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diff --git a/4037.txt b/4037.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7437822 --- /dev/null +++ b/4037.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6721 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, by +Walter Horatio Pater + +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: Appreciations, with an Essay on Style + +Author: Walter Horatio Pater + +Posting Date: June 7, 2009 [EBook #4037] +Release Date: May, 2003 +First Posted: October 19, 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPRECIATIONS, ESSAY ON STYLE *** + + + + +Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +APPRECIATIONS, WITH AN ESSAY ON STYLE + +By WALTER HORATIO PATER + + + + +E-text Editor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Electronic Version 1.0 / Date +10-12-01 + + +NOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR: + +Reliability: Although I have done my best to ensure that the text you +read is error-free in comparison with an exact reprint of the standard +edition--Macmillan's 1910 Library Edition--please exercise scholarly +caution in using it. It is not intended as a substitute for the +printed original but rather as a searchable supplement. My e-texts may +prove convenient substitutes for hard-to-get works in a course where +both instructor and students accept the possibility of some +imperfections in the text, but if you are writing a scholarly article, +dissertation, or book, you should use the standard hard-copy editions +of any works you cite. + +Pagination and Paragraphing: To avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, I +have transferred original pagination to brackets. A bracketed numeral +such as [22] indicates that the material immediately following the +number marks the beginning of the relevant page. I have preserved +paragraph structure except for first-line indentation. + +Hyphenation: I have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-text +does not require line-end or page-end hyphenation. + +Greek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliterated +Pater's Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original Greek, +it can be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a +Victorianist archive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater +and many other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions. + + + + +CONTENTS + +Style: 5-38 + +Wordsworth: 39-64 + +Coleridge: 65-104 + +Charles Lamb: 105-123 + +Sir Thomas Browne: 124-160 + +"Love's Labours Lost": 161-169 + +"Measure for Measure": 170-184 + +Shakespeare's English Kings: 185-204 + +Dante Gabriel Rossetti: 205-218 + +Feuillet's "La Morte": 219-240 + +Postscript: 241-261 + + + + +APPRECIATIONS + + +STYLE + +[5] SINCE all progress of mind consists for the most part in +differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure and complex object +into its component aspects, it is surely the stupidest of losses to +confuse things which right reason has put asunder, to lose the sense of +achieved distinctions, the distinction between poetry and prose, for +instance, or, to speak more exactly, between the laws and +characteristic excellences of verse and prose composition. On the +other hand, those who have dwelt most emphatically on the distinction +between prose and verse, prose and poetry, may sometimes have been +tempted to limit the proper functions of prose too narrowly; and this +again is at least false economy, as being, in effect, the renunciation +of a certain means or faculty, in a world where after all we must needs +make the most of things. Critical efforts to limit art a priori, by +anticipations regarding the natural incapacity of the material with +which this or that artist works, as the sculptor with solid form, or +the prose-writer with the ordinary [6] language of men, are always +liable to be discredited by the facts of artistic production; and while +prose is actually found to be a coloured thing with Bacon, picturesque +with Livy and Carlyle, musical with Cicero and Newman, mystical and +intimate with Plato and Michelet and Sir Thomas Browne, exalted or +florid, it may be, with Milton and Taylor, it will be useless to +protest that it can be nothing at all, except something very tamely and +narrowly confined to mainly practical ends--a kind of "good +round-hand;" as useless as the protest that poetry might not touch +prosaic subjects as with Wordsworth, or an abstruse matter as with +Browning, or treat contemporary life nobly as with Tennyson. In +subordination to one essential beauty in all good literary style, in +all literature as a fine art, as there are many beauties of poetry so +the beauties of prose are many, and it is the business of criticism to +estimate them as such; as it is good in the criticism of verse to look +for those hard, logical, and quasi-prosaic excellences which that too +has, or needs. To find in the poem, amid the flowers, the allusions, +the mixed perspectives, of Lycidas for instance, the thought, the +logical structure:--how wholesome! how delightful! as to identify in +prose what we call the poetry, the imaginative power, not treating it +as out of place and a kind of vagrant intruder, but by way of an +estimate of its rights, that is, of its achieved powers, there. + +[7] Dryden, with the characteristic instinct of his age, loved to +emphasise the distinction between poetry and prose, the protest against +their confusion with each other, coming with somewhat diminished effect +from one whose poetry was so prosaic. In truth, his sense of prosaic +excellence affected his verse rather than his prose, which is not only +fervid, richly figured, poetic, as we say, but vitiated, all +unconsciously, by many a scanning line. Setting up correctness, that +humble merit of prose, as the central literary excellence, he is really +a less correct writer than he may seem, still with an imperfect mastery +of the relative pronoun. It might have been foreseen that, in the +rotations of mind, the province of poetry in prose would find its +assertor; and, a century after Dryden, amid very different intellectual +needs, and with the need therefore of great modifications in literary +form, the range of the poetic force in literature was effectively +enlarged by Wordsworth. The true distinction between prose and poetry +he regarded as the almost technical or accidental one of the absence or +presence of metrical beauty, or, say! metrical restraint; and for him +the opposition came to be between verse and prose of course; but, as +the essential dichotomy in this matter, between imaginative and +unimaginative writing, parallel to De Quincey's distinction between +"the literature of power and the literature of knowledge," in the +former of which the composer gives us [8] not fact, but his peculiar +sense of fact, whether past or present. + +Dismissing then, under sanction of Wordsworth, that harsher opposition +of poetry to prose, as savouring in fact of the arbitrary psychology of +the last century, and with it the prejudice that there can be but one +only beauty of prose style, I propose here to point out certain +qualities of all literature as a fine art, which, if they apply to the +literature of fact, apply still more to the literature of the +imaginative sense of fact, while they apply indifferently to verse and +prose, so far as either is really imaginative--certain conditions of +true art in both alike, which conditions may also contain in them the +secret of the proper discrimination and guardianship of the peculiar +excellences of either. + +The line between fact and something quite different from external fact +is, indeed, hard to draw. In Pascal, for instance, in the persuasive +writers generally, how difficult to define the point where, from time +to time, argument which, if it is to be worth anything at all, must +consist of facts or groups of facts, becomes a pleading--a theorem no +longer, but essentially an appeal to the reader to catch the writer's +spirit, to think with him, if one can or will--an expression no longer +of fact but of his sense of it, his peculiar intuition of a world, +prospective, or discerned below the faulty conditions of the present, +in either case changed somewhat from the actual [9] world. In science, +on the other hand, in history so far as it conforms to scientific rule, +we have a literary domain where the imagination may be thought to be +always an intruder. And as, in all science, the functions of +literature reduce themselves eventually to the transcribing of fact, so +all the excellences of literary form in regard to science are reducible +to various kinds of pains-taking; this good quality being involved in +all "skilled work" whatever, in the drafting of an act of parliament, +as in sewing. Yet here again, the writer's sense of fact, in history +especially, and in all those complex subjects which do but lie on the +borders of science, will still take the place of fact, in various +degrees. Your historian, for instance, with absolutely truthful +intention, amid the multitude of facts presented to him must needs +select, and in selecting assert something of his own humour, something +that comes not of the world without but of a vision within. So Gibbon +moulds his unwieldy material to a preconceived view. Livy, Tacitus, +Michelet, moving full of poignant sensibility amid the records of the +past, each, after his own sense, modifies--who can tell where and to +what degree?--and becomes something else than a transcriber; each, as +he thus modifies, passing into the domain of art proper. For just in +proportion as the writer's aim, consciously or unconsciously, comes to +be the transcribing, not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his +sense [10] of it, he becomes an artist, his work fine art; and good art +(as I hope ultimately to show) in proportion to the truth of his +presentment of that sense; as in those humbler or plainer functions of +literature also, truth--truth to bare fact, there--is the essence of +such artistic quality as they may have. Truth! there can be no merit, +no craft at all, without that. And further, all beauty is in the long +run only fineness of truth, or what we call expression, the finer +accommodation of speech to that vision within. + +--The transcript of his sense of fact rather than the fact, as being +preferable, pleasanter, more beautiful to the writer himself. In +literature, as in every other product of human skill, in the moulding +of a bell or a platter for instance, wherever this sense asserts +itself, wherever the producer so modifies his work as, over and above +its primary use or intention, to make it pleasing (to himself, of +course, in the first instance) there, "fine" as opposed to merely +serviceable art, exists. Literary art, that is, like all art which is +in any way imitative or reproductive of fact--form, or colour, or +incident--is the representation of such fact as connected with soul, of +a specific personality, in its preferences, its volition and power. + +Such is the matter of imaginative or artistic literature--this +transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinite variety, as +modified by human preference in all its infinitely varied [11] forms. +It will be good literary art not because it is brilliant or sober, or +rich, or impulsive, or severe, but just in proportion as its +representation of that sense, that soul-fact, is true, verse being only +one department of such literature, and imaginative prose, it may be +thought, being the special art of the modern world. That imaginative +prose should be the special and opportune art of the modern world +results from two important facts about the latter: first, the chaotic +variety and complexity of its interests, making the intellectual issue, +the really master currents of the present time incalculable--a +condition of mind little susceptible of the restraint proper to verse +form, so that the most characteristic verse of the nineteenth century +has been lawless verse; and secondly, an all-pervading naturalism, a +curiosity about everything whatever as it really is, involving a +certain humility of attitude, cognate to what must, after all, be the +less ambitious form of literature. And prose thus asserting itself as +the special and privileged artistic faculty of the present day, will +be, however critics may try to narrow its scope, as varied in its +excellence as humanity itself reflecting on the facts of its latest +experience--an instrument of many stops, meditative, observant, +descriptive, eloquent, analytic, plaintive, fervid. Its beauties will +be not exclusively "pedestrian": it will exert, in due measure, all the +varied charms of poetry, down to the rhythm which, as in Cicero, [12] +or Michelet, or Newman, at their best, gives its musical value to every +syllable.* + +The literary artist is of necessity a scholar, and in what he . +proposes to do will have in mind, first of all, the scholar and the +scholarly conscience--the male conscience in this matter, as we must +think it, under a system of education which still to so large an extent +limits real scholarship to men. In his self-criticism, he supposes +always that sort of reader who will go (full of eyes) warily, +considerately, though without consideration for him, over the ground +which the female conscience traverses so lightly, so amiably. For the +material in which he works is no more a creation of his own than the +sculptor's marble. Product of a myriad various minds and contending +tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its +own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary +recognition of which scholarship consists. A writer, full of a matter +he is before all things anxious to express, may think of those laws, +the limitations of vocabulary, structure, and the like, as a +restriction, but if a [13] real artist will find in them an +opportunity. His punctilious observance of the proprieties of his +medium will diffuse through all he writes a general air of sensibility, +of refined usage. Exclusiones debitae--the exclusions, or rejections, +which nature demands--we know how large a part these play, according to +Bacon, in the science of nature. In a somewhat changed sense, we might +say that the art of the scholar is summed up in the observance of those +rejections demanded by the nature of his medium, the material he must +use. Alive to the value of an atmosphere in which every term finds its +utmost degree of expression, and with all the jealousy of a lover of +words, he will resist a constant tendency on the part of the majority +of those who use them to efface the distinctions of language, the +facility of writers often reinforcing in this respect the work of the +vulgar. He will feel the obligation not of the laws only, but of those +affinities, avoidances, those mere preferences, of his language, which +through the associations of literary history have become a part of its +nature, prescribing the rejection of many a neology, many a license, +many a gipsy phrase which might present itself as actually expressive. +His appeal, again, is to the scholar, who has great experience in +literature, and will show no favour to short-cuts, or hackneyed +illustration, or an affectation of learning designed for the unlearned. +Hence a contention, a sense [14] of self-restraint and renunciation, +having for the susceptible reader the effect of a challenge for minute +consideration; the attention of the writer, in every minutest detail, +being a pledge that it is worth the reader's while to be attentive too, +that the writer is dealing scrupulously with his instrument, and +therefore, indirectly, with the reader himself also, that he has the +science of the instrument he plays on, perhaps, after all, with a +freedom which in such case will be the freedom of a master. + +For meanwhile, braced only by those restraints, he is really +vindicating his liberty in the making of a vocabulary, an entire system +of composition, for himself, his own true manner; and when we speak of +the manner of a true master we mean what is essential in his art. +Pedantry being only the scholarship of le cuistre (we have no English +equivalent) he is no pedant, and does but show his intelligence of the +rules of language in his freedoms with it, addition or expansion, which +like the spontaneities of manner in a well-bred person will still +further illustrate good taste.--The right vocabulary! Translators have +not invariably seen how all-important that is in the work of +translation, driving for the most part at idiom or construction; +whereas, if the original be first-rate, one's first care should be with +its elementary particles, Plato, for instance, being often reproducible +by an exact following, with no variation in structure, of word after +word, as [15] the pencil follows a drawing under tracing-paper, so only +each word or syllable be not of false colour, to change my illustration +a little. + +Well! that is because any writer worth translating at all has winnowed +and searched through his vocabulary, is conscious of the words he would +select in systematic reading of a dictionary, and still more of the +words he would reject were the dictionary other than Johnson's; and +doing this with his peculiar sense of the world ever in view, in search +of an instrument for the adequate expression of that, he begets a +vocabulary faithful to the colouring of his own spirit, and in the +strictest sense original. That living authority which language needs +lies, in truth, in its scholars, who recognising always that every +language possesses a genius, a very fastidious genius, of its own, +expand at once and purify its very elements, which must needs change +along with the changing thoughts of living people. Ninety years ago, +for instance, great mental force, certainly, was needed by Wordsworth, +to break through the consecrated poetic associations of a century, and +speak the language that was his, that was to become in a measure the +language of the next generation. But he did it with the tact of a +scholar also. English, for a quarter of a century past, has been +assimilating the phraseology of pictorial art; for half a century, the +phraseology of the great German metaphysical movement of eighty years +ago; in part also the [16] language of mystical theology: and none but +pedants will regret a great consequent increase of its resources. For +many years to come its enterprise may well lie in the naturalisation of +the vocabulary of science, so only it be under the eye of a sensitive +scholarship--in a liberal naturalisation of the ideas of science too, +for after all the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full, +rich, complex matter to grapple with. The literary artist, therefore, +will be well aware of physical science; science also attaining, in its +turn, its true literary ideal. And then, as the scholar is nothing +without the historic sense, he will be apt to restore not really +obsolete or really worn-out words, but the finer edge of words still in +use: ascertain, communicate, discover--words like these it has been +part of our "business" to misuse. And still, as language was made for +man, he will be no authority for correctnesses which, limiting freedom +of utterance, were yet but accidents in their origin; as if one vowed +not to say "its," which ought to have been in Shakespeare; "his" +"hers," for inanimate objects, being but a barbarous and really +inexpressive survival. Yet we have known many things like this. Racy +Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix +readily with those long, savoursome, Latin words, rich in "second +intention." In this late day certainly, no critical process can be +conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism we +have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time. How +illustrative of monosyllabic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the +phraseology of science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the +writings of Tennyson; yet with what a fine, fastidious scholarship +throughout! + +A scholar writing for the scholarly, he will of course leave something +to the willing intelligence of his reader. "To go preach to the first +passer-by," says Montaigne, "to become tutor to the ignorance of the +first I meet, is a thing I abhor;" a thing, in fact, naturally +distressing to the scholar, who will therefore ever be shy of offering +uncomplimentary assistance to the reader's wit. To really strenuous +minds there is a pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a continuous +effort on their part, to be rewarded by securer and more intimate grasp +of the author's sense. Self-restraint, a skilful economy of means, +ascesis, that too has a beauty of its own; and for the reader supposed +there will be an aesthetic satisfaction in that frugal closeness of +style which makes the most of a word, in the exaction from every +sentence of a precise relief, in the just spacing out of word to +thought, in the logically filled space connected always with the +delightful sense of difficulty overcome. + +Different classes of persons, at different times, make, of course, very +various demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not +[18] only scholars, but all disinterested lovers of books, will always +look to it, as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral +refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world. A perfect poem +like Lycidas, a perfect fiction like Esmond, the perfect handling of a +theory like Newman's Idea of a University, has for them something of +the uses of a religious "retreat." Here, then, with a view to the +central need of a select few, those "men of a finer thread" who have +formed and maintain the literary ideal, everything, every component +element, will have undergone exact trial, and, above all, there will be +no uncharacteristic or tarnished or vulgar decoration, permissible +ornament being for the most part structural, or necessary. As the +painter in his picture, so the artist in his book, aims at the +production by honourable artifice of a peculiar atmosphere. "The +artist," says Schiller, "may be known rather by what he omits"; and in +literature, too, the true artist may be best recognised by his tact of +omission. For to the grave reader words too are grave; and the +ornamental word, the figure, the accessory form or colour or reference, +is rarely content to die to thought precisely at the right moment, but +will inevitably linger awhile, stirring a long "brain-wave" behind it +of perhaps quite alien associations. + +Just there, it may be, is the detrimental tendency of the sort of +scholarly attentiveness [19] of mind I am recommending. But the true +artist allows for it. He will remember that, as the very word ornament +indicates what is in itself non-essential, so the "one beauty" of all +literary style is of its very essence, and independent, in prose and +verse alike, of all removable decoration; that it may exist in its +fullest lustre, as in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, for instance, or in +Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, in a composition utterly unadorned, +with hardly a single suggestion of visibly beautiful things. Parallel, +allusion, the allusive way generally, the flowers in the garden:--he +knows the narcotic force of these upon the negligent intelligence to +which any diversion, literally, is welcome, any vagrant intruder, +because one can go wandering away with it from the immediate subject. +Jealous, if he have a really quickening motive within, of all that does +not hold directly to that, of the facile, the otiose, he will never +depart from the strictly pedestrian process, unless he gains a +ponderable something thereby. Even assured of its congruity, he will +still question its serviceableness. Is it worth while, can we afford, +to attend to just that, to just that figure or literary reference, just +then?--Surplusage! he will dread that, as the runner on his muscles. +For in truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, +from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle +of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of [20] the finished +work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michelangelo's fancy, in the +rough-hewn block of stone. + +And what applies to figure or flower must be understood of all other +accidental or removable ornaments of writing whatever; and not of +specific ornament only, but of all that latent colour and imagery which +language as such carries in it. A lover of words for their own sake, +to whom nothing about them is unimportant, a minute and constant +observer of their physiognomy, he will be on the alert not only for +obviously mixed metaphors of course, but for the metaphor that is mixed +in all our speech, though a rapid use may involve no cognition of it. +Currently recognising the incident, the colour, the physical elements +or particles in words like absorb, consider, extract, to take the first +that occur, he will avail himself of them, as further adding to the +resources of expression. The elementary particles of language will be +realised as colour and light and shade through his scholarly living in +the full sense of them. Still opposing the constant degradation of +language by those who use it carelessly, he will not treat coloured +glass as if it were clear; and while half the world is using figure +unconsciously, will be fully aware not only of all that latent +figurative texture in speech, but of the vague, lazy, half-formed +personification--a rhetoric, depressing, and worse than nothing, [21] +because it has no really rhetorical motive--which plays so large a part +there, and, as in the case of more ostentatious ornament, scrupulously +exact of it, from syllable to syllable, its precise value. + +So far I have been speaking of certain conditions of the literary art +arising out of the medium or material in or upon which it works, the +essential qualities of language and its aptitudes for contingent +ornamentation, matters which define scholarship as science and good +taste respectively. They are both subservient to a more intimate +quality of good style: more intimate, as coming nearer to the artist +himself. The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent +to the true literary artist, except because, in literary as in all +other art, structure is all-important, felt, or painfully missed, +everywhere?--that architectural conception of work, which foresees the +end in the beginning and never loses sight of it, and in every part is +conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with +undiminished vigour, unfold and justify the first--a condition of +literary art, which, in contradistinction to another quality of the +artist himself, to be spoken of later, I shall call the necessity of +mind in style. + +An acute philosophical writer, the late Dean Mansel (a writer whose +works illustrate the literary beauty there may be in closeness, and +with obvious repression or economy of a fine [22] rhetorical gift) +wrote a book, of fascinating precision in a very obscure subject, to +show that all the technical laws of logic are but means of securing, in +each and all of its apprehensions, the unity, the strict identity with +itself, of the apprehending mind. All the laws of good writing aim at +a similar unity or identity of the mind in all the processes by which +the word is associated to its import. The term is right, and has its +essential beauty, when it becomes, in a manner, what it signifies, as +with the names of simple sensations. To give the phrase, the sentence, +the structural member, the entire composition, song, or essay, a +similar unity with its subject and with itself:--style is in the right +way when it tends towards that. All depends upon the original unity, +the vital wholeness and identity, of the initiatory apprehension or +view. So much is true of all art, which therefore requires always its +logic, its comprehensive reason--insight, foresight, retrospect, in +simultaneous action--true, most of all, of the literary art, as being +of all the arts most closely cognate to the abstract intelligence. +Such logical coherency may be evidenced not merely in the lines of +composition as a whole, but in the choice of a single word, while it by +no means interferes with, but may even prescribe, much variety, in the +building of the sentence for instance, or in the manner, argumentative, +descriptive, discursive, of this or that [23] part or member of the +entire design. The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's +expression of its needs, may alternate with the long-contending, +victoriously intricate sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity +of a single word, relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look +closely, you can see much contrivance, much adjustment, to bring a +highly qualified matter into compass at one view. For the literary +architecture, if it is to be rich and expressive, involves not only +foresight of the end in the beginning, but also development or growth +of design, in the process of execution, with many irregularities, +surprises, and afterthoughts; the contingent as well as the necessary +being subsumed under the unity of the whole. As truly, to the lack of +such architectural design, of a single, almost visual, image, +vigorously informing an entire, perhaps very intricate, composition, +which shall be austere, ornate, argumentative, fanciful, yet true from +first to last to that vision within, may be attributed those weaknesses +of conscious or unconscious repetition of word, phrase, motive, or +member of the whole matter, indicating, as Flaubert was aware, an +original structure in thought not organically complete. With such +foresight, the actual conclusion will most often get itself written out +of hand, before, in the more obvious sense, the work is finished. With +some strong and leading sense of the world, the [24] tight hold of +which secures true composition and not mere loose accretion, the +literary artist, I suppose, goes on considerately, setting joint to +joint, sustained by yet restraining the productive ardour, retracing +the negligences of his first sketch, repeating his steps only that he +may give the reader a sense of secure and restful progress, readjusting +mere assonances even, that they may soothe the reader, or at least not +interrupt him on his way; and then, somewhere before the end comes, is +burdened, inspired, with his conclusion, and betimes delivered of it, +leaving off, not in weariness and because he finds himself at an end, +but in all the freshness of volition. His work now structurally +complete, with all the accumulating effect of secondary shades of +meaning, he finishes the whole up to the just proportion of that +ante-penultimate conclusion, and all becomes expressive. The house he +has built is rather a body he has informed. And so it happens, to its +greater credit, that the better interest even of a narrative to be +recounted, a story to be told, will often be in its second reading. +And though there are instances of great writers who have been no +artists, an unconscious tact sometimes directing work in which we may +detect, very pleasurably, many of the effects of conscious art, yet one +of the greatest pleasures of really good prose literature is in the +critical tracing out of that conscious artistic structure, and the +pervading sense of it [25] as we read. Yet of poetic literature too; +for, in truth, the kind of constructive intelligence here supposed is +one of the forms of the imagination. + +That is the special function of mind, in style. Mind and soul:--hard +to ascertain philosophically, the distinction is real enough +practically, for they often interfere, are sometimes in conflict, with +each other. Blake, in the last century, is an instance of +preponderating soul, embarrassed, at a loss, in an era of +preponderating mind. As a quality of style, at all events, soul is a +fact, in certain writers--the way they have of absorbing language, of +attracting it into the peculiar spirit they are of, with a subtlety +which makes the actual result seem like some inexplicable inspiration. +By mind, the literary artist reaches us, through static and objective +indications of design in his work, legible to all. By soul, he reaches +us, somewhat capriciously perhaps, one and not another, through vagrant +sympathy and a kind of immediate contact. Mind we cannot choose but +approve where we recognise it; soul may repel us, not because we +misunderstand it. The way in which theological interests sometimes +avail themselves of language is perhaps the best illustration of the +force I mean to indicate generally in literature, by the word soul. +Ardent religious persuasion may exist, may make its way, without +finding any equivalent heat in language: or, again, it may enkindle +[26] words to various degrees, and when it really takes hold of them +doubles its force. Religious history presents many remarkable +instances in which, through no mere phrase-worship, an unconscious +literary tact has, for the sensitive, laid open a privileged pathway +from one to another. "The altar-fire," people say, "has touched those +lips!" The Vulgate, the English Bible, the English Prayer-Book, the +writings of Swedenborg, the Tracts for the Times:--there, we have +instances of widely different and largely diffused phases of religious +feeling in operation as soul in style. But something of the same kind +acts with similar power in certain writers of quite other than +theological literature, on behalf of some wholly personal and peculiar +sense of theirs. Most easily illustrated by theological literature, +this quality lends to profane writers a kind of religious influence. +At their best, these writers become, as we say sometimes, "prophets"; +such character depending on the effect not merely of their matter, but +of their matter as allied to, in "electric affinity" with, peculiar +form, and working in all cases by an immediate sympathetic contact, on +which account it is that it may be called soul, as opposed to mind, in +style. And this too is a faculty of choosing and rejecting what is +congruous or otherwise, with a drift towards unity--unity of atmosphere +here, as there of design--soul securing colour (or perfume, might [27] +we say?) as mind secures form, the latter being essentially finite, the +former vague or infinite, as the influence of a living person is +practically infinite. There are some to whom nothing has any real +interest, or real meaning, except as operative in a given person; and +it is they who best appreciate the quality of soul in literary art. +They seem to know a person, in a book, and make way by intuition: yet, +although they thus enjoy the completeness of a personal information, it +is still a characteristic of soul, in this sense of the word, that it +does but suggest what can never be uttered, not as being different +from, or more obscure than, what actually gets said, but as containing +that plenary substance of which there is only one phase or facet in +what is there expressed. + +If all high things have their martyrs, Gustave Flaubert might perhaps +rank as the martyr of literary style. In his printed correspondence, a +curious series of letters, written in his twenty-fifth year, records +what seems to have been his one other passion--a series of letters +which, with its fine casuistries, its firmly repressed anguish, its +tone of harmonious grey, and the sense of disillusion in which the +whole matter ends, might have been, a few slight changes supposed, one +of his own fictions. Writing to Madame X. certainly he does display, +by "taking thought" mainly, by constant and delicate pondering, as in +his love for literature, a heart really moved, but [28] still more, and +as the pledge of that emotion, a loyalty to his work. Madame X., too, +is a literary artist, and the best gifts he can send her are precepts +of perfection in art, counsels for the effectual pursuit of that better +love. In his love-letters it is the pains and pleasures of art he +insists on, its solaces: he communicates secrets, reproves, encourages, +with a view to that. Whether the lady was dissatisfied with such +divided or indirect service, the reader is not enabled to see; but sees +that, on Flaubert's part at least, a living person could be no rival of +what was, from first to last, his leading passion, a somewhat solitary +and exclusive one. + +I must scold you (he writes) for one thing, which shocks, scandalises +me, the small concern, namely, you show for art just now. As regards +glory be it so: there, I approve. But for art!--the one thing in life +that is good and real--can you compare with it an earthly love?--prefer +the adoration of a relative beauty to the cultus of the true beauty? +Well! I tell you the truth. That is the one thing good in me: the one +thing I have, to me estimable. For yourself, you blend with the +beautiful a heap of alien things, the useful, the agreeable, what not?-- + +The only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up in art, and count +everything else as nothing. Pride takes the place of all beside when +it is established on a large basis. Work! God wills it. That, it +seems to me, is clear.--+ + +I am reading over again the Aeneid, certain verses of which I repeat to +myself to satiety. There are phrases there which stay in one's head, +by which I find myself beset, as with those musical airs which are for +ever returning, and cause you pain, you love them so much. I observe +that I no longer laugh much, and am no longer depressed. I am ripe. +You talk of my serenity, and envy me. It may well surprise you. Sick, +[29] irritated, the prey a thousand times a day of cruel pain, I +continue my labour like a true working-man, who, with sleeves turned +up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, never troubling +himself whether it rains or blows, for hail or thunder. I was not like +that formerly. The change has taken place naturally, though my will +has counted for something in the matter.-- + +Those who write in good style are sometimes accused of a neglect of +ideas, and of the moral end, as if the end of the physician were +something else than healing, of the painter than painting-as if the end +of art were not, before all else, the beautiful. + +What, then, did Flaubert understand by beauty, in the art he pursued +with so much fervour, with so much self-command? Let us hear a +sympathetic commentator:-- + +Possessed of an absolute belief that there exists but one way of +expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to qualify, +one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman labour for the +discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that verb, that epithet. In +this way, he believed in some mysterious harmony of expression, and +when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony still went on seeking +another, with invincible patience, certain that he had not yet got hold +of the unique word.... A thousand preoccupations would beset him at +the same moment, always with this desperate certitude fixed in his +spirit: Among all the expressions in the world, all forms and turns of +expression, there is but one--one form, one mode--to express what I +want to say. + +The one word for the one thing, the one thought, amid the multitude of +words, terms, that might just do: the problem of style was there!--the +unique word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely +proper to the single mental presentation or vision within. + +[30] In that perfect justice, over and above the many contingent and +removable beauties with which beautiful style may charm us, but which +it can exist without, independent of them yet dexterously availing +itself of them, omnipresent in good work, in function at every point, +from single epithets to the rhythm of a whole book, lay the specific, +indispensable, very intellectual, beauty of literature, the possibility +of which constitutes it a fine art. + +One seems to detect the influence of a philosophic idea there, the idea +of a natural economy, of some pre-existent adaptation, between a +relative, somewhere in the world of thought, and its correlative, +somewhere in the world of language--both alike, rather, somewhere in +the mind of the artist, desiderative, expectant, inventive--meeting +each other with the readiness of "soul and body reunited," in Blake's +rapturous design; and, in fact, Flaubert was fond of giving his theory +philosophical expression.-- + +There are no beautiful thoughts (he would say) without beautiful forms, +and conversely. As it is impossible to extract from a physical body +the qualities which really constitute it--colour, extension, and the +like--without reducing it to a hollow abstraction, in a word, without +destroying it; just so it is impossible to detach the form from the +idea, for the idea only exists by virtue of the form. + +All, the recognised flowers, the removable ornaments of literature +(including harmony and ease in reading aloud, very carefully considered +[31] by him) counted, certainly; for these too are part of the actual +value of what one says. But still, after all, with Flaubert, the +search, the unwearied research, was not for the smooth, or winsome, or +forcible word, as such, as with false Ciceronians, but quite simply and +honestly, for the word's adjustment to its meaning. The first condition +of this must be, of course, to know yourself, to have ascertained your +own sense exactly. Then, if we suppose an artist, he says to the +reader,--I want you to see precisely what I see. Into the mind +sensitive to "form," a flood of random sounds, colours, incidents, is +ever penetrating from the world without, to become, by sympathetic +selection, a part of its very structure, and, in turn, the visible +vesture and expression of that other world it sees so steadily within, +nay, already with a partial conformity thereto, to be refined, +enlarged, corrected, at a hundred points; and it is just there, just at +those doubtful points that the function of style, as tact or taste, +intervenes. The unique term will come more quickly to one than +another, at one time than another, according also to the kind of matter +in question. Quickness and slowness, ease and closeness alike, have +nothing to do with the artistic character of the true word found at +last. As there is a charm of ease, so there is also a special charm in +the signs of discovery, of effort and contention towards a due end, as +so often with Flaubert himself--in the style which has [32] been +pliant, as only obstinate, durable metal can be, to the inherent +perplexities and recusancy of a certain difficult thought. + +If Flaubert had not told us, perhaps we should never have guessed how +tardy and painful his own procedure really was, and after reading his +confession may think that his almost endless hesitation had much to do +with diseased nerves. Often, perhaps, the felicity supposed will be +the product of a happier, a more exuberant nature than Flaubert's. +Aggravated, certainly, by a morbid physical condition, that anxiety in +"seeking the phrase," which gathered all the other small ennuis of a +really quiet existence into a kind of battle, was connected with his +lifelong contention against facile poetry, facile art--art, facile and +flimsy; and what constitutes the true artist is not the slowness or +quickness of the process, but the absolute success of the result. As +with those labourers in the parable, the prize is independent of the +mere length of the actual day's work. "You talk," he writes, odd, +trying lover, to Madame X.-- + +"You talk of the exclusiveness of my literary tastes. That might have +enabled you to divine what kind of a person I am in the matter of love. +I grow so hard to please as a literary artist, that I am driven to +despair. I shall end by not writing another line." + +"Happy," he cries, in a moment of discouragement at that patient +labour, which for him, certainly, was the condition of a great +success--[33] + +Happy those who have no doubts of themselves! who lengthen out, as the +pen runs on, all that flows forth from their brains. As for me, I +hesitate, I disappoint myself, turn round upon myself in despite: my +taste is augmented in proportion as my natural vigour decreases, and I +afflict my soul over some dubious word out of all proportion to the +pleasure I get from a whole page of good writing. One would have to +live two centuries to attain a true idea of any matter whatever. What +Buffon said is a big blasphemy: genius is not long-continued patience. +Still, there is some truth in the statement, and more than people +think, especially as regards our own day. Art! art! art! bitter +deception! phantom that glows with light, only to lead one on to +destruction... + +Again-- + +I am growing so peevish about my writing. I am like a man whose ear is +true but who plays falsely on the violin: his fingers refuse to +reproduce precisely those sounds of which he has the inward sense. +Then the tears come rolling down from the poor scraper's eyes and the +bow falls from his hand. + +Coming slowly or quickly, when it comes, as it came with so much labour +of mind, but also with so much lustre, to Gustave Flaubert, this +discovery of the word will be, like all artistic success and felicity, +incapable of strict analysis: effect of an intuitive condition of mind, +it must be recognised by like intuition on the part of the reader, and +a sort of immediate sense. In every one of those masterly sentences of +Flaubert there was, below all mere contrivance, shaping and +afterthought, by some happy instantaneous concourse of the various +faculties of the mind with each other, the exact apprehension of what +was needed to carry the meaning. And that it fits with absolute +justice will be a judgment of [34] immediate sense in the appreciative +reader. We all feel this in what may be called inspired translation. +Well! all language involves translation from inward to outward. In +literature, as in all forms of art, there are the absolute and the +merely relative or accessory beauties; and precisely in that exact +proportion of the term to its purpose is the absolute beauty of style, +prose or verse. All the good qualities, the beauties, of verse also, +are such, only as precise expression. + +In the highest as in the lowliest literature, then, the one +indispensable beauty is, after all, truth:--truth to bare fact in the +latter, as to some personal sense of fact, diverted somewhat from men's +ordinary sense of it, in the former; truth there as accuracy, truth +here as expression, that finest and most intimate form of truth, the +vraie verite. And what an eclectic principle this really is! employing +for its one sole purpose--that absolute accordance of expression to +idea--all other literary beauties and excellences whatever: how many +kinds of style it covers, explains, justifies, and at the same time +safeguards! Scott's facility, Flaubert's deeply pondered evocation of +"the phrase," are equally good art. Say what you have to say, what you +have a will to say, in the simplest, the most direct and exact manner +possible, with no surplusage:--there, is the justification of the +sentence so fortunately born, "entire, smooth, and round," that it +needs no punctuation, and also [35] (that is the point!) of the most +elaborate period, if it be right in its elaboration. Here is the +office of ornament: here also the purpose of restraint in ornament. As +the exponent of truth, that austerity (the beauty, the function, of +which in literature Flaubert understood so well) becomes not the +correctness or purism of the mere scholar, but a security against the +otiose, a jealous exclusion of what does not really tell towards the +pursuit of relief, of life and vigour in the portraiture of one's +sense. License again, the making free with rule, if it be indeed, as +people fancy, a habit of genius, flinging aside or transforming all +that opposes the liberty of beautiful production, will be but faith to +one's own meaning. The seeming baldness of Le Rouge et Le Noir is +nothing in itself; the wild ornament of Les Miserables is nothing in +itself; and the restraint of Flaubert, amid a real natural opulence, +only redoubled beauty--the phrase so large and so precise at the same +time, hard as bronze, in service to the more perfect adaptation of +words to their matter. Afterthoughts, retouchings, finish, will be of +profit only so far as they too really serve to bring out the original, +initiative, generative, sense in them. + +In this way, according to the well-known saying, "The style is the +man," complex or simple, in his individuality, his plenary sense of +what he really has to say, his sense of the world; all cautions +regarding style arising out of so many [36] natural scruples as to the +medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, +the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is +to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that. +Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, +musical, stimulant, academic, so long as each is really characteristic +or expressive, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous good taste +of Cicero being as truly the man himself, and not another, justified, +yet insured inalienably to him, thereby, as would have been his +portrait by Raffaelle, in full consular splendour, on his ivory chair. + +A relegation, you may say perhaps--a relegation of style to the +subjectivity, the mere caprice, of the individual, which must soon +transform it into mannerism. Not so! since there is, under the +conditions supposed, for those elements of the man, for every lineament +of the vision within, the one word, the one acceptable word, +recognisable by the sensitive, by others "who have intelligence" in the +matter, as absolutely as ever anything can be in the evanescent and +delicate region of human language. The style, the manner, would be the +man, not in his unreasoned and really uncharacteristic caprices, +involuntary or affected, but in absolutely sincere apprehension of what +is most real to him. But let us hear our French guide again.-- + +Styles (says Flaubert's commentator), Styles, as so many [37] peculiar +moulds, each of which bears the mark of a particular writer, who is to +pour into it the whole content of his ideas, were no part of his +theory. What he believed in was Style: that is to say, a certain +absolute and unique manner of expressing a thing, in all its intensity +and colour. For him the form was the work itself. As in living +creatures, the blood, nourishing the body, determines its very contour +and external aspect, just so, to his mind, the matter, the basis, in a +work of art, imposed, necessarily, the unique, the just expression, the +measure, the rhythm--the form in all its characteristics. + +If the style be the man, in all the colour and intensity of a veritable +apprehension, it will be in a real sense "impersonal." + +I said, thinking of books like Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, that prose +literature was the characteristic art of the nineteenth century, as +others, thinking of its triumphs since the youth of Bach, have assigned +that place to music. Music and prose literature are, in one sense, the +opposite terms of art; the art of literature presenting to the +imagination, through the intelligence, a range of interests, as free +and various as those which music presents to it through sense. And +certainly the tendency of what has been here said is to bring +literature too under those conditions, by conformity to which music +takes rank as the typically perfect art. If music be the ideal of all +art whatever, precisely because in music it is impossible to +distinguish the form from the substance or matter, the subject from the +expression, then, literature, by finding its specific excellence in the +absolute correspondence of the term to its import, will be [38] but +fulfilling the condition of all artistic quality in things everywhere, +of all good art. + +Good art, but not necessarily great art; the distinction between great +art and good art depending immediately, as regards literature at all +events, not on its form, but on the matter. Thackeray's Esmond, +surely, is greater art than Vanity Fair, by the greater dignity of its +interests. It is on the quality of the matter it informs or controls, +its compass, its variety, its alliance to great ends, or the depth of +the note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the greatness +of literary art depends, as The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Les +Miserables, The English Bible, are great art. Given the conditions I +have tried to explain as constituting good art;--then, if it be devoted +further to the increase of men's happiness, to the redemption of the +oppressed, or the enlargement of our sympathies with each other, or to +such presentment of new or old truth about ourselves and our relation +to the world as may ennoble and fortify us in our sojourn here, or +immediately, as with Dante, to the glory of God, it will be also great +art; if, over and above those qualities I summed up as mind and +soul--that colour and mystic perfume, and that reasonable structure, it +has something of the soul of humanity in it, and finds its logical, its +architectural place, in the great structure of human life. + +1888. + +NOTES + +12. *Mr. Saintsbury, in his Specimens of English Prose, from Malory to +Macaulay, has succeeded in tracing, through successive English +prose-writers, the tradition of that severer beauty in them, of which +this admirable scholar of our literature is known to be a lover. +English Prose, from Mandeville to Thackeray, more recently "chosen and +edited" by a younger scholar, Mr. Arthur Galton, of New College, +Oxford, a lover of our literature at once enthusiastic and discreet, +aims at a more various illustration of the eloquent powers of English +prose, and is a delightful companion. + +28. +In the original, the quoted material is not indented but instead +appears in a smaller typeface; I have chosen to indent the material +half an inch to make it easier to read. + + + +WORDSWORTH + +[39] SOME English critics at the beginning of the present century had a +great deal to say concerning a distinction, of much importance, as they +thought, in the true estimate of poetry, between the Fancy, and another +more powerful faculty--the Imagination. This metaphysical distinction, +borrowed originally from the writings of German philosophers, and +perhaps not always clearly apprehended by those who talked of it, +involved a far deeper and more vital distinction, with which indeed all +true criticism more or less directly has to do, the distinction, +namely, between higher and lower degrees of intensity in the poet's +perception of his subject, and in his concentration of himself upon his +work. Of those who dwelt upon the metaphysical distinction between the +Fancy and the Imagination, it was Wordsworth who made the most of it, +assuming it as the basis for the final classification of his poetical +writings; and it is in these writings that the deeper and more vital +distinction, which, as I have said, underlies the metaphysical [40] +distinction, is most needed, and may best be illustrated. + +For nowhere is there so perplexed a mixture as in Wordsworth's own +poetry, of work touched with intense and individual power, with work of +almost no character at all. He has much conventional sentiment, and +some of that insincere poetic diction, against which his most serious +critical efforts were directed: the reaction in his political ideas, +consequent on the excesses of 1795, makes him, at times, a mere +declaimer on moral and social topics; and he seems, sometimes, to force +an unwilling pen, and write by rule. By making the most of these +blemishes it is possible to obscure the true aesthetic value of his +work, just as his life also, a life of much quiet delicacy and +independence, might easily be placed in a false focus, and made to +appear a somewhat tame theme in illustration of the more obvious +parochial virtues. And those who wish to understand his influence, and +experience his peculiar savour, must bear with patience the presence of +an alien element in Wordsworth's work, which never coalesced with what +is really delightful in it, nor underwent his special power. Who that +values his writings most has not felt the intrusion there, from time to +time, of something tedious and prosaic? Of all poets equally great, he +would gain most by a skilfully made anthology. Such a selection would +show, in truth, not so much what he was, or to himself or others [41] +seemed to be, as what, by the more energetic and fertile quality in his +writings, he was ever tending to become. And the mixture in his work, +as it actually stands, is so perplexed, that one fears to miss the +least promising composition even, lest some precious morsel should be +lying hidden within--the few perfect lines, the phrase, the single word +perhaps, to which he often works up mechanically through a poem, almost +the whole of which may be tame enough. He who thought that in all +creative work the larger part was given passively, to the recipient +mind, who waited so dutifully upon the gift, to whom so large a measure +was sometimes given, had his times also of desertion and relapse; and +he has permitted the impress of these too to remain in his work. And +this duality there--the fitfulness with which the higher qualities +manifest themselves in it, gives the effect in his poetry of a power +not altogether his own, or under his control, which comes and goes when +it will, lifting or lowering a matter, poor in itself; so that that old +fancy which made the poet's art an enthusiasm, a form of divine +possession, seems almost literally true of him. + +This constant suggestion of an absolute duality between higher and +lower moods, and the work done in them, stimulating one always to look +below the surface, makes the reading of Wordsworth an excellent sort of +training towards the things of art and poetry. It begets in those, +[42] who, coming across him in youth, can bear him at all, a habit of +reading between the lines, a faith in the effect of concentration and +collectedness of mind in the right appreciation of poetry, an +expectation of things, in this order, coming to one by means of a right +discipline of the temper as well as of the intellect. He meets us with +the promise that he has much, and something very peculiar, to give us, +if we will follow a certain difficult way, and seems to have the secret +of a special and privileged state of mind. And those who have +undergone his influence, and followed this difficult way, are like +people who have passed through some initiation, a disciplina arcani, by +submitting to which they become able constantly to distinguish in art, +speech, feeling, manners, that which is organic, animated, expressive, +from that which is only conventional, derivative, inexpressive. + +But although the necessity of selecting these precious morsels for +oneself is an opportunity for the exercise of Wordsworth's peculiar +influence, and induces a kind of just criticism and true estimate of +it, yet the purely literary product would have been more excellent, had +the writer himself purged away that alien element. How perfect would +have been the little treasury, shut between the covers of how thin a +book! Let us suppose the desired separation made, the electric thread +untwined, the golden pieces, [43] great and small, lying apart +together.* What are the peculiarities of this residue? What special +sense does Wordsworth exercise, and what instincts does he satisfy? +What are the subjects and the motives which in him excite the +imaginative faculty? What are the qualities in things and persons +which he values, the impression and sense of which he can convey to +others, in an extraordinary way? + +An intimate consciousness of the expression of natural things, which +weighs, listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by, +is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry. It has been +remarked as a fact in mental history again and again. It reveals +itself in many forms; but is strongest and most attractive in what is +strongest and most attractive in modern literature. It is exemplified, +almost equally, by writers as unlike each other as Senancour and +Theophile Gautier: as a singular chapter in the history of the human +mind, its growth might be traced from Rousseau to Chateaubriand, from +Chateaubriand to Victor Hugo: it has doubtless some latent connexion +with those pantheistic theories which locate an intelligent soul in +material things, and have largely exercised men's minds in some modern +systems of philosophy: it is traceable even in [44] the graver writings +of historians: it makes as much difference between ancient and modern +landscape art, as there is between the rough masks of an early mosaic +and a portrait by Reynolds or Gainsborough. Of this new sense, the +writings of Wordsworth are the central and elementary expression: he is +more simply and entirely occupied with it than any other poet, though +there are fine expressions of precisely the same thing in so different +a poet as Shelley. There was in his own character a certain +contentment, a sort of inborn religious placidity, seldom found united +with a sensibility so mobile as his, which was favourable to the quiet, +habitual observation of inanimate, or imperfectly animate, existence. +His life of eighty years is divided by no very profoundly felt +incidents: its changes are almost wholly inward, and it falls into +broad, untroubled, perhaps somewhat monotonous spaces. What it most +resembles is the life of one of those early Italian or Flemish +painters, who, just because their minds were full of heavenly visions, +passed, some of them, the better part of sixty years in quiet, +systematic industry. This placid life matured a quite unusual +sensibility, really innate in him, to the sights and sounds of the +natural world--the flower and its shadow on the stone, the cuckoo and +its echo. The poem of Resolution and Independence is a storehouse of +such records: for its fulness of imagery it may be compared to Keats's +Saint Agnes' Eve. To [45] read one of his longer pastoral poems for +the first time, is like a day spent in a new country: the memory is +crowded for a while with its precise and vivid incidents-- + + The pliant harebell swinging in the breeze + On some grey rock;-- + + The single sheep and the one blasted tree + And the bleak music from that old stone wall;-- + + In the meadows and the lower ground + Was all the sweetness of a common dawn;-- + + And that green corn all day is rustling in thine ears. + +Clear and delicate at once, as he is in the outlining of visible +imagery, he is more clear and delicate still, and finely scrupulous, in +the noting of sounds; so that he conceives of noble sound as even +moulding the human countenance to nobler types, and as something +actually "profaned" by colour, by visible form, or image. + +He has a power likewise of realising, and conveying to the +consciousness of the reader, abstract and elementary +impressions--silence, darkness, absolute motionlessness: or, again, the +whole complex sentiment of a particular place, the abstract expression +of desolation in the long white road, of peacefulness in a particular +folding of the hills. In the airy building of the brain, a special day +or hour even, comes to have for him a sort of personal identity, a +spirit or angel given to it, by which, for its exceptional [46] +insight, or the happy light upon it, it has a presence in one's +history, and acts there, as a separate power or accomplishment; and he +has celebrated in many of his poems the "efficacious spirit," which, as +he says, resides in these "particular spots" of time. + +It is to such a world, and to a world of congruous meditation thereon, +that we see him retiring in his but lately published poem of The +Recluse--taking leave, without much count of costs, of the world of +business, of action and ambition; as also of all that for the majority +of mankind counts as sensuous enjoyment.* + +And so it came about that this sense of a life in natural objects, +which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, is with Wordsworth +the assertion of what for him is almost literal fact. To him every +natural object seemed to possess more or less of a moral or spiritual +life, to be [47] capable of a companionship with man, full of +expression, of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse. +An emanation, a particular spirit, belonged, not to the moving leaves +or water only, but to the distant peak of the hills arising suddenly, +by some change of perspective, above the nearer horizon, to the passing +space of light across the plain, to the lichened Druidic stone even, +for a certain weird fellowship in it with the moods of men. It was +like a "survival," in the peculiar intellectual temperament of a man of +letters at the end of the eighteenth century, of that primitive +condition, which some philosophers have traced in the general history +of human culture, wherein all outward objects [48] alike, including +even the works of men's hands, were believed to be endowed with +animation, and the world was "full of souls"--that mood in which the +old Greek gods were first begotten, and which had many strange +aftergrowths. + +In the early ages, this belief, delightful as its effects on poetry +often are, was but the result of a crude intelligence. But, in +Wordsworth, such power of seeing life, such perception of a soul, in +inanimate things, came of an exceptional susceptibility to the +impressions of eye and ear, and was, in its essence, a kind of +sensuousness. At least, it is only in a temperament exceptionally +susceptible on the sensuous side, that this sense of the expressiveness +of outward things comes to be so large a part of life. That he awakened +"a sort of thought in sense," is Shelley's just estimate of this +element in Wordsworth's poetry. + +And it was through nature, thus ennobled by a semblance of passion and +thought, that he approached the spectacle of human life. Human life, +indeed, is for him, at first, only an additional, accidental grace on +an expressive landscape. When he thought of man, it was of man as in +the presence and under the influence of these effective natural +objects, and linked to them by many associations. The close connexion +of man with natural objects, the habitual association of his thoughts +and feelings with a particular spot of earth, has sometimes seemed to +[49] degrade those who are subject to its influence, as if it did but +reinforce that physical connexion of our nature with the actual lime +and clay of the soil, which is always drawing us nearer to our end. +But for Wordsworth, these influences tended to the dignity of human +nature, because they tended to tranquillise it. By raising nature to +the level of human thought he gives it power and expression: he subdues +man to the level of nature, and gives him thereby a certain breadth and +coolness and solemnity. The leech-gatherer on the moor, the woman +"stepping westward," are for him natural objects, almost in the same +sense as the aged thorn, or the lichened rock on the heath. In this +sense the leader of the "Lake School," in spite of an earnest +preoccupation with man, his thoughts, his destiny, is the poet of +nature. And of nature, after all, in its modesty. The English lake +country has, of course, its grandeurs. But the peculiar function of +Wordsworth's genius, as carrying in it a power to open out the soul of +apparently little or familiar things, would have found its true test +had he become the poet of Surrey, say! and the prophet of its life. +The glories of Italy and Switzerland, though he did write a little +about them, had too potent a material life of their own to serve +greatly his poetic purpose. + +Religious sentiment, consecrating the affections and natural regrets of +the human heart, above all, that pitiful awe and care for the [50] +perishing human clay, of which relic-worship is but the corruption, has +always had much to do with localities, with the thoughts which attach +themselves to actual scenes and places. Now what is true of it +everywhere, is truest of it in those secluded valleys where one +generation after another maintains the same abiding-place; and it was +on this side, that Wordsworth apprehended religion most strongly. +Consisting, as it did so much, in the recognition of local sanctities, +in the habit of connecting the stones and trees of a particular spot of +earth with the great events of life, till the low walls, the green +mounds, the half-obliterated epitaphs seemed full of voices, and a sort +of natural oracles, the very religion of these people of the dales +appeared but as another link between them and the earth, and was +literally a religion of nature. It tranquillised them by bringing them +under the placid rule of traditional and narrowly localised +observances. "Grave livers," they seemed to him, under this aspect, +with stately speech, and something of that natural dignity of manners, +which underlies the highest courtesy. + +And, seeing man thus as a part of nature, elevated and solemnised in +proportion as his daily life and occupations brought him into +companionship with permanent natural objects, his very religion forming +new links for him with the narrow limits of the valley, the low vaults +of his church, the rough stones of his [51] home, made intense for him +now with profound sentiment, Wordsworth was able to appreciate passion +in the lowly. He chooses to depict people from humble life, because, +being nearer to nature than others, they are on the whole more +impassioned, certainly more direct in their expression of passion, than +other men: it is for this direct expression of passion, that he values +their humble words. In much that he said in exaltation of rural life, +he was but pleading indirectly for that sincerity, that perfect +fidelity to one's own inward presentations, to the precise features of +the picture within, without which any profound poetry is impossible. +It was not for their tameness, but for this passionate sincerity, that +he chose incidents and situations from common life, "related in a +selection of language really used by men." He constantly endeavours to +bring his language near to the real language of men: to the real +language of men, however, not on the dead level of their ordinary +intercourse, but in select moments of vivid sensation, when this +language is winnowed and ennobled by excitement. There are poets who +have chosen rural life as their subject, for the sake of its +passionless repose, and times when Wordsworth himself extols the mere +calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest aim of poetical +culture. But it was not for such passionless calm that he preferred +the scenes of pastoral life; and the meditative poet, sheltering [52] +himself, as it might seem, from the agitations of the outward world, is +in reality only clearing the scene for the great exhibitions of +emotion, and what he values most is the almost elementary expression of +elementary feelings. + +And so he has much for those who value highly the concentrated +presentment of passion, who appraise men and women by their +susceptibility to it, and art and poetry as they afford the spectacle +of it. Breaking from time to time into the pensive spectacle of their +daily toil, their occupations near to nature, come those great +elementary feelings, lifting and solemnising their language and giving +it a natural music. The great, distinguishing passion came to Michael +by the sheepfold, to Ruth by the wayside, adding these humble children +of the furrow to the true aristocracy of passionate souls. In this +respect, Wordsworth's work resembles most that of George Sand, in those +of her novels which depict country life. With a penetrative pathos, +which puts him in the same rank with the masters of the sentiment of +pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the +traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral +world--the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling +about its mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the +sorrows of the wild creatures, even--their home-sickness, their strange +yearnings; the tales of passionate regret that hang [53] by a ruined +farm-building, a heap of stones, a deserted sheepfold; that gay, false, +adventurous, outer world, which breaks in from time to time to bewilder +and deflower these quiet homes; not "passionate sorrow" only, for the +overthrow of the soul's beauty, but the loss of, or carelessness for +personal beauty even, in those whom men have wronged--their pathetic +wanness; the sailor "who, in his heart, was half a shepherd on the +stormy seas"; the wild woman teaching her child to pray for her +betrayer; incidents like the making of the shepherd's staff, or that of +the young boy laying the first stone of the sheepfold;--all the +pathetic episodes of their humble existence, their longing, their +wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, like the pleasures of +children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence; their +yearning towards each other, in their darkened houses, or at their +early toil. A sort of biblical depth and solemnity hangs over this +strange, new, passionate, pastoral world, of which he first raised the +image, and the reflection of which some of our best modern fiction has +caught from him. + +He pondered much over the philosophy of his poetry, and reading deeply +in the history of his own mind, seems at times to have passed the +borders of a world of strange speculations, inconsistent enough, had he +cared to note such inconsistencies, with those traditional beliefs, +which [54] were otherwise the object of his devout acceptance. +Thinking of the high value he set upon customariness, upon all that is +habitual, local, rooted in the ground, in matters of religious +sentiment, you might sometimes regard him as one tethered down to a +world, refined and peaceful indeed, but with no broad outlook, a world +protected, but somewhat narrowed, by the influence of received ideas. +But he is at times also something very different from this, and +something much bolder. A chance expression is overheard and placed in +a new connexion, the sudden memory of a thing long past occurs to him, +a distant object is relieved for a while by a random gleam of +light--accidents turning up for a moment what lies below the surface of +our immediate experience--and he passes from the humble graves and +lowly arches of "the little rock-like pile" of a Westmoreland church, +on bold trains of speculative thought, and comes, from point to point, +into strange contact with thoughts which have visited, from time to +time, far more venturesome, perhaps errant, spirits. + +He had pondered deeply, for instance, on those strange reminiscences +and forebodings, which seem to make our lives stretch before and behind +us, beyond where we can see or touch anything, or trace the lines of +connexion. Following the soul, backwards and forwards, on these +endless ways, his sense of man's dim, potential powers became a pledge +to him, indeed, of a future life, [55] but carried him back also to +that mysterious notion of an earlier state of existence--the fancy of +the Platonists--the old heresy of Origen. It was in this mood that he +conceived those oft-reiterated regrets for a half-ideal childhood, when +the relics of Paradise still clung about the soul--a childhood, as it +seemed, full of the fruits of old age, lost for all, in a degree, in +the passing away of the youth of the world, lost for each one, over +again, in the passing away of actual youth. It is this ideal childhood +which he celebrates in his famous Ode on the Recollections of +Childhood, and some other poems which may be grouped around it, such as +the lines on Tintern Abbey, and something like what he describes was +actually truer of himself than he seems to have understood; for his own +most delightful poems were really the instinctive productions of +earlier life, and most surely for him, "the first diviner influence of +this world" passed away, more and more completely, in his contact with +experience. + +Sometimes as he dwelt upon those moments of profound, imaginative +power, in which the outward object appears to take colour and +expression, a new nature almost, from the prompting of the observant +mind, the actual world would, as it were, dissolve and detach itself, +flake by flake, and he himself seemed to be the creator, and when he +would the destroyer, of the world in which he lived--that old isolating +thought of many a brain-sick mystic of ancient and modern times. + +[56] At other times, again, in those periods of intense susceptibility, +in which he appeared to himself as but the passive recipient of +external influences, he was attracted by the thought of a spirit of +life in outward things, a single, all-pervading mind in them, of which +man, and even the poet's imaginative energy, are but moments--that old +dream of the anima mundi, the mother of all things and their grave, in +which some had desired to lose themselves, and others had become +indifferent to the distinctions of good and evil. It would come, +sometimes, like the sign of the macrocosm to Faust in his cell: the +network of man and nature was seen to be pervaded by a common, +universal life: a new, bold thought lifted him above the furrow, above +the green turf of the Westmoreland churchyard, to a world altogether +different in its vagueness and vastness, and the narrow glen was full +of the brooding power of one universal spirit. + +And so he has something, also, for those who feel the fascination of +bold speculative ideas, who are really capable of rising upon them to +conditions of poetical thought. He uses them, indeed, always with a +very fine apprehension of the limits within which alone philosophical +imaginings have any place in true poetry; and using them only for +poetical purposes, is not too careful even to make them consistent with +each other. To him, theories which for other men [57] bring a world of +technical diction, brought perfect form and expression, as in those two +lofty books of The Prelude, which describe the decay and the +restoration of Imagination and Taste. Skirting the borders of this +world of bewildering heights and depths, he got but the first exciting +influence of it, that joyful enthusiasm which great imaginative +theories prompt, when the mind first comes to have an understanding of +them; and it is not under the influence of these thoughts that his +poetry becomes tedious or loses its blitheness. He keeps them, too, +always within certain ethical bounds, so that no word of his could +offend the simplest of those simple souls which are always the largest +portion of mankind. But it is, nevertheless, the contact of these +thoughts, the speculative boldness in them, which constitutes, at least +for some minds, the secret attraction of much of his best poetry--the +sudden passage from lowly thoughts and places to the majestic forms of +philosophical imagination, the play of these forms over a world so +different, enlarging so strangely the bounds of its humble churchyards, +and breaking such a wild light on the graves of christened children. + +And these moods always brought with them faultless expression. In +regard to expression, as with feeling and thought, the duality of the +higher and lower moods was absolute. It belonged to the higher, the +imaginative mood, and was the pledge of its reality, to bring the [58] +appropriate language with it. In him, when the really poetical motive +worked at all, it united, with absolute justice, the word and the idea; +each, in the imaginative flame, becoming inseparably one with the +other, by that fusion of matter and form, which is the characteristic +of the highest poetical expression. His words are themselves thought +and feeling; not eloquent, or musical words merely, but that sort of +creative language which carries the reality of what it depicts, +directly, to the consciousness. + +The music of mere metre performs but a limited, yet a very peculiar and +subtly ascertained function, in Wordsworth's poetry. With him, metre +is but an additional grace, accessory to that deeper music of words and +sounds, that moving power, which they exercise in the nobler prose no +less than in formal poetry. It is a sedative to that excitement, an +excitement sometimes almost painful, under which the language, alike of +poetry and prose, attains a rhythmical power, independent of metrical +combination, and dependent rather on some subtle adjustment of the +elementary sounds of words themselves to the image or feeling they +convey. Yet some of his pieces, pieces prompted by a sort of +half-playful mysticism, like the Daffodils and The Two April Mornings, +are distinguished by a certain quaint gaiety of metre, and rival by +their perfect execution, in this respect, similar pieces among our own +Elizabethan, or contemporary French poetry. + +[59] And those who take up these poems after an interval of months, or +years perhaps, may be surprised at finding how well old favourites +wear, how their strange, inventive turns of diction or thought still +send through them the old feeling of surprise. Those who lived about +Wordsworth were all great lovers of the older English literature, and +oftentimes there came out in him a noticeable likeness to our earlier +poets. He quotes unconsciously, but with new power of meaning, a +clause from one of Shakespeare's sonnets; and, as with some other men's +most famous work, the Ode on the Recollections of Childhood had its +anticipator.* He drew something too from the unconscious mysticism of +the old English language itself, drawing out the inward significance of +its racy idiom, and the not wholly unconscious poetry of the language +used by the simplest people under strong excitement--language, +therefore, at its origin. + +The office of the poet is not that of the moralist, and the first aim +of Wordsworth's poetry is to give the reader a peculiar kind of +pleasure. But through his poetry, and through this pleasure in it, he +does actually convey to the reader an extraordinary wisdom in the +things of practice. One lesson, if men must have lessons, he conveys +more clearly than all, the supreme importance of contemplation in the +conduct of life. + +[60] Contemplation--impassioned contemplation--that, is with Wordsworth +the end-in-itself, the perfect end. We see the majority of mankind +going most often to definite ends, lower or higher ends, as their own +instincts may determine; but the end may never be attained, and the +means not be quite the right means, great ends and little ones alike +being, for the most part, distant, and the ways to them, in this dim +world, somewhat vague. Meantime, to higher or lower ends, they move +too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble +gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety +to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even +great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and +temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its +very sources. We understand this when it is a question of mean, or of +intensely selfish ends--of Grandet, or Javert. We think it bad +morality to say that the end justifies the means, and we know how false +to all higher conceptions of the religious life is the type of one who +is ready to do evil that good may come. We contrast with such dark, +mistaken eagerness, a type like that of Saint Catherine of Siena, who +made the means to her ends so attractive, that she has won for herself +an undying place in the House Beautiful, not by her rectitude of soul +only, but by its "fairness"--by those quite different qualities [61] +which commend themselves to the poet and the artist. + +Yet, for most of us, the conception of means and ends covers the whole +of life, and is the exclusive type or figure under which we represent +our lives to ourselves. Such a figure, reducing all things to +machinery, though it has on its side the authority of that old Greek +moralist who has fixed for succeeding generations the outline of the +theory of right living, is too like a mere picture or description of +men's lives as we actually find them, to be the basis of the higher +ethics. It covers the meanness of men's daily lives, and much of the +dexterity with which they pursue what may seem to them the good of +themselves or of others; but not the intangible perfection of those +whose ideal is rather in being than in doing--not those manners which +are, in the deepest as in the simplest sense, morals, and without which +one cannot so much as offer a cup of water to a poor man without +offence--not the part of "antique Rachel," sitting in the company of +Beatrice; and even the moralist might well endeavour rather to withdraw +men from the too exclusive consideration of means and ends, in life. + +Against this predominance of machinery in our existence, Wordsworth's +poetry, like all great art and poetry, is a continual protest. Justify +rather the end by the means, it seems to say: whatever may become of +the fruit, make sure of [62] the flowers and the leaves. It was justly +said, therefore, by one who had meditated very profoundly on the true +relation of means to ends in life, and on the distinction between what +is desirable in itself and what is desirable only as machinery, that +when the battle which he and his friends were waging had been won, the +world would need more than ever those qualities which Wordsworth was +keeping alive and nourishing.* + +That the end of life is not action but contemplation--being as distinct +from doing--a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some shape or +other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if +you enter into their true spirit at all; you touch this principle, in a +measure: these, by their very sterility, are a type of beholding for +the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit of art, is to +make life a thing in which means and ends are identified: to encourage +such treatment, the true moral significance of art and poetry. +Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more +recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned +contemplation. Their work is, not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, +or even to stimulate us to noble ends; but to withdraw the thoughts for +a little while from the mere machinery of life, to fix [63] them, with +appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man's +existence which no machinery affects, "on the great and universal +passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, +and the entire world of nature,"--on "the operations of the elements +and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on +the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends +and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and hope, on +fear and sorrow." To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions +is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like +Wordsworth's is a great nourisher and stimulant. He sees nature full +of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature, +passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connexion with the +grandeur and beauty of the natural world:--images, in his own words, +"of man suffering, amid awful forms and powers." + +Such is the figure of the more powerful and original poet, hidden away, +in part, under those weaker elements in Wordsworth's poetry, which for +some minds determine their entire character; a poet somewhat bolder and +more passionate than might at first sight be supposed, but not too bold +for true poetical taste; an unimpassioned writer, you might sometimes +fancy, yet thinking the chief aim, in life and art alike, to be a +certain deep emotion; seeking most often the great [64] elementary +passions in lowly places; having at least this condition of all +impassioned work, that he aims always at an absolute sincerity of +feeling and diction, so that he is the true forerunner of the deepest +and most passionate poetry of our own day; yet going back also, with +something of a protest against the conventional fervour of much of the +poetry popular in his own time, to those older English poets, whose +unconscious likeness often comes out in him. + +1874. + +NOTES + +43. *Since this essay was written, such selections have been made, with +excellent taste, by Matthew Arnold and Professor Knight. + +46-47. *In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of +The Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was +intended to be introductory to The Recluse; and that The Recluse, if +completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The +Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the first book of the +first part was left in manuscript by Wordsworth--though in manuscript, +it is said, in no great condition of forwardness for the printers. +This book, now for the first time printed in extenso (a very noble +passage from it found place in that prose advertisement to The +Excursion), is included in the latest edition of Wordsworth by Mr. John +Morley. It was well worth adding to the poet's great bequest to +English literature. A true student of his work, who has formulated for +himself what he supposes to be the leading characteristics of +Wordsworth's genius, will feel, we think, lively interest in testing +them by the various fine passages in what is here presented for the +first time. Let the following serve for a sample:-- + + Thickets full of songsters, and the voice + Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound + Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, + Admonishing the man who walks below + Of solitude and silence in the sky:-- + These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth + Have also these, but nowhere else is found, + Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found + The one sensation that is here; 'tis here, + Here as it found its way into my heart + In childhood, here as it abides by day, + By night, here only; or in chosen minds + That take it with them hence, where'er they go. + --'Tis, but I cannot name it, 'tis the sense + Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, + A blended holiness of earth and sky, + Something that makes this individual spot, + This small abiding-place of many men, + A termination, and a last retreat, + A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will, + A whole without dependence or defect, + Made for itself, and happy in itself, + Perfect contentment, Unity entire. + + +59. *Henry Vaughan, in The Retreat. + +62. *See an interesting paper, by Mr. John Morley, on "The Death of Mr. +Mill," Fortnightly Review, June 1873. + + + +COLERIDGE* + +[65] FORMS of intellectual and spiritual culture sometimes exercise +their subtlest and most artful charm when life is already passing from +them. Searching and irresistible as are the changes of the human spirit +on its way to perfection, there is yet so much elasticity of temper +that what must pass away sooner or later is not disengaged all at once, +even from the highest order of minds. Nature, which by one law of +development evolves ideas, hypotheses, modes of inward life, and +represses them in turn, has in this way provided that the earlier +growth should propel its fibres into the later, and so transmit the +whole of its forces in an unbroken continuity of life. Then comes the +spectacle of the reserve of the elder generation exquisitely refined by +the antagonism of the new. That current of new life chastens them +while they contend against it. Weaker minds fail to perceive the +change: the clearest minds abandon themselves to it. To [66] feel the +change everywhere, yet not abandon oneself to it, is a situation of +difficulty and contention. Communicating, in this way, to the passing +stage of culture, the charm of what is chastened, high-strung, +athletic, they yet detach the highest minds from the past, by pressing +home its difficulties and finally proving it impossible. Such has been +the charm of many leaders of lost causes in philosophy and in religion. +It is the special charm of Coleridge, in connexion with those older +methods of philosophic inquiry, over which the empirical philosophy of +our day has triumphed. + +Modern thought is distinguished from ancient by its cultivation of the +"relative" spirit in place of the "absolute." Ancient philosophy +sought to arrest every object in an eternal outline, to fix thought in +a necessary formula, and the varieties of life in a classification by +"kinds," or genera. To the modern spirit nothing is, or can be rightly +known, except relatively and under conditions. The philosophical +conception of the relative has been developed in modern times through +the influence of the sciences of observation. Those sciences reveal +types of life evanescing into each other by inexpressible refinements +of change. Things pass into their opposites by accumulation of +undefinable quantities. The growth of those sciences consists in a +continual analysis of facts of rough and general observation into +groups of facts more precise and minute. + +[67] The faculty for truth is recognised as a power of distinguishing +and fixing delicate and fugitive detail. The moral world is ever in +contact with the physical, and the relative spirit has invaded moral +philosophy from the ground of the inductive sciences. There it has +started a new analysis of the relations of body and mind, good and +evil, freedom and necessity. Hard and abstract moralities are yielding +to a more exact estimate of the subtlety and complexity of our life. +Always, as an organism increases in perfection, the conditions of its +life become more complex. Man is the most complex of the products of +nature. Character merges into temperament: the nervous system refines +itself into intellect. Man's physical organism is played upon not only +by the physical conditions about it, but by remote laws of inheritance, +the vibration of long-past acts reaching him in the midst of the new +order of things in which he lives. When we have estimated these +conditions he is still not yet simple and isolated; for the mind of the +race, the character of the age, sway him this way or that through the +medium of language and current ideas. It seems as if the most opposite +statements about him were alike true: he is so receptive, all the +influences of nature and of society ceaselessly playing upon him, so +that every hour in his life is unique, changed altogether by a stray +word, or glance, or touch. It is the truth of these relations that +experience [68] gives us, not the truth of eternal outlines ascertained +once for all, but a world of fine gradations and subtly linked +conditions, shifting intricately as we ourselves change--and bids us, +by a constant clearing of the organs of observation and perfecting of +analysis, to make what we can of these. To the intellect, the critical +spirit, just these subtleties of effect are more precious than anything +else. What is lost in precision of form is gained in intricacy of +expression. It is no vague scholastic abstraction that will satisfy +the speculative instinct in our modern minds. Who would change the +colour or curve of a rose-leaf for that ousia akhromatos, +askhematistos, anaphes+--that colourless, formless, intangible, +being--Plato put so high? For the true illustration of the speculative +temper is not the Hindoo mystic, lost to sense, understanding, +individuality, but one such as Goethe, to whom every moment of life +brought its contribution of experimental, individual knowledge; by whom +no touch of the world of form, colour, and passion was disregarded. + +Now the literary life of Coleridge was a disinterested struggle against +the relative spirit. With a strong native bent towards the tracking of +all questions, critical or practical, to first principles, he is ever +restlessly scheming to "apprehend the absolute," to affirm it +effectively, to get it acknowledged. It was an effort, surely, an +effort of sickly thought, that saddened his [69] mind, and limited the +operation of his unique poetic gift. + +So what the reader of our own generation will least find in Coleridge's +prose writings is the excitement of the literary sense. And yet, in +those grey volumes, we have the larger part of the production of one +who made way ever by a charm, the charm of voice, of aspect, of +language, above all by the intellectual charm of new, moving, luminous +ideas. Perhaps the chief offence in Coleridge is an excess of +seriousness, a seriousness arising not from any moral principle, but +from a misconception of the perfect manner. There is a certain shade +of unconcern, the perfect manner of the eighteenth century, which may +be thought to mark complete culture in the handling of abstract +questions. The humanist, the possessor of that complete culture, does +not "weep" over the failure of "a theory of the quantification of the +predicate," nor "shriek" over the fall of a philosophical formula. A +kind of humour is, in truth, one of the conditions of the just mental +attitude, in the criticism of by-past stages of thought. Humanity +cannot afford to be too serious about them, any more than a man of good +sense can afford to be too serious in looking back upon his own +childhood. Plato, whom Coleridge claims as the first of his spiritual +ancestors, Plato, as we remember him, a true humanist, holds his +theories lightly, glances with a somewhat blithe and naive +inconsequence from [70] one view to another, not anticipating the +burden of importance "views" will one day have for men. In reading him +one feels how lately it was that Croesus thought it a paradox to say +that external prosperity was not necessarily happiness. But on +Coleridge lies the whole weight of the sad reflection that has since +come into the world, with which for us the air is full, which the +"children in the market-place" repeat to each other. His very language +is forced and broken lest some saving formula should be +lost--distinctities, enucleation, pentad of operative Christianity; he +has a whole armoury of these terms, and expects to turn the tide of +human thought by fixing the sense of such expressions as "reason," +"understanding," "idea." Again, he lacks the jealousy of a true artist +in excluding all associations that have no colour, or charm, or +gladness in them; and everywhere allows the impress of a somewhat +inferior theological literature. + +"I was driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation:" so +Coleridge sums up his childhood, with its delicacy, its sensitiveness, +and passion. But at twenty-five he was exercising a wonderful charm, +and had already defined for himself his peculiar line of intellectual +activity. He had an odd, attractive gift of conversation, or rather of +monologue, as Madame de Stael observed of him, full of bizarreries, +with the rapid alternations of a dream, and here or there an unexpected +summons into a world [71] strange to the hearer, abounding in images +drawn from a sort of divided imperfect life, the consciousness of the +opium-eater, as of one to whom the external world penetrated only in +part, and, blent with all this, passages of deep obscurity, precious, +if at all, only for their musical cadence, echoes in Coleridge of the +eloquence of those older English writers of whom he was so ardent a +lover. And all through this brilliant early manhood we may discern the +power of the "Asiatic" temperament, of that voluptuousness, which is +connected perhaps with his appreciation of the intimacy, the almost +mystical communion of touch, between nature and man. "I am much +better," he writes, "and my new and tender health is all over me like a +voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring +gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the +interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his +early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible, self-assertion. So +great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal +life, of even a temporary escape of the spirit from routine. + +In 1798 he visited Germany, then, the only half-known, "promised land," +of the metaphysical, the "absolute," philosophy. A beautiful fragment +of this period remains, describing a spring excursion to the Brocken. +His excitement still vibrates in it. Love, all joyful states [72] of +mind, are self-expressive: they loosen the tongue, they fill the +thoughts with sensuous images, they harmonise one with the world of +sight. We hear of the "rich graciousness and courtesy" of Coleridge's +manner, of the white and delicate skin, the abundant black hair, the +full, almost animal lips--that whole physiognomy of the dreamer, +already touched with narcotism. One says, of the beginning of one of +his Unitarian sermons: "His voice rose like a stream of rich, distilled +perfumes;" another, "He talks like an angel, and does--nothing!" + +The Aids to Reflection, The Friend, The Biographia Literaria: those +books came from one whose vocation was in the world of the imagination, +the theory and practice of poetry. And yet, perhaps, of all books that +have been influential in modern times, they are furthest from artistic +form--bundles of notes; the original matter inseparably mixed up with +that borrowed from others; the whole, just that mere preparation for an +artistic effect which the finished literary artist would be careful one +day to destroy. Here, again, we have a trait profoundly characteristic +of Coleridge. He sometimes attempts to reduce a phase of thought, +subtle and exquisite, to conditions too rough for it. He uses a purely +speculative gift for direct moral edification. Scientific truth is a +thing fugitive, relative, full of fine gradations: he tries to fix it +in absolute formulas. The Aids to Reflection, The Friend, are [73] +efforts to propagate the volatile spirit of conversation into the less +ethereal fabric of a written book; and it is only here or there that +the poorer matter becomes vibrant, is really lifted by the spirit. + +De Quincey said of him that "he wanted better bread than can be made +with wheat:" Lamb, that from childhood he had "hungered for eternity." +Yet the faintness, the continuous dissolution, whatever its cause, +which soon supplanted the buoyancy of his first wonderful years, had +its own consumptive refinements, and even brought, as to the "Beautiful +Soul" in Wilhelm Meister, a faint religious ecstasy--that "singing in +the sails" which is not of the breeze. Here again is one of his +occasional notes:-- + +"In looking at objects of nature while I am thinking, as at yonder +moon, dim-glimmering through the window-pane, I seem rather to be +seeking, as it were asking, a symbolical language for something within +me, that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. +Even when the latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure +feeling, as if that new phenomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten +or hidden truth of my inner nature. While I was preparing the pen to +make this remark, I lost the train of thought which had led me to it." + +What a distemper of the eye of the mind! What an almost bodily +distemper there is in that! + +Coleridge's intellectual sorrows were many; [74] but he had one +singular intellectual happiness. With an inborn taste for +transcendental philosophy, he lived just at the time when that +philosophy took an immense spring in Germany, and connected itself with +an impressive literary movement. He had the good luck to light upon it +in its freshness, and introduce it to his countrymen. What an +opportunity for one reared on the colourless analytic English +philosophies of the last century, but who feels an irresistible +attraction towards bold metaphysical synthesis! How rare are such +occasions of intellectual contentment! This transcendental philosophy, +chiefly as systematised by the mystic Schelling, Coleridge applied with +an eager, unwearied subtlety, to the questions of theology, and poetic +or artistic criticism. It is in his theory of poetry, of art, that he +comes nearest to principles of permanent truth and importance: that is +the least fugitive part of his prose work. What, then, is the essence +of his philosophy of art--of imaginative production? + +Generally, it may be described as an attempt to reclaim the world of +art as a world of fixed laws, to show that the creative activity of +genius and the simplest act of thought are but higher and lower +products of the laws of a universal logic. Criticism, feeling its own +inadequacy in dealing with the greater works of art, is sometimes +tempted to make too much of those dark and capricious suggestions of +genius, which even [75] the intellect possessed by them is unable to +explain or recall. It has seemed due to the half-sacred character of +those works to ignore all analogy between the productive process by +which they had their birth, and the simpler processes of mind. +Coleridge, on the other hand, assumes that the highest phases of +thought must be more, not less, than the lower, subject to law. + +With this interest, in the Biographia Literaria, he refines Schelling's +"Philosophy of Nature" into a theory of art. "There can be no +plagiarism in philosophy," says Heine:--Es giebt kein Plagiat in der +Philosophie, in reference to the charge brought against Schelling of +unacknowledged borrowing from Bruno; and certainly that which is common +to Coleridge and Schelling and Bruno alike is of far earlier origin +than any of them. Schellingism, the "Philosophy of Nature," is indeed +a constant tradition in the history of thought: it embodies a permanent +type of the speculative temper. That mode of conceiving nature as a +mirror or reflex of the intelligence of man may be traced up to the +first beginnings of Greek speculation. There are two ways of +envisaging those aspects of nature which seem to bear the impress of +reason or intelligence. There is the deist's way, which regards them +merely as marks of design, which separates the informing mind from its +result in nature, as the mechanist from the machine; and there is the +pantheistic way, which identifies the two, which [76] regards nature +itself as the living energy of an intelligence of the same kind as +though vaster in scope than the human. Partly through the influence of +mythology, the Greek mind became early possessed with the conception of +nature as living, thinking, almost speaking to the mind of man. This +unfixed poetical prepossession, reduced to an abstract form, petrified +into an idea, is the force which gives unity of aim to Greek +philosophy. Little by little, it works out the substance of the +Hegelian formula: "Whatever is, is according to reason: whatever is +according to reason, that is." Experience, which has gradually +saddened the earth's colours for us, stiffened its motions, withdrawn +from it some blithe and debonair presence, has quite changed the +character of the science of nature, as we understand it. The +"positive" method, in truth, makes very little account of marks of +intelligence in nature: in its wider view of phenomena, it sees that +those instances are a minority, and may rank as happy coincidences: it +absorbs them in the larger conception of universal mechanical law. But +the suspicion of a mind latent in nature, struggling for release, and +intercourse with the intellect of man through true ideas, has never +ceased to haunt a certain class of minds. Started again and again in +successive periods by enthusiasts on the antique pattern, in each case +the thought may have seemed paler and more fantastic amid the growing +[77] consistency and sharpness of outline of other and more positive +forms of knowledge. Still, wherever the speculative instinct has been +united with a certain poetic inwardness of temperament, as in Bruno, in +Schelling, there that old Greek conception, like some seed floating in +the air, has taken root and sprung up anew. Coleridge, thrust inward +upon himself, driven from "life in thought and sensation" to life in +thought only, feels already, in his dark London school, a thread of the +Greek mind on this matter vibrating strongly in him. At fifteen he is +discoursing on Plotinus, as in later years he reflects from Schelling +that flitting intellectual tradition. He supposes a subtle, sympathetic +co-ordination between the ideas of the human reason and the laws of the +natural world. Science, the real knowledge of that natural world, is +to be attained, not by observation, experiment, analysis, patient +generalisation, but by the evolution or recovery of those ideas +directly from within, by a sort of Platonic "recollection"; every group +of observed facts remaining an enigma until the appropriate idea is +struck upon them from the mind of a Newton, or a Cuvier, the genius in +whom sympathy with the universal reason becomes entire. In the next +place, he conceives that this reason or intelligence in nature becomes +reflective, or self-conscious. He fancies he can trace, through all +the simpler forms of life, fragments of an eloquent prophecy about the +[78] human mind. The whole of nature he regards as a development of +higher forms out of the lower, through shade after shade of systematic +change. The dim stir of chemical atoms towards the axis of crystal +form, the trance-like life of plants, the animal troubled by strange +irritabilities, are stages which anticipate consciousness. All through +the ever-increasing movement of life that was shaping itself; every +successive phase of life, in its unsatisfied susceptibilities, seeming +to be drawn out of its own limits by the more pronounced current of +life on its confines, the "shadow of approaching humanity" gradually +deepening, the latent intelligence winning a way to the surface. And +at this point the law of development does not lose itself in caprice: +rather it becomes more constraining and incisive. From the lowest to +the very highest acts of the conscious intelligence, there is another +series of refining shades. Gradually the mind concentrates itself, +frees itself from the limitations of the particular, the individual, +attains a strange power of modifying and centralising what it receives +from without, according to the pattern of an inward ideal. At last, in +imaginative genius, ideas become effective: the intelligence of nature, +all its discursive elements now connected and justified, is clearly +reflected; the interpretation of its latent purposes being embodied in +the great central products of creative art. The secret of creative +[79] genius would be an exquisitely purged sympathy with nature, with +the reasonable soul antecedent there. Those associative conceptions of +the imagination, those eternally fixed types of action and passion, +would come, not so much from the conscious invention of the artist, as +from his self-surrender to the suggestions of an abstract reason or +ideality in things: they would be evolved by the stir of nature itself, +realising the highest reach of its dormant reason: they would have a +kind of prevenient necessity to rise at some time to the surface of the +human mind. + +It is natural that Shakespeare should be the favourite illustration of +such criticism, whether in England or Germany. The first suggestion in +Shakespeare is that of capricious detail, of a waywardness that plays +with the parts careless of the impression of the whole; what supervenes +is the constraining unity of effect, the ineffaceable impression, of +Hamlet or Macbeth. His hand moving freely is curved round as if by +some law of gravitation from within: an energetic unity or identity +makes itself visible amid an abounding variety. This unity or identity +Coleridge exaggerates into something like the identity of a natural +organism, and the associative act which effected it into something +closely akin to the primitive power of nature itself. "In the +Shakespearian drama," he says, "there is a vitality which grows and +evolves itself from within." + +[80] Again-- + +He, too, worked in the spirit of nature, by evolving the germ from +within, by the imaginative power, according to the idea. For as the +power of seeing is to light, so is an idea in mind to a law in nature. +They are correlatives which suppose each other. + +Again-- + +The organic form is innate: it shapes, as it develops, itself from +within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the +perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form. +Nature, the prime, genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is +equally inexhaustible in forms: each exterior is the physiognomy of the +being within, and even such is the appropriate excellence of +Shakespeare, himself a nature humanised, a genial understanding, +directing self-consciously a power and an implicit wisdom deeper even +than our consciousness.+ + +In this late age we are become so familiarised with the greater works +of art as to be little sensitive of the act of creation in them: they +do not impress us as a new presence in the world. Only sometimes, in +productions which realise immediately a profound influence and enforce +a change in taste, we are actual witnesses of the moulding of an +unforeseen type by some new principle of association; and to that +phenomenon Coleridge wisely recalls our attention. What makes his view +a one-sided one is, that in it the artist has become almost a +mechanical agent: instead of the most luminous and self-possessed phase +of consciousness, the associative act in art or poetry is made to look +like some blindly organic process of assimilation. The work of art is +likened to a living organism. That expresses [81] truly the sense of a +self-delighting, independent life which the finished work of art gives +us: it hardly figures the process by which such work was produced. +Here there is no blind ferment of lifeless elements towards the +realisation of a type. By exquisite analysis the artist attains +clearness of idea; then, through many stages of refining, clearness of +expression. He moves slowly over his work, calculating the tenderest +tone, and restraining the subtlest curve, never letting hand or fancy +move at large, gradually enforcing flaccid spaces to the higher degree +of expressiveness. The philosophic critic, at least, will value, even +in works of imagination, seemingly the most intuitive, the power of the +understanding in them, their logical process of construction, the +spectacle of a supreme intellectual dexterity which they afford. + +Coleridge's prose writings on philosophy, politics, religion, and +criticism, were, in truth, but one element in a whole lifetime of +endeavours to present the then recent metaphysics of Germany to English +readers, as a legitimate expansion of the older, classical and native +masters of what has been variously called the a priori, or absolute, or +spiritual, or Platonic, view of things. His criticism, his challenge +for recognition in the concrete, visible, finite work of art, of the +dim, unseen, comparatively infinite, soul or power of the artist, may +well be [82] remembered as part of the long pleading of German culture +for the things "behind the veil." To introduce that spiritual +philosophy, as represented by the more transcendental parts of Kant, +and by Schelling, into all subjects, as a system of reason in them, one +and ever identical with itself, however various the matter through +which it was diffused, became with him the motive of an unflagging +enthusiasm, which seems to have been the one thread of continuity in a +life otherwise singularly wanting in unity of purpose, and in which he +was certainly far from uniformly at his best. Fragmentary and obscure, +but often eloquent, and always at once earnest and ingenious, those +writings, supplementing his remarkable gift of conversation, were +directly and indirectly influential, even on some the furthest removed +from Coleridge's own masters; on John Stuart Mill, for instance, and +some of the earlier writers of the "high-church" school. Like his +verse, they display him also in two other characters--as a student of +words, and as a psychologist, that is, as a more minute observer or +student than other men of the phenomena of mind. To note the recondite +associations of words, old or new; to expound the logic, the reasonable +soul, of their various uses; to recover the interest of older writers +who had had a phraseology of their own--this was a vein of inquiry +allied to his undoubted gift of tracking out and analysing curious +modes of thought. A [83] quaint fragment of verse on Human Life might +serve to illustrate his study of the earlier English philosophical +poetry. The latter gift, that power of the "subtle-souled +psychologist," as Shelley calls him, seems to have been connected with +some tendency to disease in the physical temperament, something of a +morbid want of balance in those parts where the physical and +intellectual elements mix most closely together, with a kind of languid +visionariness, deep-seated in the very constitution of the "narcotist," +who had quite a gift for "plucking the poisons of self-harm," and which +the actual habit of taking opium, accidentally acquired, did but +reinforce. This morbid languor of nature, connected both with his +fitfulness of purpose and his rich delicate dreaminess, qualifies +Coleridge's poetic composition even more than his prose; his verse, +with the exception of his avowedly political poems, being, unlike that +of the "Lake School," to which in some respects he belongs, singularly +unaffected by any moral, or professional, or personal effort or +ambition,--"written," as he says, "after the more violent emotions of +sorrow, to give him pleasure, when perhaps nothing else could;" but +coming thus, indeed, very close to his own most intimately personal +characteristics, and having a certain languidly soothing grace or +cadence, for its most fixed quality, from first to last. After some +Platonic soliloquy on a flower opening on a fine day in February, he +goes on-- [84] + + Dim similitudes + Weaving in mortal strains, I've stolen one hour + From anxious self, life's cruel taskmaster! + And the warm wooings of this sunny day + Tremble along my frame and harmonise + The attempered organ, that even saddest thoughts + Mix with some sweet sensations, like harsh tunes + Played deftly on a sweet-toned instrument. + +The expression of two opposed, yet allied, elements of sensibility in +these lines, is very true to Coleridge:--the grievous agitation, the +grievous listlessness, almost never entirely relieved, together with a +certain physical voluptuousness. He has spoken several times of the +scent of the bean-field in the air:--the tropical touches in a chilly +climate; his is a nature that will make the most of these, which finds +a sort of caress in such things. Kubla Khan, the fragment of a poem +actually composed in some certainly not quite healthy sleep, is perhaps +chiefly of interest as showing, by the mode of its composition, how +physical, how much of a diseased or valetudinarian temperament, in its +moments of relief, Coleridge's happiest gift really was; and side by +side with Kubla Khan should be read, as Coleridge placed it, the Pains +of Sleep, to illustrate that retarding physical burden in his +temperament, that "unimpassioned grief," the source of which lay so +near the source of those pleasures. Connected also with this, and +again in contrast with Wordsworth, is the limited quantity of his +poetical performance, as he himself [85] regrets so eloquently in the +lines addressed to Wordsworth after his recitation of The Prelude. It +is like some exotic plant, just managing to blossom a little in the +somewhat un-english air of Coleridge's own south-western birthplace, +but never quite well there. + +In 1798 he joined Wordsworth in the composition of a volume of +poems--the Lyrical Ballads. What Wordsworth then wrote already +vibrates with that blithe impulse which carried him to final happiness +and self-possession. In Coleridge we feel already that faintness and +obscure dejection which clung like some contagious damp to all his +work. Wordsworth was to be distinguished by a joyful and penetrative +conviction of the existence of certain latent affinities between nature +and the human mind, which reciprocally gild the mind and nature with a +kind of "heavenly alchemy." + + My voice proclaims + How exquisitely the individual mind + (And the progressive powers, perhaps, no less + Of the whole species) to the external world + Is fitted; and how exquisitely, too, + The external world is fitted to the mind; + And the creation, by no lower name + Can it be called, which they with blended might + Accomplish. + +In Wordsworth this took the form of an unbroken dreaming over the +aspects and transitions of nature--a reflective, though altogether +unformulated, analysis of them. + +[86] There are in Coleridge's poems expressions of this conviction as +deep as Wordsworth's. But Coleridge could never have abandoned himself +to the dream, the vision, as Wordsworth did, because the first +condition of such abandonment must be an unvexed quietness of heart. +No one can read the Lines composed above Tintern without feeling how +potent the physical element was among the conditions of Wordsworth's +genius--"felt in the blood and felt along the heart." + + My whole life I have lived in quiet thought! + +The stimulus which most artists require of nature he can renounce. He +leaves the ready-made glory of the Swiss mountains that he may reflect +glory on a mouldering leaf. He loves best to watch the floating +thistledown, because of its hint at an unseen life in the air. +Coleridge's temperament, aei en sphodra orexei,+ with its faintness, +its grieved dejection, could never have been like that. + + My genial spirits fail; + And what can these avail + To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? + It were a vain endeavour, + Though I should gaze for ever + On that green light that lingers in the west + I may not hope from outward forms to win + The passion and the life whose fountains are within. + +Wordsworth's flawless temperament, his fine mountain atmosphere of +mind, that calm, sabbatic, mystic, wellbeing which De Quincey, [87] a +little cynically, connected with worldly (that is to say, pecuniary) +good fortune, kept his conviction of a latent intelligence in nature +within the limits of sentiment or instinct, and confined it to those +delicate and subdued shades of expression which alone perfect art +allows. In Coleridge's sadder, more purely intellectual, cast of +genius, what with Wordsworth was sentiment or instinct became a +philosophical idea, or philosophical formula, developed, as much as +possible, after the abstract and metaphysical fashion of the +transcendental schools of Germany. + +The period of Coleridge's residence at Nether Stowey, 1797-1798, was +for him the annus mirabilis. Nearly all the chief works by which his +poetic fame will live were then composed or planned. What shapes +itself for criticism as the main phenomenon of Coleridge's poetic life, +is not, as with most true poets, the gradual development of a poetic +gift, determined, enriched, retarded, by the actual circumstances of +the poet's life, but the sudden blossoming, through one short season, +of such a gift already perfect in its kind, which thereafter +deteriorates as suddenly, with something like premature old age. +Connecting this phenomenon with the leading motive of his prose +writings, we might note it as the deterioration of a productive or +creative power into one merely metaphysical or discursive. In his +unambitious conception of his function as a poet, and in the very +limited quantity of his [88] poetical performance, as I have said, he +was a contrast to his friend Wordsworth. That friendship with +Wordsworth, the chief "developing" circumstance of his poetic life, +comprehended a very close intellectual sympathy; and in such +association chiefly, lies whatever truth there may be in the popular +classification of Coleridge as a member of what is called the "Lake +School." Coleridge's philosophical speculations do really turn on the +ideas which underlay Wordsworth's poetical practice. His prose works +are one long explanation of all that is involved in that famous +distinction between the Fancy and the Imagination. Of what is +understood by both writers as the imaginative quality in the use of +poetic figures, we may take some words of Shakespeare as an example.-- + + My cousin Suffolk, + My soul shall thine keep company to heaven + Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast. + +The complete infusion here of the figure into the thought, so vividly +realised, that, though birds are not actually mentioned, yet the sense +of their flight, conveyed to us by the single word "abreast," comes to +be more than half of the thought itself:--this, as the expression of +exalted feeling, is an instance of what Coleridge meant by Imagination. +And this sort of identification of the poet's thought, of himself, with +the image or figure which serves him, is the secret, sometimes, [89] of +a singularly entire realisation of that image, such as makes these +lines of Coleridge, for instance, "imaginative"-- + + Amid the howl of more than wintry storms, + The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours + Already on the wing. + +There are many such figures both in Coleridge's verse and prose. He +has, too, his passages of that sort of impassioned contemplation on the +permanent and elementary conditions of nature and humanity, which +Wordsworth held to be the essence of a poet; as it would be his proper +function to awaken such contemplation in other men--those "moments," as +Coleridge says, addressing him-- + + Moments awful, + Now in thy inner life, and now abroad, + When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received + The light reflected, as a light bestowed. + +The entire poem from which these lines are taken, "composed on the +night after Wordsworth's recitation of a poem on the growth of an +individual mind," is, in its high-pitched strain of meditation, and in +the combined justice and elevation of its philosophical expression-- + + high and passionate thoughts + To their own music chanted; + +wholly sympathetic with The Prelude which it celebrates, and of which +the subject is, in effect, the generation of the spirit of the "Lake +poetry." [90] The Lines to Joseph Cottle have the same philosophically +imaginative character; the Ode to Dejection being Coleridge's most +sustained effort of this kind. + +It is in a highly sensitive apprehension of the aspects of external +nature that Coleridge identifies himself most closely with one of the +main tendencies of the "Lake School"; a tendency instinctive, and no +mere matter of theory, in him as in Wordsworth. That record of the + + green light + Which lingers in the west, + +and again, of + + the western sky, + And its peculiar tint of yellow green, + +which Byron found ludicrously untrue, but which surely needs no +defence, is a characteristic example of a singular watchfulness for the +minute fact and expression of natural scenery pervading all he wrote--a +closeness to the exact physiognomy of nature, having something to do +with that idealistic philosophy which sees in the external world no +mere concurrence of mechanical agencies, but an animated body, informed +and made expressive, like the body of man, by an indwelling +intelligence. It was a tendency, doubtless, in the air, for Shelley +too is affected by it, and Turner, with the school of landscape which +followed him. "I had found," Coleridge tells us, + +[91] + + That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive + Their finer influence from the world within; + Fair ciphers of vague import, where the eye + Traces no spot, in which the heart may read + History and prophecy:... + +and this induces in him no indifference to actual colour and form and +process, but such minute realism as this-- + + The thin grey cloud is spread on high, + It covers but not hides the sky. + The moon is behind and at the full; + And yet she looks both small and dull; + +or this, which has a touch of "romantic" weirdness-- + + Nought was green upon the oak + But moss and rarest misletoe + +or this-- + + There is not wind enough to twirl + The one red leaf, the last of its clan, + That dances as often as dance it can, + Hanging so light, and hanging so high, + On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky + +or this, with a weirdness, again, like that of some wild French etcher-- + + Lo! the new-moon winter-bright! + And overspread with phantom light + (With swimming phantom light o'erspread, + But rimmed and circled with a silver thread) + I see the old moon in her lap, foretelling + The coming on of rain and squally blast. + +He has a like imaginative apprehension of the silent and unseen +processes of nature, its "ministries" [92] of dew and frost, for +instance; as when he writes, in April-- + + A balmy night! and though the stars be dim, + Yet let us think upon the vernal showers + That gladden the green earth, and we shall find + A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. + +Of such imaginative treatment of landscape there is no better instance +than the description of The Dell, in Fears in Solitude-- + + A green and silent spot amid the hills, + A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place + No singing skylark ever poised himself-- + But the dell, + Bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate + As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax + When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve, + The level sunshine glimmers with green light:-- + + The gust that roared and died away + To the distant tree-- + + heard and only heard + In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass. + +This curious insistence of the mind on one particular spot, till it +seems to attain actual expression and a sort of soul in it--a mood so +characteristic of the "Lake School"--occurs in an earnest political +poem, "written in April 1798, during the alarm of an invasion"; and +that silent dell is the background against which the tumultuous fears +of the poet are in strong relief, while the quiet sense of the place, +maintained all through them, gives a true poetic unity to the piece. +Good political poetry--[93] political poetry that shall be permanently +moving--can, perhaps, only be written on motives which, for those they +concern, have ceased to be open questions, and are really beyond +argument; while Coleridge's political poems are for the most part on +open questions. For although it was a great part of his intellectual +ambition to subject political questions to the action of the +fundamental ideas of his philosophy, he was nevertheless an ardent +partisan, first on one side, then on the other, of the actual politics +proper to the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, +where there is still room for much difference of opinion. Yet The +Destiny of Nations, though formless as a whole, and unfinished, +presents many traces of his most elevated manner of speculation, cast +into that sort of imaginative philosophical expression, in which, in +effect, the language itself is inseparable from, or essentially a part +of, the thought. France, an Ode, begins with a famous apostrophe to +Liberty-- + + Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, + Whose pathless march no mortal may control! + Ye Ocean-waves! that wheresoe'er ye roll, + Yield homage only to eternal laws! + Ye Woods! that listen to the night-bird's singing, + Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, + Save when your own imperious branches swinging, + Have made a solemn music of the wind! + Where like a man beloved of God, + Through glooms which never woodman trod, + How oft, pursuing fancies holy, + +[94] + + My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, + Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, + By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! + O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! + And O ye Clouds that far above me soar'd! + + Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! + Yea, everything that is and will be free! + Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, + With what deep worship I have still adored + The spirit of divinest liberty. + +And the whole ode, though, after Coleridge's way, not quite equal to +that exordium, is an example of strong national sentiment, partly in +indignant reaction against his own earlier sympathy with the French +Republic, inspiring a composition which, in spite of some turgid lines, +really justifies itself as poetry, and has that true unity of effect +which the ode requires. Liberty, after all his hopes of young France, +is only to be found in nature:-- + + Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, + The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! + +In his changes of political sentiment, Coleridge was associated with +the "Lake School"; and there is yet one other very different sort of +sentiment in which he is one with that school, yet all himself, his +sympathy, namely, with the animal world. That was a sentiment +connected at once with the love of outward nature in himself and in the +"Lake School," and its assertion of the natural affections in their +simplicity; with the homeliness and pity, consequent upon [95] that +assertion. The Lines to a Young Ass, tethered-- + + Where the close-eaten grass is scarcely seen, + While sweet around her waves the tempting green, + +which had seemed merely whimsical in their day, indicate a vein of +interest constant in Coleridge's poems, and at its height in his +greatest poems--in Christabel, where it has its effect, as it were +antipathetically, in the vivid realisation of the serpentine element in +Geraldine's nature; and in The Ancient Mariner, whose fate is +interwoven with that of the wonderful bird, at whose blessing of the +water-snakes the curse for the death of the albatross passes away, and +where the moral of the love of all creatures, as a sort of religious +duty, is definitely expressed. + +Christabel, though not printed till 1816, was written mainly in the +year 1797: The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was printed as a +contribution to the Lyrical Ballads in 1798; and these two poems belong +to the great year of Coleridge's poetic production, his twenty-fifth +year. In poetic quality, above all in that most poetic of all +qualities, a keen sense of, and delight in beauty, the infection of +which lays hold upon the reader, they are quite out of proportion to +all his other compositions. The form in both is that of the ballad, +with some of its terminology, and some also of its quaint conceits. +They connect themselves with that revival of ballad literature, of +which Percy's Relics, and, in another [96] way, Macpherson's Ossian are +monuments, and which afterwards so powerfully affected Scott-- + + Young-eyed poesy + All deftly masked as hoar antiquity. + +The Ancient Mariner, as also, in its measure, Christabel, is a +"romantic" poem, impressing us by bold invention, and appealing to that +taste for the supernatural, that longing for le frisson, a shudder, to +which the "romantic" school in Germany, and its derivations in England +and France, directly ministered. In Coleridge, personally, this taste +had been encouraged by his odd and out-of-the-way reading in the +old-fashioned literature of the marvellous--books like Purchas's +Pilgrims, early voyages like Hakluyt's, old naturalists and visionary +moralists, like Thomas Burnet, from whom he quotes the motto of "The +Ancient Mariner, Facile credo, plures esse naturas invisibiles quam +visibiles in rerum universitate, etc." Fancies of the strange things +which may very well happen, even in broad daylight, to men shut up +alone in ships far off on the sea, seem to have occurred to the human +mind in all ages with a peculiar readiness, and often have about them, +from the story of the stealing of Dionysus downwards, the fascination +of a certain dreamy grace, which distinguishes them from other kinds of +marvellous inventions. This sort of fascination The Ancient Mariner +brings to its highest degree: it is the delicacy, the dreamy [97] +grace, in his presentation of the marvellous, which makes Coleridge's +work so remarkable. The too palpable intruders from a spiritual world +in almost all ghost literature, in Scott and Shakespeare even, have a +kind of crudity or coarseness. Coleridge's power is in the very +fineness with which, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home +to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are--the skeleton +ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the +ship's crew. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner has the plausibility, +the perfect adaptation to reason and the general aspect of life, which +belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a +credible experience in our dreams. Doubtless, the mere experience of +the opium-eater, the habit he must almost necessarily fall into of +noting the more elusive phenomena of dreams, had something to do with +that: in its essence, however, it is connected with a more purely +intellectual circumstance in the development of Coleridge's poetic +gift. Some one once asked William Blake, to whom Coleridge has many +resemblances, when either is at his best (that whole episode of the +re-inspiriting of the ship's crew in The Ancient Mariner being +comparable to Blake's well-known design of the "Morning Stars singing +together") whether he had ever seen a ghost, and was surprised when the +famous seer, who ought, one might think, to have seen so many, answered +frankly, "Only [98] once!" His "spirits," at once more delicate, and +so much more real, than any ghost--the burden, as they were the +privilege, of his temperament--like it, were an integral element in his +everyday life. And the difference of mood expressed in that question +and its answer, is indicative of a change of temper in regard to the +supernatural which has passed over the whole modern mind, and of which +the true measure is the influence of the writings of Swedenborg. What +that change is we may see if we compare the vision by which Swedenborg +was "called," as he thought, to his work, with the ghost which called +Hamlet, or the spells of Marlowe's Faust with those of Goethe's. The +modern mind, so minutely self-scrutinising, if it is to be affected at +all by a sense of the supernatural, needs to be more finely touched +than was possible in the older, romantic presentment of it. The +spectral object, so crude, so impossible, has become plausible, as + + The blot upon the brain, + That will show itself without; + +and is understood to be but a condition of one's own mind, for which, +according to the scepticism, latent at least, in so much of our modern +philosophy, the so-called real things themselves are but spectra after +all. + +It is this finer, more delicately marvellous supernaturalism, fruit of +his more delicate [99] psychology, that Coleridge infuses into romantic +adventure, itself also then a new or revived thing in English +literature; and with a fineness of weird effect in The Ancient Mariner, +unknown in those older, more simple, romantic legends and ballads. It +is a flower of medieval or later German romance, growing up in the +peculiarly compounded atmosphere of modern psychological speculation, +and putting forth in it wholly new qualities. The quaint prose +commentary, which runs side by side with the verse of The Ancient +Mariner, illustrates this--a composition of quite a different shade of +beauty and merit from that of the verse which it accompanies, +connecting this, the chief poem of Coleridge, with his philosophy, and +emphasising therein that psychological interest of which I have spoken, +its curious soul-lore. + +Completeness, the perfectly rounded wholeness and unity of the +impression it leaves on the mind of a reader who fairly gives himself +to it--that, too, is one of the characteristics of a really excellent +work, in the poetic as in every other kind of art; and by this +completeness, The Ancient Mariner certainly gains upon Christabel--a +completeness, entire as that of Wordsworth's Leech-gatherer, or Keats's +Saint Agnes' Eve, each typical in its way of such wholeness or entirety +of effect on a careful reader. It is Coleridge's one great complete +work, the one really finished thing, in a life of many beginnings. +Christabel remained a fragment. In The Ancient Mariner [100] this +unity is secured in part by the skill with which the incidents of the +marriage-feast are made to break in dreamily from time to time upon the +main story. And then, how pleasantly, how reassuringly, the whole +nightmare story itself is made to end, among the clear fresh sounds and +lights of the bay, where it began, with + + The moon-light steeped in silentness, + The steady weather-cock. + +So different from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in regard to this +completeness of effect, Christabel illustrates the same complexion of +motives, a like intellectual situation. Here, too, the work is of a +kind peculiar to one who touches the characteristic motives of the old +romantic ballad, with a spirit made subtle and fine by modern +reflection; as we feel, I think, in such passages as-- + + But though my slumber had gone by, + This dream it would not pass away-- + It seems to live upon mine eye; + +and-- + + For she, belike, hath drunken deep + Of all the blessedness of sleep; + +and again-- + + With such perplexity of mind + As dreams too lively leave behind. + +And that gift of handling the finer passages of human feeling, at once +with power and delicacy, which was another result of his finer +psychology, [101] of his exquisitely refined habit of self-reflection, +is illustrated by a passage on Friendship in the Second Part-- + + Alas! they had been friends in youth; + But whispering tongues can poison truth; + And constancy lives in realms above; + And life is thorny; and youth is vain; + And to be wroth with one we love, + Doth work like madness in the brain. + And thus it chanced, as I divine, + With Roland and Sir Leoline. + Each spake words of high disdain + And insult to his heart's best brother + They parted--ne'er to meet again! + But never either found another + To free the hollow heart from paining-- + They stood aloof the scars remaining, + Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; + A dreary sea now flows between; + But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, + Shall wholly do away, I ween, + The marks of that which once hath been. + +I suppose these lines leave almost every reader with a quickened sense +of the beauty and compass of human feeling; and it is the sense of such +richness and beauty which, in spite of his "dejection," in spite of +that burden of his morbid lassitude, accompanies Coleridge himself +through life. A warm poetic joy in everything beautiful, whether it be +a moral sentiment, like the friendship of Roland and Leoline, or only +the flakes of falling light from the water-snakes--this joy, visiting +him, now and again, after sickly dreams, in sleep or waking, as a +relief not to be forgotten, [102] and with such a power of felicitous +expression that the infection of it passes irresistibly to the +reader--such is the predominant element in the matter of his poetry, as +cadence is the predominant quality of its form. "We bless thee for our +creation!" he might have said, in his later period of definite +religious assent, "because the world is so beautiful: the world of +ideas--living spirits, detached from the divine nature itself, to +inform and lift the heavy mass of material things; the world of man, +above all in his melodious and intelligible speech; the world of living +creatures and natural scenery; the world of dreams." What he really +did say, by way of A Tombless Epitaph, is true enough of himself-- + + Sickness, 'tis true, + Whole years of weary days, besieged him close, + Even to the gates and inlets of his life! + But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm, + And with a natural gladness, he maintained + The citadel unconquered, and in joy + Was strong to follow the delightful Muse. + For not a hidden path, that to the shades + Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads, + Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill + There issues from the fount of Hippocrene, + But he had traced it upward to its source, + Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell, + Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled + Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone, + Piercing the long-neglected holy cave, + The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, + He bade with lifted torch its starry walls + Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame + +[103] + + Of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage. + O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts! + O studious Poet, eloquent for truth! + Philosopher! contemning wealth and death, + Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love. + +The student of empirical science asks, Are absolute principles +attainable? What are the limits of knowledge? The answer he receives +from science itself is not ambiguous. What the moralist asks is, Shall +we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit? +Experience answers that the dominant tendency of life is to turn +ascertained truth into a dead letter, to make us all the phlegmatic +servants of routine. The relative spirit, by its constant dwelling on +the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, breaking +through a thousand rough and brutal classifications, and giving +elasticity to inflexible principles, begets an intellectual finesse of +which the ethical result is a delicate and tender justice in the +criticism of human life. Who would gain more than Coleridge by +criticism in such a spirit? We know how his life has appeared when +judged by absolute standards. We see him trying to apprehend the +"absolute," to stereotype forms of faith and philosophy, to attain, as +he says, "fixed principles" in politics, morals, and religion, to fix +one mode of life as the essence of life, refusing to see the parts as +parts only; and all the time his own pathetic history pleads for a more +[104] elastic moral philosophy than his, and cries out against every +formula less living and flexible than life itself. + +"From his childhood he hungered for eternity." There, after all, is +the incontestable claim of Coleridge. The perfect flower of any +elementary type of life must always be precious to humanity, and +Coleridge is a true flower of the ennuye, of the type of Rene. More +than Childe Harold, more than Werther, more than Rene himself, +Coleridge, by what he did, what he was, and what he failed to do, +represents that inexhaustible discontent, languor, and homesickness, +that endless regret, the chords of which ring all through our modern +literature. It is to the romantic element in literature that those +qualities belong. One day, perhaps, we may come to forget the distant +horizon, with full knowledge of the situation, to be content with "what +is here and now"; and herein is the essence of classical feeling. But +by us of the present moment, certainly--by us for whom the Greek +spirit, with its engaging naturalness, simple, chastened, debonair, +tryphes, habrotetos, khlides, khariton, himerou, pothou pater+, is +itself the Sangrail of an endless pilgrimage, Coleridge, with his +passion for the absolute, for something fixed where all is moving, his +faintness, his broken memory, his intellectual disquiet, may still be +ranked among the interpreters of one of the constituent elements of our +life. + +1865, 1880. + +NOTES + +65. *The latter part of this paper, like that on Dante Gabriel +Rossetti, was contributed to Mr. T. H. Ward's English Poets. + +68. +Transliteration: ousia akhromatos, askhematistos, anaphes. +Translation: "the colorless, utterly formless, intangible essence." +Phaedrus 247C. + +80. +The two passages are not indented in the original; they are in +smaller typeface that makes for difficult reading. + +86. +Transliteration: aei en sphodra orexei. Translation: "always +greatly yearning." + +104. +Transliteration: tryphes, habrotetos, khlides, khariton, himerou, +pothou pater. Translation: "Of daintiness, delicacy, luxury, graces, +father of desire." + + + +CHARLES LAMB + +[105] THOSE English critics who at the beginning of the present century +introduced from Germany, together with some other subtleties of thought +transplanted hither not without advantage, the distinction between the +Fancy and the Imagination, made much also of the cognate distinction +between Wit and Humour, between that unreal and transitory mirth, which +is as the crackling of thorns under the pot, and the laughter which +blends with tears and even with the sublimities of the imagination, and +which, in its most exquisite motives, is one with pity--the laughter of +the comedies of Shakespeare, hardly less expressive than his moods of +seriousness or solemnity, of that deeply stirred soul of sympathy in +him, as flowing from which both tears and laughter are alike genuine +and contagious. + +This distinction between wit and humour, Coleridge and other kindred +critics applied, with much effect, in their studies of some of our +older English writers. And as the distinction between imagination and +fancy, made popular by Wordsworth, [106] found its best justification +in certain essential differences of stuff in Wordsworth's own writings, +so this other critical distinction, between wit and humour, finds a +sort of visible interpretation and instance in the character and +writings of Charles Lamb;--one who lived more consistently than most +writers among subtle literary theories, and whose remains are still +full of curious interest for the student of literature as a fine art. + +The author of the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, coming +to the humourists of the nineteenth, would have found, as is true +preeminently of Thackeray himself, the springs of pity in them deepened +by the deeper subjectivity, the intenser and closer living with itself, +which is characteristic of the temper of the later generation; and +therewith, the mirth also, from the amalgam of which with pity humour +proceeds, has become, in Charles Dickens, for example, freer and more +boisterous. + +To this more high-pitched feeling, since predominant in our literature, +the writings of Charles Lamb, whose life occupies the last quarter of +the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, are a +transition; and such union of grave, of terrible even, with gay, we may +note in the circumstances of his life, as reflected thence into his +work. We catch the aroma of a singular, homely sweetness about his +first years, spent on Thames' side, amid the red [107] bricks and +terraced gardens, with their rich historical memories of old-fashioned +legal London. Just above the poorer class, deprived, as he says, of +the "sweet food of academic institution," he is fortunate enough to be +reared in the classical languages at an ancient school, where he +becomes the companion of Coleridge, as at a later period he was his +enthusiastic disciple. So far, the years go by with less than the +usual share of boyish difficulties; protected, one fancies, seeing what +he was afterwards, by some attraction of temper in the quaint child, +small and delicate, with a certain Jewish expression in his clear, +brown complexion, eyes not precisely of the same colour, and a slow +walk adding to the staidness of his figure; and whose infirmity of +speech, increased by agitation, is partly engaging. + +And the cheerfulness of all this, of the mere aspect of Lamb's quiet +subsequent life also, might make the more superficial reader think of +him as in himself something slight, and of his mirth as cheaply bought. +Yet we know that beneath this blithe surface there was something of the +fateful domestic horror, of the beautiful heroism and devotedness too, +of old Greek tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his senior, in a +sudden paroxysm of madness, caused the death of her mother, and was +brought to trial for what an overstrained justice might have construed +as the greatest of crimes. She was [108] released on the brother's +pledging himself to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age of +twenty-one, Charles Lamb sacrificed himself, "seeking thenceforth," +says his earliest biographer, "no connexion which could interfere with +her supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and +comfort her." The "feverish, romantic tie of love," he cast away in +exchange for the "charities of home." Only, from time to time, the +madness returned, affecting him too, once; and we see the brother and +sister voluntarily yielding to restraint. In estimating the humour of +Elia, we must no more forget the strong undercurrent of this great +misfortune and pity, than one could forget it in his actual story. So +he becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a +dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so macabre. +Rosamund Grey, written in his twenty-third year, a story with something +bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible +in it, strikes clearly this note in his work. + +For himself, and from his own point of view, the exercise of his gift, +of his literary art, came to gild or sweeten a life of monotonous +labour, and seemed, as far as regarded others, no very important thing; +availing to give them a little pleasure, and inform them a little, +chiefly in a retrospective manner, but in no way concerned with the +turning of the tides of the great world. And yet this very modesty, +this unambitious [109] way of conceiving his work, has impressed upon +it a certain exceptional enduringness. For of the remarkable English +writers contemporary with Lamb, many were greatly preoccupied with +ideas of practice--religious, moral, political--ideas which have since, +in some sense or other, entered permanently into the general +consciousness; and, these having no longer any stimulus for a +generation provided with a different stock of ideas, the writings of +those who spent so much of themselves in their propagation have lost, +with posterity, something of what they gained by them in immediate +influence. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley even--sharing so largely in +the unrest of their own age, and made personally more interesting +thereby, yet, of their actual work, surrender more to the mere course +of time than some of those who may have seemed to exercise themselves +hardly at all in great matters, to have been little serious, or a +little indifferent, regarding them. + +Of this number of the disinterested servants of literature, smaller in +England than in France, Charles Lamb is one. In the making of prose he +realises the principle of art for its own sake, as completely as Keats +in the making of verse. And, working ever close to the concrete, to +the details, great or small, of actual things, books, persons, and with +no part of them blurred to his vision by the intervention of mere +abstract theories, he has reached an enduring moral effect [110] also, +in a sort of boundless sympathy. Unoccupied, as he might seem, with +great matters, he is in immediate contact with what is real, especially +in its caressing littleness, that littleness in which there is much of +the whole woeful heart of things, and meets it more than half-way with +a perfect understanding of it. What sudden, unexpected touches of +pathos in him!--bearing witness how the sorrow of humanity, the +Weltschmerz, the constant aching of its wounds, is ever present with +him: but what a gift also for the enjoyment of life in its subtleties, +of enjoyment actually refined by the need of some thoughtful economies +and making the most of things! Little arts of happiness he is ready to +teach to others. The quaint remarks of children which another would +scarcely have heard, he preserves--little flies in the priceless amber +of his Attic wit--and has his "Praise of chimney-sweepers" (as William +Blake has written, with so much natural pathos, the Chimney-sweeper's +Song) valuing carefully their white teeth, and fine enjoyment of white +sheets in stolen sleep at Arundel Castle, as he tells the story, +anticipating something of the mood of our deep humourists of the last +generation. His simple mother-pity for those who suffer by accident, +or unkindness of nature, blindness for instance, or fateful disease of +mind like his sister's, has something primitive in its largeness; and +on behalf of ill-used animals he is early in composing a Pity's Gift. + +[111] And if, in deeper or more superficial sense, the dead do care at +all for their name and fame, then how must the souls of Shakespeare and +Webster have been stirred, after so long converse with things that +stopped their ears, whether above or below the soil, at his exquisite +appreciations of them; the souls of Titian and of Hogarth too; for, +what has not been observed so generally as the excellence of his +literary criticism, Charles Lamb is a fine critic of painting also. It +was as loyal, self-forgetful work for others, for Shakespeare's self +first, for instance, and then for Shakespeare's readers, that that too +was done: he has the true scholar's way of forgetting himself in his +subject. For though "defrauded," as we saw, in his young years, "of +the sweet food of academic institution," he is yet essentially a +scholar, and all his work mainly retrospective, as I said; his own +sorrows, affections, perceptions, being alone real to him of the +present. "I cannot make these present times," he says once, "present +to me." + +Above all, he becomes not merely an expositor, permanently valuable, +but for Englishmen almost the discoverer of the old English drama. "The +book is such as I am glad there should be," he modestly says of the +Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of +Shakespeare; to which, however, he adds in a series of notes the very +quintessence of criticism, the choicest savour and perfume of +Elizabethan poetry being [112] sorted, and stored here, with a sort of +delicate intellectual epicureanism, which has had the effect of winning +for these, then almost forgotten, poets, one generation after another +of enthusiastic students. Could he but have known how fresh a source +of culture he was evoking there for other generations, through all +those years in which, a little wistfully, he would harp on the +limitation of his time by business, and sigh for a better fortune in +regard to literary opportunities! + +To feel strongly the charm of an old poet or moralist, the literary +charm of Burton, for instance, or Quarles, or The Duchess of Newcastle; +and then to interpret that charm, to convey it to others--he seeming to +himself but to hand on to others, in mere humble ministration, that of +which for them he is really the creator--this is the way of his +criticism; cast off in a stray letter often, or passing note, or +lightest essay or conversation. It is in such a letter, for instance, +that we come upon a singularly penetrative estimate of the genius and +writings of Defoe. + +Tracking, with an attention always alert, the whole process of their +production to its starting-point in the deep places of the mind, he +seems to realise the but half-conscious intuitions of Hogarth or +Shakespeare, and develops the great ruling unities which have swayed +their actual work; or "puts up," and takes, the one morsel of good +stuff in an old, forgotten writer. Even [113] in what he says casually +there comes an aroma of old English; noticeable echoes, in chance turn +and phrase, of the great masters of style, the old masters. Godwin, +seeing in quotation a passage from John Woodvil, takes it for a choice +fragment of an old dramatist, and goes to Lamb to assist him in finding +the author. His power of delicate imitation in prose and verse reaches +the length of a fine mimicry even, as in those last essays of Elia on +Popular Fallacies, with their gentle reproduction or caricature of Sir +Thomas Browne, showing, the more completely, his mastery, by +disinterested study, of those elements of the man which were the real +source of style in that great, solemn master of old English, who, ready +to say what he has to say with fearless homeliness, yet continually +overawes one with touches of a strange utterance from worlds afar. For +it is with the delicacies of fine literature especially, its gradations +of expression, its fine judgment, its pure sense of words, of +vocabulary--things, alas! dying out in the English literature of the +present, together with the appreciation of them in our literature of +the past--that his literary mission is chiefly concerned. And yet, +delicate, refining, daintily epicurean, as he may seem, when he writes +of giants, such as Hogarth or Shakespeare, though often but in a stray +note, you catch the sense of veneration with which those great names in +past literature and art brooded over his intelligence, his undiminished +[114] impressibility by the great effects in them. Reading, commenting +on Shakespeare, he is like a man who walks alone under a grand stormy +sky, and among unwonted tricks of light, when powerful spirits might +seem to be abroad upon the air; and the grim humour of Hogarth, as he +analyses it, rises into a kind of spectral grotesque; while he too +knows the secret of fine, significant touches like theirs. + +There are traits, customs, characteristics of houses and dress, +surviving morsels of old life, such as Hogarth has transferred so +vividly into The Rake's Progress, or Marriage a la Mode, concerning +which we well understand how, common, uninteresting, or even worthless +in themselves, they have come to please us at last as things +picturesque, being set in relief against the modes of our different +age. Customs, stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff furniture--types of +cast-off fashions, left by accident, and which no one ever meant to +preserve--we contemplate with more than good-nature, as having in them +the veritable accent of a time, not altogether to be replaced by its +more solemn and self-conscious deposits; like those tricks of +individuality which we find quite tolerable in persons, because they +convey to us the secret of lifelike expression, and with regard to +which we are all to some extent humourists. But it is part of the +privilege of the genuine humourist to anticipate this pensive mood with +regard to the ways and things [115] of his own day; to look upon the +tricks in manner of the life about him with that same refined, purged +sort of vision, which will come naturally to those of a later +generation, in observing whatever may have survived by chance of its +mere external habit. Seeing things always by the light of an +understanding more entire than is possible for ordinary minds, of the +whole mechanism of humanity, and seeing also the manner, the outward +mode or fashion, always in strict connexion with the spiritual +condition which determined it, a humourist such as Charles Lamb +anticipates the enchantment of distance; and the characteristics of +places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even now and +in advance of time, by poetic light; justifying what some might condemn +as mere sentimentality, in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition +of such fashion or accent. "The praise of beggars," "the cries of +London," the traits of actors just grown "old," the spots in "town" +where the country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on, +one after another, amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed, just +played-out farces, he had relished so much, coming partly through them +to understand the earlier English theatre as a thing once really alive; +those fountains and sun-dials of old gardens, of which he entertains +such dainty discourse:--he feels the poetry of these things, as the +poetry of things old indeed, but surviving [116] as an actual part of +the life of the present; and as something quite different from the +poetry of things flatly gone from us and antique, which come back to +us, if at all, as entire strangers, like Scott's old Scotch-border +personages, their oaths and armour. Such gift of appreciation depends, +as I said, on the habitual apprehension of men's life as a whole--its +organic wholeness, as extending even to the least things in it--of its +outward manner in connexion with its inward temper; and it involves a +fine perception of the congruities, the musical accordance between +humanity and its environment of custom, society, personal intercourse; +as if all this, with its meetings, partings, ceremonies, gesture, tones +of speech, were some delicate instrument on which an expert performer +is playing. + +These are some of the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an +essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, "never judging," as he +says, "system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars;" saying all +things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet +succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," in catching and recording more +frequently than others "the gayest, happiest attitude of things;" a +casual writer for dreamy readers, yet always giving the reader so much +more than he seemed to propose. There is something of the follower of +George Fox about him, and the Quaker's belief in the inward light +coming to one passive, [117] to the mere wayfarer, who will be sure at +all events to lose no light which falls by the way--glimpses, +suggestions, delightful half-apprehensions, profound thoughts of old +philosophers, hints of the innermost reason in things, the full +knowledge of which is held in reserve; all the varied stuff, that is, +of which genuine essays are made. + +And with him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is, +below all more superficial tendencies, the real motive in writing at +all--a desire closely connected with that intimacy, that modern +subjectivity, which may be called the Montaignesque element in +literature. What he designs is to give you himself, to acquaint you +with his likeness; but must do this, if at all, indirectly, being +indeed always more or less reserved, for himself and his friends; +friendship counting for so much in his life, that he is jealous of +anything that might jar or disturb it, even to the length of a sort of +insincerity, to which he assigns its quaint "praise"; this lover of +stage plays significantly welcoming a little touch of the artificiality +of play to sweeten the intercourse of actual life. + +And, in effect, a very delicate and expressive portrait of him does put +itself together for the duly meditative reader. In indirect touches of +his own work, scraps of faded old letters, what others remembered of +his talk, the man's likeness emerges; what he laughed and wept at, +[118] his sudden elevations, and longings after absent friends, his +fine casuistries of affection and devices to jog sometimes, as he says, +the lazy happiness of perfect love, his solemn moments of higher +discourse with the young, as they came across him on occasion, and went +along a little way with him, the sudden, surprised apprehension of +beauties in old literature, revealing anew the deep soul of poetry in +things, and withal the pure spirit of fun, having its way again; +laughter, that most short-lived of all things (some of Shakespeare's +even being grown hollow) wearing well with him. Much of all this comes +out through his letters, which may be regarded as a department of his +essays. He is an old-fashioned letter-writer, the essence of the old +fashion of letter-writing lying, as with true essay-writing, in the +dexterous availing oneself of accident and circumstance, in the +prosecution of deeper lines of observation; although, just as with the +record of his conversation, one loses something, in losing the actual +tones of the stammerer, still graceful in his halting, as he halted +also in composition, composing slowly and by fits, "like a Flemish +painter," as he tells us, so "it is to be regretted," says the editor +of his letters, "that in the printed letters the reader will lose the +curious varieties of writing with which the originals abound, and which +are scrupulously adapted to the subject." + +Also, he was a true "collector," delighting [119] in the personal +finding of a thing, in the colour an old book or print gets for him by +the little accidents which attest previous ownership. Wither's +Emblems, "that old book and quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at +last, he values none the less because a child had coloured the plates +with his paints. A lover of household warmth everywhere, of that +tempered atmosphere which our various habitations get by men's living +within them, he "sticks to his favourite books as he did to his +friends," and loved the "town," with a jealous eye for all its +characteristics, "old houses" coming to have souls for him. The +yearning for mere warmth against him in another, makes him content, all +through life, with pure brotherliness, "the most kindly and natural +species of love," as he says, in place of the passion of love. Brother +and sister, sitting thus side by side, have, of course, their +anticipations how one of them must sit at last in the faint sun alone, +and set us speculating, as we read, as to precisely what amount of +melancholy really accompanied for him the approach of old age, so +steadily foreseen; make us note also, with pleasure, his successive +wakings up to cheerful realities, out of a too curious musing over what +is gone and what remains, of life. In his subtle capacity for enjoying +the more refined points of earth, of human relationship, he could throw +the gleam of poetry or humour on what seemed common or threadbare; has +a care for the [120] sighs, and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of +very weak people, down to their little pathetic "gentilities," even; +while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death, almost like +Shakespeare. + +And that care, through all his enthusiasm of discovery, for what is +accustomed, in literature, connected thus with his close clinging to +home and the earth, was congruous also with that love for the +accustomed in religion, which we may notice in him. He is one of the +last votaries of that old-world sentiment, based on the feelings of +hope and awe, which may be described as the religion of men of letters +(as Sir Thomas Browne has his Religion of the Physician) religion as +understood by the soberer men of letters in the last century, Addison, +Gray, and Johnson; by Jane Austen and Thackeray, later. A high way of +feeling developed largely by constant intercourse with the great things +of literature, and extended in its turn to those matters greater still, +this religion lives, in the main retrospectively, in a system of +received sentiments and beliefs; received, like those great things of +literature and art, in the first instance, on the authority of a long +tradition, in the course of which they have linked themselves in a +thousand complex ways to the conditions of human life, and no more +questioned now than the feeling one keeps by one of the greatness--say! +of Shakespeare. For Charles Lamb, such form of religion becomes [121] +the solemn background on which the nearer and more exciting objects of +his immediate experience relieve themselves, borrowing from it an +expression of calm; its necessary atmosphere being indeed a profound +quiet, that quiet which has in it a kind of sacramental efficacy, +working, we might say, on the principle of the opus operatum, almost +without any co-operation of one's own, towards the assertion of the +higher self. And, in truth, to men of Lamb's delicately attuned +temperament mere physical stillness has its full value; such natures +seeming to long for it sometimes, as for no merely negative thing, with +a sort of mystical sensuality. + +The writings of Charles Lamb are an excellent illustration of the value +of reserve in literature. Below his quiet, his quaintness, his humour, +and what may seem the slightness, the occasional or accidental +character of his work, there lies, as I said at starting, as in his +life, a genuinely tragic element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest +in those hard shadows of Rosamund Grey, is always there, though not +always realised either for himself or his readers, and restrained +always in utterance. It gives to those lighter matters on the surface +of life and literature among which he for the most part moved, a +wonderful force of expression, as if at any moment these slight words +and fancies might pierce very far into the deeper soul of things. In +his writing, as in his [122] life, that quiet is not the low-flying of +one from the first drowsy by choice, and needing the prick of some +strong passion or worldly ambition, to stimulate him into all the +energy of which he is capable; but rather the reaction of nature, after +an escape from fate, dark and insane as in old Greek tragedy, following +upon which the sense of mere relief becomes a kind of passion, as with +one who, having narrowly escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a thing +for grateful tears in just sitting quiet at home, under the wall, till +the end of days. + +He felt the genius of places; and I sometimes think he resembles the +places he knew and liked best, and where his lot fell--London, +sixty-five years ago, with Covent Garden and the old theatres, and the +Temple gardens still unspoiled, Thames gliding down, and beyond to +north and south the fields at Enfield or Hampton, to which, "with their +living trees," the thoughts wander "from the hard wood of the +desk"--fields fresher, and coming nearer to town then, but in one of +which the present writer remembers, on a brooding early summer's day, +to have heard the cuckoo for the first time. Here, the surface of +things is certainly humdrum, the streets dingy, the green places, where +the child goes a-maying, tame enough. But nowhere are things more apt +to respond to the brighter weather, nowhere is there so much difference +between rain and sunshine, nowhere do the [123] clouds roll together +more grandly; those quaint suburban pastorals gathering a certain +quality of grandeur from the background of the great city, with its +weighty atmosphere, and portent of storm in the rapid light on dome and +bleached stone steeples. + +1878. + + + +SIR THOMAS BROWNE + +[124] ENGLISH prose literature towards the end of the seventeenth +century, in the hands of Dryden and Locke, was becoming, as that of +France had become at an earlier date, a matter of design and skilled +practice, highly conscious of itself as an art, and, above all, +correct. Up to that time it had been, on the whole, singularly +informal and unprofessional, and by no means the literature of the "man +of letters," as we understand him. Certain great instances there had +been of literary structure or architecture--The Ecclesiastical Polity, +The Leviathan--but for the most part that earlier prose literature is +eminently occasional, closely determined by the eager practical aims of +contemporary politics and theology, or else due to a man's own native +instinct to speak because he cannot help speaking. Hardly aware of the +habit, he likes talking to himself; and when he writes (still in +undress) he does but take the "friendly reader" into his confidence. +The type of this literature, obviously, is not Locke or Gibbon, but, +above all others, Sir Thomas [125] Browne; as Jean Paul is a good +instance of it in German literature, always in its developments so much +later than the English; and as the best instance of it in French +literature, in the century preceding Browne, is Montaigne, from whom +indeed, in a great measure, all those tentative writers, or essayists, +derive. + +It was a result, perhaps, of the individualism and liberty of personal +development, which, even for a Roman Catholic, were effects of the +Reformation, that there was so much in Montaigne of the "subjective," +as people say, of the singularities of personal character. Browne, +too, bookish as he really is claims to give his readers a matter, "not +picked from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and +tares" of his own brain. The faults of such literature are what we all +recognise in it: unevenness, alike in thought and style; lack of +design; and caprice--the lack of authority; after the full play of +which, there is so much to refresh one in the reasonable transparency +of Hooker, representing thus early the tradition of a classical +clearness in English literature, anticipated by Latimer and More, and +to be fulfilled afterwards in Butler and Hume. But then, in recompense +for that looseness and whim, in Sir Thomas Browne for instance, we have +in those "quaint" writers, as they themselves understood the term +(coint, adorned, but adorned with all the curious ornaments of their +own predilection, provincial [126] or archaic, certainly unfamiliar, +and selected without reference to the taste or usages of other people) +the charm of an absolute sincerity, with all the ingenuous and racy +effect of what is circumstantial and peculiar in their growth. + +The whole creation is a mystery and particularly that of man. At the +blast of His mouth were the rest of the creatures made, and at His bare +word they started out of nothing. But in the frame of man He played +the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create as to make him. +When He had separated the materials of other creatures, there +consequently resulted a form and soul: but having raised the walls of +man, He was driven to a second and harder creation--of a substance like +Himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. + +There, we have the manner of Sir Thomas Browne, in exact expression of +his mind!--minute and curious in its thinking; but with an effect, on +the sudden, of a real sublimity or depth. His style is certainly an +unequal one. It has the monumental aim which charmed, and perhaps +influenced, Johnson--a dignity that can be attained only in such mental +calm as follows long and learned pondering on the high subjects Browne +loves to deal with. It has its garrulity, its various levels of +painstaking, its mannerism, pleasant of its kind or tolerable, together +with much, to us intolerable, but of which he was capable on a lazy +summer afternoon down at Norwich. And all is so oddly mixed, showing, +in its entire ignorance of self, how much he, and the sort of +literature he represents, really stood in need of technique, [127] of a +formed taste in literature, of a literary architecture. + +And yet perhaps we could hardly wish the result different, in him, any +more than in the books of Burton and Fuller, or some other similar +writers of that age--mental abodes, we might liken, after their own +manner, to the little old private houses of some historic town grouped +about its grand public structures, which, when they have survived at +all, posterity is loth to part with. For, in their absolute sincerity, +not only do these authors clearly exhibit themselves ("the unique +peculiarity of the writer's mind," being, as Johnson says of Browne, +"faithfully reflected in the form and matter of his work") but, even +more than mere professionally instructed writers, they belong to, and +reflect, the age they lived in. In essentials, of course, even Browne +is by no means so unique among his contemporaries, and so singular, as +he looks. And then, as the very condition of their work, there is an +entire absence of personal restraint in dealing with the public, whose +humours they come at last in a great measure to reproduce. To speak +more properly, they have no sense of a "public" to deal with, at +all--only a full confidence in the "friendly reader," as they love to +call him. Hence their amazing pleasantry, their indulgence in their +own conceits; but hence also those unpremeditated wildflowers of speech +we should [128] never have the good luck to find in any more formal +kind of literature. + +It is, in truth, to the literary purpose of the humourist, in the +old-fashioned sense of the term, that this method of writing naturally +allies itself--of the humourist to whom all the world is but a +spectacle in which nothing is really alien from himself, who has hardly +a sense of the distinction between great and little among things that +are at all, and whose half-pitying, half-amused sympathy is called out +especially by the seemingly small interests and traits of character in +the things or the people around him. Certainly, in an age stirred by +great causes, like the age of Browne in England, of Montaigne in +France, that is not a type to which one would wish to reduce all men of +letters. Still, in an age apt also to become severe, or even cruel +(its eager interest in those great causes turning sour on occasion) the +character of the humourist may well find its proper influence, through +that serene power, and the leisure it has for conceiving second +thoughts, on the tendencies, conscious or unconscious, of the fierce +wills around it. Something of such a humourist was Browne--not callous +to men and their fortunes; certainly not without opinions of his own +about them; and yet, undisturbed by the civil war, by the fall, and +then the restoration, of the monarchy, through that long quiet life +(ending at last on the day [129] himself had predicted, as if at the +moment he had willed) in which "all existence," as he says, "had been +but food for contemplation." + +Johnson, in beginning his Life of Browne, remarks that Browne "seems to +have had the fortune, common among men of letters, of raising little +curiosity after their private life." Whether or not, with the example +of Johnson himself before us, we can think just that, it is certain +that Browne's works are of a kind to directly stimulate curiosity about +himself--about himself, as being manifestly so large a part of those +works; and as a matter of fact we know a great deal about his life, +uneventful as in truth it was. To himself, indeed, his life at +Norwich, as he gives us to understand, seemed wonderful enough. "Of +these wonders," says Johnson, "the view that can now be taken of his +life offers no appearance." But "we carry with us," as Browne writes, +"the wonders we seek without us," and we may note on the other hand, a +circumstance which his daughter, Mrs. Lyttleton, tells us of his +childhood: "His father used to open his breast when he was asleep, and +kiss it in prayers over him, as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the +Holy Ghost would take possession there." It was perhaps because the son +inherited an aptitude for a like profound kindling of sentiment in the +taking of his life, that, uneventful as it was, [130] commonplace as it +seemed to Johnson, to Browne himself it was so full of wonders, and so +stimulates the curiosity of his more careful reader of to-day. "What +influence," says Johnson again, "learning has had on its possessors may +be doubtful." Well! the influence of his great learning, of his +constant research on Browne, was its imaginative influence--that it +completed his outfit as a poetic visionary, stirring all the strange +"conceit" of his nature to its depths. + +Browne himself dwells, in connexion with the first publication +(extorted by circumstance) of the Religio Medici, on the natural +"inactivity of his disposition"; and he does, as I have said, pass very +quietly through an exciting time. Born in the year of the Gunpowder +Plot, he was not, in truth, one of those clear and clarifying souls +which, in an age alike of practical and mental confusion, can +anticipate and lay down the bases of reconstruction, like Bacon or +Hooker. His mind has much of the perplexity which was part of the +atmosphere of the time. Not that he is without his own definite +opinions on events. For him, Cromwell is a usurper, the death of +Charles an abominable murder. In spite of what is but an affectation, +perhaps, of the sceptical mood, he is a Churchman too; one of those who +entered fully into the Anglican position, so full of sympathy with +those ceremonies and observances [131] which "misguided zeal terms +superstition," that there were some Roman Catholics who thought that +nothing but custom and education kept him from their communion. At the +Restoration he rejoices to see the return of the comely Anglican order +in old episcopal Norwich, with its ancient churches; the antiquity, in +particular, of the English Church being, characteristically, one of the +things he most valued in it, vindicating it, when occasion came, +against the "unjust scandal" of those who made that Church a creation +of Henry the Eighth. As to Romanists--he makes no scruple to "enter +their churches in defect of ours." He cannot laugh at, but rather +pities, "the fruitless journeys of pilgrims--for there is something in +it of devotion." He could never "hear the Ave Mary! bell without an +oraison." At a solemn procession he has "wept abundantly." How +English, in truth, all this really is! It reminds one how some of the +most popular of English writers, in many a half-conscious expression, +have witnessed to a susceptibility in the English mind itself, in spite +of the Reformation, to what is affecting in religious ceremony. Only, +in religion as in politics, Browne had no turn for disputes; was +suspicious of them, indeed; knowing, as he says with true acumen, that +"a man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be +forced to surrender," even in controversies not [132] necessarily +maladroit--an image in which we may trace a little contemporary +colouring. + +The Enquiries into Vulgar Errors appeared in the year 1646; a year +which found him very hard on "the vulgar." His suspicion, in the +abstract, of what Bacon calls Idola Fori, the Idols of the +Market-place, takes a special emphasis from the course of events about +him: "being erroneous in their single numbers, once huddled together, +they will be error itself." And yet, congruously with a dreamy +sweetness of character we may find expressed in his very features, he +seems not greatly concerned at the temporary suppression of the +institutions he values so much. He seems to possess some inward +Platonic reality of them--church or monarchy--to hold by in idea, quite +beyond the reach of Roundhead or unworthy Cavalier. In the power of +what is inward and inviolable in his religion, he can still take note: +"In my solitary and retired imagination (neque enim cum porticus aut me +lectulus accepit, desum mihi) I remember I am not alone, and therefore +forget not to contemplate Him and His attributes who is ever with me." + +His father, a merchant of London, with some claims to ancient descent, +left him early in possession of ample means. Educated at Winchester +and Oxford, he visited Ireland, France, and Italy; and in the year +1633, at the age of twenty-eight, became Doctor of Medicine at Leyden. +Three years later he established himself as a physician [133] at +Norwich for the remainder of his life, having married a lady, described +as beautiful and attractive, and affectionate also, as we may judge +from her letters and postscripts to those of her husband, in an +orthography of a homeliness amazing even for that age. Dorothy Browne +bore him ten children, six of whom he survived. + +Their house at Norwich, even then an old one it would seem, must have +grown, through long years of acquisition, into an odd cabinet of +antiquities--antiquities properly so called; his old Roman, or +Romanised British urns, from Walsingham or Brampton, for instance, and +those natural objects which he studied somewhat in the temper of a +curiosity-hunter or antiquary. In one of the old churchyards of +Norwich he makes the first discovery of adipocere, of which grim +substance "a portion still remains with him." For his multifarious +experiments he must have had his laboratory. The old window-stanchions +had become magnetic, proving, as he thinks, that iron "acquires +verticity" from long lying in one position. Once we find him re-tiling +the place. It was then, perhaps, that he made the observation that +bricks and tiles also acquire "magnetic alliciency"--one's whole house, +one might fancy; as indeed, he holds the earth itself to be a vast +lodestone. + +The very faults of his literary work, its desultoriness, the time it +costs his readers, that [134] slow Latinity which Johnson imitated from +him, those lengthy leisurely terminations which busy posterity will +abbreviate, all breathe of the long quiet of the place. Yet he is by +no means indolent. Besides wide book-learning, experimental research +at home, and indefatigable observation in the open air, he prosecutes +the ordinary duties of a physician; contrasting himself indeed with +other students, "whose quiet and unmolested doors afford no such +distractions." To most persons of mind sensitive as his, his chosen +studies would have seemed full of melancholy, turning always, as they +did, upon death and decay. It is well, perhaps, that life should be +something of a "meditation upon death": but to many, certainly, +Browne's would have seemed too like a lifelong following of one's own +funeral. A museum is seldom a cheerful place--oftenest induces the +feeling that nothing could ever have been young; and to Browne the +whole world is a museum; all the grace and beauty it has being of a +somewhat mortified kind. Only, for him (poetic dream, or philosophic +apprehension, it was this which never failed to evoke his wonderful +genius for exquisitely impassioned speech) over all those ugly +anatomical preparations, as though over miraculous saintly relics, +there was the perpetual flicker of a surviving spiritual ardency, one +day to reassert itself--stranger far than any fancied odylic +gravelights! + +[135] When Browne settled at Norwich, being then about thirty-six years +old, he had already completed the Religio Medici; a desultory +collection of observations designed for himself only and a few friends, +at all events with no purpose of immediate publication. It had been +lying by him for seven years, circulating privately in his own +extraordinarily perplexed manuscript, or in manuscript copies, when, in +1642, an incorrect printed version from one of those copies, "much +corrupted by transcription at various hands," appeared anonymously. +Browne, decided royalist as he was in spite of seeming indifference, +connects this circumstance with the unscrupulous use of the press for +political purposes, and especially against the king, at that time. +Just here a romantic figure comes on the scene. Son of the unfortunate +young Everard Digby who perished on the scaffold for some half-hearted +participation in the Gunpowder Plot, Kenelm Digby, brought up in the +reformed religion, had returned in manhood to the religion of his +father. In his intellectual composition he had, in common with Browne, +a scientific interest, oddly tinged with both poetry and scepticism: he +had also a strong sympathy with religious reaction, and a more than +sentimental love for a seemingly vanishing age of faith, which he, for +one, would not think of as vanishing. A copy of that surreptitious +edition of the Religio Medici found him a prisoner on suspicion of a +too active [136] royalism, and with much time on his hands. + +The Roman Catholic, although, secure in his definite orthodoxy, he +finds himself indifferent on many points (on the reality of witchcraft, +for instance) concerning which Browne's more timid, personally grounded +faith might indulge no scepticism, forced himself, nevertheless, to +detect a vein of rationalism in a book which on the whole much +attracted him, and hastily put forth his "animadversions" upon it. +Browne, with all his distaste for controversy, thus found himself +committed to a dispute, and his reply came with the correct edition of +the Religio Medici published at last with his name. There have been +many efforts to formulate the "religion of the layman," which might be +rightly understood, perhaps, as something more than what is called +"natural," yet less than ecclesiastical, or "professional" religion. +Though its habitual mode of conceiving experience is on a different +plane, yet it would recognise the legitimacy of the traditional +religious interpretation of that experience, generally and by +implication; only, with a marked reserve as to religious particulars, +both of thought and language, out of a real reverence or awe, as proper +only for a special place. Such is the lay religion, as we may find it +in Addison, in Gray, in Thackeray; and there is something of a +concession--a concession, on second thoughts--about it. Browne's +Religio Medici is designed as the expression of a mind [137] more +difficult of belief than that of the mere "layman," as above described; +it is meant for the religion of the man of science. Actually, it is +something less to the point, in any balancing of the religious against +the worldly view of things, than the religion of the layman, as just +now defined. For Browne, in spite of his profession of boisterous +doubt, has no real difficulties, and his religion, certainly, nothing +of the character of a concession. He holds that there has never +existed an atheist. Not that he is credulous; but that his religion is +only the correlative of himself, his peculiar character and education, +a religion of manifold association. For him, the wonders of religion, +its supernatural events or agencies, are almost natural facts or +processes. "Even in this material fabric, the spirits walk as freely +exempt from the affection of time, place and motion, as beyond the +extremest circumference." Had not Divine interference designed to +raise the dead, nature herself is in act to do it--to lead out the +"incinerated soul" from the retreats of her dark laboratory. Certainly +Browne has not, like Pascal, made the "great resolution," by the +apprehension that it is just in the contrast of the moral world to the +world with which science deals that religion finds its proper basis. +It is from the homelessness of the world which science analyses so +victoriously, its dark unspirituality, wherein the soul he is conscious +of seems such a [138] stranger, that Pascal "turns again to his rest," +in the conception of a world of wholly reasonable and moral agencies. +For Browne, on the contrary, the light is full, design everywhere +obvious, its conclusion easy to draw, all small and great things marked +clearly with the signature of the "Word." The adhesion, the difficult +adhesion, of men such as Pascal, is an immense contribution to +religious controversy; the concession, again, of a man like Addison, of +great significance there. But in the adhesion of Browne, in spite of +his crusade against "vulgar errors," there is no real significance. +The Religio Medici is a contribution, not to faith, but to piety; a +refinement and correction, such as piety often stands in need of; a +help, not so much to religious belief in a world of doubt, as to the +maintenance of the religious mood amid the interests of a secular +calling. + +From about this time Browne's letters afford a pretty clear view of his +life as it passed in the house at Norwich. Many of these letters +represent him in correspondence with the singular men who shared his +own half poetic, half scientific turn of mind, with that impressibility +towards what one might call the thaumaturgic elements in nature which +has often made men dupes, and which is certainly an element in the +somewhat atrabiliar mental complexion of that age in England. He +corresponds seriously with William Lily, the astrologer; is acquainted +[139] with Dr. Dee, who had some connexion with Norwich, and has +"often heard him affirm, sometimes with oaths, that he had seen +transmutation of pewter dishes and flagons into silver (at least) which +the goldsmiths at Prague bought of him." Browne is certainly an honest +investigator; but it is still with a faint hope of something like that +upon fitting occasion, and on the alert always for surprises in nature +(as if nature had a rhetoric, at times, to deliver to us, like those +sudden and surprising flowers of his own poetic style) that he listens +to her everyday talk so attentively. Of strange animals, strange cures, +and the like, his correspondence is full. The very errors he combats +are, of course, the curiosities of error--those fascinating, +irresistible, popular, errors, which various kinds of people have +insisted on gliding into because they like them. Even his heresies +were old ones--the very fossils of capricious opinion. + +It is as an industrious local naturalist that Browne comes before us +first, full of the fantastic minute life in the fens and "Broads" +around Norwich, its various sea and marsh birds. He is something of a +vivisectionist also, and we may not be surprised at it, perhaps, in an +age which, for the propagation of truth, was ready to cut off men's +ears. He finds one day "a Scarabaus capricornus odoratus," which he +takes "to be mentioned by Monfetus, folio 150. He saith, 'Nucem +moschatam et cinnamomum vere spirat'--[140] but to me it smelt like +roses, santalum, and ambergris." "Musca tuliparum moschata," again, +"is a small bee-like fly of an excellent fragrant odour, which I have +often found at the bottom of the flowers of tulips." Is this within +the experience of modern entomologists? + +The Garden of Cyrus, though it ends indeed with a passage of wonderful +felicity, certainly emphasises (to say the least) the defects of +Browne's literary good qualities. His chimeric fancy carries him here +into a kind of frivolousness, as if he felt almost too safe with his +public, and were himself not quite serious, or dealing fairly with it; +and in a writer such as Browne levity must of necessity be a little +ponderous. Still, like one of those stiff gardens, half-way between +the medieval garden and the true "English" garden of Temple or Walpole, +actually to be seen in the background of some of the conventional +portraits of that day, the fantasies of this indescribable exposition +of the mysteries of the quincunx form part of the complete portrait of +Browne himself; and it is in connexion with it that, once or twice, the +quaintly delightful pen of Evelyn comes into the correspondence--in +connexion with the "hortulane pleasure." "Norwich," he writes to +Browne, "is a place, I understand, much addicted to the flowery part." +Professing himself a believer in the operation "of the air and genius +of gardens upon human spirits, towards virtue and sanctity," he is all +for [141] natural gardens as against "those which appear like gardens +of paste-board and march-pane, and smell more of paint than of flowers +and verdure." Browne is in communication also with Ashmole and +Dugdale, the famous antiquaries; to the latter of whom, who had written +a work on the history of the embanking of fens, he communicates the +discovery of certain coins, on a piece of ground "in the nature of an +island in the fens." + +Far more interesting certainly than those curious scientific letters is +Browne's "domestic correspondence." Dobson, Charles the First's +"English Tintoret," would seem to have painted a life-sized picture of +Sir Thomas Browne and his family, after the manner of those big, +urbane, family groups, then coming into fashion with the Dutch Masters. +Of such a portrait nothing is now known. But in these old-fashioned, +affectionate letters, transmitted often, in those troublous times, with +so much difficulty, we have what is almost as graphic--a numerous +group, in which, although so many of Browne's children died young, he +was happy; with Dorothy Browne, occasionally adding her charming, +ill-spelt postscripts to her husband's letters; the religious daughter +who goes to daily prayers after the Restoration, which brought Browne +the honour of knighthood; and, above all, two Toms, son and grandson of +Sir Thomas, the latter being the son of Dr. Edward Browne, [142] now +become distinguished as a physician in London (he attended John, Earl +of Rochester, in his last illness at Woodstock) and his childish +existence as he lives away from his proper home in London, in the old +house at Norwich, two hundred years ago, we see like a thing of to-day. + +At first the two brothers, Edward and Thomas (the elder) are together +in everything. Then Edward goes abroad for his studies, and Thomas, +quite early, into the navy, where he certainly develops into a +wonderfully gallant figure; passing away, however, from the +correspondence, it is uncertain how, before he was of full age. From +the first he is understood to be a lad of parts. "If you practise to +write, you will have a good pen and style:" and a delightful, boyish +journal of his remains, describing a tour the two brothers made in +September 1662 among the Derbyshire hills. "I received your two last +letters," he writes to his father from aboard the Marie Rose, "and give +you many thanks for the discourse you sent me out of Vossius: De motu +marium et ventorum. It seemed very hard to me at first; but I have now +beaten it, and I wish I had the book." His father is pleased to think +that he is "like to proceed not only a good navigator, but a good +scholar": and he finds the much exacting, old classical prescription +for the character of the brave man fulfilled in him. On 16th July 1666 +the young man writes--still from the Marie Rose-- + +[143] If it were possible to get an opportunity to send as often as I +am desirous to write, you should hear more often from me, being now so +near the grand action, from which I would by no means be absent. I +extremely long for that thundering day: wherein I hope you shall hear +we have behaved ourselves like men, and to the honour of our country. +I thank you for your directions for my ears against the noise of the +guns, but I have found that I could endure it; nor is it so intolerable +as most conceive; especially when men are earnest, and intent upon +their business, unto whom muskets sound but like pop-guns. It is +impossible to express unto another how a smart sea-fight elevates the +spirits of a man, and makes him despise all dangers. In and after all +sea-fights, I have been very thirsty. + +He died, as I said, early in life. We only hear of him later in +connexion with a trait of character observed in Tom the grandson, whose +winning ways, and tricks of bodily and mental growth, are duly recorded +in these letters: the reader will, I hope, pardon the following +extracts from them:-- + +Little Tom is lively.... Frank is fayne sometimes to play him asleep +with a fiddle. When we send away our letters he scribbles a paper and +will have it sent to his sister, and saith she doth not know how many +fine things there are in Norwich.... He delights his grandfather when +he comes home. + +Tom gives you many thanks for his clothes (from London). He has +appeared very fine this King's day with them. + +Tom presents his duty. A gentleman at our election asked Tom who hee +was for? and he answered, "For all four." The gentleman replied that +he answered like a physician's son. + +Tom would have his grandmother, his aunt Betty, and Frank, valentines: +but hee conditioned with them that they should give him nothing of any +kind that hee had ever had or seen before. + +[144] "Tom is just now gone to see two bears which are to be shown." +"Tom, his duty. He is begging books and reading of them." "The +players are at the Red Lion hard by; and Tom goes sometimes to see a +play." + +And then one day he stirs old memories-- + +The fairings were welcome to Tom. He finds about the house divers +things that were your brother's (the late Edward's), and Betty +sometimes tells him stories about him, so that he was importunate with +her to write his life in a quarter of a sheet of paper, and read it +unto him, and will have still more added. + +Just as I am writing (learnedly about a comet, 7th January 1680-81) Tom +comes and tells me the blazing star is in the yard, and calls me to see +it. It was but dim, and the sky not clear.... I am very sensible of +this sharp weather.+ + +He seems to have come to no good end, riding forth one stormy night. +Requiescat in pace! + +Of this long, leisurely existence the chief events were Browne's rare +literary publications; some of his writings indeed having been left +unprinted till after his death; while in the circumstances of the issue +of every one of them there is something accidental, as if the world +might have missed it altogether. Even the Discourse of Vulgar Errors, +the longest and most elaborate of his works, is entirely discursive and +occasional, coming to an end with no natural conclusion, but only +because the writer chose to leave off just there; and few probably have +been the readers of the book as a consecutive whole. At times indeed we +seem to have in it observations only, or notes, preliminary to some +more orderly composition. Dip into it: read, for [145] instance, the +chapter "Of the Ring-finger," or the chapters "Of the Long Life of the +Deer," and on the "Pictures of Mermaids, Unicorns, and some Others," +and the part will certainly seem more than the whole. Try to read it +through, and you will soon feel cloyed;--miss very likely, its real +worth to the fancy, the literary fancy (which finds its pleasure in +inventive word and phrase) and become dull to the really vivid beauties +of a book so lengthy, but with no real evolution. Though there are +words, phrases, constructions innumerable, which remind one how much +the work initiated in France by Madame de Rambouillet--work, done for +England, we may think perhaps imperfectly, in the next century by +Johnson and others--was really needed; yet the capacities of Browne's +manner of writing, coming as it did so directly from the man, are felt +even in his treatment of matters of science. As with Buffon, his full, +ardent, sympathetic vocabulary, the poetry of his language, a poetry +inherent in its elementary particles--the word, the epithet--helps to +keep his eye, and the eye of the reader, on the object before it, and +conduces directly to the purpose of the naturalist, the observer. But, +only one half observation, its other half consisting of very +out-of-the-way book-lore, this work displays Browne still in the +character of the antiquary, as that age understood him. He is a kind +of Elias Ashmole, but dealing with natural objects; which are for him, +in the first [146] place, and apart from the remote religious hints and +intimations they carry with them, curiosities. He seems to have no +true sense of natural law, as Bacon understood it; nor even of that +immanent reason in the natural world, which the Platonic tradition +supposes. "Things are really true," he says, "as they correspond unto +God's conception; and have so much verity as they hold of conformity +unto that intellect, in whose idea they had their first +determinations." But, actually, what he is busy in the record of, are +matters more or less of the nature of caprices; as if things, after +all, were significant of their higher verity only at random, and in a +sort of surprises, like music in old instruments suddenly touched into +sound by a wandering finger, among the lumber of people's houses. +Nature, "the art of God," as he says, varying a little a phrase used +also by Hobbes, in a work printed later--Nature, he seems to protest, +is only a little less magical, its processes only a little less in the +way of alchemy, than you had supposed. We feel that, as with that +disturbed age in England generally (and it is here that he, with it, is +so interesting, curious, old-world, and unlike ourselves) his supposed +experience might at any moment be broken in upon by a hundred forms of +a natural magic, only not quite so marvellous as that older sort of +magic, or alchemy, he is at so much pains to expose; and the large +promises of which, its large words too, he still regretfully enjoys. + +[147] And yet the Discourse of Vulgar Errors, seeming, as it often +does, to be a serious refutation of fairy tales--arguing, for instance, +against the literal truth of the poetic statement that "The pigeon hath +no gall," and such questions as "Whether men weigh heavier dead than +alive?" being characteristic questions--is designed, with much +ambition, under its pedantic Greek title Pseudodoxia Epidemica, as a +criticism, a cathartic, an instrument for the clarifying of the +intellect. He begins from "that first error in Paradise," wondering +much at "man's deceivability in his perfection,"--"at such gross +deceit." He enters in this connexion, with a kind of poetry of +scholasticism which may interest the student of Paradise Lost, into +what we may call the intellectual and moral by-play of the situation of +the first man and woman in Paradise, with strange queries about it. +Did Adam, for instance, already know of the fall of the Angels? Did he +really believe in death, till Abel died? It is from Julius Scaliger +that he takes his motto, to the effect that the true knowledge of +things must be had from things themselves, not from books; and he seems +as seriously concerned as Bacon to dissipate the crude impressions of a +false "common sense," of false science, and a fictitious authority. +Inverting, oddly, Plato's theory that all learning is but reminiscence, +he reflects with a sigh how much of oblivion must needs be involved in +the getting of any true knowledge. "Men that [148] adore times past, +consider not that those times were once present (that is, as our own +are) and ourselves unto those to come, as they unto us at present." +That, surely, coming from one both by temperament and habit so great an +antiquary, has the touch of something like an influence in the +atmosphere of the time. That there was any actual connexion between +Browne's work and Bacon's is but a surmise. Yet we almost seem to hear +Bacon when Browne discourses on the "use of doubts, and the advantages +which might be derived from drawing up a calendar of doubts, +falsehoods, and popular errors;" and, as from Bacon, one gets the +impression that men really have been very much the prisoners of their +own crude or pedantic terms, notions, associations; that they have been +very indolent in testing very simple matters--with a wonderful kind of +"supinity," as he calls it. In Browne's chapter on the "Sources of +Error," again, we may trace much resemblance to Bacon's striking +doctrine of the Idola, the "shams" men fall down and worship. Taking +source respectively, from the "common infirmity of human nature," from +the "erroneous disposition of the people," from "confident adherence to +authority," the errors which Browne chooses to deal with may be +registered as identical with Bacon's Idola Tribus, Fori, Theatri; the +idols of our common human nature; of the vulgar, when they get +together; and of the learned, when they get together. + +[149] But of the fourth species of error noted by Bacon, the Idola +Specus, the Idols of the Cave, that whole tribe of illusions, which are +"bred amongst the weeds and tares of one's own brain," Browne tells us +nothing by way of criticism; was himself, rather, a lively example of +their operation. Throw those illusions, those "idols," into concrete +or personal form, suppose them introduced among the other forces of an +active intellect, and you have Sir Thomas Browne himself. The +sceptical inquirer who rises from his cathartic, his purging of error, +a believer in the supernatural character of pagan oracles, and a cruel +judge of supposed witches, must still need as much as ever that +elementary conception of the right method and the just limitations of +knowledge, by power of which he should not just strain out a single +error here or there, but make a final precipitate of fallacy. + +And yet if the temperament had been deducted from Browne's work--that +inherent and strongly marked way of deciding things, which has guided +with so surprising effect the musings of the Letter to a Friend, and +the Urn-Burial--we should probably have remembered him little. Pity! +some may think, for himself at least, that he had not lived earlier, +and still believed in the mandrake, for instance; its fondness for +places of execution, and its human cries "on eradication, with hazard +of life to them that pull it up." "In philosophy," he observes, +meaning to contrast [150] his free-thinking in that department with his +orthodoxy in religion--in philosophy, "where truth seems double-faced, +there is no man more paradoxical than myself:" which is true, we may +think, in a further sense than he meant, and that it was the +"paradoxical" that he actually preferred. Happy, at all events, he +still remained--undisturbed and happy--in a hundred native +prepossessions, some certainly valueless, some of them perhaps +invaluable. And while one feels that no real logic of fallacies has +been achieved by him, one feels still more how little the construction +of that branch of logical inquiry really helps men's minds; fallacy, +like truth itself, being a matter so dependent on innate gift of +apprehension, so extra-logical and personal; the original perception +counting for almost everything, the mere inference for so little! Yes! +"A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be +forced to surrender," even in controversies not necessarily maladroit. + +The really stirring poetry of science is not in guesses, or facile +divinations about it, but in its larger ascertained truths--the order +of infinite space, the slow method and vast results of infinite time. +For Browne, however, the sense of poetry which so overmasters his +scientific procedure, depends chiefly on its vaguer possibilities; the +empirical philosophy, even after Bacon, being still dominated by a +temper, resultant from the general unsettlement of men's [151] minds at +the Reformation, which may be summed up in the famous question of +Montaigne--Que scais-je? The cold-blooded method of observation and +experiment was creeping but slowly over the domain of science; and such +unreclaimed portions of it as the phenomena of magnetism had an immense +fascination for men like Browne and Digby. Here, in those parts of +natural philosophy "but yet in discovery," "the America and untravelled +parts of truth," lay for them the true prospect of science, like the +new world itself to a geographical discoverer such as Raleigh. And +welcome as one of the minute hints of that country far ahead of them, +the strange bird, or floating fragment of unfamiliar vegetation, which +met those early navigators, there was a certain fantastic experiment, +in which, as was alleged, Paracelsus had been lucky. For Browne and +others it became the crucial type of the kind of agency in nature +which, as they conceived, it was the proper function of science to +reveal in larger operation. "The subject of my last letter," says Dr. +Henry Power, then a student, writing to Browne in 1648, the last year +of Charles the First, "being so high and noble a piece of chemistry, +invites me once more to request an experimental eviction of it from +yourself; and I hope you will not chide my importunity in this +petition, or be angry at my so frequent knockings at your door to +obtain a grant of so great and admirable a [152] mystery." What the +enthusiastic young student expected from Browne, so high and noble a +piece of chemistry, was the "re-individualling of an incinerated +plant"--a violet, turning to freshness, and smelling sweet again, out +of its ashes, under some genially fitted conditions of the chemic art. + +Palingenesis, resurrection, effected by orderly prescription--the +"re-individualling" of an "incinerated organism"--is a subject which +affords us a natural transition to the little book of the Hydriotaphia, +or Treatise of Urn-Burial--about fifty or sixty pages--which, together +with a very singular letter not printed till after Browne's death, is +perhaps, after all, the best justification of Browne's literary +reputation, as it were his own curiously figured urn, and +treasure-place of immortal memory. + +In its first presentation to the public this letter was connected with +Browne's Christian Morals; but its proper and sympathetic collocation +would be rather with the Urn-Burial, of which it is a kind of prelude, +or strikes the keynote. He is writing in a very complex situation--to +a friend, upon occasion of the death of a common friend. The deceased +apparently had been little known to Browne himself till his recent +visits, while the intimate friend to whom he is writing had been absent +at the time; and the leading motive of Browne's letter is the deep +impression he has received during those visits, of a sort of [153] +physical beauty in the coming of death, with which he still surprises +and moves his reader. There had been, in this case, a tardiness and +reluctancy in the circumstances of dissolution, which had permitted +him, in the character of a physician, as it were to assist at the +spiritualising of the bodily frame by natural process; a wonderful new +type of a kind of mortified grace being evolved by the way. The +spiritual body had anticipated the formal moment of death; the alert +soul, in that tardy decay, changing its vesture gradually, and as if +piece by piece. The infinite future had invaded this life perceptibly +to the senses, like the ocean felt far inland up a tidal river. +Nowhere, perhaps, is the attitude of questioning awe on the threshold +of another life displayed with the expressiveness of this unique morsel +of literature; though there is something of the same kind, in another +than the literary medium, in the delicate monumental sculpture of the +early Tuscan School, as also in many of the designs of William Blake, +often, though unconsciously, much in sympathy with those +unsophisticated Italian workmen. With him, as with them, and with the +writer of the Letter to a Friend upon the occasion of the death of his +intimate Friend,--so strangely! the visible function of death is but to +refine, to detach from aught that is vulgar. And this elfin letter, +really an impromptu epistle to a friend, affords the best possible +light on the general temper of the man [154] who could be moved by the +accidental discovery of those old urns at Walsingham--funeral relics of +"Romans, or Britons Romanised which had learned Roman customs"--to the +composition of that wonderful book the Hydriotaphia. He had drawn up a +short account of the circumstance at the moment; but it was after ten +years' brooding that he put forth the finished treatise, dedicated to +an eminent collector of ancient coins and other rarities, with +congratulations that he "can daily command the view of so many imperial +faces," and (by way of frontispiece) with one of the urns, "drawn with +a coal taken out of it and found among the burnt bones." The discovery +had resuscitated for him a whole world of latent observation, from +life, from out-of-the-way reading, from the natural world, and fused +into a composition, which with all its quaintness we may well pronounce +classical, all the heterogeneous elements of that singular mind. The +desire to "record these risen ashes and not to let them be buried twice +among us," had set free, in his manner of conceiving things, something +not wholly analysable, something that may be properly called genius, +which shapes his use of common words to stronger and deeper senses, in +a way unusual in prose writing. Let the reader, for instance, trace +his peculiarly sensitive use of the epithets thin and dark, both here +and in the Letter to a Friend. + +Upon what a grand note he can begin and end [155] chapter or paragraph! +"When the funeral pyre was out, and the last valediction over:" "And a +large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us." Dealing with a +very vague range of feelings, it is his skill to associate them to very +definite objects. Like the Soul, in Blake's design, "exploring the +recesses of the tomb," he carries a light, the light of the poetic +faith which he cannot put off him, into those dark places, "the abode +of worms and pismires," peering round with a boundless curiosity and no +fear; noting the various casuistical considerations of men's last form +of self-love; all those whims of humanity as a "student of perpetuity," +the mortuary customs of all nations, which, from their very closeness +to our human nature, arouse in most minds only a strong feeling of +distaste. There is something congruous with the impassive piety of the +man in his waiting on accident from without to take start for the work, +which, of all his work, is most truly touched by the "divine spark." +Delightsome as its eloquence is actually found to be, that eloquence is +attained out of a certain difficulty and halting crabbedness of +expression; the wretched punctuation of the piece being not the only +cause of its impressing the reader with the notion that he is but +dealing with a collection of notes for a more finished composition, and +of a different kind; perhaps a purely erudite treatise on its subject, +with detachment of all personal colour now adhering [156] to it. Out +of an atmosphere of all-pervading oddity and quaintness--the quaintness +of mind which reflects that this disclosing of the urns of the ancients +hath "left unto our view some parts which they never beheld +themselves"--arises a work really ample and grand, nay! classical, as I +said, by virtue of the effectiveness with which it fixes a type in +literature; as, indeed, at its best, romantic literature (and Browne is +genuinely romantic) in every period attains classical quality, giving +true measure of the very limited value of those well-worn critical +distinctions. And though the Urn-Burial certainly has much of the +character of a poem, yet one is never allowed to forget that it was +designed, candidly, as a scientific treatise on one department of +ancient "culture" (as much so as Guichard's curious old French book on +Divers Manners of Burial) and was the fruit of much labour, in the way +especially of industrious selection from remote and difficult writers; +there being then few or no handbooks, or anything like our modern +shortcuts to varied knowledge. Quite unaffectedly, a curious learning +saturates, with a kind of grey and aged colour most apt and congruous +with the subject-matter, all the thoughts that arise in him. His great +store of reading, so freely displayed, he uses almost as poetically as +Milton; like him, profiting often by the mere sonorous effect of some +heroic or ancient name, which he can adapt to that same sort of learned +sweetness of [157] cadence with which so many of his single sentences +are made to fall upon the ear. + +Pope Gregory, that great religious poet, requested by certain eminent +persons to send them some of those relics he sought for so devoutly in +all the lurking-places of old Rome, took up, it is said, a portion of +common earth, and delivered it to the messengers; and, on their +expressing surprise at such a gift, pressed the earth together in his +hand, whereupon the sacred blood of the Martyrs was beheld flowing out +between his fingers. The veneration of relics became a part of +Christian (as some may think it a part of natural) religion. All over +Rome we may count how much devotion in fine art is owing to it; and, +through all ugliness or superstition, its intention still speaks +clearly to serious minds. The poor dead bones, ghastly and +forbidding:--we know what Shakespeare would have felt about +them.--"Beat not the bones of the buried: when he breathed, he was a +man!" And it is with something of a similar feeling that Browne is +full, on the common and general ground of humanity; an awe-stricken +sympathy with those, whose bones "lie at the mercies of the living," +strong enough to unite all his various chords of feeling into a single +strain of impressive and genuine poetry. His real interest is in what +may be called the curiosities of our common humanity. As another might +be moved at the sight of Alexander's bones, or Saint Edmund's, or Saint +Cecilia's, [158] so he is full of a fine poetical excitement at such +lowly relics as the earth hides almost everywhere beneath our feet. +But it is hardly fair to take our leave amid these grievous images of +so happy a writer as Sir Thomas Browne; so great a lover of the open +air, under which much of his life was passed. His work, late one +night, draws to a natural close:--"To keep our eyes open longer," he +bethinks himself suddenly, "were but to act our Antipodes. The +huntsmen are up in America!" + +What a fund of open-air cheerfulness, there! in turning to sleep. +Still, even when we are dealing with a writer in whom mere style counts +for so much as with Browne, it is impossible to ignore his matter; and +it is with religion he is really occupied from first to last, hardly +less than Richard Hooker. And his religion, too, after all, was a +religion of cheerfulness: he has no great consciousness of evil in +things, and is no fighter. His religion, if one may say so, was all +profit to him; among other ways, in securing an absolute staidness and +placidity of temper, for the intellectual work which was the proper +business of his life. His contributions to "evidence," in the Religio +Medici, for instance, hardly tell, because he writes out of view of a +really philosophical criticism. What does tell in him, in this +direction, is the witness he brings to men's instinct of survival--the +"intimations of immortality," as Wordsworth terms them, which [159] +were natural with him in surprising force. As was said of Jean Paul, +his special subject was the immortality of the soul; with an assurance +as personal, as fresh and original, as it was, on the one hand, in +those old half-civilised people who had deposited the urns; on the +other hand, in the cynical French poet of the nineteenth century, who +did not think, but knew, that his soul was imperishable. He lived in +an age in which that philosophy made a great stride which ends with +Hume; and his lesson, if we may be pardoned for taking away a "lesson" +from so ethical a writer, is the force of men's temperaments in the +management of opinion, their own or that of others;--that it is not +merely different degrees of bare intellectual power which cause men to +approach in different degrees to this or that intellectual programme. +Could he have foreseen the mature result of that mechanical analysis +which Bacon had applied to nature, and Hobbes to the mind of man, there +is no reason to think that he would have surrendered his own chosen +hypothesis concerning them. He represents, in an age, the intellectual +powers of which tend strongly to agnosticism, that class of minds to +which the supernatural view of things is still credible. The +non-mechanical theory of nature has had its grave adherents since: to +the non-mechanical theory of man--that he is in contact with a moral +order on a different plane from the [160] mechanical order--thousands, +of the most various types and degrees of intellectual power, always +adhere; a fact worth the consideration of all ingenuous thinkers, if +(as is certainly the case with colour, music, number, for instance) +there may be whole regions of fact, the recognition of which belongs to +one and not to another, which people may possess in various degrees; +for the knowledge of which, therefore, one person is dependent upon +another; and in relation to which the appropriate means of cognition +must lie among the elements of what we call individual temperament, so +that what looks like a pre-judgment may be really a legitimate +apprehension. "Men are what they are," and are not wholly at the mercy +of formal conclusions from their formally limited premises. Browne +passes his whole life in observation and inquiry: he is a genuine +investigator, with every opportunity: the mind of the age all around +him seems passively yielding to an almost foregone intellectual result, +to a philosophy of disillusion. But he thinks all that a prejudice; +and not from any want of intellectual power certainly, but from some +inward consideration, some afterthought, from the antecedent +gravitation of his own general character--or, will you say? from that +unprecipitated infusion of fallacy in him--he fails to draw, unlike +almost all the rest of the world, the conclusion ready to hand. + +1886. + +NOTES + +144. +In the original, this quotation, like several above it, is not +indented; it is in smaller type. Return. + + + +"LOVE'S LABOURS LOST" + +[161] Love's Labours Lost is one of the earliest of Shakespeare's +dramas, and has many of the peculiarities of his poems, which are also +the work of his earlier life. The opening speech of the king on the +immortality of fame--on the triumph of fame over death--and the nobler +parts of Biron, display something of the monumental style of +Shakespeare's Sonnets, and are not without their concerts of thought +and expression. This connexion of Love's Labours Lost with +Shakespeare's poems is further enforced by the actual insertion in it +of three sonnets and a faultless song; which, in accordance with his +practice in other plays, are inwoven into the argument of the piece +and, like the golden ornaments of a fair woman, give it a peculiar air +of distinction. There is merriment in it also, with choice +illustrations of both wit and humour; a laughter, often exquisite, +ringing, if faintly, yet as genuine laughter still, though sometimes +sinking into mere burlesque, which has not lasted quite so well. And +Shakespeare [162] brings a serious effect out of the trifling of his +characters. A dainty love-making is interchanged with the more +cumbrous play: below the many artifices of Biron's amorous speeches we +may trace sometimes the "unutterable longing;" and the lines in which +Katherine describes the blighting through love of her younger sister +are one of the most touching things in older literature.* Again, how +many echoes seem awakened by those strange words, actually said in +jest! "The sweet war-man (Hector of Troy) is dead and rotten; sweet +chucks, beat not the bones of the buried: when he breathed, he was a +man!"--words which may remind us of Shakespeare's own epitaph. In the +last scene, an ingenious turn is given to the action, so that the piece +does not conclude after the manner of other comedies.-- + + Our wooing doth not end like an old play; + Jack hath not Jill: + +and Shakespeare strikes a passionate note across it at last, in the +entrance of the messenger, who announces to the princess that the king +her father is suddenly dead. + +The merely dramatic interest of the piece is slight enough; only just +sufficient, indeed, to form the vehicle of its wit and poetry. The +scene--a park of the King of Navarre--is unaltered throughout; and the +unity of the [163] play is not so much the unity of a drama as that of +a series of pictorial groups, in which the same figures reappear, in +different combinations but on the same background. It is as if +Shakespeare had intended to bind together, by some inventive conceit, +the devices of an ancient tapestry, and give voices to its figures. On +one side, a fair palace; on the other, the tents of the Princess of +France, who has come on an embassy from her father to the King of +Navarre; in the midst, a wide space of smooth grass. + +The same personages are combined over and over again into a series of +gallant scenes--the princess, the three masked ladies, the quaint, +pedantic king; one of those amiable kings men have never loved enough, +whose serious occupation with the things of the mind seems, by contrast +with the more usual forms of kingship, like frivolity or play. Some of +the figures are grotesque merely, and all the male ones at least, a +little fantastic. Certain objects reappearing from scene to +scene--love-letters crammed with verses to the margin, and lovers' +toys--hint obscurely at some story of intrigue. Between these groups, +on a smaller scale, come the slighter and more homely episodes, with +Sir Nathaniel the curate, the country-maid Jaquenetta, Moth or Mote the +elfin-page, with Hiems and Ver, who recite "the dialogue that the two +learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo." The +ladies are [164] lodged in tents, because the king, like the princess +of the modern poet's fancy, has taken a vow + + to make his court a little Academe, + +and for three years' space no woman may come within a mile of it; and +the play shows how this artificial attempt was broken through. For the +king and his three fellow-scholars are of course soon forsworn, and +turn to writing sonnets, each to his chosen lady. These +fellow-scholars of the king--"quaint votaries of science" at first, +afterwards "affection's men-at-arms"--three youthful knights, gallant, +amorous, chivalrous, but also a little affected, sporting always a +curious foppery of language, are, throughout, the leading figures in +the foreground; one of them, in particular, being more carefully +depicted than the others, and in himself very noticeable--a portrait +with somewhat puzzling manner and expression, which at once catches the +eye irresistibly and keeps it fixed. + +Play is often that about which people are most serious; and the +humourist may observe how, under all love of playthings, there is +almost always hidden an appreciation of something really engaging and +delightful. This is true always of the toys of children: it is often +true of the playthings of grown-up people, their vanities, their +fopperies even, their lighter loves; the cynic would add their pursuit +of fame. Certainly, this is true without exception [165] of the +playthings of a past age, which to those who succeed it are always full +of a pensive interest--old manners, old dresses, old houses. For what +is called fashion in these matters occupies, in each age, much of the +care of many of the most discerning people, furnishing them with a kind +of mirror of their real inward refinements, and their capacity for +selection. Such modes or fashions are, at their best, an example of +the artistic predominance of form over matter; of the manner of the +doing of it over the thing done; and have a beauty of their own. It is +so with that old euphuism of the Elizabethan age--that pride of dainty +language and curious expression, which it is very easy to ridicule, +which often made itself ridiculous, but which had below it a real sense +of fitness and nicety; and which, as we see in this very play, and +still more clearly in the Sonnets, had some fascination for the young +Shakespeare himself. It is this foppery of delicate language, this +fashionable plaything of his time, with which Shakespeare is occupied +in Love's Labours Lost. He shows us the manner in all its stages; +passing from the grotesque and vulgar pedantry of Holofernes, through +the extravagant but polished caricature of Armado, to become the +peculiar characteristic of a real though still quaint poetry in Biron +himself, who is still chargeable even at his best with just a little +affectation. As Shakespeare laughs broadly at it in Holofernes or +Armado, so he [166] is the analyst of its curious charm in Biron; and +this analysis involves a delicate raillery by Shakespeare himself at +his own chosen manner. + +This "foppery" of Shakespeare's day had, then, its really delightful +side, a quality in no sense "affected," by which it satisfies a real +instinct in our minds--the fancy so many of us have for an exquisite +and curious skill in the use of words. Biron is the perfect flower of +this manner: + + A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight: + +--as he describes Armado, in terms which are really applicable to +himself. In him this manner blends with a true gallantry of nature, +and an affectionate complaisance and grace. He has at times some of +its extravagance or caricature also, but the shades of expression by +which he passes from this to the "golden cadence" of Shakespeare's own +most characteristic verse, are so fine, that it is sometimes difficult +to trace them. What is a vulgarity in Holofernes, and a caricature in +Armado, refines itself with him into the expression of a nature truly +and inwardly bent upon a form of delicate perfection, and is +accompanied by a real insight into the laws which determine what is +exquisite in language, and their root in the nature of things. He can +appreciate quite the opposite style-- + + In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes; + +he knows the first law of pathos, that + + Honest plain words best suit the ear of grief. + +[167] He delights in his own rapidity of intuition; and, in harmony +with the half-sensuous philosophy of the Sonnets, exalts, a little +scornfully, in many memorable expressions, the judgment of the senses, +above all slower, more toilsome means of knowledge, scorning some who +fail to see things only because they are so clear: + + So here you find where light in darkness lies, + Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes:-- + +as with some German commentators on Shakespeare. Appealing always to +actual sensation from men's affected theories, he might seem to despise +learning; as, indeed, he has taken up his deep studies partly in sport, +and demands always the profit of learning in renewed enjoyment. Yet he +surprises us from time to time by intuitions which could come only from +a deep experience and power of observation; and men listen to him, old +and young, in spite of themselves. He is quickly impressible to the +slightest clouding of the spirits in social intercourse, and has his +moments of extreme seriousness: his trial-task may well be, as Rosaline +puts it-- + + To enforce the pained impotent to smile. + +But still, through all, he is true to his chosen manner: that gloss of +dainty language is a second nature with him: even at his best he is not +without a certain artifice: the trick of playing on words never deserts +him; and [168] Shakespeare, in whose own genius there is an element of +this very quality, shows us in this graceful, and, as it seems, +studied, portrait, his enjoyment of it. + +As happens with every true dramatist, Shakespeare is for the most part +hidden behind the persons of his creation. Yet there are certain of +his characters in which we feel that there is something of +self-portraiture. And it is not so much in his grander, more subtle +and ingenious creations that we feel this--in Hamlet and King Lear--as +in those slighter and more spontaneously developed figures, who, while +far from playing principal parts, are yet distinguished by a peculiar +happiness and delicate ease in the drawing of them; figures which +possess, above all, that winning attractiveness which there is no man +but would willingly exercise, and which resemble those works of art +which, though not meant to be very great or imposing, are yet wrought +of the choicest material. Mercutio, in Romeo and Juliet, belongs to +this group of Shakespeare's characters--versatile, mercurial people, +such as make good actors, and in whom the + + nimble spirits of the arteries, + +the finer but still merely animal elements of great wit, predominate. A +careful delineation of minor, yet expressive traits seems to mark them +out as the characters of his predilection; [169] and it is hard not to +identify him with these more than with others. Biron, in Love's +Labours Lost, is perhaps the most striking member of this group. In +this character, which is never quite in touch, never quite on a perfect +level of understanding, with the other persons of the play, we see, +perhaps, a reflex of Shakespeare himself, when he has just become able +to stand aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry. + +1878. + +NOTES + +162. *Act V. Scene II. Return. + + + +"MEASURE FOR MEASURE" + +[170] IN Measure for Measure, as in some other of his plays, +Shakespeare has remodelled an earlier and somewhat rough composition to +"finer issues," suffering much to remain as it had come from the less +skilful hand, and not raising the whole of his work to an equal degree +of intensity. Hence perhaps some of that depth and weightiness which +make this play so impressive, as with the true seal of experience, like +a fragment of life itself, rough and disjointed indeed, but forced to +yield in places its profounder meaning. In Measure for Measure, in +contrast with the flawless execution of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare +has spent his art in just enough modification of the scheme of the +older play to make it exponent of this purpose, adapting its terrible +essential incidents, so that Coleridge found it the only painful work +among Shakespeare's dramas, and leaving for the reader of to-day more +than the usual number of difficult expressions; but infusing a lavish +colour and a profound significance into it, so that under his [171] +touch certain select portions of it rise far above the level of all but +his own best poetry, and working out of it a morality so characteristic +that the play might well pass for the central expression of his moral +judgments. It remains a comedy, as indeed is congruous with the bland, +half-humorous equity which informs the whole composition, sinking from +the heights of sorrow and terror into the rough scheme of the earlier +piece; yet it is hardly less full of what is really tragic in man's +existence than if Claudio had indeed "stooped to death." Even the +humorous concluding scenes have traits of special grace, retaining in +less emphatic passages a stray lire or word of power, as it seems, so +that we watch to the end for the traces where the nobler hand has +glanced along, leaving its vestiges, as if accidentally or wastefully, +in the rising of the style. + +The interest of Measure for Measure, therefore, is partly that of an +old story told over again. We measure with curiosity that variety of +resources which has enabled Shakespeare to refashion the original +material with a higher motive; adding to the intricacy of the piece, +yet so modifying its structure as to give the whole almost the unity of +a single scene; lending, by the light of a philosophy which dwells much +on what is complex and subtle in our nature, a true human propriety to +its strange and unexpected turns of feeling and character, to incidents +so [172] difficult as the fall of Angelo, and the subsequent +reconciliation of Isabella, so that she pleads successfully for his +life. It was from Whetstone, a contemporary English writer, that +Shakespeare derived the outline of Cinthio's "rare history" of Promos +and Cassandra, one of that numerous class of Italian stories, like +Boccaccio's Tancred of Salerno, in which the mere energy of southern +passion has everything its own way, and which, though they may repel +many a northern reader by a certain crudity in their colouring, seem to +have been full of fascination for the Elizabethan age. This story, as +it appears in Whetstone's endless comedy, is almost as rough as the +roughest episode of actual criminal life. But the play seems never to +have been acted, and some time after its publication Whetstone himself +turned the thing into a tale, included in his Heptameron of Civil +Discourses, where it still figures as a genuine piece, with touches of +undesigned poetry, a quaint field-flower here and there of diction or +sentiment, the whole strung up to an effective brevity, and with the +fragrance of that admirable age of literature all about it. Here, +then, there is something of the original Italian colour: in this +narrative Shakespeare may well have caught the first glimpse of a +composition with nobler proportions; and some artless sketch from his +own hand, perhaps, putting together his first impressions, insinuated +itself between Whetstone's work and the play as we actually read it. +Out [173] of these insignificant sources Shakespeare's play rises, full +of solemn expression, and with a profoundly designed beauty, the new +body of a higher, though sometimes remote and difficult poetry, +escaping from the imperfect relics of the old story, yet not wholly +transformed, and even as it stands but the preparation only, we might +think, of a still more imposing design. For once we have in it a real +example of that sort of writing which is sometimes described as +suggestive, and which by the help of certain subtly calculated hints +only, brings into distinct shape the reader's own half-developed +imaginings. Often the quality is attributed to writing merely vague +and unrealised, but in Measure for Measure, quite certainly, +Shakespeare has directed the attention of sympathetic readers along +certain channels of meditation beyond the immediate scope of his work. + +Measure for Measure, therefore, by the quality of these higher designs, +woven by his strange magic on a texture of poorer quality, is hardly +less indicative than Hamlet even, of Shakespeare's reason, of his power +of moral interpretation. It deals, not like Hamlet with the problems +which beset one of exceptional temperament, but with mere human nature. +It brings before us a group of persons, attractive, full of desire, +vessels of the genial, seed-bearing powers of nature, a gaudy existence +flowering out over the old court and city of Vienna, a spectacle of the +fulness and [174] pride of life which to some may seem to touch the +verge of wantonness. Behind this group of people, behind their various +action, Shakespeare inspires in us the sense of a strong tyranny of +nature and circumstance. Then what shall there be on this side of +it--on our side, the spectators' side, of this painted screen, with its +puppets who are really glad or sorry all the time? what philosophy of +life, what sort of equity? + +Stimulated to read more carefully by Shakespeare's own profounder +touches, the reader will note the vivid reality, the subtle interchange +of light and shade, the strongly contrasted characters of this group of +persons, passing across the stage so quickly. The slightest of them is +at least not ill-natured: the meanest of them can put forth a plea for +existence--Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live!--they are +never sure of themselves, even in the strong tower of a cold +unimpressible nature: they are capable of many friendships and of a +true dignity in danger, giving each other a sympathetic, if transitory, +regret--one sorry that another "should be foolishly lost at a game of +tick-tack." Words which seem to exhaust man's deepest sentiment +concerning death and life are put on the lips of a gilded, witless +youth; and the saintly Isabella feels fire creep along her, kindling +her tongue to eloquence at the suggestion of shame. In places the +shadow deepens: death intrudes itself on the scene, as among other +[175] things "a great disguiser," blanching the features of youth and +spoiling its goodly hair, touching the fine Claudio even with its +disgraceful associations. As in Orcagna's fresco at Pisa, it comes +capriciously, giving many and long reprieves to Barnardine, who has +been waiting for it nine years in prison, taking another thence by +fever, another by mistake of judgment, embracing others in the midst of +their music and song. The little mirror of existence, which reflects +to each for a moment the stage on which he plays, is broken at last by +a capricious accident; while all alike, in their yearning for untasted +enjoyment, are really discounting their days, grasping so hastily and +accepting so inexactly the precious pieces. The Duke's quaint but +excellent moralising at the beginning of the third act does but +express, like the chorus of a Greek play, the spirit of the passing +incidents. To him in Shakespeare's play, to a few here and there in +the actual world, this strange practical paradox of our life, so unwise +in its eager haste, reveals itself in all its clearness. + +The Duke disguised as a friar, with his curious moralising on life and +death, and Isabella in her first mood of renunciation, a thing "ensky'd +and sainted," come with the quiet of the cloister as a relief to this +lust and pride of life: like some grey monastic picture hung on the +wall of a gaudy room, their presence cools the heated air of the piece. +For a moment we [176] are within the placid conventual walls, whither +they fancy at first that the Duke has come as a man crossed in love, +with Friar Thomas and Friar Peter, calling each other by their homely, +English names, or at the nunnery among the novices, with their little +limited privileges, where + + If you speak you must not show your face, + Or if you show your face you must not speak. + +Not less precious for this relief in the general structure of the +piece, than for its own peculiar graces is the episode of Mariana, a +creature wholly of Shakespeare's invention, told, by way of interlude, +in subdued prose. The moated grange, with its dejected mistress, its +long, listless, discontented days, where we hear only the voice of a +boy broken off suddenly in the midst of one of the loveliest songs of +Shakespeare, or of Shakespeare's school,* is the pleasantest of many +glimpses we get here of pleasant places--the field without the town, +Angelo's garden-house, the consecrated fountain. Indirectly it has +suggested two of the most perfect compositions among the poetry of our +own generation. Again it is a picture within a picture, but with +fainter lines and a greyer atmosphere: we have here the same passions, +the same wrongs, the same continuance of affection, the same crying out +upon death, as in the nearer and larger piece, though softened, and +reduced to the mood of a more dreamy scene. + +[177] Of Angelo we may feel at first sight inclined to say only guarda +e passa! or to ask whether he is indeed psychologically possible. In +the old story, he figures as an embodiment of pure and unmodified evil, +like "Hyliogabalus of Rome or Denis of Sicyll." But the embodiment of +pure evil is no proper subject of art, and Shakespeare, in the spirit +of a philosophy which dwells much on the complications of outward +circumstance with men's inclinations, turns into a subtle study in +casuistry this incident of the austere judge fallen suddenly into +utmost corruption by a momentary contact with supreme purity. But the +main interest in Measure for Measure is not, as in Promos and +Cassandra, in the relation of Isabella and Angelo, but rather in the +relation of Claudio and Isabella. + +Greek tragedy in some of its noblest products has taken for its theme +the love of a sister, a sentiment unimpassioned indeed, purifying by +the very spectacle of its passionlessness, but capable of a fierce and +almost animal strength if informed for a moment by pity and regret. At +first Isabella comes upon the scene as a tranquillising influence in +it. But Shakespeare, in the development of the action, brings quite +different and unexpected qualities out of her. It is his +characteristic poetry to expose this cold, chastened personality, +respected even by the worldly Lucio as "something ensky'd and sainted, +and almost an immortal spirit," to two [178] sharp, shameful trials, +and wring out of her a fiery, revealing eloquence. Thrown into the +terrible dilemma of the piece, called upon to sacrifice that cloistral +whiteness to sisterly affection, become in a moment the ground of +strong, contending passions, she develops a new character and shows +herself suddenly of kindred with those strangely conceived women, like +Webster's Vittoria, who unite to a seductive sweetness something of a +dangerous and tigerlike changefulness of feeling. The swift, +vindictive anger leaps, like a white flame, into this white spirit, +and, stripped in a moment of all convention, she stands before us +clear, detached, columnar, among the tender frailties of the piece. +Cassandra, the original of Isabella in Whetstone's tale, with the +purpose of the Roman Lucretia in her mind, yields gracefully enough to +the conditions of her brother's safety; and to the lighter reader of +Shakespeare there may seem something harshly conceived, or +psychologically impossible even, in the suddenness of the change +wrought in her, as Claudio welcomes for a moment the chance of life +through her compliance with Angelo's will, and he may have a sense here +of flagging skill, as in words less finely handled than in the +preceding scene. The play, though still not without traces of nobler +handiwork, sinks down, as we know, at last into almost homely comedy, +and it might be supposed that just here the grander manner [179] +deserted it. But the skill with which Isabella plays upon Claudio's +well-recognised sense of honour, and endeavours by means of that to +insure him beforehand from the acceptance of life on baser terms, +indicates no coming laxity of hand just in this place. It was rather +that there rose in Shakespeare's conception, as there may for the +reader, as there certainly would in any good acting of the part, +something of that terror, the seeking for which is one of the notes of +romanticism in Shakespeare and his circle. The stream of ardent +natural affection, poured as sudden hatred upon the youth condemned to +die, adds an additional note of expression to the horror of the prison +where so much of the scene takes place. It is not here only that +Shakespeare has conceived of such extreme anger and pity as putting a +sort of genius into simple women, so that their "lips drop eloquence," +and their intuitions interpret that which is often too hard or fine for +manlier reason; and it is Isabella with her grand imaginative diction, +and that poetry laid upon the "prone and speechless dialect" there is +in mere youth itself, who gives utterance to the equity, the finer +judgments of the piece on men and things. + +From behind this group with its subtle lights and shades, its poetry, +its impressive contrasts, Shakespeare, as I said, conveys to us a +strong sense of the tyranny of nature and [180] circumstance over human +action. The most powerful expressions of this side of experience might +be found here. The bloodless, impassible temperament does but wait for +its opportunity, for the almost accidental coherence of time with +place, and place with wishing, to annul its long and patient +discipline, and become in a moment the very opposite of that which +under ordinary conditions it seemed to be, even to itself. The mere +resolute self-assertion of the blood brings to others special +temptations, temptations which, as defects or over-growths, lie in the +very qualities which make them otherwise imposing or attractive; the +very advantage of men's gifts of intellect or sentiment being dependent +on a balance in their use so delicate that men hardly maintain it +always. Something also must be conceded to influences merely physical, +to the complexion of the heavens, the skyey influences, shifting as the +stars shift; as something also to the mere caprice of men exercised +over each other in the dispensations of social or political order, to +the chance which makes the life or death of Claudio dependent on +Angelo's will. + +The many veins of thought which render the poetry of this play so +weighty and impressive unite in the image of Claudio, a flowerlike +young man, whom, prompted by a few hints from Shakespeare, the +imagination easily clothes with all the bravery of youth, as he crosses +the stage before us on his way to death, coming so [181] hastily to the +end of his pilgrimage. Set in the horrible blackness of the prison, +with its various forms of unsightly death, this flower seems the +braver. Fallen by "prompture of the blood," the victim of a suddenly +revived law against the common fault of youth like his, he finds his +life forfeited as if by the chance of a lottery. With that instinctive +clinging to life, which breaks through the subtlest casuistries of monk +or sage apologising for an early death, he welcomes for a moment the +chance of life through his sister's shame, though he revolts hardly +less from the notion of perpetual imprisonment so repulsive to the +buoyant energy of youth. Familiarised, by the words alike of friends +and the indifferent, to the thought of death, he becomes gentle and +subdued indeed, yet more perhaps through pride than real resignation, +and would go down to darkness at last hard and unblinded. Called upon +suddenly to encounter his fate, looking with keen and resolute profile +straight before him, he gives utterance to some of the central truths +of human feeling, the sincere, concentrated expression of the recoiling +flesh. Thoughts as profound and poetical as Hamlet's arise in him; and +but for the accidental arrest of sentence he would descend into the +dust, a mere gilded, idle flower of youth indeed, but with what are +perhaps the most eloquent of all Shakespeare's words upon his lips. + +As Shakespeare in Measure for Measure has [182] refashioned, after a +nobler pattern, materials already at hand, so that the relics of other +men's poetry are incorporated into his perfect work, so traces of the +old "morality," that early form of dramatic composition which had for +its function the inculcating of some moral theme, survive in it also, +and give it a peculiar ethical interest. This ethical interest, though +it can escape no attentive reader, yet, in accordance with that +artistic law which demands the predominance of form everywhere over the +mere matter or subject handled, is not to be wholly separated from the +special circumstances, necessities, embarrassments, of these particular +dramatic persons. The old "moralities" exemplified most often some +rough-and-ready lesson. Here the very intricacy and subtlety of the +moral world itself, the difficulty of seizing the true relations of so +complex a material, the difficulty of just judgment, of judgment that +shall not be unjust, are the lessons conveyed. Even in Whetstone's old +story this peculiar vein of moralising comes to the surface: even +there, we notice the tendency to dwell on mixed motives, the contending +issues of action, the presence of virtues and vices alike in unexpected +places, on "the hard choice of two evils," on the "imprisoning" of +men's "real intents." Measure for Measure is full of expressions drawn +from a profound experience of these casuistries, and that ethical +interest becomes predominant in it: it is no longer Promos and [183] +Cassandra, but Measure for Measure, its new name expressly suggesting +the subject of poetical justice. The action of the play, like the +action of life itself for the keener observer, develops in us the +conception of this poetical justice, and the yearning to realise it, +the true justice of which Angelo knows nothing, because it lies for the +most part beyond the limits of any acknowledged law. The idea of +justice involves the idea of rights. But at bottom rights are +equivalent to that which really is, to facts; and the recognition of +his rights therefore, the justice he requires of our hands, or our +thoughts, is the recognition of that which the person, in his inmost +nature, really is; and as sympathy alone can discover that which really +is in matters of feeling and thought, true justice is in its essence a +finer knowledge through love. + + 'Tis very pregnant: + The jewel that we find we stoop and take it, + Because we see it; but what we do not see + We tread upon, and never think of it. + +It is for this finer justice, a justice based on a more delicate +appreciation of the true conditions of men and things, a true respect +of persons in our estimate of actions, that the people in Measure for +Measure cry out as they pass before us; and as the poetry of this play +is full of the peculiarities of Shakespeare's poetry, so in its ethics +it is an epitome of Shakespeare's moral judgments. They are the moral +judgments of [184] an observer, of one who sits as a spectator, and +knows how the threads in the design before him hold together under the +surface: they are the judgments of the humourist also, who follows with +a half-amused but always pitiful sympathy, the various ways of human +disposition, and sees less distance than ordinary men between what are +called respectively great and little things. It is not always that +poetry can be the exponent of morality; but it is this aspect of morals +which it represents most naturally, for this true justice is dependent +on just those finer appreciations which poetry cultivates in us the +power of making, those peculiar valuations of action and its effect +which poetry actually requires. + +1874. + +NOTES + +176. *Fletcher, in the Bloody Brother, gives the rest of it. Return. + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLISH KINGS + +[185] + + A brittle glory shineth in this face: + As brittle as the glory is the face. + +THE English plays of Shakespeare needed but the completion of one +unimportant interval to possess the unity of a popular chronicle from +Richard the Second to Henry the Eighth, and possess, as they actually +stand, the unity of a common motive in the handling of the various +events and persons which they bring before us. Certain of his historic +dramas, not English, display Shakespeare's mastery in the development +of the heroic nature amid heroic circumstances; and had he chosen, from +English history, to deal with Coeur-de-Lion or Edward the First, the +innate quality of his subject would doubtless have called into play +something of that profound and sombre power which in Julius Caesar and +Macbeth has sounded the depths of mighty character. True, on the whole, +to fact, it is another side of kingship which he has made prominent in +his English histories. The irony [186] of kingship--average human +nature, flung with a wonderfully pathetic effect into the vortex of +great events; tragedy of everyday quality heightened in degree only by +the conspicuous scene which does but make those who play their parts +there conspicuously unfortunate; the utterance of common humanity +straight from the heart, but refined like other common things for +kingly uses by Shakespeare's unfailing eloquence: such, unconsciously +for the most part, though palpably enough to the careful reader, is the +conception under which Shakespeare has arranged the lights and shadows +of the story of the English kings, emphasising merely the light and +shadow inherent in it, and keeping very close to the original +authorities, not simply in the general outline of these dramatic +histories but sometimes in their very expression. Certainly the +history itself, as he found it in Hall, Holinshed, and Stowe, those +somewhat picturesque old chroniclers who had themselves an eye for the +dramatic "effects" of human life, has much of this sentiment already +about it. What he did not find there was the natural prerogative--such +justification, in kingly, that is to say, in exceptional, qualities, of +the exceptional position, as makes it practicable in the result. It is +no Henriade he writes, and no history of the English people, but the +sad fortunes of some English kings as conspicuous examples of the +ordinary human condition. As in a children's [187] story, all princes +are in extremes. Delightful in the sunshine above the wall into which +chance lifts the flower for a season, they can but plead somewhat more +touchingly than others their everyday weakness in the storm. Such is +the motive that gives unity to these unequal and intermittent +contributions toward a slowly evolved dramatic chronicle, which it +would have taken many days to rehearse; a not distant story from real +life still well remembered in its general course, to which people might +listen now and again, as long as they cared, finding human nature at +least wherever their attention struck ground in it. + +He begins with John, and allows indeed to the first of these English +kings a kind of greatness, making the development of the play centre in +the counteraction of his natural gifts--that something of heroic force +about him--by a madness which takes the shape of reckless impiety, +forced especially on men's attention by the terrible circumstances of +his end, in the delineation of which Shakespeare triumphs, setting, +with true poetic tact, this incident of the king's death, in all the +horror of a violent one, amid a scene delicately suggestive of what is +perennially peaceful and genial in the outward world. Like the sensual +humours of Falstaff in another play, the presence of the bastard +Faulconbridge, with his physical energy and his unmistakable family +likeness--"those limbs [188] which Sir Robert never holp to make"* +contributes to an almost coarse assertion of the force of nature, of +the somewhat ironic preponderance of nature and circumstance over men's +artificial arrangements, to, the recognition of a certain potent +natural aristocracy, which is far from being always identical with that +more formal, heraldic one. And what is a coarse fact in the case of +Faulconbridge becomes a motive of pathetic appeal in the wan and +babyish Arthur. The magic with which nature models tiny and delicate +children to the likeness of their rough fathers is nowhere more justly +expressed than in the words of King Philip.-- + + Look here upon thy brother Geoffrey's face + These eyes, these brows were moulded out of his: + This little abstract doth contain that large + Which died in Geoffrey; and the hand of time + Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume. + +It was perhaps something of a boyish memory of the shocking end of his +father that had distorted the piety of Henry the Third into +superstitious terror. A frightened soul, himself touched with the +contrary sort of religious madness, doting on all that was alien from +his father's huge ferocity, on the genialities, the soft gilding, of +life, on the genuine interests of art and poetry, to be credited more +than any other person with the deep religious expression of [189] +Westminster Abbey, Henry the Third, picturesque though useless, but +certainly touching, might have furnished Shakespeare, had he filled up +this interval in his series, with precisely the kind of effect he tends +towards in his English plays. But he found it completer still in the +person and story of Richard the Second, a figure--"that sweet lovely +rose"--which haunts Shakespeare's mind, as it seems long to have +haunted the minds of the English people, as the most touching of all +examples of the irony of kingship. + +Henry the Fourth--to look for a moment beyond our immediate subject, in +pursuit of Shakespeare's thought--is presented, of course, in general +outline, as an impersonation of "surviving force:" he has a certain +amount of kingcraft also, a real fitness for great opportunity. But +still true to his leading motive, Shakespeare, in King Henry the +Fourth, has left the high-water mark of his poetry in the soliloquy +which represents royalty longing vainly for the toiler's sleep; while +the popularity, the showy heroism, of Henry the Fifth, is used to give +emphatic point to the old earthy commonplace about "wild oats." The +wealth of homely humour in these plays, the fun coming straight home to +all the world, of Fluellen especially in his unconscious interview with +the king, the boisterous earthiness of Falstaff and his companions, +contribute to the same effect. The keynote of [190] Shakespeare's +treatment is indeed expressed by Henry the Fifth himself, the greatest +of Shakespeare's kings.--"Though I speak it to you," he says incognito, +under cover of night, to a common soldier on the field, "I think the +king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: +all his senses have but human conditions; and though his affections be +higher mounted than ours yet when they stoop they stoop with like +wing." And, in truth, the really kingly speeches which Shakespeare +assigns to him, as to other kings weak enough in all but speech, are +but a kind of flowers, worn for, and effective only as personal +embellishment. They combine to one result with the merely outward and +ceremonial ornaments of royalty, its pageantries, flaunting so naively, +so credulously, in Shakespeare, as in that old medieval time. And +then, the force of Hotspur is but transient youth, the common heat of +youth, in him. The character of Henry the Sixth again, roi faineant, +with La Pucelle* for his counterfoil, lay in the direct course of +Shakespeare's design: he has done much to fix the sentiment of the +"holy Henry." Richard the Third, touched, like John, with an effect of +real heroism, is spoiled like him by something of criminal madness, and +reaches his highest level of tragic expression [191] when circumstances +reduce him to terms of mere human nature.-- + + A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! + +The Princes in the Tower recall to mind the lot of young Arthur:-- + + I'll go with thee, + And find the inheritance of this poor child, + His little kingdom of a forced grave. + +And when Shakespeare comes to Henry the Eighth, it is not the +superficial though very English splendour of the king himself, but the +really potent and ascendant nature of the butcher's son on the one +hand, and Katharine's subdued reproduction of the sad fortunes of +Richard the Second on the other, that define his central interest.* + +With a prescience of the Wars of the Roses, of which his errors were +the original cause, it is Richard who best exposes Shakespeare's own +constant sentiment concerning war, and especially that sort of civil +war which was then recent in English memories. The soul of +Shakespeare, certainly, was not wanting in a sense of the magnanimity +of warriors. The grandiose aspects of war, its magnificent +apparelling, he records [192] monumentally enough--the "dressing of the +lists," the lion's heart, its unfaltering haste thither in all the +freshness of youth and morning.-- + + Not sick although I have to do with death-- + The sun doth gild our armour: Up, my Lords!-- + I saw young Harry with his beaver on, + His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd, + Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury. + +Only, with Shakespeare, the afterthought is immediate:-- + + They come like sacrifices in their trim. + +--Will it never be to-day? I will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way +shall be paved with English faces. + +This sentiment Richard reiterates very plaintively, in association with +the delicate sweetness of the English fields, still sweet and fresh, +like London and her other fair towns in that England of Chaucer, for +whose soil the exiled Bolingbroke is made to long so dangerously, while +Richard on his return from Ireland salutes it-- + + That pale, that white-fac'd shore,-- + As a long-parted mother with her child.-- + So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth! + And do thee favour with my royal hands.-- + +Then (of Bolingbroke) + + Ere the crown he looks for live in peace, + Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons + Shall ill become the flower of England's face; + Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace + To scarlet indignation, and bedew + My pastures' grass with faithful English blood.-- + +[193] + + Why have they dared to march?-- + +asks York, + + So many miles upon her peaceful bosom, + Frighting her pale-fac'd visages with war?-- + +waking, according to Richard, + + Our peace, which in our country's cradle, + Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep:-- + +bedrenching "with crimson tempest" + + The fresh green lap of fair king Richard's land:-- + +frighting "fair peace" from "our quiet confines," laying + + The summer's dust with showers of blood, + Rained from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen: + +bruising + + Her flowerets with the armed hoofs + Of hostile paces. + +Perhaps it is not too fanciful to note in this play a peculiar recoil +from the mere instruments of warfare, the contact of the "rude ribs," +the "flint bosom," of Barkloughly Castle or Pomfret or + + Julius Caesar's ill-erected tower: + +the + + Boisterous untun'd drums + With harsh-resounding trumpets' dreadful bray + And grating shock of wrathful iron arms. + +It is as if the lax, soft beauty of the king took effect, at least by +contrast, on everything beside. One gracious prerogative, certainly, +Shakespeare's [194] English kings possess: they are a very eloquent +company, and Richard is the most sweet-tongued of them all. In no +other play perhaps is there such a flush of those gay, fresh, +variegated flowers of speech--colour and figure, not lightly attached +to, but fused into, the very phrase itself--which Shakespeare cannot +help dispensing to his characters, as in this "play of the Deposing of +King Richard the Second," an exquisite poet if he is nothing else, from +first to last, in light and gloom alike, able to see all things +poetically, to give a poetic turn to his conduct of them, and +refreshing with his golden language the tritest aspects of that ironic +contrast between the pretensions of a king and the actual necessities +of his destiny. What a garden of words! With him, blank verse, +infinitely graceful, deliberate, musical in inflexion, becomes indeed a +true "verse royal," that rhyming lapse, which to the Shakespearian ear, +at least in youth, came as the last touch of refinement on it, being +here doubly appropriate. His eloquence blends with that fatal beauty, +of which he was so frankly aware, so amiable to his friends, to his +wife, of the effects of which on the people his enemies were so much +afraid, on which Shakespeare himself dwells so attentively as the +"royal blood" comes and goes in the face with his rapid changes of +temper. As happens with sensitive natures, it attunes him to a +congruous suavity of manners, by which anger itself became flattering: +[195] it blends with his merely youthful hopefulness and high spirits, +his sympathetic love for gay people, things, apparel--"his cote of gold +and stone, valued at thirty thousand marks," the novel Italian fashions +he preferred, as also with those real amiabilities that made people +forget the darker touches of his character, but never tire of the +pathetic rehearsal of his fall, the meekness of which would have seemed +merely abject in a less graceful performer. + +Yet it is only fair to say that in the painstaking "revival" of King +Richard the Second, by the late Charles Kean, those who were very young +thirty years ago were afforded much more than Shakespeare's play could +ever have been before--the very person of the king based on the stately +old portrait in Westminster Abbey, "the earliest extant contemporary +likeness of any English sovereign," the grace, the winning pathos, the +sympathetic voice of the player, the tasteful archaeology confronting +vulgar modern London with a scenic reproduction, for once really +agreeable, of the London of Chaucer. In the hands of Kean the play +became like an exquisite performance on the violin. + +The long agony of one so gaily painted by nature's self, from his +"tragic abdication" till the hour in which he + + Sluiced out his innocent soul thro' streams of blood, + +was for playwrights a subject ready to hand, and [196] became early the +theme of a popular drama, of which some have fancied surviving +favourite fragments in the rhymed parts of Shakespeare's work. + + The king Richard of Yngland + Was in his flowris then regnand: + But his flowris efter sone + Fadyt, and ware all undone:-- + +says the old chronicle. Strangely enough, Shakespeare supposes him an +over-confident believer in that divine right of kings, of which people +in Shakespeare's time were coming to hear so much; a general right, +sealed to him (so Richard is made to think) as an ineradicable personal +gift by the touch--stream rather, over head and breast and +shoulders--of the "holy oil" of his consecration at Westminster; not, +however, through some oversight, the genuine balm used at the +coronation of his successor, given, according to legend, by the Blessed +Virgin to Saint Thomas of Canterbury. Richard himself found that, it +was said, among other forgotten treasures, at the crisis of his +changing fortunes, and vainly sought reconsecration +therewith--understood, wistfully, that it was reserved for his happier +rival. And yet his coronation, by the pageantry, the amplitude, the +learned care, of its order, so lengthy that the king, then only eleven +years of age, and fasting, as a communicant at the ceremony, was +carried away in a faint, fixed the type under which it has ever [197] +since continued. And nowhere is there so emphatic a reiteration as in +Richard the Second of the sentiment which those singular rites were +calculated to produce. + + Not all the water in the rough rude sea + Can wash the balm from an anointed king,-- + +as supplementing another, almost supernatural, right.--"Edward's seven +sons," of whom Richard's father was one, + + Were as seven phials of his sacred blood. + +But this, too, in the hands of Shakespeare, becomes for him, like any +other of those fantastic, ineffectual, easily discredited, personal +graces, as capricious in its operation on men's wills as merely +physical beauty, kindling himself to eloquence indeed, but only giving +double pathos to insults which "barbarism itself" might have +pitied--the dust in his face, as he returns, through the streets of +London, a prisoner in the train of his victorious enemy. + + How soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face! + +he cries, in that most poetic invention of the mirror scene, which does +but reinforce again that physical charm which all confessed. The sense +of "divine right" in kings is found to act not so much as a secret of +power over others, as of infatuation to themselves. And of all those +personal gifts the one which alone never altogether fails him is just +that royal utterance, his [198] appreciation of the poetry of his own +hapless lot, an eloquent self-pity, infecting others in spite of +themselves, till they too become irresistibly eloquent about him. + +In the Roman Pontifical, of which the order of Coronation is really a +part, there is no form for the inverse process, no rite of +"degradation," such as that by which an offending priest or bishop may +be deprived, if not of the essential quality of "orders," yet, one by +one, of its outward dignities. It is as if Shakespeare had had in mind +some such inverted rite, like those old ecclesiastical or military +ones, by which human hardness, or human justice, adds the last touch of +unkindness to the execution of its sentences, in the scene where +Richard "deposes" himself, as in some long, agonising ceremony, +reflectively drawn out, with an extraordinary refinement of +intelligence and variety of piteous appeal, but also with a felicity of +poetic invention, which puts these pages into a very select class, with +the finest "vermeil and ivory" work of Chatterton or Keats. + + Fetch hither Richard that in common view + He may surrender!-- + +And Richard more than concurs: he throws himself into the part, +realises a type, falls gracefully as on the world's stage.--Why is he +sent for? + + To do that office of thine own good will + Which tired majesty did make thee offer.-- + + Now mark me! how I will undo myself. + +[199] "Hath Bolingbroke deposed thine intellect?" the Queen asks him, +on his way to the Tower:-- + + Hath Bolingbroke + Deposed thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart? + +And in truth, but for that adventitious poetic gold, it would be only +"plume-plucked Richard."-- + + I find myself a traitor with the rest, + For I have given here my soul's consent + To undeck the pompous body of a king. + +He is duly reminded, indeed, how + + That which in mean men we entitle patience + Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts. + +Yet at least within the poetic bounds of Shakespeare's play, through +Shakespeare's bountiful gifts, his desire seems fulfilled.-- + + O! that I were as great + As is my grief. + +And his grief becomes nothing less than a central expression of all +that in the revolutions of Fortune's wheel goes down in the world. + +No! Shakespeare's kings are not, nor are meant to be, great men: +rather, little or quite ordinary humanity, thrust upon greatness, with +those pathetic results, the natural self-pity of the weak heightened in +them into irresistible appeal to others as the net result of their +royal prerogative. One after another, they seem to lie composed in +Shakespeare's embalming pages, with just that touch of nature about +them, [200] making the whole world akin, which has infused into their +tombs at Westminster a rare poetic grace. It is that irony of +kingship, the sense that it is in its happiness child's play, in its +sorrows, after all, but children's grief, which gives its finer accent +to all the changeful feeling of these wonderful speeches:--the great +meekness of the graceful, wild creature, tamed at last.-- + + Give Richard leave to live till Richard die! + +his somewhat abject fear of death, turning to acquiescence at moments +of extreme weariness:-- + + My large kingdom for a little grave! + A little little grave, an obscure grave!-- + +his religious appeal in the last reserve, with its bold reference to +the judgment of Pilate, as he thinks once more of his "anointing." + +And as happens with children he attains contentment finally in the +merely passive recognition of superior strength, in the naturalness of +the result of the great battle as a matter of course, and experiences +something of the royal prerogative of poetry to obscure, or at least to +attune and soften men's griefs. As in some sweet anthem of Handel, the +sufferer, who put finger to the organ under the utmost pressure of +mental conflict, extracts a kind of peace at last from the mere skill +with which he sets his distress to music.-- + + Beshrew thee, Cousin, that didst lead me forth + Of that sweet way I was in to despair! + +[201] "With Cain go wander through the shades of night!" cries the new +king to the gaoler Exton, dissimulating his share in the murder he is +thought to have suggested; and in truth there is something of the +murdered Abel about Shakespeare's Richard. The fact seems to be that +he died of "waste and a broken heart:" it was by way of proof that his +end had been a natural one that, stifling a real fear of the face, the +face of Richard, on men's minds, with the added pleading now of all +dead faces, Henry exposed the corpse to general view; and Shakespeare, +in bringing it on the stage, in the last scene of his play, does but +follow out the motive with which he has emphasised Richard's physical +beauty all through it--that "most beauteous inn," as the Queen says +quaintly, meeting him on the way to death--residence, then soon to be +deserted, of that wayward, frenzied, but withal so affectionate soul. +Though the body did not go to Westminster immediately, his tomb, + + That small model of the barren earth + Which serves as paste and cover to our bones,* + +the effigy clasping the hand of his youthful consort, was already +prepared there, with "rich [202] gilding and ornaments," monument of +poetic regret, for Queen Anne of Bohemia, not of course the "Queen" of +Shakespeare, who however seems to have transferred to this second wife +something of Richard's wildly proclaimed affection for the first. In +this way, through the connecting link of that sacred spot, our thoughts +once more associate Richard's two fallacious prerogatives, his personal +beauty and his "anointing." + +According to Johnson, Richard the Second is one of those plays which +Shakespeare has "apparently revised;" and how doubly delightful +Shakespeare is where he seems to have revised! "Would that he had +blotted a thousand"--a thousand hasty phrases, we may venture once more +to say with his earlier critic, now that the tiresome German +superstition has passed away which challenged us to a dogmatic faith in +the plenary verbal inspiration of every one of Shakespeare's clowns. +Like some melodiously contending anthem of Handle's, I said, of +Richard's meek "undoing" of himself in the mirror-scene; and, in fact, +the play of Richard the Second does, like a musical composition, +possess a certain concentration of all its parts, a simple continuity, +an evenness in execution, which are rare in the great dramatist. With +Romeo and Juliet, that perfect symphony (symphony of three independent +poetic forms set in a grander one* which it is the merit of German +[203] criticism to have detected) it belongs to a small group of plays, +where, by happy birth and consistent evolution, dramatic form +approaches to something like the unity of a lyrical ballad, a lyric, a +song, a single strain of music. Which sort of poetry we are to account +the highest, is perhaps a barren question. Yet if, in art generally, +unity of impression is a note of what is perfect, then lyric poetry, +which in spite of complex structure often preserves the unity of a +single passionate ejaculation, would rank higher than dramatic poetry, +where, especially to the reader, as distinguished from the spectator +assisting at a theatrical performance, there must always be a sense of +the effort necessary to keep the various parts from flying asunder, a +sense of imperfect continuity, such as the older criticism vainly +sought to obviate by the rule of the dramatic "unities." It follows +that a play attains artistic perfection just in proportion as it +approaches that unity of lyrical effect, as if a song or ballad were +still lying at the root of it, all the various expression of the +conflict of character and circumstance falling at last into the compass +of a single melody, or musical theme. As, historically, the earliest +classic drama arose out of the chorus, from which this or that person, +this or that episode, detached itself, so, into the unity of a choric +song the perfect drama ever tends to return, its intellectual scope +deepened, complicated, enlarged, but still with an unmistakable [204] +singleness, or identity, in its impression on the mind. Just there, in +that vivid single impression left on the mind when all is over, not in +any mechanical limitation of time and place, is the secret of the +"unities"--the true imaginative unity--of the drama. + +1889. + +NOTES + +188. *Elinor. Do you not read some tokens of my son (Coeur-de-Lion) + In the large composition of this man? + +190. *Perhaps the one person of genius in these English plays. + + The spirit of deep prophecy she hath, + Exceeding the nine Sibyls of old Rome: + What's past and what's to come she can descry. + +191. *Proposing in this paper to trace the leading sentiment in +Shakespeare's English Plays as a sort of popular dramatic chronicle, I +have left untouched the question how much (or, in the case of Henry the +Sixth and Henry the Eighth, how little) of them may be really his: how +far inferior hands have contributed to a result, true on the whole to +the greater, that is to say, the Shakespearian elements in them. + +201. *Perhaps a double entendre:--of any ordinary grave, as comprising, +in effect, the whole small earth now left to its occupant or, of such a +tomb as Richard's in particular, with its actual model, or effigy, of +the clay of him. Both senses are so characteristic that it would be a +pity to lose either. + +202. *The Sonnet: the Aubade: the Epithalamium. + + + +DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI + +[205] IT was characteristic of a poet who had ever something about him +of mystic isolation, and will still appeal perhaps, though with a name +it may seem now established in English literature, to a special and +limited audience, that some of his poems had won a kind of exquisite +fame before they were in the full sense published. The Blessed +Damozel, although actually printed twice before the year 1870, was +eagerly circulated in manuscript; and the volume which it now opens +came at last to satisfy a long-standing curiosity as to the poet, whose +pictures also had become an object of the same peculiar kind of +interest. For those poems were the work of a painter, understood to +belong to, and to be indeed the leader, of a new school then rising +into note; and the reader of to-day may observe already, in The Blessed +Damozel, written at the age of eighteen, a prefigurement of the chief +characteristics of that school, as he will recognise in it also, in +proportion as he really knows Rossetti, many of the characteristics +which are most markedly personal and his own. Common [206] to that +school and to him, and in both alike of primary significance, was the +quality of sincerity, already felt as one of the charms of that +earliest poem--a perfect sincerity, taking effect in the deliberate use +of the most direct and unconventional expression, for the conveyance of +a poetic sense which recognised no conventional standard of what poetry +was called upon to be. At a time when poetic originality in England +might seem to have had its utmost play, here was certainly one new poet +more, with a structure and music of verse, a vocabulary, an accent, +unmistakably novel, yet felt to be no mere tricks of manner adopted +with a view to forcing attention--an accent which might rather count as +the very seal of reality on one man's own proper speech; as that speech +itself was the wholly natural expression of certain wonderful things he +really felt and saw. Here was one, who had a matter to present to his +readers, to himself at least, in the first instance, so valuable, so +real and definite, that his primary aim, as regards form or expression +in his verse, would be but its exact equivalence to those data within. +That he had this gift of transparency in language--the control of a +style which did but obediently shift and shape itself to the mental +motion, as a well-trained hand can follow on the tracing-paper the +outline of an original drawing below it, was proved afterwards by a +volume of typically perfect translations from the delightful but +difficult [207] "early Italian poets:" such transparency being indeed +the secret of all genuine style, of all such style as can truly belong +to one man and not to another. His own meaning was always personal and +even recondite, in a certain sense learned and casuistical, sometimes +complex or obscure; but the term was always, one could see, +deliberately chosen from many competitors, as the just transcript of +that peculiar phase of soul which he alone knew, precisely as he knew +it. + +One of the peculiarities of The Blessed Damozel was a definiteness of +sensible imagery, which seemed almost grotesque to some, and was +strange, above all, in a theme so profoundly visionary. The gold bar +of heaven from which she leaned, her hair yellow like ripe corn, are +but examples of a general treatment, as naively detailed as the +pictures of those early painters contemporary with Dante, who has shown +a similar care for minute and definite imagery in his verse; there, +too, in the very midst of profoundly mystic vision. Such definition of +outline is indeed one among many points in which Rossetti resembles the +great Italian poet, of whom, led to him at first by family +circumstances, he was ever a lover--a "servant and singer," faithful as +Dante, "of Florence and of Beatrice"--with some close inward +conformities of genius also, independent of any mere circumstances of +education. It was said by a critic of the last century, not wisely +though agreeably to the practice of his time, [208] that poetry +rejoices in abstractions. For Rossetti, as for Dante, without question +on his part, the first condition of the poetic way of seeing and +presenting things is particularisation. "Tell me now," he writes, for +Villon's + + Dictes-moy ou, n'en quel pays, + Est Flora, la belle Romaine-- + + Tell me now, in what hidden way is + Lady Flora the lovely Roman: + +--"way," in which one might actually chance to meet her; the +unmistakably poetic effect of the couplet in English being dependent on +the definiteness of that single word (though actually lighted on in the +search after a difficult double rhyme) for which every one else would +have written, like Villon himself, a more general one, just equivalent +to place or region. + +And this delight in concrete definition is allied with another of his +conformities to Dante, the really imaginative vividness, namely, of his +personifications--his hold upon them, or rather their hold upon him, +with the force of a Frankenstein, when once they have taken life from +him. Not Death only and Sleep, for instance, and the winged spirit of +Love, but certain particular aspects of them, a whole "populace" of +special hours and places, "the hour" even "which might have been, yet +might not be," are living creatures, with hands and eyes and articulate +voices. + +[209] + + Stands it not by the door-- + Love's Hour--till she and I shall meet; + With bodiless form and unapparent feet + That cast no shadow yet before, + Though round its head the dawn begins to pour + The breath that makes day sweet?-- + + Nay, why + Name the dead hours? I mind them well: + Their ghosts in many darkened doorways dwell + With desolate eyes to know them by. + +Poetry as a mania--one of Plato's two higher forms of "divine" +mania--has, in all its species, a mere insanity incidental to it, the +"defect of its quality," into which it may lapse in its moment of +weakness; and the insanity which follows a vivid poetic +anthropomorphism like that of Rossetti may be noted here and there in +his work, in a forced and almost grotesque materialising of +abstractions, as Dante also became at times a mere subject of the +scholastic realism of the Middle Age. + +In Love's Nocturn and The Stream's Secret, congruously perhaps with a +certain feverishness of soul in the moods they present, there is at +times a near approach (may it be said?) to such insanity of realism-- + + Pity and love shall burn + In her pressed cheek and cherishing hands; + And from the living spirit of love that stands + Between her lips to soothe and yearn, + Each separate breath shall clasp me round in turn + And loose my spirit's bands. + +[210] But even if we concede this; even if we allow, in the very plan +of those two compositions, something of the literary conceit--what +exquisite, what novel flowers of poetry, we must admit them to be, as +they stand! In the one, what a delight in all the natural beauty of +water, all its details for the eye of a painter; in the other, how +subtle and fine the imaginative hold upon all the secret ways of sleep +and dreams! In both of them, with much the same attitude and tone, +Love--sick and doubtful Love--would fain inquire of what lies below the +surface of sleep, and below the water; stream or dream being forced to +speak by Love's powerful "control"; and the poet would have it foretell +the fortune, issue, and event of his wasting passion. Such artifices, +indeed, were not unknown in the old Provencal poetry of which Dante had +learned something. Only, in Rossetti at least, they are redeemed by a +serious purpose, by that sincerity of his, which allies itself readily +to a serious beauty, a sort of grandeur of literary workmanship, to a +great style. One seems to hear there a really new kind of poetic +utterance, with effects which have nothing else like them; as there is +nothing else, for instance, like the narrative of Jacob's Dream in +Genesis, or Blake's design of the Singing of the Morning Stars, or +Addison's Nineteenth Psalm. + +With him indeed, as in some revival of the old mythopoeic age, common +things--dawn, [211] noon, night--are full of human or personal +expression, full of sentiment. The lovely little sceneries scattered +up and down his poems, glimpses of a landscape, not indeed of broad +open-air effects, but rather that of a painter concentrated upon the +picturesque effect of one or two selected objects at a time--the +"hollow brimmed with mist," or the "ruined weir," as he sees it from +one of the windows, or reflected in one of the mirrors of his "house of +life" (the vignettes for instance seen by Rose Mary in the magic beryl) +attest, by their very freshness and simplicity, to a pictorial or +descriptive power in dealing with the inanimate world, which is +certainly also one half of the charm, in that other, more remote and +mystic, use of it. For with Rossetti this sense of lifeless nature, +after all, is translated to a higher service, in which it does but +incorporate itself with some phase of strong emotion. Every one +understands how this may happen at critical moments of life; what a +weirdly expressive soul may have crept, even in full noonday, into "the +white-flower'd elder-thicket," when Godiva saw it "gleam through the +Gothic archways in the wall," at the end of her terrible ride. To +Rossetti it is so always, because to him life is a crisis at every +moment. A sustained impressibility towards the mysterious conditions +of man's everyday life, towards the very mystery itself in it, gives a +singular gravity to all his work: those matters never became trite +[212] to him. But throughout, it is the ideal intensity of love--of +love based upon a perfect yet peculiar type of physical or material +beauty--which is enthroned in the midst of those mysterious powers; +Youth and Death, Destiny and Fortune, Fame, Poetic Fame, Memory, +Oblivion, and the like. Rossetti is one of those who, in the words of +Merimee, se passionnent pour la passion, one of Love's lovers. + +And yet, again as with Dante, to speak of his ideal type of beauty as +material, is partly misleading. Spirit and matter, indeed, have been +for the most part opposed, with a false contrast or antagonism by +schoolmen, whose artificial creation those abstractions really are. In +our actual concrete experience, the two trains of phenomena which the +words matter and spirit do but roughly distinguish, play inextricably +into each other. Practically, the church of the Middle Age by its +aesthetic worship, its sacramentalism, its real faith in the +resurrection of the flesh, had set itself against that Manichean +opposition of spirit and matter, and its results in men's way of taking +life; and in this, Dante is the central representative of its spirit. +To him, in the vehement and impassioned heat of his conceptions, the +material and the spiritual are fused and blent: if the spiritual +attains the definite visibility of a crystal, what is material loses +its earthiness and impurity. And here again, by force of instinct, +Rossetti [213] is one with him. His chosen type of beauty is one, + + Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought, + Nor Love her body from her soul. + +Like Dante, he knows no region of spirit which shall not be sensuous +also, or material. The shadowy world, which he realises so powerfully, +has still the ways and houses, the land and water, the light and +darkness, the fire and flowers, that had so much to do in the moulding +of those bodily powers and aspects which counted for so large a part of +the soul, here. + +For Rossetti, then, the great affections of persons to each other, +swayed and determined, in the case of his highly pictorial genius, +mainly by that so-called material loveliness, formed the great +undeniable reality in things, the solid resisting substance, in a world +where all beside might be but shadow. The fortunes of those +affections--of the great love so determined; its casuistries, its +languor sometimes; above all, its sorrows; its fortunate or unfortunate +collisions with those other great matters; how it looks, as the long +day of life goes round, in the light and shadow of them: all this, +conceived with an abundant imagination, and a deep, a philosophic, +reflectiveness, is the matter of his verse, and especially of what he +designed as his chief poetic work, "a work to be called The House of +Life," towards which the majority of his sonnets and songs were +contributions. + +[214] The dwelling-place in which one finds oneself by chance or +destiny, yet can partly fashion for oneself; never properly one's own +at all, if it be changed too lightly; in which every object has its +associations--the dim mirrors, the portraits, the lamps, the books, the +hair-tresses of the dead and visionary magic crystals in the secret +drawers, the names and words scratched on the windows, windows open +upon prospects the saddest or the sweetest; the house one must quit, +yet taking perhaps, how much of its quietly active light and colour +along with us!--grown now to be a kind of raiment to one's body, as the +body, according to Swedenborg, is but the raiment of the soul--under +that image, the whole of Rossetti's work might count as a House of +Life, of which he is but the "Interpreter." And it is a "haunted" +house. A sense of power in love, defying distance, and those barriers +which are so much more than physical distance, of unutterable desire +penetrating into the world of sleep, however "lead-bound," was one of +those anticipative notes obscurely struck in The Blessed Damozel, and, +in his later work, makes him speak sometimes almost like a believer in +mesmerism. Dream-land, as we said, with its "phantoms of the body," +deftly coming and going on love's service, is to him, in no mere fancy +or figure of speech, a real country, a veritable expansion of, or +addition to, our waking life; and he did well perhaps to wait carefully +upon sleep, for the lack [215] of it became mortal disease with him. +One may even recognise a sort of morbid and over-hasty making-ready for +death itself, which increases on him; thoughts concerning it, its +imageries, coming with a frequency and importunity, in excess, one +might think, of even the very saddest, quite wholesome wisdom. + +And indeed the publication of his second volume of Ballads and Sonnets +preceded his death by scarcely a twelvemonth. That volume bears +witness to the reverse of any failure of power, or falling-off from his +early standard of literary perfection, in every one of his then +accustomed forms of poetry--the song, the sonnet, and the ballad. The +newly printed sonnets, now completing The House of Life, certainly +advanced beyond those earlier ones, in clearness; his dramatic power in +the ballad, was here at its height; while one monumental, gnomic piece, +Soothsay, testifies, more clearly even than the Nineveh of his first +volume, to the reflective force, the dry reason, always at work behind +his imaginative creations, which at no time dispensed with a genuine +intellectual structure. For in matters of pure reflection also, +Rossetti maintained the painter's sensuous clearness of conception; and +this has something to do with the capacity, largely illustrated by his +ballads, of telling some red-hearted story of impassioned action with +effect. + +Have there, in very deed, been ages, in which [216] the external +conditions of poetry such as Rossetti's were of more spontaneous growth +than in our own? The archaic side of Rossetti's work, his preferences +in regard to earlier poetry, connect him with those who have certainly +thought so, who fancied they could have breathed more largely in the +age of Chaucer, or of Ronsard, in one of those ages, in the words of +Stendhal--ces siecles de passions ou les ames pouvaient se livrer +franchement a la plus haute exaltation, quand les passions qui font la +possibilite We may think, perhaps, that such old time as that has never +really existed except in the fancy of poets; but it was to find it, +that Rossetti turned so often from modern life to the chronicle of the +past. Old Scotch history, perhaps beyond any other, is strong in the +matter of heroic and vehement hatreds and love, the tragic Mary herself +being but the perfect blossom of them; and it is from that history that +Rossetti has taken the subjects of the two longer ballads of his second +volume: of the three admirable ballads in it, The King's Tragedy (in +which Rossetti has dexterously interwoven some relics of James's own +exquisite early verse) reaching the highest level of dramatic success, +and marking perfection, perhaps, in this kind of poetry; which, in the +earlier volume, gave us, among other pieces, Troy Town, Sister Helen, +and Eden Bower. + +Like those earlier pieces, the ballads of the [217] second volume bring +with them the question of the poetic value of the "refrain"-- + + Eden bower's in flower: + And O the bower and the hour! + +--and the like. Two of those ballads--Troy Town and Eden Bower, are +terrible in theme; and the refrain serves, perhaps, to relieve their +bold aim at the sentiment of terror. In Sister Helen again, the +refrain has a real, and sustained purpose (being here duly varied also) +and performs the part of a chorus, as the story proceeds. Yet even in +these cases, whatever its effect may be in actual recitation, it may +fairly be questioned, whether, to the mere reader their actual effect +is not that of a positive interruption and drawback, at least in pieces +so lengthy; and Rossetti himself, it would seem, came to think so, for +in the shortest of his later ballads, The White Ship--that old true +history of the generosity with which a youth, worthless in life, flung +himself upon death--he was contented with a single utterance of the +refrain, "given out" like the keynote or tune of a chant. + +In The King's Tragedy, Rossetti has worked upon motive, broadly human +(to adopt the phrase of popular criticism) such as one and all may +realise. Rossetti, indeed, with all his self-concentration upon his +own peculiar aim, by no means ignored those general interests which are +external to poetry as he conceived it; as he has [218] shown here and +there, in this poetic, as also in pictorial, work. It was but that, in +a life to be shorter even than the average, he found enough to occupy +him in the fulfilment of a task, plainly "given him to do." Perhaps, +if one had to name a single composition of his to readers desiring to +make acquaintance with him for the first time, one would select: The +King's Tragedy--that poem so moving, so popularly dramatic, and +lifelike. Notwithstanding this, his work, it must be conceded, +certainly through no narrowness or egotism, but in the faithfulness of +a true workman to a vocation so emphatic, was mainly of the esoteric +order. But poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it +may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common +things, after Gray's way (though Gray too, it is well to remember, +seemed in his own day, seemed even to Johnson, obscure) or it may +actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in +themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from +their very birth. Rossetti did something, something excellent, of the +former kind; but his characteristic, his really revealing work, lay in +the adding to poetry of fresh poetic material, of a new order of +phenomena, in the creation of a new ideal. + +1883. + + + +FEUILLET'S "LA MORTE" + +[219] IN his latest novel M. Octave Feuillet adds two charming people +to that chosen group of personages in which he loves to trace the +development of the more serious elements of character amid the +refinements and artifices of modern society, and which make such good +company. The proper function of fictitious literature in affording us +a refuge into a world slightly better--better conceived, or better +finished--than the real one, is effected in most instances less through +the imaginary events at which a novelist causes us to assist, than by +the imaginary persons to whom he introduces us. The situations of M. +Feuillet's novels are indeed of a real and intrinsic +importance:--tragic crises, inherent in the general conditions of human +nature itself, or which arise necessarily out of the special conditions +of modern society. Still, with him, in the actual result, they become +subordinate, as it is their tendency to do in real life, to the +characters they help to form. Often, his most attentive reader will +have forgotten the actual details of his plot; while [220] the soul, +tried, enlarged, shaped by it, remains as a well-fixed type in the +memory. He may return a second or third time to Sibylle, or Le Journal +d'une Femme, or Les Amours de Philippe, and watch, surprised afresh, +the clean, dainty, word-sparing literary operation (word-sparing, yet +with no loss of real grace or ease) which, sometimes in a few pages, +with the perfect logic of a problem of Euclid, complicates and then +unravels some moral embarrassment, really worthy of a trained dramatic +expert. But the characters themselves, the agents in those difficult, +revealing situations, such a reader will recognise as old acquaintances +after the first reading, feeling for them as for some gifted and +attractive persons he has known in the actual world--Raoul de Chalys, +Henri de Lerne, Madame de Tecle, Jeanne de la Roche-Ermel, Maurice de +Fremeuse, many others; to whom must now be added Bernard and Aliette de +Vaudricourt. + +"How I love those people!" cries Mademoiselle de Courteheuse, of Madame +de Sevigne and some other of her literary favourites in the days of the +Grand Monarch. "What good company! What pleasure they took in high +things! How much more worthy they were than the people who live +now!"--What good company! That is precisely what the admirer of M. +Feuillet's books feels as one by one he places them on his book-shelf, +to be sought again. What is proposed here is not to tell his last +story, [221] but to give the English reader specimens of his most +recent effort at characterisation. + +It is with the journal of Bernard himself that the story opens, +September 187-. Bernard-Maurice Hugon de Montauret, Vicomte de +Vaudricourt, is on a visit to his uncle, the head of his family, at La +Saviniere, a country-house somewhere between Normandy and Brittany. +This uncle, an artificial old Parisian in manner, but honest in +purpose, a good talker, and full of real affection for his heir +Bernard, is one of M. Feuillet's good minor characters--one of the +quietly humorous figures with which he relieves his more serious +company. Bernard, with whom the refinements of a man of fashion in the +Parisian world by no means disguise a powerful intelligence cultivated +by wide reading, has had thoughts during his tedious stay at La +Saviniere of writing a history of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, +the library of a neighbouring chateau being rich in memoirs of that +period. Finally, he prefers to write his own story, a story so much +more interesting to himself; to write it at a peculiar crisis in his +life, the moment when his uncle, unmarried, but anxious to perpetuate +his race, is bent on providing him with a wife, and indeed has one in +view. + +The accomplished Bernard, with many graces of person, by his own +confession, takes nothing seriously. As to that matter of religious +beliefs, "the breeze of the age, and of science, has blown [222] over +him, as it has blown over his contemporaries, and left empty space +there." Still, when he saw his childish religious faith departing from +him, as he thinks it must necessarily depart from all intelligent male +Parisians, he wept. Since that moment, however, a gaiety, serene and +imperturbable, has been the mainstay of his happily constituted +character. The girl to whom his uncle desires to see him united--odd, +quixotic, intelligent, with a sort of pathetic and delicate grace, and +herself very religious--belongs to an old-fashioned, devout family,. +resident at Varaville, near by. M. Feuillet, with half a dozen fine +touches of his admirable pencil makes us see the place. And the +enterprise has at least sufficient interest to keep Bernard in the +country, which the young Parisian detests. "This piquant episode of my +life," he writes, "seems to me to be really deserving of study; to be +worth etching off, day by day, by an observer well informed on the +subject." + +Recognising in himself, though as his one real fault, that he can take +nothing seriously in heaven or earth, Bernard de Vaudricourt, like all +M. Feuillet's favourite young men, so often erring or corrupt, is a man +of scrupulous "honour." He has already shown disinterestedness in +wishing his rich uncle to marry again. His friends at Varaville think +so well-mannered a young man more of a Christian than he really is; +and, at all events, he will never owe his happiness to a falsehood. If +he has great faults, [223] hypocrisy at least is no part of them. In +oblique paths he finds himself ill at ease. Decidedly, as he thinks, +he was born for straight ways, for loyalty in all his enterprises; and +he congratulates himself upon the fact. + +In truth, Bernard has merits which he ignores, at least in this first +part of his journal: merits which are necessary to explain the +influence he is able to exercise from the first over such a character +as Mademoiselle de Courteheuse. His charm, in fact, is in the union of +that gay and apparently wanton nature with a genuine power of +appreciating devotion in others, which becomes devotion in himself. +With all the much-cherished elegance and worldly glitter of his +personality, he is capable of apprehending, of understanding and being +touched by the presence of great matters. In spite of that happy +lightness of heart, so jealously fenced about, he is to be wholly +caught at last, as he is worthy to be, by the serious, the generous +influence of things. In proportion to his immense worldly strength is +his capacity for the immense pity which breaks his heart. + +In a few life-like touches M. Feuillet brings out, as if it were indeed +a thing of ordinary existence, the simple yet delicate life of a French +country-house, the ideal life in an ideal France. Bernard is paying a +morning visit at the old turreted home of the "prehistoric" Courteheuse +family. Mademoiselle Aliette de Courteheuse, a studious girl, though a +bold and excellent rider [224] --Mademoiselle de Courteheuse, "with her +hair of that strange colour of fine ashes"--has conducted her visitor +to see the library: + +One day she took me to see the library, rich in works of the +seventeenth century and in memoirs relating to that time. I remarked +there also a curious collection of engravings of the same period. +"Your father," I observed, "had a strong predilection for the age of +Louis the Fourteenth." + +"My father lived in that age," she answered gravely. And as I looked +at her with surprise, and a little embarrassed, she added, "He made me +live there too, in his company." + +And then the eyes of this singular girl filled with tears. She turned +away, took a few steps to suppress her emotion, and returning, pointed +me to a chair. Then seating herself on the step of the book-case, she +said, "I must explain my father to you." + +She was half a minute collecting her thoughts: then, speaking with an +expansion of manner not habitual with her, hesitating, and blushing +deeply, whenever she was about to utter a word that might seem a shade +too serious for lips so youthful:--"My father," she proceeded, "died of +the consequences of a wound he had received at Patay. That may show +you that he loved his country, but he was no lover of his own age. He +possessed in the highest degree the love of order; and order was a +thing nowhere to be seen. He had a horror of disorder; and he saw it +everywhere. In those last years, especially, his reverence, his +beliefs, his tastes, all alike were ruffled to the point of actual +suffering, by whatever was done and said and written around him. +Deeply saddened by the conditions of the present time, he habituated +himself to find a refuge in the past, and the seventeenth century more +particularly offered him the kind of society in which he would have +wished to live--a society, well-ordered, polished, lettered, believing. +More and more he loved to shut himself up in it. More and more also he +loved to make the moral discipline and the literary tastes of that +favourite age prevail in his own household. You may even have remarked +that he carried his predilection into minute matters of arrangement and +decoration. You can see from this window the straight paths, the box +in [225] patterns, the yew trees and clipped alleys of our garden. You +may notice that in our garden-beds we have none but flowers of the +period--lilies, rose-mallows, immortelles, rose-pinks, in short what +people call parsonage flowers--des fleurs de cure. Our old silvan +tapestries, similarly, are of that age. You see too that all our +furniture, from presses and sideboards, down to our little tables and +our arm-chairs, is in the severest style of Louis the Fourteenth. My +father did not appreciate the dainty research of our modern luxury. He +maintained that our excessive care for the comforts of life weakened +mind as well as body. That," added the girl with a laugh,--"that is +why you find your chair so hard when you come to see us." + +Then, with resumed gravity--"It was thus that my father endeavoured, by +the very aspect and arrangement of outward things, to promote in +himself the imaginary presence of the epoch in which his thoughts +delighted. As for myself--need I tell you that I was the confidant of +that father, so well-beloved: a confidant touched by his sorrows, full +of indignation at his disappointments, charmed by his consolations. +Here, precisely--surrounded by those books which we read together, and +which he taught me to love--it is here that I have passed the +pleasantest hours of my youth. In common we indulged our enthusiasm +for those days of faith; of the quiet life; its blissful hours of +leisure well-secured; for the French language in its beauty and purity; +the delicate, the noble urbanity, which was then the honour and the +special mark of our country, but has ceased to be so." + +She paused, with a little confusion, as I thought, at the warmth of her +last words. + +And then, just to break the silence, "You have explained," I said, "an +impression which I have experienced again and again in my visits here, +and which has sometimes reached the intensity of an actual illusion, +though a very agreeable one. The look of your house, its style, its +tone and keeping, carried me two centuries back so completely that I +should hardly have been surprised to hear Monsieur le Prince, Madame de +la Fayette, or Madame de Sevigne herself, announced at your +drawing-room door." + +"Would it might be!" said Mademoiselle de Courteheuse. [226] "Ah! +Monsieur, how I love those people! What good company! What pleasure +they took in high things! How much more worthy they were than the +people who live now!" I tried to calm a little this retrospective +enthusiasm, so much to the prejudice of my contemporaries and of +myself. "Most truly, Mademoiselle," I said, "the age which you regret +had its rare merits--merits which I appreciate as you do. But then, +need one say that that society, so regular, so choice in appearance, +had, like our own, below the surface, its troubles, its disorders? I +see here many of the memoirs of that time. I can't tell exactly which +of them you may or may not have read, and so I feel a certain +difficulty in speaking." + +She interrupted me: "Ah!" she said, with entire simplicity, "I +understand you. I have not read all you see here. But I have read +enough of it to know that my friends in that past age had, like those +who live now, their passions, their weaknesses, their mistakes. But, +as my father used to say to me, all that did but pass over a ground of +what was solid and serious, which always discovered itself again anew. +There were great faults then; but there were also great repentances. +There was a certain higher region to which everything conducted--even +what as evil." She blushed deeply: then rising a little suddenly, "A +long speech!" she said: "Forgive me! I am not usually so very +talkative. It is because my father was in question; and I should wish +his memory to be as dear and as venerable to all the rest of the world +as it is to me." + +We pass over the many little dramatic intrigues and misunderstandings, +with the more or less adroit interferences of the uncle, which raise +and lower alternately Bernard's hopes. M. Feuillet has more than once +tried his hand with striking success in the portraiture of French +ecclesiastics. He has drawn none better than the Bishop of Saint-Meen, +uncle of Mademoiselle de Courteheuse, to whose interests he is devoted. +Bernard feels that to gain the influence of this prelate [227] would be +to gain his cause; and the opportunity for an interview comes. + +Monseigneur de Courteheuse would seem to be little over fifty years of +age: he is rather tall, and very thin: the eyes, black and full of +life, are encircled by a ring of deep brown. His speech and gesture +are animated, and, at times, as if carried away. He adopts frequently +a sort of furious manner which on a sudden melts into the smile of an +honest man. He has beautiful silvery hair, flying in vagrant locks +over his forehead, and beautiful bishop's hands. As he becomes calm he +has an imposing way of gently resettling himself in his sacerdotal +dignity. To sum up: his is a physiognomy full of passion, consumed +with zeal, yet still frank and sincere. + +I was hardly seated, when with a motion of the hand he invited me to +speak. + +"Monseigneur!" I said, "I come to you (you understand me?) as to my +last resource. What I am now doing is almost an act of despair; for it +might seem at first sight that no member of the family of Mademoiselle +de Courteheuse must show himself more pitiless than yourself towards +the faults with which I am reproached. I am an unbeliever: you are an +apostle! And yet, Monseigneur, it is often at the hands of saintly +priests, such as yourself, that the guilty find most indulgence. And +then, I am not indeed guilty: I have but wandered. I am refused the +hand of your niece because I do not share her faith--your own faith. +But, Monseigneur, unbelief is not a crime, it is a misfortune. I know +people often say, a man denies God when by his own conduct he has +brought himself into a condition in which he may well desire that God +does not exist. In this way he is made guilty, or, in a sense, +responsible for his incredulity. For myself, Monseigneur, I have +consulted my conscience with an entire sincerity; and although my youth +has been amiss, I am certain that my atheism proceeds from no sentiment +of personal interest. On the contrary, I may tell you with truth that +the day on which I perceived my faith come to nought, the day on which +I lost hope in God, I shed the bitterest tears of my life. In spite of +appearances, I am not so light a spirit as people think. I am not one +of those for whom God, when He disappears, [228] leaves no sense of a +void place. Believe me!--a man may love sport, his club, his worldly +habits, and yet have his hours of thought, of self-recollection. Do +you suppose that in those hours one does not feel the frightful +discomfort of an existence with no moral basis, without principles, +with no outlook beyond this world? And yet, what can one do? You +would tell me forthwith, in the goodness, the compassion, which I read +in your eyes; Confide to me your objections to religion, and I will try +to solve them. Monseigneur, I should hardly know how to answer you. +My objections are 'Legion!' They are without number, like the stars in +the sky: they come to us on all sides, from every quarter of the +horizon, as if on the wings of the wind; and they leave in us, as they +pass, ruins only, and darkness. Such has been my experience, and that +of many others; and it has been as involuntary as it is irreparable." + +"And I--Monsieur!" said the bishop, suddenly, casting on me one of his +august looks, "Do you suppose that I am but a play-actor in my +cathedral church?" + +"Monseigneur!" + +"Yes! Listening to you, one would suppose that we were come to a +period of the world in which one must needs be either an atheist or a +hypocrite! Personally, I claim to be neither one nor the other." + +"Need I defend myself on that point, Monseigneur? Need I say that I +did not come here to give you offence?" + +"Doubtless! doubtless! Well, Monsieur, I admit; not without great +reserves, mind! for one is always more or less responsible for the +atmosphere in which he lives, the influences to which he is subject, +for the habitual turn he gives to his thoughts; still, I admit that you +are the victim of the incredulity of the age, that you are altogether +guiltless in your scepticism, your atheism! since you have no fear of +hard words. Is it therefore any the less certain that the union of a +fervent believer, such as my niece, with a man like yourself would be a +moral disorder of which the consequences might be disastrous? Do you +think it could be my duty, as a relative of Mademoiselle de +Courteheuse, her spiritual father, as a prelate of the Church, to lend +my hands to such disorder, to preside over the shocking union of two +souls separated by the whole width of heaven?" + +[229] The bishop, in proposing that question, kept his eyes fixed +ardently on mine. + +"Monseigneur," I answered, after a moment's embarrassment, "you know as +well as, and better than I, the condition of the world, and of our +country, at this time. You know that unhappily I am not an exception: +that men of faith are rare in it. And permit me to tell you my whole +mind. If I must needs suffer the inconsolable misfortune of renouncing +the happiness I had hoped for, are you quite sure that the man to whom +one of these days you will give your niece may not be something more +than a sceptic, or even an atheist?" + +"What, Monsieur?" + +"A hypocrite, Monseigneur! Mademoiselle de Courteheuse is beautiful +enough, rich enough, to excite the ambition of those who may be less +scrupulous than I. As for me, if you now know that I am a sceptic, you +know also that I am a man of honour: and there is something in that!" + +"A man of honour!" the bishop muttered to himself, with a little +petulance and hesitation. "A man of honour! Yes, I believe it!" +Then, after an interval, "Come, Monsieur," he said gently, "your case +is not as desperate as you suppose. My Aliette is one of those young +enthusiasts through whom Heaven sometimes works miracles." And Bernard +refusing any encouragement of that hope (the "very roots of faith are +dead" in him for ever) "since you think that," the bishop answers, "it +is honest to say so. But God has His ways!" + +Soon after, the journal comes to an end with that peculiar crisis in +Bernard's life which had suggested the writing of it. Aliette, with +the approval of her family, has given him her hand. Bernard accepts it +with the full purpose of doing all he can to make his wife as happy as +she is charming and beloved. The virginal first period of their +married life in their dainty house in Paris--the pure and beautiful +picture of the mother, the father, and at last the child, a little +[230] girl, Jeanne--is presented with M. Feuillet's usual grace. +Certain embarrassments succeed; the development of what was ill-matched +in their union; but still with mutual loyalty. A far-reaching +acquaintance with, and reflection upon, the world and its ways, +especially the Parisian world, has gone into the apparently slight +texture of these pages. The accomplished playwright may be recognised +in the skilful touches with which M. Feuillet, unrivalled, as his +regular readers know, in his power of breathing higher notes into the +frivolous prattle of fashionable French life, develops the tragic germ +in the elegant, youthful household. Amid the distractions of a +society, frivolous, perhaps vulgar, Aliette's mind is still set on +greater things; and, in spite of a thousand rude discouragements, she +maintains her generous hope for Bernard's restoration to faith. One +day, a little roughly, he bids her relinquish that dream finally. She +looks at him with the moist, suppliant eyes of some weak animal at bay. +Then his native goodness returns. In a softened tone he owns himself +wrong. + +"As to conversions;--no one must be despaired of. Do you remember M. +de Rance? He lived in your favourite age;--M. de Rance. Well! before +he became the reformer of La Trappe he had been a worldling like me, +and a great sceptic--what people called a libertine. Still he became a +saint! It is true he had a terrible reason for it. Do you know what +it was converted him?" + +Aliette gave a sign that she did not know. + +"Well! he returned to Paris after a few days' absence. He [231] ran +straight to the lady he loved; Madame Montbazon, I think: he went up a +little staircase of which he had the key, and the first thing he saw on +the table in the middle of the room was the head of his mistress, of +which the doctors were about to make a post-mortem examination." + +"If I were sure," said Aliette, "that my head could have such power, I +would love to die." + +She said it in a low voice, but with such an accent of loving sincerity +that her husband had a sensation of a sort of painful disquiet. He +smiled, however, and tapping her cheek softly, "Folly!" he said. "A +head, charming as yours, has no need to be dead that it may work +miracles!" + +Certainly M. Feuillet has some weighty charges to bring against the +Parisian society of our day. When Aliette revolts from a world of +gossip, which reduces all minds alike to the same level of vulgar +mediocrity, Bernard, on his side, can perceive there a deterioration of +moral tone which shocks his sense of honour. As a man of honour, he +can hardly trust his wife to the gaieties of a society which welcomes +all the world "to amuse itself in undress." + +It happened that at this perplexed period in the youthful household, +one and the same person became the recipient both of the tearful +confidences of Madame de Vaudricourt and those of her husband. It was +the Duchess of Castel-Moret [she is another of M. Feuillet's admirable +minor sketches] an old friend of the Vaudricourt family, and the only +woman with whom Aliette since her arrival in Paris had formed a kind of +intimacy. The Duchess was far from sharing, on points of morality, and +above all of religion, the severe and impassioned orthodoxy of her +young friend. She had lived, it is true, an irreproachable life, but +less in consequence of defined principles than by instinct and natural +taste. She admitted to herself that she was an honest woman as a result +of her birth, and had no further merit in the matter. She was old, very +careful of [232] herself, and a pleasant aroma floated about her, below +her silvery hair. People loved her for her grace--the grace of another +time than ours--for her wit, and her worldly wisdom, which she placed +freely at the disposal of the public. Now and then she made a match: +but her special gift lay rather in the way in which she came to the +rescue when a marriage turned out ill. And she had no sinecure: the +result was that she passed the best part of her time in repairing +family rents. That might "last its time," she would say. "And then we +know that what has been well mended sometimes lasts better than what is +new." + +A little later, Bernard, in the interest of Aliette, has chivalrously +determined to quit Paris. At Valmoutiers, a fine old place in the +neighbourhood of Fontainebleau, they established themselves for a +country life. Here Aliette tastes the happiest days since her +marriage. Bernard, of course, after a little time is greatly bored. +But so far they have never seriously doubted of their great love for +each other. It is here that M. Feuillet brings on the scene a kind of +character new in his books; perhaps hardly worthy of the other company +there; a sort of female Monsieur de Camors, but without his grace and +tenderness, and who actually commits a crime. How would the morbid +charms of M. de Camors have vanished, if, as his wife once suspected of +him, he had ever contemplated crime! And surely, the showy insolent +charms of Sabine de Tallevaut, beautiful, intellectually gifted, +supremely Amazonian, yet withal not drawn with M. Feuillet's usual +fineness, scarcely hold out for the reader, any more than for [233] +Bernard himself, in the long run, against the vulgarising touch of her +cold wickedness. Living in the neighbourhood of Valmoutiers, in a +somewhat melancholy abode (the mystery of which in the eyes of Bernard +adds to her poetic charm) with her guardian, an old, rich, freethinking +doctor, devoted to research, she comes to Valmoutiers one night in his +company on the occasion of the alarming illness of the only child. +They arrive escorted by Bernard himself. The little Jeanne, wrapped in +her coverlet, was placed upon the table of her play-room, which was +illuminated as if for a party. The illness, the operation (skilfully +performed by the old doctor) which restores her to life, are described +with that seemingly simple pathos in which M. Feuillet's consummate art +hides itself. Sabine remains to watch the child's recovery, and +becomes an intimate. In vain Bernard struggles against the first real +passion of his life;--does everything but send its object out of his +sight. Aliette has divined their secret. In the fatal illness which +follows soon after, Bernard watches over her with tender solicitude; +hoping against hope that the disease may take a favourable turn. + +"My child," he said to her one day, taking the hand which she abandoned +to him, "I have just been scolding old Victoire. She is losing her +head. In spite of the repeated assurances of the doctors, she is +alarmed at seeing you a little worse than usual to-day, and has had the +Cure sent for. Do you wish to see him?" + +"Pray let me see him!" + +[234] She sighed heavily, and fixed upon her husband her large blue +eyes, full of anguish--an anguish so sharp and so singular that he felt +frozen to the marrow. + +He could not help saying with deep emotion, "Do you love me no longer, +Aliette?" + +"For ever!" murmured the poor child. + +He leaned over her with a long kiss upon the forehead. She saw tears +stealing from the eyes of her husband, and seemed as if surprised. + +Soon afterwards Aliette is dead, to the profound sorrow of Bernard. +Less than two years later he has become the husband of Mademoiselle +Tallevaut. It was about two years after his marriage with Sabine that +Bernard resumed the journal with which we began. In the pages which he +now adds he seems at first unchanged. How then as to that story of M. +de Rance, the reformer of La Trappe, finding the head of his dead +mistress; an incident which the reader of La Morte will surely have +taken as a "presentiment"? Aliette had so taken it. "A head so +charming as yours," Bernard had assured her tenderly, "does not need to +be dead that it may work miracles!"--How, in the few pages that remain, +will M. Feuillet justify that, and certain other delicate touches of +presentiment, and at the same time justify the title of his book? + +The journal is recommenced in February. On the twentieth of April +Bernard writes, at Valmoutiers: + +Under pretext of certain urgently needed repairs I am come to pass a +week at Valmoutiers, and get a little pure air. By my orders they have +kept Aliette's room under lock and key since [235] the day when she +left it in her coffin. To-day I re-entered it for the first time. +There was a vague odour of her favourite perfumes. My poor Aliette! +why was I unable, as you so ardently desired, to share your gentle +creed, and associate myself to the life of your dreams, the life of +honesty and peace? Compared with that which is mine to-day, it seems to +me like paradise. What a terrible scene it was, here in this room! +What a memory! I can still see the last look she fixed on me, a look +almost of terror! and how quickly she died! I have taken the room for +my own. But I shall not remain here long. I intend to go for a few +days to Varaville. I want to see my little girl: her dear angel's face. + +VALMOUTIERS, April 22.--What a change there has been in the world since +my childhood: since my youth even! what a surprising change in so short +a period, in the moral atmosphere we are breathing! Then we were, as it +were, impregnated with the thought of God--a just God, but benevolent +and fatherlike. We really lived under His eyes, as under the eyes of a +parent, with respect and fear, but with confidence. We felt sustained +by His invisible but undoubted presence. We spoke to Him, and it +seemed that He answered. And now we feel ourselves alone--as it were +abandoned in the immensity of the universe. We live in a world, hard, +savage, full of hatred; whose one cruel law is the struggle for +existence, and in which we are no more than those natural elements, let +loose to war with each other in fierce selfishness, without pity, with +no appeal beyond, no hope of final justice. And above us, in place of +the good God of our happy youth, nothing, any more! or worse than +nothing--a deity, barbarous and ironical, who cares nothing at all +about us. + +The aged mother of Aliette, hitherto the guardian of his daughter, is +lately dead. Bernard proposes to take the child away with him to +Paris. The child's old nurse objects. On April the twenty-seventh, +Bernard writes: + +For a moment--for a few moments--in that room where I have been +shutting myself up with the shadow of my poor [236] dead one, a +horrible thought had come to me. I had driven it away as an insane +fancy. But now, yes! it is becoming a reality. Shall I write this? +Yes! I will write it. It is my duty to do so; for from this moment +the journal, begun in so much gaiety of heart, is but my last will and +testament. If I should disappear from the world, the secret must not +die with me. It must be bequeathed to the natural protectors of my +child. Her interests, if not her life, are concerned therein. + +Here, then, is what passed: I had not arrived in time to render my last +duty to Madame de Courteheuse. The family was already dispersed. I +found here only Aliette's brother. To him I communicated my plan +concerning the child, and he could but approve. My intention was to +bring away with Jeanne her nurse Victoire, who had brought her up, as +she brought up her mother. But she is old, and in feeble health, and I +feared some difficulties on her part; the more as her attitude towards +myself since the death of my first wife has been marked by an ill grace +approaching to hostility. I took her aside while Jeanne was playing in +the garden. + +"My good Victoire," I said, "while Madame de Courteheuse was living, I +considered it a duty to leave her granddaughter in her keeping. +Besides, no one was better fitted to watch over her education. At +present my duty is to watch over it myself. I propose therefore to take +Jeanne with me to Paris; and I hope that you may be willing to +accompany her, and remain in her service." When she understood my +intention, the old woman, in whose hands I had noticed a faint +trembling, became suddenly very pale. She fixed her firm, grey eyes +upon me: "Monsieur le Comte will not do that!" + +"Pardon me, my good Victoire, that I shall do. I appreciate your good +qualities of fidelity and devotion. I shall be very grateful if you +will continue to take care of my daughter, as you have done so +excellently. But for the rest, I intend to be the only master in my +own house, and the only master of my child." She laid a hand upon my +arm: "I implore you, Monsieur, don't do this!" Her fixed look did not +leave my face, and seemed to be questioning me to the very bottom of my +soul. "I have never believed it," she murmured, "No! I [237] never +could believe it. But if you take the child away I shall." + +"Believe what, wretched woman? believe what?" + +Her voice sank lower still. "Believe that you knew how her mother came +by her death; and that you mean the daughter to die as she did." + +"Die as her mother did?" + +"Yes! by the same hand!" + +The sweat came on my forehead. I felt as it were a breathing of death +upon me. But still I thrust away from me that terrible light on things. + +"Victoire!" I said, "take care! You are no fool: you are something +worse. Your hatred of the woman who has taken the place of my first +wife--your blind hatred--has suggested to you odious, nay! criminal +words." + +"Ah! Ah! Monsieur", she cried with wild energy. "After what I have +just told you, take your daughter to live with that woman if you dare." + +I walked up and down the room awhile to collect my senses. Then, +returning to the old woman, "Yet how can I believe you?" I asked. "If +you had had the shadow of a proof of what you give me to understand, +how could you have kept silence so long? How could you have allowed me +to contract that hateful marriage?" + +She seemed more confident, and her voice grew gentler. "Monsieur, it +is because Madame, before she went to God, made me take oath on the +crucifix to keep that secret for ever." + +"Yet not with me, in fact,--not with me!" And I, in turn, questioned +her; my eyes upon hers. She hesitated: then stammered out, "True! not +with you! because she believed, poor little soul! that..." + +"What did she believe? That I knew it? That I was an accomplice? Tell +me!" Her eyes fell, and she made no answer. "Is it possible, my God, +is it possible? But come, sit by me here, and tell me all you know, +all you saw. At what time was it you noticed anything--the precise +moment?" For in truth she had been suffering for a long time past. + +Victoire tells the miserable story of Sabine's [238] crime--we must +pardon what we think a not quite worthy addition to the imaginary world +M. Feuillet has called up round about him, for the sake of fully +knowing Bernard and Aliette. The old nurse had surprised her in the +very act, and did not credit her explanation. "When I surprised her," +she goes on: + +"It may already have been too late--be sure it was not the first time +she had been guilty--my first thought was to give you information. But +I had not the courage. Then I told Madame. I thought I saw plainly +that I had nothing to tell she was not already aware of. Nevertheless +she chided me almost harshly. 'You know very well,' she said, 'that my +husband is always there when Mademoiselle prepares the medicines. So +that he too would be guilty. Rather than believe that, I would accept +death at his hands a hundred times over!' And I remember, Monsieur, +how at the very moment when she told me that, you came out from the +little boudoir, and brought her a glass of valerian. She cast on me a +terrible look and drank. A few minutes afterwards she was so ill that +she thought the end was come. She begged me to give her her crucifix, +and made me swear never to utter a word concerning our suspicions. It +was then I sent for the priest. I have told you, Monsieur, what I +know; what I have seen with my own eyes. I swear that I have said +nothing but what is absolutely true." She paused. I could not answer +her. I seized her old wrinkled and trembling hands and pressed them to +my forehead, and wept like a child. + +May 10.--She died believing me guilty! The thought is terrible to me. +I know not what to do. A creature so frail, so delicate, so sweet. +"Yes!" she said to herself, "my husband is a murderer; what he is +giving me is poison, and he knows it." She died with that thought in +her mind--her last thought. And she will never, never know that it was +not so; that I am innocent; that the thought is torment to me: that I +am the most unhappy of men. Ah! God, all-powerful! if you indeed +exist, you see what I suffer. Have pity on me! + +Ah! how I wish I could believe that all is not over between [239] her +and me; that she sees and hears me; that she knew the truth. But I +find it impossible! impossible! + +June.--That I was a criminal was her last thought, and she will never +be undeceived. + +All seems so completely ended when one dies. All returns to its first +elements. How credit that miracle of a personal resurrection? and yet +in truth all is mystery,--miracle, around us, about us, within +ourselves. The entire universe is but a continuous miracle. Man's new +birth from the womb of death--is it a mystery less comprehensible than +his birth from the womb of his mother? + +Those lines are the last written by Bernard de Vaudricourt. His health, +for some time past disturbed by grief, was powerless against the +emotions of the last terrible trial imposed on him. A malady, the +exact nature of which was not determined, in a few days assumed a +mortal character. Perceiving that his end was come, he caused +Monseigneur de Courteheuse to be summoned--he desired to die in the +religion of Aliette. Living, the poor child had been defeated: she +prevailed in her death. + +Two distinguished souls! deux etres d'elite--M. Feuillet thinks--whose +fine qualities properly brought them together. When Mademoiselle de +Courteheuse said of the heroes of her favourite age, that their +passions, their errors, did but pass over a ground of what was solid +and serious, and which always discovered itself afresh, she was +unconsciously describing Bernard. Singular young brother of Monsieur +de Camors--after all, certainly, more fortunate than he--he belongs to +the age, which, if it had great faults, had also great repentances. In +appearance, frivolous; with all the light charm of the world, yet with +that impressibility to great things, according to the law which makes +the best of M. Feuillet's [240] characters so interesting; above all, +with that capacity for pity which almost everything around him tended +to suppress; in real life, if he exists there, and certainly in M. +Feuillet's pages, it is a refreshment to meet him. + +1886. + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +ainei de palaion men oinon, anthea d' hymnon neoteron+ + +[241] THE words, classical and romantic, although, like many other +critical expressions, sometimes abused by those who have understood +them too vaguely or too absolutely, yet define two real tendencies in +the history of art and literature. Used in an exaggerated sense, to +express a greater opposition between those tendencies than really +exists, they have at times tended to divide people of taste into +opposite camps. But in that House Beautiful, which the creative minds +of all generations--the artists and those who have treated life in the +spirit of art--are always building together, for the refreshment of the +human spirit, these oppositions cease; and the Interpreter of the House +Beautiful, the true aesthetic critic, uses these divisions, only so far +as they enable him to enter into the peculiarities of the objects with +which he has to do. The term classical, fixed, as it is, to a +well-defined literature, and a well-defined group in art, is clear, +indeed; but then it has often been used in a hard, and merely +scholastic [242] sense, by the praisers of what is old and accustomed, +at the expense of what is new, by critics who would never have +discovered for themselves the charm of any work, whether new or old, +who value what is old, in art or literature, for its accessories, and +chiefly for the conventional authority that has gathered about +it--people who would never really have been made glad by any Venus +fresh-risen from the sea, and who praise the Venus of old Greece and +Rome, only because they fancy her grown now into something staid and +tame. + +And as the term, classical, has been used in a too absolute, and +therefore in a misleading sense, so the term, romantic, has been used +much too vaguely, in various accidental senses. The sense in which +Scott is called a romantic writer is chiefly this; that, in opposition +to the literary tradition of the last century, he loved strange +adventure, and sought it in the Middle Age. Much later, in a Yorkshire +village, the spirit of romanticism bore a more really characteristic +fruit in the work of a young girl, Emily Bronte, the romance of +Wuthering Heights; the figures of Hareton Earnshaw, of Catherine +Linton, and of Heathcliffe--tearing open Catherine's grave, removing +one side of her coffin, that he may really lie beside her in +death--figures so passionate, yet woven on a background of delicately +beautiful, moorland scenery, being typical examples of that spirit. In +Germany, again, [243] that spirit is shown less in Tieck, its +professional representative, than in Meinhold, the author of Sidonia +the Sorceress and the Amber-Witch. In Germany and France, within the +last hundred years, the term has been used to describe a particular +school of writers; and, consequently, when Heine criticises the +Romantic School in Germany--that movement which culminated in Goethe's +Goetz von Berlichingen; or when Theophile Gautier criticises the +romantic movement in France, where, indeed, it bore its most +characteristic fruits, and its play is hardly yet over where, by a +certain audacity, or bizarrerie of motive, united with faultless +literary execution, it still shows itself in imaginative literature, +they use the word, with an exact sense of special artistic qualities, +indeed; but use it, nevertheless, with a limited application to the +manifestation of those qualities at a particular period. But the +romantic spirit is, in reality, an ever-present, an enduring principle, +in the artistic temperament; and the qualities of thought and style +which that, and other similar uses of the word romantic really +indicate, are indeed but symptoms of a very continuous and widely +working influence. + +Though the words classical and romantic, then, have acquired an almost +technical meaning, in application to certain developments of German and +French taste, yet this is but one variation of an old opposition, which +may be traced from the [244] very beginning of the formation of +European art and literature. From the first formation of anything like +a standard of taste in these things, the restless curiosity of their +more eager lovers necessarily made itself felt, in the craving for new +motives, new subjects of interest, new modifications of style. Hence, +the opposition between the classicists and the romanticists--between +the adherents, in the culture of beauty, of the principles of liberty, +and authority, respectively--of strength, and order or what the Greeks +called kosmiotes.+ + +Sainte-Beuve, in the third volume of the Causeries du Lundi, has +discussed the question, What is meant by a classic? It was a question +he was well fitted to answer, having himself lived through many phases +of taste, and having been in earlier life an enthusiastic member of the +romantic school: he was also a great master of that sort of "philosophy +of literature," which delights in tracing traditions in it, and the way +in which various phases of thought and sentiment maintain themselves, +through successive modifications, from epoch to epoch. His aim, then, +is to give the word classic a wider and, as he says, a more generous +sense than it commonly bears, to make it expressly grandiose et +flottant; and, in doing this, he develops, in a masterly manner, those +qualities of measure, purity, temperance, of which it is the especial +function of classical art [245] and literature, whatever meaning, +narrower or wider, we attach to the term, to take care. + +The charm, therefore, of what is classical, in art or literature, is +that of the well-known tale, to which we can, nevertheless, listen over +and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute beauty of +its artistic form, is added the accidental, tranquil, charm of +familiarity. There are times, indeed, at which these charms fail to +work on our spirits at all, because they fail to excite us. +"Romanticism," says Stendhal, "is the art of presenting to people the +literary works which, in the actual state of their habits and beliefs, +are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure; classicism, +on the contrary, of presenting them with that which gave the greatest +possible pleasure to their grandfathers." But then, beneath all +changes of habits and beliefs, our love of that mere abstract +proportion--of music--which what is classical in literature possesses, +still maintains itself in the best of us, and what pleased our +grandparents may at least tranquillise us. The "classic" comes to us +out of the cool and quiet of other times; as the measure of what a long +experience has shown will at least never displease us. And in the +classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last +century, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in +beauty, which they possess, indeed, [246] in a pre-eminent degree, and +which impresses some minds to the exclusion of everything else in them. + +It is the addition of strangeness to beauty, that constitutes the +romantic character in art; and the desire of beauty being a fixed +element in every artistic organisation, it is the addition of curiosity +to this desire of beauty, that constitutes the romantic temper. +Curiosity and the desire of beauty, have each their place in art, as in +all true criticism. When one's curiosity is deficient, when one is not +eager enough for new impressions, and new pleasures, one is liable to +value mere academical proprieties too highly, to be satisfied with +worn-out or conventional types, with the insipid ornament of Racine, or +the prettiness of that later Greek sculpture, which passed so long for +true Hellenic work; to miss those places where the handiwork of nature, +or of the artist, has been most cunning; to find the most stimulating +products of art a mere irritation. And when one's curiosity is in +excess, when it overbalances the desire of beauty, then one is liable +to value in works of art what is inartistic in them; to be satisfied +with what is exaggerated in art, with productions like some of those of +the romantic school in Germany; not to distinguish, jealously enough, +between what is admirably done, and what is done not quite so well, in +the writings, for instance, of Jean Paul. And if I had to give [247] +instances of these defects, then I should say, that Pope, in common +with the age of literature to which he belonged, had too little +curiosity, so that there is always a certain insipidity in the effect +of his work, exquisite as it is; and, coming down to our own time, that +Balzac had an excess of curiosity--curiosity not duly tempered with the +desire of beauty. + +But, however falsely those two tendencies may be opposed by critics, or +exaggerated by artists themselves, they are tendencies really at work +at all times in art, moulding it, with the balance sometimes a little +on one side, sometimes a little on the other, generating, respectively, +as the balance inclines on this side or that, two principles, two +traditions, in art, and in literature so far as it partakes of the +spirit of art. If there is a great overbalance of curiosity, then, we +have the grotesque in art: if the union of strangeness and beauty, +under very difficult and complex conditions, be a successful one, if +the union be entire, then the resultant beauty is very exquisite, very +attractive. With a passionate care for beauty, the romantic spirit +refuses to have it, unless the condition of strangeness be first +fulfilled. Its desire is for a beauty born of unlikely elements, by a +profound alchemy, by a difficult initiation, by the charm which wrings +it even out of terrible things; and a trace of distortion, of the +grotesque, may perhaps linger, as an additional element of expression, +about its [248] ultimate grace. Its eager, excited spirit will have +strength, the grotesque, first of all--the trees shrieking as you tear +off the leaves; for Jean Valjean, the long years of convict life; for +Redgauntlet, the quicksands of Solway Moss; then, incorporate with this +strangeness, and intensified by restraint, as much sweetness, as much +beauty, as is compatible with that. Energique, frais, et +dispos--these, according to Sainte-Beuve, are the characteristics of a +genuine classic--les ouvrages anciens ne sont pas classiques parce +qu'ils sont vieux, mais parce qu'ils sont energiques, frais, et dispos. +Energy, freshness, intelligent and masterly disposition:--these are +characteristics of Victor Hugo when his alchemy is complete, in certain +figures, like Marius and Cosette, in certain scenes, like that in the +opening of Les Travailleurs de la Mer, where Deruchette writes the name +of Gilliatt in the snow, on Christmas morning; but always there is a +certain note of strangeness discernible there, as well. + +The essential elements, then, of the romantic spirit are curiosity and +the love of beauty; and it is only as an illustration of these +qualities, that it seeks the Middle Age, because, in the over-charged +atmosphere of the Middle Age, there are unworked sources of romantic +effect, of a strange beauty, to be won, by strong imagination, out of +things unlikely or remote. + +Few, probably, now read Madame de Stael's [249] De l'Allemagne, though +it has its interest, the interest which never quite fades out of work +really touched with the enthusiasm of the spiritual adventurer, the +pioneer in culture. It was published in 1810, to introduce to French +readers a new school of writers--the romantic school, from beyond the +Rhine; and it was followed, twenty-three years later, by Heine's +Romantische Schule, as at once a supplement and a correction. Both +these books, then, connect romanticism with Germany, with the names +especially of Goethe and Tieck; and, to many English readers, the idea +of romanticism is still inseparably connected with Germany--that +Germany which, in its quaint old towns, under the spire of Strasburg or +the towers of Heidelberg, was always listening in rapt inaction to the +melodious, fascinating voices of the Middle Age, and which, now that it +has got Strasburg back again, has, I suppose, almost ceased to exist. +But neither Germany, with its Goethe and Tieck, nor England, with its +Byron and Scott, is nearly so representative of the romantic temper as +France, with Murger, and Gautier, and Victor Hugo. It is in French +literature that its most characteristic expression is to be found; and +that, as most closely derivative, historically, from such peculiar +conditions, as ever reinforce it to the utmost. + +For, although temperament has much to do with the generation of the +romantic spirit, and [250] although this spirit, with its curiosity, +its thirst for a curious beauty, may be always traceable in excellent +art (traceable even in Sophocles) yet still, in a limited sense, it may +be said to be a product of special epochs. Outbreaks of this spirit, +that is, come naturally with particular periods--times, when, in men's +approaches towards art and poetry, curiosity may be noticed to take the +lead, when men come to art and poetry, with a deep thirst for +intellectual excitement, after a long ennui, or in reaction against the +strain of outward, practical things: in the later Middle Age, for +instance; so that medieval poetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed +to Greek and Roman poetry, as romantic poetry to the classical. What +the romanticism of Dante is, may be estimated, if we compare the lines +in which Virgil describes the hazel-wood, from whose broken twigs flows +the blood of Polydorus, not without the expression of a real shudder at +the ghastly incident, with the whole canto of the Inferno, into which +Dante has expanded them, beautifying and softening it, meanwhile, by a +sentiment of profound pity. And it is especially in that period of +intellectual disturbance, immediately preceding Dante, amid which the +romance languages define themselves at last, that this temper is +manifested. Here, in the literature of Provence, the very name of +romanticism is stamped with its true signification: here we have indeed +a romantic world, grotesque [251] even, in the strength of its +passions, almost insane in its curious expression of them, drawing all +things into its sphere, making the birds, nay! lifeless things, its +voices and messengers, yet so penetrated with the desire for beauty and +sweetness, that it begets a wholly new species of poetry, in which the +Renaissance may be said to begin. The last century was pre-eminently a +classical age, an age in which, for art and literature, the element of +a comely order was in the ascendant; which, passing away, left a hard +battle to be fought between the classical and the romantic schools. +Yet, it is in the heart of this century, of Goldsmith and Stothard, of +Watteau and the Siecle de Louis XIV.--in one of its central, if not +most characteristic figures, in Rousseau--that the modern or French +romanticism really originates. But, what in the eighteenth century is +but an exceptional phenomenon, breaking through its fair reserve and +discretion only at rare intervals, is the habitual guise of the +nineteenth, breaking through it perpetually, with a feverishness, an +incomprehensible straining and excitement, which all experience to some +degree, but yearning also, in the genuine children of the romantic +school, to be energique, frais, et dispos--for those qualities of +energy, freshness, comely order; and often, in Murger, in Gautier, in +Victor Hugo, for instance, with singular felicity attaining them. + +It is in the terrible tragedy of Rousseau, in [252] fact, that French +romanticism, with much else, begins: reading his Confessions we seem +actually to assist at the birth of this new, strong spirit in the +French mind. The wildness which has shocked so many, and the +fascination which has influenced almost every one, in the squalid, yet +eloquent figure, we see and hear so clearly in that book, wandering +under the apple-blossoms and among the vines of Neuchatel or Vevey +actually give it the quality of a very successful romantic invention. +His strangeness or distortion, his profound subjectivity, his +passionateness--the cor laceratum--Rousseau makes all men in love with +these. Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j'ai sus. Mais si je +ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre. "I am not made like any one +else I have ever known: yet, if I am not better, at least I am +different." These words, from the first page of the Confessions, +anticipate all the Werthers, Renes, Obermanns, of the last hundred +years. For Rousseau did but anticipate a trouble in the spirit of the +whole world; and thirty years afterwards, what in him was a +peculiarity, became part of the general consciousness. A storm was +coming: Rousseau, with others, felt it in the air, and they helped to +bring it down: they introduced a disturbing element into French +literature, then so trim and formal, like our own literature of the age +of Queen Anne. + +In 1815 the storm had come and gone, but had left, in the spirit of +"young France," the [253] ennui of an immense disillusion. In the last +chapter of Edgar Quinet's Revolution Francaise, a work itself full of +irony, of disillusion, he distinguishes two books, Senancour's Obermann +and Chateaubriand's Genie du Christianisme, as characteristic of the +first decade of the present century. In those two books we detect +already the disease and the cure--in Obermann the irony, refined into a +plaintive philosophy of "indifference"--in Chateaubriand's Genie du +Christianisme, the refuge from a tarnished actual present, a present of +disillusion, into a world of strength and beauty in the Middle Age, as +at an earlier period--in Rene and Atala--into the free play of them in +savage life. It is to minds in this spiritual situation, weary of the +present, but yearning for the spectacle of beauty and strength, that +the works of French romanticism appeal. They set a positive value on +the intense, the exceptional; and a certain distortion is sometimes +noticeable in them, as in conceptions like Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, or +Gwynplaine, something of a terrible grotesque, of the macabre, as the +French themselves call it; though always combined with perfect literary +execution, as in Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse, or the scene of the +"maimed" burial-rites of the player, dead of the frost, in his +Capitaine Fracasse--true "flowers of the yew." It becomes grim humour +in Victor Hugo's combat of Gilliatt with the devil-fish, or the +incident, with all its ghastly comedy drawn [254] out at length, of the +great gun detached from its fastenings on shipboard, in +Quatre-Vingt-Trieze (perhaps the most terrible of all the accidents +that can happen by sea) and in the entire episode, in that book, of the +Convention. Not less surely does it reach a genuine pathos; for the +habit of noting and distinguishing one's own most intimate passages of +sentiment makes one sympathetic, begetting, as it must, the power of +entering, by all sorts of finer ways, into the intimate recesses of +other minds; so that pity is another quality of romanticism, both +Victor Hugo and Gautier being great lovers of animals, and charming +writers about them, and Murger being unrivalled in the pathos of his +Scenes de la Vie de Jeunesse. Penetrating so finely into all +situations which appeal to pity, above all, into the special or +exceptional phases of such feeling, the romantic humour is not afraid +of the quaintness or singularity of its circumstances or expression, +pity, indeed, being of the essence of humour; so that Victor Hugo does +but turn his romanticism into practice, in his hunger and thirst after +practical Justice!--a justice which shall no longer wrong children, or +animals, for instance, by ignoring in a stupid, mere breadth of view, +minute facts about them. Yet the romanticists are antinomian, too, +sometimes, because the love of energy and beauty, of distinction in +passion, tended naturally to become a little bizarre, plunging into the +[255] Middle Age, into the secrets of old Italian story. Are we in the +Inferno?--we are tempted to ask, wondering at something malign in so +much beauty. For over all a care for the refreshment of the human +spirit by fine art manifests itself, a predominant sense of literary +charm, so that, in their search for the secret of exquisite expression, +the romantic school went back to the forgotten world of early French +poetry, and literature itself became the most delicate of the +arts--like "goldsmith's work," says Sainte-Beuve, of Bertrand's Gaspard +de la Nuit--and that peculiarly French gift, the gift of exquisite +speech, argute loqui, attained in them a perfection which it had never +seen before. + +Stendhal, a writer whom I have already quoted, and of whom English +readers might well know much more than they do, stands between the +earlier and later growths of the romantic spirit. His novels are rich +in romantic quality; and his other writings--partly criticism, partly +personal reminiscences--are a very curious and interesting illustration +of the needs out of which romanticism arose. In his book on Racine and +Shakespeare, Stendhal argues that all good art was romantic in its day; +and this is perhaps true in Stendhal's sense. That little treatise, +full of "dry light" and fertile ideas, was published in the year 1823, +and its object is to defend an entire independence and liberty in the +choice and treatment of subject, both in [256] art and literature, +against those who upheld the exclusive authority of precedent. In +pleading the cause of romanticism, therefore, it is the novelty, both +of form and of motive, in writings like the Hernani of Victor Hugo +(which soon followed it, raising a storm of criticism) that he is +chiefly concerned to justify. To be interesting and really +stimulating, to keep us from yawning even, art and literature must +follow the subtle movements of that nimbly-shifting Time-Spirit, or +Zeit-Geist, understood by French not less than by German criticism, +which is always modifying men's taste, as it modifies their manners and +their pleasures. This, he contends, is what all great workmen had +always understood. Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, had exercised an +absolute independence in their choice of subject and treatment. To +turn always with that ever-changing spirit, yet to retain the flavour +of what was admirably done in past generations, in the classics, as we +say--is the problem of true romanticism. "Dante," he observes, "was +pre-eminently the romantic poet. He adored Virgil, yet he wrote the +Divine Comedy, with the episode of Ugolino, which is as unlike the +Aeneid as can possibly be. And those who thus obey the fundamental +principle of romanticism, one by one become classical, and are joined +to that ever-increasing common league, formed by men of all countries, +to approach nearer and nearer to perfection." + +Romanticism, then, although it has its epochs, [257] is in its +essential characteristics rather a spirit which shows itself at all +times, in various degrees, in individual workmen and their work, and +the amount of which criticism has to estimate in them taken one by one, +than the peculiarity of a time or a school. Depending on the varying +proportion of curiosity and the desire of beauty, natural tendencies of +the artistic spirit at all times, it must always be partly a matter of +individual temperament. The eighteenth century in England has been +regarded as almost exclusively a classical period; yet William Blake, a +type of so much which breaks through what are conventionally thought +the influences of that century, is still a noticeable phenomenon in it, +and the reaction in favour of naturalism in poetry begins in that +century, early. There are, thus, the born romanticists and the born +classicists. There are the born classicists who start with form, to +whose minds the comeliness of the old, immemorial, well-recognised +types in art and literature, have revealed themselves impressively; who +will entertain no matter which will not go easily and flexibly into +them; whose work aspires only to be a variation upon, or study from, +the older masters. "'Tis art's decline, my son!" they are always +saying, to the progressive element in their own generation; to those +who care for that which in fifty years' time every one will be caring +for. On the other hand, there are the born romanticists, who start +with an original, [258] untried matter, still in fusion; who conceive +this vividly, and hold by it as the essence of their work; who, by the +very vividness and heat of their conception, purge away, sooner or +later, all that is not organically appropriate to it, till the whole +effect adjusts itself in clear, orderly, proportionate form; which +form, after a very little time, becomes classical in its turn. + +The romantic or classical character of a picture, a poem, a literary +work, depends, then, on the balance of certain qualities in it; and in +this sense, a very real distinction may be drawn between good classical +and good romantic work. But all critical terms are relative; and there +is at least a valuable suggestion in that theory of Stendhal's, that +all good art was romantic in its day. In the beauties of Homer and +Pheidias, quiet as they now seem, there must have been, for those who +confronted them for the first time, excitement and surprise, the +sudden, unforeseen satisfaction of the desire of beauty. Yet the +Odyssey, with its marvellous adventure, is more romantic than the +Iliad, which nevertheless contains, among many other romantic episodes, +that of the immortal horses of Achilles, who weep at the death of +Patroclus. Aeschylus is more romantic than Sophocles, whose +Philoctetes, were it written now, might figure, for the strangeness of +its motive and the perfectness of its execution, as typically romantic; +while, of Euripides, it may be said, that his method in [259] writing +his plays is to sacrifice readily almost everything else, so that he +may attain the fulness of a single romantic effect. These two +tendencies, indeed, might be applied as a measure or standard, all +through Greek and Roman art and poetry, with very illuminating results; +and for an analyst of the romantic principle in art, no exercise would +be more profitable, than to walk through the collection of classical +antiquities at the Louvre, or the British Museum, or to examine some +representative collection of Greek coins, and note how the element of +curiosity, of the love of strangeness, insinuates itself into classical +design, and record the effects of the romantic spirit there, the traces +of struggle, of the grotesque even, though over-balanced here by +sweetness; as in the sculpture of Chartres and Rheims, the real +sweetness of mind in the sculptor is often overbalanced by the +grotesque, by the rudeness of his strength. + +Classicism, then, means for Stendhal, for that younger enthusiastic +band of French writers whose unconscious method he formulated into +principles, the reign of what is pedantic, conventional, and narrowly +academical in art; for him, all good art is romantic. To Sainte-Beuve, +who understands the term in a more liberal sense, it is the +characteristic of certain epochs, of certain spirits in every epoch, +not given to the exercise of original imagination, but rather to the +working out of refinements of manner on some [260] authorised matter; +and who bring to their perfection, in this way, the elements of sanity, +of order and beauty in manner. In general criticism, again, it means +the spirit of Greece and Rome, of some phases in literature and art +that may seem of equal authority with Greece and Rome, the age of Louis +the Fourteenth, the age of Johnson; though this is at best an +uncritical use of the term, because in Greek and Roman work there are +typical examples of the romantic spirit. But explain the terms as we +may, in application to particular epochs, there are these two elements +always recognisable; united in perfect art--in Sophocles, in Dante, in +the highest work of Goethe, though not always absolutely balanced +there; and these two elements may be not inappropriately termed the +classical and romantic tendencies. + +Material for the artist, motives of inspiration, are not yet exhausted: +our curious, complex, aspiring age still abounds in subjects for +aesthetic manipulation by the literary as well as by other forms of +art. For the literary art, at all events, the problem just now is, to +induce order upon the contorted, proportionless accumulation of our +knowledge and experience, our science and history, our hopes and +disillusion, and, in effecting this, to do consciously what has been +done hitherto for the most part too unconsciously, to write our English +language as the Latins wrote theirs, as the [261] French write, as +scholars should write. Appealing, as he may, to precedent in this +matter, the scholar will still remember that if "the style is the man" +it is also the age: that the nineteenth century too will be found to +have had its style, justified by necessity--a style very different, +alike from the baldness of an impossible "Queen Anne" revival, and an +incorrect, incondite exuberance, after the mode of Elizabeth: that we +can only return to either at the price of an impoverishment of form or +matter, or both, although, an intellectually rich age such as ours +being necessarily an eclectic one, we may well cultivate some of the +excellences of literary types so different as those: that in literature +as in other matters it is well to unite as many diverse elements as may +be: that the individual writer or artist, certainly, is to be estimated +by the number of graces he combines, and his power of interpenetrating +them in a given work. To discriminate schools, of art, of literature, +is, of course, part of the obvious business of literary criticism: but, +in the work of literary production, it is easy to be overmuch occupied +concerning them. For, in truth, the legitimate contention is, not of +one age or school of literary art against another, but of all +successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the +substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form. + + +NOTES + + +241. +Transliteration: ainei de palaion men oinon, anthea d' hymnon +neoteron. Translation: "Praise wine for its age, but the song in first +bloom. Pindar, Odes, Book O, Poem 9, Line 47. + +244. +Transliteration: kosmiotes. Liddell and Scott definition: +"propriety, decorum, orderly behavior." + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, by +Walter Horatio Pater + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPRECIATIONS, ESSAY ON STYLE *** + +***** This file should be named 4037.txt or 4037.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/3/4037/ + +Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + +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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