop did so; and that you had + abundance of wit, &c. I ever feared the tattle of this nasty town, + and told you so; and that was the reason why I said to you long ago + that I would see you seldom when you were in Ireland; and I must beg + you to be easy, if, for some time, I visit you seldomer, and not in + so particular a manner." + + _Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ * * "Solitude is + unsupportable to a mind which is not easy. I have worn out my days in + sighing and my nights in watching and thinking of ----, who thinks + not of me. How many letters shall I send you before I receive an + answer? * * Oh that I could hope to see you here, or that I could go + to you! I was born with violent passions, which terminate all in + one--that inexpressible passion I have for you. * * Surely you cannot + possibly be so taken up but you might command a moment to write to me + and force your inclinations to so great a charity. I firmly believe, + if I could know your thoughts (which no human creature is capable of + guessing at, because never anyone living thought like you), I should + find you had often in a rage wished me religious, hoping then I + should have paid my devotions to Heaven. But that would not spare + you; for, were I an enthusiast, still you'd be the deity I should + worship. What marks are there of a deity but what you are to be known + by? You are present everywhere; your dear image is always before my + eyes. Sometimes you strike me with that prodigious awe I tremble with + fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your + countenance, which revives my soul. Is it not more reasonable to + adore a radiant form one has seen than one only described?" + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, October 15, 1720._ "All the + morning I am plagued with impertinent visits, below any man of sense + or honour to endure, if it were any way avoidable. Afternoons and + evenings are spent abroad in walking to keep off and avoid spleen as + far as I can; so that, when I am not so good a correspondent as I + could wish, you are not to quarrel and be governor, but to impute it + to my situation, and to conclude infallibly that I have the same + respect and kindness for you I ever professed to have." + + _Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Gaullstoun, July 5, 1721._ * * "Settle + your affairs, and quit this scoundrel-island, and things will be as + you desire. I can say no more, being called away. _Mais soyez assuree + que jamais personne au monde n'a ete aimee, honoree, estimee, adoree + par votre ami que vous._" + +Vanessa did not quit the "scoundrel-island;" but, on the contrary, +remained in it, unmanageable as ever. In 1722, about a year after the date +of the last scrap, the catastrophe came. In a wild fit Vanessa, as the +story is, took the bold step of writing to Stella, insisting on an +explanation of the nature of Swift's engagements to her; Stella placed +the letter in Swift's hands; and Swift, in a paroxysm of fury, rode +instantly to Selbridge, saw Vanessa without speaking, laid a letter on her +table, and rode off again. The letter was Vanessa's death-warrant. Within +a few weeks she was dead, having previously revoked a will in which she +had bequeathed all her fortune to Swift. + +Whatever may have been the purport of Vanessa's communication to Stella, +it produced no change in Swift's relations to the latter. The pale pensive +face of Hester Johnson, with her "fine dark eyes" and hair "black as a +raven," was still to be seen on reception-evenings at the deanery, where +also she and Mrs. Dingley would sometimes take up their abode when Swift +was suffering from one of his attacks of vertigo and required to be +nursed. Nay, during those very years in which, as we have just seen, Swift +was attending to the movements to and fro of the more imperious Vanessa in +the background, and assuaging her passion by visits and letters, and +praises of her powers, and professions of his admiration of her beyond all +her sex, he was all the while keeping up the same affectionate style of +intercourse as ever with the more gentle Stella, whose happier lot it was +to be stationed in the centre of his domestic circle, and addressing to +her, in a less forced manner, praises singularly like those he addressed +to her rival. Thus, every year, on Stella's birth-day, he wrote a little +poem in honour of the occasion. Take the one for 1718, beginning thus:-- + + "Stella this day is thirty-four + (We sha'n't dispute a year or more): + However, Stella, be not troubled; + Although thy size and years be doubled + Since first I saw thee at sixteen, + The brightest virgin on the green, + So little is thy form declined, + Made up so largely in thy mind." + +Stella would reciprocate these compliments by verses on the Dean's +birth-day; and one is struck with the similarity of her acknowledgments of +what the Dean had taught her and done for her to those of Vanessa. Thus, +in 1721,-- + + "When men began to call me fair, + You interposed your timely care; + You early taught me to despise + The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes; + Show'd where my judgment was misplaced, + Refined my fancy and my taste. + You taught how I might youth prolong + By knowing what was right and wrong; + How from my heart to bring supplies + Of lustre to my fading eyes; + How soon a beauteous mind repairs + The loss of changed or falling hairs; + How wit and virtue from within + Send out a smoothness o'er the skin: + Your lectures could my fancy fix, + And I can please at thirty-six." + +The death of Vanessa in 1722 left Swift from that time entirely Stella's. +How she got over the Vanessa affair in her own mind, when the full extent +of the facts became known to her, can only be guessed. When some one +alluded to the fact that Swift had written beautifully about Vanessa, she +is reported to have said "That doesn't signify, for we all know the Dean +could write beautifully about a broomstick." "A woman, a true woman!" is +Mr. Thackeray's characteristic comment. + +To the world's end those who take interest in Swift's life will range +themselves either on the side of Stella or on that of Vanessa. Mr. +Thackeray prefers Stella, but admits that, in doing so, though the +majority of men may be on his side, he will have most women against him. +Which way Swift's _heart_ inclined him it is not difficult to see. Stella +was the main influence of his life; the intimacy with Vanessa was but an +episode. And yet, when he speaks of the two women as a critic, there is a +curious equality in his appreciation of them. Of Stella he used to say +that her wit and judgment were such that "she never failed to say the best +thing that was said wherever she was in company;" and one of his +epistolary compliments to Vanessa is that he had "always remarked that, +neither in general nor in particular conversation, had any word ever +escaped her lips that could by possibility have been better." Some little +differences in his preceptorial treatment of them may be discerned--as +when he finds it necessary to admonish poor Stella for her incorrigibly +bad spelling, no such admonition, apparently, being required for Vanessa; +or when, in praising Stella, he dwells chiefly on her honour and gentle +kindliness, whereas in praising Vanessa he dwells chiefly on her genius +and force of mind. But it is distinctly on record that his regard for both +was founded on his belief that in respect of intellect and culture both +were above the majority of their sex. And here it may be repeated that, +not only from the evidence afforded by the whole story of Swift's +relations to these two women, but also from the evidence of distinct +doctrinal passages scattered through his works, it appears that those who +in the present day maintain the co-equality of the two sexes, and the +right of women to as full and varied an education, and as free a social +use of their powers, as is allowed to men, may claim Swift as a pioneer in +their cause. Both Stella and Vanessa have left their testimony that from +the very first Swift took care to indoctrinate them with peculiar views on +this subject; and both thank him for having done so. Stella even goes +further, and almost urges Swift to do on the great scale what he had done +for her individually:-- + + "O turn your precepts into laws; + Redeem the woman's ruin'd cause; + Retrieve lost empire to our sex, + That men may bow their rebel necks." + +This fact that Swift had a _theory_ on the subject of the proper mode of +treating and educating women, which theory was in antagonism to the ideas +of his time, explains much both in his conduct as a man and in his habits +as a writer. + + * * * * * + +For the first six years of his exile in Ireland after the death of Queen +Anne, Swift had published nothing of any consequence, and had kept aloof +from politics, except when they were brought to his door by local +quarrels. In 1720, however, he again flashed forth as a political +luminary, in a character that could hardly have been anticipated--that of +an Irish patriot. Taking up the cause of the "scoundrel-island," to which +he belonged by birth, if not by affection, and to which fate had consigned +him in spite of all his efforts, he made that cause his own. Virtually +saying to his old Whig enemies, then in power on the other side of the +water, "Yes, I am an Irishman, and I will show you what an Irishman is," +he constituted himself the representative of the island, and hurled it, +with all its pent-up mass of rage and wrongs, against Walpole and his +administration. First, in revenge for the commercial wrongs of Ireland +came his _Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, utterly +Rejecting and Renouncing Everything Wearable that comes from England_; +then, amidst the uproar and danger excited by this proposal, other and +other defiances in the same tone; and lastly, in 1723, on the occasion of +the royal patent to poor William Wood to supply Ireland, without her own +consent, with a hundred and eight thousand pounds' worth of copper +half-pence of English manufacture, the unparalleled _Drapier's Letters_, +which blasted the character of the coppers and asserted the nationality of +Ireland. All Ireland, Catholic as well as Protestant, blessed the Dean of +St. Patrick's; associations were formed for the defence of his person; +and, had Walpole and his Whigs succeeded in bringing him to trial, it +would have been at the expense of an Irish rebellion. From that time till +his death Swift was the true King of Ireland; only when O'Connell arose +did the heart of the nation yield equal veneration to any single chief; +and even at this day the grateful Irish, forgetting his gibes against +them, and forgetting his continual habit of distinguishing between the +Irish population as a whole and the English and Protestant part of it to +which he belonged himself, cherish his memory with loving enthusiasm, and +speak of him as the "great Irishman." Among the phases of Swift's life +this of his having been an Irish patriot and agitator deserves to be +particularly remembered. + +In the year 1726 Swift, then in his sixtieth year, and in the full flush +of his new popularity as the champion of Irish nationality, visited +England for the first time since Queen Anne's death. Once there, he was +loth to return; and a considerable portion of the years 1726 and 1727 was +spent by him in or near London. This was the time of the publication of +_Gulliver's Travels_, which had been written some years before, and also +of some _Miscellanies_, which were edited for him by Pope. It was at +Pope's villa at Twickenham that most of his time was spent; and it was +there and at this time that the long friendship between Swift and Pope +ripened into that extreme and affectionate intimacy which they both lived +to acknowledge. Gay, Arbuthnot, and Bolingbroke, now returned from exile, +joined Pope in welcoming their friend. Addison had been dead several +years. Prior was dead, and also Vanbrugh and Parnell. Steele was yet +alive; but between him and Swift there was no longer any tie. Political +and aristocratic acquaintances, old and new, there were in abundance, all +anxious once again to have Swift among them to fight their battles. Old +George I. had not long to live, and the Tories were trying again to come +into power in the train of the Prince of Wales. There were even chances of +an arrangement with Walpole, with possibilities, in that or in some other +way, that Swift should not die a mere Irish dean. These prospects were but +temporary. The old King died; and, contrary to expectation, George II. +retained Walpole and his Whig colleagues. In October, 1727, Swift left +England for the last time. He returned to Dublin just in time to watch +over the death-bed of Stella, who expired, after a lingering illness, in +January, 1728. Swift was then in his sixty-second year. + + * * * * * + +The story of the remaining seventeen years of Swift's life--for, with all +his maladies, bodily and mental, his strong frame withstood, for all that +time of solitude and gloom, the wear of mortality--is perhaps better known +than any other part of his biography. How his irritability and +eccentricities and avarice grew upon him, so that his friends and servants +had a hard task in humouring him, we learn from the traditions of others; +how his memory began to fail, and other signs of breaking-up began to +appear, we learn from himself;-- + + "See how the Dean begins to break! + Poor gentleman he droops apace; + You plainly find it in his face. + That old vertigo in his head + Will never leave him till he's dead. + Besides, his memory decays; + He recollects not what he says; + He cannot call his friends to mind, + Forgets the place where last he dined, + Plies you with stories o'er and o'er; + He told them fifty times before." + +The fire of his genius, however, was not yet burnt out. Between 1729 and +1736 he continued to throw out satires and lampoons in profusion, +referring to the men and topics of the day, and particularly to the +political affairs of Ireland; and it was during this time that his +_Directions to Servants_, his _Polite Conversation_, and other well-known +facetiae, first saw the light. From the year 1736, however, it was well +known in Dublin that the Dean was no more what he had been, and that his +recovery was not to be looked for. The rest will be best told in the words +of Sir Walter Scott:-- + + "The last scene was now rapidly approaching, and the stage darkened + ere the curtain fell. From 1736 onward the Dean's fits of periodical + giddiness and deafness had returned with violence; he could neither + enjoy conversation nor amuse himself with writing, and an obstinate + resolution which he had formed not to wear glasses prevented him from + reading. The following dismal letter to Mrs. Whiteway [his cousin, + and chief attendant in his last days] in 1740 is almost the last + document which we possess of the celebrated Swift as a rational and + reflecting being. It awfully foretells the catastrophe which shortly + after took place. + + 'I have been very miserable all night, and to-day extremely deaf + and full of pain. I am so stupid and confounded that I cannot + express the mortification I am under both in body and mind. All + I can say is that I am not in torture, but I daily and hourly + expect it. Pray let me know how your health is and your family. + I hardly understand one word I write. I am sure my days will be + very few; few and miserable they must be. + + 'I am, for these few days, + 'Yours entirely, + 'J. SWIFT.' + + 'If I do not blunder, it is Saturday, July 26th, 1740.' + + "His understanding having totally failed soon after these melancholy + expressions of grief and affection, his first state was that of + violent and furious lunacy. His estate was put under the management + of trustees, and his person confided to the care of Dr. Lyons, a + respectable clergyman, curate to the Rev. Robert King, prebendary of + Dunlavin, one of Swift's executors. This gentleman discharged his + melancholy task with great fidelity, being much and gratefully + attached to the object of his care. From a state of outrageous + frenzy, aggravated by severe bodily suffering, the illustrious Dean + of St. Patrick's sank into the situation of a helpless changeling. In + the course of about three years he is only known to have spoken once + or twice. At length, when this awful moral lesson had subsisted from + 1743 until the 19th of October, 1745, it pleased God to release him + from this calamitous situation. He died upon that day without a + single pang, so gently that his attendants were scarce aware of the + moment of his dissolution." + +Swift was seventy-eight years of age at the time of his death, having +outlived all his contemporaries of the Queen Anne cluster of wits, with +the exception of Bolingbroke, Ambrose Philips, and Cibber. Congreve had +died in 1729; Steele in the same year; Defoe in 1731; Gay in 1732; +Arbuthnot in 1735; Tickell in 1740; and Pope, who was Swift's junior by +twenty-one years, in 1744. Swift, therefore, is entitled in our literary +histories to the place of patriarch as well as to that of chief among the +Wits of Queen Anne's reign; and he stands nearest to our own day of any of +them whose writings we still read. As late as the year 1820 a person was +alive who had seen Swift as he lay dead in the deanery before his burial, +great crowds going to take their last look of him. "The coffin was open; +he had on his head neither cap nor wig; there was not much hair on the +front or very top, but it was long and thick behind, very white, and was +like flax upon the pillow." Such is the last glimpse we have of Swift on +earth. Exactly ninety years afterwards the coffin was taken up from its +resting-place in the aisle of the cathedral; and the skull of Swift, the +white locks now all mouldered away from it, became an object of +scientific curiosity. Phrenologically, it was a disappointment, the +extreme lowness of the forehead striking everyone, and the so-called +organs of wit, causality, and comparison being scarcely developed at all. +There were peculiarities, however, in the shape of the interior, +indicating larger capacity of brain than would have been inferred from the +external aspect. Stella's coffin was exhumed, and her skull examined at +the same time. The examiners found the skull "a perfect model of symmetry +and beauty." + + * * * * * + +Have we said too much in declaring that of all the men who illustrated +that period of our literary history which lies between the Revolution of +1688 and the beginning or middle of the reign of George II. Swift alone +(Pope excepted, and he only on certain definite and peculiar grounds) +fulfils to any tolerable extent those conditions which would entitle him +to the epithet of "great," already refused to his age as a whole? We do +not think so. Swift _was_ a great genius; nay, if by _greatness_ we +understand general mass and energy rather than any preconceived +peculiarity of quality, he was the greatest genius of his age. Neither +Addison, nor Steele, nor Pope, nor Defoe, possessed, in anything like the +same degree, that which Goethe and Niebuhr, seeking a name for a certain +attribute found often present, as they thought, in the higher and more +forcible order of historic characters, agreed to call the _demonic_ +element. Indeed very few men in our literature, from first to last, have +had so much of this element in them--perhaps the sign and source of all +real greatness--as Swift. In him it was so obvious as to attract notice at +once. "There is something in your looks," wrote Vanessa to him, "so awful +that it strikes me dumb;" and again, "Sometimes you strike me with that +prodigious awe I tremble with fear;" and again, "What marks are there of a +deity that you are not known by?" True, these are the words of a woman +infatuated with love; but there is evidence that, wherever Swift went, and +in whatever society he was, there was this magnetic power in his presence. +Pope felt it; Addison felt it; they all felt it. We question if, among all +our literary celebrities, from first to last, there has been one more +distinguished for being personally formidable to all who came near him. + +And yet, in calling Swift a great genius, we clearly do not mean to rank +him in the same order of greatness with such men among his predecessors as +Spenser, or Shakespeare, or Milton, or such men among his successors as +Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. We even retain instinctively the right +of not according to him a certain kind of admiration which we bestow on +such men of his own generation as Pope, Steele, and Addison. How is this? +What is the drawback about Swift's genius which prevents us from +referring him to that highest order of literary greatness to which we do +refer others who in respect of hard general capacity were apparently not +superior to him, and on the borders of which we also place some who in +that respect were certainly his inferiors? To make the question more +special, why do we call Milton great in quite a different sense from that +in which we consent to confer the same epithet on Swift? + +Altogether, it will be said, Milton was a greater man than Swift; his +intellect was higher, richer, deeper, grander, his views of things were +more profound, grave, stately, and exalted. This is a true enough +statement of the case; and one likes that comprehensive use of the word +intellect which it implies, wrapping up, as it were, all that is in and +about a man in this one word, so as to dispense with the distinctions +between imaginative and non-imaginative, spiritual and unspiritual +natures, and make every possible question about a man a mere question in +the end as to the size or degree of his intellect. But such a mode of +speaking is too violent and recondite for common purposes. According to +the common use of the word intellect, it might be maintained (we do not +say it would) that Swift's intellect, his strength of mental grasp, was +equal to Milton's, and yet that, by reason of the fact that his +intellectual style was different, or that he did not grasp things +precisely in the Miltonic way, a distinction might be drawn unfavourable +to his genius as compared with that of Milton. According to such a view, +we must seek for that in Swift's genius upon which it depends that, while +we accord to it all the admiration we bestow on strength, our sympathies +with height or sublimity are left unmoved. Nor have we far to seek. When +Goethe and Niebuhr generalized in the phrase "the demonic element" that +mystic something which they seemed to detect in men of unusual potency +among their fellows, they used the word "demonic," not in its English +sense, as signifying what appertains specially to the demons or powers of +darkness, but in its Greek sense, as equally implying the unseen agencies +of light and good. The demonic element in a man, therefore, may in one +case be the demonic of the etherial and celestial, in another the +demonic of the Tartarean and infernal. There is a demonic of the +_super_natural--angels, and seraphs, and white-winged airy messengers, +swaying men's phantasies from above; and there is a demonic of the +_infra_-natural--fiends and shapes of horror tugging at men's thoughts +from beneath. The demonic in Swift was of the latter kind. It is false, it +would be an entire mistake as to his genius, to say that he regarded, or +was inspired by, only the worldly and the secular--that men, women, and +their relations in the little world of visible life, were all that his +intellect cared to recognise. He also, like our Miltons and our +Shakespeares, and all our men who have been anything more than prudential +and pleasant writers, had his being anchored in things and imaginations +beyond the visible verge. But, while it was given to them to hold rather +by things and imaginations belonging to the region of the celestial, to +hear angelic music and the rustling of seraphic wings, it was his +unhappier lot to be related rather to the darker and subterranean +mysteries. One might say of Swift that he had far less of belief in a God +than of belief in a Devil. He is like a man walking on the earth and among +the busy haunts of his fellow-mortals, observing them and their ways, and +taking his part in the bustle, all the while, however, conscious of the +tuggings downward of secret chains reaching into the world of the demons. +Hence his ferocity, his misanthropy, his _saeva indignatio_, all of them +true forms of energy, imparting unusual potency to a life, but forms of +energy bred of communion with what outlies nature on the lower or infernal +side. + +Swift, doubtless, had this melancholic tendency in him constitutionally +from the beginning. From the first we see him an unruly, rebellious, +gloomy, revengeful, unforgiving spirit, loyal to no authority, and +gnashing under every restraint. With nothing small or weak in his nature, +too proud to be dishonest, bold and fearless in his opinions, capable of +strong attachments and of hatred as strong, it was to be predicted that, +if the swarthy Irish youth, whom Sir William Temple received into his +house when his college had all but expelled him for contumacy, should ever +be eminent in the world, it would be for fierce and controversial, and not +for beautiful or harmonious, activity. It is clear, however, on a survey +of Swift's career, that the gloom and melancholy which characterized it +were not altogether congenital, but, in part at least, grew out of some +special circumstance, or set of circumstances, having a precise date and +locality among the facts of his life. In other words, there was some +secret in Swift's life, some root of bitterness or remorse, diffusing a +black poison throughout his whole existence. That communion with the +invisible almost exclusively on the infernal side--that consciousness of +chains wound round his own moving frame at the one end, and at the other +held by demons in the depths of their populous pit, while no cords of love +were felt sustaining him from the countervailing heaven--had its origin, +in part at least, in some one recollection or cause of dread. It was some +one demon down in that pit that held the chains; the others but assisted +him. Thackeray's perception seems to us exact when he says of Swift that +"he goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil;" or +again, changing the form of the figure, that "like Abudah, in the Arabian +story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night +will come, and the inevitable hag with it." What was this Fury, this hag +that duly came in the night, making the mornings horrible by the terrors +of recollection, the evenings horrible by those of anticipation, and +leaving but a calm hour at full mid-day? There was a secret in Swift's +life: what was it? His biographers as yet have failed to agree on this +dark topic. Thackeray's hypothesis, that the cause of Swift's despair was +chiefly his consciousness of disbelief in the creed to which he had sworn +his professional faith, does not seem to us sufficient. In Swift's days, +and even with his frank nature, we think that difficulty could have been +got over. There was nothing, at least, so unique in the case as to justify +the supposition that this was what Archbishop King referred to in that +memorable saying to Dr. Delany, "You have just met the most miserable man +on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a +question." Had Swift made a confession of scepticism to the Archbishop, we +do not think the prelate would have been taken so very much by surprise. +Nor can we think, with some, that Swift's vertigo (now pronounced to have +been increasing congestion of the brain), and his life-long certainty that +it would end in idiocy or madness, are the true explanation of this +interview and of the mystery which it shrouds. There was cause enough for +melancholy here, but not exactly the cause that meets the case. Another +hypothesis there is of a physical kind, which Scott and others hint at, +and which finds great acceptance with the medical philosophers. Swift, it +is said, was of "a cold temperament," &c., &c. But why a confession on the +part of Swift that he was not a marriageable man, even had he added that +he desired, above all things in the world, to be a person of that sort, +should have so moved the heart of an Archbishop as to make him shed tears, +one cannot conceive. Besides, although this hypothesis might explain much +of the Stella and Vanessa imbroglio, it would not explain all; nor do we +see on what foundation it could rest. Scott's assertion that all through +Swift's writings there is no evidence of his having felt the tender +passion is simply untrue. On the whole, the hypothesis which has been +started of a too near consanguinity between Swift and Stella, either known +from the first to one or both, or discovered too late, would most nearly +suit the conditions of the case. And yet, as far as we have seen, this +hypothesis also rests on air, with no one fact to support it. Could we +suppose that Swift, like another Eugene Aram, went through the world with +a murder on his mind, it might be taken as a solution of the mystery; but, +as we cannot do this, we must be content with supposing that either some +one of the foregoing hypotheses, or some combination of them, is to be +accepted, or that the matter is altogether inscrutable. + +Such by constitution as we have described him--with an intellect strong as +iron, much acquired knowledge, an ambition all but insatiable, and a +decided desire to be wealthy--Swift, almost as a matter of course, flung +himself impetuously into that Whig and Tory controversy which was the +question paramount in his time. In that he laboured as only a man of his +powers could, bringing to the side of the controversy on which he chanced +to be (and we believe when he was on a side it was honestly because he +found a certain preponderance of right in it) a hard and ruthless vigour +which served it immensely. But from the first, or at all events after the +disappointments of a political career had been experienced by him, his +nature would not work merely in the narrow warfare of Whiggism and +Toryism, but overflowed in general bitterness of reflection on all the +customs and ways of humanity. The following passage in _Gulliver's Voyage +to Brobdingnag_, describing how the politics of Europe appeared to the +King of Brobdingnag, shows us Swift himself in his larger mood of thought. + + "This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into + the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; + wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was + so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise + reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess that, + after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved + country, of our trade, and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in + religion and parties in the state, the prejudices of his education + prevailed so far that he could not forbear taking me up in his right + hand, and, stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of + laughing asking me whether _I_ was a Whig or Tory. Then, turning to + his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff nearly + as tall as the mainmast of the 'Royal Sovereign,' he observed how + contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by + such diminutive insects as I; 'And yet,' says he, 'I dare engage + these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they + contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; + they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they + dispute, they cheat, they betray.' And thus he continued on, while my + colour came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble + country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the + arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, truth, the + pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated." + +Swift's writings, accordingly, divide themselves, in the main, into two +classes,--pamphlets, tracts, lampoons, and the like, bearing directly on +persons and topics of the day, and written with the ordinary purpose of a +partisan; and satires of a more general aim, directed, in the spirit of a +cynic philosopher, against humanity on the whole, or against particular +human classes, arrangements, and modes of thinking. In some of his +writings the politician and the general satirist are seen together. The +_Drapier's Letters_ and most of the poetical lampoons exhibit Swift in his +direct character as a party-writer; in the _Tale of a Tub_ we have the +ostensible purpose of a partisan masking a reserve of general scepticism; +in the _Battle of the Books_ we have a satire partly personal to +individuals, partly with a reference to a prevailing tone of opinion; in +the _Voyage to Laputa_ we have a satire on a great class of men; and in +the _Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag_, and still more in the story of +the _Houyhnhnms_ and _Yahoos_, we have human nature itself analysed and +laid bare. + +Swift took no care of his writings, never acknowledged some of them, never +collected them, and suffered them to find their way about the world as +chance, demand, and the piracy of publishers, directed. As all know, it is +in his character as a humourist, an inventor of the preposterous as a +medium for the reflective, and above all as a master of irony, that he +takes his place as one of the chiefs of English literature. There can be +no doubt that, as regards the literary form which he affected most, he +took hints from Rabelais as the greatest original in the realm of the +absurd. Sometimes, as in his description of the Strulbrugs in the _Voyage +to Laputa_, he approaches the ghastly power of that writer; but on the +whole there is more of stern English realism in him, and less of sheer +riot and wildness. Sometimes, however, Swift throws off the disguise of +the humourist, and speaks seriously and in his own name. On such occasions +we find ourselves in the presence of a man of strong, sagacious, and +thoroughly English mind, content, as is the habit of most Englishmen, with +vigorous proximate sense, expressed in plain and rather coarse idiom. For +the speculative he shows in these cases neither liking nor aptitude: he +takes obvious reasons and arguments as they come to hand, and uses them in +a robust, downright, Saxon manner. In one respect he stands out +conspicuously even among plain Saxon writers--his total freedom from cant. +Johnson's advice to Boswell, "above all things to clear his mind of cant," +was perhaps never better illustrated than in the case of Dean Swift. +Indeed, it might be given as a summary definition of Swift's character +that he had cleared his mind of cant without having succeeded in filling +the void with song. It was Swift's intense hatred of cant--cant in +religion, cant in morality, cant in literature--that occasioned many of +those peculiarities which shock people in his writings. His principle +being to view things as they are, with no regard to the accumulated cant +of orators and poets, he naturally prosecuted his investigations into +those classes of facts which orators and poets have omitted as unsuitable +for their purposes. If they had viewed men as Angels, he would view them +as Yahoos. If they had placed the springs of action among the fine +phrases and the sublimities, he would trace them down into their secret +connections with the bestial and the obscene. Hence, as much as for any of +those physiological reasons which some of his biographers assign for it, +his undisguised delight in filth. And hence, also, probably--since among +the forms of cant he included the traditional manner of speaking of women +in their relations to men--his studious contempt, whether in writing for +men or for women, of all the accustomed decencies. It was not only the +more obvious forms of cant, however, that Swift had in aversion. Even to +that minor form of cant which consists in the "trite" he gave no quarter. +Whatever was habitually said by the majority of people seemed to him, for +that very reason, not worthy of being said at all, much less put into +print. A considerable portion of his writings, as, for example, his +_Tritical Essay on the Faculties of the Mind_, and his _Art of Polite +Conversation_--in the one of which he strings together a series of the +most threadbare maxims and quotations to be found in books, offering the +compilation as a gravely original disquisition, while in the other he +imitates the insipidity of ordinary table-talk in society--may be regarded +as showing a systematic determination on his part to turn the trite into +ridicule. Hence, in his own writings, though he refrains from the +profound, he never falls into the commonplace. Apart from Swift's other +views, there are to be found scattered through his writings not a few +distinct propositions of an innovative character respecting our social +arrangements. We have seen his doctrine as to the education of women; and +we may mention, as another instance of the same kind, his denunciation of +the system of standing armies as incompatible with freedom. Curiously +enough, also, it was Swift's belief that, Yahoos though we are, the world +is always in the right. + + + + +HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY. + + + + +HOW LITERATURE MAY ILLUSTRATE HISTORY.[8] + + +Some of the ways in which Literature may illustrate History are obvious +enough. In the poems, the songs, the dramas, the novels, the satires, the +speeches, even the speculative treatises, of any time or nation, there is +imbedded a wealth of direct particulars respecting persons and events, +additional to the information that has been transmitted in the formal +records of that time or nation, or in its express histories of itself. "It +has often come to my ears that it is a saying too frequently in your mouth +that you have lived long enough for yourself:" so did Cicero, if the +speech in which the passage occurs is really his, address Caesar face to +face, in the height of his power, and not long before his assassination, +remonstrating with him on his melancholy, and his carelessness of a life +so precious to Rome and to the world. If the words are any way authentic, +what a flash they are into the mind of the great Roman in his last years, +when, _blase_ with wars and victories, and all the sensations that the +largest life on earth could afford, he walked about the streets of Rome, +consenting to live on so long as there might be need, but, so far as he +himself was concerned, heedless when the end might come, the conspirators +in a ring round him, the short scuffle, the first sharp stab of the +murderous knife! + +Let this pass as one instance of a valuable illustration of Biography and +History derived from casual reading. Literature teems with such: no one +can tell what particles of direct historical and biographical information +lie yet undiscovered and unappropriated in miscellaneous books. But there +is an extension of the use for the historian of the general literature of +the time with which he may be concerned. Not only does Literature teem +with yet unappropriated anecdotes respecting the persons and events of +most prominent interest in the consecutive history of the world; but quite +apart from this, the books, and especially the popular books, of any time, +are the richest possible storehouses of the kind of information the +historian wants. Whatever may be the main thread of his narrative, he has +to re-imagine more or less vividly what is called the general life of the +time, its manners, customs, humours, ways of thinking, the working of its +institutions, all the peculiarities of that patch of the never-ending, +ever-changing rush and bustle of human affairs, to-day above the ground, +and to-morrow under. Well, here in the books of the time he has his +materials and aids. They were formed in the conditions of the time; the +time played itself into them; they are saturated with its spirit; and +costumes, customs, modes of eating and drinking, town-life, country life, +the traveller on horseback to his inn, the shoutings of mobs in riot, what +grieved them, what they hated, what they laughed at, all are there. No +matter of what kind the book is, or what was its author's aim; it is, in +spite of itself, a bequest out of the very body and being of that time, +reminding us thereof by its structure through and through, and by a crust +of innumerable allusions. It has been remarked by Hallam, and by others, +how particularly useful in this way for the historian, as furnishing him +with social details of past times, are popular books more especially of +the humorous order--comic dramas and farces, poems of occasion, and novels +and works of prose-fiction generally. How the plays of Aristophanes admit +us to the public life of Athens! How, as we read the Satires and Epistles +of Horace, we see old Rome, like another huge London, only with taller +houses, and the masons mending the houses, and the poet himself, like a +modern official in Somerset House, trudging along to his office, jostled +by the crowds, and having to get out of the way of the ladders and the +falling rubbish, thinking all the while of his appointment with Maecenas! +Or, if it is the reign of George II. in Britain that we are studying, +where shall we find better illustration of much of the life, and +especially the London life, of that coarse, wig-wearing age, than in the +novels of Fielding and Smollett? + + * * * * * + +These, and perhaps other ways in which Literature may illustrate History, +are tolerably obvious, and need no farther exposition. There is, however, +a higher and somewhat more subtle service which Literature may perform +towards illustrating History and modifying our ideas of the Past. + +What the historian chiefly and finally wants to get at, through all his +researches, and by all his methods of research, is the _mind_ of the time +that interests him, its mode of thinking and feeling. Through all the +trappings, all the colours, all the costumes, all those circumstances of +the picturesque which delight us in our recollections of the past, this is +what we seek, or ought to seek. The trappings and picturesque +circumstances are but our optical helps in our quest of this; they are the +thickets of metaphor through which we push the quest, interpreting as we +go. The metaphors resolve themselves; and at last it is as if we had +reached that vital and essential something--a clear transparency, we seem +to fancy it, and yet a kind of throbbing transparency, a transparency +with pulses and powers--which we call the mind or spirit of the time. As +in the case of the individual, so in that of a time or a people, we seem +to have got at the end of our language when we use this word, mind or +spirit. We know what we mean, and it is the last thing that we can mean; +but, just on that account, it eludes description or definition. At best we +can go to and fro among a few convenient synonyms and images. Soul, mind, +spirit, these old and simple words are the strongest, the profoundest, the +surest; age cannot antiquate them, nor science undo them; they last with +the rocks, and still go beyond. But, having in view rather the operation +than the cause, we find a use also in such alternative phrases as "mode of +thinking," "mode of feeling and thinking," "habit of thought," "moral and +intellectual character or constitution," and the like. Or, again, if we +will have an image of that which from its nature is unimaginable, then, in +our efforts to be as pure and abstract as possible, we find ourselves +driven, as I have said, into a fancy of mind as a kind of clear aerial +transparency, unbounded or of indefinite bounds, and yet not a dead +transparency, but a transparency full of pulses, powers, motions, and +whirls, capable in a moment of clouding itself, ceasing to be a +transparency, and becoming some strange solid phantasmagory, as of a +landscape smiling in sunshine or a sky dark with a storm. Yet again there +is another and more mechanical conception of mind which may be of +occasional use. The thinking power, the thinking principle, the substance +which feels and thinks, are phrases for mind from of old: what if we were +to agree, for a momentary advantage, to call mind rudely the thinking +apparatus? What the advantage may be will presently appear. + +Mind, mode of thinking, mode of thinking and feeling, moral and +intellectual constitution, that mystic transparency full of pulses and +motions, this thinking apparatus,--whichever phrase or image we adopt, +there are certain appertaining considerations which we have to take along +with us. + +(1.) There is the consideration of differences of degree, quality, and +worth. Mind may be great or small, noble or mean, strong or weak; the mode +of thinking of one person or one time may be higher, finer, grander than +that of another; the moral and intellectual constitutions of diverse +individuals or peoples may present all varieties of the admirable and +lovely or the despicable and unlovely; the pulses and motions in that +mystic transparency which we fancy as one man's mind may be more vehement, +more awful, more rhythmical and musical, than are known in that which we +fancy as the mind of some other; the thinking apparatus which A possesses, +and by which he performs the business of his life, may be more massive, +more complex, more exquisite, capable of longer reaches and more superb +combinations, than that which has fallen to the lot of B. All this is +taken for granted everywhere; all our speech and conduct proceed on the +assumption. + +(2.) Somewhat less familiar, but not unimportant, is a consideration which +I may express by calling it the necessary instability of mind, its +variability from moment to moment. Your mind, my mind, every mind, is +continually sustaining modifications, disintegrations, reconstructions, by +all that acts upon it, by all it comes to know. We are much in the habit, +indeed, of speaking of experience, of different kinds of knowledge, as so +much material for the mind--material delivered into it, outspread as it +were on its floor, and which it, the lord and master, may survey, let lie +there for occasion, and now and then select from and employ. True! but not +the whole truth! The mind does not stand amid what it knows, as something +distinct and untouched; the mind is actually composed at any one moment of +all that it has learnt or felt up to that moment. Every new information +received, every piece of knowledge gained, every joy enjoyed, every sorrow +suffered, is then and there transmuted into mind, and becomes incorporate +with the prior central substance. To resort now to that mechanical figure +which I said might be found useful: every new piece of information, every +fact that one comes to apprehend, every probability brought before one in +the course of life, is not only so much new matter for the thinking +apparatus to lay hold of and work into the warp and woof of thought; it is +actually also a modification of the thinking apparatus itself. The mind +thinks _with_ what it knows; and, if you alter the knowledge in any one +whit, you alter the thinking instrumentality in proportion. Our whole +practice of education is based on this idea, and yet somehow the idea is +allowed to lurk. It may be brought out best perhaps by thinking what may +happen to a mind that has passed the period of education in the ordinary +sense. A person of mature age, let us say, betakes himself, for the first +time, to the study of geology. He gains thereby so much new and important +knowledge of a particular kind. Yes! but he does more. He modifies his +previous mind; he introduces a difference into his mode of thinking by a +positive addition to that instrumentality of notions _with_ which he +thinks. The geological conceptions which he has acquired become an organic +part of that reason, that intellect, which he applies to all things +whatsoever; he will think and imagine thenceforward with the help of an +added potency, and, consequently, never again precisely as he did before. +Generalize this hint, and let it run through history. The mind of Man +cannot remain the same through two consecutive generations, if only +because the knowledge which feeds and makes mind, the notions that +constitute the thinking power, are continually varying. In this age of a +hundred sciences, all tramping on Nature's outside with their flags up, +and marching her round and round, and searching her through and through +for her secrets, and flinging into the public forum their heaps of +results, how is it possible to call mind the same as it was a generation +or two ago, when the sciences were fewer, their industry more leisurely, +and their discoveries less frequent? Nay, but we may go back not a +generation or two only, but to generation beyond generation through a long +series, still, as we ascend, finding the sciences fewer, earth's load of +knowledge lighter, and man's very imagination of the physical universe +which he tenants cruder and more diminutive. Till two hundred years ago +the Mundus, or physical system of things, to even the most learned of men, +with scarcely an exception, was a finite spectacular sphere, or succession +of spheres, that of the fixed stars nearly outermost, wheeling round the +central earth for her pleasure; as we penetrate through still prior +centuries, even this finite spherical Mundus is seen to shrink and shrink +in men's fancies of it till a radius of some hundreds of miles would sweep +from the earth to the starry roof; back beyond that again the very notion +of sphericity disappears, and men were walking, as it seemed, on the upper +side of a flat disc, close under a concave of blue, travelled by fiery +caprices. How is it possible to regard man's mode of thinking and +feeling, man's mind, as in any way constant through such vicissitude in +man's notions respecting his very housing in space, and the whole +encircling touch of his physical belongings? + +(3.) A third consideration, however, administers a kind of corrective to +the last. It is that, though the last consideration is not unimportant, +its importance practically, and as far as the range of historic time is +concerned, may be easily exaggerated. We have supposed a person betaking +himself to the study of geology, and have truly said that his very mode of +thinking would be thereby affected, that his geological knowledge would +pass into his reason, and determine so far the very cast of his mind, the +form of his ability. Well, but he might have betaken himself to something +else; and who can tell, without definite investigation, but that out of +that something else he might have derived as much increase of his mental +power, or even greater? There are thousands of employments for all minds, +and, though all may select, and select differently, there are thousands +for all in common. Life itself, all the inevitable activity of life, is +one vast and most complex schooling. Books or no books, sciences or no +sciences, we live, we look, we love, we laugh, we fear, we hate, we +wonder; we are sons, we are brothers, we have friends; the seasons return, +the sun shines, the moon walks in beauty, the sea roars and beats the +land, the winds blow, the leaves fall; we are young, we grow old; we +commit others to their graves, we see somewhere the little grassy mound +which shall conceal ourselves:--is not this a large enough primary school +for all and sundry; are not these sufficient and everlasting rudiments? +That so it is we all recognise. Given some original force or goodness of +nature, and out of even this primary school, and from the teaching of +these common rudiments, may there not come, do there not come, minds +worthy of mark--the shrewd, keen wit, the upright and robust judgment, the +disposition tender and true, the bold and honest man? And though, for +perfection, the books and the sciences must be superadded, yet do not the +rudiments persist in constant over-proportion and incessant compulsory +repetition through all the process of culture, and is not the great result +of culture itself a reaction on the rudiments? And so, without prejudice +to our foregone conclusion that mind is variable with knowledge, that +every new science or body of notions conquered for the world modifies the +world's mode of thinking and feeling, alters the cast and the working +trick of its reason and imagination, we can yet fall back, for historic +time at least, on the notion of a human mind so essentially permanent and +traditional that we cannot decide by mere chronology where we may justly +be fondest of it, and certainly cannot assume that its latest individual +specimens, with all their advantages, are necessarily the ablest, the +noblest, or the cleverest. In fact, however we may reconcile it with our +theories of vital evolution and progressive civilization, we all +instinctively agree in this style of sentiment. Shakespeare lived and +died, we may say, in the pre-scientific period; he lived and died in the +belief of the fixedness of our earth in space and the diurnal wheeling +round her of the ten spectacular spheres. Not the less was he Shakespeare; +and none of us dares to say that there is now in the world, or has +recently been, a more superb thinking apparatus of its order than his mind +was, a spiritual transparency of larger diameter, or vivid with grander +gleamings and pulses. Two hundred and fifty years, therefore, chock-full +though they are of new knowledges and discoveries, have not been a single +knife-edge of visible advance in the world's power of producing splendid +individuals; and, if we add two hundred and fifty to that, and again two +hundred and fifty, and four times two hundred and fifty more without +stopping, still we cannot discern that there has been a knife-edge of +advance in that particular. For at this last remove we are among the +Romans, and beyond them there lie the Greeks; and side by side with both, +and beyond both, are other Mediterranean Indo-Europeans, and, away in +Asia, clumps and masses of various Orientals. For ease of reference, let +us go no farther than the Greeks. Thinking apparatuses of first-rate grip! +mental transparencies of large diameter and tremulous with great powers +and pulses! What do we say to Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, +Euripides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and the rest +of the great Hellenic cluster which these represent! True, their cosmology +was in a muddle (perhaps _ours_ is in a muddle too, for as little as we +think so); but somehow they contrived to be such that the world doubts to +this day whether, on the whole, at any time since, it has exhibited, in +such close grouping, such a constellation of spirits of the highest +magnitude. And the lesson enforced by this Greek instance may be enforced, +less blazingly perhaps, but still clearly, as by the light of scattered +stars, by instances from the whole course of historic time. Within that +range, despite the vicissitudes of the mode of human thought caused by +continued inquisitiveness and its results in new knowledges, despite the +change from age to age in mankind's very image of its own whereabouts in +space, and the extent of that whereabouts, and the complexity of the +entanglement in which it rolls, it is still true that you may probe at any +point with the sure expectation of finding at least _some_ minds as good +intrinsically, as strong, as noble, as valiant, as inventive, as any in +our own age of latest appearances and all the newest lights. I am aware, +of course, where the compensation may be sought. The philosophical +historian may contend that, though some minds of early ages have been as +able intrinsically as any minds of later ages, these later minds being +themselves the critics and judges, yet an enormous general progress may be +made out in the increased _number_ in the later ages of minds tolerably +able, in the heightening of the general level, in the more equable +diffusion of intelligence, in the gradual extension of freedom, and the +humanizing of manners and institutions. On that question I am not called +upon to enter now, nor is my opinion on it to be inferred from anything I +am now saying. I limit myself to the assertion that within historic time +we find what we are obliged to call an intrinsic co-equality of _some_ +minds at various successive points and at long-separated intervals, and +that consequently, if the human race _is_ gradually acquiring a power of +producing individuals more able than their ablest predecessors, the rate +of its law in this respect is so slow that 2,500 years have not made the +advance appreciable. The assertion is limited; it is reconcilable, I +believe, with the most absolute and extreme doctrine of evolution; but it +seems to be both important and curious, inasmuch as it has not yet been +sufficiently attended to in any of the phrasings of that doctrine that +have been speculatively put forward. No doctrine is rightly phrased, I +would submit, when, if it were true according to that phrasing, it would +be man's highest duty to proceed as if it weren't. + +History itself, the mere tradition and records of the human race, would +have authorized our assertion. Pericles, Epaminondas, Alexander the Great, +Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne: would not the authenticated tradition +of the lives and actions of those men, and others of their order, or of +other orders, prove that possible capacity of the individual mind has not, +for the last 2,500 years of our earth's history, been a mere affair of +chronological date? But it is Literature that reads us the lesson most +fully and convincingly. Some of those great men of action have left little +or no direct speech of themselves. They mingled their minds with the rage +of things around them; they worked, and strove, and died. But the books we +have from all periods, the poems, the songs, the treatises, the +pleadings--some of them from men great also in the world of action, but +most from men who only looked on, and thought, and tried to rule the +spirit, or to find how it might be ruled--these remain with us and can be +studied yet microscopically. If what the Historian wants to get at is the +mind of the time that interests him, or of the past generally, here it is +for him in no disguised form, but in actual specimens. Poems, treatises, +and the like, are actual transmitted _bits_ of the mind of the past; +every fragment of verse or prose from a former period preserves something +of the thought and sentiment of that period expressed by some one +belonging to it; the masterpieces of the world's literature are the +thought and feeling of successive generations expressed, in and for each +generation, by those who could express them best. What a purblind +perversity then it is for History, professing that its aim is to know the +mind or real life of the past, to be fumbling for that mind or life amid +old daggers, rusty iron caps and jingling jackets, and other such material +relics as the past has transmitted, or even groping for it, as ought to be +done most strictly, in statutes and charters and records, if all the while +those literary remains of the past are neglected from which the very thing +searched for stares us face to face! + + * * * * * + +There is a small corollary to our main proposition. It is that ages which +we are accustomed to regard as crude, barbarous, and uncivilized, may turn +out perhaps, on due investigation and a better construction of the +records, to have been not so crude and barbarous after all, but to have +contained a great deal of intrinsic humanity, interesting to us yet, and +capable, through all intervening time and difference, of folding itself +round our hearts. And here I will quit those great, but perhaps too +continually obtrusive, Greeks and Romans, and will take my examples, all +the homelier though they must be, from our own land and kindred. + +The Fourteenth Century in our island was not what we should now hold up as +a model age, a soft age, an orderly age, an instructed age, a pleasant age +for a lady or gentleman that has been accustomed to modern ideas and +modern comforts to be transferred back into. It was the age of the three +first Edwards, Richard II., and Henry IV. in England, and of the Wallace +Interregnum, Bruce, David II., and the two first Stuarts in Scotland. Much +was done in it, as these names will suggest, that has come down as +picturesque story and stirring popular legend. It is an age, on that +account, in which schoolboys and other plain uncritical readers of both +nations revel with peculiar relish. Critical inquirers, too, and real +students of history, especially of late, have found it an age worth their +while, and have declared it full of important facts and powerful +characters. Not the less the inveterate impression among a large number of +persons of a rapid modern way of thinking is that all this interesting +vision of the England and Scotland of the fourteenth century is mere +poetical glamour or antiquarian make-believe, and that the real state of +affairs was one of mud, mindlessness, fighting and scramble generally, no +tea and no newspapers, but plenty of hanging, and murder almost _ad +libitum_. Now these are most wrong-headed persons, and they might be +beaten black and blue by sheer force of records. But out of kindliness one +may take a gentler method with them, and try to bring them right by +aesthetic suasion. It so chances, for example, that there are literary +remains of the fourteenth century, both English and Scottish, and that the +authors of the chief of these were Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English +literature proper, and John Barbour, the father of the English literature +of North Britain. Let us take a few bits from Chaucer and Barbour. +Purposely, we shall take bits that may be already familiar. + +Here is Chaucer's often-quoted description of the scholar, or typical +student of Oxford University, from the Prologue to his _Canterbury +Tales_:-- + + A Clerk there was of Oxenford also, + That unto logic hadde long ygo, + As leane was his horse as is a rake, + And _he_ was not right fat, I undertake; + But looked hollow, and thereto soberly. + Full threadbare was his overest courtepy; + For he had getten him yet no benefice, + Ne was so worldly for to have office; + For him was liefer have at his bed's head + A twenty books, clothed in black and red, + Of Aristotle and his philosophie + Than robes rich, or fiddle, or sautrie. + But, albe that he was a philosopher, + Yet had he but a little gold in coffer; + But all that he might of his friendes hent + On bookes and on learning he it spent, + And busily gan for the soules pray + Of hem that gave him wherewith to scholay. + Of study took he most cure and most heed; + Not oe word spak he more than was need; + And that was said in form and reverence, + And short and quick, and full of high sentence; + Souning in moral virtue was his speech, + And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach. + +Or take an out-of-doors' scene from one of Chaucer's reputed minor poems. +It is a description of a grove or wood in spring, or early summer:-- + + In which were oakes great, straight as a line, + Under the which the grass, so fresh of hue, + Was newly sprung, and an eight foot or nine + Every tree well fro his fellow grew, + With branches broad, laden with leaves new, + That sprungen out agen the sunne sheen, + Some very red, and some a glad light green. + +Or, for a tidy scene indoors, take this from another poem:-- + + And, sooth to sayen, my chamber was + Full well depainted, and with glass + Were all the windows well yglazed + Full clear, and not an hole ycrased, + That to behold it was great joy; + For wholly all the story of Troy + Was in the glazing ywrought thus, + Of Hector and of King Priamus, + Of Achilles and of King Laomedon, + And eke of Medea and Jason, + Of Paris, Helen, and Lavine; + And all the walls with colours fine + Weren paint, both text and glose, + And all the Romaunt of the Rose: + My windows weren shut each one, + And through the glass the sunne shone + Upon my bed with brighte beams. + +Or take these stanzas of weighty ethical sententiousness (usually printed +as Chaucer's, but whether his or not does not matter):-- + + Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness; + Suffice unto thy good, though it be small; + For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness, + Press hath envy, and weal is blent in all; + Savour no more than thee behove shall; + Rede well thyself that other folk canst rede; + And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede. + + Paine thee not each crooked to redress + In trust of her that turneth as a ball. + Great rest standeth in little business; + Beware also to spurn against an awl; + Strive not as doth a crocke with a wall; + Deeme thyself that deemest others dead; + And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede. + + That thee is sent receive in buxomness; + The wrestling of this world asketh a fall; + Here is no home, here is but wilderness: + Forth, pilgrim! forth, beast, out of thy stall! + Look up on high, and thanke God of all: + Waive thy lusts, and let thy ghost thee lead; + And truth shall thee deliver, it is no drede. + +Or, finally, take a little bit of Chaucer's deep, keen slyness, when he is +speaking smilingly about himself and his own poetry. He has represented +himself as standing in the House or Temple of Fame, observing company +after company going up to the goddess, and petitioning for renown in the +world for what they have done. Some she grants what they ask, others she +dismisses crestfallen, and Chaucer thinks the _levee_ over:-- + + With that I gan about to wend, + For one that stood right at my back + Methought full goodly to me spak, + And said, "Friend, what is thy name? + Art _thou_ come hither to have fame?" + "Nay, forsoothe, friend," quoth I; + "I came not hither, grammercy, + For no such cause, by my head. + Sufficeth me, as I were dead, + That no wight have _my_ name in hand: + I wot myself best how I stand; + For what I dree or what I think + I will myselfe all it drink, + Certain for the more part, + As farforth as I ken mine art!" + +Chaucer ranks to this day as one of the very greatest and finest minds in +the entire literature of the English speech, and stands therefore on a +level far higher than can be assumed for his contemporary Barbour. But +Barbour was a most creditable old worthy too. Let us have a scrap or two +from his _Bruce_. Who does not know the famous passage which is the very +key-note of that poem? One is never tired of quoting it:-- + + Ah! freedom is a noble thing; + Freedom makes man to have liking: + Freedom all solace to man gives; + He lives at ease that freely lives. + A noble heart may have nane ease, + Ne ellys nought that may him please + Gif freedom faileth; for free liking + Is yearnit ower all other thing; + Nor he that aye has livit free + May not know weel the propertie, + The anger, ne the wretched doom, + That is couplit to foul thirldom; + But, gif he had essayit it, + Then all perquere he suld it wit, + And suld think freedom mair to prize + Than all the gold in the warld that is. + +Or take the portrait of the good Sir James, called "The Black Douglas," +the chief companion and adherent of Bruce, introduced near the beginning +of the poem, where he is described as a young man living moodily at St. +Andrews before the Bruce revolt:-- + + Ane weel great while there dwellit he: + All men loved him for his bountie; + For he was of full fair effere, + Wise, courteous, and debonair; + Large and lovand also was he, + And ower all thing loved loyauty. + Loyautie to love is gretumly; + Through loyautie men lives richtwisely; + With a virtue of loyautie + Ane man may yet sufficiand be; + And, but loyautie, may nane have prize, + Whether he be wicht or be he wise; + For, where _it_ failis, nae virtue + May be of prize, ne of value + To mak ane man sae good that he + May simply callit good man be. + He was in all his deedes leal; + For him dedeignit not to deal + With treachery ne with falset. + His heart on high honour was set, + And him contened in sic manere + That all him loved that war him near. + But he was not sae fair that we + Suld speak greatly of his beautie. + In visage was he somedeal grey, + And had black hair, as I heard say; + But of his limbs he was well made, + With banes great and shoulders braid; + His body was well made leanlie, + As they that saw him said to me. + When he was blythe, he was lovely + And meek and sweet in company; + But wha in battle micht him see + All other countenance had he. + And in speech lispit he somedeal; + But that set him richt wonder weel. + To Good Hector of Troy micht he + In mony thinges likenit be. + Hector had black hair as he had, + And stark limbes and richt weel made, + And lispit also as did he, + And was fulfillit of loyautie, + And was courteous, and wise, and wicht. + +My purpose in quoting these passages from Chaucer and Barbour will have +been anticipated. Let me, however, state it in brief. We hear sometimes in +these days of a certain science, or rather portion of a more general +science, which takes to itself the name of _Social Statics_, and +professes, under that name, to have for its business--I give the very +phrase of those who define it--the investigation of "possible social +simultaneities." That is to say, there may be a science of what can +possibly go along with what in any social state or stage; or, to put it +otherwise, any one fact or condition of a state of society being given, +there may be inferred from that fact or condition some of the other facts +and conditions that must necessarily have co-existed with it. Thus at +length perhaps, by continued inference, the whole state of an old society +might be imaged out, just as Cuvier, from the sight of one bone, could +infer with tolerable accuracy the general structure of the animal. Well, +will _Social Statics_ be so good as to take the foregoing passages, and +whirr out of them their "possible social simultaneities"? Were this done, +I should be surprised if the England and Scotland of the fourteenth +century were to turn out so very unlovely, so atrociously barbarian, after +all. These passages are actual transmitted bits of the English and +Scottish mind of that age, and surely the substance from which they are +extracts cannot have been so very coarse or bad. Where such sentiments +existed and were expressed, where the men that could express them lived +and were appreciated, the surrounding medium of thought, of institutions, +and of customs, must have been to correspond. There must have been truth, +and honour, and courtesy, and culture, round those men; there must have +been high heart, shrewd sense, delicate art, gentle behaviour, and, in one +part of the island at least, a luxuriant complexity of most subtle and +exquisite circumstance. + + * * * * * + +The conclusion which we have thus reached vindicates that mood of mind +towards the whole historical past which we find to have been actually the +mood of all the great masters of literature whenever they have ranged back +in the past for their themes. When Shakespeare writes of Richard II., who +lived two hundred years before his own time, does he not overleap those +two hundred years as a mere nothing, plunge in among Richard's Englishmen +as intrinsically not different from so many great Elizabethans, make them +talk and act as co-equals in whom Elizabethans could take an interest, and +even fill the mouth of the weak monarch himself with soliloquies of +philosophic melancholy and the kingliest verbal splendours? And so when +the same poet goes back into a still remoter antique, as in the council of +the Greek chiefs in his _Troilus and Cressida_. We speak of Shakespeare's +anachronisms in such cases. There they are certainly for the critic to +note; but they only serve to bring out more clearly his main principle in +his art--his sense or instinct, for all historic time, of a grand +over-matching synchronism. And, indeed, without something of this +instinct--this sense of an intrinsic traditional humanity persisting +through particular progressive variations, this belief in a co-equality of +at least some minds through all the succession of human ages in what we +call the historic period--what were the past of mankind to us much more +than a history of dogs or ruminants? Nay, and with that measure with which +we mete out to others, with the same measure shall it not be meted out to +ourselves? If to be dead is to be inferior, and if to be long dead is to +be despicable, to the generation in possession, shall not we who are in +possession now have passed into the state of inferiority to-morrow, with +all the other defunct beyond us, and will not a time come when some far +future generation will lord it on the earth, and _we_ shall lie deep, deep +down, among the strata of the despicable? + + +THE END. + + +LONDON; R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS. + + + + +Footnotes: + +[1] _Fraser's Magazine_, Dec. 1844. + +[2] _British Quarterly Review_, November, 1852.--1. "Shakspeare and His +Times." By M. Guizot. 1852.--2. "Shakspeare's Dramatic Art; and his +Relation to Calderon and Goethe." Translated from the German of Dr. +Hermann Ulrici. 1846.--3. "Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and +Soret." Translated from the German by John Oxenford. 2 vols. 1850. + +[3] According to Mr. Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, it is a mistake to +fancy that Goethe was tall. He seemed taller than he really was. + +[4] This saying of Steevens, though still repeated in books, has lost its +force with the public. The Lives of Shakespeare by Mr. Halliwell and Mr. +Charles Knight, written on such different principles, have effectually +dissipated the old impression. Mr. Knight, by his use of the principle of +synchronism, and his accumulation of picturesque details, in his Biography +of Shakespeare, has left the public without excuse, if they still believe +in Steevens. + +[5] _North British Review_, February 1852:--"The Works of John Milton." 8 +vols. London: Pickering. 1851. + +[6] _British Quarterly Review_, July, 1854. The Annotated Edition of the +English Poets: Edited by Robert Bell. "Poetical Works of John Dryden." 3 +vols. London. 1854. + +[7] _British Quarterly Review_, October 1854.--1. "The English Humourists +of the Eighteenth Century." A Series of Lectures. By W. M. Thackeray. +London: 1853. 2. "The Life of Swift." By Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh: +1848. + +[8] _Macmillan's Magazine_, July 1871. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + +The following misprints have been corrected: + "entersprie" corrected to "enterprise" (page 20) + "ancy" corrected to "fancy" (page 66) + "extravagan s" corrected to "extravagances" (page 222) + "hpyotheses" corrected to "hypotheses" (page 292) + +Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and +hyphenation have been retained from the original. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHER'S, +MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S*** + + +******* This file should be named 35438.txt or 35438.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/4/3/35438 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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