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diff --git a/old/61345-0.txt b/old/61345-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ba6b99c..0000000 --- a/old/61345-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7646 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Companionable Books, by Henry van Dyke - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Companionable Books - -Author: Henry van Dyke - -Release Date: February 8, 2020 [EBook #61345] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPANIONABLE BOOKS *** - - - - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - -BY HENRY VAN DYKE - - - Companionable Books - The Valley of Vision - Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts - Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Little Rivers - Fisherman’s Luck - - Days Off - The Unknown Quantity - The Ruling Passion - The Blue Flower - - Poems, Collection in one volume - Songs Out of Doors - - Golden Stars - The Red Flower - The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems - The White Bees, and Other Poems - The Builders, and Other Poems - Music, and Other Poems - The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems - The House of Rimmon - - Studies in Tennyson - Poems of Tennyson - Fighting for Peace - -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - - - - -COMPANIONABLE BOOKS - - - - -[Illustration: JOHN KEATS. - -Painted by Joseph Severn. - -_From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London._] - - - - - COMPANIONABLE - BOOKS - - BY - HENRY VAN DYKE - - _“What is this reading, which I must learn,” asked Adam, “and - what is it like?”_ - - _“It is something beyond gardening,” answered Raphael, “and at - times you will find it a heavy task. But at its best it will - be like listening through your eyes; and you shall hear the - flowers laugh, the trees talk, and the stars sing.”_ - - SOLOMON SINGLEWITZ—_The Life of Adam_ - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1922 - - COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - - COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARPER BROTHERS - - Printed in the United States of America - - Published October, 1922 - -[Illustration] - - - - - To - - MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT - - AUTHOR AND RANCHMAN - ONCE MY SCHOLAR - ALWAYS MY FRIEND - - - - -PREFACE - - -Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are -soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed -orange; but some have in them an unfailing sap, both from the tree of -knowledge and from the tree of life. - -By companionable books I mean those that are worth taking with you on a -journey, where the weight of luggage counts, or keeping beside your bed, -near the night-lamp; books that will bear reading often, and the more -slowly you read them the better you enjoy them; books that not only tell -you how things look and how people behave, but also interpret nature and -life to you, in language of beauty and power touched with the personality -of the author, so that they have a real voice audible to your spirit in -the silence. - -Here I have written about a few of these books which have borne me good -company, in one way or another,—and about their authors, who have put -the best of themselves into their work. Such criticism as the volume -contains is therefore mainly in the form of appreciation with reasons for -it. The other kind of criticism you will find chiefly in the omissions. - -So (changing the figure to suit this cabin by the sea) I send forth my -new ship, hoping only that it may carry something desirable from each of -the ports where it has taken on cargo, and that it may not be sunk by the -enemy before it touches at a few friendly harbours. - - HENRY VAN DYKE. - -SYLVANORA, _Seal Harbour, Me., August 19, 1922_. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - _I._ _The Book of Books_ 1 - - _II._ _Poetry in the Psalms_ 33 - - _III._ _The Good Enchantment of Dickens_ 63 - - _IV._ _Thackeray and Real Men_ 103 - - _V._ _George Eliot and Real Women_ 131 - - _VI._ _The Poet of Immortal Youth (Keats)_ 165 - - _VII._ _The Recovery of Joy (Wordsworth)_ 189 - - _VIII._ _“The Glory of the Imperfect” (Browning)_ 233 - - _IX._ _A Quaint Comrade by Quiet Streams (Walton)_ 289 - - _X._ _A Sturdy Believer (Samuel Johnson)_ 307 - - _XI._ _A Puritan Plus Poetry (Emerson)_ 333 - - _XII._ _An Adventurer in a Velvet Jacket (Stevenson)_ 357 - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - - _John Keats_ Frontispiece - - Facing page - - _Charles Dickens as Captain Bobadil in “Every Man in His Humour”_ 82 - - _William Makepeace Thackeray_ 120 - - _William Wordsworth_ 200 - - _Robert Browning_ 246 - - _Samuel Johnson_ 314 - - _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ 340 - - _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 360 - -_In the cover design by Margaret Armstrong the books and authors are -represented by the following symbolic flowers: Bible—grapes; Psalms—wheat; -Dickens—English holly; Thackeray—English rose; George Eliot—ivy; -Keats—bleeding-heart; Wordsworth—daffodil; Browning—pomegranate; Izaak -Walton—strawberry; Johnson—oak; Stevenson—Scottish bluebell._ - - - - -THE BOOK OF BOOKS - -_An Apologue_ - - -There was once an Eastern prince who was much enamoured of the art of -gardening. He wished that all flowers delightful to the eye, and all -fruits pleasant to the taste and good for food, should grow in his -dominion, and that in growing the flowers should become more fair, the -fruits more savoury and nourishing. With this thought in his mind and -this desire in his heart, he found his way to the Ancient One, the Worker -of Wonders who dwells in a secret place, and made known his request. - -“For the care of your gardens and your orchards,” said the Ancient One, -“I can do nothing, since that charge has been given to you and to your -people. Nor will I send blossoming plants and fruiting trees of every -kind to make your kingdom rich and beautiful as by magic, lest the honour -of labour should be diminished, and the slow reward of patience despised, -and even the living gifts bestowed upon you without toil should wither -and die away. But this will I do: a single tree shall be brought to you -from a far country by the hands of my servants, and you shall plant it in -the midst of your land. In the body of that tree is the sap of life that -was from the beginning; the leaves of it are full of healing; its flowers -never fail, and its fruitage is the joy of every season. The roots of -the tree shall go down to the springs of deep waters; and wherever its -pollen is drifted by the wind or borne by the bees, the gardens shall put -on new beauty; and wherever its seed is carried by the fowls of the air, -the orchards shall yield a richer harvest. But the tree itself you shall -guard and cherish and keep as I give it you, neither cutting anything -away from it, nor grafting anything upon it; for the life of the tree is -in all the branches, and the other trees shall be glad because of it.” - -As the Ancient One had spoken, so it came to pass. The land of that -prince had great renown of fine flowers and delicious fruits, ever -unfolding in new colours and sweeter flavours the life that was shed -among them by the tree of trees. - - -I - -Something like the marvel of this tale may be read in the history of -the Bible. No other book in the world has had such a strange vitality, -such an outgoing power of influence and inspiration. Not only has it -brought to the countries in whose heart it has been set new ideals of -civilization, new models of character, new conceptions of virtue and -hopes of happiness; but it has also given new impulse and form to the -shaping imagination of man, and begotten beauty in literature and the -other arts. - -Suppose, for example, that it were possible to dissolve away all the -works of art which clearly owe their being to thoughts, emotions, or -visions derived from the Bible,—all sculpture like Donatello’s “David” -and Michelangelo’s “Moses”; all painting like Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” -and Murillo’s “Holy Family”; all music like Bach’s “Passion” and Handel’s -“Messiah”; all poetry like Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Milton’s “Paradise -Lost,”—how it would impoverish the world! - -The literary influence of the Bible appears the more wonderful when we -consider that it is the work of a race not otherwise potent or famous in -literature. We do not know, of course, what other books may have come -from the Jewish nation and vanished with whatever of power or beauty they -possessed; but in those that remain there is little of exceptional force -or charm for readers outside of the Hebrew race. They have no broad human -appeal, no universal significance, not even any signal excellence of form -and imagery. Josephus is a fairly good historian, sometimes entertaining, -but not comparable to Herodotus or Thucydides or Tacitus or Gibbon. The -Talmuds are vast storehouses of things new and old, where a careful -searcher may now and then find a legendary gem or a quaint fragment of -moral tapestry. In histories of mediæval literature, Ibn Ezra of Toledo -and Rashi of Lunel are spoken of with respect. In modern letters, works -as far apart as the philosophical treatises of Spinoza and the lyrics of -Heinrich Heine have distinction in their kind. No one thinks that the -Hebrews are lacking in great and varied talents; but how is it that in -world-literature their only contribution that counts is the Bible? And -how is it that it counts so immensely? - -It is possible to answer by saying that in the Old Testament we have a -happily made collection of the best things in the ancient literature -of the Jews, and in the New Testament we have another anthology of the -finest of the narratives and letters which were produced by certain -writers of the same race under a new and exceedingly powerful spiritual -impulse. The Bible is excellent because it contains the cream of Hebrew -thought. But this answer explains nothing. It only restates the facts in -another form. How did the cream rise? How did such a collection come to -be made? What gives it unity and coherence underneath all its diversity? -How is it that, as a clear critic has well said, “These sixty books, with -all their varieties of age, authorship, literary form, are, when properly -arranged, felt to draw together with a unity like the connectedness of a -dramatic plot?” - -There is an answer, which if it be accepted, carries with it a solution -of the problem. - -Suppose a race chosen by some process of selection (which need not -now be discussed or defined) to develop in its strongest and most -absolute form that one of man’s faculties which is called the religious -sense, to receive most clearly and deeply the impression of the unity, -spirituality, and righteousness of a Supreme Being present in the world. -Imagine that race moving through a long and varied experience under this -powerful impression, now loyal to it, now rebelling against it, now -misinterpreting it, now led by the voice of some prophet to understand -it more fully and feel it more profoundly, but never wholly losing it -for a single generation. Imagine the history of that race, its poetry, -the biography of its famous men and women, the messages of its moral -reformers, conceived and written in constant relation to that strongest -factor of conscious life, the sense of the presence and power of the -Eternal. - -Suppose, now, in a time of darkness and humiliation, that there rises -within that race a prophet who declares that a new era of spiritual light -has come, preaches a new revelation of the Eternal, and claims in his own -person to fulfil the ancient hopes and promises of a divine deliverer -and redeemer. Imagine his followers, few in number, accepting his -message slowly and dimly at first, guided by companionship with him into -a clearer understanding and a stronger belief, until at last they are -convinced that his claims are true, and that he is the saviour not only -of the chosen people, but also of the whole world, the revealer of the -Eternal to mankind. Imagine these disciples setting out with incredible -courage to carry this message to all nations, so deeply impressed with -its truth that they are supremely happy to suffer and die for it, so -filled with the passion of its meaning that they dare attempt to remodel -the life of the world with it. Suppose a human story like this underneath -the writing of the books which are gathered in the Bible, and you have -an explanation—it seems to me the only reasonable explanation—of their -surpassing quality and their strange unity. - -This story is not a mere supposition: its general outline, stated in -these terms, belongs to the realm of facts which cannot reasonably be -questioned. What more is needed to account for the story itself, what -potent and irresistible reality is involved in this record of experience, -I do not now ask. This is not an estimate of the religious authority of -the Bible, nor of its inspiration in the theological sense of that word, -but only of something less important, though no less real—its literary -influence. - - -II - -The fountain-head of the power of the Bible in literature lies in its -nearness to the very springs and sources of human life—life taken -seriously, earnestly, intensely; life in its broadest meaning, including -the inward as well as the outward; life interpreted in its relation -to universal laws and eternal values. It is this vital quality in the -narratives, the poems, the allegories, the meditations, the discourses, -the letters, gathered in this book, that gives it first place among the -books of the world not only for currency, but also for greatness. - -For the currency of literature depends in the long run upon the breadth -and vividness of its human appeal. And the greatness of literature -depends upon the intensive significance of those portions of life which -it depicts and interprets. Now, there is no other book which reflects so -many sides and aspects of human experience as the Bible, and this fact -alone would suffice to give it a world-wide interest and make it popular. -But it mirrors them all, whether they belong to the chronicles of kings -and conquerors, or to the obscure records of the lowliest of labourers -and sufferers, in the light of a conviction that they are all related -to the will and purpose of the Eternal. This illuminates every figure -with a divine distinction, and raises every event to the _n_th power of -meaning. It is this fact that gives the Bible its extraordinary force as -literature and makes it great. - -_Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible -walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after -land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds -of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the -monarch that he is a servant of the Most High, and into the cottage -to assure the peasant that he is a son of God. Children listen to its -stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as parables -of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, a word of comfort -for the day of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its -oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels -whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wicked and the proud tremble -at its warning, but to the wounded and the penitent it has a mother’s -voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, -and the fire on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn page. It -has woven itself into our deepest affections and coloured our dearest -dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and -hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of -frankincense and myrrh._ - -_Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us -uncalled. They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the -beauty of them lingers on our ear long after the sermons which they -adorned have been forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly, like -doves flying from far away. They surprise us with new meanings, like -springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a long-trodden -path. They grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart._ - -_No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the -landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the Valley named -of the Shadow, he is not afraid to enter: he takes the rod and staff of -Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, “Good-by; we shall -meet again”; and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely -pass as one who walks through darkness into light._ - -It would be strange indeed if a book which has played such a part in -human life had not exercised an extraordinary influence upon literature. -As a matter of fact, the Bible has called into existence tens of -thousands of other books devoted to the exposition of its meaning, -the defense and illustration of its doctrine, the application of its -teaching, or the record of its history. The learned Fabricius, in the -early part of the eighteenth century, published a _catalogue raisonné_ -of such books, filling seven hundred quarto pages.[1] Since that time -the length of the list has probably more than trebled. In addition, we -must reckon the many books of hostile criticism and contrary argument -which the Bible has evoked, and which are an evidence of revolt against -the might of its influence. All this tangle of Biblical literature has -grown up around it like a vast wood full of all manner of trees, great -and small, useful and worthless, fruit-trees, timber-trees, berry-bushes, -briers, and poison-vines. But all of them, even the most beautiful and -tall, look like undergrowth, when we compare them with the mighty oak of -Scripture, towering in perennial grandeur, the father of the forest. - -Among the patristic writers there were some of great genius like Origen -and Chrysostom and Augustine. The mediæval schools of theology produced -men of philosophic power, like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas; of spiritual -insight, like the author of the _Imitatio Christi_. The eloquence of -France reached its height in the discourses of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and -Massillon. German became one of the potent tongues of literature when -Martin Luther used it in his tracts and sermons, and Herder’s _Geist der -hebräischen Poesie_ is one of the great books in criticism. In English, -to mention such names as Hooker and Fuller and Jeremy Taylor is to recall -the dignity, force, and splendour of prose at its best. Yet none of -these authors has produced anything to rival the book from which they -drew their common inspiration. - -In the other camp, though there have been many brilliant assailants, not -one has surpassed, or even equalled, in the estimation of the world, the -literary excellence of the book which they attacked. The mordant wit -of Voltaire, the lucid and melancholy charm of Renan, have not availed -to drive or draw the world away from the Bible; and the effect of all -assaults has been to leave it more widely read, better understood, and -more intelligently admired than ever before. - -Now it must be admitted that the same thing is true, at least in some -degree, of other books which are held to be sacred or quasi-sacred: -they are superior to the distinctively theological literature which has -grown up about them. I suppose nothing of the Mussulmans is as great as -the “Koran,” nothing of the Hindus as great as the “Vedas”; and though -the effect of the Confucian classics, from the literary point of view, -may not have been altogether good, their supremacy in the religious -library of the Chinese is unquestioned. But the singular and noteworthy -thing about the influence of the Bible is the extent to which it has -permeated general literature, the mark which it has made in all forms of -belles-lettres. To treat this subject adequately one would need to write -volumes. In this chapter I can touch but briefly on a few points of the -outline as they come out in English literature. - - -III - -In the Old-English period, the predominant influence of the Scriptures -may be seen in the frequency with which the men of letters turned to -them for subjects, and in the Biblical colouring and texture of thought -and style. Cædmon’s famous “Hymn” and the other poems like “Genesis,” -“Exodus,” “Daniel,” and “Judith,” which were once ascribed to him; -Cynewulf’s “Crist,” “The Fates of the Apostles,” “The Dream of the -Rood”; Ælfric’s “Homilies” and his paraphrases of certain books of -Scripture—these early fruits of our literature are all the offspring of -the Bible. - -In the Middle-English period, that anonymous masterpiece “Pearl” is -full of the spirit of Christian mysticism, and the two poems called -“Cleanness” and “Patience,” probably written by the same hand, are free -and spirited versions of stories from the Bible. “The Vision of Piers the -Plowman,” formerly ascribed to William Langland, but now supposed by some -scholars to be the work of four or five different authors, was the most -popular poem of the latter half of the fourteenth century. It is a vivid -picture of the wrongs and sufferings of the labouring man, a passionate -satire on the corruptions of the age in church and state, an eloquent -appeal for a return to truth and simplicity. The feeling and the imagery -of Scripture pervade it with a strange power and charm; in its reverence -for poverty and toil it leans closely and confidently upon the example of -Jesus; and at the end it makes its ploughman hero appear in some mystic -way as a type, first of the crucified Saviour, and then of the church -which is the body of Christ. - -It was about this time, the end of the fourteenth century, that John -Wyclif and his disciples, feeling the need of the support of the Bible in -their work as reformers, took up and completed the task of translating -it entirely into the English tongue of the common people. This rude but -vigourous version was revised and improved by John Purvey. It rested -mainly upon the Latin version of St. Jerome. At the beginning of the -sixteenth century William Tindale made an independent translation of -the New Testament from the original Greek, a virile and enduring piece -of work, marked by strength and simplicity, and setting a standard for -subsequent English translations. Coverdale’s version of the Scriptures -was published in 1535, and was announced as made “out of Douche and -Latyn”; that is to say, it was based upon the German of Luther and the -Zurich Bible, and upon the Vulgate of St. Jerome; but it owed much to -Tindale, to whose manly force it added a certain music of diction and -grace of phrase which may still be noted in the Psalms as they are -rendered in the Anglican Prayer-Book. Another translation, marked by -accurate scholarship, was made by English Puritans at Geneva, and still -another, characterized by a richer Latinized style, was made by English -Catholics living in exile at Rheims, and was known as “the Douai -Version,” from the fact that it was first published in its complete form -in that city in 1609-1610. - -Meantime, in 1604, a company of scholars had been appointed by King James -I in England to make a new translation “out of the original tongues, and -with the former translations diligently compared and revised.” These -forty-seven men had the advantage of all the work of their predecessors, -the benefit of all the discussion over doubtful words and phrases, and -the “unearned increment” of riches which had come into the English -language since the days of Wyclif. The result of their labours, published -in 1611, was the so-called “Authorized Version,” a monument of English -prose in its prime: clear, strong, direct, yet full of subtle rhythms -and strange colours; now moving as simply as a shepherd’s song, in the -Twenty-third Psalm; now marching with majestic harmonies, in the book -of Job; now reflecting the lowliest forms of human life, in the Gospel -stories; and now flashing with celestial splendours in the visions of -the Apocalypse; vivid without effort; picturesque without exaggeration; -sinewy without strain; capable alike of the deepest tenderness and the -most sublime majesty; using a vocabulary of only six thousand words to -build a book which, as Macaulay said, “if everything else in our language -should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty -and power.” - -The literary excellence of this version, no doubt, did much to increase -the influence of the Bible in literature and confirm its place as the -central book in the life of those who speak and write the English tongue. -Consider a few of the ways in which this influence may be traced. - - -IV - -First of all, it has had a general effect upon English writing, helping -to preserve it from the opposite faults of vulgarity and affectation. -Coleridge long ago remarked upon the tendency of a close study of the -Bible to elevate a writer’s style. There is a certain naturalness, -inevitableness, propriety of form to substance, in the language of -Scripture which communicates to its readers a feeling for the fitness -of words; and this in itself is the first requisite of good writing. -Sincerity is the best part of dignity. - -The English of our Bible is singularly free from the vice of preciosity: -it is not far-sought, overnice, elaborate. Its plainness is a rebuking -contrast to all forms of euphuism. It does not encourage a direct -imitation of itself; for the comparison between the original and the copy -makes the latter look pale and dull. Even in the age which produced the -authorized version, its style was distinct and remarkable. As Hallam has -observed, it was “not the English of Daniel, of Raleigh, or Bacon.” It -was something larger, at once more ancient and more modern, and therefore -well fitted to become not an invariable model, but an enduring standard. -Its words come to it from all sources; they are not chosen according -to the foolish theory that a word of Anglo-Saxon origin is always -stronger and simpler than a Latin derivative. Take the beginning of the -Forty-sixth Psalm: - -“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. -Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the -mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof -roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling -thereof.” - -Or take this passage from the Epistle to the Romans: - -“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour -preferring one another; not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; -serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing -instant in prayer; distributing to the necessity of saints; given to -hospitality.” - -Here is a style that adapts itself by instinct to its subject, and -whether it uses Saxon words like “strength” and “help” and “love” and -“hope,” or Latin words like “refuge” and “trouble” and “present” and -“fervent” and “patient” and “prayer” and “hospitality,” weaves them into -a garment worthy of the thought. - -The literary influence of a great, popular book written in such a style -is both inspiring and conservative. It survives the passing modes of -prose in each generation, and keeps the present in touch with the past. -It preserves a sense of balance and proportion in a language whose perils -lie in its liberties and in the indiscriminate use of its growing wealth. -And finally it keeps a medium of communication open between the learned -and the simple; for the two places where the effect of the Bible upon the -English language may be most clearly felt are in the natural speech of -the plain people and in the finest passages of great authors. - - -V - -Following this line of the influence of the Bible upon language as the -medium of literature, we find, in the next place, that it has contributed -to our common speech a great number of phrases which are current -everywhere. Sometimes these phrases are used in a merely conventional -way. They serve as counters in a long extemporaneous prayer, or as -padding to a page of dull and pious prose. But at other times they -illuminate the sentence with a new radiance; they clarify its meaning -with a true symbol; they enhance its value with rich associations; they -are “sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.” - -Take for example such phrases as these: “a good old age,” “the wife -of thy bosom,” “the apple of his eye,” “gathered to his fathers,” “a -mother in Israel,” “a land flowing with milk and honey,” “the windows -of heaven,” “the fountains of the great deep,” “living fountains of -waters,” “the valley of decision,” “cometh up as a flower,” “a garden -enclosed,” “one little ewe lamb,” “thou art the man,” “a still, small -voice,” “as the sparks fly upward,” “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” -“miserable comforters,” “the strife of tongues,” “the tents of Kedar,” -“the cry of the humble,” “the lofty looks of man,” “the pride of life,” -“from strength to strength,” “as a dream when one awaketh,” “the wings -of the morning,” “stolen waters,” “a dinner of herbs,” “apples of gold -in pictures of silver,” “better than rubies,” “a lion in the way,” -“vanity of vanities,” “no discharge in that war,” “the little foxes that -spoil the vines,” “terrible as an army with banners,” “precept upon -precept, line upon line,” “as a drop of a bucket,” “whose merchants are -princes,” “trodden the wine-press alone,” “the rose of Sharon and the -lily of the valley,” “the highways and hedges,” “the salt of the earth,” -“the burden and heat of the day,” “the signs of the times,” “a pearl of -great price,” “what God hath joined together,” “the children of light,” -“the powers that be,” “if the trumpet give an uncertain sound,” “the -fashion of this world,” “decently and in order,” “a thorn in the flesh,” -“labour of love,” “a cloud of witnesses,” “to entertain angels unawares,” -“faithful unto death,” “a crown of life.” Consider also those expressions -which carry with them distinctly the memory of some ancient story: “the -fleshpots of Egypt,” “manna in the wilderness,” “a mess of pottage,” -“Joseph’s coat,” “the driving of Jehu,” “the mantle of Elijah,” “the -widow’s mite,” “the elder brother,” “the kiss of Judas,” “the house of -Martha,” “a friend of publicans and sinners,” “many mansions,” “bearing -the cross.” Into such phrases as these, which are familiar to us all, the -Bible has poured a wealth of meaning far beyond the measure of the bare -words. They call up visions and reveal mysteries. - - -VI - -Direct, but not always accurate, quotations from Scripture and allusions -to Biblical characters and events are very numerous in English -literature. They are found in all sorts of books. Professor Albert T. -Cook has recently counted sixty-three in a volume of descriptive sketches -of Italy, twelve in a book on wild animals, and eighteen in a novel by -Thomas Hardy. A special study of the Biblical references in Tennyson has -been made,[2] and more than five hundred of them have been found. - -Bishop Charles Wordsworth has written a book on _Shakespeare’s Knowledge -and Use of the Bible_,[3] and shown “how fully and how accurately the -general tenor of the facts recorded in the sacred narrative was present -to his mind,” and “how Scriptural are the conceptions which Shakespeare -had of the being and attributes of God, of His general and particular -Providence, of His revelation to man, of our duty toward Him and toward -each other, of human life and of human death, of time and of eternity.” -It is possible that the bishop benevolently credits the dramatist with a -more invariable and complete orthodoxy than he possessed. But certainly -Shakespeare knew the Bible well, and felt the dramatic value of allusions -and illustrations which were sure to be instantly understood by the plain -people. It is his Antonio, in _The Merchant of Venice_, who remarks that -“the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” evidently referring to -the Gospel story of the evil one who tried to tempt Jesus with a verse -from the Psalms. - -The references to the Bible in the poetry of Robert Browning have been -very carefully examined by Mrs. Machen in an admirable little book.[4] -It is not too much to say that his work is crowded with Scriptural -quotations, allusions, and imagery. He follows Antonio’s maxim, and makes -his bad characters, like Bishop Blougram and Sludge the Medium, cite -from Holy Writ to cloak their hypocrisy or excuse their villainy. In his -longest poem, _The Ring and the Book_, there are said to be more than -five hundred Biblical references. - -But more remarkable even than the extent to which this material drawn -from the Scriptures has been used by English writers, is the striking -effect which it produces when it is well used. With what pathos does Sir -Walter Scott, in _The Heart of Midlothian_, make old Davie Deans bow his -head when he sees his daughter Effie on trial for her life, and mutter to -himself, “Ichabod! my glory is departed!” How magnificently does Ruskin -enrich his _Sesame and Lilies_ with that passage from Isaiah in which the -fallen kings of Hades start from their thrones to greet the newly fallen -with the cry, “Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like -unto us?” How grandly do the images and thoughts of the last chapters of -Deuteronomy roll through Kipling’s _Recessional_, with its Scriptural -refrain, “Lest we forget!” - -There are some works of literature in English since the sixteenth century -which are altogether Biblical in subject and colouring. Chief among these -in prose is _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ of John Bunyan, and in verse, the -_Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_ of John -Milton. These are already classics. Some day a place near them will be -given to Browning’s _Saul_ and _A Death in the Desert_; but for that we -must wait until their form has stood the test of time. - -In general it may be observed—and the remark holds good of the works -just mentioned—that a Scriptural story or poem is most likely to succeed -when it takes its theme, directly or by suggestion, from the Bible, and -carries it into a region of imagination, a border-realm, where the author -is free to work without paraphrase or comparison with the sacred writers. -It is for this reason that both _Samson Agonistes_ and _Paradise Lost_ -are superior to _Paradise Regained_. - - -VII - -The largest and most important influence of the Bible in literature lies -beyond all these visible effects upon language and style and imagery -and form. It comes from the strange power of the book to nourish and -inspire, to mould and guide, the inner life of man. “_It finds me_,” -said Coleridge; and the word of the philosopher is one that the plain man -can understand and repeat. - -The hunger for happiness which lies in every human heart can never be -satisfied without righteousness; and the reason why the Bible reaches -down so deep into the breast of man is because it brings news of a -kingdom which _is_ righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It -brings this news not in the form of a dogma, a definition, a scientific -statement, but in the form of literature, a living picture of experience, -a perfect ideal embodied in a Character and a Life. And because it does -this, it has inspiration for those who write in the service of truth and -humanity. - -The Bible has been the favourite book of those who were troubled and -downtrodden, and of those who bore the great burden of a great task. New -light has broken forth from it to lead the upward struggle of mankind -from age to age. Men have come back to it because they could not do -without it. Nor will its influence wane, its radiance be darkened, unless -literature ceases to express the noblest of human longings, the highest -of human hopes, and mankind forgets all that is now incarnate in the -central figure of the Bible,—the Divine Deliverer. - - - - -POETRY IN THE PSALMS - - -There are three ways in which we may read the Bible. - -We may come to it as the divinely inspired rule of faith and conduct. -This is the point of view from which it appears most precious to -religion. It gives us the word of God to teach us what to believe and how -to live. - -We may consider it as a collection of historical books, written under -certain conditions, and reflecting, in their contents and in their -language, the circumstances in which they were produced. This is the -aspect in which criticism regards the Bible; and its intellectual -interest, as well as its religious value, is greatly enhanced by a clear -vision of the truth about it from this point of view. - -We may study it also as literature. We may see in it a noble and -impassioned interpretation of nature and life, uttered in language -of beauty and sublimity, touched with the vivid colours of human -personality, and embodied in forms of enduring literary art. - -None of these three ways of studying the Bible is hostile to the others. -On the contrary, they are helpful to one another, because each of them -gives us knowledge of a real factor in the marvellous influence of the -Bible in the world. - -The true lover of the Bible has an interest in all the elements of -its life as an immortal book. He wishes to discern, and rightly to -appreciate, the method of its history, the spirit of its philosophy, the -significance of its fiction, the power of its eloquence, and the charm of -its poetry. He wishes this all the more because he finds in it something -which is not in any other book: a vision of God, a hope for man, and an -inspiration to righteousness which seem to him divine. As the worshipper -in the Temple would observe the art and structure of the carven beams of -cedar and the lily-work on the tops of the pillars the more attentively -because they beautified the house of his God, so the man who has a -religious faith in the Bible will study more eagerly and carefully the -literary forms of the book in which the Holy Spirit speaks forever. - -It is in this spirit that I wish to consider the poetical element in the -Psalms. The comfort, help, and guidance that they bring to our spiritual -life will not be diminished, but increased, by a perception of their -exquisite form and finish. If a king sent a golden cup full of cheering -cordial to a weary man, he might well admire the two-fold bounty of the -royal gift. The beauty of the vessel would make the draught more grateful -and refreshing. And if the cup were inexhaustible, if it filled itself -anew as often as it touched the lips, then the very shape and adornment -of it would become significant and precious. It would be an inestimable -possession, a singing goblet, a treasure of life. - -John Milton, whose faith in religion was as exalted as his mastery of -the art of poetry was perfect, has expressed in a single sentence the -spirit in which I would approach the poetic study of the Book of Psalms: -“Not in their divine arguments alone, but in the very critical art of -composition, the Psalms may be easily made to appear over all kinds of -lyric poetry incomparable.” - - -I - -Let us remember at the outset that a considerable part of the value of -the Psalms as poetry will lie beyond our reach. We cannot precisely -measure it, nor give it full appreciation, simply because we are dealing -with the Psalms only as we have them in our English Bible. This is a real -drawback; and it is well to understand clearly the two things that we -lose in reading the Psalms in this way. - -First, we lose the beauty and the charm of verse. This is a serious loss. -Poetry and verse are not the same thing, but they are so intimately -related that it is difficult to divide them. Indeed, according to certain -definitions of poetry, it would seem almost impossible. - -Yet who will deny that the Psalms as we have them in the English Bible -are really and truly poetical? - -The only way out of this difficulty that I can see is to distinguish -between verse as the formal element and imaginative emotion as the -essential element in poetry. In the original production of a poem, it -seems to me, it is just to say that the embodiment in metrical language -is a law of art which must be observed. But in the translation of a poem -(which is a kind of reflection of it in a mirror) the verse may be lost -without altogether losing the spirit of the poem. - -Take an illustration from another art. A statue has the symmetry of solid -form. You can look at it from all sides, and from every side you can see -the balance and rhythm of the parts. In a photograph this solidity of -form disappears. You see only a flat surface. But you still recognize it -as the reflection of a statue. - -The Psalms were undoubtedly written, in the original Hebrew, according to -a system of versification, and perhaps to some extent with forms of rhyme. - -The older scholars, like Lowth and Herder, held that such a system -existed, but could not be recovered. Later scholars, like Ewald, evolved -a system of their own. Modern scholarship, represented by such authors -as Professors Cheyne and Briggs, is reconstructing and explaining more -accurately the Hebrew versification. But, for the present at least, the -only thing that is clear is that this system must remain obscure to us. -It cannot be reproduced in English. The metrical versions of the Psalms -are the least satisfactory. The poet Cowley said of them, “They are so -far from doing justice to David that methinks they revile him worse -than Shimei.”[5] We must learn to appreciate the poetry in the Psalms -without the aid of those symmetries of form and sound in which they first -appeared. This is a serious loss. Poetry without verse is like a bride -without a bridal garment. - -The second thing that we lose in reading the Psalms in English is -something even more important. It is the heavy tax on the wealth of its -meaning, which all poetry must pay when it is imported from one country -to another, through the medium of translation. - -The most subtle charm of poetry is its suggestiveness; and much of -this comes from the magical power which words acquire over memory and -imagination, from their associations. This intimate and personal charm -must be left behind when a poem passes from one language to another. The -accompaniment, the harmony of things remembered and beloved, which the -very words of the song once awakened, is silent now. Nothing remains but -the naked melody of thought. If this is pure and strong, it will gather -new associations; as, indeed, the Psalms have already done in English, -so that their familiar expressions have become charged with musical -potency. And yet I suppose such phrases as “a tree planted by the rivers -of water,” “a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of the house,” “the -mountains round about Jerusalem,” can never bring to us the full sense of -beauty, the enlargement of heart, that they gave to the ancient Hebrews. -But, in spite of this double loss, in the passage from verse to prose and -from Hebrew to English, the poetry in the Psalms is so real and vital and -imperishable that every reader feels its beauty and power. - -It retains one valuable element of poetic form. This is that balancing -of the parts of a sentence, one against another, to which Bishop Lowth -first gave the familiar name of “parallelism.”[6] The effect of this -simple artifice, learned from Nature herself, is singularly pleasant -and powerful. It is the rise and fall of the fountain, the ebb and flow -of the tide, the tone and overtone of the chiming bell. The two-fold -utterance seems to bear the thought onward like the wings of a bird. A -German writer compares it very exquisitely to “the heaving and sinking of -the troubled heart.” - -It is this “parallelism” which gives such a familiar charm to the -language of the Psalms. Unconsciously, and without recognizing the nature -of the attraction, we grow used to the double cadence, the sound and the -echo, and learn to look for its recurrence with delight. - - O come let us sing unto the Lord; - Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation, - Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; - And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. - -If we should want a plain English name for this method of composition we -might call it _thought-rhyme_. It is easy to find varied illustrations of -its beauty and of its power to emphasize large and simple ideas. - -Take for instance that very perfect psalm with which the book begins—a -poem so complete, so compact, so delicately wrought that it seems like a -sonnet. The subject is _The Two Paths_. - -The first part describes the way of the good man. It has three divisions. - -The first verse gives a description of his conduct by negatives—telling -us what he does not do. There is a triple thought-rhyme here. - - Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, - Nor standeth in the way of sinners, - Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. - -The second verse describes his character positively, with a double -thought-rhyme. - - But his delight is in the law of the Lord; - And in his law doth he meditate day and night. - -The third verse tells us the result of this character and conduct, in a -fourfold thought-rhyme. - - He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water: - That bringeth forth his fruit in his season: - His leaf also shall not wither: - And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. - -The second part of the psalm describes the way of the evil man. In the -fourth verse there is a double thought-rhyme. - - The ungodly are not so: - But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. - -In the fifth verse the consequences of this worthless, fruitless, -unrooted life are shown, again with a double cadence of thought, the -first referring to the judgment of God, the second to the judgment of men. - - Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment: - Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. - -The third part of the psalm is a terse, powerful couplet, giving the -reason for the different ending of the two paths. - - For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: - But the way of the ungodly shall perish. - -The thought-rhyme here is one of contrast. - -A poem of very different character from this brief, serious, impersonal -sonnet is found in the Forty-sixth Psalm, which might be called a -National Anthem. Here again the poem is divided into three parts. - -The first part (verses first to third) expresses a sense of joyful -confidence in the Eternal, amid the tempests and confusions of earth. -The thought-rhymes are in couplets; and the second phrase, in each case, -emphasizes and enlarges the idea of the first phrase. - - God is our refuge and strength: - A very present help in trouble. - -The second part (verses fourth to seventh) describes the peace and -security of the city of God, surrounded by furious enemies, but rejoicing -in the Eternal Presence. The parallel phrases here follow the same rule -as in the first part. The concluding phrase is the stronger, the more -emphatic. The seventh verse gives the refrain or chorus of the anthem. - - The Lord of hosts is with us: - The God of Jacob is our refuge. - -The last part (verses eighth to tenth) describes in a very vivid and -concrete way the deliverance of the people that have trusted in the -Eternal. It begins with a couplet, like those which have gone before. -Then follow two stanzas of triple thought-rhymes, in which the thought is -stated and intensified with each repetition. - - He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth: - He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder: - He burneth the chariot in the fire. - - Be still, and know that I am God: - I will be exalted among the heathen: - I will be exalted in the earth. - -The anthem ends with a repetition of the refrain. - -A careful study of the Psalms, even in English, will enable the -thoughtful reader to derive new pleasure from them, by tracing the many -modes and manners in which this poetic form of thought-rhyme is used to -bind the composition together, and to give balance and harmony to the -poem. - -Another element of poetic form can be discerned in the Psalms, not -directly, in the English version, but by its effects. I mean the curious -artifice of alphabetic arrangement. It was a favourite practice among -Hebrew poets to begin their verses with the successive letters of the -alphabet, or sometimes to vary the device by making every verse in a -strophe begin with one letter, and every verse in the next strophe with -the following letter, and so on to the end. The Twenty-fifth and the -Thirty-seventh Psalms were written by the first of these rules; the One -Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm follows the second plan. - -Of course the alphabetic artifice disappears entirely in the English -translation. But its effects remain. The Psalms written in this manner -usually have but a single theme, which is repeated over and over again, -in different words and with new illustrations. They are kaleidoscopic. -The material does not change, but it is turned this way and that way, and -shows itself in new shapes and arrangements. These alphabetic psalms are -characterized by poverty of action and richness of expression. - - -II - -Milton has already reminded us that the Psalms belong to the second -of the three orders into which the Greeks, with clear discernment, -divided all poetry: the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic. The Psalms -are rightly called lyrics because they are chiefly concerned with the -immediate and imaginative expression of real feeling. It is the personal -and emotional note that predominates. They are inward, confessional, -intense; outpourings of the quickened spirit; self-revelations of the -heart. It is for this reason that we should never separate them in our -thought from the actual human life out of which they sprung. We must -feel the warm pulse of humanity in them in order to comprehend their -meaning and immortal worth. So far as we can connect them with the actual -experience of men, this will help us to appreciate their reality and -power. The effort to do this will make plain to us some other things -which it is important to remember. - -We shall see at once that the book does not come from a single writer, -but from many authors and ages. It represents the heart of man in -communion with God through a thousand years of history, from Moses to -Nehemiah, perhaps even to the time of the Maccabean revival. It is, -therefore, something very much larger and better than an individual book. - -It is the golden treasury of lyrics gathered from the life of the Hebrew -people, the hymn-book of the Jews. And this gives to it a singular and -precious quality of brotherhood. The fault, or at least the danger, of -modern lyrical poetry is that it is too solitary and separate in its -tone. It tends towards exclusiveness, over-refinement, morbid sentiment. -Many Christian hymns suffer from this defect. But the Psalms breathe a -spirit of human fellowship even when they are most intensely personal. -The poet rejoices or mourns in solitude, it may be, but he is not alone -in spirit. He is one of the people. He is conscious always of the ties -that bind him to his brother men. Compare the intense selfishness of the -modern hymn: - - I can but perish if I go; - I am resolved to try; - For if I stay away, I know - I shall forever die; - -with the generous penitence of the Fifty-first Psalm: - - Then will I teach transgressors thy way; - And sinners shall be converted unto thee. - -It is important to observe that there are several different kinds of -lyrics among the Psalms. Some of them are simple and natural outpourings -of a single feeling, like _A Shepherd’s Song about His Shepherd_, the -incomparable Twenty-third Psalm. - -This little poem is a perfect melody. It would be impossible to express -a pure, unmixed emotion—the feeling of joy in the Divine Goodness—more -simply, with a more penetrating lyrical charm. The “valley of the -death-shadow,” the “enemies” in whose presence the table is spread, are -but dimly suggested in the background. The atmosphere of the psalm is -clear and bright. The singing shepherd walks in light. The whole world is -the House of the Lord, and life is altogether gladness. - -How different is the tone, the quality, of the One Hundred and Nineteenth -Psalm! This is not a melody, but a harmony; not a song, but an ode. The -ode has been defined as “a strain of exalted and enthusiastic lyrical -verse, directed to a fixed purpose and dealing progressively with one -dignified theme.”[7] This definition precisely fits the One Hundred and -Nineteenth Psalm. - -Its theme is _The Eternal Word_. Every verse in the poem, except one, -contains some name or description of the law, commandments, testimonies, -precepts, statutes, or judgments of Jehovah. Its enthusiasm for the -Divine Righteousness never fails from beginning to end. Its fixed purpose -is to kindle in other hearts the flame of devotion to the one Holy Law. -It closes with a touch of magnificent pathos—a confession of personal -failure and an assertion of spiritual loyalty: - - I have gone astray like a lost sheep: - Seek thy servant: - For I do not forget thy commandments. - -The Fifteenth Psalm I should call a short didactic lyric. Its title is -_The Good Citizen_. It begins with a question: - - Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? - Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? - -This question is answered by the description of a man whose character -corresponds to the law of God. First there is a positive sketch in three -broad lines: - - He that walketh uprightly, - And worketh righteousness, - And speaketh truth in his heart. - -Then comes a negative characterization in a finely touched triplet: - - He that backbiteth not with his tongue, - Nor doeth evil to his neighbor, - Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor. - -This is followed by a couplet containing a strong contrast: - - In whose eyes a vile person is contemned: - But he honoureth them that fear the Lord. - -Then the description goes back to the negative style again and three more -touches are added to the picture: - - He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not, - He that putteth not out his money to usury, - Nor taketh reward against the innocent. - -The poem closes with a single vigourous line, summing up the character of -the good citizen and answering the question of the first verse with a new -emphasis of security and permanence: - - He that doeth these things shall never be moved. - -The Seventy-eighth, One Hundred and Fifth, and One Hundred and Sixth -Psalms are lyrical ballads. They tell the story of Israel in Egypt, and -in the Wilderness, and in Canaan, with swift, stirring phrases, and with -splendid flashes of imagery. Take this passage from the Seventy-eighth -Psalm as an example: - - He clave the rocks in the wilderness, - _And gave them drink out of the great depths_. - - He brought streams also out of the rock, - _And caused waters to run down like rivers_. - - And they sinned yet more against him, - Provoking the Most High in the wilderness. - - _They tempted God in their hearts_, - Asking meat for their lust. - - Yea, they spake against God: - They said, _Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?_ - - Behold, he smote the rock that the waters gushed out, - And the streams overflowed; - - Can he give bread also? - Can he provide flesh for his people? - - Therefore the Lord heard and was wroth: - _So a fire was kindled against Jacob,_ - _And anger also came up against Israel:_ - Because they believed not in God, - And trusted not in his salvation: - - Though he had commanded the clouds from above, - And opened the doors of heaven, - And had rained down manna upon them to eat, - _And had given them of the corn of heaven,_ - _Man did eat angel’s food:_ - - He sent them meat to the full. - He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven, - And by his power he brought in the south wind. - _He rained flesh also upon them as dust,_ - _And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea._ - - And he let it fall in the midst of their camp, - Round about their habitations; - So they did eat and were filled, - _For he gave them their own desire_. - - They were not estranged from their lust: - _But while the meat was yet in their mouths,_ - _The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them_, - And smote down the chosen men of Israel. - -The Forty-fifth Psalm is a Marriage Ode: the Hebrew title calls it a -Love Song. It bears all the marks of having been composed for some royal -wedding-feast in Jerusalem. - -There are many nature lyrics among the Psalms. The Twenty-ninth is -notable for its rugged realism. It is a Song of Thunder. - - The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars: - Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon: - He maketh them also to skip like a calf: - Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn. - -The One Hundred and Fourth, on the contrary, is full of calm sublimity -and meditative grandeur. - - O, Lord, my God, thou art very great: - Thou art clothed with honour and majesty: - - Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; - Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain. - -The Nineteenth is famous for its splendid comparison between “the starry -heavens and the moral law.” - -I think that we may find also some dramatic lyrics among the Psalms—poems -composed to express the feelings of an historic person, like David or -Solomon, in certain well-known and striking experiences of his life. That -a later writer should thus embody and express the truth dramatically -through the personality of some great hero of the past, involves no -falsehood. It is a mode of utterance which has been common to the -literature of all lands and of all ages. Such a method of composition -would certainly be no hindrance to the spirit of inspiration. The -Thirty-first Psalm, for instance, is ascribed by the title to David. But -there is strong reason, in the phraseology and in the spirit of the poem, -to believe that it was written by the Prophet Jeremiah. - - -III - -It is not to be supposed that our reverence for the Psalms in their -moral and religious aspects will make us put them all on the same level -poetically. There is a difference among the books of the New Testament -in regard to the purity and dignity of the Greek in which they are -written. There is a difference among St. Paul’s Epistles in regard to -the clearness and force of their style. There is a difference even among -the chapters of the same epistle in regard to the beauty of thought and -language. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter -is poetic, and the fourteenth is prosaic. Why should there not be a -difference in poetic quality among the Psalms? - -There is a difference. The honest reader will recognize it. It will be no -harm to him if he should have his favourites among the poems which have -been gathered from many centuries into this great collection. - -There are some, like the Twenty-seventh, the Forty-second, the -Forty-sixth, the Fifty-first, the Sixty-third, the Ninety-first, the -Ninety-sixth, the One Hundred and Third, the One Hundred and Seventh, -the One Hundred and Thirty-ninth, which rank with the noblest poetic -literature of the world. Others move on a lower level, and show the -traces of effort and constraint. There are also manifest alterations -and interpolations, which are not always improvements. Dr. Perowne, -who is one of the wisest and most conservative of modern commentators, -says, “Many of the Psalms have not come down to us in their original -form,”[8] and refers to the alterations which the Seventieth makes in -the Fortieth, and the Fifty-third in the Fourteenth. The last two verses -of the Fifty-first were evidently added by a later hand. The whole book, -in its present form, shows the marks of its compilation and use as the -Hymn-Book of the Jewish people. Not only in the titles, but also in the -text, we can discern the work of the compiler, critic, and adapter, -sometimes wise, but occasionally otherwise. - - -IV - -The most essential thing in the appreciation of the poetry in the -Psalms is the recognition of the three great spiritual qualities which -distinguish them. - -The first of these is the deep and genuine love of nature. The psalmists -delight in the vision of the world, and their joy quickens their senses -to read both the larger hieroglyphs of glory written in the stars and -the delicate tracings of transient beauty on leaf and flower; to hear -both the mighty roaring of the sea and the soft sweet laughter of the -rustling corn-fields. But in all these they see the handwriting and -hear the voice of God. It is His presence that makes the world sublime -and beautiful. The direct, piercing, elevating sense of this presence -simplifies, enlarges, and enables their style, and makes it different -from other nature-poetry. They never lose themselves, as Theocritus and -Wordsworth and Shelley and Tennyson sometimes do, in the contemplation -and description of natural beauty. They see it, but they always see -beyond it. Compare, for example, a modern versified translation with the -psalm itself: - - The spacious firmament on high, - With all the blue ethereal sky - And spangled heavens, a shining frame, - Their Great Original proclaim.[9] - -Addison’s descriptive epithets betray a conscious effort to make a -splendid picture. But the psalmist felt no need of this; a larger impulse -lifted him at once into “the grand style:” - - The heavens declare the glory of God; - And the firmament showeth his handiwork. - -The second quality of the poetry in the Psalms is their passionate sense -of the beauty of holiness. Keats was undoubtedly right in his suggestion -that the poet must always see truth in the form of beauty. Otherwise he -may be a philosopher, or a critic, or a moralist, but he is not a true -poet. But we must go on from this standpoint to the Platonic doctrine -that the highest form of beauty is spiritual and ethical. The poet must -also see beauty in the light of truth. It is the harmony of the soul with -the eternal music of the Good. And the highest poets are those who, like -the psalmists, are most ardently enamoured of righteousness. This fills -their songs with sweetness and fire incomparable and immortal: - - The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: - The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. - More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: - Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. - -The third quality of the poetry of the Psalms is their intense joy in -God. No lover ever poured out the longings of his heart toward his -mistress more eagerly than the Psalmist voices his desire and thirst for -God. No conqueror ever sang of victory more exultantly than the Psalmist -rejoices in the Lord, who is his light and his salvation, the strength of -his life and his portion forever. - -After all, the true mission of poetry is to increase joy. It must, -indeed, be sensitive to sorrow and acquainted with grief. But it has -wings given to it in order that it may bear us up into the air of -gladness. - -There is no perfect joy without love. Therefore love-poetry is the best. -But the highest of all love-poetry is that which celebrates, with the -Psalms, - - that Love which is and was - My Father and my Brother and my God. - - - - -THE GOOD ENCHANTMENT OF CHARLES DICKENS - - -I - -There are four kinds of novels. - -First, those that are easy to read and hard to remember: the well-told -tales of no consequence, the cream-puffs of perishable fiction. - -Second, those that are hard to read and hard to remember: the -purpose-novels which are tedious sermons in disguise, and the love-tales -in which there is no one with whom it is possible to fall in love. - -Third, those that are hard to read and easy to remember: the books with a -crust of perverse style or faulty construction through which the reader -must break in order to get at the rich and vital meaning. - -Fourth, those that are easy to read and easy to remember: the novels in -which stories worth telling are well-told, and characters worth observing -are vividly painted, and life is interpreted to the imagination in -enduring forms of literary art. These are the best-sellers which do not -go out of print—everybody’s books. - -In this fourth class healthy-minded people and unprejudiced critics -put the novels of Charles Dickens. For millions of readers they have -fulfilled what Dr. Johnson called the purpose of good books, to teach us -to enjoy life or help us to endure it. They have awakened laughter and -tears. They have enlarged and enriched existence by revealing the hidden -veins of humour and pathos beneath the surface of the every-day world, -and by giving “the freedom of the city” to those poor prisoners who had -thought of it only as the dwelling-place of so many hundred thousand -inhabitants and no real persons. - -What a city it was that Dickens opened to us! London, of course, in -outward form and semblance,—the London of the early Victorian epoch, with -its reeking Seven Dials close to its perfumed Piccadilly, with its grimy -river-front and its musty Inns of Court and its mildly rural suburbs, -with its rollicking taverns and its deadly solemn residential squares and -its gloomy debtors’ prisons and its gaily insanitary markets, with all -its consecrated conventions and unsuspected hilarities,—vast, portentous, -formal, merry, childish, inexplicable, a wilderness of human homes and -haunts, ever thrilling with sincerest passion, mirth, and pain,—London it -was, as the eye saw it in those days, and as the curious traveller may -still retrace some of its vanishing landmarks and fading features. - -But it was more than London, after Dickens touched it. It was an -enchanted city, where the streets seemed to murmur of joy or fear, -where the dark faces of the dens of crime scowled or leered at you, and -the decrepit houses doddered in senility, and the new mansions stared -you down with stolid pride. Everything spoke or made a sign to you. -From red-curtained windows jollity beckoned. From prison-doors lean -hands stretched toward you. Under bridges and among slimy piers the -river gurgled, and chuckled, and muttered unholy secrets. Across trim -front-yards little cottages smiled and almost nodded their good-will. -There were no dead spots, no deaf and dumb regions. All was alive and -significant. Even the real estate became personal. One felt that it -needed but a word, a wave of the wand, to bring the buildings leaping, -roistering, creeping, tottering, stalking from their places. - -It was an enchanted city, and the folk who filled it and almost, -but never quite, crowded it to suffocation, were so intensely and -supernaturally human, so blackly bad, so brightly good, so touchingly -pathetic, so supremely funny, that they also were creatures of -enchantment and seemed to come from fairy-land. - -For what is fairy-land, after all? It is not an invisible region, an -impossible place. It is only the realm of the hitherto unobserved, the -not yet realized, where the things we have seen but never noticed, and -the persons we have met but never known, are suddenly “translated,” like -Bottom the Weaver, and sent forth upon strange adventures. - -That is what happens to the Dickens people. Good or bad they surpass -themselves when they get into his books. That rotund Brownie, -Mr. Pickwick, with his amazing troupe; that gentle compound of -Hop-o’-my-Thumb and a Babe in the Wood, Oliver Twist, surrounded by -wicked uncles, and hungry ogres, and good fairies in bottle-green coats; -that tender and lovely Red Riding-Hood, Little Nell; that impetuous -Hans-in-Luck, Nicholas Nickleby; that intimate Cinderella, Little Dorrit; -that simple-minded Aladdin, Pip; all these, and a thousand more like -them, go rambling through Dickensopolis and behaving naturally in a most -extraordinary manner. - -Things that have seldom or never happened, occur inevitably. The -preposterous becomes the necessary, the wildly improbable is the one -thing that must come to pass. Mr. Dombey is converted, Mr. Krook is -removed by spontaneous combustion, Mr. Micawber performs amazing feats -as an amateur detective, Sam Weller gets married, the immortally absurd -epitaphs of Young John Chivery and Mrs. Sapsea are engraved upon -monuments more lasting than brass. - -The fact is, Dickens himself was bewitched by the spell of his own -imagination. His people carried him away, did what they liked with him. -He wrote of Little Nell: “You can’t imagine how exhausted I am to-day -with yesterday’s labours. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and -done up. All night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I -am unrefreshed and miserable. I don’t know what to do with myself.... I -think the close of the story will be great.” Again he says: “As to the -way in which these characters have opened out [in _Martin Chuzzlewit_], -that is to me one of the most surprising processes of the mind in this -sort of invention. Given what one knows, what one does not know springs -up; and I am _as absolutely certain of its being true, as I am of the law -of gravitation_—if such a thing is possible, more so.” - -Precisely such a thing (as Dickens very well understood) is not only -possible, but unavoidable. For what certainty have we of the law of -gravitation? Only by hearsay, by the submissive reception of a process -of reasoning conducted for us by Sir Isaac Newton and other vaguely -conceived men of science. The fall of an apple is an intense reality -(especially if it falls upon your head); but the law which regulates its -speed is for you an intellectual abstraction as remote as the idea of a -“combination in restraint of trade,” or the definition of “art for art’s -sake.” Whereas the irrepressible vivacity of Sam Weller, and the unctuous -hypocrisy of Pecksniff, and the moist humility of Uriah Heep, and the -sublime conviviality of Dick Swiveller, and the triumphant make-believe -of the Marchioness are facts of experience. They have touched you, and -you cannot doubt them. The question whether they are actual or imaginary -is purely academic. - -Another fairy-land feature of Dickens’s world is the way in which minor -personages of the drama suddenly take the centre of the stage and hold -the attention of the audience. It is always so in fairy-land. - -In _The Tempest_, what are Prospero and Miranda, compared with Caliban -and Ariel? In _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, who thinks as much of Oberon -and Titania, as of Puck, and Bottom the Weaver? Even in an historical -drama like Henry IV, we feel that Falstaff is the most historic character. - -Dickens’s first lady and first gentleman are often less memorable than -his active supernumeraries. A hobgoblin like Quilp, a good old nurse -like Peggotty, a bad old nurse like Sairey Gamp, a volatile elf like Miss -Mowcher, a shrewd elf and a blunder-headed elf like Susan Nipper and Mr. -Toots, a good-natured disreputable sprite like Charley Bates, a malicious -gnome like Noah Claypole, a wicked ogre like Wackford Squeers, a pair -of fairy-godmothers like the Cheeryble Brothers, a dandy ouphe like Mr. -Mantalini, and a mischievous, wooden-legged kobold like Silas Wegg, take -stronger hold upon us than the Harry Maylies and Rose Flemings, the John -Harmons and Bella Wilfers, for whose ultimate matrimonial felicity the -business of the plot is conducted. Even the more notable heroes often -pale a little by comparison with their attendants. Who remembers Martin -Chuzzlewit as clearly as his servant Mark Tapley? Is Pip, with his Great -Expectations, half as delightful as his clumsy dry-nurse Joe Gargery? Has -even the great Pickwick a charm to compare with the unique, immortal Sam -Weller? - -Do not imagine that Dickens was unconscious of this disarrangement of -rôles, or that it was an evidence of failure on his part. He knew -perfectly well what he was doing. Great authors always do. They cannot -help it, and they do not care. Homer makes Agamemnon and Priam the kings -of his tale, and Paris the first walking gentleman and Helen the leading -lady. But Achilles and Ajax and Hector are the bully boys, and Ulysses is -the wise jester, and Thersites the tragic clown. As for Helen,— - - The face that launched a thousand ships, - And burnt the topless towers of Ilium— - -her reputed pulchritude means less to us than the splendid womanhood of -Andromache, or the wit and worth of the adorable matron Penelope. - -Now this unconventionality of art, which disregards ranks and titles, -even those of its own making, and finds the beautiful and the absurd, the -grotesque and the picturesque, the noble and the base, not according to -the programme but according to the fact, is precisely the essence of good -enchantment. - -Good enchantment goes about discovering the ass in the lion’s skin and -the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the princess in the goose-girl and the -wise man under the fool’s cap, the pretender in the purple robe and the -rightful heir in rags, the devil in the belfry and the Redeemer among -the publicans and sinners. It is the spirit of revelation, the spirit of -divine sympathy and laughter, the spirit of admiration, hope, and love—or -better still, it is simply the spirit of life. - -When I call this the essence of good enchantment I do not mean that it is -unreal. I mean only that it is _unrealistic_, which is just the opposite -of unreal. It is not in bondage to the beggarly elements of form and -ceremony. It is not captive to names and appearances, though it revels -in their delightful absurdity. It knows that an idol is nothing, and -finds all the more laughter in its pompous pretence of being something. -It can afford to be merry because it is in earnest; it is happy because -it has not forgotten how to weep; it is content because it is still -unsatisfied; it is humble in the sense of unfathomed faults and exalted -in the consciousness of inexhaustible power; it calls nothing common or -unclean; it values life for its mystery, its surprisingness, and its -divine reversals of human prejudice,—just like Beauty and the Beast and -the story of the Ugly Duckling. - -This, I say, is the essence of good enchantment; and it is also the -essence of true religion. “For God hath chosen the foolish things of the -world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound -the mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised, -yea, and _things which are not, to bring to naught things which are._” - -This is also the essence of real democracy, which is not a theory of -government but a state of mind. - -No one has ever expressed it better than Charles Dickens did in a speech -which he made at Hartford, Connecticut, seventy years ago. “I have -faith,” said he, “and I wish to diffuse faith in the existence—yes, -of beautiful things, even in those conditions of society which are so -degenerate, so degraded and forlorn, that at first sight it would seem as -though it could only be described by a strange and terrible reversal of -the words of Scripture—God said let there be light, and there was none. -I take it that we are born, and that we hold our sympathies, hopes, and -energies in trust for the Many and not the Few. That we cannot hold in -too strong a light of disgust and contempt, before our own view and that -of others, all meanness, falsehood, cruelty, and oppression of every -grade and kind. Above all, that nothing is high because it is in a high -place; and that nothing is low because it is in a low place. This is the -lesson taught us in the great book of Nature. This is the lesson which -may be read alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty -course of the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground.” - -This was the creed of Dickens; and like every man’s creed, conscious or -unconscious, confessed or concealed, it made him what he was. - -It has been said that he had no deep philosophy, no calmly reasoned -and clearly stated theory of the universe. Perhaps that is true. Yet I -believe he hardly missed it. He was too much interested in living to be -anxious about a complete theory of life. Perhaps it would have helped -him when trouble came, when domestic infelicity broke up his home, if he -could have climbed into some philosopher’s ivory tower. Perhaps not. I -have observed that even the most learned and philosophic mortals, under -these afflictions, sometimes fail to appreciate the consolations of -philosophy to any noticeable extent. From their ivory towers they cry -aloud, being in pain, even as other men. - -But it was certainly not true (even though his biographer wrote it, and -it has been quoted a thousand times), that just because Dickens cried -aloud, “there was for him no ‘city of the mind’ against outward ills, for -inner consolation and shelter.” He was not cast out and left comfortless. -Faith, hope, and charity—these three abode with him. His human sympathy, -his indomitable imagination, his immense and varied interest in the -strange adventures of men and women, his unfaltering intuition of the -truer light of God that burns - - In this vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, - Heart, or whatever else—— - -these were the celestial powers and bright serviceable angels that built -and guarded for him a true “city of refuge,” secure, inviolate, ever open -to the fugitive in the day of his calamity. Thither he could flee to -find safety. There he could ungird his heart and indulge - - Love and the thoughts that breathe for humankind; - -there he could laugh and sing and weep with the children, the -dream-children, which God had given him; there he could enter into his -work-shop and shut the door and lose himself in joyous labour which -should make the world richer by the gift of good books. And so he did, -even until the end came and the pen fell from his fingers, he sitting -safe in his city of refuge, learning and unfolding _The Mystery of Edwin -Drood_. - -O enchanted city, great asylum in the mind of man, where ideals are -embodied, and visions take form and substance to parley with us! -Imagination rears thy towers and Fancy populates thy streets; yet art -thou a city that hath foundations, a dwelling eternal though unseen. -Ever building, changing, never falling, thy walls are open-gated day -and night. The fountain of youth is in thy gardens, the treasure of the -humble in thy storehouses. Hope is thy doorkeeper, and Faith thy warden, -and Love thy Lord. In thee the wanderer may take shelter and find -himself by forgetting himself. In thee rest and refreshment are waiting -for the weary, and new courage for the despondent, and new strength for -the faint. From thy magic casements we have looked upon unknown horizons, -and we return from thy gates to our task, our toil, our pilgrimage, -with better and braver hearts, knowing more surely that the things -which are seen were not made of things which do appear, and that the -imperishable jewels of the universe are in the souls of men. O city of -good enchantment, for my brethren and companions’ sakes I will now say: -Peace be within thee! - - -II - -Of the outward appearance, or, as _Sartor Resartus_ would have called it, -the Time-Vesture and Flesh-Garment of that flaming light-particle which -was cast hither from Heaven in the person of Charles Dickens, and of his -ways and manners while he hasted jubilantly and stormfully across the -astonished Earth, something must be said here. - -Charles Dickens was born at Portsea, in 1812, an offspring of what the -accurate English call the “lower middle class.” Inheriting something -from a father who was decidedly Micawberish, and a mother who resembled -Mrs. Nickleby, Charles was not likely to be a humdrum child. But the -remarkable thing about him was the intense, aspiring, and gaily sensible -spirit with which he entered into the business of developing whatever -gifts he had received from his vague and amiable parents. - -The fat streak of comfort in his childish years, when his proud father -used to stand the tiny lad on a table to sing comic songs for an -applauding audience of relatives, could not spoil him. The lean streak -of misery, when the improvident family sprawled in poverty, with its -head in a debtors’ prison, while the bright, delicate, hungry boy roamed -the streets, or drudged in a dirty blacking-factory, could not starve -him. The two dry years of school at Wellington House Academy could not -fossilize him. The years from fifteen to nineteen, when he was earning -his bread as office-boy, lawyers’ clerk, shorthand reporter, could -not commercialize him. Through it all he burned his way painfully and -joyously. - -He was not to be detailed as a perpetual comic songster in upholstered -parlors; nor as a prosperous frock-coated citizen with fatty degeneration -of the mind; nor as a newspaper politician, a power beneath the -footstool. None of these alluring prospects delayed him. He passed them -by, observing everything as he went, now hurrying, now sauntering, for -all the world like a boy who has been sent somewhere. Where it was, he -found out in his twenty-fifth year, when the extraordinary results of his -self-education bloomed in the _Pickwick Papers_ and _Oliver Twist._ - -Never was a good thing coming out of Nazareth more promptly welcomed. -The simple-minded critics of that day had not yet discovered the damning -nature of popularity, and they hailed the new genius in spite of the fact -that hundreds of thousands of people were reading his books. His success -was exhilarating, overwhelming, and at times intoxicating. - - It was roses, roses all the way.— - -Some of them had thorns, which hurt his thin skin horribly, but they -never made him despair or doubt the goodness of the universe. Being -vexed, he let it off in anger instead of distilling it into pessimism to -poison himself. Life was too everlastingly interesting for him to be long -unhappy. A draught of his own triumph would restore him, a slice of his -own work would reinvigorate him, and he would go on with his industrious -dreaming. - -No one enjoyed the reading of his books more than he the making of them, -though he sometimes suffered keenly in the process. That was a proof of -his faith that happiness does not consist in the absence of suffering, -but in the presence of joy. Dulness, insincerity, stupid humbug—_voilà -l’ennemi!_ So he lived and wrote with a high hand and an outstretched -arm. He made men see what he saw, and hate what he hated, and love what -he loved. This was his great reward,—more than money, fame, or hosts of -friends,—that he saw the children of his brain enter into the common life -of the world. - -[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS AS CAPTAIN BOBADIL IN “EVERY MAN IN HIS -HUMOUR.” - -Painted by C. R. Leslie.] - -But he was not exempt from the ordinary laws of nature. The conditions of -his youth left their marks for good and evil on his maturity. The petting -of his babyhood gave him the habit of showing off. We often see him as -a grown man, standing on the table and reciting his little piece, or -singing his little song, to please an admiring audience. He delighted in -playing to the galleries. - -His early experience of poverty made him at once tremendously sympathetic -and invincibly optimistic—both of which virtues belong to the poor -more than to the rich. Dickens understood this and never forgot it. -The chief moralities of his poor people are mutual helpfulness and -unquenchable hopefulness. From them, also, he caught the tone of material -comfort which characterizes his visions of the reward of virtue. Having -known cold and hunger, he simply could not resist the desire to make -his favourite characters—if they stayed on earth till the end of the -book—warm and “comfy,” and to give them plenty to eat and drink. This may -not have been artistic, but it was intensely human. - -The same personal quality may be noted in his ardour as a reformer. No -writer of fiction has ever done more to better the world than Charles -Dickens. But he did not do it by setting forth programmes of legislation -and theories of government. As a matter of fact, he professed an -amusing “contempt for the House of Commons,” having been a Parliamentary -reporter; and of Sir Robert Peel, who emancipated the Catholics, -enfranchised the Jews, and repealed the Corn Laws, he thought so little -that he caricatured him as Mr. Pecksniff. - -Dickens felt the evils of the social order at the precise point where -the shoe pinched; he did not go back to the place where the leather was -tanned or the last designed. It was some practical abuse in poorhouses -or police-courts or prisons; it was some hidden shame in the conduct of -schools, or the renting of tenements; it was some monumental absurdity -in the Circumlocution Office, some pompous and cruel delay in the course -of justice, that made him hot with indignation. These were the things -that he assailed with Rabelaisian laughter, or over which he wept with a -deeper and more sincere pity than that of Tristram Shandy. His idea was -that if he could get people to see that a thing was both ridiculous and -cruel, they would want to stop it. What would come after that, he did not -clearly know, nor had he any particularly valuable suggestions to make, -except the general proposition that men should do justly, and love mercy, -and walk humbly with their God. - -He took no stock in the doleful predictions of the politicians that -England was in an awful state merely because Lord Coodle was going out of -office, and Sir Thomas Doodle would not come in, and each of these was -the only man to save the country. The trouble seemed to him deeper and -more real. It was a certain fat-witted selfishness, a certain callous, -complacent blindness in the people who were likely to read his books. He -conceived that his duty as a novelist was done when he had shown up the -absurd and hateful things, and made people laugh at their ugliness, weep -over their inhumanity, and long to sweep them away. - -In this attitude, I think, Dickens was not only natural, and true to his -bringing-up, but also wise as a great artist in literature. For I have -observed that brilliant writers, while often profitable as satirists to -expose abuses, are seldom judicious as legislators to plan reforms. - -Before we leave this subject of the effects of Dickens’s early poverty -and sudden popularity, we must consider his alleged lack of refinement. -Some say that he was vulgar, others that he was ungrateful and -inconsiderate of the feelings of his friends and relations, others that -he had little or no taste. I should rather say, in the words of the old -epigram, that he had a great deal of taste, and that some of it was very -bad. - -Take the matter of his caricaturing real people in his books. No one -could object to his use of the grotesque insolence of a well-known London -magistrate as the foundation of his portrait of Mr. Fang in _Oliver -Twist._ That was public property. But the amiable eccentricities of his -own father and mother, the airy irresponsible ways of his good friend -Leigh Hunt, were private property. Yet even here Dickens could not -reasonably be blamed for observing them, for being amused by them, or for -letting them enrich his general sense of the immense, incalculable, and -fantastic humour of the world. Taste, which is simply another name for -the gusto of life, has a comic side; and a man who is keenly sensitive -to everything cannot be expected to be blind to the funny things that -happen among his family and friends. But when Dickens used these private -delights for the public amusement, and in such a form that the partial -portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, Mrs. Nickleby, and Harold Skimpole -were easily identified, all that we can say is that his taste was still -there, but it had gone bad. What could you expect? Where, in his early -years, was he likely to have learned the old-fashioned habit of reserve -in regard to private affairs, which you may call either a mark of good -manners, or a sign of silly pride, according to your own education? - -Or take his behavior during his first visit to America in 1842, and -immediately after his return to England. His reception was enough to turn -anybody’s head. “There never was a king or emperor,” wrote Dickens to a -friend, “so cheered and followed by crowds, and entertained at splendid -balls and dinners, and waited upon by public bodies of all kinds.” This -was at the beginning. At the end he was criticized by all, condemned -by many, and abused by some of the newspapers. Why? Chiefly because -he used the dinners given in his honour as occasions to convict the -Americans of their gross national sin of literary piracy, and because -when he got home he wrote a book of _American Notes_, containing some -very severe strictures upon the country which had just entertained him so -magnificently. - -Mr. Chesterton defends Dickens for his attack upon the American practice -of book-stealing which grew out of the absence of an International -Copyright Law. He says that it was only the new, raw sensibility of the -Americans that was hurt by these speeches. “Dickens was not in the least -desirous of being thought too ‘high-souled’ to want his wages.... He -asked for his money in a valiant and ringing voice, like a man asking for -his honour.” And this, Mr. Chesterton leaves us to infer, is what any -bold Englishman, as distinguished from a timidly refined American, would -do. - -Precisely. But if the bold Englishman had been gently-bred would he have -accepted an invitation to dinner in order that he might publicly say -to his host, in a valiant and ringing voice, “You owe me a thousand -pounds”? Such procedure at the dinner-table is contrary not only to good -manners but also to good digestion. This is what Mr. Chesterton’s bold -British constitution apparently prevents him from seeing. What Dickens -said about international copyright was right. But he was wretchedly wrong -in his choice of the time and place for saying it. The natural irritation -which his bad taste produced was one of the causes which delayed for -fifty years the success of the efforts of American authors to secure -copyright for foreign authors. - -The same criticism applies to the _American Notes_. Read them again and -you will see that they are not bad notes. With much that he says about -Yankee boastfulness and superficiality, and the evils of slavery, and the -dangers of yellow journalism, every sane American will agree to-day. But -the occasion which Dickens took for making these remarks was not happily -chosen. It was as if a man who had just been entertained at your house -should write to thank you for the pleasure of the visit, and improve the -opportunity to point out the shocking defects of your domestic service -and the exceedingly bad tone which pervaded your establishment. Such a -“bread-and-butter letter” might be full of good morals, but their effect -would be diminished by its bad manners. Of this Dickens was probably -quite unconscious. He acted spontaneously, irrepressibly, vivaciously, -in accordance with his own taste; and it surprised and irritated him -immensely that people were offended by it. - -It was precisely so in regard to his personal appearance. When the time -suddenly arrived that he could indulge his taste in dress without fear of -financial consequences, he did so hilariously and to the fullest extent. -Here is a description of him as he appeared to an American girl at an -evening party in Cincinnati eighty years ago. “He is young and handsome, -has a mellow beautiful eye, fine brow and abundant hair.... His manner -is easy and negligent, but not elegant. His dress was foppish.... He had -a dark coat with lighter pantaloons; a black waistcoat embroidered with -coloured flowers; and about his neck, covering his white shirt-front, -was a black neck-cloth also embroidered with colours, on which were two -large diamond pins connected by a chain; a gold watch-chain and a large -red rose in his buttonhole completed his toilet.” - -The young lady does not seem to have been delighted with this costume. -But Dickens did not dress to please her, he dressed to please himself. -His taste was so exuberant that it naturally effervesced in this kind -of raiment. There was certainly nothing immoral about it. He had paid -for it and he had a right to wear it, for to him it seemed beautiful. He -would have been amazed to know that any young lady did not like it; and -her opinion would probably have had little effect upon him, for he wrote -of the occasion on which this candid girl met him, as follows: “In the -evening we went to a party at Judge Walker’s and were introduced to at -least one hundred and fifty first-rate bores, separately and singly.” - -But what does it all amount to, this lack of discretion in manners, this -want of reserve in speech, this oriental luxuriance in attire? It simply -goes to show that _Dickens himself was a Dickens character_. - -He was vivid, florid, inexhaustible, and untamed. There was material -in the little man for a hundred of his own immortal caricatures. The -self-portrait that he has drawn in _David Copperfield_ is too smooth, -like a retouched photograph. That is why David is less interesting than -half-a-dozen other people in the book. If Dickens could have seen his -own humourous aspects in the magic mirror of his fancy, it would have -been among the richest of his observations, and if he could have let -his enchantment loose upon the subject, not even the figures of Dick -Swiveller and Harold Skimpole would have been more memorable than the -burlesque of “Boz” by the hand of C. D. - -But the humourous, the extravagant, the wildly picturesque,—would these -have given a true and complete portrait of the man? Does it make any -great difference what kind of clothes he wore, or how many blunders -of taste and tact he made, even tragic blunders like his inability to -refrain from telling the world all about his domestic unhappiness,—does -all this count for much when we look back upon the wonders which his -imagination wrought in fiction, and upon the generous fruits which his -heart brought forth in life? - -It is easy to endure small weaknesses when you can feel beneath them the -presence of great and vital power. Faults are forgiven readily in one -who has the genius of loving much. Better many blunders than the supreme -mistake of a life that is - - Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null. - -Charles Dickens never made, nor indeed was tempted to make, that mistake. -He carried with him the defects of his qualities, the marks of his early -life, the penalties of his bewildering success. But, look you, _he -carried them_—they did not crush him nor turn him from his true course. -Forward he marched, cheering and beguiling the way for his comrades -with mirthful stories and tales of pity, lightening many a burden and -consoling many a dark and lonely hour, until he came at last to the -goal of honour and the haven of happy rest. Those who knew him best saw -him most clearly as Carlyle did: “The good, the gentle, high-gifted, -ever-friendly, noble Dickens,—every inch of him an Honest Man.” - - -III - -As an artist in fiction Dickens was great; but not because he had a -correct theory of the technique of the novel, not because he always -followed good rules and models in writing, nor because he was one - - Who saw life steadily and saw it whole. - -On the contrary, his vision of life, though vivid, was almost always -partial. He was capable of doing a great deal of bad work, which he -himself liked. The plots of his novels, on which he toiled tremendously, -are negligible; indeed it is often difficult to follow and impossible to -remember them. The one of his books that is notably fine in structure and -approximately faultless in technique—_A Tale of Two Cities_—is so unlike -his other novels that it stands in a class by itself, as an example of -what he could have done if he had chosen to follow that line. In a way it -is his most perfect piece of work. But it is not his most characteristic -piece of work, and therefore I think it has less value for us than some -of his other books in which his peculiar, distinctive, unrivalled powers -are more fully shown. - -After all, art must not only interpret the world but also reveal the -artist. The lasting interest of his vision, its distinction, its charm, -depend, at least in some real degree, upon the personal touch. Being -himself a part of the things that are seen, he must “paint the thing _as -he sees it_” if he wishes to win the approval of “the God of things as -they are.” - -Now the artistic value of Dickens’s way of seeing things lay in its -fitness to the purpose which he had in mind and heart,—a really great -purpose, namely, to enhance the interest of life by good enchantment, -to save people from the plague of dulness and the curse of indifference -by showing them that the world is full of the stuff for hearty laughter -and deep sympathy. This way of seeing things, with constant reference -to their humourous and sentimental potency, was essential to the genius -of Dickens. His method of making other people see it was strongly -influenced, if not absolutely determined, by two facts which seemed to -lie outside of his career as an author: first, his training as a reporter -for the press; second, his favourite avocation as an amateur actor, -stage-manager, and dramatic reader. - -The style of Dickens at its best is that of an inspired reporter. It -is rapid, graphic, pictorial, aiming always at a certain heightening -of effect, making the shadows darker and the lights brighter for the -purpose of intensifying sensation. He did not get it in the study but -in the street. Take his description in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ of Todgers’s -Boarding House with its complicated smells and its mottled shades of -dinginess; or take his picture in _Little Dorrit_ of Marseilles burning -in the August sunlight with its broad, white, universal stare. Here is -the art of journalism,—the trick of intensification by omission,—carried -to the limit. He aims distinctly at a certain effect, and he makes sure -of getting it. - -He takes long walks in the heart of London, attends police courts, goes -behind the scenes of theatres, rides in omnibuses, visits prisons and -workhouses. You think he is seeking realism. Quite wrong. He is seeking a -sense of reality which shall make realism look cheap. He is not trying to -put up canned goods which shall seem more or less like fresh vegetables. -He is trying to extract the essential flavour of places and people so -that you can taste it in a drop. - -We find in his style an accumulation of details all bearing on a certain -point; nothing that serves his purpose is overlooked; everything that is -likely to distract the attention or obscure his aim is disregarded. The -head-lines are in the text. When the brute, Bill Sykes, says to Nancy: -“Get up,” you know what is coming. When Mrs. Todgers gives a party to Mr. -Pecksniff you know what is coming. But the point is that when it comes, -tragedy or comedy, it is as pure and unadulterated as the most brilliant -of reporters could make it. - -Naturally, Dickens puts more emphasis upon the contrast between -his characters than upon the contrast within them. The internal -inconsistencies and struggles, the slow processes of growth and change -which are the delight of the psychological novelist do not especially -interest him. He sees things black or white, not gray. The objects that -attract him most, and on which he lavishes his art, do not belong to -the average, but to the extraordinary. Dickens is not a commonplace -merchant. He is a dealer in oddities and rarities, in fact the keeper -of an “Old Curiosity Shop,” and he knows how to set forth his goods with -incomparable skill. - -His drawing of character is sharp rather than deep. He makes the figure -stand out, always recognizable, but not always thoroughly understood. -Many of his people are simply admirable incarnations of their particular -trades or professions: Mould the undertaker, old Weller the coachman, -Tulkinghorn the lawyer, Elijah Program the political demagogue, Blimber -the school-master, Stiggins the religious ranter, Betsey Prig the -day-nurse, Cap’n Cuttle the retired skipper. They are all as easy -to identify as the wooden image in front of a tobacconist’s shop. -Others are embodiments of a single passion or quality: Pecksniff of -unctuous hypocrisy, Micawber of joyous improvidence, Mr. Toots of dumb -sentimentalism, Little Dorrit of the motherly instinct in a girl, Joe -Gargery of the motherly instinct in a man, Mark Tapley of resolute and -strenuous optimism. If these persons do anything out of harmony with -their head-lines, Dickens does not tell of it. He does not care for the -incongruities, the modifications, the fine shadings which soften and -complicate the philosophic and reflective view of life. He wants to write -his “story” sharply, picturesquely, with “snap” and plenty of local -colour; and he does it, in his happiest hours, with all the _verve_ and -skill of a star reporter for the _Morning Journal_ of the Enchanted City. - -In this graphic and emphatic quality the art of Dickens in fiction -resembles the art of Hogarth in painting. But Dickens, like Hogarth, was -much more than a reporter. He was a dramatist, and therefore he was also, -by necessity, a moralist. - -I do not mean that Dickens had a dramatic genius in the Greek sense that -he habitually dealt with the eternal conflict between human passion and -inscrutable destiny. I mean only this: that his lifelong love for the -theatre often led him, consciously or unconsciously, to construct the -_scenario_ of a story with a view to dramatic effect, and to work up the -details of a crisis precisely as if he saw it in his mind’s eye on the -stage. - -Notice how the _dramatis personæ_ are clearly marked as comic, or tragic, -or sentimental. The moment they come upon the scene you can tell whether -they are meant to appeal to your risibilities or to your sensibilities. -You are in no danger of laughing at the heroine, or weeping over the -funny man. Dickens knows too much to leave his audience in perplexity. -He even gives to some of his personages set phrases, like the musical -_motifs_ of the various characters in the operas of Wagner, by which you -may easily identify them. Mr. Micawber is forever “waiting for something -to turn up.” Mr. Toots always reminds us that “it’s of no consequence.” -Sairey Gamp never appears without her imaginary friend Mrs. Harris. Mrs. -General has “prunes and prism” perpetually on her lips. - -Observe, also, how carefully the scene is set, and how wonderfully the -preparation is made for a dramatic climax in the story. If it is a comic -climax, like the trial of Mr. Pickwick for breach of promise, nothing is -forgotten, from the hysterics of the obese Mrs. Bardell to the feigned -indignation of Sergeant Buzfuz over the incriminating phrase “chops and -tomato sauce!” - -If it is a tragic climax, like the death of Bill Sykes, a score of dark -premonitions lead up to it, the dingiest slum of London is chosen for -it, the grimy streets are filled with a furious crowd to witness it, and -just as the murderer is about to escape, the ghostly eyes of his victim -glare upon him, and he plunges from the roof, tangled in his rope, to be -hanged by the hand of the Eternal Judge as surely as if he stood upon the -gallows. - -Or suppose the climax is not one of shame and terror, but of pure pity -and tenderness, like the death of Little Nell. Then the quiet room is -prepared for it, and the white bed is decked with winter berries and -green leaves that the child loved because they loved the light; and -gentle friends are there to read and talk to her, and she sleeps herself -away in loving dreams, and the poor old grandfather, whom she has guided -by the hand and comforted, kneels at her bedside, wondering why his dear -Nell lies so still, and the very words which tell us of her peace and his -grief, move rhythmically and plaintively, like soft music with a dying -fall. - -Close the book. The curtain descends. The drama is finished. The master -has had his way with us; he has made us laugh; he has made us cry. We -have been at the play. - -But was it not as real to us while it lasted as many of the scenes in -which we actors daily take our parts? And did it not mellow our spirits -with mirth, and soften our hearts with tears? And now that it is over are -we not likely to be a little better, a little kinder, a little happier -for what we have laughed at or wept over? - -Ah, master of the good enchantment, you have given us hours of ease -and joy, and we thank you for them. But there is a greater gift than -that. You have made us more willing to go cheerfully and companionably -along the strange, crowded, winding way of human life, because you have -deepened our faith that there is something of the divine on earth, and -something of the human in heaven. - - - - -THACKERAY AND REAL MEN - - -In that fragrant bunch of _Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children_ -which has just brightened and sweetened our too sadly strenuous times -there are some passages on novel-reading which are full of spirited good -sense. He says that he can read _Pendennis_, and _The Newcomes_, and -_Vanity Fair_ over and over again; he agrees with his boy in preferring -Thackeray to Dickens, and then he gives the reason—or at least _a_ -reason—for this preference: - -“Of course one fundamental difference ... is that Thackeray was a -gentleman and Dickens was not.” - -The damnatory clause in this sentence seems to me too absolute, though -Roosevelt softens it by adding, “but a man might do some mighty good work -without being in any sense a gentleman.” That is certainly true, and -beyond a doubt Dickens did it—a wonderful plenty of it. It is also true -that in several perfectly good senses he was a brave and kind gentleman, -despite his faults in manners and dress. - -But it is the laudatory clause in Roosevelt’s judgment that interests me. -Thackeray’s work is pervaded with his personality to an unusual degree. -It is a saturated solution of the man. We can taste him in every page. -And it is because we like the taste, because we find something strong -and true, bracing and stimulant in it, that we love to read him. ’Tis -like being with a gentleman in any enterprise or adventure; it gives us -pleasure and does us unconscious good. - -Well, then, what do we mean by “a gentleman?” Tennyson calls it - - The grand old name of gentleman - Defamed by every charlatan, - And soil’d with all ignoble use. - -In the big New Oxford Dictionary there is more than a pageful of -definitions of the word, and almost every English essayist has tried a -shot at it. One thing is sure, its old hereditary use as a title of rank -or property is going out, or already gone. “John Jones, Gent.,” is a -vanishing form of address. More and more the word is coming to connote -something in character and conduct. Inheritance may enter into it, and -the sense of honour has a great part in it, and its outward and visible -sign is an unassuming fitness of behaviour in the various circumstances -of life. But its indispensable essence is reality; its native speech, -sincerity; and its controlling spirit, good-will. - -Let us content ourselves with a description instead of a definition. -A gentleman is a real man who deals honestly, bravely, frankly, and -considerately with all sorts and conditions of other real men. - -This is Thackeray’s very mark and quality. We can feel it all through his -life and works. Everything real in the world he recognized and accepted, -even though he might not always like it. But the unreal people and -things—the pretenders, the hypocrites, the shams, and the frauds (whether -pious or impious)—he detested and scoffed away. Reality was his quest -and his passion. He followed it with unfailing interest, penetration, -and good temper. He found it, at least in humankind, always mixed and -complicated, never altogether good nor altogether bad, no hero without a -fault, and no villain without a germ of virtue. Life is really made that -way. The true realist is not the materialist, the five-sense naturalist, -but the man who takes into account the human soul and God as ultimate -realities. - -Thackeray’s personal life had nothing that was remarkable and much that -was admirable. It was simply the background of his genius. He was a -child of the upper-middle class in England—if you know just what that -means. He went to the Charterhouse School in London (which he afterward -immortalized as Greyfriars in _The Newcomes_), and illustrated his -passion for reality by getting his nose broken in a fight, which gave -his face a permanent Socratic cast. At Cambridge University he seems to -have written much and studied little, but that little to good purpose. He -inherited a modest fortune, which he spent, not in riotous living, but in -travel, art study in Paris, and in the most risky of all extravagances, -the starting of new periodicals. When this failed and his money was gone, -he lived in London as a hack-writer. - -His young wife was taken from him by that saddest of all -bereavements—the loss of her mind. It became necessary to place her in a -private sanitarium, where she outlived her husband by thirty years. To -her, and to the two little daughters whom she left him, Thackeray was -faithful and devoted. He never complained, never flinched into an easy -way of escape from his burden. He bent his back to it, and, in spite of -natural indolence, he worked hard and was cheerful. - -He made a host of friends and kept them, as Stevenson puts it, “without -capitulation.” Of course, this grim condition implies some frictions and -some dislikes, and from these Thackeray was not exempt. The satire which -was his first mode in writing was too direct and pungent to be relished -by those who had any streak of self-humbug in their make-up. But, so far -as I know, he had only one serious literary quarrel—that unhappy dispute -with Mr. Edmund Yates, in which Dickens, with the best intentions in the -world, became, unfortunately, somewhat involved. Thackeray might perhaps -have been more generous and forgiving—he could have afforded that luxury. -But he could not have been more honest and frank, more real, than he -was. Being very angry, and for a just cause, he said so in plain words. -Presently the tempest passed away. When Thackeray died in 1863, Dickens -wrote: - -“No one can be surer than I of the greatness and goodness of his heart.” - -The first period of his life as a man of letters was given almost -entirely to satirical and fragmentary writing, under various _noms de -guerre_. Hence, he remained for a long time in comparative poverty and -obscurity, from which he stepped into fame and prosperity with the -publication of his first large novel, _Vanity Fair_, in 1847-48. It was -like turning the corner of Grub Street and coming into Glory Avenue. - -Henceforth the way was open, though not easy. The succession of his -big, welcome novels was slow, steady, unbroken. Each one brought him -thousands of new readers, and the old ones were _semper fideles_, even -when they professed a preference for the earlier over the later volumes. -His lecture tours in Great Britain and the United States were eminently -successful—more so, I think, than those of Charles Dickens. They may have -brought in less money, but more of what old William Caxton, the prince -of printers, called “good fame and renommee.” The last of his completed -books, and one of his most delightful, was _Roundabout Papers_—a volume -of essays that has no superior in English for a light, firm, friendly -touch upon the realities of life. His last story begun was _Denis Duval_, -and on this he was working when he laid down his pen on Christmas Eve, -1863, and fell asleep for the last time. - -It was Edmund Yates who wrote of him then: - -“Thackeray was dead; and the purest English prose writer of the -nineteenth century and the novelist with a greater knowledge of the human -heart, as it really is, than any other—with the exception perhaps of -Shakespeare and Balzac—was suddenly struck down in the midst of us.” - -_The human heart as it really is_—there’s the point! That is what -Thackeray sought to know, to understand, to reveal, and—no! not to -explain, nor to judge and sentence—for that, as he well knew, was far -beyond him or any of us—but his desire was to _show_ the real heart -of man, in its various complexities and perplexities, working its -way through the divers realities and unrealities in which we are all -entangled. - -The acute French critic, Edmond Scherer, distinguished and divided -between George Eliot as “a novelist of character,” and Thackeray as “a -novelist of manners.” The epithet will pass only if we take the word in -the sense of William of Wykeham’s motto, “Manners makyth man.” - -For, as surely as there is something in the outward demeanour which -unveils and discloses the person within, even so surely is there -something in behaviour, the habitual mode of speech and conduct, which -moulds the man using it. A false behaviour weaves a texture of lies into -the warp of his nature. A true behaviour weakens the hold of his own -self-delusions, and so helps him to know what he really is—which is good -for him and for others. - -It was in this sense that Thackeray was interested in manners, and -depicted them in his books. Go with him to a ball, and you arrive at the -hour of unmasking; to a club, and you are aware of the thoughts under -the conversation; to a play, and you pass behind the footlights and the -paint; to a death-bed, and—well, do you remember the death of Helen in -_Pendennis_? and of the Colonel in _The Newcomes_? Foolish critics speak -of these last two passages as “scenes.” Scenes! By Heaven! no, they are -realities. We can feel those pure souls passing. - -Let us follow this clew of the passion for reality through the three -phases of Thackeray’s work. - - -I - -At first he is the indefatigable satirist, rejoicing in the assault. -Youth is almost always inclined that way—far more swift and sweeping in -judgment, more severe in condemnation, than maturity or age. Thackeray -writes much that is merely amusing, full of high spirits and pure fun, in -his first period. But his main business is to expose false pretensions, -false methods, false principles in literature and life; to show up the -fakers, to ridicule the humbugs, to convict the crooks of every rank and -degree. - -Here, for example, is a popular fashion of books with criminals and -burglars for heroes and heroines, portrayed in the glamour of romance. -Very well, our satirist, assuming the name of “Ikey Solomons, Esq.,” -will take a real criminal, a murderess, and show us the manner of life -she leads with her associates. So we have _Catherine_. Here is another -fashion of weaving a fiction about a _chevalier d’industrie_, a bold, -adventurous, conscienceless fellow who pursues his own pleasure with a -swagger, and makes a brave show hide a mean and selfish heart. Very well, -a fellow of this kidney shall tell his own story and show himself in his -habit as he lives, and as he dies in prison. So we have _The Memoirs of -Barry Lyndon, Esq._ Here are innumerable fashions of folly and falsehood -current not only in high society, but also in the region of respectable -mediocrity, and in the “world below-stairs.” Very well, our satirist, -under the name of “Jeames Yellowplush,” or “M. Angelo Titmarsh,” or -“Fitz-Boodle,” will show them up for us. So we have various bundles of -short stories, and skits, and sketches of travel, some of them bubbling -over with fun, some of them, like _Dennis Haggarty’s Wife_, touched with -quiet pathos. - -The culmination of this satiric period is _The Book of Snobs_, which -appeared serially in the London _Punch_, 1845-46. In order to understand -the quality and meaning of Thackeray’s satire—an element which stayed -with him all through his writing, though it was later subdued to its -proper place—we must take the necessary pains to know just what he meant -by a “snob.” - -A snob is an unreal person who tries to pass himself off for a real -person; a pretender who meanly admires and imitates mean things; an -ape of gentility. He is a specific variety of the great genus “Sham.” -Carlyle, the other notable English satirist of the nineteenth century, -attacked the whole genus with heavy artillery. Thackeray, with his light -cavalry of ridicule, assailed the species. - -All snobs are shams, but not all shams are snobs. The specific qualities -of the snob are developed only in countries where there are social -classes and distinctions, but no insuperable barriers between them. Thus -in native India with its immutable caste, or in Central Africa with its -general barbarism, I fancy it must be difficult to discover snobbism. -(Yet I have seen traces of it even among dogs and cats.) But in a country -like England or the United States of America, where society is arranged -in different stories, with staircases between, snobbism is frequent and -flourishing. - -_The snob is the man who tries to sneak up-stairs. He is the -surreptitious climber, the person who is ashamed to pass for what he is._ - -Has he been at an expensive college? He goes home and snubs his old -friends with allusions to the distinguished society he has been keeping. -Is he entertaining fashionable strangers? He gives them elaborate and -costly fare at the most aurivorous hotel, but at home his wife and -daughters may starve. He talks about books that he has never read, and -pretends to like music that sends him to sleep. At his worst, he says his -prayers on the street-corners and reviles his neighbour for sins which he -himself cherishes in secret. - -That is the snob: the particular species of sham whom Thackeray pursues -and satirizes through all his disguises and metamorphoses. He does it -unsparingly, yet never—or at least hardly ever—savagely. There is always -a strain of good humour in it, and often a touch of fellow-feeling for -the man himself, camouflaged under his affectations. It may not be worth -while—this kind of work. All satire is perishable. It has no more of the -immortal in it than the unreality which it aims to destroy. But some -shams die hard. And while they live and propagate, the arrows which hit -them fairly are not out of date. - -Stevenson makes a curious misjudgment of this part of Thackeray’s work, -when he says in his essay on “Some Gentlemen in Fiction”: - -“Personally [Thackeray] scarce appeals to us as the ideal gentleman; -if there were nothing else, perpetual nosing after snobbery at least -suggests the snob.” - -Most true, beloved R. L. S., but did you forget that this is precisely -what Thackeray himself says? He tells us not to be too quick or absolute -in our judgments; to acknowledge that we have some faults and failings -of our own; to remember that other people have sometimes hinted at a -vein, a trace, a vestige of snobbery in ourselves. Search for truth and -speak it; but, above all, no arrogance—_faut pas monter sur ses grands -chevaux_. Have you ever read the end of the lecture on “Charity and -Humour”? - -“The author ... has been described by _The London Times_ newspaper as a -writer of considerable parts, but a dreary misanthrope, who sees no good -anywhere, who sees the sky above him green, I think, instead of blue, and -only miserable sinners around him. _So we are, as is every writer and -reader I have heard of; so was every being who ever trod this earth, save -One._ I cannot help telling the truth as I view it, and describing what -I see. To describe it otherwise than it seems to me would be falsehood -in that calling in which it has pleased Heaven to place me; treason to -that conscience which says that men are weak; that truth must be told; -that faults must be owned; that pardon must be prayed for; and that Love -reigns supreme over all.” - - -II - -With _Vanity Fair_ begins what some one has called the _quadrilateral_ -on which Thackeray’s larger fame rests. The three other pillars are, -_Henry Esmond_, _Pendennis_, and _The Newcomes_. Which is the greatest of -these four novels? On this question there is dispute among critics, and -difference of opinion, even among avowed Thackerayans, who confess that -they “like everything he wrote.” Why try to settle the question? Why not -let the interesting, illuminating _causerie_ run on? In these furious -days when the hysteria of world-problems vexes us, it is good to have -some subjects on which we can dispute without ranting or raving. - -For my part, I find _Vanity Fair_ the strongest, _Pendennis_ the most -intimate, _The Newcomes_ the richest and in parts the most lovable, and -_Henry Esmond_ the most admirable and satisfying, among Thackeray’s -novels. But they all have this in common: they represent a reaction from -certain false fashions in fiction which prevailed at that time. From the -spurious romanticism of G. P. R. James and Harrison Ainsworth, from -the philosophic affectation of Bulwer, from the gilding and rococo-work -of the super-snob Disraeli—all of them popular writers of their -day—Thackeray turned away, not now as in his earlier period to satirize -and ridicule and parody them, but to create something in a different -_genre_, closer to the facts of life, more true to the reality of human -nature. - -We may read in the preface to _Pendennis_ just what he had in mind and -purpose: - -“Many ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because, in the -course of the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by -temptation. My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and -the manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear—it is -best to know it—what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in -the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms—what is the life and talk of your sons. -A little more frankness than is customary has been attempted in this -story; with no bad desire on the author’s part, it is hoped, and with no -ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant, at any -rate truth is best, from whatever chair—from those whence graver writers -or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits as he -concludes his labour, and bids his kind reader farewell.” - -[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. - -_Reproduced from the Kensington Edition of Thackeray’s Works._] - -It is amusing, in this age of art undressed, to read this modest -defense of frankness in fiction. Its meaning is very different -from the interpretation of it which is given by disciples of the -“show-everything-without-a-fig-leaf” school. - -Thackeray did not confuse reality with indecency. He did not think it -needful to make his hero cut his toe-nails or take a bath in public -in order to show him as a real man. The ordinary and common physical -details of life may be taken for granted; to obtrude them is to -exaggerate their importance. It is with the frailties and passions, -the faults and virtues, the defeats and victories of his men and women -that Thackeray deals. He describes Pendennis tempted without making -the description a new temptation. He brings us acquainted with Becky -Sharp, _enchanteresse_, without adding to her enchantment. We feel that -she is capable of anything; but we do not know all that she actually -did,—indeed Thackeray himself frankly confessed that even he did not -know, nor much care. - -The excellence of his character-drawing is that his men and women are not -mere pegs to hang a doctrine or a theory on. They have a life of their -own, independent of, and yet closely touching his. This is what he says -of them in his essay “_De Finibus_”: - -“They have been boarding and lodging with me for twenty months.... I know -the people utterly,—I know the sound of their voices.” - -Fault has been found with him (and that by such high authority as Mr. -Howells) for coming into his own pages so often with personal comment -or, “a word to the reader.” It is said that this disturbs the narrative, -breaks the illusion, makes the novel less convincing as a work of art. -Frankly, it does not strike me that way. On the contrary, it adds to the -verisimilitude. These men and women are so real to him that he cannot -help talking to us about them as we go along together. Is it not just -so in actual life, when you go with a friend to watch the passing show? -Do you think that what Thackeray says to you about Colonel Newcome, -or Captain Costigan, or Helen Pendennis, or Laura, or Ethel, or George -Warrington, makes them fade away? - -Yes, I know the paragraphs at the beginning and end of _Vanity Fair_ -about the showman and the puppets and the box. But don’t you see what the -parable means? It is only what Shakespeare said long ago: - - All the world’s a stage, - And all the men and women merely players. - -Nor would Thackeray have let this metaphor pass without adding to it -Pope’s fine line: - - Act well your part, there all the honour lies. - -Of course, there is another type of fiction in which running personal -comment by the author would be out of place. It is illustrated in Dickens -by _A Tale of Two Cities_, and in Thackeray by _Henry Esmond_. The -latter seems to me the most perfect example of a historical novel in all -literature. More than that,—it is, so far as I know, the best portrayal -of the character of a gentleman. - -The book presents itself as a memoir of Henry Esmond, Esq., a colonel in -the service of her Majesty, Queen Anne, written by himself. Here, then, -we have an autobiographical novel, the most difficult and perilous of all -modes of fiction. If the supposed author puts himself in the foreground, -he becomes egotistical and insufferable; if he puts himself in the -background, he becomes insignificant, a mere Chinese “property-man” in -the drama. This dilemma Thackeray avoids by letting Esmond tell his own -story in the third person—that is to say, with a certain detachment of -view, such as a sensible person would feel in looking back on his own -life. - -Rarely is this historic method of narration broken. I recall one -instance, in the last chapter, where Beatrix, after that tremendous scene -in the house of Castlewood with the Prince, reveals her true nature and -quits the room in a rage. The supposed author writes: - -“Her keen words gave no wound to Mr. Esmond; his heart was too hard. As -he looked at her, he wondered that he could ever have loved her.... -The Prince blushed and bowed low, as she gazed at him and quitted the -chamber. _I have never seen her from that day._” - -Thackeray made this slip on purpose. He wanted us to feel the reality of -the man who is trying to tell his own story in the third person. - -This, after all, is the real value of the book. It is not only a -wonderful picture of the Age of Queen Anne, its ways and customs, its -manner of speech and life, its principal personages—the red-faced queen, -and peremptory Marlborough, and smooth Atterbury, and rakish Mohun, and -urbane Addison, and soldier-scholar Richard Steele—appearing in the -background of the political plot. It is also, and far more significantly, -a story of the honour of a gentleman—namely, Henry Esmond—carried through -a life of difficulty, and crowned with the love of a true woman, after a -false one had failed him. - -Some readers profess themselves disappointed with the dénouement of the -love-story. They find it unnatural and disconcerting that the hero should -win the mother and not the daughter as the guerdon of his devotion. Not -I. Read the story more closely. - -When it opens, in the house of Castlewood, Esmond is a grave, lonely -boy of twelve; Lady Castlewood, fair and golden-haired, is in the first -bloom of gracious beauty, twenty years old; Beatrix is a dark little minx -of four years. Naturally, Henry falls in love with the mother rather -than with the daughter, grows up as her champion and knight, defends -her against the rakishness of Lord Mohun, resolves for her sake to give -up his claim to the title and the estate. Then comes the episode of his -infatuation by the wonderful physical beauty of Beatrix, the vixen. That -madness ends with the self-betrayal of her letter of assignation with the -Prince, and her subsequent conduct. Esmond returns to his first love, his -young love, his true love, Lady Castlewood. Of its fruition let us read -his own estimate: - -“That happiness which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in -words; it is of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, -though the heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the -One Ear alone—to one fond being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife -ever man was blessed with.” - - -III - -I have left myself scant space to speak of Thackeray’s third phase in -writing—his work as a moralist. But perhaps this is well, for, as he -himself said, (and as I have always tried to practise), the preacher must -be brief if he wishes to be heard. Five words that go home are worth more -than a thousand that wander about the subject. - -Thackeray’s direct moralizings are to be found chiefly in his lectures -on “The Four Georges,” “The English Humourists,” and in the “Roundabout -Papers.” He was like Lowell: as a scholastic critic he was far from -infallible, but as a vital interpreter he seldom missed the mark. - -After all, the essential thing in life for us as real men is to have a -knowledge of facts to correct our follies, an ideal to guide our efforts, -and a gospel to sustain our hopes. - -That was Thackeray’s message as moralist. It is expressed in the last -paragraph of his essay “_Nil Nisi Bonum_,” written just after the death -of Macaulay and Washington Irving: - -“If any young man of letters reads this little sermon—and to him, indeed, -it is addressed—I would say to him, ‘Bear Scott’s words in your mind, and -_be good, my dear_.’ Here are two literary men gone to their account, -and, _laus Deo_, as far as we know, it is fair, and open, and clean. -Here is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices -which would have been virtues but for unavoidable, etc. Here are two -examples of men most differently gifted—each pursuing his calling; each -speaking his truth as God bade him; each honest in his life; just and -irreproachable in his dealings; dear to his friends; honoured by his -country; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both -to give incalculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks -them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may -not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or -rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to -_our service_. We may not win the bâton or epaulettes; but God give us -strength to guard the honour of the flag!” - -With this supplication for myself and for others, I leave this essay on -Thackeray, the greatest of English novelists, to the consideration of -real men. - - - - -GEORGE ELIOT AND REAL WOMEN - - -George Eliot was a woman who wrote full-grown novels for men. - -Other women have done and are doing notable work in prose fiction—Jane -Austen, George Sand, Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Stowe, Margaret Deland, -Edith Wharton, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Mrs. Humphry Ward—the list -might easily be extended, but it would delay us from the purpose of -this chapter. Let me rather make a general salute to all the sisterhood -who have risen above the indignity of being called “authoresses,” and, -without pursuing perilous comparisons, go directly to the subject in hand. - -What was it that enabled George Eliot to enter the field of the English -novel at a time when Dickens and Thackeray were at the height of their -fame, and win a place in the same class with them? - -It was certainly not the hide-and-seek of the sex of the new writer -under a pseudonym. You remember, opinions were divided on this -question. Carlyle and Thackeray thought that the author of _Scenes of -Clerical Life_ was a man. Dickens was sure that it was a woman. But a -mystification of this kind has no interest apart from the primary value -of the works of the unidentified writer in question. Nor does it last -long as an advertisement, unless the following books excel the first; -and, in that case, the secret is sure to be soon discovered. - -George Eliot’s success and distinction as a novelist were due to three -things: first, the preliminary and rather obvious advantage of having -genius; second, a method of thinking and writing which is commonly -(though perhaps arrogantly) called masculine; third, a quickness of -insight into certain things, a warmth of sympathy for suffering, and -an instinct of sacrifice which we still regard (we hope rightly) as -feminine. A man for logic, a woman for feeling, a genius for creative -power—that was a great alliance. But the womanhood kept the priority -without which it would not only have died out, but also have endangered, -in dying, the other qualities. Dickens was right when he said of certain -touches in the work of this pseudonymous writer: “If they originated with -no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself -mentally so like a woman since the world began.” - -George Eliot’s profile resembled Savonarola’s. He was one of her heroes. -But she was not his brother. She was his sister in the spirit. - -Her essential femininity was the reason why the drawing of her women -surpassed the drawing of her men. It was more intimate, more revealing, -more convincing. She knew women better. She painted them of many types -and classes—from the peasant maid to the well-born lady, from the selfish -white cat to the generous white swan-sister; from the narrow-minded -Rosamund to the deep-hearted, broad-minded Romola; all types, I think, -but one—the lewdly carnal Circe. In all her books, with perhaps a single -exception, it is a woman who stands out most clearly from the carefully -studied and often complex background as the figure of interest. And even -in that one it is the slight form of Eppie, the golden-hearted girl who -was sent to save old Silas Marner from melancholy madness, that shines -brightest in the picture. - -The finest of her women—finest not in the sense of being faultless, but -of having in them most of that wonderful sacrificial quality which Goethe -called _das ewig Weibliche_—were those upon whose spiritual portraits -George Eliot spent her most loving care and her most graphic skill. - -She shows them almost always in the revealing light of love. But she -does not dwell meticulously on the symptoms or the course of the merely -physical attraction. She knows that it is there; she confesses that -it is potent. But it seems to her, (as indeed it really is,) far more -uniform and less interesting than the meaning of love in the _soul_ of a -woman as daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife. Were it not for that inward -significance there would be little to differentiate the physical act from -the mating of the lower animals—an affair so common and casual that it -merits less attention than some writers give it. But in the inner life of -thought and emotion, in a woman’s intellectual and moral nature,—there -love has its mystery and its power, there it brings deepest joy or -sharpest sorrow, there it strengthens or maims. - -It is because George Eliot knows this and reveals it with extraordinary -clearness that her books have an especial value. Other qualities they -have, of course, and very high qualities. But this is their proper and -peculiar excellence, and the source, if I mistake not, of their strongest -appeal to sanely thinking men. - -_The Man Who Understood Woman_ is the title of a recent clever -trivial story. But of course such a man is a myth, an impostor, or a -self-deluder. He makes a preposterous claim. - -Thackeray and Dickens, for example, made no such pretension. Some -of their women are admirably drawn; they are very lovable, or very -despicable, as the case may be; but they are not completely convincing. -Thackeray comes nearer than Dickens, and George Meredith, I think, much -nearer than either of the others. But in George Eliot we feel that we -are listening to one who does understand. Her women, in their different -types, reveal something of that thinking, willing, feeling other-half of -humanity with whom man makes the journey of life. They do not cover all -the possibilities of variation in the feminine, for these are infinite, -but they are real women, and so they have an interest for real men. - - * * * * * - -Let us take it for granted that we know enough of the details of George -Eliot’s life to enable us to understand and appreciate certain things -in her novels. Such biographical knowledge is illuminating in the study -of the works of any writer. The author of a book is not an algebraic -quantity nor a strange monster, but a human being with certain features -and a certain life-history. - -But, after all, the promotion of literary analysis is not the object of -these chapters. Plain reading, and the pleasure of it, is what I have in -mind. For that cause I love most of George Eliot’s novels, and am ready -to maintain that they are worthy to be loved. And so, even if my “taken -for granted” a few lines above should not be altogether accurate in these -days of ignorant contempt of all that is “Victorian,” I may still go -ahead to speak of her books as they are in themselves: strong, fine, -rewarding pieces of English fiction: that is what they would remain, no -matter who had written them. - -It must be admitted at once that they are not adapted to readers who -like to be spared the trouble of thinking while they read. They do not -belong to the class of massage-fiction, Turkish-bath novels. They require -a certain amount of intellectual exercise; and for this they return, it -seems to me, an adequate recompense in the pleasurable sense of quickened -mental activity and vigour. - -But this admission must not be taken to imply that they are obscure, -intricate, enigmatical, “tough reading,” like the later books of George -Meredith and Henry James, in which a minimum of meaning is hidden in a -maximum of obfuscated verbiage, and the reader is invited to a tedious -game of hunt-the-slipper. On the contrary, George Eliot at her best is a -very clear writer—decidedly not shallow, nor superficial, nor hasty,—like -the running comment which is supposed to illuminate the scenes in a -moving-picture show,—but intentionally lucid and perspicuous. Having -a story to tell, she takes pains to tell it so that you can follow it, -not only in its outward, but also in its inward movement. Having certain -characters to depict (and almost always mixed characters of good and evil -mingled and conflicting as in real life), she is careful to draw them so -that you shall feel their reality and take an interest in their strifes -and adventures. - -They are distinctly persons, capable of making their own choice -between the worse and the better reason, and thereafter influenced by -the consequences of that choice, which, if repeated, becomes a habit -of moral victory or defeat. They are not puppets in, the hands of an -inscrutable Fate, like most of the figures in the books of the modern -Russian novelists and their imitators. What do I care for the ever-so -realistically painted marionettes in the fiction of Messrs. Gawky, -Popoff, Dropoff, and Slumpoff? What interest have I in the minute -articulations of the dingy automatons of Mijnheer Couperus, or the -dismal, despicable figures who are pulled through the pages of Mr. Samuel -Butler’s _The Way of All Flesh_? A claim on compassion they might -have if they were alive. But being, by the avowal of their creators, -nothing more than imaginary bundles of sensation, helpless playthings of -irresistible hereditary impulse and entangling destiny, their story and -their fate leave me cold. What does it matter what becomes of them? They -can neither be saved nor damned. They can only be drifted. There is no -more human interest in them than there is in the predestined saints and -foredoomed sinners of a certain type of Calvinistic theology. - -But this is not George Eliot’s view of life. It is not to her “a tale -told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Within -the fixed circle of its stern natural and moral laws there is a hidden -field of conflict where the soul is free to discern and choose its own -cause, and to fight for it or betray it. However small that field may -be, while it exists life has a meaning, and personalities are real, -and the results of their striving or surrendering, though rarely seen -complete or final, are worth following and thinking about. Thus George -Eliot’s people—at least the majority of them—have the human touch which -justifies narrative and comment. We follow the fortunes of Dinah Morris -and of Maggie Tulliver, of Romola, and of Dorothea Brooke—yes, and of -Hetty Sorrel and Rosamund Vincy—precisely because we feel that they are -real women and that the turning of their ways will reveal the secret of -their hearts. - -It is a mistake to think (as a recent admirable essay of Professor -W. L. Cross seems to imply) that the books of George Eliot are -characteristically novels of argument or propaganda. Once only, or -perhaps twice, she yielded to that temptation and spoiled her story. But -for the rest she kept clear of the snare of _Tendenz_. - -Purpose-novels, like advertisements, belong in the temporary department. -As certain goods and wares go out of date, and the often eloquent -announcements that commended them suddenly disappear; even so the -“burning questions” of the hour and age burn out, and the solutions -of them presented in the form of fiction fall down with the other -ashes. They have served their purpose, well or ill, and their transient -importance is ended. What endures, if anything, is the human story -vividly told, the human characters graphically depicted. These have a -permanent value. These belong to literature. Here I would place _Adam -Bede_ and _Silas Marner_ and _The Mill on the Floss_ and _Middlemarch_, -because they deal with problems which never grow old; but not _Robert -Elsmere_, because it deals chiefly with a defunct controversy in Biblical -criticism. - -George Eliot was thirty-eight years old when she made the amazing -discovery that she was by nature, not what she had thought herself, a -philosophical essayist and a translator of arid German treatises against -revealed religion, but something very different—a novelist of human -souls, and especially of the souls of women. It was the noteworthy -success of her three long short stories, _Amos Barton_, _Mr. Gilfil’s -Love Story_, and _Janet’s Repentance_, printed in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ -in 1857, that revealed her to herself and to the world. - -“Depend upon it, [she says to her imaginary reader in the first of these -stories,] you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see -something of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying -in the experience of the human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes -and speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.” - -It was the interior drama of human life that attracted her interest and -moved her heart with pity and fear, laughter and love. She found it for -the most part in what we should call mediocre surroundings and on rather -a humble and obscure stage. But what she found was not mediocre. It was -the same discovery that Wordsworth made: - - “A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.” - -By this I do not mean to say that a close study of the humanness of human -nature, a searching contemplation of character, an acute and penetrating -psychological analysis is all that there is in her novels. This is -her predominant interest, beyond a doubt. She belongs to the school -of Hawthorne, Henry James, Thomas Hardy—realists or romancers of the -interior life. But she has other interests; and there are other things to -reward us in the reading of her books. - -There is, first of all, an admirable skill in the setting of her -stories. No other novelist has described English midland landscape, -towns, and hamlets, better than she. No other writer has given the rich, -history-saturated scenery of Florence as well. - -She is careful also not to exclude from her stage that messenger of -relief and contrast whom George Meredith calls “the comic spirit.” -Shakespeare’s clowns, wonderful as some of them are, seem at times like -supernumeraries. They come in to make a “diversion.” But George Eliot’s -rustic wits and conscious or unconscious humourists belong to the story. -Mrs. Poyser and Bartle Massey, Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Tulliver and Bob -Jakin, could not be spared. - -And then, her stories are really stories. They have action. They move; -though sometimes, it must be confessed, they move slowly. Not only do the -characters develop, one way or the other, but the plot also develops. -Sometimes it is very simple, as in _Silas Marner_; sometimes it is -extremely complicated, as in _Middlemarch_, where three love-stories are -braided together. One thing it never is—theatrical. Yet at times it -moves into an intense scene, like the trial of Hetty Sorrel or the death -of Tito Melema, in which the very essence of tragedy is concentrated. - -From the success of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ George Eliot went on -steadily with her work in fiction, never turning aside, never pausing -even, except when her health compelled, or when she needed time to fill -her mind and heart with a new subject. She did not write rapidly, nor are -her books easy to read in a hurry. - -It was an extraordinary series: _Adam Bede_ in 1859, _The Mill on the -Floss_ in 1860, _Silas Marner_ in 1861, _Romola_ in 1863, _Felix Holt, -the Radical_ in 1866, _Middlemarch_ in 1871, _Daniel Deronda_ in 1876; no -padding, no “seconds,” each book apparently more successful, certainly -more famous, than its predecessor. How could one woman produce so much -closely wrought, finely finished work? Of what sturdy mental race were -the serious readers who welcomed it and found delight in it? - -Mr. Oscar Browning of Cambridge said that _Daniel Deronda_ was the -climax, “the sun and glory of George Eliot’s art.” From that academic -judgment I venture to dissent. It is a great book, no doubt, the work -of a powerful intellect. But to me it was at the first reading, and -is still, a tiresome book. Tediousness, which is a totally different -thing from seriousness, is the unpardonable defect in a novel. It may -be my own fault, but Deronda seems to me something of a prig. Now a man -may be a prig without sin, but he ought not to take up too much room. -Deronda takes up too much room. And Gwendolen Harleth, who dressed by -preference in sea-green, seems to me to have a soul of the same colour—a -psychological mermaid. She is unconvincing. I cannot love her. The vivid -little Jewess, Mirah, is the only character with charm in the book. - -_Middlemarch_ is noteworthy for its extraordinary richness of human -observation and the unexcelled truthfulness of some of its portraits. -Mr. Isaac Casaubon is the living image of the gray-minded scholar and -gentleman,—as delicately drawn as one of Miss Cecelia Beaux’ portraits of -aged, learned, wrinkled men. Rosamund Vincy is the typical “daughter of -the horse-leech” in respectable clothes and surroundings. Dorothea Brooke -is one of George Eliot’s finest sacrificial heroines: - - “A perfect woman, nobly plann’d.” - -The book, as a whole, seems to me to have the defect of superabundance. -There is too much of it. It is like one of the late William Frith’s large -canvases, “The Derby Day,” or “The Railway Station.” It is constructed -with skill, and full of rich material, but it does not compose. You -cannot see the people for the crowd. Yet there is hardly a corner of the -story in which you will not find something worth while. - -_Felix Holt, the Radical_ is marred, at least for me, by a fault of -another kind. It is a novel of problem, of purpose. I do not care for -problem-novels, unless the problem is alive, and even then I do not care -very much for political economy in that form. It is too easy for the -author to prove any proposition by attaching it to a noble character, -or to disprove any theory by giving it an unworthy advocate. English -radicalism of 1832 has quite passed away, or gone into the Coalition -Cabinet. All that saves _Felix Holt_ now (as it seems to me, who read -novels primarily for pleasure) is the lovely figure of Esther Lyon, and -her old father, a preacher who really was good. - -Following the path still backward, we come to something altogether -different. _Romola_ is a historical romance on the grand scale. In the -central background is the heroic figure of Savonarola, saintly but -not impeccable; in the middle distance, a crowd of Renaissance people -immersed in the rich and bloody turmoil of that age; in the foreground, -the sharp contrast of two epic personalities—Tito Melema, the incarnation -of smooth, easy-going selfishness which never refuses a pleasure nor -accepts a duty; and Romola, the splendid embodiment of pure love in -self-surrendering womanhood. The shameful end of Tito, swept away by the -flooded river Arno and finally choked to death by the father whom he had -disowned and wronged, has in it the sombre tone of Fate. But the end of -the book is not defeat; it is triumph. Romola, victor through selfless -courage and patience, saves and protects the deserted mistress and -children of her faithless husband. In the epilogue we see her like _Notre -Dame de Secours_, throned in mercy and crowned with compassion. - -Listen to her as she talks to Tito’s son in the loggia looking over -Florence to the heights beyond Fiesole. - -“‘What is it, Lillo?’ said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. -Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more -massive and less regular than his father’s. The blood of the Tuscan -peasant was in his veins. - -“‘Mamma Romola, what am I to be?’ he said, well contented that there was -a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con _Spirto gentil_ -any longer. - -“‘What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father -was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason -why I can teach you.’ - -“‘Yes,’ said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. ‘But he is old and blind in the -picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?’ - -“‘Not much, Lillo. The world was not always very kind to him, and he -saw meaner men than himself put into higher places, because they could -flatter and say what was false. And then his dear son thought it right to -leave him and become a monk; and after that, my father, being blind and -lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his learning of -greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in his works after -he was in his grave.’ - -“‘I should not like that sort of life,’ said Lillo. ‘I should like -to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy -besides—something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of -pleasure.’ - -“‘That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that -could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We -can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a -great man, by having wide thoughts, and feeling for the rest of the world -as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much -pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we -would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. -There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man -can be great—he can hardly keep himself from wickedness—unless he gives -up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure -what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to -integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And -there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep to-morrow sacred: _he_ had the -greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful -wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable -of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the -best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your -mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And -remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of -your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, -calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a -base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and -that may well make a man say, “It would have been better for me if I had -never been born.” I will tell you something, Lillo.’ - -“Romola paused for a moment. She had taken Lillo’s cheeks between her -hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers. - -“‘There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great -deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was -young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and -kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything -cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was -unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came -at last to commit some of the basest deeds—such as make men infamous. He -denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that -was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and -prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.’ - -“Again Romola paused. Her voice was unsteady, and Lillo was looking up at -her with awed wonder. - -“‘Another time, my Lillo—I will tell you another time. See, there are -our old Piero di Cosimo and Nello coming up the Borgo Pinti, bringing us -their flowers. Let us go and wave our hands to them, that they may know -we see them.’” - -Hardly one of George Eliot’s stories has a conventional “happy -ending.” Yet they leave us not depressed, but strengthened to endure -and invigorated to endeavour. In this they differ absolutely from the -pessimistic novels of the present hour, which not only leave a bad taste -in the mouth, but also a sense of futility in the heart. - -Let me turn now to her first two novels, which still seem to me her best. -Bear in mind, I am not formulating academic theories, nor pronouncing _ex -cathedrâ_ judgments, but simply recording for the consideration of other -readers certain personal observations and reactions. - -_Adam Bede_ is a novel of rustic tragedy in which some of the characters -are drawn directly from memory. Adam is a partial portrait of George -Eliot’s father, and Dinah Morris a sketch of her aunt, a Methodist -woman preacher. There is plenty of comic relief in the story, admirably -done. Take the tongue duel between Bartle Massey, the sharp-spoken, -kind-hearted bachelor school-master, and Mrs. Poyser, the humorous, -pungent, motherly wife of the old farmer. - -“‘What!’ said Bartle, with an air of disgust. ‘Was there a woman -concerned? Then I give you up, Adam.’ - -“‘But it’s a woman you’n spoke well on, Bartle,’ said Mr. Poyser. ‘Come, -now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha’ been a bad -invention if they’d all been like Dinah.’ - -“‘I meant her voice, man—I meant her voice, that was all,’ said Bartle. -‘I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As -for other things, I dare say she’s like the rest o’ the women—thinks two -and two ’ull come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.’ - -“‘Ay, ay!’ said Mrs. Poyser; ‘one ’ud think, an’ hear some folks talk, as -the men war ’cute enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’ only -smelling at it. They can see through a barn door, _they_ can. Perhaps -that’s the reason they can see so little o’ this side on’t.’ - -“‘Ah!’ said Bartle, sneeringly, ‘the women are quick enough—they’re -quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and -can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows ’em himself.’ - -“‘Like enough,’ said Mrs. Poyser; ‘for the men are mostly so slow, their -thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can -count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready; an’ when he -outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth to be made on’t. It’s -your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. Howiver, I’m not denyin’ the -women are foolish: God Almighty made ’em to match the men.’ - -“‘Match!’ said Bartle; ‘ay, as vinegar matches one’s teeth. If a man says -a word, his wife’ll match it with a contradiction; if he’s a mind for hot -meat, his wife’ll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she’ll match -him with whimpering. She’s such a match as the horsefly is to th’ horse: -she’s got the right venom to sting him with—the right venom to sting him -with.’ - -“‘What dost say to that?’ said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and -looking merrily at his wife. - -“‘Say!’ answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye; -‘why, _I say as some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on -strikin’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but because there’s summat -wrong i’ their own inside_.’ ...” - -The plot, as in Scott’s _Heart of Midlothian_, turns on a case of -seduction and child murder, and the contrast between Effie and Jeannie -Deans has its parallel in the stronger contrast between Hetty Sorrel and -Dinah Morris. Hetty looked as if she were “made of roses”; but she was, -in Mrs. Poyser’s phrase, “no better nor a cherry wi’ a hard stone inside -it.” Dinah’s human beauty of face and voice was the true reflection of -her inward life which - - “cast a beam on the outward shape, - The unpolluted temple of the mind, - And turned it by degrees to the soul’s essence.” - -The crisis of the book comes in the prison, where Dinah wrestles for the -soul of Hetty—a scene as passionate and moving as any in fiction. Dinah -triumphs, not by her own might, but by the sheer power and beauty of the -Christian faith and love which she embodies. - -In George Eliot’s novels you will find some passages of stinging -and well-merited satire on the semi-pagan, conventional religion of -middle-class orthodoxy in England of the nineteenth century—“proud -respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without -side-dishes”—read the chapter on “A Variation of Protestantism Unknown -to Bossuet,” in _The Mill on the Floss_. But you will not find a single -page or paragraph that would draw or drive the reader away from real -Christianity. On the contrary, she has expressed the very secret of its -appeal to the human heart through the words and conduct of some of her -best characters. They do not argue; they utter and show the meaning -of religion. On me the effect of her books is a deepened sense of the -inevitable need of Christ and his gospel to sustain and nourish the high -morality of courage and compassion, patience, and hope, which she so -faithfully teaches. - -The truth is, George Eliot lived in the afterglow of Christian faith. -Rare souls are capable of doing that. But mankind at large needs the -sunrise. - -_The Mill on the Floss_ is partly an autobiographic romance. Maggie -Tulliver’s character resembles George Eliot in her youth. The contrast -between the practical and the ideal, the conflict between love and duty -in the heart of a girl, belong to those _problematische Naturen_, as -Goethe called them, which may taste keen joys but cannot escape sharp -sorrows. The centre of the story lies in Maggie’s strong devotion to -her father and to her brother Tom—a person not altogether unlike the -“elder brother” in the parable—in strife with her love for Philip, the -son of the family enemy. Tom ruthlessly commands his sister to choose -between breaking with him and giving up her lover. Maggie, after a bitter -struggle, chooses her brother. Would a real woman do that? Yes, I have -known some very real women who have done it, in one case with a tragic -result. - -The original title of this book (and the right one) was _Sister Maggie_. -Yet we can see why George Eliot chose the other name. The little river -Floss, so tranquil in its regular tidal flow, yet capable of such fierce -and sudden outbreaks, runs through the book from beginning to end. It is -a mysterious type of the ineluctable power of Nature in man’s mortal -drama. - -In the last chapter, when the flood comes, and the erring sister who -loved her brother so tenderly, rescues him who loved her so cruelly from -the ruined mill, the frail skiff which carries them clasped heart to -heart, reconciled in that revealing moment, goes down in the senseless -irresistible rush of waters. - -It is not a “bad ending.” The sister’s love triumphs. Such a close was -inevitable for such a story. But it is not a conclusion. It cries out for -immortality. - - * * * * * - -On the art of George Eliot judgments have differed. Mr. Oscar Browning, -a respectable authority, thinks highly of it. Mr. W. C. Brownell, a far -better critic, indeed one of the very best, thinks less favourably of -it, says that it is too intellectual; that the development and conduct -of her characters are too logical and consistent; that the element of -surprize, which is always present in life, is lacking in her people. -“Our attention,” he writes, “is so concentrated on what they think that -we hardly know how they feel, or whether ... they feel at all.” This -criticism does not seem to me altogether just. Certainly there is no lack -of surprize in Maggie Tulliver’s temporary infatuation with the handsome, -light-minded Stephen Guest, or in Dorothea Brooke’s marriage to that -heady young butterfly, Will Ladislaw. These things certainly were not -arrived at by logical consistency. Nor can one lay his hand on his heart -and say that there is no feeling in the chapter where the fugitive Romola -comes as Madonna to the mountain village, stricken by pestilence, or in -the passage where Dinah Morris strives for Hetty’s soul in prison. - -George Eliot herself tells us the purpose of her art—it is _verity_. - -“It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in -many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise.... All honour -and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the -utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our homes. -But let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret of -proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy.” - -It is Rembrandt, then, rather than Titian, who is her chosen painter. -But she does not often attain his marvellous _chiaroscuro_. - -Her style is clear and almost always firm in drawing, though deficient -in colour. It is full of meaning, almost over-scrupulous in defining -precisely what she wishes to express. Here and there it flashes into -a wise saying, a sparkling epigram. At other times, especially in her -later books, it spreads out and becomes too diffuse, too slow, like Sir -Walter Scott’s. But it never repels by vulgar smartness, nor perplexes -by vagueness and artificial obscurity. It serves her purpose well—to -convey the results of her scrutiny of the inner life and her loving -observation of the outer life in its humblest forms. In these respects it -is admirable and satisfying. And it is her own—she does not imitate, nor -write according to a theory. - -Her general view of human nature is not essentially different from that -expressed in a passage which I quoted from Thackeray in the previous -chapter. We are none of us “irreproachable characters.” We are “mixed -human beings.” Therefore she wishes to tell her stories “in such a way -as to call forth tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy.” - - * * * * * - -As I began so let me end this chapter—with a word on women. For myself, -I think it wise and prudent to maintain with Plutarch that _virtue_ in -man and woman is one and the same. Yet there is a difference between the -feminine and the masculine virtues. This opinion Plutarch sets forth and -illustrates in his brief histories, and George Eliot in her novels. But -of the virtues of women she gives more and finer examples. - - - - -THE POET OF IMMORTAL YOUTH - - -One of the things that surprized and bewildered old Colonel Newcome -when he gathered his boy’s friends around the mahogany tree in the -dull, respectable dining-room at 12 Fitzroy Square, was to hear George -Warrington declare, between huge puffs of tobacco smoke, “that young -Keats was a genius to be estimated in future days with young Raphael.” -At this Charles Honeyman sagely nodded his ambrosial head, while Clive -Newcome assented with sparkling eyes. But to the Colonel, sitting kindly -grave and silent at the head of the table, and recalling (somewhat -dimly) the bewigged and powdered poetry of the age of Queen Anne, such a -critical sentiment seemed radical and revolutionary, almost ungentlemanly. - -How astonished he would have been sixty years later if he had taken up -Mr. Sidney Colvin’s _Life of Keats_, in the “English Men of Letters -Series,” and read in the concluding chapter the deliberate and -remarkable judgment that “by power, as well as by temperament and aim, he -was the most Shakespearean spirit that has lived since Shakespeare”! - -In truth, from the beginning the poetry of Keats has been visited too -much by thunder-storms of praise. It was the indiscriminate enthusiasm -of his friends that drew out the equally indiscriminate ridicule of his -enemies. It was the premature salutation offered to him as a supreme -master of the most difficult of all arts that gave point and sting to -the criticism of evident defects in his work. _The Examiner_ hailed -him, before his first volume had been printed, as one who was destined -to revive the early vigour of English poetry. _Blackwood’s Magazine_ -retorted by quoting his feeblest lines and calling him “Johnny Keats.” -The suspicion of log-rolling led to its usual result in a volley of -stone-throwing. - -Happily, the ultimate fame and influence of a true poet are not -determined by the partizan conflicts which are waged about his name. -He may suffer some personal loss by having to breathe, at times, a -perturbed atmosphere of mingled flattery and abuse instead of the still -air of delightful studies. He may be robbed of some days of a life -already far too short, by the pestilent noise and confusion arising from -that scramble for notoriety which is often unduly honoured with the -name of “literary activity.” And there are some men whose days of real -inspiration are so few, and whose poetic gift is so slender, that this -loss proves fatal to them. They are completely carried away and absorbed -by the speculations and strifes of the market-place. They spend their -time in the intrigues of rival poetic enterprises, and learn to regard -current quotations in the trade journals as the only standard of value. -Minor poets at the outset, they are tempted to risk their little all on -the stock exchange of literature, and, losing their last title to the -noun, retire to bankruptcy on the adjective. - -But Keats did not belong to this frail and foolish race. His lot was cast -in a world of petty conflict and ungenerous rivalry, but he was not of -that world. It hurt him a little, but it did not ruin him. His spiritual -capital was too large, and he regarded it as too sacred to be imperilled -by vain speculations. He had in Chaucer and Spenser, Shakespeare and -Chapman, Milton and Petrarch, older and wiser friends than Leigh Hunt. -For him - - “The blue - Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew - Of summer nights collected still to make - The morning precious: beauty was awake!” - -He perceived, by that light which comes only to high-souled and -noble-hearted poets, - - “The great end - Of poesy, that it should be a friend - To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.” - -To that end he gave the best that he had to give, freely, generously, -joyously pouring himself into the ministry of his art. He did not dream -for a moment that the gift was perfect. Flattery could not blind him -to the limitations and defects of his early work. He was his own best -and clearest critic. But he knew that so far as it went his poetic -inspiration was true. He had faithfully followed the light of a pure -and elevating joy in the opulent, manifold beauty of nature and in the -eloquent significance of old-world legends, and he believed that it -had already led him to a place among the poets whose verse would bring -delight, in far-off years, to the sons and daughters of mankind. He -believed also that if he kept alive his faith in the truth of beauty and -the beauty of truth it would lead him on yet further, into a nobler life -and closer to those immortal bards whose - - “Souls still speak - To mortals of their little week; - Of their sorrows and delights; - Of their passions and their spites; - Of their glory and their shame; - What doth strengthen and what maim.” - -He expressed this faith very clearly in the early and uneven poem called -“Sleep and Poetry,” in a passage which begins - - “Oh, for ten years, that I may overwhelm - Myself in poesy! so I may do the deed - That my own soul has to itself decreed.” - -And then, ere four years had followed that brave wish, his voice fell -silent under a wasting agony of pain and love, and the daisies were -growing upon his Roman grave. - -The pathos of his frustrated hope, his early death, has sometimes -blinded men a little, it seems to me, to the real significance of his -work and the true quality of his influence in poetry. He has been -lamented in the golden verse of Shelley’s “Adonaïs,” and in the prose -of a hundred writers who have shared Shelley’s error without partaking -of his genius, as the loveliest innocent ever martyred by the cruelty -of hostile critics. But, in fact, the vituperations of Gifford and his -crew were no more responsible for the death of Keats, than the stings -of insects are for the death of a man who has perished of hunger on the -coast of Labrador. They added to his sufferings, no doubt, but they did -not take away his life. Keats had far too much virtue in the old Roman -sense—far too much courage, to be killed by a criticism. He died of -consumption, as he clearly and sadly knew that he was fated to do when he -first saw the drop of arterial blood upon his pillow. - -Nor is it just, although it may seem generous, to estimate his fame -chiefly by the anticipation of what he might have accomplished if he -had lived longer; to praise him for his promise at the expense of his -performance; and to rest his claim to a place among the English poets -upon an uncertain prophecy of rivalry with Shakespeare. I find a far -sounder note in Lowell’s manly essay, when he says: “No doubt there is -something tropical and of strange overgrowth in his sudden maturity, but -it _was_ maturity nevertheless.” I hear the accent of a wiser and saner -criticism in the sonnet of one of our American poets: - - “Touch not with dark regret his perfect fame, - Sighing, ‘Had he but lived he had done so’; - Or, ‘Were his heart not eaten out with woe - John Keats had won a prouder, mightier name!’ - Take him for what he was and did—nor blame - Blind fate for all he suffered. Thou shouldst know - Souls such as his escape no mortal blow— - No agony of joy, or sorrow, or shame.” - -“Take him for what he was and did”—that should be the key-note of our -thought of Keats as a poet. The exquisite harmony of his actual work -with his actual character; the truth of what he wrote to what his young -heart saw and felt and enjoyed; the simplicity of his very exuberance of -ornament, and the naturalness of his artifice; the sincerity of his love -of beauty and the beauty of his sincerity—these are the qualities which -give an individual and lasting charm to his poetry, and make his gift to -the world complete in itself and very precious, although,—or perhaps we -should even say because,—it was unfinished. - -Youth itself is imperfect: it is impulsive, visionary, and unrestrained; -full of tremulous delight in its sensations, but not yet thoroughly awake -to the deeper meanings of the world; avid of novelty and mystery, but not -yet fully capable of hearing or interpreting the still, small voice of -divine significance which breathes from the simple and familiar elements -of life. - -Yet youth has its own completeness as a season of man’s existence. It is -justified and indispensable. Alfred de Musset’s - - “We old men born yesterday” - -are simply monstrous. The poetry which expresses and represents youth, -the poetry of sensation and sentiment, has its own place in the -literature of the world. This is the order to which the poetry of Keats -belongs. - -He is not a feminine poet, as Mr. Coventry Patmore calls him, any more -than Theocritus or Tennyson is feminine; for the quality of extreme -sensitiveness to outward beauty is not a mark of femininity. It is found -in men more often and more clearly than in women. But it is always most -keen and joyous and overmastering in the morning of the soul. - -Keats is not a virile poet, like Dante or Shakespeare or Milton; that he -would have become one if he had lived is a happy and loving guess. He is -certainly not a member of the senile school of poetry, which celebrates -the impotent and morbid passions of decay, with a _café chantant_ for its -temple, and the smoke of cigarettes for incense, and cups of absinthe for -its libations, and for its goddess not the immortal Venus rising from the -sea, but the weary, painted, and decrepit Venus sinking into the gutter. - -He is in the highest and best sense of the word a juvenile poet—“mature,” -as Lowell says, but mature, as genius always is, within the boundaries -and in the spirit of his own season of life. The very sadness of his -lovely odes, “To a Nightingale,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “To Autumn,” “To -Psyche,” is the pleasant melancholy of the springtime of the heart. “The -Eve of St. Agnes,” pure and passionate, surprizing us by its fine excess -of colour and melody, sensuous in every line, yet free from the slightest -taint of sensuality, is unforgettable and unsurpassable as the dream -of first love. The poetry of Keats, small in bulk and slight in body -as it seems at first sight to be, endures, and will endure, in English -literature, because it is the embodiment of _the spirit of immortal -youth_. - -Here, I think, we touch its secret as an influence upon other poets. For -that it has been an influence,—in the older sense of the word, which -carries with it a reference to the guiding and controlling force supposed -to flow from the stars to the earth,—is beyond all doubt. The _History -of English Literature_, with which Taine amused us some fifty years ago, -nowhere displays its narrowness of vision more egregiously than in its -failure to take account of Gray, Collins, and Keats as fashioners of -English poetry. It does not mention Gray and Collins at all; the name -of Keats occurs only once, with a reference to “sickly or overflowing -imagination,” but to Byron nearly fifty pages are devoted. The American -critic, Stedman, showed a far broader and more intelligent understanding -of the subject when he said that “Wordsworth begot the mind, and Keats -the body, of the idyllic Victorian School.” - -We can trace the influence of Keats not merely in the conscious or -unconscious imitations of his manner, like those which are so evident in -the early poems of Tennyson and Procter, in Hood’s _Plea of the Midsummer -Fairies_ and _Lycus the Centaur_, in Rossetti’s _Ballads and Sonnets_, -and William Morris’s _Earthly Paradise_, but also in the youthful spirit -of delight in the retelling of old tales of mythology and chivalry; -in the quickened sense of pleasure in the luxuriance and abundance of -natural beauty; in the freedom of overflowing cadences transmuting -ancient forms of verse into new and more flexible measures; in the large -liberty of imaginative diction, making all nature sympathize with -the joy and sorrow of man,—in brief, in many of the finest marks of a -renascence, a renewed youth, which characterize the poetry of the early -Victorian era. - -I do not mean to say that Keats alone, or chiefly, was responsible for -this renascence. He never set up to lead a movement or to found a school. -His genius is not to be compared to that of a commanding artist like -Giotto or Leonardo or Michelangelo, but rather to that of a painter like -Botticelli, whose personal and expressive charm makes itself felt in the -work of many painters, who learned secrets of grace and beauty from him, -though they were not his professed disciples or followers. - -Take for example Matthew Arnold. He called himself, and no doubt rightly, -a Wordsworthian. But it was not from Wordsworth that he caught the -strange and searching melody of “The Forsaken Merman,” or learned to -embroider the laments for “Thyrsis” and “The Scholar-Gypsy” with such -opulence of varied bloom as makes death itself seem lovely. It was from -John Keats. Or read the description of the tapestry on the castle walls -in “Tristram and Iseult.” How perfectly that repeats the spirit of -Keats’s descriptions in “The Eve of St. Agnes”! It is the poetry of the -picturesque. - -Indeed, we shall fail to do justice to the influence of Keats unless -we recognize also that it has produced direct and distinct effects -in the art of painting. The English pre-Raphaelites owed much to his -inspiration. Holman Hunt found two of his earliest subjects for pictures -in “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “The Pot of Basil.” Millais painted -“Lorenzo and Isabella,” and Rossetti “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” There -is an evident sympathy between the art of these painters, which insisted -that every detail in a picture is precious and should be painted with -truthful care for its beauty, and the poetry of Keats, which is filled, -and even overfilled, with minute and loving touches of exquisite -elaboration. - -But it must be remembered that in poetry, as well as in painting, the -spirit of picturesqueness has its dangers. The details may be multiplied -until the original design is lost. The harmony and lucidity of a poem -may be destroyed by innumerable digressions and descriptions. In some of -his poems—in “Endymion” and in “Lamia”—Keats fell very deep into this -fault, and no one knew it better than himself. But when he was at his -best he had the power of adding a hundred delicate details to his central -vision, and making every touch heighten and enhance the general effect. -How wonderful in its unity is the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”! How completely -magical are the opening lines of “Hyperion”: - - “Deep in the shady sadness of a vale - Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, - Far from the fiery Noon, and eve’s one star, - Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone, - Still as the silence round about his lair; - Forest on forest hung about his head - Like cloud on cloud.” - -How large and splendid is the imagery of the sonnet “On First Looking -into Chapman’s Homer”! And who that has any sense of poetry does not -recognize the voice of a young master in the two superb lines of the last -poem that Keats wrote?—the sonnet in which he speaks of the bright star - - “watching, with eternal lids apart, - Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, - The moving waters at their priestlike task - Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.” - -The poets of America have not been slow to recognize the charm and power -of Keats. Holmes and Longfellow and Lowell paid homage to him in their -verse. Lanier inscribed to his memory a poem called “Clover.” Gilder -wrote two sonnets which celebrate his “perfect fame.” Robert Underwood -Johnson has a lovely lyric on “The Name Writ in Water.” - -But I find an even deeper and larger tribute to his influence in the -features of resemblance to his manner and spirit which flash out here -and there, unexpectedly and unconsciously, in the poetry of our New -World. Emerson was so unlike Keats in his intellectual constitution as -to make all contact between them appear improbable, if not impossible. -Yet no one can read Emerson’s “May-Day,” and Keats’ exquisitely truthful -and imaginative lines on “Fancy,” one after the other, without feeling -that the two poems are very near of kin. Lowell’s “Legend of Brittany” -has caught, not only the measure, but also the tone and the diction of -“Isabella.” The famous introduction to “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” with -its often quoted line, - - “What is so rare as a day in June?” - -finds a parallel in the opening verses of “Sleep and Poetry”— - - “What is more gentle than a wind in summer?” - -Lowell’s “Endymion,” which he calls “a mystical comment on Titian’s -‘Sacred and Profane Love,’” is full of echoes from Keats, like this: - - “My day began not till the twilight fell - And lo! in ether from heaven’s sweetest well - The new moon swam, divinely isolate - In maiden silence, she that makes my fate - Haply not knowing it, or only so - As I the secrets of my sheep may know.” - -In Lanier’s rich and melodious “Hymns of the Marshes” there are -innumerable touches in the style of Keats; for example, his apostrophe to -the - - “Reverend marsh, low-couched along the sea, - Old chemist, wrapped in alchemy, - Distilling silence,——” - -or his praise of the - - “Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, - Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, - Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves.” - -One of the finest pieces of elegiac verse that have yet been produced in -America, George E. Woodberry’s poem called “The North Shore Watch,” has -many passages that recall the young poet who wrote - - “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” - -Indeed, we hear the very spirit of Endymion speaking in Woodberry’s lines: - - “Beauty abides, nor suffers mortal change, - Eternal refuge of the orphaned mind.” - -Father John B. Tabb, who had the exquisite art of the Greek epigram at -his command, in one of his delicately finished little poems, imagined -Sappho listening to the “Ode to a Nightingale”: - - “Methinks when first the nightingale - Was mated to thy deathless song, - That Sappho with emotion pale - Amid the Olympian throng, - Again, as in the Lesbian grove, - Stood listening with lips apart, - To hear in thy melodious love - The pantings of her heart.” - -Yes; the memory and influence of Keats endure, and will endure, because -his poetry expresses something in the heart that will not die so long -as there are young men and maidens to see and feel the beauty of the -world and the thrill of love. His poetry is complete, it is true, it is -justified, because it is the fitting utterance of one of those periods of -mental life which Keats himself has called “the human seasons.” - -But its completeness and its truth depend upon its relation, in itself -and in the poet’s mind, to the larger world of poetry, the fuller life, -the rounded year of man. Nor was this forward look, this anticipation of -something better and greater yet to come, lacking in the youth of Keats. -It flashes out, again and again, from his letters, those outpourings -of his heart and mind, so full of boyish exuberance and manly vigour, -so rich in revelations of what this marvellous, beautiful, sensitive, -courageous little creature really was,—a great soul in the body of a lad. -It shows itself clearly and calmly in the remarkable preface in which he -criticizes his own “Endymion,” calling it “a feverish attempt, rather -than a deed accomplished.” “It is just,” he writes, “that this youngster -should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while -it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit -to live.” The same fine hope of a sane and manly youth is expressed in -his early verses entitled “Sleep and Poetry.” He has been speaking of -the first joys of his fancy, in the realm of Flora and old Pan: the -merry games and dances with white-handed nymphs: the ardent pursuit of -love, and the satisfied repose in the bosom of a leafy world. Then his -imagination goes on to something better. - - “And can I ever bid these joys farewell? - Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, - Where I may find the agonies, the strife - Of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, - O’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car - And steeds with streamy manes—the charioteer - Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: - And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly - Along a huge cloud’s ridge: and now with sprightly - Wheel downward come they into fresher skies, - Tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes. - ... And there soon appear - Shapes of delight, of mystery and fear, - Passing along before a dusky space - Made by some mighty oaks: as they would chase - Some ever-fleeting music, on they sweep. - Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep: - Some with upholden hand and mouth severe; - Some with their faces muffled to the ear - Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom, - Go glad and smilingly across the gloom; - Some looking back, and some with upward gaze; - Yes, thousands in a thousand different ways - Flit onward—now a lovely wreath of girls - Dancing their sleek hair into tangled curls; - And now broad wings. Most awfully intent - The driver of those steeds is forward bent, - And seems to listen: O that I might know - All that he writes with such a hurrying glow. - - The visions all are fled—the car is fled - Into the light of heaven, and in their stead - A sense of real things comes doubly strong, - And, like a muddy stream, would bear along - My soul to nothingness: but I will strive - Against all doubtings, and will keep alive - The thought of that same chariot, and the strange - Journey it went.” - -How young-hearted is this vision, how full of thronging fancies and -half-apprehended mystic meanings! Yet how unmistakably it has the long, -high, forward look toward manhood, without which youth itself is not -rounded and complete! - -After all, that look, that brave expectation, is vital in our picture of -Keats. It is one of the reasons why we love him. It is one of the things -which make his slender volume of poetry so companionable, even as an -ardent, dreamy man is doubly a good comrade when we feel in him the hope -of a strong man. We cannot truly understand the wonderful performance of -Keats without considering his promise; we cannot appreciate what he did -without remembering that it was only part of what he hoped to do. - -He was not one of those who believe that the ultimate aim of poetry is -sensuous loveliness, and that there is no higher law above the law of -“art for art’s sake.” The poets of arrested development, the artificers -of mere melody and form, who say that art must always play and never -teach, the musicians who are content to remain forever - - “The idle singers of an empty day,” - -are not his true followers. - -He held that “beauty is truth.” But he held also another article that has -been too often left out in the repetition of his poetic creed: he held -“truth, beauty,” and he hoped one day to give a clear, full utterance to -that higher, holier vision. Perhaps he has, but not to mortal ears. - - - - -THE RECOVERY OF JOY - -WORDSWORTH’S POETRY - - -When this essay was written, a good many years ago, there was no -available biography of Wordsworth except the two-volume _Memoir_ by -Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, the poet’s nephew. It is a solid work of -family piety, admiring and admirable; but it must be admitted that it is -dull. It is full of matters of no particular consequence, and it leaves -out events in the poet’s life and traits in his character which are not -only interesting in themselves but also of real importance to a vital -understanding of his work. - -Even while reading the _Memoir_, I felt sure that he was not always the -tranquil, patient, wise, serenely happy sage that he appeared in his -later years,—sure that a joy in peace as deep and strong as his was, -could only have been won through sharp conflict,—sure that the smooth -portrait drawn by the reverent hand of the bishop did not fully and -frankly depict the real man who wrote the deep and moving poetry of -Wordsworth. - -It was about this time that the valuable studies of Wordsworth’s early -life which had been made by Professor Emile Legouis, (then of the -University of Lyons, now of the Sorbonne,) were published in English. -This volume threw a new light upon the poet’s nature, revealing its -intense, romantic strain, and making clear at least some of the causes -which led to the shipwreck of his first hopes and to the period of -profound gloom which followed his return from residence in France in -December 1792. - -Shortly after reading Professor Legouis’ book, I met by chance a -gentleman in Baltimore and was convinced by what he told me, (in a -conversation which I do not feel at liberty to repeat in detail,) that -Wordsworth had a grand “affair of the heart” while he lived in France, -with a young French lady of excellent family and character. But they were -parted. A daughter was born, (whom he legitimated according to French -law,) and descendants of that daughter were living. - -There was therefore solid ground for my feeling that the poet was not -a man who had been always and easily decorous. He had passed through a -time of storm and stress. He had lost not only his political dreams and -his hopes of a career, but also his first love and his joy. The knowledge -of this gave his poetry a new meaning for me, brought it nearer, made it -seem more deeply human. It was under the influence of this feeling that -this essay was written in a farmhouse in Tyringham Valley, where I was -staying in the winter of 1897, with Richard Watson Gilder and his wife. - -Since then Professor George McLean Harper has completed and published, -(1916,) his classic book on _William Wordsworth, His Life, Works, and -Influence_. This is undoubtedly the very best biography of the poet, -and it contains much new material, particularly with reference to his -life and connections in France. But there is nothing in it to shake, -and on the contrary there is much to confirm, the opinion which was -first put forth in this essay: namely, that the central theme, the great -significance, of Wordsworth’s poetry is _the recovery of joy_. - - -I - -William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the town of Cockermouth in -Cumberland; educated in the village school of Hawkshead among the -mountains, and at St. John’s College, Cambridge. A dreamy, moody youth; -always ambitious, but not always industrious; passionate in disposition, -with high spirits, simple tastes, and independent virtues; he did not -win, and seems not to have desired, university honours. His principal -property when he came of age consisted of two manuscript poems,—_An -Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_,—composed in the manner of -Cowper’s _Task_. With these in his pocket he wandered over to France; -partly to study the language; partly to indulge his inborn love of travel -by a second journey on the Continent; and partly to look on at the vivid -scenes of the French Revolution. But the vast dæmonic movement of which -he proposed to be a spectator caught his mind in its current and swept -him out of his former self. - -Wordsworth was not originally a revolutionist, like Coleridge and -Southey. He was not even a native radical, except as all simplicity -and austerity of character tend towards radicalism. When he passed -through Paris, in November of 1791, and picked up a bit of stone from -the ruins of the Bastile as a souvenir, it was only a sign of youthful -sentimentality. But when he came back to Paris in October of 1792, after -a winter at Orleans and a summer at Blois, in close intercourse with that -ardent and noble republican, Michael Beaupuy, he had been converted into -an eager partisan of the Republic. He even dreamed of throwing himself -into the conflict, reflecting on “the power of one pure and energetic -will to accomplish great things.” - -His conversion was not, it seems to me, primarily a matter of -intellectual conviction. It was an affair of emotional sympathy. His -knowledge of the political and social theories of the Revolution was but -superficial. He was never a doctrinaire. The influence of Rousseau and -Condorcet did not penetrate far beneath the skin of his mind. It was -the primal joy of the Revolutionary movement that fascinated him,—the -confused glimmering of new hopes and aspirations for mankind. He was -like a man who has journeyed, half asleep, from the frost-bound dulness -of a wintry clime, and finds himself, fully awake, in a new country, -where the time for the singing of birds has come, and the multitudinous -blossoming of spring bursts forth. He is possessed by the spirit of -joy, and reason follows where feeling leads the way. Wordsworth himself -has confessed, half unconsciously, the secret of his conversion in his -lines on _The French Revolution as it appeared to Enthusiasts at its -Commencement_. - - “Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! - For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood - Upon our side, we who were strong in love! - Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, - But to be young was very heaven!” - -There was another “bliss,” keener even than the dreams of political -enthusiasm, that thrilled him in this momentous year,—the rapture of -romantic love. Into this he threw himself with ardour and tasted all its -joy. We do not know exactly what it was that broke the vision and dashed -the cup of gladness from his lips. Perhaps it was some difficulty with -the girl’s family, who were royalists. Perhaps it was simply the poet’s -poverty. Whatever the cause was, love’s young dream was shattered, and -there was nothing left but the painful memory of an error, to be atoned -for in later years as best he could. - -His political hopes and ideals were darkened by the actual horrors -which filled Paris during the fall of 1792. His impulse to become a -revolutionist was shaken, if not altogether broken. Returning to England -at the end of the same year, he tried to sustain his sinking spirits by -setting in order the reasons and grounds of his new-born enthusiasm, -already waning. His letter to Bishop Watson, written in 1793, is the -fullest statement of republican sympathies that he ever made. In it he -even seems to justify the execution of Louis XVI, and makes light of “the -idle cry of modish lamentation which has resounded from the court to the -cottage” over the royal martyr’s fate. He defends the right of the people -to overthrow all who oppress them, to choose their own rulers, to direct -their own destiny by universal suffrage, and to sweep all obstacles out -of their way. The reasoning is so absolute, so relentless, the scorn -for all who oppose it is so lofty, that already we begin to suspect a -wavering conviction intrenching itself for safety. - -The course of events in France was ill fitted to nourish the joy of a -pure-minded enthusiast. The tumultuous terrors of the Revolution trod its -ideals in the dust. Its light was obscured in its own sulphurous smoke. -Robespierre ran his bloody course to the end; and when his head fell -under the guillotine, Wordsworth could not but exult. War was declared -between France and England, and his heart was divided; but the deeper -and stronger ties were those that bound him to his own country. He was -English in his very flesh and bones. The framework of his mind was of -Cumberland. So he stood rooted in his native allegiance, while the leaves -and blossoms of joy fell from him, like a tree stripped bare by the first -great gale of autumn. - -The years from 1793 to 1795 were the period of his deepest poverty, -spiritual and material. His youthful poems, published in 1793, met with -no more success than they deserved. His plans for entering into active -life were feeble and futile. His mind was darkened and confused, his -faith shaken to the foundation, and his feelings clouded with despair. -In this crisis of disaster two gifts of fortune came to him. His sister -Dorothy took her place at his side, to lead him back by her wise, tender, -cheerful love from the far country of despair. His friend Raisley Calvert -bequeathed to him a legacy of nine hundred pounds; a small inheritance, -but enough to protect him from the wolf of poverty, while he devoted his -life to the muse. From the autumn of 1795, when he and his sister set -up housekeeping together in a farmhouse at Racedown, until his death in -1850 in the cottage at Rydal Mount, where he had lived for thirty-seven -years with his wife and children, there was never any doubt about the -disposition of his life. It was wholly dedicated to poetry. - - -II - -But what kind of poetry? What was to be its motive power? What its -animating spirit? Here the experience of life acting upon his natural -character became the deciding factor. - -Wordsworth was born a lover of joy, not sensual, but spiritual. The -first thing that happened to him, when he went out into the world, was -that he went bankrupt of joy. The enthusiasm of his youth was dashed, the -high hope of his spirit was quenched. At the touch of reality his dreams -dissolved. It seemed as though he were altogether beaten, a broken man. -But with the gentle courage of his sister to sustain him, his indomitable -spirit rose again, to renew the adventure of life. He did not evade the -issue, by turning aside to seek for fame or wealth. His problem from -first to last was the problem of joy,—inward, sincere, imperishable -joy. How to recover it after life’s disappointments, how to deepen it -amid life’s illusions, how to secure it through life’s trials, how to -spread it among life’s confusions,—this was the problem that he faced. -This was the wealth that he desired to possess, and to increase, and to -diffuse,—the wealth - - “Of joy in widest commonalty spread.” - -None of the poets has been as clear as Wordsworth in the avowal that the -immediate end of poetry is pleasure. “We have no sympathy,” said he, “but -what is propagated by pleasure, ... wherever we sympathise with pain, -it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle -combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is no general -principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what -has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone.” And -again: “The end of Poetry is to produce excitement, in co-existence with -an over-balance of pleasure.” - -[Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. - -Painted by W. Boxall. - -_After an engraving by J. Bromley._] - -But it may be clearly read in his poetry that what he means by “pleasure” -is really an inward, spiritual joy. It is such a joy, in its various -forms, that charms him most as he sees it in the world. His gallery of -human portraits contains many figures, but every one of them is presented -in the light of joy,—the rising light of dawn, or the waning light of -sunset. _Lucy Gray_ and the little maid in _We are Seven_ are childish -shapes of joy. The _Highland Girl_ is an embodiment of virginal gladness, -and the poet cries - - “Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace - Hath led me to this lovely place. - _Joy have I had_; and going hence - I bear away my recompence.” - -Wordsworth regards joy as an actual potency of vision: - - “With an eye made quiet by the power - Of harmony, and _the deep power of joy_, - We see into the heart of things.” - -Joy is indeed the master-word of his poetry. The dancing daffodils enrich -his heart with joy. - - “They flash upon that inward eye - Which is the bliss of solitude; - And then my heart with pleasure fills, - And dances with the daffodils.” - -The kitten playing with the fallen leaves charms him with pure merriment. -The skylark’s song lifts him up into the clouds. - - “There is madness about thee, and _joy divine_ - In that song of thine.” - -He turns from the nightingale, that creature of a “fiery heart,” to the -Stock-dove: - - “He sang of love, with quiet blending, - Slow to begin and never ending; - Of serious faith, _and inward glee_; - That was the song—the song for me.” - -He thinks of love which grows to use - - “_Joy as her holiest language._” - -He speaks of life’s disenchantments and wearinesses as - - “_All that is at enmity with joy._” - -When autumn closes around him, and the season makes him conscious that -his leaf is sere and yellow on the bough, he exclaims - - “_Yet will I temperately rejoice_; - Wide is the range and free the choice - Of undiscordant themes; - Which haply kindred souls may prize - Not less than vernal ecstacies, - And passion’s feverish dreams.” - -_Temperate rejoicing_,—that is the clearest note of Wordsworth’s poetry. -Not an unrestrained gladness, for he can never escape from that deep, -strange experience of his youth. Often, in thought, he - - “Must hear Humanity in fields and groves - Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang - Brooding above the fierce confederate storm - Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore - Within the walls of cities.” - -But even while he hears these sounds he will not be “downcast or -forlorn.” He will find a deeper music to conquer these clashing -discords. He will learn, and teach, a hidden joy, strong to survive amid -the sorrows of a world like this. He will not look for it in some far-off -unrealized Utopia, - - “But in the very world which is the world - Of all of us,—_the place where in the end_ - _We find our happiness, or not at all_!” - -To this quest of joy, to this proclamation of joy, he dedicates his life. - - “By words - Which speak of nothing more than what we are - Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep - Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain - _To noble raptures_.” - -And herein he becomes a prophet to his age,—a prophet of the secret of -joy, simple, universal, enduring,—the open secret. - -The burden of Wordsworth’s prophecy of joy, as found in his poetry, -is threefold. First, he declares with exultation that he has seen in -Nature the evidence of a living spirit in vital correspondence with -the spirit of man. Second, he expresses the deepest, tenderest feeling -of the inestimable value of the humblest human life,—a feeling which -through all its steadiness is yet strangely illumined by sudden gushes of -penetration and pathos. Third, he proclaims a lofty ideal of the liberty -and greatness of man, consisting in obedience to law and fidelity to duty. - -I am careful in choosing words to describe the manner of this threefold -prophesying, because I am anxious to distinguish it from didacticism. -Not that Wordsworth is never didactic; for he is very often entirely and -dreadfully so. But at such times he is not at his best; and it is in -these long uninspired intervals that we must bear, as Walter Pater has -said, “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 peculiar power.” Wordsworth’s genius as a poet did not -always illuminate his industry as a writer. In the intervals he prosed -terribly. There is a good deal of what Lowell calls “Dr. Wattsiness,” in -some of his poems. - -But the character of his best poems was strangely inspirational. They -came to him like gifts, and he read them aloud as if wondering at their -beauty. Through the protracted description of an excursion, or the -careful explanation of a state of mind, he slowly plods on foot; but when -he comes to the mount of vision, he mounts up with wings as an eagle. In -the analysis of a character, in the narration of a simple story, he often -drones, and sometimes stammers; but when the flash of insight arrives, he -sings. This is the difference between the pedagogue and the prophet: the -pedagogue repeats a lesson learned by rote, the prophet chants a truth -revealed by vision. - - -III - -Let me speak first of Wordsworth as a poet of Nature. The peculiar and -precious quality of his best work is that it is done with his eye on the -object and his imagination beyond it. - -Nothing could be more accurate, more true to the facts than Wordsworth’s -observation of the external world. There was an underlying steadiness, -a fundamental placidity, a kind of patient, heroic obstinacy in his -character, which blended with his delicate, almost tremulous sensibility, -to make him rarely fitted for this work. He could look and listen long. -When the magical moment of disclosure arrived, he was there and ready. - -Some of his senses were not particularly acute. Odours seem not to -have affected him. There are few phrases descriptive of the fragrance -of nature in his poetry, and so far as I can remember none of them are -vivid. He could never have written Tennyson’s line about - - “The smell of violets hidden in the green.” - -Nor was he especially sensitive to colour. Most of his descriptions in -this region are vague and luminous, rather than precise and brilliant. -Colour-words are comparatively rare in his poems. Yellow, I think, was -his favourite, if we may judge by the flowers that he mentioned most -frequently. Yet more than any colour he loved clearness, transparency, -the diaphanous current of a pure stream, the light of sunset - - “that imbues - Whate’er it strikes with gem-like hues.” - -But in two things his power of observation was unsurpassed, I think we -may almost say, unrivalled: in sound, and in movement. For these he had -what he describes in his sailor-brother, - - “a watchful heart - Still couchant, an inevitable ear, - And an eye practiced like a blind man’s touch.” - -In one of his juvenile poems, a sonnet describing the stillness of the -world at twilight, he says: - - “Calm is all nature as a resting wheel; - The kine are couched upon the dewy grass, - The horse alone seen dimly as I pass, - _Is cropping audibly his evening meal_.” - -At nightfall, while he is listening to the hooting of the owls and -mocking them, there comes an interval of silence, and then - - “a gentle shock of mild surprise - _Has carried far into his heart the voice_ - _Of mountain torrents_.” - -At midnight, on the summit of Snowdon, from a rift in the cloud-ocean at -his feet, he hears - - “the roar of waters, torrents, streams - Innumerable, roaring with one voice.” - -Under the shadows of the great yew-trees of Borrowdalek he loves - - “To lie and listen to the mountain flood - _Murmuring from Glaramara’s inmost caves_.” - -What could be more perfect than the little lyric which begins - - “Yes, it was the mountain echo - Solitary, clear, profound, - Answering to the shouting cuckoo - Giving to her sound for sound.” - -How poignant is the touch with which he describes the notes of the -fiery-hearted Nightingale, singing in the dusk: - - “they pierce and pierce; - Tumultuous harmony and fierce!” - -But at sunrise other choristers make different melodies: - - “The birds are singing in the distant woods; - Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; - The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; - And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.” - -Wandering into a lovely glen among the hills, he hears all the voices of -nature blending together: - - “The Stream, so ardent in its course before, - Sent forth such sallies of glad sound that all - Which I till then had heard, appeared the voice - Of common pleasure: beast and bird, the lamb, - The shepherd’s dog, the linnet and the thrush - Vied with this waterfall, and made a song, - Which while I listened, seemed like the wild growth - _Or like some natural produce of the air_ - _That could not cease to be_.” - -Wordsworth, more than any other English poet, interprets and glorifies -the mystery of sound. He is the poet who sits oftenest by the Ear-Gate -listening to the whispers and murmurs of the invisible guests who throng -that portal into “the city of Man-Soul.” Indeed the whole spiritual -meaning of nature seems to come to him in the form of sound. - - “Wonder not - If high the transport, great the joy I felt, - Communing in this sort through earth and heaven - With every form of creature, as it looked - Towards the Uncreated with a countenance - Of adoration, with an eye of love. - One song they sang, and it was audible, - Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear, - O’ercome by humblest prelude of that strain, - Forgot her functions and slept undisturbed.” - -No less wonderful is his sense of the delicate motions of nature, the -visible transition of form and outline. How exquisite is the description -of a high-poising summer-cloud, - - “That heareth not the loud winds when they call; - And moveth all together, if it move at all.” - -He sees the hazy ridges of the mountains like a golden ladder, - - “Climbing suffused with sunny air - To stop—no record hath told where!” - -He sees the gentle mists - - “Curling with unconfirmed intent - On that green mountain’s side.” - -He watches the swan swimming on Lake Lucarno,— - - “Behold!—as with a gushing impulse heaves - That downy prow, and softly cleaves - The mirror of the crystal flood, - Vanish inverted hill and shadowy wood.” - -He catches sight of the fluttering green linnet among the hazel-trees: - - “My dazzled sight he oft deceives, - A Brother of the dancing leaves.” - -He looks on the meadows sleeping in the spring sunshine: - - “The cattle are grazing, - Their heads never raising, - There are forty feeding like one!” - -He beholds the far-off torrent pouring down Ben Cruachan: - - “Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice; - Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, - Frozen by distance.” - -Now in such an observation of Nature as this, so keen, so patient, so -loving, so delicate, there is an immediate comfort for the troubled mind, -a direct refuge and repose for the heart. To see and hear such things is -peace and joy. It is a consolation and an education. Wordsworth himself -has said this very distinctly. - - “One impulse from a vernal wood - May teach you more of man - Of moral evil and of good - Than all the sages can.” - -But the most perfect expression of his faith in the educating power of -Nature is given in one of the little group of lyrics which are bound -together by the name of Lucy,—love-songs so pure and simple that they -seem almost mysterious in their ethereal passion. - - “Three years she grew in sun and shower, - Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower - On earth was never sown; - This Child I to myself will take; - She shall be mine, and I will make - A Lady of my own. - - Myself will to my darling be - Both law and impulse; and with me - The Girl, in rock and plain, - In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, - Shall feel an overseeing power - To kindle or restrain. - - ... - - The stars of midnight shall be dear - To her; and she shall lean her ear - In many a secret place - Where rivulets dance their wayward round, - _And beauty born of murmuring sound_ - _Shall pass into her face_.’” - -The personification of Nature in this poem is at the farthest removed -from the traditional poetic fiction which peopled the world with Dryads -and Nymphs and Oreads. Nor has it any touch of the “pathetic fallacy” -which imposes the thoughts and feelings of man upon natural objects. It -presents unconsciously, very simply, and yet prophetically, Wordsworth’s -vision of Nature,—a vision whose distinctive marks are vitality and -unity. - -It is his faith that “every flower enjoys the air it breathes.” It is -also his faith that underlying and animating all this joy there is the -life of one mighty Spirit. This faith rises to its most magnificent -expression in the famous _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_: - - “And I have felt - A presence that disturbs me with the joy - Of elevated thought; a sense sublime - Of something far more deeply interfused, - Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, - And the round ocean and the living air, - And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: - A motion and a spirit, that impels - All thinking things, all objects of all thought, - And rolls through all things.” - -The union of this animating Spirit of Nature, with the beholding, -contemplating, rejoicing spirit of man is like a pure and noble marriage, -in which man attains peace and the spousal consummation of his being. -This is the first remedy which Wordsworth finds for the malady of -despair, the first and simplest burden of his prophecy of joy. And he -utters it with confidence, - - “Knowing that Nature never did betray - The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege, - Through all the years of this our life, to lead - From joy to joy: for she can so inform - The mind that is within us, so impress - With quietness and beauty, and so feed - With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, - Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, - Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all - The dreary intercourse of daily life, - Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb - Our cheerful faith that all which we behold - Is full of blessings.” - - -IV - -Side by side with this revelation of Nature, and interwoven with it so -closely as to be inseparable, Wordsworth was receiving a revelation of -humanity, no less marvellous, no less significant for his recovery of -joy. Indeed he himself seems to have thought it the more important of the -two, for he speaks of the mind of man as - - “My haunt and the main region of my song”; - -And again he says that he will set out, like an adventurer, - - “And through the human heart explore the way; - And look and listen—gathering whence I may, - Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain.” - -The discovery of humble life, of peasant character, of lowly, trivial -scenes and incidents, as a field for poetry, was not original with -Wordsworth. But he was the first English poet to explore this field -thoroughly, sympathetically, with steady and deepening joy. Burns had -been there before him; but the song of Burns though clear and passionate, -was fitful. Cowper had been there before him; but Cowper was like a -visitor from the polite world, never an inhabitant, never quite able to -pierce gently, powerfully down to the realities of lowly life and abide -in them. Crabbe had been there before him; but Crabbe was something of -a pessimist; he felt the rough shell of the nut, but did not taste the -sweet kernel. - -Wordsworth, if I may draw a comparison from another art, was the Millet -of English poetry. In his verse we find the same quality of perfect -comprehension, of tender pathos, of absolute truth interfused with -delicate beauty that makes Millet’s _Angelus_, and _The Gleaners_ and -_The Sower_ and _The Sheepfold_, immortal visions of the lowly life. -Place beside these pictures, if you will, Wordsworth’s _Solitary Reaper_, -_The Old Cumberland Beggar_, _Margaret_ waiting in her ruined cottage -for the husband who would never return, _Michael_, the old shepherd who -stood, many and many a day, beside the unfinished sheepfold which he had -begun to build with his lost boy, - - “And never lifted up a single stone,”— - -place these beside Millet’s pictures, and the poems will bear the -comparison. - -Coleridge called Wordsworth “a miner of the human heart.” But there is a -striking peculiarity in his mining: he searched the most familiar places, -by the most simple methods, to bring out the rarest and least suspected -treasures. His discovery was that there is an element of poetry, like -some metal of great value, diffused through the common clay of every-day -life. - -It is true that he did not always succeed in separating the precious -metal from the surrounding dross. There were certain limitations in his -mind which prevented him from distinguishing that which was familiar and -precious, from that which was merely familiar. - -One of these limitations was his lack of a sense of humour. At a -dinner-party he announced that he was never witty but once in his life. -When asked to narrate the instance, after some hesitation he said: “Well, -I will tell you. I was standing some time ago at the entrance of my -cottage at Rydal Mount. A man accosted me with the question, ‘Pray, sir, -have you seen my wife pass by?’ Whereupon I said, ‘Why, my good friend, -I didn’t know till this moment that you had a wife!’” The humour of this -story is unintentional and lies otherwhere than Wordsworth thought. The -fact that he was capable of telling it as a merry jest accounts for the -presence of many queer things in his poetry. For example; the lines in -_Simon Lee_, - - “Few months of life has he in store - As he to you will tell, - For still the more he works, the more - Do his weak ankles swell:” - -the stanza in _Peter Bell_, which Shelley was accused of having -maliciously invented, but which was actually printed in the first edition -of the poem, - - “Is it a party in a parlour - Cramming just as they on earth were crammed, - Some sipping punch—some sipping tea - But, as you by their faces see, - All silent and all—damned?” - -the couplet in the original version of _The Blind Highland Boy_ which -describes him as embarking on his voyage in - - “A household tub, like one of those - Which women use to wash their clothes.” - -It is quite certain, I think, that Wordsworth’s insensibility to -the humourous side of things made him incapable of perceiving one -considerable source of comfort and solace in lowly life. Plain and poor -people get a great deal of consolation, in their hard journey, out of the -rude but keen fun that they take by the way. The sense of humour is a -means of grace. - -I doubt whether Wordsworth’s peasant-poetry has ever been widely popular -among peasants themselves. There was an old farmer in the Lake Country -who had often seen the poet and talked with him, and who remembered him -well. Canon Rawnsley has made an interesting record of some of the old -man’s reminiscences. When he was asked whether he had ever read any of -Wordsworth’s poetry, or seen any of his books about in the farmhouses, -he answered: - -“Ay, ay, time or two. But ya’re weel aware there’s potry and potry. -There’s potry wi’ a li’le bit pleasant in it, and potry sic as a man can -laugh at or the childer understand, and some as takes a deal of mastery -to make out what’s said, and a deal of Wordsworth’s was this sort, ye -kna. You could tell fra the man’s faace his potry would niver have no -laugh in it.” - -But when we have admitted these limitations, it remains true that no -other English poet has penetrated so deeply into the springs of poetry -which rise by every cottage door, or sung so nobly of the treasures which -are hidden in the humblest human heart, as Wordsworth has. This is his -merit, his incomparable merit, that he has done so much, amid the hard -conditions, the broken dreams, and the cruel necessities of life, to -remind us how rich we are in being simply human. - -Like Clifford, in the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_, - - “Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,” - -and thenceforth his chosen task was to explore the beauty and to show the -power of that common love. - - “There is a comfort in the strength of love; - ’Twill make a thing endurable, which else - Would overset the brain or break the heart.” - -He found the best portion of a good man’s life in - - “His little, nameless, unremembered acts - Of kindness and of love.” - -In _The Old Cumberland Beggar_ he declared - - “’Tis Nature’s law - That none, the meanest of created things, - Of forms created the most vile and brute, - The dullest or most noxious, should exist - Divorced from good—a spirit and pulse of good, - A life and soul, to every mode of being - Inseparably linked.” - -And then he went on to trace, not always with full poetic inspiration, -but still with many touches of beautiful insight, the good that the old -beggar did and received in the world, by wakening among the peasants -to whose doors he came from year to year, the memory of past deeds of -charity, by giving them a sense of kinship with the world of want and -sorrow, and by bestowing on them in their poverty the opportunity of -showing mercy to one whose needs were even greater than their own; -for,—the poet adds—with one of those penetrating flashes which are the -surest mark of his genius,— - - “Man is dear to man; the poorest poor - Long for some moments in a weary life - When they can know and feel that they have been, - Themselves, the fathers and the dealers out - Of some small blessings; have been kind to such - As needed kindness, for this single cause - That we have all of us one human heart.” - -Nor did Wordsworth forget, in his estimate of the value of the simplest -life, those pleasures which are shared by all men. - - “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; - And hermits are contented with their cells; - And students with their pensive citadels; - Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, - Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom - High as the highest Peak of Furniss-fells, - Will murmur by the hour in fox-glove bells; - In truth the prison, unto which we doom - Ourselves, no prison is.” - -He sees a Miller dancing with two girls on the platform of a boat moored -in the river Thames, and breaks out into a song on the “stray pleasures” -that are spread through the earth to be claimed by whoever shall find -them. A little crowd of poor people gather around a wandering musician in -a city street, and the poet cries, - - “Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream; - Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream; - They are deaf to your murmurs—they care not for you, - Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue!” - -He describes Coleridge and himself as lying together on the greensward in -the orchard by the cottage at Grasmere, and says - - “If but a bird, to keep them company, - Or butterfly sate down, they were, I ween, - As pleased as if the same had been a maiden Queen.” - -It was of such simple and unchartered blessings that he loved to sing. He -did not think that the vain or the worldly would care to listen to his -voice. Indeed he said in a memorable passage of gentle scorn that he did -not expect his poetry to be fashionable. “It is an awful truth,” wrote he -to Lady Beaumont, “that there neither is nor can be any genuine enjoyment -of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who either live -or wish to live in the broad light of the world,—among those who either -are, or are striving to make themselves, people of consideration in -society. This is a truth, and an awful one, because to be incapable of -a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of -human nature and reverence for God.” He did not expect that his poetry -would be popular in that world where men and women devote themselves to -the business of pleasure, and where they care only for the things that -minister to vanity or selfishness,—and it never was. - -But there was another world where he expected to be welcome and of -service. He wished his poetry to cheer the solitary, to uplift the -downcast, to bid the despairing hope again, to teach the impoverished -how much treasure was left to them. In short, he intended by the quiet -ministry of his art to be one of those - - “Poets who keep the world in heart,” - -—and so he was. - -It is impossible to exaggerate the value of such a service. Measured by -any true and vital standard Wordsworth’s contribution to the welfare of -mankind was greater, more enduring than that of the amazing Corsican, -Bonaparte, who was born but a few months before him and blazed his way to -glory. Wordsworth’s service was to life at its fountain-head. His remedy -for the despair and paralysis of the soul was not the prescription of a -definite philosophy as an antidote. It was a hygienic method, a simple, -healthful, loving life in fellowship with man and nature, by which -the native tranquillity and vigour of the soul would be restored. The -tendency of his poetry is to enhance our interest in humanity, to promote -the cultivation of the small but useful virtues, to brighten our joy in -common things, and to deepen our trust in a wise, kind, over-ruling God. -Wordsworth gives us not so much a new scheme of life as a new sense of -its interior and inalienable wealth. His calm, noble, lofty poetry is -needed to-day to counteract the belittling and distracting influence -of great cities; to save us from that most modern form of insanity, -publicomania, which sacrifices all the sanctities of life to the craze -for advertising; and to make a little quiet space in the heart, where -those who are still capable of thought, in this age of clattering -machinery, shall be able to hear themselves think. - - -V - -But there is one still deeper element in Wordsworth’s poetry. He tells -us very clearly that the true liberty and grandeur of _mankind_ are -to be found along the line of obedience to law and fidelity to duty. -This is the truth which was revealed to him, slowly and serenely, as a -consolation for the loss of his brief revolutionary dream. He learned -to rejoice in it more and more deeply, and to proclaim it more and more -clearly, as his manhood settled into firmness and strength. - -Fixing his attention at first upon the humblest examples of the power of -the human heart to resist unfriendly circumstances, as in _Resolution -and Independence_, and to endure sufferings and trials, as in _Margaret_ -and _Michael_, he grew into a new conception of the right nobility. He -saw that it was not necessary to make a great overturning of society -before the individual man could begin to fulfil his destiny. “What then -remains?” he cries— - - “To seek - Those helps for his occasion ever near - Who lacks not will to use them; vows, renewed - On the first motion of a holy thought; - Vigils of contemplation; praise; and prayer— - A stream, which, from the fountain of the heart, - Issuing however feebly, nowhere flows - Without access of unexpected strength. - But, above all, the victory is sure - For him, who seeking faith by virtue, strives - To yield entire submission to the law - Of conscience—conscience reverenced and obeyed, - As God’s most intimate presence in the soul, - And his most perfect image in the world.” - -If we would hear this message breathed in tones of lyric sweetness, as -to the notes of a silver harp, we may turn to Wordsworth’s poems on the -Skylark,— - - “Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; - True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.” - -If we would hear it proclaimed with grandeur, as by a solemn organ; -or with martial ardour, as by a ringing trumpet, we may read the _Ode -to Duty_ or _The Character of the Happy Warrior_, two of the noblest -and most weighty poems that Wordsworth ever wrote. There is a certain -distinction and elevation about his moral feelings which makes them in -themselves poetic. In his poetry beauty is goodness and goodness is -beauty. - -But I think it is in the Sonnets that this element of Wordsworth’s poetry -finds the broadest and most perfect expression. For here he sweeps upward -from the thought of the freedom and greatness of the individual man to -the vision of nations and races emancipated and ennobled by loyalty to -the right. How pregnant and powerful are his phrases! “Plain living and -high thinking.” “The homely beauty of the good old cause.” “A few strong -instincts and a few plain rules.” “Man’s unconquerable mind.” “By the -soul only, the Nations shall be great and free.” The whole series of -_Sonnets addressed to Liberty_, published in 1807, is full of poetic and -prophetic fire. But none among them burns with a clearer light, none -is more characteristic of him at his best, than that which is entitled -_London, 1802_. - - “Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour; - England hath need of thee; she is a fen - Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, - Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, - Have forfeited their ancient English dower - Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; - Oh! raise us up; return to us again; - And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. - Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; - Thou had’st a voice whose sound was like the sea: - Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, - So didst thou travel on life’s common way - In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart - The lowliest duties on herself did lay.” - -This sonnet embraces within its “scanty plot of ground” the roots of -Wordsworth’s strength. Here is his view of nature in the kinship between -the lonely star and the solitary soul. Here is his recognition of life’s -common way as the path of honour, and of the lowliest duties as the -highest. Here is his message that manners and virtue must go before -freedom and power. And here is the deep spring and motive of all his -work, in the thought that _joy_, _inward happiness_, is the dower that -has been lost and must be regained. - -Here then I conclude this chapter on Wordsworth. There are other things -that might well be said about him, indeed that would need to be said if -this were intended for a complete estimate of his influence. I should -wish to speak of the deep effect which his poetry has had upon the style -of other poets, breaking the bondage of “poetic diction” and leading the -way to a simpler and more natural utterance. I should need to touch upon -his alleged betrayal of his early revolutionary principles in politics, -and to show, (if a paradox may be pardoned), that he never had them and -that he always kept them. He never forsook liberty; he only changed his -conception of it. He saw that the reconstruction of society must be -preceded by reconstruction of the individual. Browning’s stirring lyric, -_The Lost Leader_,— - - “Just for a handful of silver he left us, - Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat,”— - -may have been written with Wordsworth in mind, but it was a singularly -infelicitous suggestion of a remarkably good poem. - -All of these additions would be necessary if this estimate were intended -to be complete. But it is not, and so let it stand. - -If we were to choose a motto for Wordsworth’s poetry it might be this: -“Rejoice, and again I say unto you, rejoice.” And if we looked farther -for a watchword, we might take it from that other great poet, Isaiah, -standing between the fierce radicals and sullen conservatives of Israel, -and saying, - - “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength, - In rest and in returning ye shall be saved.” - - - - -“THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT” - -ROBERT BROWNING’S POETRY - - -There is a striking contrast between the poetry of Browning and the -poetry of Wordsworth; and this comes naturally from the difference -between the two men in genius, temperament and life. I want to trace -carefully and perhaps more clearly some of the lines of that difference. -I do not propose to ask which of them ranks higher as poet. That seems -to me a futile question. The contrast in kind interests me more than the -comparison of degree. And this contrast, I think, can best be felt and -understood through a closer knowledge of the central theme of each of the -two poets. - -Wordsworth is a poet of recovered joy. He brings consolation and -refreshment to the heart,—consolation which is passive strength, -refreshment which is peaceful energy. His poetry is addressed not to -crowds, but to men standing alone, and feeling their loneliness most -deeply when the crowd presses most tumultuously about them. He speaks -to us one by one, distracted by the very excess of life, separated from -humanity by the multitude of men, dazzled by the shifting variety of hues -into which the eternal light is broken by the prism of the world,—one -by one he accosts us, and leads us gently back, if we will follow him, -into a more tranquil region and a serener air. There we find the repose -of “a heart at leisure from itself.” There we feel the unity of man and -nature, and of both in God. There we catch sight of those eternal stars -of truth whose shining, though sometimes hidden, is never dimmed by the -cloud-confusions of morality. Such is the mission of Wordsworth to the -age. Matthew Arnold has described it with profound beauty. - - “He found us when the age had bound - Our souls in its benumbing round, - He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. - He laid us as we lay at birth - On the cool flowery lap of earth, - Smiles broke from us and we had ease, - The hills were round us, and the breeze - Went o’er the sun-lit fields again: - Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. - Our youth returned; for there was shed - On spirits that had long been dead, - Spirits dried up and closely furled, - The freshness of the early world.” - -But precious as such a service is and ever must be, it does not fill -the whole need of man’s heart. There are times and moods in which it -seems pale and ineffectual. The very contrast between its serenity, its -assurance, its disembodied passion, its radiant asceticism, and the -mixed lights, the broken music, the fluctuating faith, the confused -conflict of actual life, seems like a discouragement. It calls us to -go into a retreat, that we may find ourselves and renew our power to -live. But there are natures which do not easily adapt themselves to a -retreat,—natures which crave stimulus more than consolation, and look -for a solution of life’s problem that can be worked out while they are -in motion. They do not wish, perhaps they are not able, to withdraw -themselves from active life even for the sake of seeing it more clearly. - -Wordsworth’s world seems to them too bare, too still, too monotonous. -The rugged and unpopulous mountains, the lonely lakes, the secluded -vales, do not attract them as much as the fertile plain with its -luxuriant vegetation, the whirling city, the crowded highways of trade -and pleasure. Simplicity is strange to them; complexity is their native -element. They want music, but they want it to go with them in the -march, the parade, the festal procession. The poet for them must be -in the world, though he need not be altogether of it. He must speak -of the rich and varied life of man as one who knows its artificial as -well as its natural elements,—palaces as well as cottages, courts as -well as sheep-folds. Art and politics and literature and science and -churchmanship and society,—all must be familiar to him, material to his -art, significant to his interpretation. His message must be modern and -militant. He must not disregard doubt and rebellion and discord, but take -them into his poetry and transform them. He must front - - “The cloud of mortal destiny,” - -and make the most of the light that breaks through it. Such a poet is -Robert Browning; and his poetry is the direct answer to at least one -side of the modern _Zeitgeist_, restless, curious, self-conscious, -energetic, the active, questioning spirit. - - -I - -Browning’s poetic work-time covered a period of about fifty-six years, -(1833-1889,) and during this time he published over thirty volumes of -verse, containing more than two hundred and thirty poems, the longest, -_The Ring and the Book_, extending to nearly twenty-one thousand lines. -It was an immense output, greater I think, in mass, than that of almost -any other English poet except Shakespeare. The mere fact of such -productiveness is worth noting, because it is a proof of the activity of -the poet’s mind, and also because it may throw some light upon certain -peculiarities in the quality of his work. - -Browning not only wrote much himself, he was also the cause of much -writing in others. Commentaries, guide-books, handbooks, and expositions -have grown up around his poetry so fast that the vines almost hide the -trellis. The Browning Literature now demands not merely a shelf, but a -whole case to itself in the library. It has come to such a pass that one -must choose between reading the books that Browning wrote and the books -that other people have written about Browning. Life is too short for both. - -A reason, if not a justification, for this growth of a locksmith -literature about his work is undoubtedly to be found in what Mr. -Augustine Birrell calls “The Alleged Obscurity of Mr. Browning’s Poetry.” -The adjective in this happy title indicates one of the points in the -voluminous discussion. Does the difficulty in understanding Browning lie -in him, or in his readers? Is it an accidental defect of his style, or -a valuable element of his art, or an inherent profundity of his subject -that makes him hard to read? Or does the trouble reside altogether in -the imagination of certain readers, or perhaps in their lack of it? This -question was debated so seriously as to become at times almost personal -and threaten the unity of households if not the peace of nations. -Browning himself was accustomed to tell the story of a young man who -could not read his poetry, falling deeply in love with a young woman who -would hardly read anything else. She made it a condition of her favour -that her lover should learn to love her poet, and therefore set the -marriage day at a point beyond the time when the bridegroom could present -himself before her with convincing evidence that he had perused the works -of Browning down to the last line. Such was the strength of love that -the condition was triumphantly fulfilled. The poet used to tell with -humourous satisfaction that he assisted in person at the wedding of these -two lovers whose happiness he had unconsciously delayed and accomplished. - -But an incident like this does not contribute much to the settlement of -the controversy which it illustrates. Love is a notorious miracle-worker. -The question of Browning’s obscurity is still debatable; and whatever may -be said on one side or the other, one fact must be recognized: it is not -yet quite clear whether his poetry is clear or not. - -To this fact I would trace the rise and flourishing of Browning Societies -in considerable abundance, during the late Victorian Era, especially near -Boston. The enterprise of reading and understanding Browning presented -itself as an affair too large and difficult for the intellectual capital -of any private person. Corporations were formed, stock companies of -intelligence were promoted, for the purpose of working the field of his -poetry. The task which daunted the solitary individual was courageously -undertaken by phalanxes and cheerfully pursued in fellowship. Thus the -obscurity, alleged or actual, of the poet’s writing, having been at -first a hindrance, afterward became an advertisement to his fame. The -charm of the enigma, the fascination of solving riddles, the pleasure -of understanding something which other people at least professed to -be unable to understand, entered distinctly into the growth of his -popularity. A Browning cult, a Browning propaganda, came into being and -toiled tremendously. - -One result of the work of these clubs and societies is already evident: -they have done much to remove the cause which called them into being. It -is generally recognized that a considerable part of Browning’s poetry is -not really so difficult after all. It can be read and enjoyed by any one -whose mind is in working order. Those innocent and stupid Victorians -were wrong about it. We alert and sagacious George-the-Fifthians need -some tougher poetry to try our mettle. So I suppose the Browning -Societies, having fulfilled their function, will gradually fade away,—or -perhaps transfer their attention to some of those later writers who -have put obscurity on a scientific basis and raised impenetrability to -a fine art. Meantime I question whether all the claims which were made -on behalf of Browning in the period of propaganda will be allowed at -their face value. For example, that _The Ring and the Book_ is “the -greatest work of creative imagination that has appeared since the time of -Shakespeare,”[10] and that _A Grammarian’s Funeral_ is “the most powerful -ode in English, the mightiest tribute ever paid to a man,”[11] and that -Browning’s “style as it stands is God-made, not Browning-made,”[12] -appear even now like drafts on glory which must be discounted before -they are paid. Nor does it seem probable that the general proposition -which was sometimes advanced by extreme Browningites, (and others,) -to the effect that all great poetry _ought_ to be hard to read, and -that a poem which is easy cannot be great, will stand the test of time. -Milton’s _Comus_, Gray’s _Elegy_, Wordsworth’s _Ode on the Intimations of -Immortality_, Shelley’s _Skylark_, Keats’ _Grecian Urn_, and Tennyson’s -_Guinevere_ cannot be reduced to the rank of minor verse by such a -formula. - -And yet it must be said that the very extravagance of the claims which -were made for Browning, the audacity of enthusiasm which he inspired -in his expositors, is a proof of the reality and the potency of his -influence. Men are not kindled where there is no fire. Men do not keep -on guessing riddles unless the answers have some interest and value. A -stock company cannot create a prophet out of straw. Browning must have -had something important to say to the age, and he must have succeeded in -saying it in a way which was suitable, in spite of its defects, to convey -his message, else we may be sure his age never would have listened to -him, even by select companies, nor discussed him, even in a partisan -temper, nor felt his influence, even at second-hand. - -What was it, then, that he had to say, and how did he say it? What was -the theme of his poetry, what the method by which he found it, what -the manner in which he treated it, and what the central element of -his disposition by which the development of his genius was impelled -and guided? These are the questions,—questions of fact rather than of -theory,—that particularly interest me in regard to Browning. And I hope -it may be possible to consider them from a somewhat fresh point of view, -and without entering into disturbing and unprofitable comparisons of rank -with Shakespeare and the other poets. - -But there is no reason why the answers to these questions should be -concealed until the end of the chapter. It may be better to state them -now, in order that we may be able to test them as we go on, and judge -whether they are justified and how far they need to be qualified. There -is a particular reason for taking this course, in the fact that Browning -changed very little in the process of growth. There were alterations -in his style, but there was no real alteration in the man, nor in his -poetry. His first theme was his last theme. His early manner of treatment -was his latest manner of treatment. What he said at the beginning he -said again at the end. With the greatest possible variety of titles he -had but one main topic; with the widest imaginable range of subjects, he -used chiefly one method and reached but one conclusion; with a nature -of almost unlimited breadth he was always under control of one central -impulse and loyal to one central quality. Let me try, then, to condense -the general impression into a paragraph and take up the particulars -afterwards, point by point. - -The clew to Browning’s mind, it seems to me, is vivid and inexhaustible -curiosity, dominated by a strangely steady optimism. His topic is not -the soul, in the abstract, but souls in the concrete. His chosen method -is that of spiritual drama, and for the most part, monodrama. His manner -is the intense, subtle, passionate style of psychological realism. His -message, uttered through the lips of a hundred imaginary characters, but -always with his own accent,—his message is “the Glory of the Imperfect.” - -[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING. - -Painted by G. F. Watts. - -_From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London._] - - -II - -The best criticisms of the poets have usually come from other poets, and -often in the form of verse. Landor wrote of Browning, - - “Since Chaucer was alive and hale - No man hath walked along our roads with step - So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue - So varied in discourse.” - -This is a thumb-nail sketch of Browning’s personality,—not complete, -but very lifelike. And when we add to it Landor’s prose saying that -“his is the surest foot since Chaucer’s, that has waked the echoes from -_the difficult places_ of poetry and of life” we have a sufficiently -plain clew to the unfolding of Browning’s genius. Unwearying activity, -intense curiosity, variety of expression, and a predominant interest -in the difficult places of poetry and of life,—these were the striking -characteristics of his mind. In his heart a native optimism, an -unconquerable hopefulness, was the ruling factor. But of that I shall -not speak until later, when we come to consider his message. For -the present we are looking simply for the mainspring of his immense -intellectual energy. - -When I say that the clew to Browning’s mind is to be found in his -curiosity, I do not mean inquisitiveness, but a very much larger and -nobler quality, for which we have no good word in English,—something -which corresponds with the German _Wissbegier_, as distinguished from -_Neugier_: an ardent desire to know things as they are, to penetrate as -many as possible of the secrets of actual life. This, it seems to me, is -the key to Browning’s intellectual disposition. He puts it into words in -his first poem _Pauline_, where he makes the nameless hero speak of his -life as linked to - - “a principle of restlessness - Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all— - This is myself; and I should thus have been - Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.” - -_Paracelsus_ is only an expansion of this theme in the biography of a -soul. In _Fra Lippo Lippi_ the painter says: - - “God made it all! - For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no, - For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line, - The mountain round it and the sky above, - Much more the figures of man, woman, child, - These are the frame to? What’s it all about? - To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon, - Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say. - But why not do as well as say, paint these - Just as they are, careless what comes of it? - God’s works—paint any one and count it crime - To let a truth slip. - ... This world’s no blot for us, - Nor blank; it means intensely and means good: - To find its meaning is my meat and drink.” - -No poet was ever more interested in life than Browning, and whatever -else may be said of his poetry it must be admitted that it is very -interesting. He touches all sides of human activity and peers into the -secret places of knowledge. He enters into the life of musicians in -_Abt Vogler_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, -and _Charles Avison_; into the life of painters in _Andrea del Sarto_, -_Pictor Ignotus_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Old Pictures in Florence_, -_Gerard de Lairesse_, _Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper_, -and _Francis Furini_; into the life of scholars in _A Grammarian’s -Funeral_ and _Fust and his Friends_; into the life of politicians in -_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ and _George Bubb Dodington_; into the life -of ecclesiastics in the _Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_, _Bishop -Blougram’s Apology_, _The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s -Church_, and _The Ring and the Book_; and he makes excursions into all -kinds of byways and crooked corners of life in such poems as _Mr. Sludge, -the Medium_, _Porphyria’s Lover_, _Mesmerism_, _Johannes Agricola in -Meditation_, _Pietro of Abano_, _Ned Bratts_, _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, and -so forth. - -Merely to read a list of such titles is to have evidence of Browning’s -insatiable curiosity. It is evident also that he has a fondness for -out-of-the-way places. He wants to know, even more than he wants to -enjoy. If Wordsworth is the poet of the common life, Browning is the poet -of the uncommon life. Extraordinary situations and eccentric characters -attract him. Even when he is looking at some familiar scene, at some -commonplace character, his effort is to discover something that shall -prove that it is not familiar, not commonplace,—a singular detail, a -striking feature, a mark of individuality. This gives him more pleasure -than any distant vision of an abstraction or a general law. - - “All that I know - Of a certain star - Is, it can throw - (Like the angled spar) - Now a dart of red, - Now a dart of blue; - Till my friends have said - They would fain see, too, - My star that dartles the red and the blue! - Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled; - They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. - What matter to me if their star is a world? - Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.” - -One consequence of this penetrating, personal quality of mind is that -Browning’s pages teem with portraits of men and women, which are like -sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance. They are more individual -than they are typical. There is a peculiarity about each one of them -which almost makes us forget to ask whether they have any general -relation and value. The presentations are so sharp and vivid that their -representative quality is lost. - -If Wordsworth is the Millet of poetry, Browning is the Holbein or the -Denner. He never misses the mole, the wrinkle, the twist of the eyebrow, -which makes the face stand out alone, the sudden touch of self-revelation -which individualizes the character. Thus we find in Browning’s poetry few -types of humanity, but plenty of men. - -Yet he seldom, if ever, allows us to forget the background of society. -His figures are far more individual than Wordsworth’s, but far less -solitary. Behind each of them we feel the world out of which they -have come and to which they belong. There is a sense of crowded life -surging through his poetry. The city, with all that it means, is not -often completely out of view. “Shelley’s characters,” says a thoughtful -essayist, “are creatures of wave and sky; Wordsworth’s of green English -fields; Browning’s move in the house, the palace, the street.”[13] In -many of them, even when they are soliloquizing, there is a curious -consciousness of opposition, of conflict. They seem to be defending -themselves against unseen adversaries, justifying their course against -the judgment of absent critics. Thus Bishop Blougram while he talks over -the walnuts and the wine to Mr. Gigadibs, the sceptical hack-writer, has -a worldful of religious conservatives and radicals in his eye and makes -his half-cynical, wholly militant, apology for agnostic orthodoxy to -them. The old huntsman, in _The Flight of the Duchess_, is maintaining -the honour of his fugitive mistress against the dried-up, stiff, -conventional society from which she has eloped with the Gypsies. Andrea -del Sarto, looking at the soulless fatal beauty of his Lucrezia, and -meditating on the splendid failure of his art, cries out to Rafael and -Michelangelo and all his compeers to understand and judge him. - -Even when Browning writes of romantic love, (one of his two favourite -subjects), he almost always heightens its effect by putting it in relief -against the ignorance, the indifference, the busyness, or the hostility -of the great world. In _Cristina_ and _Evelyn Hope_ half the charm of the -passion lies in the feeling that it means everything to the lover though -no one else in the world may know of its existence. _Porphyria’s Lover_, -in a fit of madness, kills his mistress to keep her from going back to -the world which would divide them. The sweet searching melody of _In a -Gondola_ plays itself athwart a sullen distant accompaniment of Venetian -tyranny and ends with a swift stroke of vengeance from the secret Three. - -Take, for an example of Browning’s way of enhancing love by contrast, -that most exquisite and subtle lyric called _Love Among the Ruins_. - - “Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles - Miles and miles - On the solitary pastures where our sheep - Half asleep - Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stay or stop - As they crop— - Was the site once of a city great and gay - (So they say) - Of our country’s very capital, its prince - Ages since - Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far - Peace or war. - - And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve - Smiles to leave - To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece - In such peace, - And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray - Melt away— - That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair - Waits me there - In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul - For the goal, - When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb - Till I come. - - ... - - In one year they sent a million fighters forth - South and North, - And they built their gods a brazen pillar high - As the sky, - Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force— - Gold of course. - Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! - Earth’s returns - For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! - Shut them in, - With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! - Love is best.” - - -III - -“Love is best!” That is one of the cardinal points of Browning’s -creed. He repeats it in a hundred ways: tragically in _A Blot in -the ’Scutcheon_; sentimentally in _A Lover’s Quarrel_, _Two in the -Campagna_, _The Last Ride Together_; heroically in _Colombe’s Birthday_; -in the form of a paradox in _The Statue and the Bust_; as a personal -experience in _By the Fireside_, _One Word More_, and at the end of the -prelude to _The Ring and the Book_. - - “For life, with all it yields of joy and woe - And hope and fear, ... - Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.” - -But it must be confessed that he does not often say it as clearly, as -quietly, as beautifully as in _Love Among the Ruins_. For his chosen -method is dramatic and his natural manner is psychological. So ardently -does he follow this method, so entirely does he give himself up to this -manner that his style - - “is subdued - To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.” - -In the dedicatory note to _Sordello_, written in 1863, he says “My stress -lay in the incidents in the development of a _soul_; little else is worth -study.” He felt intensely - - “How the world is made for each of us! - How all we perceive and know in it - Tends to some moment’s product thus, - When a soul declares itself—to wit, - By its fruit, the thing it does!” - -In _One Word More_ he describes his own poetry with keen insight: - - “Love, you saw me gather men and women, - Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, - Enter each and all and use their service, - Speak from every mouth,—the speech a poem.” - -It is a mistake to say that Browning is a metaphysical poet: he is a -psychological poet. His interest does not lie in the abstract problems of -time and space, mind and matter, divinity and humanity. It lies in the -concrete problems of opportunity and crisis, flesh and spirit, man the -individual and God the person. He is an anatomist of souls. - - “Take the least man of all mankind, as I; - Look at his head and heart, find how and why - He differs from his fellows utterly.”[14] - -But his way of finding out this personal equation is not by observation -and reflection. It is by throwing himself into the character and making -it reveal itself by intricate self-analysis or by impulsive action. -What his poetry lacks is the temperate zone. He has the arctic circle -of intellect and the tropics of passion. But he seldom enters the -intermediate region of sentiment, reflection, sympathy, equable and -prolonged feeling. Therefore it is that few of his poems have the power -of “sinking inward from thought to thought” as Wordsworth’s do. They -surprise us, rouse us, stimulate us, more than they rest us. He does -not penetrate with a mild and steady light through the portals of the -human heart, making them transparent. He flings them wide open suddenly, -and often the gates creak on their hinges. He is forever tying Gordian -knots in the skein of human life and cutting them with the sword of -swift action or intense passion. His psychological curiosity creates the -difficulties, his intuitive optimism solves them. - - -IV - -The results of this preoccupation with such subjects and of this manner -of dealing with them may be recognized very easily in Browning’s work. - -First of all they turned him aside from becoming a great Nature-poet, -though he was well fitted to be one. It is not that he loves Nature’s -slow and solemn pageant less, but that he loves man’s quick and varied -drama more. His landscapes are like scenery for the stage. They -accompany the unfolding of the plot and change with it, but they do not -influence it. His observation is as keen, as accurate as Wordsworth’s or -Tennyson’s, but it is less steady, less patient, less familiar. It is the -observation of one who passes through the country but does not stay to -grow intimate with it. The forms of nature do not print themselves on his -mind; they flash vividly before him, and come and go. Usually it is some -intense human feeling that makes the details of the landscape stand out -so sharply. In _Pippa Passes_, it is in the ecstasy of love that Ottima -and Sebald notice - - “The garden’s silence: even the single bee - Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped, - And where he hid you only could surmise - By some campanula chalice set a-swing.” - -It is the sense of guilty passion that makes the lightning-flashes, -burning through the pine-forest, seem like dagger-strokes,— - - “As if God’s messenger through the closed wood screen - Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture, - Feeling for guilty thee and me.” - -In _Home Thoughts from Abroad_, it is the exile’s deep homesickness that -brings the quick, delicate vision before his eyes: - - “Oh, to be in England - Now that April’s there, - And whoever wakes in England - Sees, some morning, unaware, - That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf - Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, - While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough - In England—now!” - -But Browning’s touches of nature are not always as happy as this. Often -he crowds the details too closely, and fails to blend them with the -ground of the picture, so that the tonality is destroyed and the effect -is distracting. The foreground is too vivid: the aerial perspective -vanishes. There is an impressionism that obscures the reality. As Amiel -says: “Under pretense that we want to study it more in detail, we -pulverize the statue.” - -Browning is at his best as a Nature-poet in sky-scapes, like the -description of daybreak in _Pippa Passes_, the lunar rainbow in -_Christmas Eve_, and the Northern Lights in _Easter Day_; and also in -a kind of work which might be called symbolic landscape, where the -imaginative vision of nature is made to represent a human experience. -A striking example of this work is the scenery of _Childe Roland_, -reflecting as in a glass the grotesque horrors of spiritual desolation. -There is a passage in _Sordello_ which makes a fertile landscape, -sketched in a few swift lines, the symbol of Sordello’s luxuriant -nature; and another in Norbert’s speech, in _In a Balcony_, which uses -the calm self-abandonment of the world in the tranquil evening light as -the type of the sincerity of the heart giving itself up to love. But -perhaps as good an illustration as we can find of Browning’s quality as a -Nature-poet, is a little bit of mystery called _Meeting at Night_. - - “The gray sea and the long black land; - And the yellow half-moon, large and low; - And the startled little waves that leap - In fiery ringlets from their sleep, - As I gain the cove with pushing prow, - And quench its speed in the slushy sand. - Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; - Three fields to cross till a farm appears; - A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch - And the blue spirt of a lighted match, - And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, - Than the two hearts beating each to each!” - -This is the landscape of the drama. - -A second result of Browning’s preoccupation with dramatic psychology is -the close concentration and “alleged obscurity” of his style. Here again -I evade the critical question whether the obscurity is real, or whether -it is only a natural and admirable profundity to which an indolent -reviewer has given a bad name. That is a question which Posterity must -answer. But for us the fact remains that some of his poetry is hard to -read; it demands close attention and strenuous effort; and when we find -a piece of it that goes very easily, like _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_, -_How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, _Hervé Riel_, or -the stirring _Cavalier Tunes_, we are conscious of missing the sense of -strain which we have learned to associate with the reading of Browning. - -One reason for this is the predominance of curiosity over harmony in -his disposition. He tries to express the inexpressible, to write the -unwritable. As Dr. Johnson said of Cowley, he has the habit “of pursuing -his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of -generality.” Another reason is the fluency, the fertility, the haste of -his genius, and his reluctance, or inability, to put the brakes on his -own productiveness. - -It seems probable that if Browning had been able to write more slowly -and carefully he might have written with more lucidity. There was a time -when he made a point of turning off a poem a day. It is doubtful whether -the story of _The Ring and the Book_ gains in clearness by being told by -eleven different persons, all of them inclined to volubility. - -Yet Browning’s poetry is not verbose. It is singularly condensed in the -matter of language. He seems to have made his most arduous effort in -this direction. After _Paracelsus_ had been published and pronounced -“unintelligible,” he was inclined to think that there might be some fault -of too great terseness in the style. But a letter from Miss Caroline -Fox was shown to him, in which that lady, (then very young,) took the -opposite view and asked “doth he know that Wordsworth will devote a -fortnight or more to the discovery of the single word that is the one -fit for his sonnet.” Browning appears to have been impressed by this -criticism; but he set himself to work upon it, not so much by way of -selecting words as by way of compressing them. He put _Sordello_ into a -world where many of the parts of speech are lacking and all are crowded. -He learned to pack the largest, possible amount of meaning into the -smallest possible space, as a hasty traveller packs his portmanteau. Many -small articles are crushed and crumpled out of shape. He adopted a system -of elisions for the sake of brevity, and loved, as C. S. Calverley said, - - “to dock the smaller parts of speech - As we curtail th’ already curtailed cur.” - -At the same time he seldom could resist the temptation to put in another -thought, another simile, another illustration, although the poem might be -already quite full. He called out, like the conductor of a street-car, -“Move up in front: room for one more!” He had little tautology of -expression, but much of conception. A good critic says “Browning -condenses by the phrase, elaborates by the volume.”[15] - -One consequence of this system of writing is that a great deal of -Browning’s poetry lends itself admirably to translation,—into English. -The number of prose paraphrases of his poems is great, and so constantly -increasing that it seems as if there must be a real demand for them. -But Coleridge, speaking of the qualities of a true poetic style, -remarked: “Whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same -language without diminution of their significance, either in sense, or -in association, or in any other feeling, are so far vicious in their -diction.” - -Another very notable thing in Browning’s poetry is his fertility -and fluency of rhyme. He is probably the most rapid, ingenious, and -unwearying rhymer among the English poets. There is a story that once, -in company with Tennyson, he was challenged to produce a rhyme for -“rhinoceros,” and almost instantly accomplished the task with a verse in -which the unwieldy quadruped kept time and tune with the phrase “he can -toss Eros.”[16] There are other _tours de force_ almost as extraordinary -in his serious poems. Who but Browning would have thought of rhyming -“syntax” with “tin-tacks,” or “spare-rib” with “Carib,” (_Flight of -Duchess_) or “Fra Angelico’s” with “bellicose,” or “Ghirlandajo” with -“heigh-ho,” (_Old Pictures in Florence_) or “expansive explosive” with “O -Danaides, O Sieve!” (_Master Hugues_). Rhyme, with most poets, acts as a -restraint, a brake upon speech. But with Browning it is the other way. -His rhymes are like wild, frolicsome horses, leaping over the fences and -carrying him into the widest digressions. Many a couplet, many a stanza -would not have been written but for the impulse of a daring, suggestive -rhyme. - -Join to this love of somewhat reckless rhyming, his deep and powerful -sense of humour, and you have the secret of his fondness for the -grotesque. His poetry abounds in strange contrasts, sudden changes of -mood, incongruous comparisons, and odd presentations of well-known -subjects. Sometimes the whole poem is written in this manner. The -_Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister_, _Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_, and -_Caliban upon Setebos_, are poetic gargoyles. Sometimes he begins -seriously enough, as in the poem on Keats, and closes with a bit of -fantastic irony: - - “Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats: - Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup: - Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats— - Both gorge. Who fished the murex up? - What porridge had John Keats?” - -Sometimes the poem opens grotesquely, like _Christmas Eve_, and rises -swiftly to a wonderful height of pure beauty and solemnity, dropping -back into a grotesque at the end. But all this play of fancy must -not be confused with the spirit of mockery or of levity. It is often -characteristic of the most serious and earnest natures; it arises in -fact from the restlessness of mind in the contemplation of evil, or from -the perception of life’s difficulties and perplexities. Shakespeare -was profoundly right in introducing the element of the grotesque into -_Hamlet_, his most thoughtful tragedy. Browning is never really anything -else but a serious thinker, passionately curious to solve the riddle of -existence. Like his own _Sordello_ he - - “Gave to familiar things a face grotesque, - Only, pursuing through the mad burlesque, - A grave regard.” - -We may sum up, then, what we have to say of Browning’s method and manner -by recognizing that they belong together and have a mutual fitness and -inevitableness. We may wish that he had attained to more lucidity and -harmony of expression, but we should probably have had some difficulty -in telling him precisely how to do it, and he would have been likely to -reply with good humour as he did to Tennyson, “The people must take me -as they find me.” If he had been less ardent in looking for subjects -for his poetry, he might have given more care to the form of his poems. -If he had cut fewer blocks, he might have finished more statues. The -immortality of much of his work may be discounted by its want of perfect -art,—the only true preservative of man’s handiwork. But the immortality -of his genius is secure. He may not be ranked finally among the great -masters of the art of poetry. But he certainly will endure as a mine for -poets. They may stamp the coins more clearly and fashion the ornaments -more delicately. But the gold is his. He was the prospector,—the first -dramatic psychologist of modern life. The very imperfections of his work, -in all its splendid richness and bewildering complexity, bear witness to -his favourite doctrine that life itself is more interesting than art, and -more glorious, because it is not yet perfect. - - -V - -“The Glory of the Imperfect,”—that is a phrase which I read in a pamphlet -by that fine old Grecian and noble Christian philosopher, George Herbert -Palmer, many years ago. It seems to me to express the central meaning of -Browning’s poetry. - -He is the poet of aspiration and endeavour; the prophet of a divine -discontent. All things are precious to him, not in themselves, but as -their defects are realized, as man uses them, and presses through them, -towards something higher and better. Hope is man’s power: and the things -hoped for must be as yet unseen. Struggle is man’s life; and the purpose -of life is not merely education, but a kind of progressive creation of -the soul. - - “Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.” - -The world presents itself to him, as the Germans say, _Im Werden_. It is -a world of potencies, working itself out. Existence is not the mere fact -of being, but the vital process of becoming. The glory of man lies in -his power to realize this process in his mind and to fling himself into -it with all his will. If he tries to satisfy himself with things as they -are, like the world-wedded soul in _Easter Eve_, he fails. If he tries to -crowd the infinite into the finite, like Paracelsus, he fails. He must -make his dissatisfaction his strength. He must accept the limitations of -his life, not in the sense of submitting to them, but as Jacob wrestled -with the angel, in order to win, through conflict, a new power, a larger -blessing. His ardent desires and longings and aspirations, yes, even his -defeats and disappointments and failures, are the stuff out of which his -immortal destiny is weaving itself. The one thing that life requires of -him is to act with ardour, to go forward resolutely, to “burn his way -through the world”; and the great lesson which it teaches him is this: - - “But thou shalt painfully attain to joy - While hope and love and fear shall keep thee man.” - -Browning was very much needed in the Nineteenth Century as the antidote, -or perhaps it would be more just to say, as the complement to Carlyle. -For Carlyle’s prophecy, with all its moral earnestness, its virility, -its indomitable courage, had in it a ground-tone of despair. It was the -battle-cry of a forlorn hope. Man must hate shams intensely, must seek -reality passionately, must do his duty desperately; but he can never tell -why. The reason of things is inscrutable: the eternal Power that rules -things is unknowable. Carlyle, said Mazzini, “has a constant disposition -to crush the human by comparing him with God.” But Browning has an -unconquerable disposition to elevate the human by joining him to God. The -power that animates and governs the world is Divine; man cannot escape -from it nor overcome it. But the love that stirs in man’s heart is also -Divine; and if man will follow it, it shall lead him to that height -where he shall see that Power is Love. - - “I have faith such end shall be: - From the first Power was—I knew. - Life has made clear to me - That, strive but for closer view, - Love were as plain to see. - - When see? When there dawns a day - If not on the homely earth, - Then yonder, worlds away, - Where the strange and new have birth - And Power comes full in play.”[17] - -Browning’s optimism is fundamental. Originally a matter of temperament, -perhaps, as it is expressed in _At the Mermaid_,— - - “I find earth not gray, but rosy, - Heaven not grim but fair of hue. - Do I stoop? I pluck a posy, - Do I stand and stare? All’s blue——” - -primarily the spontaneous tone of a healthy, happy nature, it became the -chosen key-note of all his music, and he works it out through a hundred -harmonies and discords. He is “sure of goodness as of life.” He does -not ask “How came good into the world?” For that, after all, is the -pessimistic question; it assumes that the ground of things is evil and -the good is the breaking of the rule. He asks instead “How came evil into -the world?” That is the optimistic question; as long as a man puts it in -that form he is an optimist at heart; he takes it for granted that good -is the native element and evil is the intruder; there must be a solution -of the problem whether he can find it or not; the rule must be superior -to, and triumphant over, the exception; the meaning and purpose of evil -must somehow, some time, be proved subordinate to good. - -That is Browning’s position: - - “My own hope is, a sun will pierce - The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; - That, after Last, returns the First, - Though a wide compass round be fetched; - That what began best, can’t end worst, - Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.” - -The way in which he justifies this position is characteristic of the man. -His optimism is far less defensive than it is militant. He never wavers -from his intuitive conviction that “the world means good.” He follows -this instinct as a soldier follows his banner, into whatever difficulties -and conflicts it may lead him, and fights his way out, now with the -weapons of philosophy, now with the bare sword of faith. - - -VI - -It might seem at first as if it were unfair to attempt any estimate of -the philosophic and religious teaching of a poet like Browning, whose -method we have already recognized as dramatic. Can we ascribe to the poet -himself the opinions which he puts into the mouths of his characters? Can -we hold him responsible for the sentiments which are expressed by the -actors on his stage? - -Certainly this objection must be admitted as a restraint in the -interpretation of his poetry. We are not to take all that his characters -say, literally and directly, as his own belief, any more than we are to -read the speeches of Satan, and Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar, in the -Book of Job, as utterances of the spirit of inspiration. But just as -that great dramatic Scripture, dealing with the problems of evil and -suffering and sovereignty, does contain a doctrine and convey a lesson, -so the poetry of Browning, taken as a whole, utters a distinct and -positive prophetic message. - -In the first place, many of the poems are evidently subjective, written -without disguise in the first person. Among these we may consider _My -Star_; _By the Fireside_; _One Word More_; the Epilogues to _Dramatis -Personæ_ and _Pachiarrotto_ and _Ferishtah’s Fancies_; the introduction -and the close of _The Ring and the Book_; _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter -Day_; the ending of the poem called _Gold Hair_, and of _A Death in the -Desert_, and of _Bishop Blougram’s Apology_; _Prospice_ and _Reverie_. -In the second place we must remember Goethe’s dictum: “Every author in -some degree, pourtrays himself in his works, even be it against his -will.” Even when Browning is writing dramatically, he cannot conceal -his sympathy. The masks are thin. His eyes shine through. “His own -personality,” says Mr. Stedman, “is manifest in the speech and movement -of almost every character of each piece. His spirit is infused as if by -metempsychosis, within them all, and forces each to assume a strange -Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the poet himself.” Thus -it is not impossible, nor even difficult, to reach a fair estimate of his -ethical and religious teaching and discover its principal elements. - -1. First among these I would put a great confidence in God. Browning is -the most theological of modern poets. The epithet which was applied to -Spinoza might well be transferred to him. He is a “God-intoxicated” man. -But in a very different sense, for whereas the philosopher felt God as an -idea, the poet feels Him intensely as a person. The song which he puts -into the lips of the unconscious heroine in _Pippa Passes_,— - - “God’s in his heaven - All’s right with the world,——” - -is the recurrent theme of his poetry. He cries with Paracelsus, - - “God thou art Love, I build my faith on that.” - -Even when his music is broken and interrupted by discords, when it -seems to dissolve and fade away as all human work, in its outward form, -dissolves and fades, he turns, as Abt Vogler turns from his silent -organ, to God; - - “Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? - Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! - What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? - Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?” - -In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ he takes up the ancient figure of the potter and the -clay and uses it to express his boundless trust in God. - -The characteristic mark of Browning’s view of God is that it is always -taken from the side of humanity. The Perfect Glory is the correlative of -the glory of the imperfect. The Divine Love is the answer to the human -longing. God is, because man needs Him. From this point of view it almost -seems, as a brilliant essayist has said, as if “In Browning, God is -adjective to man.”[18] - -But it may be said in answer, that, at least for man, this is the only -point of view that is accessible. We can never leave our own needs -behind us, however high we may try to climb. Certainly if we succeed in -forgetting them for a moment, in that very moment we have passed out of -the region of poetry, which is the impassioned interpretation of man’s -heart. - -2. The second element of power in Browning’s poetry is that he sees in -the personal Christ the very revelation of God that man’s heart most -needs and welcomes. Nowhere else in all the range of modern poetry has -this vision been expressed with such spiritual ardour, with such poignant -joy. We must turn back to the pages of Isaiah to find anything to equal -the Messianic rapture of the minstrel in _Saul_. - - “He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall stand the most - weak. - ’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek - In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be, - A Face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me, - Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand - Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! see the Christ stand!” - -We must look into the Christ-filled letters of St. Paul to find the -attractions of the Crucified One uttered as powerfully as they are in the -_Epistle of Karshish_. - - “The very God! think Abib; dost thou think? - So, the All-great, were the All-Loving too— - So, through the thunder comes a human voice - Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here! - Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! - Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine, - But love I gave thee, with myself to love, - And thou must love me who have died for thee!’” - -It is idle to assert that these are only dramatic presentations of the -Christian faith. No poet could have imagined such utterances without -feeling their significance; and the piercing splendour of their -expression discloses his sympathy. He reveals it yet more unmistakably -in _Christmas Eve_, (strophe XVII) and in _Easter Day_, (strophe XXX.) -In the Epilogue to _Dramatis Personæ_ it flashes out clearly. The second -speaker, as Renan, has bewailed the vanishing of the face of Christ from -the sorrowful vision of the race. The third speaker, the poet himself, -answers: - - “That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, - Or decomposes but to recompose - Become my universe that feels and knows!” - -“That face,” said Browning to a friend, “that face is the face of Christ: -that is how I feel Him.” - -Surely this is the religious message that the world most needs to-day. -More and more everything in Christianity hangs upon the truth of the -Incarnation. The alternative declares itself. Either no God whom we can -know and love at all, or God personally manifest in Christ! - -3. The third religious element in Browning’s poetry is his faith that -this life is a probation, a discipline for the future. He says, again and -again, - - “I count life just a stuff - To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.” - -The glory of the imperfect lies in the power of progress, “man’s -distinctive mark.” And progress comes by conflict; conflict with -falsehood and ignorance,— - - “Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—” - -and conflict with evil,— - - “Why comes temptation but for man to meet, - And master and make crouch beneath his foot, - And so be pedestalled in triumph?” - -The poet is always calling us to be glad we are engaged in such a noble -strife. - - “Rejoice we are allied - To that which doth provide - And not partake, effect and not receive! - A spark disturbs our clod; - Nearer we hold of God - Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. - - Then welcome each rebuff - That turns earth’s smoothness rough, - Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! - Be our joys three-parts pain! - Strive and hold cheap the strain; - Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!” - -Now this is fine doctrine, lofty, strenuous, stimulating. It appeals -to the will, which is man’s central power. It proclaims the truth that -virtue must be active in its essence though it may also be passive in its -education, positive in its spirit and negative only by contrast. - -But it is in the working out of this doctrine into an ethical system -that Browning enters upon dangerous ground, and arrives at results which -seem to obscure the clearness, and to threaten the stability of the moral -order, by which alone, if the world’s greatest teachers have been right, -the ultimate good of humanity can be attained. Here, it seems to me, -his teaching, especially in its latter utterances, is often confused, -turbulent, misleading. His light is mixed with darkness. He seems almost -to say that it matters little which way we go, provided only we go. - -He overlooks the deep truth that there is an activity of the soul in -self-restraint as well as in self-assertion. It takes as much courage -to dare not to do evil as it does to dare to do good. The hero is -sometimes the man who stands still. Virtue is noblest when it is joined -to virility. But virility alone is not virtue nor does it always lead -to moral victory. Sometimes it leads straight towards moral paralysis, -death, extinction. Browning fails to see this, because his method is -dramatic and because he dramatizes through himself. He puts himself -into this or the other character, and works himself out through it, -preserving still in himself, though all unconsciously, the soul of -something good. Thus he does not touch that peculiar deadening of -spiritual power which is one result of the unrestrained following of -impulse and passion. It is this defect in his vision of life that leads -to the dubious and interrogatory moral of such a poem as _The Statue and -the Bust_. - -Browning values the individual so much that he lays all his emphasis upon -the development of stronger passions and aspirations, the unfolding of a -more vivid and intense personality, and has comparatively little stress -to lay upon the larger thought of the progress of mankind in harmony -and order. Indeed he poetizes so vigorously against the conventional -judgments of society that he often seems to set himself against the -moral sentiments on which those conventional judgments, however warped, -ultimately rest. “Over and over again in Browning’s poetry,” says a -penetrating critic, “we meet with this insistence on the value of moments -of high excitement, of intense living, of full experience of pleasure, -even though such moments be of the essence of evil and fruitful in all -dark consequences.” - -Take for example his treatment of love. He is right in saying “Love is -best.” But is he right in admitting, even by inference, that love has a -right to take its own way of realizing itself? Can love be at its best -unless it is obedient to law? Does it not make its truest music when -it keeps its place in the harmony of purity and peace and good living? -Surely the wild and reckless view of love as its own law which seems to -glimmer through the unconsumed smoke of Browning’s later poems, such as -_Fifine at the Fair_, _The Inn Album_, and _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, -needs correction by a true flash of insight like that which we find in -two lines of _One Word More_: - - “_Dante, who loved well because he hated,_ - _Hated wickedness that hinders loving._” - -Browning was at times misled by a perilous philosophy into a position -where the vital distinction between good and evil dissolved away in a -cloud of unreality. In _Ferishtah’s Fancies_ and _Parleyings with Certain -People of Importance_, any one who has the patience to read them will -find himself in a nebulous moral world. The supposed necessity of showing -that evil is always a means to good tempts to the assertion that it has -no other reality. Perhaps it is altogether an illusion, needed to sting -us into conflict, but really non-existent. Perhaps it is only the shadow -cast by the good,—or “the silence implying sound.” Perhaps it is good -in disguise, not yet developed from the crawling worm into the creature -with wings. After this fashion the whimsical dervish Ferishtah strews his -beans upon the table. - - “This bean was white, this—black, - Set by itself,—but see if good and bad - Each following other in companionship, - Black have not grown less black and white less white, - Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish,—gray, - And the whole line turns—well, or black to thee - Or white alike to me—no matter which.” - -Certainly if this were the essence of Browning’s poetry the best -safeguard against its falsehood would be its own weakness. Such a -message, if this were all, could never attract many hearers, nor inspire -those whom it attracted. Effort, struggle, noble conflict would be -impossible in a world where there were no moral certainties or realities, -but all men felt that they were playing at a stupid game like the Caucus -race in _Alice in Wonderland_, where everything went round in a circle -and every runner received a prize. - -But in fact these elements of weakness in Browning’s work, as it seems to -me, do not belong to his true poetry. They are expressed, generally, in -his most obfuscated style, and at a prohibitory length. They are embodied -in poems which no one is likely to read for fun, and few are capable of -learning by heart. - -But when we go back to his best work we find another spirit, we hear -another message. Clear, resonant, trumpet-like his voice calls to us -proclaiming the glorious possibilities of this imperfect life. Only do -not despair; only do not sink down into conventionality, indifference, -mockery, cynicism; only rise and hope and go forward out of the house of -bondage into the land of liberty. True, the prophecy is not complete. But -it is inspiring. He does not teach us how to live. But he does tell us -to live,—with courage, with love to man, with trust in God,—and he bids -us find life glorious, because it is still imperfect and therefore full -of promise. - - - - -A QUAINT COMRADE BY QUIET STREAMS - - -In April, 1653, Oliver Cromwell, after much bloodshed and amid great -confusion, violently dissolved the “Rump Parliament.” In May of the same -year, Izaak Walton published _The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative -Man’s Recreation_. ’Twas a strange contrast between the tranquil book -and the tempestuous time. But that the contrast was not displeasing may -be inferred from the fact that five editions were issued during the -author’s life, which ended in 1683, at the house of his son-in-law in the -cathedral close at Winchester, Walton being then in his ninety-first year -and at peace with God and man. - -Doubtless one of the reasons why those early editions, especially the -first, the second, and the fifth, (in which Walton’s friend Charles -Cotton added his “Instructions How to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a -Clear Stream,”) are now become so rare and costly, is because they were -carried about by honest anglers of the 17th Century in their coat-pockets -or in their wallets, a practice whereby the body of a book is soon worn -out, though its soul be immortal. - -That this last is true of Walton’s _Angler_ seems proven by its continual -reappearance. The Hundredth Edition (called after the rivers Lea and -Dove, which Walton loved) was brought out in 1888, by the genial -fisherman and bibliophile, R. B. Marston of the London _Fishing Gazette_. -Among the other English editions I like John Major’s second (1824); and -Sir John Hawkins’, reissued by Bagster (1808); and Pickering’s richly -illustrated two volumes edited by Sir Harris Nicolas (1836). There is -a 32mo reprint by the same publisher, (and a “diamond” from the Oxford -University Press,) small enough to go comfortably in a vest-pocket with -your watch or your pipe. I must speak also of the admirable introductions -to the _Angler_ written in these latter years by James Russell Lowell, -Andrew Lang, and Richard Le Gallienne; and of the great American edition -made by the Reverend Doctor George W. Bethune in 1847, a work in which -the learning, wit, and sympathy of the editor illuminate the pages. This -edition is already hard to find, but no collector of angling books would -willingly go without it. - -The gentle reader has a wide choice, then, of the form in which he will -take his Walton,—something rare and richly adorned for the library, -or something small and plain for the pocket or the creel. But in what -shape soever he may choose to read the book, if he be not “a severe, -sour-complexioned man” he will find it good company. There is a most -propitiating paragraph in the “Address” at the beginning of the first -edition. Explaining why he has introduced “some innocent harmless mirth” -into his work, Walton writes: - -“I am the willinger to justify this innocent mirth because the whole -discourse is a kind of picture of my own disposition, at least of my -disposition in such days and times as I allow myself, when honest _Nat._ -and _R.R._ and I go a-fishing together.” - -This indeed is one of the great attractions of the book, that it so -naturally and simply shows the author. I know of no other in which this -quality of self-revelation without pretense or apology is as modest and -engaging,—unless it be the _Essays_ of Charles Lamb, or those of M. de -Montaigne. We feel well acquainted with Walton when we have read the -_Angler_, and perhaps have added to our reading his only other volume,—a -series of brief _Lives_ of certain excellent and beloved men of his time, -wherein he not only portrays their characters but further discloses his -own. They were men of note in their day: Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador -to Venice; Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s; Richard Hooker, famous -theologian; George Herbert, sacred poet; Bishop Sanderson, eminent -churchman. With most of these, and with other men of like standing, -Walton was in friendship. The company he kept indicates his quality. -Whatever his occupation or his means, he was certainly a gentleman and a -scholar, as well as a good judge of fishing. - -Of the actual events of his life, despite diligent research, little is -known, and all to his credit. Perhaps there were no events of public -importance or interest. He came as near as possible to the fortunate -estate of the nation which has a good repute but no history. - -He was born in the town of Stafford, August 9th, 1593. Of his schooling -he speaks with becoming modesty; and it must have been brief, for at the -age of sixteen or seventeen he was an apprentice in London. Whether he -was a linendraper or an ironmonger is a matter of dispute. Perhaps he -was first one and then the other. His first shop, in the Royal Burse, -Cornhill, was about seven and a half feet long by five wide. But he must -have done a good business in those narrow quarters; for in 1624 he had a -better place on Fleet Street, and from 1628 to 1644 he was a resident of -the parish of St. Dunstan’s, having a comfortable dwelling (and probably -his shop) in Chancery Lane, “about the seventh house on the left hand -side.” He served twice on the grand jury, and was elected a vestryman of -St. Dunstan’s twice. - -It was during his residence here that he lost his first wife, Rachel -Floud, and the seven children whom she had borne to him. In 1644, finding -the city “dangerous for honest men” on account of the civil strife -and disorder, he retired from London, and probably from business, and -lived in the country, “sometimes at Stafford,” (according to Anthony -Wood, the antiquary,) “but mostly in the families of the eminent -clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved.” This life gave him -large opportunity for his favourite avocation of fishing, and widened -the circle of his friendships, for wherever he came as a guest he was -cherished as a friend. I make no doubt that the love of angling, to which -innocent recreation he was attached by a temperate and enduring passion, -was either the occasion or the promoter of many of these intimacies. -For it has often been observed that this sport inclines those that -practise it to friendliness; and there are no closer or more lasting -companionships than such as are formed beside flowing streams by men who -study to be quiet and go a-fishing. - -After his second marriage, about 1646, to Anne Ken, half-sister of Bishop -Thomas Ken, (author of the well-known hymns, “Awake, my soul, and with -the sun,” and “All praise to Thee, my God, this night,”) Walton went to -live for some years at Clerkenwell. While he was there, the book for -which he had been long preparing, _The Compleat Angler_, was published, -and gave him his sure place in English literature and in the heart of an -innumerable company of readers. - -Never was there a better illustration of “fisherman’s luck” than the -success of Walton’s book. He set out to make a little “discourse of -fish and fishing,” a “pleasant curiositie” he calls it, full of useful -information concerning the history and practice of the gentle art, and, -as the author modestly claims on his title-page, “not unworthy the -perusal of most anglers.” Instead of this he produced an imperishable -classic, which has been read with delight by thousands who have never wet -a line. It was as if a man went forth to angle for smelts and caught a -lordly salmon. - -As a manual of practical instruction the book is long since out of -date. The kind of rod which Walton describes is too cumbrous for the -modern angler, who catches his trout with a split bamboo weighing no -more than four or five ounces, and a thin waterproofed line of silk -beside which Father Izaak’s favourite line twisted of seven horse-hairs -would look like a bed-cord. Most of his recipes for captivating baits -and lures, and his hints about “oyl,” or “camphire” with which they may -be made infallibly attractive to reluctant fish, are now more curious -than valuable. They seem like ancient superstitions,—although this very -summer I have had recommended to me a secret magic ointment one drop -of which upon a salmon-fly would (supposedly) render it irresistible. -(Yes, reader, I did try it; but its actual effect, owing to various -incalculable circumstances, could not be verified. The salmon took the -anointed fly sometimes, but at other times they took the unanointed, and -so I could not make affidavit that it was the oil that allured them. -It may have been some tickling in the brain, some dim memory of the -time when they were little parr, living in fresh water for their first -eighteen months and feeding mainly on floating insects, that made them -wish to rise again.) - -But to return to my subject. The angler of to-day who wishes to -understand the technics of modern fishing-gear will go to such books -as H. B. Wells’ _Fly Rods and Fly Tackle_, or to Dr. George Holden’s -_The Idyl of the Split Bamboo_. This very year two volumes have been -published, each of which in its way goes far beyond Walton: Mr. -William Radcliffe’s _Fishing from the Earliest Times_, which will -undoubtedly take its place as the standard history of the ancient craft -of fish-catching; and Mr. Edward R. Hewitt’s _Secrets of the Salmon_, -a brilliant and suggestive piece of work, full of acute scientific -observation and successful experiment. These belong to what De Quincey -called “the literature of knowledge.” But the _Angler_ belongs to “the -literature of power,”—that which has a quickening and inspiring influence -upon the spirit,—and here it is unsurpassed, I may even say unrivalled, -by any book ever written about any sport. Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge -commending it to his perusal: “It might sweeten a man’s temper at any -time to read _The Compleat Angler_.” - -The unfailing charm of the book lives in its delicately clear -descriptions of the country and of rural life; in its quaint pastoral -scenes, like the interview with the milkmaid and her mother, and the -convocation of gipsies under the hedge; and in its sincerely happy -incitements to patience, cheerfulness, a contented spirit, and a tranquil -mind. - -In its first form the book opened with a dialogue between Piscator and -Viator; but later this was revised to a three-sided conversation in which -Venator, a hunter, and Auceps, a falconer, take the place of Viator and -try valiantly to uphold the merits of their respective sports as superior -to angling. Of course Piscator easily gets the best of them, (authors -always have this power to reserve victory for their favourites,) and -Auceps goes off stage, vanquished, while Venator remains as a convert -and willing disciple, to follow his “Master” by quiet streams and drink -in his pleasant and profitable discourse. As a dialogue it is not very -convincing, it lacks salt and pepper; Venator is too easy a convert; -he makes two or three rather neat repartees, but in general, he seems -to have no mind of his own. But as a monologue it is very agreeable, -being written in a sincere, colloquial, unaffected yet not undignified -manner, with a plenty of digressions. And these, like the by-paths on a -journey, are the pleasantest parts of all. Piscator’s talk appears easy, -unconstrained, rambling, yet always sure-footed, like the walk of one who -has wandered by the little rivers so long that he can move forward safely -without watching every step, finding his footing by a kind of instinct -while his eyes follow the water and the rising fish. - -But we must not imagine that such a style as this, fluent as it seems and -easy to read as it is for any one with an ear for music, either comes -by nature or is attained without effort. Walton speaks somewhere of his -“artless pencil”; but this is true only in the sense that he makes us -forget the processes of his art in the simplicity of its results. He was -in fact very nice in his selection and ordering of words. He wrote and -rewrote his simplest sentences and revised his work in each of the five -earlier editions, except possibly the fourth. - -Take, for example, the bit which I have already quoted from the -“address to the reader” in the first edition, and compare it with the -corresponding passage in the fifth edition: - -“I am the willinger to justify _the pleasant part of it_, because, -_though it is known I can be serious at reasonable times_, yet the -whole discourse is, _or rather was_, a picture of my own disposition, -_especially_ in such days and times as I _have laid aside business, and -gone a-fishing with_ honest Nat. and R. Roe; _but they are gone, and with -them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away and -returns not_.” - -All the phrases in italics are either altered or added. - -He cites Montaigne’s opinion of cats,—a familiar judgment expressed with -lightness,—and in the first edition Winds up his quotation with the -sentence, “To this purpose speaks Montaigne concerning cats.” In the -fifth edition this is humourously improved to, “Thus _freely_ speaks -Montaigne concerning cats,”—as if it were something noteworthy to take a -liberty with this petted animal. - -The beautiful description of the song of the nightingale, and of the -lark, and the fine passage beginning, “Every misery that I miss is a new -mercy,” are jewels that Walton added in revision. - -In the first edition he gravely tells how the salmon “will force -themselves over the tops of weirs and hedges or stops in the water, _by -taking their tails into their mouths and leaping over those places_, -even to a height beyond common belief.” But upon reflection this -fish-story seems to him dubious; and so in the later edition you find the -mouth-and-tail legend in a poetical quotation, to which Walton cautiously -adds, “_This Michael Drayton tells you_ of this leap or summer-salt of -the salmon.” - -It would be easy to continue these illustrations of Walton’s care in -revising his work through successive editions; indeed a long article, or -even a little book might be made upon this subject, and if I had the time -I should like to do it. - -Another theme would well repay study, and that is the influence of -the King James Version of the Bible upon his style and thought. That -wonderful example of pure, strong, and stately English prose, was first -printed and published when Walton was eighteen years old, about the -time he came to London as an apprentice. Yet to such good purpose did -he read and study it that his two books, the _Angler_ and the _Lives_, -are full of apt quotations from it, and almost every page shows the -exemplary effect of its admirable diction. Indeed it has often seemed to -me that his fine description of the style of the Prophet Amos, (in the -first chapter of the _Angler_,) reveals something of the manner in which -Walton himself desired to write; and in this desire he was not altogether -unsuccessful. - -How clearly the man shines through his book! An honest, kindly man, not -ashamed of his trade, nor of his amusements, nor of his inmost faith. -A man contented with his modest place in the world, and never doubting -that it was a good world or that God made it. A firm man, not without -his settled convictions and strong aversions, yet “content that every -reader should enjoy his own opinion.” A liberal-mannered man, enjoying -the music of birds and of merry songs and glees, grateful for good food, -and “barly-wine, the good liquor that our honest Fore-fathers did use -to drink of,” and a fragrant pipe afterwards; sitting down to meat not -only with “the eminent clergymen of England,” but also, (as his Master -did,) with publicans and sinners; and counting among his friends such -dignitaries as Dr. John Hales, Bishop King, and Sir Henry Wotton, and -such lively and vagarious persons as Ben Jonson, Carey, and Charles -Cotton. A loyal, steadfast man, not given to change, anxiety of mind, or -vain complaining, but holding to the day’s duty and the day’s reward of -joy as God sent them to him, and bearing the day’s grief with fortitude. -Thus he worked and read and angled quietly through the stormy years of -the Civil War and the Commonwealth, wishing that men would beat their -swords into fish-hooks, and cast their leaden bullets into sinkers, and -study peace and the Divine will. - - - - -A STURDY BELIEVER - - -When James Boswell, Esq., wrote _The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D._, he -not only achieved his purpose of giving the world “a rich intellectual -treasure,” but also succeeded in making himself a subject of permanent -literary interest. - -Among the good things which the year 1922 has brought to us I count the -_Boswell redivivus_ from the industrious and skilful hand of Professor -Chauncey Brewster Tinker of Yale. He calls his excellent book, which is -largely enriched with new material in the way of hitherto unpublished -letters, _Young Boswell_. This does not mean that he deals only with the -early years, amatory episodes, and first literary ventures of Johnson’s -inimitable biographer, but that he sees in the man a certain persistent -youngness which accounts for the exuberance of his faults and follies as -well as for the enthusiasm of his hero-worship. - -Mr. Tinker does not attempt to camouflage the incorrigible absurdities -of Boswell’s disposition, nor the excesses of his conduct, but finds -an explanation if not an excuse for them in the fact that he had a -juvenile temperament which inclined him all through life to self-esteem -and self-indulgence, and kept him “very much a boy” until he died of -it. Whether this is quite consistent with his being “in fullest truth a -genius,” as Mr. Tinker claims, may be doubted; for genius in the high -sense is something that ripens if time be given it. But what is certain -beyond a question is that this vain and vagarious little Scotch laird -had in him a gift of observation, a talent of narration, and above all -a power of generous admiration, which enabled him to become, by dint of -hard work, what Macaulay entitled him, “the first of biographers.” - -Ever since it appeared in 1791, Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_ has been a -most companionable book. Reprinted again and again, it finds a perennial -welcome. To see it in a new edition is no more remarkable nowadays than -it once was to see Dr. Oliver Goldsmith in a new and vivid waistcoat. -For my own part I prefer it handsomely drest, with large type, liberal -margins, and a-plenty of illustrations. For it is not a book in which -economy of bulk is needful; it is less suitable for company on a journey -or a fishing-trip, than for a meditative hour in the library after -dinner, or a pleasant wakeful hour in bed, when the reading-lamp glows -clear and steady, and all the rest of the family are asleep or similarly -engaged in recumbent reading. - -There are some books with which we can never become intimate. However -long we may know them they keep us on the cold threshold of acquaintance. -Others boisterously grasp our hand and drag us in, only to bore us and -make us regret the day of our introduction. But if there ever was a -book which invited genially to friendship and delight it is this of -Boswell’s. The man who does not know it is ignorant of some of the best -cheer that can enliven a solitary fireside. The man who does not enjoy -it is insensible alike to the attractions of a noble character vividly -depicted, and to the amusement afforded by the sight of a great genius -in company with an adoring follower capable, at times, of acting like an -engaging ass. - -Yet after all, I have always had my doubts about the supposed -“asininity” of Boswell. As his Great Friend said, “A man who talks -nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense.” It is only -fair to accept his own explanation and allow that when he said or did -ridiculous things it was, partly at least, in order to draw out his -Tremendous Companion. Thus we may think with pleasure of Boswell taking -a rise out of Johnson. But we do not need to imagine Johnson taking a -rise out of Boswell; it was not necessary; he rose of his own accord. -He made a candid record of these diverting incidents because, though -self-complacent, he was not touchy, and he had sense enough to see that -the sure way to be entirely entertaining is to be quite frank. - -Boswell threw a stone at one bird and brought down two. His triumphant -effort to write the life of his Immense Hero just as it was, with all its -surroundings, appurtenances, and eccentricities, has won for himself a -singular honour: his proper name has become a common noun. It is hardly -necessary to use a capital letter when we allude to a boswell. His pious -boast that he had “Johnsonized the land,” is no more correct than it -would be to say, (and if he were alive he would certainly say it,) that -he had boswellized biography. - -The success of the book appears the more remarkable when we remember -that of the seventy-five years of Samuel Johnson’s life not more than -two years and two months were passed in the society of James Boswell. -Yet one would almost think that they had been rocked in the same cradle, -or, (if this figure of speech seem irreverent,) that the Laird of -Auchinleck had slept in a little trundle-bed beside the couch of the -Mighty Lexicographer. I do not mean by this that the record is trivial -and cubicular, but simply that Boswell has put into his book as much of -Johnson as it will hold. - -Let no one imagine, however, that a like success can be secured by -following the same recipe with any chance subject. The exact portraiture -of an insignificant person confers information where there is no -curiosity, and becomes tedious in proportion as it is precise.[19] The -first thing needful is to catch a giant for your hero; and in this -little world it is seldom that one like Johnson comes to the net. - -What a man he was,—this “old struggler,” as he called himself,—how -uncouth and noble and genuine and profound,—“a labouring, working mind; -an indolent, reposing body”! What a heart of fortitude in the bosom of -his melancholy, what a kernel of human kindness within the shell of his -rough manner! He was proud but not vain, sometimes rude but never cruel. -His prejudices were insular, but his intellect was continental. There was -enough of contradiction in his character to give it variety, and enough -of sturdy faith to give it unity. It was not easy for him to be good, but -it was impossible for him to be false; and he fought the battle of life -through along his chosen line even to the last skirmish of mortality. - -[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON. - -Painted by Reynolds. - -_From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London._] - -I suppose we Americans might harbour a grudge against him on the score -of his opinion of our forefathers. It is on record that he said of -them, during their little controversy with King George III, that they -were “a race of convicts.” (How exciting it would have been to hear him -say a thing like that to the face of George Washington or Benjamin -Franklin! He was quite capable of it.) But we can afford to laugh at -such an _obiter dictum_ now. And upon my honesty it offends me less at -the present time than Lionel Lispingly Nutt’s condescending advice on -poetry and politics, or Stutterworth Bummell’s patronizing half-praise. -Let a man smite us fairly on one cheek, and we can manage to turn the -other,—out of his reach. But if he deals superciliously with us as “poor -relations,” we can hardly help looking for a convenient and not too -dangerous flight of stairs for his speedy descent. - -Johnson may be rightly claimed as a Tory-Democrat on the strength of his -serious saying that “the interest of millions must ever prevail over that -of thousands,” and the temper of his pungent letter to Lord Chesterfield. -And when we consider also his side remark in defense of card-playing -on the ground that it “generates kindness and consolidates society,” -we may differ from him in our estimate of the game, but we cannot deny -that in small things as well as in great he spoke as a liberal friend of -humanity. - -His literary taste was not infallible; in some instances, (for example -his extreme laudation of Sir John Denham’s poem _Cooper’s Hill_, and his -adverse criticism of Milton’s verse,) it was very bad. In general you may -say that it was based upon theories and rules which are not really of -universal application, though he conceived them to be so. But his style -was much more the product of his own personality and genius. Ponderous it -often was, but seldom clumsy. He had the art of saying what he meant in a -deliberate, clear, forceful way. Words arrayed themselves at his command -and moved forward in serried phalanx. He had the praiseworthy habit of -completing his sentences and building his paragraphs firmly. It will not -do us any good to belittle his merit as a writer, particularly in this -age of slipper-shod and dressing-gowned English. - -His diction was much more varied than people usually suppose. He could -suit his manner to almost any kind of subject, except possibly the very -lightest. He had a keen sense of the shading of synonyms and rarely -picked the wrong word. Of antithesis and the balanced sentence he was -over-fond; and this device, intended originally to give a sharpened -emphasis, being used too often, lends an air of monotony to his writing. -Yet it has its merits too, as may be seen in these extracts from the -fiftieth number of _The Rambler_,—extracts which, by the way, have some -relation to a controversy still raging: - -“Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of -the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the -decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and -sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is -now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world -and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.... It may, -therefore, very reasonably be suspected that the old draw upon themselves -the greatest part of those insults which they so much lament, and that -age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible.... He that would -pass the latter part of his life with honour and decency, must, when he -is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he -is old, that he has once been young. In youth, he must lay up knowledge -for his support, when his powers of action shall forsake him; and in age -forbear to animadvert with rigour on faults which experience only can -correct.” - -In meaning this is very much the same as Sir James Barrie’s recent -admirable discourse on “Courage” at the University of St. Andrew’s; but -in manner there is quite a difference. - -It is commonly supposed that Dr. Johnson did a great deal to overload -and oppress the English language by introducing new and awkward words of -monstrous length. His opportunities in that way were large, but he always -claimed that he had used them with moderation and had not coined above -four or five words. When we note that “peregrinity” was one of them, -we are grateful that he refrained so much; but when we remember that -“clubbable” was another, we are glad that he did not refrain altogether. -For there is no quality more easy to recognize and difficult to define -than that which makes a man acceptable in a club; and of this Dr. Johnson -has given us a fine example in his life and an appropriate name in his -word. - -I think one reason why he got on so well with people who differed from -him, and why most of the sensible ones so readily put up with his -downright and often brusque way of expressing his sentiments, was because -they came so evidently from his sincere and unshakeable conviction -that certain things are true, that they can not be changed, and that -they should not be forgotten. Not only in politics, but also and more -significantly in religion, Samuel Johnson stands out as a sturdy believer. - -This seems the more noteworthy when we consider the conditions of his -life. There is hardly one among the great men of history who can be -called so distinctively “a man of letters,” undoubtedly none who has -won as high a position and as large a contemporary influence by sheer -strength of pen. Now the literary life is not generally considered to -be especially favourable to the cultivation of religion; and Johnson’s -peculiar circumstances were not of a kind to make it more favourable in -his case than usual. He was poor and neglected, struggling during a great -part of his career against the heaviest odds. His natural disposition was -by no means such as to predispose him to faith. He was afflicted from -childhood with a hypochondriac and irritable humour; a high, domineering -spirit, housed in an unwieldy and disordered body; plagued by inordinate -physical appetites; inclined naturally to rely with over-confidence -upon the strength and accuracy of his reasoning powers; driven by his -impetuous temper into violent assertion and controversy; deeply depressed -by his long years of obscurity and highly elated by his final success,—he -was certainly not one whom we would select as likely to be a remarkably -religious man. Carlyle had less to embitter him. Goethe had no more to -excuse self-idolatry. And yet, beyond a doubt, Johnson was a sincere, -humble, and, in the main, a consistent Christian. - -Of course, we cannot help seeing that his peculiarities and faults -affected his religion. He was intolerant in his expression of theological -views to a degree which seems almost ludicrous. We may, perhaps, keep a -straight face and a respectful attitude when we see him turning his back -on the Abbé Raynal, and refusing to “shake hands with an infidel.” But -when he exclaims in regard to a young lady who had left the Church of -England to become a Quaker, “I hate the wench and shall ever hate her; I -hate all impudence of a chit; apostasy I nauseate”; and when he answers -the gently expressed hope of a friend that he and the girl would meet, -after all, in a blessed eternity, by saying, “Madam, I am not fond of -_meeting fools anywhere_,” we cannot help joining in the general laughter -of the company to whom he speaks; and as the Doctor himself finally -laughs and becomes cheerful and entertaining, we feel that it was only -the bear in him that growled,—an honest beast, but sometimes very surly. - -As for his remarkable strictures upon Presbyterianism, his declaration -that he preferred the Roman Catholic Church, his expressed hope that John -Knox was buried in the highway, and his wish that a dangerous steeple in -Edinburgh might not be taken down because if it were let alone it might -fall on some of the posterity of John Knox, which, he said, would be -“no great matter,”—if when we read these things we remember that he was -talking to his Scotch friend Boswell, we get a new idea of the audacity -of the great man’s humour. I believe he even stirred up his natural -high-churchism to rise rampant and roar vigourously, for the pleasure of -seeing Boswell’s eyes stand out, and his neat little pigtail vibrate in -dismay. - -There are many other sayings of Johnson’s which disclose a deeper vein of -tolerance; such as that remark about the essential agreement and trivial -differences of all Christians, and his warm commendation, on his dying -bed, of the sermons of Dr. Samuel Clarke, a Dissenting minister. - -But even suppose we are forced to admit that Dr. Johnson was lacking in -that polished liberality, that willingness to admit that every other -man’s opinions are as good as his own, which we have come nowadays to -regard as the chief of the theological virtues; even suppose we must call -him “narrow,” we must admit at the same time that he was “deep”; he had -a profundity of conviction, a sincerity of utterance which made of his -religion something, as the Germans say, “to take hold of with your hands.” - -He had need of a sturdy belief. With that tempestuous, unruly -disposition of his boiling all the time within him, living in the age -of Chesterfield and Bolingbroke, fighting his way through the world amid -a thousand difficulties and temptations, he had great need to get a firm -grip upon some realities of religion and hold fast to them as things that -were settled. His first conviction of the truth of Christianity came to -him while he was at Oxford, through a casual reading of Law’s _Call to -the Unconverted_. There were some years after that, he tells us, when he -was totally regardless of religion. But sickness and trouble brought it -back, “and I hope,” says he, “that I have never lost it since.” - -He was not unwilling to converse with friends at fitting opportunities -in regard to religious subjects, and no one who heard him could have -remained long in doubt as to the nature of his views. There was one -conversation in particular, on the subject of the sacrifice of Christ, at -the close of which he solemnly dictated to his friend a brief statement -of his belief, saying finally, “The peculiar doctrine of Christianity -is that of an universal sacrifice and a perpetual propitiation. Other -prophets only proclaimed the will and the threatenings of God. Christ -satisfied his justice.” Again, one calm, bright Sunday afternoon, when he -was in a boat with some friends upon the sea (I think it was during his -journey to the Hebrides,) he fell into discourse with Boswell about the -fear of death, which was often very terrible to his mind. He would not -admit that the close of life ought to be regarded with cheerfulness or -indifference, or that a rational man should be as willing to leave the -world as to go out of a show-room after he has seen it. “No, sir,” said -he, “there is no rational principle by which a man can die contented, but -a trust in the mercy of God through the merits of Jesus Christ.” He was -not ashamed to say that he was afraid to die. He assumed no braggadocio -before the grave. He was honest with himself, and he felt that he needed -all the fortitude of a religious faith to meet the hour of dissolution -and the prospect of divine judgment without flinching. He could never -have understood the attitude of men who saunter as unconcernedly and -airily towards the day of judgment as if they were going to the play. - -But Johnson was by no means given to unseasonable or unreasonable -religious discourse. He had a holy horror of cant, and of unprofitable -controversy. He once said of a friend who was more loquacious than -discreet, “Why, yes, sir; he will introduce religious discourse without -seeing whether it will end in instruction and improvement, or produce -some profane jest. He would introduce it in the company of Wilkes, and -twenty more _such_.” - -It was Dr. Johnson’s custom to keep a book of _Prayers and Meditations_ -for his own private use. These were printed after his death, and they -reveal to us the sincerity of his inner life as nothing else could do. -Think of the old man kneeling down in his room before he began the -painful labours of a studious day, and repeating this prayer:— - -“_Against inquisitive and perplexing thoughts_: O Lord, my Maker and -Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to work out my -salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing -thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties -which Thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands, and -consider the course of thy providence, give me grace always to remember -that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. And while -it shall please Thee to continue me in this world, where much is to be -done and little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit to withdraw my -mind from unprofitable and dangerous inquiries, from difficulties vainly -curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me rejoice in the light -which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal and humble -confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the -soul Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge. Grant this, O -Lord, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.” - -These are honest and sensible petitions. And the more a man knows, the -more devoted he is to serious and difficult studies, the more he ought to -feel the need of just such a divine defense and guidance. It is good to -be kept on the track. It is wise to mistrust your own doubts. It is happy -to be delivered from them. - -The fundamental quality of Dr. Johnson’s religion was the sense of -reverence. He was never “known to utter the name of God but on proper -occasions and with due respect.” He approached the consideration of -divine things with genuine solemnity, and could not tolerate sacred -trifling or pious profanity. He was not ashamed to kneel where men could -see him, although he never courted their notice; or to pray where men -could hear him, although he did not desire their approbation any more -than he feared their ridicule. - -There were grave faults and errors in his conduct. But no one had so -keen a sense of their unworthiness as the man himself, who was bravely -fighting against them, and sincerely lamenting their recurrence. They -often tripped him and humiliated him, but they never got him completely -down. He righted himself and went lumbering on. He never sold his heart -to a lie, never confused the evil and the good. When he sinned he knew -it and repented. It gives us confidence in his sincerity when we see him -denying himself the use of wine because he was naturally prone to excess, -and yet allowing it to his friends who were able to use it temperately. -He was no puritan; and, on the other hand, he was no slipshod condoner of -vice or suave preacher of moral indifference. He was a big, honest soul, -trying hard to live straight along the line of duty and to do good as he -found opportunity. - -The kindness and generosity of his heart were known to few save his -intimate friends, and not always appreciated even by those who had most -cause to be grateful to him. The poor broken-down pensioners with whom -he filled his house in later years, and to whom he alluded playfully -as his _seraglio_, were a constant source of annoyance. They grumbled -perpetually and fought like so many cats. But he would not cast them off -any more than he would turn out his favourite mouser, Hodge, for whom he -used to “go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble -should take a dislike to the poor creature.” He gave away a large part -of his income in charity; and, what was still more generous, he devoted -a considerable portion of his time to counseling young and unsuccessful -authors and, (note this,) _reading their manuscripts_. - -I suppose if one had been a poverty-stricken beginner at literature, in -London of the eighteenth century, the best thing one could have done -would have been to find the way to Dr. Johnson’s house and tell him -how the case stood. If he himself had no money to lend, he would have -borrowed it from some of his friends. And if he could not say anything -encouraging about the manuscripts, he would have been honest and kind -enough to advise the unhappy aspirant to fame to prefer the life of a -competent shoemaker to that of an incompetent scribbler. - -Much of what was best in the character of Johnson came out in his -friendships. He was as good a lover as he was a hater. He was loyal to a -fault, and sincere, though never extravagant, in his admirations. - -The picture of the old man in his last illness, surrounded by the friends -whom he had cherished so faithfully, and who now delighted to testify -their respect and affection for him, and brighten his lingering days with -every attention, has little of the customary horror of a death-bed. It -is strange indeed that he who had always been subject to such a dread of -dying should have found it possible to meet the hour of dissolution with -such composure. His old friend Sir Joshua Reynolds comes in to bid him -farewell, and Johnson makes three requests of him,—to forgive him thirty -pounds which he had borrowed from him, to read the Bible, and never to -use his pencil on a Sunday. Good petitions, which Sir Joshua readily -granted, although we cannot help fearing that he occasionally forgot the -last. - -“Tell me,” says the sick man to his physician, “can I possibly recover? -Give me a direct answer.” Being hard pressed, Dr. Brocklesby confesses -that in his opinion recovery is out of the question. “Then,” says -Johnson, “I will take no more physick, not even my opiates: for I have -prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.” - -And so with kind and thoughtful words to his servant, and a “God bless -you, my dear” to the young daughter of a friend who stood lingering at -the door of his room, this sturdy old believer went out to meet the God -whom he had tried so honestly to serve. His life was an amazing victory -over poverty, sickness, and sin. Greatness alone could not have insured, -nor could perseverance alone have commanded, three of his good fortunes -in this world: that Sir Joshua Reynolds painted his portrait; that -Boswell wrote his biography; and that HIS WIFE said of him that “he was -the most sensible man she had ever met.” - - - - -A PURITAN PLUS POETRY - - -I - -A friend of mine, one of the Elder Bookmen of Harvard, told me some -twenty years ago that he had only once seen Ralph Waldo Emerson vexed out -of his transcendental tranquillity and almost Olympian calm. It was a -Sunday afternoon in Concord, and the philosopher had been drawn from his -study by an unwonted noise in the house. On the back porch he found his -own offspring and some children of the neighbours engaged in a romping, -boisterous game. With visible anger he stopped it, saying, “Even if you -have no reverence for the day, you ought to have enough sense and manners -to respect the traditions of your forefathers.” - -Emerson’s puritanism was in the blood. Seven of his ancestors were -ministers of New England churches of the early type. Among them was -Peter Bulkley, who left his comfortable parish in Bedfordshire, England, -to become the pastor of “the church in the wilderness” at Concord, -Massachusetts; Father Samuel Moody of Agamenticus, Maine, who was such a -zealous reformer that he pursued wayward sinners even into the alehouse -to reprove them; Joseph Emerson of Malden, a “heroic scholar,” who prayed -every night that no descendant of his might ever be rich; and William -Emerson, the patriot preacher, who died while serving in the army of the -Revolution. These were verily “soldiers of the Lord,” and from them and -women of like stamina and mettle, Emerson inherited the best of puritan -qualities: independence, sobriety, fearless loyalty to conscience, -strenuous and militant virtue. - -But he had also a super-gift which was not theirs. That which made him -different from them, gave him a larger and more beautiful vision of the -world, led him into ways of thinking and speaking which to them would -have seemed strange and perilous, (though in conduct he followed the -strait and narrow path,)—in short, that which made him what he was in -himself and to countless other men, a seer, an inspirer, a singer of -new light and courage and joy, was the gift of poetic imagination and -interpretation. He was a puritan _plus_ poetry. - -Graduating from Harvard he began life as a teacher in a Boston school -and afterwards the minister of a Boston church. But there was something -in his temperament which unfitted him for the service of institutions. -He was a servant of ideas. To do his best work he needed to feel himself -entirely independent of everything except allegiance to the truth as -God gave him to see it from day to day. The scholastic routine of a -Female Academy irked him. The social distinctions and rivalries of -city life appeared to him both insincere and tiresome. Even the mild -formulas and regulations of a Unitarian church seemed to hamper him. He -was a come-outer; he wished to think for himself, to proclaim his own -visions, to act and speak only from the inward impulse, though always -with an eye to the good of others. So he left his parish in Boston and -became a preacher at large to “these United States.” His pulpit was the -lecture-platform; his little books of prose and verse carried his words -to a still larger audience; no man in America during his life had a more -extended or a deeper influence; he became famous both as an orator and as -a writer; but in fact he was always preaching. As Lamb said to Coleridge, -“I never heard you do anything else.” - -The central word of all his discourse is Self-reliance,—be yourself, -trust yourself, and fear not! But in order to interpret this rightly one -must have at least an inkling of his philosophy, which was profoundly -religious and essentially poetical. He was a mystic, an intuitional -thinker. He believed that the whole universe of visible things is only -a kind of garment which covers the real world of invisible ideas and -laws and principles. He believed also that each man, having a share -in the Divine Reason which is the source of all things, may have a -direct knowledge of truth through his own innate ideas and intuitive -perceptions. Emerson wrote in his diary, “The highest revelation is that -God is in every man.” - -This way of thinking is called transcendentalism, because it overleaps -logic and scientific reasoning. It is easy to see how such a philosophy -might lead unbalanced persons into wild and queer and absurd views and -practices. And so it did when it struck the neighbourhood of Boston in -the second quarter of the 19th Century, and began to spread from that -sacred centre. - -But with these vagaries Emerson had little sympathy. His mysticism -was strongly tinctured with common sense, (which also is of divine -origin,) and his orderly nature recoiled from eccentric and irregular -ways. Although for a time he belonged to the “Transcendental Club,” he -frequently said that he would not be called a transcendentalist, and -at times he made fun, in a mild and friendly spirit, of the extreme -followers of that doctrine. He held as strongly as any one that the -Divine light of reason in each man is the guide to truth; but he held it -with the important reservation that when this inner light really shines, -free from passion and prejudice, it will never lead a man away from -good judgment and the moral law. All through his life he navigated the -transcendental sea safely, piloted by a puritan conscience, warned off -the rocks by a keen sense of humour, and kept from capsizing by a solid -ballast of New England prudence. - -He was in effect one of the most respected, sagacious, prosperous and -virtuous villagers of Concord. Some slight departures from common custom -he tranquilly tested and as tranquilly abandoned. He tried vegetarianism -for a while, but gave it up when he found that it did him no good. He -attempted to introduce domestic democracy by having the servants sit -at table with the rest of the household, but was readily induced to -abandon the experiment by the protest of his two sensible hired girls -against such an inconvenient arrangement. He began to practise a theory -that manual labour should form part of the scholar’s life, but was -checked by the personal discovery that hard work in the garden meant -poor work in the study. “The writer shall not dig,” was his conclusion. -Intellectual freedom was what he chiefly desired; and this he found could -best be attained in an inconspicuous manner of living and dressing, -not noticeably different from that of the average college professor or -country minister. - -[Illustration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON. - -_From a photograph by Black, Boston._] - -Here you see the man “in his habit as he lived,” (and as thousands -of lecture-audiences saw him,) pictured in the old photograph which -illustrates this chapter. Here is the familiar _décor_ of the -photographer’s studio: the curtain draped with a cord and tassel, -the muslin screen background, and probably that hidden instrument of -torture, the “head-rest,” behind the tall, posed figure. Here are the -solemn “swallow-tail coat,” the conventional cravat, and the black satin -waistcoat. Yet even this antique “carte de visite,” it seems to me, -suggests something more and greater,—the imperturbable, kindly presence, -the noble face, the angelic look, the serene manner, the penetrating -and revealing quality of the man who set out to be “a friend to all who -wished to live in the spirit.” - -Whatever the titles of his lectures,—_Man the Reformer_, _The Method -of Nature_, _The Conduct of Life_, _Fate_, _Compensation_, _Prudence_, -_The Present Age_, _Society and Solitude_,—his main theme is always the -same, “namely the infinitude of the private man.” But this private man -of Emerson’s, mark you, is linked by invisible ties to all Nature and -carries in his breast a spark of the undying fire which is of God. Hence -he is at his best when he feels not only his personal _unity_ but also -his universal _community_, when he relies on himself and at the same time -cries - - “I yield myself to the perfect whole.” - -This kind of independence is the truest form of obedience. - -The charm of Emerson’s way of presenting his thought comes from the -spirit of poetry in the man. He does not argue, nor threaten, nor often -exhort; he reveals what he has seen or heard, for you to make what you -will of it. He relies less on syllogisms than on imagery, symbols, -metaphors. His utterance is as inspirational as the ancient oracle of -Delphi, but he shuns the contortions of the priestess at that shrine. - -The clearness and symmetry of his sentences, the modulations of his -thrilling voice, the radiance of his fine features and his understanding -smile, even his slight hesitations and pauses over his manuscript as -he read, lent a singular attraction to his speech. Those who were -mistrustful of his views on theology and the church, listened to him -with delight when he poetized on art, politics, literature, human -society and the natural world. To the finest men and women of America -in the mid-Victorian epoch he was the lecturer _par excellence_, the -intellectual awakener and liberator, the messenger calling them to break -away from dull, thoughtless, formal ways of doing things, and live freely -in harmony with the laws of God and their own spirit. They heard him -gladly. - -I wonder how he would fare to-day, when lecturers, male or female, have -to make a loud noise to get a hearing. - - -II - -Emerson’s books, prose and verse, remain with us and still live,—“the -precious life-blood of a masterspirit, embalmed and treasured up on -purpose to a life beyond life.” That they are companionable is proved by -the way all sorts of companionable people love them. I know a Pullman car -conductor who swears by Emerson. A young French Canadian woodsman, (who -is going to work his way through college,) told me the other day that -he liked Emerson’s essays better than any other English book that he had -read. Restive girls and boys of the “new generation” find something in -him which appeals to them; reading farmers of New England and the West -prefer him to Plato; even academic professors and politicians qualifying -for statesmen feel his stimulating and liberating influence, although -(or perhaps because) he sometimes says such hard things about them. I -guess that nothing yet written in America is likely to live longer than -Emerson’s best work. - -His prose is better known and more admired than his verse, for several -reasons: first, because he took more pains to make the form of it as -perfect as he could; second, because it has a wider range and an easier -utterance; third, because it has more touches of wit and of familiarity -with the daily doings of men; and finally, because the majority of -readers probably prefer prose for silent reading, since the full charm of -good verse is revealed only in reading aloud. - -But for all that, with Emerson, (as with a writer so different as -Matthew Arnold,) I find something in the poems which is not in the -essays,—a more pure and subtle essence of what is deepest in the man. -Poetry has a power of compression which is beyond prose. It says less and -suggests more. - -Emerson wrote to the girl whom he afterwards married: “I am born a -poet,—of a low class without doubt, but a poet.... My singing, to be -sure, is very husky and is for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet -in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmonies that are -in the soul and in matter, and specially of the correspondence between -them.” This is penetrating self-criticism. That he was “of a low class” -as poet is more than doubtful,—an error of modesty. But that his singing -was often “husky” cannot be denied. He never troubled himself to learn -the art of song. The music of verse, in which Longfellow gained such -mastery, and Lowell and Whittier had such native gifts, is not often -found in Emerson’s poetry. His measures rarely flow with freedom and -harmony. They are alternately stiff and spasmodic, and the rhymes are -sometimes threadbare, sometimes eccentric. Many of his poems are so -condensed, so tight-packed with thought and information that they seem to -labour along like an overladen boat in a choppy sea. For example, this: - - “The journeying atoms, - Primordial wholes, - Firmly draw, firmly drive, - By their animate poles.” - -Or this: - - “Puny man and scentless rose - Tormenting Pan to double the dose.” - -But for these defects of form Emerson as poet makes ample amends by the -richness and accuracy of his observation of nature, by the vigorous -flight of his imagination, by the depth and at times the passionate -controlled intensity of his feeling. Of love-poetry he has none, except -the philosophical. Of narrative poetry he has practically none, unless -you count such brief, vivid touches as,— - - “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, - Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, - Here once the embattled farmers stood, - And fired the shot heard round the world.” - -But his descriptive pieces are of a rare beauty and charm, truthful in -broad outline and delicate detail, every flower and every bird in its -right colour and place. Walking with him you see and breathe New England -in the light of early morn, with the dew sparkling on the grass and all -the cosmic forces working underneath it. His reflective and symbolic -poems, like _Each and All_, _The Problem_, _Forerunners_, _Days_, _The -Sphinx_, are full of a searching and daring imaginative power. He has -also the genius of the perfect phrase. - - “The frolic architecture of the snow.” - - “Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, - As the best gem upon her zone” - - “The silent organ loudest chants - The Master’s requiem.” - - “Music pours on mortals - Its beautiful disdain.” - - “Over the winter glaciers, - I see the summer glow, - And through the wild-piled snowdrift - The warm rose-buds below.” - - “I thenceforward and long after, - Listen for their harp-like laughter, - And carry in my heart, for days, - Peace that hallows rudest ways.” - -His _Threnody_, written after the early death of his first-born son, has -always seemed to me one of the most moving elegies in the English tongue. -His patriotic poems, especially the _Concord Ode_, are unsurpassed as -brief, lyrical utterances of the spirit of America. In certain moods, -when the mind is in vigour and the windows of far vision open at a touch, -Emerson’s small volume of _Poems_ is a most companionable book. - - * * * * * - -As his prose sometimes intrudes into his verse and checks its flow, so -his poetry often runs over into his prose and illuminates it. What could -be more poetic in conception than this sentence from his first book, -_Nature_? “If the stars should appear but one night in a thousand years, -how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the -remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!” - -Emerson’s _Essays_ are a distillation of his lectures. His way of making -these was singular and all his own. It was his habit to keep note-books -in which he jotted down bits of observation about nature, stray thoughts -and comparisons, reflections on his reading, and striking phrases which -came to him in meditation or talk. Choosing a subject he planted it in -his mind and waited for ideas and illustrations to come to it, as birds -or insects to a flower. When a thought appeared he followed it, “as a -boy might hunt a butterfly,” and when it was captured he pinned it in -his “thought-book.” No doubt there were mental laws at work all the -time, giving guidance and direction to the process of composition which -seemed so irregular and haphazard. There is no lack of vital unity in -one of Emerson’s lectures or essays. It deals with a single subject and -never gets really out of sight of the proposition with which it begins. -Yet it seldom gives a complete, all-round view of it. It is more like a -series of swift and vivid glimpses of the same object seen from different -stand-points, a collection of snap-shot pictures taken in the course of a -walk around some great mountain. - -From the pages of his note-books he gathered the material for one of -his lectures, selecting and arranging it under some such title as Fate, -Genius, Beauty, Manners, Duty, The Anglo-Saxon, The Young American, -and giving it such form and order as he thought would be most effective -in delivery. If the lecture was often repeated, (as it usually was,) -the material was frequently rearranged, the pages were shifted, the -illustrations changed. Then, after it had served its purpose, the -material was again rearranged and published in a volume of _Essays_. - -It is easy to trace in the essays the effects of this method of writing. -The material is drawn from a wide range of reading and observation. -Emerson is especially fond of poetry, philosophy and books of anecdote -and biography. He quotes from Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, George Herbert, -Wordsworth, Plutarch, Grimm, St. Simon, Swedenborg, Behmen the mystic, -Plato, and the religious books of the East. His illustrations come from -far and near. Now they are strange and remote, now homely and familiar. -The Zodiac of Denderah; the Savoyards who carved their pine-forests into -toys; the _lustrum_ of silence which Pythagoras made his disciples keep; -Napoleon on the _Bellerophon_ watching the drill of the English soldiers; -the Egyptian legend that every man has two pair of eyes; Empedocles -and his shoe; the flat strata of the earth; a soft mushroom pushing up -through the hard ground;—all these allusions and a hundred more are found -in the same volume. On his pages, close beside the Parthenon, St. Paul’s, -the Sphinx, Ætna and Vesuvius, you will read of the White Mountains, -Monadnock, Katahdin, the pickerel-weed in bloom, the wild geese honking -across the sky, the chickadee singing in the face of winter, the Boston -State-house, Wall Street, cotton-mills, railroads, Quincy granite, and -so forth. Nothing is too far away to seem real to him, nothing too near -to seem interesting and valuable. There is an abundance, sometimes a -superabundance, of material in his essays, not always well-assorted, but -all vivid and suggestive. - -The structure of the essay, the way of putting the material together, -does not follow any fixed rule or system. Yet in most cases it has a -well-considered and suitable form; it stands up; it is architecturally -built, though the art is concealed. I once amused myself trying to -analyze some of the essays, and found that many of the best ones have a -definite theme, like a text, and follow a regular plan of development, -with introduction, discussion, and conclusion. In some cases Emerson does -not disdain the “heads and horns” of the old-fashioned preacher, and -numbers his points “first,” “second,” “third,”—perhaps even “fourth.” But -this is rare. For the most part the essays do not seem to be constructed -but to grow. They are like conversations with the stupid things left out. -They turn aside from dull points, and omit connecting links, and follow -an attractive idea wherever it may lead. They seldom exhaust a subject, -but they usually illuminate it. - -“The style is the man,” and in this case it is well suited to his -material and his method. It is brilliant, sparkling, gem-like. He has -great freedom in the choice of words, using them sometimes in odd ways -and not always correctly. Generally his diction is made up of terse, -pungent Anglo-Saxon phrases, but now and then he likes to bring in a -stately word of Greek or Latin origin, with a telling effect of contrast. -Most of his sentences are short and clear; it is only in the paragraph -that he is sometimes cloudy. Every essay is rich in epigrams. If one -reads too much of a style like this, the effect becomes fatiguing. You -miss the long, full, steady flow of sentences with varied cadence and -changing music. - -Emerson’s river is almost all rapids. The flash and sparkle of phrase -after phrase tire me after a while. But for a short voyage nothing could -be more animated and stimulating. I read one essay at a time and rise -refreshed. - -But the secret of Emerson’s power, (to change the figure,) is in the -wine which he offers, not the cup into which he pours it. His great -word,—“self-reliance,”—runs through all his writing and pervades all that -he says. At times it is put in an extreme form, and might lead, if rashly -followed, to intellectual conceit and folly. But it is balanced by other -words, no less potent,—self-criticism, modesty, consideration, prudence, -and reverence. He is an aspiring, hopeful teacher of youth; correcting -follies with a sharp wit; encouraging noble ambitions; making the face -of nature luminous with the glow of poetic imagination; and elevating -life with an ideal patriotism and a broad humanity. In all his writing -one feels the serene, lofty influence of a sane and chastened optimism, -the faith which holds, amid many appearances which are dark, mysterious -and terrifying, that Good is stronger than Evil and will triumph at last -everywhere. - -Read what he says in the essay called _Compensation_: “There is no -penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of -being. In a virtuous action I properly _am_; in a virtuous act I add to -the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Nothing, and -see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no -excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes -are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always -affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.” - -This is the note that brings a brave joy to the ear of youth. Old age -gladly listens to the same note in the deeper, quieter music of Emerson’s -poem, _Terminus_. - - “As the bird trims her to the gale, - I trim myself to the storm of time, - I man the rudder, reef the sail, - Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: - ‘Lowly faithful, banish fear, - Right onward drive unharmed; - The port, well worth the cruise, is near, - And every wave is charmed.’” - - - - -AN ADVENTURER IN A VELVET JACKET - - -Thus gallantly he appears in my mind’s eye when I pause in rereading -one of his books and summon up a fantasm of the author,—Robert Louis -Stevenson, gentleman adventurer in life and letters, his brown eyes -shining in a swarthy face, his lean, long-enduring body adorned with a -black-velvet jacket. - -This garment is no disguise but a symbol. It is short, so as not to -impede him with entangling tails. It is unconventional, as a protest -against the tyranny of fashion. But it is of velvet, mark you, to -match a certain niceness of choice and preference of beauty,—yes, and -probably a touch of bravura,—in all its wearer’s vagaries. ’Tis like the -silver spurs, broad sombrero and gay handkerchief of the thoroughbred -cowboy,—not an element of the dandiacal, but a tribute to romance. -Strange that the most genuine of men usually have a bit of this in their -composition; your only incurable _poseur_ being the fellow who affects -never to pose and betrays himself by his attitude of scorn. - -Of course, Stevenson did not always wear this symbolic garment. In fact -the only time I met him in the flesh his clothes had a discouraging -resemblance to those of the rest of us at the Authors Club in New York. -And a few months ago, when I traced his “footprints on the sands of -time” at Waikiki beach, near Honolulu, the picture drawn for me by those -who knew him when he passed that way, was that of a lank, bare-footed, -bright-eyed, sun-browned man who daundered along the shore in white-duck -trousers and a shirt wide open at the neck. But the velvet jacket was in -his wardrobe, you may be sure, ready for fitting weather and occasion. He -wore it, very likely, when he went to beard the Honolulu colourman who -was trying to “do” his stepson-in-law in the matter of a bill for paints. -He put it on when he banqueted with his amiable but bibulous friend, King -Kalakaua. You can follow it through many, if not most, of the photographs -which he had taken from his twentieth to his forty-fourth, and last, -year. And in his style you can almost always feel it,—the touch of -distinction, the ease of a native elegance, the assurance of a well-born -wanderer,—in short, the velvet jacket. - -[Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. - -_From a photograph, negative of which is owned by Charles Scribner’s -Sons._] - -Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson began the adventure of life in a decent -little house in Howard Place, Edinburgh, on November 13, 1850. He -completed it on the Samoan island of Upolu in the South Seas, December 3, -1894,—completed it, I think, for though he left his work unfinished he -had arrived at the port of honour and the haven of happy rest. - -His father, and his father’s father, were engineers connected with the -Board of Northern Lights. This sounds like being related to the Aurora -Borealis; and indeed there was something of mystery and magic about -Stevenson, as if an influence from that strange midnight dawn had entered -his blood. But as a matter of fact the family occupation was nothing more -uncanny than that of building and maintaining lighthouses and beacons -along the Scottish coast, a profession in which they won considerable -renown and to which the lad himself was originally assigned. He made a -fair try at it, and even won a silver medal for an essay on improvements -in lighthouses. But the calling did not suit him, and he said afterward -that he gained little from it except “properties for some possible -romance, or words to add to my vocabulary.” - -This lanky, queer, delicate, headstrong boy was a dreamer of dreams, and -from youth desperately fond of writing. He felt himself a predestinated -author, and like a true Scot toiled diligently to make his calling and -election sure. - -But there was one thing for which he cared more than for writing, -and that was living. He plunged into it eagerly, with more zest than -wisdom, trying all the games that cities offer, and learning some rather -disenchanting lessons at a high price. For in truth neither his physical, -nor (as he later discovered) his moral, nature was suited to the sowing -of wild oats. His constitution was one of the frailest ever exposed to -the biting winds and soaking mists of the North British Boston. Early -death seemed to be written in his horoscope. But an indomitable spirit -laughs at dismal predictions. Robert Louis Stevenson, (as he now called -himself, velvet-jacketing his own name,) was not the man to be easily -snuffed out by weak lungs or wild weather. Mocking at “bloody Jack” he -held fast to life with grim, cheerful, grotesque courage; his mother, his -wife, his trusty friends, heartened him for the combat; and he succeeded -in having a wider experience and doing more work than falls to the lot of -many men in rudely exuberant health. To do this calls for a singular kind -of bravery, not inferior to, nor unlike, that of the good soldier who -walks with Death undismayed. - -Undoubtedly Stevenson was born with a _Wanderlust_. - - “My mistress was the open road - And the bright eyes of danger.” - -Ill health gave occasion and direction to many voyages and experiments, -some of which bettered him, while others made him worse. As a bachelor -he roamed mountains afoot and travelled rivers in his own boat, explored -the purlieus and sublittorals of Paris, London, and Edinburgh, lodged “on -the seacoast of Bohemia,” crossed the ocean as an emigrant, and made -himself vagrantly at home in California where he married the wife “the -great Artificer made for him.” They passed their honeymoon in a deserted -miner’s cabin, and then lived around, in Scotland, the Engadine, Southern -France, Bournemouth, the Adirondacks, and on a schooner among the South -Sea Islands, bringing up at last in the pleasant haven of Vailima. On -all these distant roads Death pursued him, and, till the last ten years, -Poverty was his companion. Yet he looked with keen and joyful eyes -upon the changing face of the world and into its shadowy heart without -trembling. He kept his spirit unbroken, his faith unquenched even when -the lights burned low. He counted life - - “just a stuff - To try the soul’s strength on and educe the man.” - -He may have stumbled and sometimes fallen, things may have looked black -to him; but he never gave up, and in spite of frailties and burdens, he -travelled a long way,—upward. Through all his travels and tribulations he -kept on writing, writing, writing,—the very type of a migratory author. -He made his first appearance in a canoe. The log of this journey, -_An Inland Voyage on French Rivers_, published in 1878, was a modest, -whimsical, charming début in literature. In 1879 he appeared again, -and this time with a quaint companion. _Travels with a Donkey in the -Cevennes_ is one of the most delightful, uninstructive descriptions of a -journey ever written in English. It contains no practical information but -plenty of pleasure and profit. I do not envy the reader who can finish -it without loving that obstinate little mouse-coloured Modestine, and -feeling that she is one of the best-drawn female characters, of her race, -in fiction. - -From this good, quiet beginning his books followed rapidly, and (after -_Treasure Island_, that incomparable boys’ book for men,) with growing -popularity among the judicious, the “gentle readers,” who choose -books not because they are recommended by professors or advertised in -department stores, but because they are really well written and worth -reading. - -It is difficult to classify Stevenson’s books, perhaps just because they -are migrants, borderers. Yet I think a rough grouping, at least of his -significant works, may be made. There are five volumes of travels; six -or seven volumes of short stories; nine longer novels or romances; three -books of verse; three books of essays; one biography; and one study of -South Sea politics. This long list lights up two vital points in the man: -his industry and his versatility. - -“A virtue and a vice,” say you? Well, that may be as you choose to -take it, reader. But if you say it in a sour or a puritanical spirit, -Stevenson will gaily contradict you, making light of what you praise and -vaunting what you blame. - -Industry? Nonsense! Did he not write _An Apology for Idlers_? Yet -unquestionably he was a toiler; his record proves it. Fleeing from one -land to another to shake off his implacable enemy; camping briefly in -strange places; often laid on his back by sickness and sometimes told -to “move on” by Policeman Penury; collecting his books by post and -correcting his proofs in bed; he made out to produce twenty-nine volumes -in sixteen years,—say 8,000 pages of 300 words, each,—a thing manifestly -impossible without a mort of work. But of this he thought less than of -the fact that he did it, as a rule, cheerfully and with a high heart. -Herein he came near to his own ideal of success: “To be honest, to be -kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the -whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be -necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these -without capitulation,—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep -friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude -and delicacy.” Of his work I think he would have said that he stuck to -it, first, because he needed the money that it brought in, and second, -because he enjoyed it exceedingly. With this he would have smiled away -the puritan who wished to pat him on the back for industry. - -That he was versatile, turned from one subject to another, tried many -forms of his art, and succeeded in some better than in others, he would -have admitted boldly—even before those critics who speak slightingly -of versatility as if it marked some inferiority in a writer, whereas -they dislike it chiefly because it gives them extra trouble in putting -him into his precise pigeonhole of classification. Stevenson would -have referred these gentlemen to his masters Scott and Thackeray for a -justification. His versatility was not that of a weathercock whirled -about by every wind of literary fashion, but that of a well-mounted gun -which can be turned towards any mark. He did not think that because he -had struck a rich vein of prose story-telling he must follow that lead -until he had worked it or himself out. He was a prospector as well as a -miner. He wished to roam around, to explore things, books, and men, to -see life vividly as it is, and then to write what he thought of it in any -form that seemed to him fit,—essay, or story, or verse. And this he did, -thank God, without misgiving, and on the whole greatly to our benefit and -enjoyment. - -I am writing now of the things which make his books companionable. That -is why I have begun with a thumb-nail sketch of the man in the velvet -jacket who lives in them and in his four volumes of letters,—the best -English letters, it seems to me, since Lamb and Thackeray. That also is -why I have not cared to interrupt this simple essay by telling which of -his works strike me as comparative failures, and giving more or less -convincing reasons why certain volumes in my “collective edition” are -less worn than others. - -’Tis of these others that I wish to speak,—the volumes whose bindings -are like a comfortable suit of old clothes and on whose pages there are -pencil-marks like lovers’ initials cut upon the bark of friendly trees. -What charm keeps them alive and fresh, in an age when most books five -years old are considered out of date and everything from the unspacious -times of Queen Victoria is cordially damned? What manner of virility is -in them to evoke, and to survive, such a flood of “Stevensoniana”? What -qualities make them still welcome to so wide a range of readers, young -and old, simple and learned,—yes, even among that fair and capricious -sex whose claim to be courted his earlier writings seem so lightly (or -prudently) to neglect? - - -I - -Over and above the attraction of his pervading personality, I think -the most obvious charm of Stevenson’s books lies in the clear, vivid, -accurate and strong English in which they are written. Reading them is -like watching a good golfer drive or putt the ball with clean strokes -in which energy is never wanting and never wasted. He does not foozle, -or lose his temper in a hazard, or brandish his brassy like a war-club. -There is a grace of freedom in his play which comes from practice and -self-control. - -Stevenson describes (as far as such a thing is possible) the way in which -he got his style. “All through my boyhood and youth,” says he, “I was -known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler, and yet I was always -busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write.” He traces -with gusto, and doubtless with as much accuracy as can be expected in a -map drawn from memory, the trails of early admiration which he followed -towards this goal. His list of “authors whom I have imitated” is most -entertaining: Hazlitt, Lamb, Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe, -Hawthorne, Montaigne, Baudelaire, Obermann. In another essay, on “Books -Which Have Influenced Me,” he names _The Bible_, _Hamlet_, _As You Like -It_, _King Lear_, _Le Vicomte de Bragelonne_, _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, -_Leaves of Grass_, Herbert Spencer’s books, Lewes’s _Life of Goethe_, -the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius, the poems of Wordsworth, George -Meredith’s _The Egoist_, the essays of Thoreau and Hazlitt, Mitford’s -_Tales of Old Japan_,—a strange catalogue, but not incoherent if you -remember that he is speaking now more of their effect upon his way of -thinking than of their guidance in his manner of writing,—though in this -also I reckon he learned something from them, especially from the English -Bible. - -Besides the books which he read, he carried about with him little -blank-books in which he jotted down the noteworthy in what he saw, heard, -or imagined. He learned also from penless authors, composers without a -manuscript, masters of the _viva-voce_ style, like Robert, the Scotch -gardener, and John Todd, the shepherd. When he saw a beggar on horseback, -he cared not where the horse came from, he watched the rascal ride. -If an expression struck him “for some conspicuous force, some happy -distinction,” he promptly annexed it;—because he understood it, it was -his. - -In two separate essays, each of which he calls “A Gossip,” he pays -tribute to “the bracing influence of old Dumas,” and to the sweeping -power and broad charm of Walter Scott, “a great romantic—an idle child,” -the type of easy writers. But Stevenson is of a totally different type, -though of a kindred spirit. He is the best example in modern English of -a careful writer. He modelled and remodelled, touched and retouched his -work, toiled tremendously. The chapter on Honolulu in _The Wrecker_, was -rewritten ten times. His essays for _Scribner’s Magazine_ passed through -half a dozen revisions. - -His end in view was to bring his language closer to life, not to use -the common language of life. That, he maintained, was too diffuse, too -indiscriminate. He wished to condense, to distil, to bring out the real -vitality of language. He was like _Sentimental Tommy_ in Barrie’s book, -willing to cogitate three hours to find the solitary word which would -make the thing he had in mind stand out distinct and unmistakable. -What matter if his delay to finish his paper lost him the prize in the -competition? Tommy’s prize was the word; when he had that his work was -crowned. - -A willingness to be content with the wrong colour, to put up with the -word which does not fit, is the mark of inferior work. For example, the -author of _Trilby_, wishing to describe a certain quick, retentive look, -speaks of the painter’s “_prehensile_ eye.” The adjective startles, but -does not illuminate. The prehensile quality belongs to tails rather than -to eyes. - -There is a modern school of writers fondly given to the cross-breeding of -adjectives and nouns. Their idea of a vivid style is satisfied by taking -a subject which belongs to one region of life and describing it in terms -drawn from another. Thus if they write of music, they use the language of -painting; if of painting, they employ the terminology of music. They give -us pink songs of love, purple roars of anger, and gray dirges of despair. -Or they describe the andante passages of a landscape, and the minor key -of a heroine’s face. - -This is the extravagance of a would-be pointed style which mistakes the -incongruous for the brilliant. Stevenson may have had something to do -with the effort to escape from the polished commonplace of an English -which admitted no master earlier than Addison or later than Macaulay. -He may have been a leader in the hunting of the unexpected, striking, -pungent word. But for the excesses and absurdities of this school of -writing in its decadence, he had no liking. He knew that if you are going -to use striking words you must be all the more careful to make them hit -the mark. - -He sets forth his theory of style in the essay called _A Humble -Remonstrance_. It amounts to this: First, you shall have an idea, a -controlling thought; then you shall set your words and sentences marching -after it as soldiers follow their captain; and if any turns back, looks -the other way, fails to keep step, you shall put him out of the ranks as -a malingerer, a deserter at heart. “The proper method of literature,” -says he, “is by selection, which is a kind of negative exaggeration.” -But the positive exaggeration,—the forced epithet, the violent phrase, -the hysterical paragraph,—he does not allow. Hence we feel at once a -restraint and an intensity, a poignancy and a delicacy in his style, -which make it vivid without ever becoming insane even when he describes -insanity, as he does in _The Merry Men_, _Olalla_, and _Dr. Jekyll and -Mr. Hyde_. His words are focussed on the object as with a burning-glass. -They light it up; they kindle it; but they do not distort it. - -Now a style like this may have its occasional fatigues: it may convey a -sense of over-carefulness, of a choice somewhat too meticulous,—to use -a word which in itself illustrates my meaning. But after all it has a -certain charm, especially in these days of slipshod, straddling English. -You like to see a man put his foot down in the right place, neither -stumbling nor swaggering. The assurance with which he treads may be the -result of forethought and concentration, but to you, reading, it gives -a feeling of ease and confidence. You follow him with pleasure because -he knows where he is going and has taken pains to study the best way of -getting there. - -Take a couple of illustrations from the early sketches which Stevenson -wrote to accompany a book of etchings of Edinburgh,—hack work, you may -call them; but even hack work can be done with a nice conscience. - -Here is the Edinburgh climate: “The weather is raw and boisterous in -winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological -purgatory in spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor among -bleak winds and plumping rains, have been sometimes tempted to envy them -their fate.” - -Here is the Scottish love of home: (One of the tall “lands,” inhabited -by a hundred families, has crumbled and gone down.) “How many people all -over the world, in London, Canada, New Zealand, could say with truth, -‘The house I was born in fell last night’!” - -Now turn to a volume of short stories. Here is a Hebridean night, in _The -Merry Men_: “Outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here and -there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was near -the top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless -quiet.” - -Here is a sirocco in Spain: “It came out of malarious lowlands, and over -several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom it blew were strung -and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; their legs ached under -the burden of their body; and the touch of one hand upon another grew to -be odious.” - -Now take an illustration from one of his very early essays, _Notes on the -Movements of Young Children_, printed in 1874. Here are two very little -girls learning to dance: “In these two, particularly, the rhythm was -sometimes broken by an excess of energy, _as though the pleasure of the -music in their light bodies could endure no longer the restraint of the -regulated dance_.” - -These examples are purposely chosen from tranquil pages; there is nothing -far-fetched or extraordinary about them; yet I shall be sorry for you, -reader, if you do not feel something rare and precious in a style like -this, in which the object, however simple, is made alive with a touch, -and stands before you as if you saw it for the first time. - - -II - -Tusitala,—“Teller of Tales,”—was the name which the South Sea Islanders -gave to Stevenson; and he liked it well. Beginning as an essayist, he -turned more and more, as his life went on, to the art of prose fiction -as that in which he most desired to excel. It was in this field, indeed, -that he made his greatest advance. His later essays do not surpass his -earlier ones as much as his later stories excel his first attempts. - -Here I conceive my reader objecting: Did not _Treasure Island_ strike -twelve early in the day? Is it not the best book of its kind in English? - -Yes, my fellow Stevensonian, it is all that you say, and more,—of its -kind it has no superior, so far as I know, in any language. But the man -who wrote it wrote also books of a better kind,—deeper, broader, more -significant, and in writing these he showed, in spite of some relapses, -a steadily growing power which promised to place him in the very highest -rank of English novelists. - -_The Master of Ballantrae_, maugre its defects of construction, has the -inevitable atmosphere of fate, and the unforgettable figures of the -two brothers, born rivals. The second part of _David Balfour_ is not -only a better romance, but also a better piece of character drawing, -than the first part. _St. Ives_, which was left unfinished, may have -been little more than a regular “sword-and-cloak” story, more choicely -written, perhaps, than is usual among the followers of “old Dumas.” But -Stevenson’s other unfinished book, _Weir of Hermiston_, is the torso of -a mighty and memorable work of art. It has the lines and the texture of -something great. - -Why, then, was it not finished? Ask Death. - -_Lorna Doone_ was written at forty-four years: _The Scarlet Letter_ at -forty-six: _The Egoist_ at fifty-one: _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_ at -fifty-one. Stevenson died at forty-four. But considerations of what he -might have done, (and disputes about the insoluble question,) should not -hinder us from appraising his actual work as a teller of tales which do -not lose their interest nor their charm. - -He had a theory of the art of narration which he stated from time to time -with considerable definiteness and inconsiderable variations. It is not -obligatory to believe that his stories were written on this theory. It is -more likely that he did the work first as he wanted to do it, and then, -like a true Scot, reasoned out an explanation of why he had done it in -just that way. But even so, his theory remains good as a comment on the -things that he liked best in his own stories. Let us take it briefly. - -His first point is that fiction does not, and can not, compete with -real life. Life has a vastly more varied interest because it is more -complex. Fiction must not try to reproduce this complexity literally, -for that is manifestly impossible. What the novelist has to do is to -turn deliberately the other way, and seek to hold you by simplifying -and clarifying the material Which life presents. He wins not by trying -to tell you everything, but by telling you that which means most in the -revelation of character and in the unfolding of the story. Of necessity -he can deal only with a part of life, and that chiefly on the dramatic -side, the dream side; for a life in which the ordinary, indispensable -details of mere existence are omitted is, after all, more or less -dream-like. Therefore, the story-teller must renounce the notion of -making his story a literal transcript of even a single day of actual -life, and concentrate his attention upon those things which seem to him -the most real in life,—the things that count. - -Now a man who takes this view of fiction, if he excels at all, will -be sure to do so in the short story, a form in which the art of -omission is at a high premium. Here, it seems to me, Stevenson is a -master unsurpassed. _Will o’ the Mill_ is a perfect idyl; _Markheim_, -a psychological tale in Hawthorne’s manner; _Olalla_, a love-story of -tragic beauty; and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, in spite of its obvious -moving-picture artifice, a parable of intense power. - -Stevenson said to Graham Balfour: “There are three ways of writing a -story. You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a -character and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly -you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to express -and realize it. I’ll give you an example—_The Merry Men_. There I began -with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, -and I gradually developed the feeling with which that coast affected -me.” This, probably, is somewhat the way in which Hawthorne wrote _The -House of the Seven Gables_; yet I do not think that is one of his best -romances, any more than I think _The Merry Men_ one of Stevenson’s -best short stories. It is not memorable as a tale. Only the bits of -description live. _The Treasure of Franchard_, light and airy as it is, -has more of that kind of reality which Stevenson sought. Therefore it -seems as if his third “way of writing a story” were not the best suited -to his genius. - -The second way,—that in which the plot links and unfolds the -characters,—is the path on which he shows at his best. Here the gentleman -adventurer was at ease from the moment he set forth on it. In _Treasure -Island_ he raised the dime novel to the level of a classic. - -It has been charged against Stevenson’s stories that there are no women -in them. To this charge one might enter what the lawyers call a plea of -“confession and avoidance.” Even were it true, it would not necessarily -be fatal. It may well be doubted whether that primitive factor which -psychologists call “sex-interest” plays quite such a predominant, -perpetual, and all-absorbing part in real life as that which neurotic -writers assign to it in their books. But such a technical, (and it must -be confessed, somewhat perilous,) defense is not needed. There are plenty -of women in Stevenson’s books,—quite as many, and quite as delightful -and important as you will find in the ordinary run of life. Marjory in -_Will o’ the Mill_ is more lovable than Will himself. Olalla is the true -heroine of the story which bears her name. Catriona and Miss Grant, in -the second part of _David Balfour_, are girls of whom it would be an -honour to be enamoured; and I make no doubt that David, (like Stevenson) -was hard put to it to choose between them. Uma, in _The Beach of Falesa_, -is a lovely insulated Eve. The two Kirsties, in _Weir of Hermiston_, -are creatures of intense and vivid womanhood. It would have been quite -impossible for a writer who had such a mother as Stevenson’s, such a -friend of youth as Mrs. Sitwell, such a wife as Margaret Vandegrift, to -ignore or slight the part which woman plays in human life. If he touches -it with a certain respect and _pudor_, that also is in keeping with his -character,—the velvet jacket again. - -The second point in his theory of fiction is that in a well-told tale -the threads of narrative should converge, now and then, in a scene which -expresses, visibly and unforgettably, the very soul of the story. He -instances Robinson Crusoe finding the footprint on the beach, and the -Pilgrim running from the City of Destruction with his fingers in his ears. - -There are many of these flash-of-lightning scenes in Stevenson’s stories. -The duel in _The Master of Ballantrae_ where the brothers face each other -in the breathless winter midnight by the light of unwavering candles, -and Mr. Henry cries to his tormentor, “I will give you every advantage, -for I think you are about to die.” The flight across the heather, in -_Kidnapped_, when Davie lies down, forspent, and Alan Breck says, “Very -well then, I’ll carry ye”; whereupon Davie looks at the little man and -springs up ashamed, crying “Lead on, I’ll follow!” The moment in _Olalla_ -when the Englishman comes to the beautiful Spanish mistress of the house -with his bleeding hand to be bound up, and she, catching it swiftly to -her lips, bites it to the bone. The dead form of Israel Hands lying -huddled together on the clean, bright sand at the bottom of the lagoon of -_Treasure Island_. Such pictures imprint themselves on memory like seals. - -The third point in Stevenson’s theory is, that details should be -reduced to a minimum in number and raised to a maximum in significance. -He wrote to Henry James, (and the address of the letter is amusing,) -“How to escape from the besotting _particularity_ of fiction? ‘Roland -approached the house; it had green doors and window blinds; and there was -a scraper on the upper step.’ To hell with Roland and the scraper!” Many -a pious reader would say “thank you” for this accurate expression of his -sentiments. - -But when Stevenson sets a detail in a story you see at once that it -cannot be spared. Will o’ the Mill, throwing back his head and shouting -aloud to the stars, seems to see “a momentary shock among them, and a -diffusion of frosty light pass from one to another along the sky.” When -Markheim has killed the antiquarian and stands in the old curiosity -shop, musing on the eternity of a moment’s deed,—“first one and then -another, with every variety of pace and voice,—one deep as the bell from -a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a -waltz,—the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.” -Turning over the bit of paper on which “the black spot,” the death-notice -of the pirates, has been scrawled with charcoal, Jim Hawkins finds it has -been cut from the last page of a Bible, and on the other side he reads -part of a verse from the last chapter of the Revelation: _Without are -dogs and murderers_. - -There is no “besotting particularity” in such details as these. On the -contrary they illustrate the classic conception of a work of art, in -which every particular must be vitally connected with the general, and -the perfection of the smallest part depends upon its relation to the -perfect whole. Now this is precisely the quality, and the charm, of -Stevenson’s stories, short or long. He omits the non-essential, but his -eye never misses the significant. He does not waste your time and his -own in describing the coloured lights in the window of a chemist’s shop -where nothing is to happen, or the quaint costume of a disagreeable -woman who has no real part in the story. That kind of realism, of local -colour, does not interest him. But he is careful to let you know that -Alan Breck wore a sword that was much too long for him; that Mr. Hyde -was pale and dwarfish, gave an impression of deformity without any -nameable malformation, and bore himself “with a sort of murderous mixture -of timidity and boldness”; that John Silver could use his wooden leg as -a terrible weapon; that the kitchen of the cottage on Aros was crammed -with rare incongruous treasures from far away; and that on a certain -cold sunny morning “the blackbirds sung exceeding sweet and loud about -the House of Durisdeer, and there was a noise of the sea in all the -chambers.” Why these _trivia_? Why such an exact touch on these details? -Because they count. - -Yet Stevenson’s tales and romances do not give—at least to me—the effect -of over-elaboration, of strain, of conscious effort; there is nothing -affected and therefore nothing tedious in them. They move; they carry you -along with them; they are easy to read; one does not wish to lay them -down and take a rest. There is artifice in them, of course, but it is -a thoroughly natural artifice,—as natural as a clean voice and a clear -enunciation are to a well-bred gentleman. He does not think about them; -he uses them in his habit as he lives. Tusitala enjoys his work as a -teller of tales; he is at home in it. His manner is his own; it suits -him; he wears it without fear or misgiving,—the velvet jacket again. - - -III - -Of Stevenson as a moralist I hesitate to write because whatever is said -on this point is almost certain to be misunderstood. On one side are -the puritans who frown at a preacher in a velvet jacket; on the other -side the pagans who scoff at an artist who cares for morals. Yet surely -there is a way between the two extremes where an artist-man may follow -his conscience with joy to deal justly, to love mercy, and to walk -humbly with his God. And having caught sight of that path, though he may -trace it but dimly and follow it stumbling, surely such a man may say -to his fellows, “This is the good way; let us walk in it.” Not one of -the great writers who have used the English language, so far as I know, -has finished his career without wishing to moralize, to teach something -worth learning, to stand in the pulpit of experience and give an honest -message to the world. Stevenson was no exception to this rule. He avowed -the impulse frankly when he said to William Archer, “I would rise from -the dead to preach.” - -In his stories we look in vain for “morals” in the narrow sense,—proverbs -printed in italics and tagged on to the tale like imitation oranges tied -to a Christmas tree. The teaching of his fiction is like that of life, -diffused through the course of events and embodied in the development -of characters. But as the story unfolds we are never in doubt as to the -feelings of the narrator,—his pity for the unfortunate; his scorn for -the mean, the selfish, the hypocritical; his admiration for the brave, -the kind, the loyal and cheerful servants of duty. Never at his lightest -and gayest does he make us think of life as a silly farce; nor at his -sternest and saddest does he leave us disheartened, “having no hope and -without God in the world.” Behind the play there is a meaning, and beyond -the conflict there is a victory, and underneath the uncertainties of -doubt there is a foothold for faith. - -I like what Stevenson wrote to an old preacher, his father’s friend. -“Yes, my father was a ‘distinctly religious man,’ but not a pious.... -His sentiments were tragic; he was a tragic thinker. Now granted that -life is tragic to the marrow, it seems the proper service of religion -to make us accept and serve in that tragedy, as officers in that other -and comparable one of war. Service is the word, active service in the -military sense; and the religious man—I beg pardon, the pious man—is he -who has a military joy in duty,—not he who weeps over the wounded.” - -This is the point of view from which Stevenson writes as a novelist; -you can feel it even in a romance as romantic as _Prince Otto_; and in -his essays, where he speaks directly and in the first person, this way -of taking life as an adventure for the valourous and faithful comes out -yet more distinctly. The grace and vigour of his diction, the pointed -quality of his style, the wit of his comment on men and books, add to the -persuasiveness of his teaching. I can see no reason why morality should -be drab and dull. It was not so in Stevenson’s character, nor is it so -in his books. That is one reason why they are companionable. - -“There is nothing in it [the world],” wrote he to a friend, “but the -moral side—but the great battle and the breathing times with their -refreshments. I see no more and no less. And if you look again, it is not -ugly, and it is filled with promise.” - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] _Syllabus Scriptorum Veterum Recentiumque qui Veritatem Religionis -Christianæ Asseruerunt_: Hamburg, 1725. - -[2] _The Poetry of Tennyson._ Scribner’s: New York, 1889-1920. - -[3] Smith, Elder & Co.: London, 1880. - -[4] _The Bible in Browning._ Macmillan: New York, 1903. - -[5] “The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley.” London, 1710. Preface to -_Pindarique Odes_, volume I, page 184. - -[6] Lowth, _De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum Praelectiones_. Oxon., 1753. - -[7] _English Odes_, selected by Edmund Gosse. Preface, page xiii. - -[8] _The Book of Psalms._ 2 volumes, London, 1883. Volume I, page 82. - -[9] Joseph Addison, 1712. - -[10] Reverend A. H. Strong, _The Great Poets and their Theology_, p. 384. - -[11] John Jay Chapman, _Emerson and Other Essays_, p. 195. - -[12] J. H. Nettleship, _Robert Browning, Essays and Thoughts_, p. 292. - -[13] Miss Vida D. Scudder, _The Life of the Spirit in Modern English -Poets_. - -[14] Epilogue to _Dramatis Personæ_. - -[15] Cheney, _The Golden Guess_, p. 143. - -[16] _Memoir of Alfred Lord Tennyson_, vol. II, p. 230. - -[17] _Asolando_, “Reverie.” - -[18] J. J. Chapman, _Emerson, and Other Essays_. - -[19] I am haunted by the notion that Johnson himself said this, but I -cannot find the passage for quotation. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Companionable Books, by Henry van Dyke - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPANIONABLE BOOKS *** - -***** This file should be named 61345-0.txt or 61345-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/3/4/61345/ - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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