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| author | www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> | 2025-11-16 07:19:10 -0800 |
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| committer | www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> | 2025-11-16 07:19:10 -0800 |
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width:49%; + } + ins.correction { text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin dotted gray; } + .quote { font-size: 95%; margin-top: 1.0em; margin-bottom: 1.0em; } + .linegroup .group { margin: 0em auto; } + .blackletter { font-family: "Old English Text MT", Gothic, serif; } + hr.dbl { height: 6px; border: none; border-top: 2px black solid; + border-bottom: 2px black solid; } + hr.hvy { border: none; border-top: 2px black solid; } + .inline { display: inline-block; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; + height: 20px; } + </style> + </head> + <body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77244 ***</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c000'> +</div> +<div class='tnotes'> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>Transcriber’s Note:</div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are +linked for ease of reference.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This text includes both the ten essays in the ‘First Series’ and the +nine essays of the ‘Second Series’. The Table of Contents numbers them +consectively from I. to XIX. However the essay headings for the second +series retain their original numbering from I. to IX. There is no distinguishing +separation between the two series, save by that. The headings have been +retained as printed.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please +see the transcriber’s <a href='#endnote'>note</a> at the end of this text +for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered +during its preparation.</p> + +<div class='htmlonly'> + +<p class='c001'>Any corrections are indicated using an <ins class='correction' title='original'>underline</ins> +highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the +original text in a small popup.</p> + +<div class='figcenter id001'> +<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'> +</div> + +</div> +<div class='epubonly'> + +<p class='c001'>Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the +reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the +note at the end of the text.</p> + +</div> + +</div> + +<div class='figcenter id002'> +<img src='images/i_frontispiece.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'> +<div class='ic002'> +<p>MATTHEW ARNOLD.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<div> + <h1 class='c002'>ESSAYS IN CRITICISM</h1> +</div> + +<div class='c000'></div> +<hr class=dbl> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div><span class='large'>By MATTHEW ARNOLD</span></div> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class=hvy> + +<p class='c003'>Author of “MEROPE: A TRAGEDY,” “THE POPULAR +EDUCATION OF FRANCE,” “CULTURE AND +ANARCHY,” “POEMS,” etc., etc. <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"> <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"> <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"> <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"></p> + +<div class='figcenter id003'> +<img src='images/i_title.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'> +</div> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> +<div class='nf-center c004'> + <div><i>FIRST AND SECOND SERIES COMPLETE</i></div> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class=dbl> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER, 52-58 DUANE</div> + <div>STREET, NEW YORK <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"> <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"> <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"> <img class="inline" src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="[leaf]"></div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c000'> +</div> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span> + <h2 class='c005'>PREFACE. <br> <br> (1865,)</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Several of the Essays which are here collected and +reprinted had the good or the bad fortune to be much +criticized at the time of their first appearance. I am not +now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to those criticisms; +for one or two explanations which are desirable, I +shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day to find an opportunity; +but, indeed, it is not in my nature,—some of +my critics would rather say, not in my power,—to dispute +on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately. +To try and approach truth on one side after another, not +to strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on any +one side, with violence and self-will,—it is only thus, it +seems to me, that mortals may hope to gain any vision of +the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall never see except +in outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will +do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his own, +one, favorite, particular line, is inevitably destined to run +his head into the folds of the black robe in which she is +wrapped.</p> + +<p class='c001'>So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this +preface, but to prevent a misunderstanding, of which +certain phrases that some of them use make me apprehensive. +Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of +Homer, has published a letter to the Dean of Canterbury, +complaining of some remarks of mine, uttered now a long +while ago, on his version of the <cite>Iliad</cite>. One cannot be always +studying one’s own works, and I was really under +the impression, till I saw Mr. Wright’s complaint, that I +<span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>had spoken of him with all respect. The reader may +judge of my astonishment, therefore, at finding, from Mr. +Wright’s pamphlet, that I had “declared with much solemnity +that there is not any proper reason for his existing.” +That I never said; but, on looking back at my +Lectures on translating Homer, I find that I did say, not +that Mr. Wright, but that Mr. Wright’s version of the +<cite>Iliad</cite>, repeating in the main the merits and defects of +Cowper’s version, as Mr. Sotheby’s repeated those of Pope’s +version, had, if I might be pardoned for saying so, no +proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I expressly spoke +of the merit of his version; but I confess that the phrase, +qualified as I have shown, about its want of a proper +reason for existing, I used. Well, the phrase had, perhaps, +too much vivacity; we have all of us a right to +exist, we and our works; an unpopular author should be +the last person to call in question this right. So I gladly +withdraw the offending phrase, and I am sorry for having +used it; Mr. Wright, however, would perhaps be more indulgent +to my vivacity, if he considered that we are none +of us likely to be lively much longer. My vivacity is but +the last sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, +the last glimpse of color before we all go into drab,—the +drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, austerely literal +future. Yes, the world will soon be the Philistines’! and +then, with every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and the +whole earth filled and ennobled every morning by the +magnificent roaring of the young lions of the <cite>Daily Telegraph</cite>, +we shall all yawn in one another’s faces with the +dismallest, the most unimpeachable gravity.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But I return to my design in writing this Preface. +That design was, after apologizing to Mr. Wright for my +vivacity of five years ago, to beg him and others to let me +bear my own burdens, without saddling the great and +famous University to which I have the honor to belong +with any portion of them. What I mean to deprecate is +such phrases as, “his professorial assault,” “his assertions +issued <span lang="la"><i>ex cathedrâ</i></span>,” “the sanction of his name as the +representative of poetry,” and so on. Proud as I am of my +<span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>connection with the University of Oxford,<a id='r1'></a><a href='#f1' class='c007'><sup>[1]</sup></a> I can truly +say, that knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking +when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that +powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned organ, +the modern Englishman, I have always sought to stand +by myself, and to compromise others as little as possible. +Besides this, my native modesty is such, that I have always +been shy of assuming the honorable style of Professor, +because this is a title I share with so many distinguished +men,—Professor Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor +Frickel, and others,—who adorn it, I feel, much more +than I do.</p> + +<p class='c001'>However, it is not merely out of modesty that I prefer +to stand alone, and to concentrate on myself, as a plain +citizen of the republic of letters, and not as an office-bearer +in a hierarchy, the whole responsibility for all I +write; it is much more out of genuine devotion to the +University of Oxford, for which I feel, and always must +feel, the fondest, the most reverential attachment. In an +epoch of dissolution and transformation, such as that on +which we are now entered, habits, ties, and associations +are inevitably broken up, the action of individuals becomes +more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, disputes, +which necessarily attend individual action, are brought +into greater prominence. Who would not gladly keep +clear, from all these passing clouds, an august institution +which was there before they arose, and which will be +there when they have blown over?</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is true, the <cite>Saturday Review</cite> maintains that our epoch +of transformation is finished; that we have found our philosophy; +that the British nation has searched all anchorages +for the spirit, and has finally anchored itself, in the +fulness of perfected knowledge, on Benthamism. This +idea at first made a great impression on me; not only because +it is so consoling in itself, but also because it explained +a phenomenon which in the summer of last year +had, I confess, a good deal troubled me. At that time +<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>my avocations led me travel almost daily on one of the +Great Eastern Lines,—the Woodford Branch. Every +one knows that the murderer, Müller, perpetrated his detestable +act on the North London Railway, close by. The +English middle class, of which I am myself a feeble unit, +travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers. Well, +the demoralization of our class,—the class which (the +newspapers are constantly saying it, so I may repeat it +without vanity) has done all the great things which have +ever been done in England,—the demoralization, I say, +of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy, was something +bewildering. Myself a transcendentalist (as the <cite>Saturday +Review</cite> knows), I escaped the infection; and, day after +day, I used to ply my agitated fellow-travelers with all the +consolations which my transcendentalism would naturally +suggest to me. I reminded them how Cæsar refused to +take precautions against assassination, because life was +not worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for +it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all are +in the life of the world. “Suppose the worst to happen,” +I said, addressing a portly jeweler from Cheapside; “suppose +even yourself to be the victim; <span lang="fr"><i>il n’y a pas d’homme +nécessaire</i></span>. We should miss you for a day or two upon +the Woodford Branch; but the great mundane movement +would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would still +be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses +would still run, there would still be the old crush at +the corner of Fenchurch Street.” All was of no avail. +Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English +middle-class, their passionate, absorbing, almost +bloodthirsty clinging to life. At the moment I thought +this over-concern a little unworthy; but the <cite>Saturday +Review</cite> suggests a touching explanation of it. What I +took for the ignoble clinging to life of a comfortable +worldling, was, perhaps, only the ardent longing of a +faithful Benthamite, traversing an age still dimmed by +the last mists of transcendentalism, to be spared long +enough to see his religion in the full and final blaze of its +triumph. This respectable man, whom I imagined to be +<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>going up to London to serve his shop, or to buy shares, or +to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to assist at the deliberations +of the Marylebone Vestry, was even, perhaps, +in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain from Mr. +Bentham’s executors a secret bone of his great, dissected +master.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the <cite>Saturday +Review</cite> has here, for once, fallen a victim to an +idea,—a beautiful but a deluding idea,—and that the +British nation has not yet, so entirely as the reviewer +seems to imagine, found the last word of its philosophy. +No, we are all seekers still! seekers often make mistakes, +and I wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and +not to touch Oxford. Beautiful city! so venerable, so +lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our +century, so serene!</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“There are our young barbarians, all at play!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her +gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers +the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny +that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us +nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection,—to +beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen +from another side?—nearer, perhaps, than all the science +of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been +so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given +thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the +Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and +unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! what example +could ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistine in +ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that +bondage to which we are all prone, that bondage which +Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of Schiller, +makes it his friend’s highest praise (and nobly did +Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight +behind him;—the bondage of “<span lang="de"><b>was uns alle bändigt, +<span class='fss'>DAS GEMEINE</span>!</b></span>” She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly +<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy +son; for she is generous, and the cause in which +I fight is, after all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is +our puny <a id='corrx.4'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='warefare'>warfare</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_x.4'><ins class='correction' title='warefare'>warfare</ins></a></span> against the Philistines, compared with +the warfare which this queen of romance has been waging +against them for centuries, and will wage after we are +gone?</p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span> + <h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS.</h2> +</div> + +<table class='table0'> +<colgroup> +<col class='colwidth11'> +<col class='colwidth79'> +<col class='colwidth8'> +</colgroup> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>CHAPTER</td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'>PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>I.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Function of Criticism at the Present Time</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>II.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Literary Influence of Academies</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_31'>31</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>III.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Maurice de Guerin</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_59'>59</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>IV.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Eugenie de Guerin</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_89'>89</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>V.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Heinrich Heine</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_115'>115</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>VI.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>VII.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>A Persian Passion Play</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_164'>164</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>VIII.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Joubert</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_195'>195</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>IX.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Spinoza and the Bible</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_226'>226</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>X.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Marcus Aurelius</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XI.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>The Study of Poetry</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_279'>279</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XII.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Milton</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_308'>308</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XIII.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Thomas Gray</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_315'>315</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XIV.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>John Keats</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_331'>331</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XV.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Wordsworth</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_343'>343</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XVI.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Byron</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_364'>364</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XVII.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Shelley</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_385'>385</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XVIII.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Count Leo Tolstoi</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_409'>409</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'> </td> + <td class='c011'> </td> + <td class='c012'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c010'>XIX.</td> + <td class='c011'><span class='sc'>Amiel</span></td> + <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_432'>432</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> +<div class='nf-center c013'> + <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span><span class='xlarge'>ESSAYS IN CRITICISM.</span></div> + </div> +</div> + +<hr class='c014'> + +<div class='chapter'> + <h2 class='c015'>I. <br> THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT<br>TIME.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Many objections have been made to a proposition +which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer, I +ventured to put forth; a proposition about criticism, and +its importance at the present day. I said: “Of the literature +of France and Germany, as of the intellect of +Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, +has been a critical effort; the endeavor, in all branches +of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, +to see the object as in itself it really is.” I added, that +owing to the operation in English literature of certain +causes, “almost the last thing for which one would come +to English literature is just that very thing which now +Europe most desires,—criticism;” and that the power +and value of English literature was thereby impaired. +More than one rejoinder declared that the importance I +here assigned to criticism was excessive, and asserted the +inherent superiority of the creative effort of the human +spirit over its critical effort. And the other day, having +been led by a Mr. Shairp’s excellent notice of Wordsworth<a id='r2'></a><a href='#f2' class='c007'><sup>[2]</sup></a> +to turn again to his biography, I found, in the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>words of this great man, whom I, for one, must always +listen to with the profoundest respect, a sentence passed +on the critic’s business, which seems to justify every possible +disparagement of it. Wordsworth says in one of his +letters:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The writers in these publications” (the Reviews), +“while they prosecute their inglorious employment, cannot +be supposed to be in a state of mind very favorable +for being affected by the finer influences of a thing so +pure as genuine poetry.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation quotes +a more elaborate judgment to the same effect:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely +lower than the inventive; and he said to-day that if +the quantity of time consumed in writing critiques on the +works of others were given to original composition, of +whatever kind it might be, it would be much better employed; +it would make a man find out sooner his own +level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or +malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of +others, a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is +quite harmless.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is almost too much to expect of poor human nature, +that a man capable of producing some effect in one line of +literature, should, for the greater good of society, voluntarily +doom himself to impotence and obscurity in another. +Still less is this to be expected from men addicted +to the composition of the “false or malicious criticism” +of which Wordsworth speaks. However, everybody +would admit that a false or malicious criticism had better +never have been written. Everybody, too, would be willing +to admit, as a general proposition, that the critical +faculty is lower than the inventive. But is it true that +criticism is really, in itself, a baneful and injurious employment; +<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>is it true that all time given to writing critiques +on the works of others would be much better employed +if it were given to original composition, of whatever +kind this may be? Is it true that Johnson had +better have gone on producing more <em>Irenes</em> instead of +writing his <cite>Lives of the Poets</cite>; nay, is it certain that +Wordsworth himself was better employed in making his +Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his celebrated +Preface, so full of criticism, and criticism of the works of +others? Wordsworth was himself a great critic, and it is +to be sincerely regretted that he has not left us more criticism; +Goethe was one of the greatest of critics, and we +may sincerely congratulate ourselves that he has left us so +much criticism. Without wasting time over the exaggeration +which Wordsworth’s judgment on criticism clearly +contains, or over an attempt to trace the causes,—not +difficult, I think, to be traced,—which may have led +Wordsworth to this exaggeration, a critic may with advantage +seize an occasion for trying his own conscience, +and for asking himself of what real service at any given +moment the practice of criticism either is or may be made +to his own mind and spirit, and to the minds and spirits +of others.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. +True; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two +things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the +exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, +is the highest function of man; it is proved to be so by +man’s finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeniable, +also, that men may have the sense of exercising this +free creative activity in other ways than in producing +great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all but +a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness +of all men. They may have it in well-doing, they may +have it in learning, they may have it even in criticizing. +This is one thing to be kept in mind. Another is, that +the exercise of the creative power in the production of +great works of literature or art, however high this exercise +of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all +<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>conditions possible; and that therefore labor may be +vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more +fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possible. +This creative power works with elements, with +materials; what if it has not those materials, those +elements, ready for its use? In that case it must surely +wait till they are ready. Now, in literature,—I will limit +myself to literature, for it is about literature that the +question arises,—the elements with which the creative +power works are ideas; the best ideas on every matter +which literature touches, current at the time. At any +rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature +no manifestation of the creative power not working +with these can be very important or fruitful. And I say +<em>current</em> at the time, not merely accessible at the time; for +creative literary genius does not principally show itself in +discovering new ideas, that is rather the business of the +philosopher. The grand work of literary genius is a work +of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; +its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by a +certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain +order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing +divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most +effective and attractive combinations,—making beautiful +works with them, in short. But it must have the atmosphere, +it must find itself amidst the order of ideas, in +order to work freely; and these it is not so easy to command. +This is why great creative epochs in literature are +so rare, this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory +in the productions of many men of real genius; because, +for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers +must concur, the power of the man and the power of the +moment, and the man is not enough without the moment; +the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed +elements, and those elements are not in its own control.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nay, they are more within the control of the critical +power. It is the business of the critical power, as I said +in the words already quoted, “in all branches of knowledge, +theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object +<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>as in itself it really is.” Thus it tends, at last, to make +an intellectual situation of which the creative power can +profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of +ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by comparison with +that which it displaces; to make the best ideas prevail. +Presently these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth +is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth everywhere; +out of this stir and growth come the creative +epochs of literature.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations +of the general march of genius and of society,—considerations +which are apt to become too abstract and impalpable,—every +one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to +know life and the world before dealing with them in +poetry; and life and the world being in modern times very +complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth +much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else it must +be a comparatively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. +This is why Byron’s poetry had so little endurance in it, +and Goethe’s so much; both Byron and Goethe had a great +productive power, but Goethe’s was nourished by a great +critical effort providing the true materials for it, and +Byron’s was not; Goethe knew life and the world, the +poet’s necessary subjects, much more comprehensively +and thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more +of them, and he knew them much more as they really are.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative +activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this +century, had about it in fact something premature; and +that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of +them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied +and do still accompany them to prove hardly more lasting +than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And +this prematureness comes from its having proceeded without +having its proper data, without sufficient materials to +work with. In other words, the English poetry of the +first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty +of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron +so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth +<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness +and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, and disparaged +Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much +that I cannot wish him different; and it is vain, no doubt, +to imagine such a man different from what he is, to suppose +that he <em>could</em> have been different. But surely the +one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater +poet than he is,—his thought richer, and his influence of +wider application,—was that he should have read more +books, among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom +he disparaged without reading him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But to speak of books and reading may easily lead to a +misunderstanding here. It was not really books and +reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch; Shelley +had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading. +Pindar and Sophocles—as we all say so glibly, and often +with so little discernment of the real import of what we +are saying—had not many books; Shakespeare was no deep +reader. True; but in the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, +in the England of Shakespeare, the poet lived in a +current of ideas in the highest degree animating and +nourishing to the creative power; society was, in the +fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent +and alive. And this state of things is the true basis for +the creative power’s exercise, in this it finds its data, its +materials, truly ready for its hand; all the books and +reading in the world are only valuable as they are helps +to this. Even when this does not actually exist, books +and reading may enable a man to construct a kind of +semblance of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge +and intelligence in which he may live and work. This is +by no means an equivalent to the artist for the nationally +diffused life and thought of the epochs of Sophocles or +Shakespeare; but, besides that it may be a means of preparation +for such epochs, it does really constitute, if many +share in it, a quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great +value. Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning and +the long and widely-combined critical effort of Germany +formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There +<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>was no national glow of life and thought there as in the +Athens of Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. That +was the poet’s weakness. But there was a sort of equivalent +for it in the complete culture and unfettered thinking +of a large body of Germans. That was his strength. +In the England of the first quarter of this century there +was neither a national glow of life and thought, such as +we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and a +force of learning and criticism such as were to be found +in Germany. Therefore the creative power of poetry +wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials and a +basis; a thorough interpretation of the world was necessarily +denied to it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense +stir of the French Revolution and its age should not have +come a crop of works of genius equal to that which came +out of the stir of the great productive time of Greece, or +out of that of the Renascence, with its powerful episode +the Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of +the French Revolution took a character which essentially +distinguished it from such movements as these. These +were, in the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual +movements; movements in which the human spirit looked +for its satisfaction in itself and in the increased play of its +own activity. The French Revolution took a political, +practical character. The movement, which went on in +France under the old <span lang="fr"><i>régime</i></span> from 1700 to 1789, was far +more really akin than that of the Revolution itself to the +movement of the Renascence; the France of Voltaire and +Rousseau told far more powerfully upon the mind of Europe +than the France of the Revolution. Goethe reproached +this last expressly with having “thrown quiet +culture back.” Nay, and the true key to how much in our +Byron, even in our Wordsworth, is this!—that they had +their source in a great movement of feeling, not in a +great movement of mind. The French Revolution, however,—that +object of so much blind love and so much blind +hatred,—found undoubtedly its motive-power in the intelligence +of men, and not in their practical sense; this +<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>is what distinguishes it from the English Revolution of +Charles the First’s time. This is what makes it a more +spiritual event than our Revolution, an event of much +more powerful and world-wide interest, though practically +less successful; it appeals to an order of ideas which are +universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing, Is +it rational? 1642 asked of a thing, Is it legal? or, when +it went furthest, Is it according to conscience? This is +the English fashion, a fashion to be treated, within its +own sphere, with the highest respect; for its success, +within its own sphere, has been prodigious. But what +is law in one place is not law in another; what is law +here to-day is not law even here to-morrow; and as for +conscience, what is binding on one man’s conscience is +not binding on another’s. The old woman who threw her +stool at the head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles’s +Church at Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions +of the human race may be permitted to remain +strangers. But the prescriptions <a id='corr8.19'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='of of'>of</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_8.19'><ins class='correction' title='of of'>of</ins></a></span> reason are absolute, +unchanging, of universal validity; <em>to count by tens is the +easiest way of counting</em>—that is a proposition of which +every one, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force; at +least I should say so if we did not live in a country where +it is not impossible that any morning we may find a letter +in the <cite>Times</cite> declaring that a decimal coinage is an +absurdity. That a whole nation should have been penetrated +with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an +ardent zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a +very remarkable thing, when we consider how little of +mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes +into the motives which alone, in general, impel great +masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direction +given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies +in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives +from the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which +it took for its law, and from the passion with which it +could inspire a multitude for these ideas, a unique and +still living power; it is—it will probably long remain—the +greatest, the most animating event in history. And +<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>as no sincere passion for the things of the mind, even +though it turn out in many respects an unfortunate passion, +is ever quite thrown away and quite barren of good, France +has reaped from tiers one fruit—the natural and legitimate +fruit though not precisely the grand fruit she expected: +she is the country in Europe where <em>the people</em> is most alive.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But the mania for giving an immediate political and +practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason +was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element: on +this theme we can all go on for hours. And all we are +in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal +of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for +themselves cannot be too much lived with; but to transport +them abruptly into the world of politics, and practice, +violently to revolutionize this world to their bidding,—that +is quite another thing. There is the world +of ideas and there is the world of practice; the French +are often for suppressing the one and the English the +other; but neither is to be suppressed. A member of the +House of Commons said to me the other day: “That a +thing is an anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it +whatever.” I venture to think he was wrong; that a +thing is an anomaly <em>is</em> an objection to it, but absolutely +and in the sphere of ideas: it is not necessarily, under +such and such circumstances, or at such and such a moment, +an objection to it in the sphere of politics and +practice. Joubert has said beautifully: “<span lang="fr">C’est la force et +le droit qui règlent toutes choses dans le monde; la force +en attendant le droit.</span>” (Force and right are the governors +of this world; force till right is ready.) <em>Force +till right is ready</em>; and till right is ready, force, the existing +order of things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. +But right is something moral, and implies inward recognition, +free assent of the will; we are not ready for right,—<em>right</em>, +so far as we are concerned, <em>is not ready</em>,—until +we have attained this sense of seeing it and willing it. +The way in which for us it may change and transform +force, the existing order of things, and become, in its +turn, the legitimate ruler of the world, should depend on +<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>the way in which, when our time comes, we see it and +will it. Therefore for other people enamored of their +own newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon +us as ours, and violently to substitute their right for our +force, is an act of tyranny, and to be resisted. It sets at +naught the second great half of our maxim, <em>force till +right is ready</em>. This was the grand error of the French +Revolution; and its movement of ideas, by quitting the +intellectual sphere and rushing furiously into the political +sphere, ran, indeed, a prodigious and memorable course, +but produced no such intellectual fruit as the movement +of ideas of the Renascence, and created, in opposition to +itself, what I may call an <em>epoch of concentration</em>. The +great force of that epoch of concentration was England; +and the great voice of that epoch of concentration was +Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke’s writings on +the French Revolution as superannuated and conquered +by the event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades +of bigotry and prejudice. I will not deny that they +are often disfigured by the violence and passion of the +moment, and that in some directions Burke’s view +was bounded, and his observation therefore at fault. But +on the whole, and for those who can make the needful +corrections, what distinguishes these writings is their +profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth. They +contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration, +dissipate the heavy atmosphere which its own nature is +apt to engender round it, and make its resistance rational +instead of mechanical.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, +he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates +politics with thought. It is his accident that his ideas +were at the service of an epoch of concentration, not of +an epoch of expansion; it is his characteristic that he so +lived by ideas, and had such a source of them welling up +within him, that he could float even an epoch of concentration +and English Tory politics with them. It does not +hurt him that Dr. Price and the Liberals were enraged +with him; it does not even hurt him that George the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>Third and the Tories were enchanted with him. His +greatness is that he lived in a world which neither English +Liberalism nor English Toryism is apt to enter;—the +world of ideas, not the world of catchwords and party +habits. So far is it from being really true of him that he +“to party gave up what was meant for mankind,” that at +the very end of his fierce struggle with the French Revolution, +after all his invectives against its false pretensions, +hollowness, and madness, with his sincere conviction +of its mischievousness, he can close a memorandum +on the best means of combating it, some of the last pages +he ever wrote,—the <cite>Thoughts on French Affairs</cite>, in December +1791,—with these striking words:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The +remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, +I hope, are more united with good intentions than they +can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe, +forever. It has given me many anxious moments for the +last two years. <i>If a great change is to be made in human +affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general +opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, +every hope will forward it; and then they who persist in +opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear +rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than +the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and +firm, but perverse and obstinate.</i>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed +to me one of the finest things in English literature, or indeed +in any literature. That is what I call living by +ideas: when one side of a question has long had your +earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when +you hear all around you no language but one, when your +party talks this language like a steam-engine and can +imagine no other,—still to be able to think, still to be +irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought +to the opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to +be unable to speak anything <em>but what the Lord has put in +your mouth</em>. I know nothing more striking, and I must +add that I know nothing more un-English.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>For the Englishman in general is like my friend the +Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that +for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objection to +it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland of Burke’s +day, who, in a memorandum on the French Revolution, +talks of “certain miscreants, assuming the name of +philosophers, who have presumed themselves capable of +establishing a new system of society.” The Englishman +has been called a political animal, and he values what is +political and practical so much that ideas easily become +objects of dislike in his eyes, and thinkers “miscreants,” +because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with +politics and practice. This would be all very well if the +dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas transported +out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with +practice; but they are inevitably extended to ideas as +such, and to the whole life of intelligence; practice is +everything, a free play of the mind is nothing. The +notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects +being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being +an essential provider of elements without which a nation’s +spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, +must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into +an Englishman’s thoughts. It is noticeable that the word +<em>curiosity</em>, which in other languages is used in a good +sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of man’s nature, +just this disinterested love of a free play of the mind on +all subjects, for its own sake,—it is noticeable, I say, that +this word has in our language no sense of the kind, no +sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But criticism, +real criticism is essentially the exercise of this very quality. +It obeys an instinct prompting it to try to know the +best that is known and thought in the world, irrespectively +of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to +value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, +without the intrusion of any other considerations whatever. +This is an instinct for which there is, I think, little +original sympathy in the practical English nature, and +what there was of it has undergone a long benumbing +<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>period of blight and suppression in the epoch of concentration +which followed the French Revolution.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But epochs of concentration cannot well endure forever; +epochs of expansion, in the due course of things, +follow them. Such an epoch of expansion seems to be +opening in this country. In the first place all danger of a +hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice +has long disappeared; like the traveler in the fable, +therefore, we begin to wear our cloak a little more loosely. +Then, with a long peace, the ideas of Europe steal gradually +and amicably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally +small quantities at a time, with our own notions. Then, +too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing and +brutalizing influence of our passionate material progress, +it seems to me indisputable that this progress is likely, +though not certain, to lead in the end to an apparition of +intellectual life; and that man, after he has made himself +perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what to +do with himself next, may begin to remember that he has +a mind, and that the mind may be made the source of +great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the privilege of +faith, at present, to discern this end to our railways, +our business, and our fortune-making; but we shall see +if, here as elsewhere, faith is not in the end the true +prophet. Our ease, our traveling, and our unbounded +liberty to hold just as hard and securely as we please to +the practice to which our notions have given birth, all +tend to beget an inclination to deal a little more freely +with these notions themselves, to canvass them a little, to +penetrate a little into their real nature. Flutterings of +curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear amongst +us, and it is in these that criticism must look to find its +account. Criticism first; a time of true creative activity, +perhaps,—which, as I have said, must inevitably be preceded +amongst us by a time of criticism,—hereafter, when +criticism has done its work.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is of the last importance that English criticism should +clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail +itself of the field now opening to it, and to produce +<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be +summed up in one word,—<em>disinterestedness</em>. And how is +criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof +from what is called “the practical view of things;” by +resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to +be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. +By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, +political, practical considerations about ideas, which plenty +of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps +ought often to be attached to them, which in this country +at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite +sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do +with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the +best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its +turn making this known, to create a current of true and +fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible +honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no +more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences +and applications, questions which will never fail +to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, +besides being really false to its own nature, merely continues +in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in this +country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to +it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in this +country? It is that practical considerations cling to it +and stifle it. It subserves interests not its own. Our +organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having +practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends +are the first thing and the play of mind the second; so +much play of mind as is compatible with the prosecution +of those practical ends is all that is wanted. An organ +like the <span lang="fr"><cite>Révue des Deux Mondes</cite></span>, having for its main +function to understand and utter the best that is known +and thought in the world, existing, it may be said, as just +an organ for a free play of the mind, we have not. But +we have the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, existing as an organ of +the old Whigs, and for as much play of the mind as +may suit its being that; we have the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, +existing as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play +<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>of mind as may suit its being that; we have the <cite>British +Quarterly Review</cite>, existing as an organ of the political +Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit its +being that; we have the <cite>Times</cite>, existing as an organ of the +common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as +much play of mind as may suit its being that. And so +on through all the various fractions, political and religious, +of our society; every fraction has, as such, its organ of +criticism, but the notion of combining all fractions in the +common pleasure of a free disinterested play of mind +meets with no favor. Directly this play of mind wants +to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical +considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel the +chain. We saw this the other day in the extinction, so +much to be regretted, of the <cite>Home and Foreign Review</cite>. +Perhaps in no organ of criticism in this country was there +so much knowledge, so much play of mind; but these +could not save it. The <cite>Dublin Review</cite> subordinates play +of mind to the practical business of English and Irish +Catholicism, and lives. It must needs be that men should +act in sects and parties, that each of these sects and parties +should have its organ, and should make this organ subserve +the interests of its action; but it would be well, too, +that there should be a criticism, not the minister of these +interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent +of them. No other criticism will ever attain +any real authority or make any real way towards its end,—the +creating a current of true and fresh ideas.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual +sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, +has been so directly polemical and controversial, that it +has so ill accomplished, in this country, its best spiritual +work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which +is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection, +by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent +in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A +polemical practical criticism makes men blind even to the +ideal imperfection of their practice, makes them willingly +assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure it +<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>against attack: and clearly this is narrowing and baneful +for them. If they were reassured on the practical side, +speculative considerations of ideal perfection they might +be brought to entertain, and their spiritual horizon would +thus gradually widen. Sir Charles Adderly says to the +Warwickshire farmers:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Talk of the improvement of breed! Why, the race +we ourselves represent, the men and women, the old +Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the whole +world.... The absence of a too enervating climate, too +unclouded skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced +so vigorous a race of people and has rendered us so superior +to all the world.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I look around me and ask what is the state of England? +Is not property safe? Is not every man able to +say what he likes? Can you not walk from one end of +England to the other in perfect security? I ask you +whether, the world over or in past history, there is anything +like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivaled happiness +may last.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature +in words and thoughts of such exuberant self-satisfaction, +until we find ourselves safe in the streets of the Celestial +City.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="de">“Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="de">Der vorwärts sieht, wie viel noch übrig bleibt—”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>says Goethe; “the little that is done seems nothing when +we look forward and see how much we have yet to do.” +Clearly this is a better line of reflection for weak humanity, +so long as it remains on this earthly field of labor and trial.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck is +by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort. They +only lose sight of them owing to the controversial life we +all lead, and the practical form which all speculation takes +with us. They have in view opponents whose aim is not +ideal, but practical; and in their zeal to uphold their own +practice against these innovators, they go so far as even to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>attribute to this practice an ideal perfection. Somebody +has been wanting to introduce a six-pound franchise, or +to abolish church-rates, or to collect agricultural statistics +by force, or to diminish local self-government. How +natural, in reply to such proposals, very likely improper +or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark and to say +stoutly, “Such a race of people as we stand, so superior +to all the world! The old Anglo-Saxon race, the best +breed in the whole world! I pray that our unrivaled +happiness may last! I ask you whether, the world over +or in past history, there is anything like it?” And so +long as criticism answers this dithyramb by insisting that +the old Anglo-Saxon race would be still more superior to +all others if it had no church-rates, or that our unrivaled +happiness would last yet longer with a six-pound franchise, +so long will the strain, “The best breed in the whole +world!” swell louder and louder, everything ideal and +refining will be lost out of sight, and both the assailed +and their critics will remain in a sphere, to say the truth, +perfectly unvital, a sphere in which spiritual progression +is impossible. But let criticism leave church-rates and +the franchise alone, and in the most candid spirit, without +a single lurking thought of practical innovation, confront +with our dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled +in a newspaper immediately after reading Mr. Roebuck:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“A shocking child murder has just been committed at +Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse +there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate +child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on +Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. Wragg is in +custody.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nothing but that; but, in juxtaposition with the absolute +eulogies of Sir Charles Adderley and Mr. Roebuck, +how eloquent, how suggestive are those few lines! “Our +old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the whole world!”—how +much that is harsh and ill-favored there is in this +best! <em>Wragg!</em> If we are to talk of ideal perfection, of +“the best in the whole world,” has any one reflected what +a touch of grossness in our race, what an original shortcoming +<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is +shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous +names,—Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg! In Ionia and +Attica they were luckier in this respect than “the best +race in the world;” by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, +poor thing! And “our unrivaled happiness;”—what +an element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes +with it and blurs it; the workhouse, the dismal Mapperly +Hills,—how dismal those who have seen them will remember;—the +gloom, the smoke, the cold, the strangled illegimate +child! “I ask you whether, the world over or +in past history, there is anything like it?” Perhaps not, +one is inclined to answer; but at any rate, in that case, +the world is very much to be pitied. And the final +touch,—short, bleak and inhuman: <em>Wragg is in custody</em>. +The sex lost in the confusion of our unrivaled happiness; +or (shall I say?) the superfluous Christian name lopped off +by the straightforward vigor of our old Anglo-Saxon breed! +There is profit for the spirit in such contrasts as this; criticism +serves the cause of perfection by establishing them. +By eluding sterile conflict, by refusing to remain in the +sphere where alone narrow and relative conceptions have +any worth and validity, criticism may diminish its momentary +importance, but only in this way has it a chance +of gaining admittance for those wider and more perfect +conceptions to which all its duty is really owed. Mr. +Roebuck will have a poor opinion of an adversary who replies +to his defiant songs of triumph only by murmuring +under his breath, <em>Wragg is in custody</em>; but in no other +way will these songs of triumph be induced gradually to +moderate themselves, to get rid of what in them is excessive +and offensive, and to fall into a softer and truer key.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect +action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and that, +by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue of detachment +and abandoning the sphere of practical life, it +condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. Slow and +obscure it may be, but it is the only proper work of criticism. +The mass of mankind will never have any ardent +<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas +will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, +and must repose, the general practice of the world. That +is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things +as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but +it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work +that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush +and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and +attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and +tend to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be +the case where that life is so powerful as it is in England. +But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend +himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the +critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only +by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and +by at last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, +that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually +threaten him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, +and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture +greatly find their account. But it is not easy to lead a +practical man,—unless you reassure him as to your practical +intentions, you have no chance of leading him,—to +see that a thing which he has always been used to look at +from one side only, which he greatly values, and which, +looked at from that side, quite deserves, perhaps, all the +prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it,—that +this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much +less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims +to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find language +innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless purity +of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to say to +the political Englishman that the British Constitution itself, +which, seen from the practical side, looks such a +magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen from the +speculative side,—with its compromises, its love of facts, +its horror of theory, its studied avoidance of clear +thoughts,—that, seen from this side, our august Constitution +sometimes looks,—forgive me, shade of Lord Somers!—a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines? +How is Cobbett to say this and not be misunderstood, +blackened as he is with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in +the field of political practice? how is Mr. Carlyle to say +it and not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into +this field with his <cite>Latter-day Pamphlets</cite>? how is Mr. +Ruskin, after his pugnacious political economy? I say, +the critic must keep out of the region of immediate practice +in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he +wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative +treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its +benefits felt even in this sphere, but in a natural and +thence irresistible manner.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain exposed +to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere so +much as in this country. For here people are particularly +indisposed even to comprehend that without this +free disinterested treatment of things, truth and the +highest culture are out of the question. So immersed are +they in practical life, so accustomed to take all their notions +from this life and its processes, that they are apt to +think that truth and culture themselves can be reached +by the processes of this life, and that it is an impertinent +singularity to think of reaching them in any other. “We +are all <span lang="la"><i>terræ filii</i></span>,” cries their eloquent advocate; “all Philistines +together. Away with the notion of proceeding by +any other course than the course dear to the Philistines; +let us have a social movement, let us organize and combine +a party to pursue truth and new thought, let us call it <em>the +liberal party</em>, and let us all stick to each other, and back +each other up. Let us have no nonsense about independent +criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and the few and +the many. Don’t let us trouble ourselves about foreign +thought; we shall invent the whole thing for ourselves as +we go along. If one of us speaks well, applaud him; +if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in the +same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of +truth.” In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really +a social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>chairman, a secretary, and advertisements; with the excitement +of an occasional scandal, with a little resistance +to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome; but, +in general, plenty of bustle and very little thought. To +act is so easy, as Goethe says; to think is so hard! It +is true that the critic has many temptations to go with +the stream, to make one of the party movement, one of +these <span lang="la"><i>terræ filii</i></span>; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a +<span lang="la"><i>terræ filius</i></span>, when so many excellent people are; but the +critic’s duty is to refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least +to cry with Obermann: <span lang="fr"><i>Périssons en résistant</i></span>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had ample +opportunity of experiencing when I ventured some time +ago to criticize the celebrated first volume of Bishop +Colenso.<a id='r3'></a><a href='#f3' class='c007'><sup>[3]</sup></a> The echoes of the storm which was then raised +I still, from time to time, hear grumbling around me. +That storm arose out of a misunderstanding almost inevitable. +It is a result of no little culture to attain to a +clear perception that science and religion are two wholly +different things. The multitude will for ever confuse +them; but happily that is of no great real importance, for +while the multitude imagines itself to live by its false +science, it does really live by its true religion. Dr. +Colenso, however, in his first volume did all he could +to strengthen the confusion,<a id='r4'></a><a href='#f4' class='c007'><sup>[4]</sup></a> and to make it dangerous. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>He did this with the best intentions, I freely admit, +and with the most candid ignorance that this was +the natural effect of what he was doing; but, says +Joubert, “Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates +the crime, is itself, in intellectual matters, a +crime of the first order.” I criticized Bishop Colenso’s +speculative confusion. Immediately there was a cry +raised: “What is this? here is a liberal attacking a +liberal. Do not you belong to the movement? are not +you a friend of truth? Is not Bishop Colenso in pursuit +of truth? then speak with proper respect of his book. +Dr. Stanley is another friend of truth, and you speak with +proper respect of his book; why make these invidious +differences? both books are excellent, admirable, liberal; +Bishop Colenso’s perhaps the most so, because it is the +boldest, and will have the best practical consequences for +the liberal cause. Do you want to encourage to the attack +of a brother liberal his, and your, and our implacable +enemies, the <cite>Church and State Review</cite> or the <cite>Record</cite>,—the +High Church rhinoceros and the Evangelical hyena? Be +silent, therefore; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever +you can! and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd +pigeons.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indiscriminate +method. It is unfortunately possible for a man in pursuit +of truth to write a book which reposes upon a false conception. +Even the practical consequences of a book are +to genuine criticism no recommendation of it, if the book +is, in the highest sense, blundering. I see that a lady +who herself, too, is in pursuit of truth, and who writes +with great ability, but a little too much, perhaps, under +the influence of the practical spirit of the English liberal +movement, classes Bishop Colenso’s book and M. Renan’s +together, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, +as facts of the same order, works, both of them, of “great +importance;” “great ability, power, and skill;” Bishop +Colenso’s, perhaps, the most powerful; at least, Miss +Cobbe gives special expression to her gratitude that to +Bishop Colenso “has been given the strength to grasp, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>and the courage to teach, truths of such deep import.” +In the same way, more than one popular writer has compared +him to Luther. Now it is just this kind of false +estimate which the critical spirit is, it seems to me, bound +to resist. It is really the strongest possible proof of the +low ebb at which, in England, the critical spirit is, that +while the critical hit in the religious literature of Germany +is Dr. Strauss’s book, in that of France M. Renan’s book, +the book of Bishop Colenso is the critical hit in the religious +literature of England. Bishop Colenso’s book reposes +on a total misconception of the essential elements of +the religious problem, as that problem is now presented +for solution. To criticism, therefore, which seeks to have +the best that is known and thought on this problem, it is, +however well meant, of no importance whatever. M. +Renan’s book attempts a new synthesis of the elements +furnished to us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, in my +opinion, a synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps impossible, +certainly not successful. Up to the present time, +at any rate, we must acquiesce in Fleury’s sentence on +such recastings of the Gospel-story: <span lang="fr"><i>Quiconque s’imagine +la pouvoir mieux écrire, ne l’entend pas</i></span>. M. Renan had +himself passed by anticipation a like sentence on his own +work, when he said: “If a new presentation of the +character of Jesus were offered to me, I would not have it; +its very clearness would be, in my opinion, the best proof +of its insufficiency.” His friends may with perfect justice +rejoin that at the sight of the Holy Land, and of the +actual scene of the Gospel-story, all the current of M. +Renan’s thoughts may have naturally changed, and a new +casting of that story irresistibly suggested itself to him; +and that this is just a case for applying Cicero’s maxim: +Change of mind is not inconsistency—<span lang="la"><i>nemo doctus unquam +mutationem consilii inconstantiam dixit esse</i></span>. Nevertheless, +for criticism, M. Renan’s first thought must still be +the truer one, as long as his new casting so fails more +fully to commend itself, more fully (to use Coleridge’s +happy phrase about the Bible) to <em>find</em> us. Still M. +Renan’s attempt is, for criticism, of the most real interest +<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>and importance, since, with all its difficulty, a fresh synthesis +of the New Testament <em>data</em>,—not a making war on +them, in Voltaire’s fashion, not a leaving them out of +mind, in the world’s fashion, but the putting a new construction +upon them, the taking them from under the +old, traditional, conventional point of view and placing +them under a new one,—is the very essence of the +religious problem, as now presented; and only by efforts +in this direction can it receive a solution.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop +Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest liberals of our +practical race, both here and in America, herself sets +vigorously about a positive reconstruction of religion, about +making a religion of the future out of hand, or at least +setting about making it. We must not rest, she and they +are always thinking and saying, in negative criticism, +we must be creative and constructive; hence we have +such works as her recent <cite>Religious Duty</cite>, and works still +more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will be in +every one’s mind. These works often have much ability; +they often spring out of sincere convictions, and a sincere +wish to do good; and they sometimes, perhaps, do good. +Their fault is (if I may be permitted to say so) one which +they have in common with the British College of Health, +in the New Road. Every one knows the British College +of Health; it is that building with the lion and the statue +of the Goddess Hygeia before it; at least I am sure about +the lion, though I am not absolutely certain about the +Goddess Hygeia. This building does credit, perhaps, to +the resources of Dr. Morrison and his disciples; but it +falls a good deal short of one’s idea of what a British +College of Health ought to be. In England, where we +hate public interference and love individual enterprise, +we have a whole crop of places like the British College of +Health; the grand name without the grand thing. +Unluckily, creditable to individual enterprise as they are, +they tend to impair our taste by making us forget what +more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly belongs +to a public institution. The same may be said of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>the religions of the future of Miss Cobbe and others. +Creditable, like the British College of Health, to the resources +of their authors, they yet tend to make us forget +what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly +belongs to religious constructions. The historic religions, +with all their faults, have had this; it certainly belongs +to the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have +this; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion +of the future without it. What then is the duty of criticism +here? To take the practical point of view, to applaud +the liberal movement and all its works,—its New +Road religions of the future into the bargain,—for their +general utility’s sake? By no means; but to be perpetually +dissatisfied with these works, while they perpetually +fall short of a high and perfect ideal.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For criticism, these are elementary laws; but they never +can be popular, and in this country they have been very +little followed, and one meets with immense obstacles in +following them. That is a reason for asserting them again +and again. Criticism must maintain its independence of +the practical spirit and its aims. Even with well-meant +efforts of the practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction, +if in the sphere of the ideal they seem impoverishing +and limiting. It must not hurry on to the goal because +of its practical importance. It must be patient, +and know how to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach +itself to things and how to withdraw from them. It +must be apt to study and praise elements that for the fulness +of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they +belong to a power which in the practical sphere may be +maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings +or illusions of powers that in the practical sphere +may be beneficent. And this without any notion of favoring +or injuring, in the practical sphere, one power or the +other; without any notion of playing off, in this sphere, +one power against the other. When one looks, for instance, +at the English Divorce Court—an institution +which perhaps has its practical conveniences, but which +in the ideal sphere is so hideous; an institution which +<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>neither makes divorce impossible nor makes it decent, +which allows a man to get rid of his wife, or a wife of her +husband, but makes them drag one another first, for the +public edification, through a mire of unutterable infamy,—when +one looks at this charming institution, I say, with +its crowded trials, its newspaper reports, and its money +compensations, this institution in which the gross unregenerate +British Philistine has indeed stamped an image +of himself,—one may be permitted to find the marriage +theory of Catholicism refreshing and elevating. Or when +Protestantism, in virtue of its supposed rational and intellectual +origin, gives the law to criticism too magisterially, +criticism may and must remind it that its pretensions, +in this respect, are illusive and do it harm; that +the Reformation was a moral rather than an intellectual +event; that Luther’s theory of grace no more exactly reflects +the mind of the spirit than Bossuet’s philosophy of +history reflects it; and that there is no more antecedent +probability of the Bishop of Durham’s stock of ideas being +agreeable to perfect reason than of Pope Pius the +Ninth’s. But criticism will not on that account forget +the achievements of Protestantism in the practical and +moral sphere; nor that, even in the intellectual sphere, +Protestantism, though in a blind and stumbling manner, +carried forward the Renascence, while Catholicism threw +itself violently across its path.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting +the want of ardor and movement which he now found +amongst young men in this country with what he remembered +in his own youth, twenty years ago. “What reformers +we were then!” he exclaimed; “What a zeal +we had! how we canvassed every institution in Church +and State, and were prepared to remodel them all on first +principles!” He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual +flagging, the lull which he saw. I am disposed rather to +regard it as a pause in which the turn to a new mode of +spiritual progress is being accomplished. Everything +was long seen, by the young and ardent amongst us, in +inseparable connection with politics and practical life. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>We have pretty well exhausted the benefits of seeing +things in this connection, we have got all that can be got +by so seeing them. Let us try a more disinterested mode +of seeing them; let us betake ourselves more to the +serener life of the mind and spirit. This life, too, may +have its excesses and dangers; but they are not for us at +present. Let us think of quietly enlarging our stock of +true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as we get an idea +or half an idea, be running out with it into the street, and +trying to make it rule there. Our ideas will, in the end, +shape the world all the better for maturing a little. Perhaps +in fifty years’ time it will in the English House of +Commons be an objection to an institution that it is an +anomaly, and my friend the Member of Parliament will +shudder in his grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather +endeavor that in twenty years’ time it may, in English +literature, be an objection to a proposition that it is absurd. +That will be a change so vast, that the imagination +almost fails to grasp it. <span lang="la"><i>Ab integro sæclorum nascitur +ordo.</i></span></p> + +<p class='c001'>If I have insisted so much on the course which criticism +must take where politics and religion are concerned, it is +because, where these burning matters are in question, it is +most likely to go astray. I have wished, above all, to insist +on the attitude which criticism should adopt towards +things in general; on its right tone and temper of mind. +But then comes another question as to the subject-matter +which literary criticism should most seek. Here, in +general, its course is determined for it by the idea which is +the law of its being; the idea of a disinterested endeavor +to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought +in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and +true ideas. By the very nature of things, as England is +not all the world, much of the best that is known and +thought in the world cannot be of English growth, must +be foreign; by the nature of things, again, it is just this +that we are least likely to know, while English thought is +streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent +care that we shall not be ignorant of its existence. The +<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>English critic of literature, therefore, must dwell much +on foreign thought, and with particular heed on any part +of it, which, while significant and fruitful in itself, is for +any reason specially likely to escape him. Again, judging +is often spoken of as the critic’s one business, and so +in some sense it is; but the judgment which almost insensibly +forms itself in a fair and clear mind, along with +fresh knowledge, is the valuable one; and thus knowledge, +and ever fresh knowledge, must be the critic’s +great concern for himself. And it is by communicating +fresh knowledge, and letting his own judgment pass +along with it,—but insensibly, and in the second place, +not the first, as a sort of companion and clue, not as an +abstract lawgiver,—that the critic will generally do most +good to his readers. Sometimes, no doubt, for the sake +of establishing an author’s place in literature, and his +relation to a central standard (and if this is not done, how +are we to get at our <em>best in the world</em>?) criticism may have +to deal with a subject-matter so familiar that fresh knowledge +is out of the question, and then it must be all judgment; +an enunciation and detailed application of principles. +Here the great safeguard is never to let oneself +become abstract, always to retain an intimate and lively +consciousness of the truth of what one is saying, and, the +moment this fails us, to be sure that something is wrong. +Still, under all circumstances, this mere judgment and +application of principles is, in itself, not the most satisfactory +work to the critic; like mathematics, it is tautological, +and cannot well give us, like fresh learning, the +sense of creative activity.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But stop, some one will say; all this talk is of no practical +use to us whatever; this criticism of yours is not +what we have in our minds when we speak of criticism; +when we speak of critics and criticism, we mean critics +and criticism of the current English literature of the day; +when you offer to tell criticism its function, it is to this +criticism that we expect you to address yourself. I am +sorry for it, for I am afraid I must disappoint these expectations. +I am bound by my own definition of criticism: +<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span><em>a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best +that is known and thought in the world</em>. How much of +current English literature comes into this “best that is +known and thought in the world?” Not very much I +fear; certainly less, at this moment, than of the current +literature of France or Germany. Well, then, am I to +alter my definition of criticism, in order to meet the +requirements of a number of practising English critics, +who, after all, are free in their choice of a business? +That would be making criticism lend itself just to one of +those alien practical considerations, which, I have said, +are so fatal to it. One may say, indeed, to those who +have to deal with the mass—so much better disregarded—of +current English literature, that they may at all events +endeavor, in dealing with this, to try it, so far as they +can, by the standard of the best that is known and thought +in the world; one may say, that to get anywhere near +this standard, every critic should try and possess one +great literature, at least, besides his own; and the more +unlike his own, the better. But, after all, the criticism I +am really concerned with,—the criticism which alone can +much help us for the future, the criticism which, throughout +Europe, is at the present day meant, when so much +stress is laid on the importance of criticism and the critical +spirit,—is a criticism which regards Europe as being, +for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, +bound to a joint action and working to a common +result; and whose members have, for their proper outfit, +a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, +and of one another. Special, local, and temporary advantages +being put out of account, that modern nation +will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most +progress, which most thoroughly carries out this program. +And what is that but saying that we too, all of +us, as individuals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, +shall make the more progress?</p> + +<p class='c001'>There is so much inviting us!—what are we to take? +what will nourish us in growth towards perfection? +That is the question which, with the immense field of life +<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>and of literature lying before him, the critic has to answer; +for himself first, and afterwards for others. In +this idea of the critic’s business the essays brought together +in the following pages have had their origin; in +this idea, widely different as are their subjects, they have, +perhaps, their unity.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I conclude with what I said at the beginning: to have +the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and +the great proof of being alive, and it is not denied to criticism +to have it; but then criticism must be sincere, simple, +flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. Then +it may have, in no contemptible measure, a joyful sense +of creative activity; a sense which a man of insight and +conscience will prefer to what he might derive from a poor, +starved, fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some +epochs no other creation is possible.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity belongs +only to genuine creation; in literature we must +never forget that. But what true man of letters ever can +forget it? It is no such common matter for a gifted nature +to come into possession of a current of true and living +ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that +we are likely to underrate it. The epochs of Æschylus +and Shakespeare make us feel their pre-eminence. In an +epoch like those is, no doubt, the true life of literature; +there is the promised land, towards which criticism can only +beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, +and we shall die in the wilderness: but to have desired +to enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, perhaps, +the best distinction among contemporaries; it will +certainly be the best title to esteem with posterity.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>II.</p> + +<p class='c001'>THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF +ACADEMIES.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is impossible to put down a book like the history of +the French Academy, by Pellisson and D’Olivet, which +M. Charles Livet has lately re-edited, without being led +to reflect upon the absence, in our own country, of any +institution like the French Academy, upon the probable +causes of this absence, and upon its results. A thousand +voices will be ready to tell us that this absence is a signal +mark of our national superiority; that it is in great part +owing to this absence that the exhilarating words of Lord +Macaulay, lately given to the world by his very clever +nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true: “It +may safely be said that the literature now extant in the +English language is of far greater value than all the +literature which three hundred years ago was extant in +all the languages of the world together.” I dare say this +is so; only, remembering Spinoza’s maxim that the two +great banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness +coming from self-conceit, I think it may do us good, instead +of resting in our pre-eminence with perfect security, +to look a little more closely why this is so, and whether +it is so without any limitations.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But first of all I must give a very few words to the outward +history of the French Academy. About the year +1629, seven or eight persons in Paris, fond of literature, +formed themselves into a sort of little club to meet +at one another’s houses and discuss literary matters. +Their meetings got talked of, and Cardinal Richelieu, +then minister and all-powerful, heard of them. He himself +<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>had a noble passion for letters, and for all fine culture; +he was interested by what he heard of the nascent +society. Himself a man in the grand style, if ever man +was, he had the insight to perceive what a potent instrument +of the grand style was here to his hand. It was the +beginning of a great century for France, the seventeenth; +men’s minds were working, the French language was +forming. Richelieu sent to ask the members of the new +society whether they would be willing to become a body +with a public character, holding regular meetings. Not +without a little hesitation,—for apparently they found +themselves very well as they were, and these seven or +eight gentlemen of a social and literary turn were not +perfectly at their ease as to what the great and terrible +minister could want with them,—they consented. The +favors of a man like Richelieu are not easily refused, +whether they are honestly meant or no; but this favor of +Richelieu’s was meant quite honestly. The Parliament, +however, had its doubts of this. The Parliament had +none of Richelieu’s enthusiasm about letters and culture; +it was jealous of the apparition of a new public body in +the State; above all, of a body called into existence by +Richelieu. The King’s letters-patent, establishing and +authorizing the new society, were granted early in 1635; +but, by the old constitution of France, these letters-patent +required the verification of the Parliament. It was two +years and a half—towards the autumn of 1637—before the +Parliament would give it; and it then gave it only after +pressing solicitations, and earnest assurances of the innocent +intentions of the young Academy. Jocose people +said that this society, with its mission to purify and embellish +the language, filled with terror a body of lawyers +like the French Parliament, the stronghold of barbarous +jargon and of chicane.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This improvement of the language was in truth the declared +grand aim for the operations of the Academy. Its +statutes of foundation, approved by Richelieu before the +royal edict establishing it was issued, say expressly: “The +Academy’s principal function shall be to work with all the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>care and all the diligence possible at giving sure rules to +our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and +capable of treating the arts and sciences.” This zeal for +making a nation’s great instrument of thought,—its language,—correct +and worthy, is undoubtedly a sign full of +promise,—a weighty earnest of future power. It is said +that Richelieu had it in his mind that French should succeed +Latin in its general ascendency, as Latin had succeeded +Greek; if it was so, even this wish has to some +extent been fulfilled. But, at any rate, the <em>ethical</em> influences +of style in language,—its close relations, so often +pointed out, with character,—are most important. +Richelieu, a man of high culture, and, at the same time, +of great character felt them profoundly; and that he +should have sought to regularize, strengthen, and perpetuate +them by an institution for perfecting language, is +alone a striking proof of his governing spirit and of his +genius.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This was not all he had in his mind, however. The +new Academy, now enlarged to a body of forty members, +and meant to contain all the chief literary men of France, +was to be a <em>literary tribunal</em>. The works of its members +were to be brought before it previous to publication, were +to be criticized by it, and finally, if it saw fit, to be published +with its declared approbation. The works of other +writers, not members of the Academy, might also, at the +request of these writers themselves, be passed under the +Academy’s review. Besides this, in essays and discussions +the Academy examined and judged works already +published, whether by living or dead authors, and literary +matters in general. The celebrated opinion on Corneille’s +<cite>Cid</cite>, delivered in 1637 by the Academy at Richelieu’s +urgent request, when this poem, which strongly occupied +public attention, had been attacked by M. de Scudéry, +shows how fully Richelieu designed his new creation +to do duty as a supreme court of literature, and how early +it in fact began to exercise this function. One<a id='r5'></a><a href='#f5' class='c007'><sup>[5]</sup></a> who had +known Richelieu declared, after the Cardinal’s death, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>that he had projected a yet greater institution than the +Academy, a sort of grand European college of art, science, +and literature, a Prytaneum, where the chief authors of +all Europe should be gathered together in one central +home, there to live in security, leisure and honor;—that +was a dream which will not bear to be pulled about too +roughly. But the project of forming a high court of +letters for France was no dream; Richelieu in great measure +fulfilled it. This is what the Academy, by its idea, +really is; this is what it has always tended to become; +this is what it has, from time to time, really been; by being, +or tending to be this, far more than even by what it +has done for the language, it is of such importance in +France. To give the law, the tone to literature, and that +tone a high one, is its business. “Richelieu meant it,” +says M. Sainte-Beuve, “to be a <span lang="fr"><i>haut jury</i></span>,”—a jury the +most choice and authoritative that could be found on all +important literary matters in question before the public; +to be, as it in fact became in the latter half of the eighteenth +century, “a sovereign organ of opinion.” “The +duty of the Academy is,” says M. Renan, “<span lang="fr"><i>maintenir la +délicatesse de l’esprit français</i></span>”—to keep the fine quality +of the French spirit unimpaired; it represents a kind of +“<span lang="fr"><i>maîtrise en fait de bon ton</i></span>”—the authority of a recognized +master in matters of tone and taste. “All ages,” says +M. Renan again, “have had their inferior literature; but +the great danger of our time is that this inferior literature +tends more and more to get the upper place. No +one has the same advantage as the Academy for fighting +against this mischief;” the Academy, which, as he says +elsewhere, has even special facilities, for “creating a +form of intellectual culture <em>which shall impose itself on +all around</em>.” M. Sainte-Beuve and M. Renan are, both +of them, very keen-sighted critics; and they show it signally +by seizing and putting so prominently forward this +character of the French Academy.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Such an effort to set up a recognized authority, imposing +on us a high standard in matters of intellect and taste, +has many enemies in human nature. We all of us like to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>go our own way, and not to be forced out of the atmosphere +of commonplace habitual to most of us;—“<span lang="de"><i>was +uns alle bändigt</i></span>,” says Goethe, “<span lang="de"><i>das Gemeine</i></span>.” We like +to be suffered to lie comfortably in the old straw of our +habits, especially of our intellectual habits, even though +this straw may not be very clean and fine. But if the +effort to limit this freedom of our lower nature finds, as it +does and must find, enemies in human nature, it finds +also auxiliaries in it. Out of the four great parts, says +Cicero, of the <span lang="la"><i>honestum</i></span>, or good, which forms the matter +on which <span lang="la"><i>officium</i></span>, or human duty, finds employment, one +is the fixing of a <span lang="la"><i>modus</i></span> and an <span lang="la"><i>ordo</i></span>, a measure and an +order, to fashion and wholesomely constrain our action, +in order to lift it above the level it keeps if left to itself, +and to bring it nearer to perfection. Man alone of living +creatures, he says, goes feeling after “<span lang="la"><em>quid sit</em> ordo, +<em>quid sid quod</em> deceat, <em>in factis dictisque qui</em> modus</span>—the +discovery of an <em>order</em>, a law of <em>good taste</em>, a <em>measure</em> for his +words and actions.” Other creatures submissively follow +the law of their nature; man alone has an impulse leading +him to set up some other law to control the bent of his +nature.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This holds good, of course, as to moral matters, as well +as intellectual matters: and it is of moral matters that +we are generally thinking when we affirm it. But it +holds good as to intellectual matters too. Now, probably, +M. Sainte-Beuve had not these words of Cicero in his mind +when he made, about the French nation, the assertion I +am going to quote; but, for all that, the assertion leans +for support, one may say, upon the truth conveyed in +those words of Cicero, and wonderfully illustrates and +confirms them. “In France,” says M. Sainte-Beuve, +“the first consideration for us is not whether we are +amused and pleased by a work of art or mind, nor is it +whether we are touched by it. What we seek above all +to learn is, whether <em>we were right</em> in being amused with +it, and in applauding it, and in being moved by it.” +Those are very remarkable words, and they are, I +believe, in the main quite true. A Frenchman has, to a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>considerable degree, what one may call a conscience in +intellectual matters; he has an active belief that there is +a right and a wrong in them, that he is bound to honor +and obey the right, that he is disgraced by cleaving to the +wrong. All the world has, or professes to have, this +conscience in moral matters. The word <em>conscience</em> has +become almost confined, in popular use, to the moral +sphere, because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, in +the moral sphere, so far more common than in the intellectual +sphere; the livelier, in the moral sphere, this +susceptibility is, the greater becomes a man’s readiness to +admit a high standard of action, an ideal authoritatively +correcting his everyday moral habits; here, such willing +admission of authority is due to sensitiveness of conscience. +And a like deference to a standard higher than +one’s own habitual standard in intellectual matters, a like +respectful recognition of a superior ideal, is caused, in +the intellectual sphere, by sensitiveness of intelligence. +Those whose intelligence is quickest, openest, most sensitive, +are readiest with this deference; those whose intelligence +is less delicate and sensitive are less disposed to it. +Well, now we are on the road to see why the French have +their Academy and we have nothing of the kind.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of +our nation? Not, certainly, an open and clear mind, +not a quick and flexible intelligence. Our greatest admirers +would not claim for us that we have these in a preeminent +degree; they might say that we had more of them +than our detractors gave us credit for; but they would +not assert them to be our essential characteristics. They +would rather allege, as our chief spiritual characteristics, +energy and honesty; and, if we are judged favorably and +positively, not invidiously and negatively, our chief characteristics +are, no doubt, these:—energy and honesty, not +an open and clear mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence. +Openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence +were very signal characteristics of the Athenian people +in ancient times; everybody will feel that. Openness +of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable +<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>characteristics of the French people in modern times; at +any rate, they strikingly characterize them as compared +with us; I think everybody, or almost everybody, will feel +that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or the +French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either +of them may have as a set-off against this; all I want now +to point out is that they have this, and that we have it in +a much lesser degree.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral +sphere, but also in the intellectual and spiritual sphere, +energy and honesty are most important and fruitful +qualities; that, for instance, of what we call genius +energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning to a +nation energy and honesty as its chief spiritual characteristics,—by +refusing to it, as at all eminent characteristics, +openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence,—we do +not by any means, as some people might at first suppose, +relegate its importance and its power of manifesting itself +with effect from the intellectual to the moral sphere. We +only indicate its probable special line of successful activity +in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain imperfections +and failings to which, in this sphere, it will always +be subject. Genius is mainly an affair of energy, and +poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore, a nation +whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be eminent +in poetry;—and we have Shakespeare. Again, the +highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive +power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power +exercised in poetry; therefore, a nation whose spirit is +characterized by energy may well be eminent in science;—and +we have Newton. Shakespeare and Newton: in the intellectual +sphere there can be no higher names. And +what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything +demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence +of all authority, prescription, and routine,—the +fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore, a nation +whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy, will not be +very apt to set up, in intellectual matters, a fixed standard, +an authority, like an academy. By this it certainly +<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>escapes certain real inconveniences and dangers, and it +can, at the same time, as we have seen, reach undeniably +splendid heights in poetry and science. On the other +hand, some of the requisites of intellectual work are specially +the affair of quickness of mind and flexibility of intelligence. +The form, the method of evolution, the precision, +the proportions, the relations of the parts to the +whole, in an intellectual work, depend mainly upon them. +And these are the elements of an intellectual work which +are really most communicable from it, which can most be +learned and adopted from it, which have, therefore, the +greatest effect upon the intellectual performance of +others. Even in poetry, these requisites are very important; +and the poetry of a nation, not eminent for the +gifts on which they depend, will, more or less, suffer by +this shortcoming. In poetry, however, they are, after +all, secondary, and energy is the first thing; but in prose +they are of first-rate importance. In its prose literature, +therefore, and in the routine of intellectual work generally, +a nation with no particular gifts for these will not +be so successful. These are what, as I have said, can to +a certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the +free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate +and maintain them, and, therefore, a nation with an +eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies. +So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy +and inventive genius, academies may be said to be obstructive +to energy and inventive genius, and, to this extent, +to the human spirit’s general advance. But then +this evil is so much compensated by the propagation, on a +large scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands which +an open mind and a flexible intelligence naturally engender, +genius itself, in the long run, so greatly finds its +account in this propagation, and bodies like the French +Academy have such power for promoting it, that the +general advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the +whole, rather furthered than impeded by their existence.</p> + +<p class='c001'>How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! +how much better, in general, do the productions of its +<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>spirit show in the qualities of genius than in the qualities +of intelligence! One may constantly remark this in the +work of individuals; how much more striking, in general, +does any Englishman,—of some vigor of mind, but by no +means a poet,—seem in his verse than in his prose! His +verse partly suffers from his not being really a poet, partly, +no doubt, from the very same defects which impair his prose, +and he cannot express himself with thorough success in it. +But how much more powerful a personage does he appear +in it, by dint of feeling, and of originality and movement +of ideas, than when he is writing prose! With a Frenchman +of like stamp, it is just the reverse: set him to write +poetry, he is limited, artificial, and impotent; set him to +write prose, he is free, natural, and effective. The power +of French literature is in its prose-writers, the power of +English literature is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated +French poets depend wholly for their fame upon +the qualities of intelligence which they exhibit,—qualities +which are the distinctive support of prose; many of the +celebrated English prose-writers depend wholly for their +fame upon the qualities of genius and imagination which +they exhibit,—qualities which are the distinctive support +of poetry. But, as I have said, the qualities of genius are +less transferable than the qualities of intelligence; less +can be immediately learned and appropriated from their +product; they are less direct and stringent intellectual +agencies, though they may be more beautiful and divine. +Shakspeare and our great Elizabethan group were certainly +more gifted writers than Corneille and his group; but +what was the sequel to this great literature, this literature +of genius, as we may call it, stretching from Marlow to +Milton? What did it lead up to in English literature? +To our provincial and second-rate literature of the eighteenth +century. What on the other hand, was the sequel +to the literature of the French “great century,” to this +literature of intelligence, as by comparison with our Elizabethan +literature, we may call it; what did it lead up +to? To the French literature of the eighteenth century, +one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual agencies +<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>that have ever existed,—the greatest European force of the +eighteenth century. In science, again, we had Newton, a +genius of the very highest order, a type of genius in science, +if ever there was one. On the continent, as a sort of +counterpart to Newton, there was Leibnitz; a man, it +seems to me (though on these matters I speak under correction), +of much less creative energy of genius, much less +power of divination than Newton, but rather a man of +admirable intelligence, a type of intelligence in science, if +ever there was one. Well, and what did they each directly +lead up to in science? What was the intellectual generation +that sprang from each of them? I only repeat what +the men of science have themselves pointed out. The man +of genius was continued by the English analysts of the +eighteenth century, comparatively powerless and obscure +followers of the renowned master. The man of intelligence +was continued by successors like Bernouilli, Euler, Lagrange, +and Laplace, the greatest names in modern mathematics.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What I want the reader to see is, that the question as +to the utility of academies to the intellectual life of a nation +is not settled when we say, for instance: “Oh, we have +never had an academy and yet we have, confessedly, a +very great literature.” It still remains to be asked: +“What sort of a great literature? a literature great in the +special qualities of genius, or great in the special qualities +of intelligence?” If in the former, it is by no means +sure that either our literature, or the general intellectual +life of our nation, has got already, without academics, all +that academics can give. Both the one and the other may +very well be somewhat wanting in those qualities of intelligence +out of a lively sense for which a body like the French +Academy, as I have said, springs, and which such a body +does a great deal to spread and confirm. Our literature, +in spite of the genius manifested in it, may fall short in +form, method, precision, proportions, arrangement,—all +of them, I have said, things where intelligence proper +comes in. It may be comparatively weak in prose, that +branch of literature where intelligence proper is, so to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>speak, all in all. In this branch it may show many grave +faults to which the want of a quick, flexible intelligence, +and of the strict standard which such an intelligence tends +to impose, makes it liable; it may be full of haphazard, +crudeness, provincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering. +It may be a less stringent and effective intellectual +agency, both upon our own nation and upon the world at +large, than other literatures which show less genius, perhaps, +but more intelligence.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The right conclusion certainly is that we should try, so +far as we can, to make up our shortcomings; and that to +this end, instead of always fixing our thoughts upon the +points in which our literature, and our intellectual life +generally, are strong, we should from time to time, fix +them upon those in which they are weak, and so learn to +perceive <a id='corr41.16'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='elearly'>clearly</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_41.16'><ins class='correction' title='elearly'>clearly</ins></a></span> what we have to amend. What is our +second great spiritual characteristic,—our honesty,—good +for, if it is not good for this? But it will,—I am sure it +will,—more and more, as time goes on, be found good for +this.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Well, then, an institution like the French Academy,—an +institution owing its existence to a national bent towards +the things of the mind, towards culture, towards clearness, +correctness, and propriety in thinking and speaking, and, +in its turn, promoting this bent,—sets standards in a +number of directions, and creates, in all these directions, +a force of educated opinion, checking and rebuking those +who fall below these standards, or who set them at nought. +Educated opinion exists here as in France; but in France +the Academy serves as a sort of center and rallying-point +to it, and gives it a force which it has not got here. Why +is all the <em>journeyman-work</em> of literature, as I may call it, +so much worse done here than it is in France? I do not +wish to hurt any one’s feelings; but surely this is so. +Think of the difference between our books of reference and +those of the French, between our biographical dictionaries +(to take a striking instance) and theirs; think of the difference +between the translations of the classics turned out +for Mr. Bohn’s library and those turned out for M. Nisard’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>collection! As a general rule, hardly any one amongst us, +who knows French and German well, would use an English +book of reference when he could get a French or German +one; or would look at an English prose translation +of an ancient author when he could get a French or German +one. It is not that there do not exist in England, as +in France, a number of people perfectly well able to discern +what is good, in these things, from what is bad, and preferring +what is good; but they are isolated, they form no +powerful body of opinion, they are not strong enough to +set a standard, up to which even the journeyman-work of +literature must be brought, if it is to be vendible. Ignorance +and charlatanism in work of this kind are always +trying to pass off their wares as excellent, and to cry down +criticism as the voice of an insignificant, over-fastidious +minority; they easily persuade the multitude that this is +so when the minority is scattered about as it is here; not +so easily when it is banded together as in the French +Academy. So, again, with freaks in dealing with language; +certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and +beauty of language; and how far more common they are +with us than with the French! To take a very familiar +instance. Every one has noticed the way in which the +<cite>Times</cite> chooses to spell the word “diocese;” it always +spells it diocess,<a id='r6'></a><a href='#f6' class='c007'><sup>[6]</sup></a> deriving it, I suppose, from <em>Zeus</em> and +<em>census</em>. The <span lang="fr"><cite>Journal des Débats</cite></span> might just as well write +“diocess” instead of “diocèse,” but imagine the <span lang="fr"><cite>Journal +des Débats</cite></span> doing so! Imagine an educated Frenchman +indulging himself in an orthographical antic of this sort, +in face of the grave respect with which the Academy and +its dictionary invest the French language! Some people +will say these are little things; they are not; they are of +bad example. They tend to spread the baneful notion +that there is no such thing as a high, correct standard in +intellectual matters; that every one may as well take his +own way; they are at variance with the severe discipline +<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>necessary for all real culture; they confirm us in habits of +wilfulness and eccentricity, which hurt our minds, and +damage our credit with serious people. The late Mr. +Donaldson was certainly a man of great ability, and I, +who am not an Orientalist, do not pretend to judge his +<em>Jashar</em>: but let the reader observe the form which a foreign +Orientalist’s judgment of it naturally takes. M. +Renan calls it a <span lang="fr"><i>tentative malheureuse</i></span>, a failure, in short; +this it may be, or it may not be; I am no judge. But he +goes on: “It is astonishing that a recent article” (in a +French periodical, he means) “should have brought forward +as the last word of German exegesis a work like this, +composed by a doctor of the University of Cambridge, +and universally condemned by German critics.” You see +what he means to imply: an extravagance of this sort +could never have come from Germany, where there is a +great force of critical opinion controlling a learned man’s +vagaries, and keeping him straight; it comes from the +native home of intellectual eccentricity of all kinds,<a id='r7'></a><a href='#f7' class='c007'><sup>[7]</sup></a>—from +England, from a doctor of the University of Cambridge:—and +I dare say he would not expect much better +things from a doctor of the University of Oxford. Again, +after speaking of what Germany and France have done +for the history of Mahomet: “America and England,” +M. Renan goes on, “have also occupied themselves with +Mahomet.” He mentions Washington Irving’s <cite>Life of +Mahomet</cite>, which does not, he says, evince much of an historical +sense, a <span lang="fr"><i>sentiment historique fort élevé</i></span>; “but,” he +proceeds, “this book shows a real progress, when one +thinks that in 1829 Mr. Charles Forster published two +thick volumes, which enchanted the English <span lang="fr"><i>révérends</i></span>, +to make out that Mahomet was the little horn of the he-goat +that figures in the eighth chapter of Daniel, and that +the Pope was the great horn. Mr. Forster founded on this +<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>ingenious parallel a whole philosophy of history, according +to which the Pope represented the Western corruption +of Christianity, and Mahomet the Eastern; thence the +striking resemblances between Mahometanism and Popery.” +And in a note M. Renan adds: “This is the same +Mr. Charles Forster who is the author of a mystification +about the Sinaitic inscriptions, in which he declares he +finds the primitive language.” As much as to say: “It +is an Englishman, be surprised at no extravagance.” If +these innuendoes had no ground, and were made in hatred +and malice, they would not be worth a moment’s attention; +but they come from a grave Orientalist, on his own subject, +and they point to a real fact;—the absence, in this +country, of any force of educated literary and scientific +opinion, making aberrations like those of the author of +<cite>The One Primeval Language</cite> out of the question. Not +only the author of such aberrations, often a very clever +man, suffers by the want of check, by the not being kept +straight, and spends force in vain on a false road, which, +under better discipline, he might have used with profit +on a true one; but all his adherents, both “reverends” +and others, suffer too, and the general rate of information +and judgment is in this way kept low.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In a production which we have all been reading lately, +a production stamped throughout with a literary quality +very rare in this country, and of which I shall have a +word to say presently—<em>urbanity</em>; in this production, the +work of a man never to be named by any son of Oxford +without sympathy, a man who alone in Oxford of his +generation, alone of many generations, conveyed to us in +his genius that same charm, that same ineffable sentiment +which this exquisite place itself conveys,—I mean Dr. +Newman,—an expression is frequently used which is more +common in theological than in literary language, but +which seems to me fitted to be of general service; the <em>note</em> +of so and so, the note of catholicity, the note of antiquity, +the note of sanctity, and so on. Adopting this expressive +word, I say that in the bulk of the intellectual work of a +nation which has no center, no intellectual metropolis like +<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>an academy, like M. Sainte-Beuve’s “sovereign organ of +opinion,” like M. Renan’s “recognized authority in matters +of tone and taste,”—there is observable a <em>note of +provinciality</em>. Now to get rid of provinciality is a certain +stage of culture; a stage the positive result of which we +must not make of too much importance, but which is, +nevertheless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the +platform where alone the best and highest intellectual +work can be said fairly to begin. Work done after men +have reached this platform is <em>classical</em>; and that is the +only work which, in the long run, can stand. All the +<span lang="la"><i>scoriæ</i></span> in the work of men of great genius who have not +lived on this platform are due to their not having lived on +it. Genius raises them to it by moments, and the portions +of their work which are immortal are done at these moments; +but more of it would have been immortal if they +had not reached this platform at moments only, if they +had had the culture which makes men live there.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The less a literature has felt the influence of a supposed +center of correct information, correct judgment, correct +taste, the more we shall find in it this note of provinciality. +I have shown the note of provinciality as caused by remoteness +from a center of correct information. Of course +the note of provinciality from the want of a center of correct +taste is still more visible, and it is also still more common. +For here great—even the greatest—powers of mind +most fail a man. Great powers of mind will make him +inform himself thoroughly, great powers of mind will +make him think profoundly, even with ignorance and +platitude all round him; but not even great powers of +mind will keep his taste and style perfectly sound and +sure, if he is left too much to himself, with no “sovereign +organ of opinion” in these matters near him. Even men +like Jeremy Taylor and Burke suffer here. Take this passage +from Taylor’s funeral sermon on Lady Carbery:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing with +a still foot and a sober face, and paying to the <span lang="la"><i>fiscus</i></span>, the +great exchequer of the sea, a tribute large and full; and +hard by it a little brook, skipping and making a noise +<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>upon its unequal and neighbor bottom; and after all its +talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common audit +no more than the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible +vessel: so have I sometimes compared the issues of her +religion to the solemnities and famed outsides of another’s +piety.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, the +genius in it is undeniable. I should say, for my part, that +genius, the ruling divinity of poetry, had been too busy in +it, and intelligence, the ruling divinity of prose, not busy +enough. But can any one, with the best models of style +in his head, help feeling the note of provinciality there, +the want of simplicity, the want of measure, the want of +just the qualities that make prose classical? If he does +not feel what I mean, let him place beside the passage of +Taylor this passage from the Panegyric of St. Paul, by +Taylor’s contemporary, Bossuet:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“<span lang="fr">Il ira, cet ignorant dans l’art de bien dire, avec cette +locution rude, avec cette phrase qui sent l’étranger il ira +en cette Grèce polie, la mère des philosophes et des +orateurs; et malgré la résistance du monde, il y établira +plus d’Eglises que Platon n’y a gagné de disciples par cette +éloquence qu’on a crue divine.</span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>There we have prose without the note of provinciality—classical +prose, prose of the center.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Or take Burke, our greatest English prose-writer, as I +think; take expressions like this:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes +when they push, they drive, by the point of their bayonets, +their slaves, blindfolded, indeed, no worse than their +lords, to take their fictions for currencies, and to swallow +down paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Or this:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“They used it” (the royal name) “as a sort of navel-string, +to nourish their unnatural offspring from the +bowels of royalty itself. Now that the monster can purvey +for its own subsistence, it will only carry the mark +about it, as a token of its having torn the womb it came +from.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>Or this:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Without one natural pang, he” (Rousseau) “casts +away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his +disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital +of foundlings.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Or this:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I confess I never liked this continual talk of resistance +and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme +medicine of the constitution its daily bread. It renders +the habit of society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking +periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and swallowing +down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of +liberty.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>I say that is extravagant prose; prose too much suffered +to indulge its caprices; prose at too great a distance from +the center of good taste; prose, in short, with the note of +provinciality. People may reply, it is rich and imaginative; +yes, that is just it, it is <em>Asiatic</em> prose, as the ancient +critics would have said; prose somewhat barbarously rich +and overloaded. But the true prose is Attic prose.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Well, but Addison’s prose is Attic prose. Where, then, +it may be asked, is the note of provinciality in Addison? +I answer, in the commonplace of his ideas.<a id='r8'></a><a href='#f8' class='c007'><sup>[8]</sup></a> This is a +matter worth remarking. Addison claims to take leading +rank as a moralist. To do that, you must have ideas of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>the first order on your subject—the best ideas, at any rate, +attainable in your time—as well as to be able to express +them in a perfectly sound and sure style. Else you show +your distance from the center of ideas by your matter; +you are provincial by your matter, though you may not be +provincial by your style. It is comparatively a small matter +to express oneself well, if one will be content with not expressing +much, with expressing only trite ideas; the problem +is to express new and profound ideas in a perfectly +sound and classical style. He is the true classic, in every +age, who does that. Now Addison has not, on his subject +of morals, the force of ideas of the moralists of the first +class—the classical moralists; he has not the best ideas +attainable in or about his time, and which were, so to +speak, in the air then, to be seized by the finest spirits; +he is not to be compared for power, searchingness, or delicacy +of thought to Pascal or La Bruyère or Vauvenargues; +he is rather on a level, in this respect, with a man +like Marmontel. Therefore, I say, he has the note of provinciality +as a moralist; he is provincial by his matter, +though not by his style.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addison, +writing as a moralist on fixedness in religious faith, +says:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Those who delight in reading books of controversy do +very seldom arrive at a fixed and settled habit of faith. +The doubt which was laid revives again, and shows itself +in new difficulties; and that generally for this reason,—because +the mind, which is perpetually tossed in controversies +and disputes, is apt to forget the reasons which +had once set it at rest, and to be disquieted with any +former perplexity when it appears in a new shape, or is +started by a different hand.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in +lucidity, measure, and propriety. I make no objection; +but, in my turn, I say that the idea expressed is perfectly +trite and barren, and that it is a note of provinciality in +Addison, in a man whom a nation puts forward as one of +its great moralists, to have no profounder and more striking +<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>idea to produce on this great subject. Compare, on +the same subject, these words of a moralist really of the +first order, really at the center by his ideas,—Joubert:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“<span lang="fr">L’expérience de beaucoup d’opinions donne à l’esprit +beaucoup de flexibilité et l’affermit dans celles qu’il croit +les meilleures.</span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>With what a flash of light that touches the subject! +how it sets us thinking! What a genuine contribution to +moral science it is!</p> + +<p class='c001'>In short, where there is no center like an academy, if +you have genius and powerful ideas, you are apt not to +have the best style going; if you have precision of style +and not genius, you are apt not to have the best ideas +going.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The provincial spirit, again, exaggerates the value of +its ideas for want of a high standard at hand by which to +try them. Or rather, for want of such a standard, it gives +one idea too much prominence at the expense of others; it +orders its ideas amiss; it is hurried away by fancies; it likes +and dislikes too passionately, too exclusively. Its admiration +weeps hysterical tears, and its disapprobation foams +at the mouth. So we get the <em>eruptive</em> and the <em>aggressive</em> +manner in literature; the former prevails most in our criticism, +the latter in our newspapers. For, not having the +lucidity of a large and centrally placed intelligence, the provincial +spirit has not its graciousness; it does not persuade, +it makes war; it has not urbanity, the tone of the city, of +the center, the tone which always aims at a spiritual and intellectual +effect, and not excluding the use of banter, never +disjoins banter itself from politeness, from felicity. But +the provincial tone is more violent, and seems to aim +rather at an effect upon the blood and senses than upon +the spirit and intellect; it loves hard-hitting rather than +persuading. The newspaper, with its party spirit, its +thorough-goingness, its resolute avoidance of shades and +distinctions, its short, highly-charged, heavy-shotted articles, +its style so unlike that style <span lang="fr"><i>lenis minimèque pertinax</i></span>—easy +and not too violently insisting,—which the +ancients so much admired, is its true literature; the provincial +<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>spirit likes in the newspaper just what makes the +newspaper such bad food for it,—just what made Goethe +say, when he was pressed hard about the immorality of +Byron’s poems, that, after all, they were not so immoral +as the newspapers. The French talk of the <span lang="fr"><i>brutalité des +journaux anglais</i></span>. What strikes them comes from the +necessary inherent tendencies of newspaper-writing not +being checked in England by any center of intelligent +and urbane spirit, but rather stimulated by coming in +contact with a provincial spirit. Even a newspaper +like the <cite>Saturday Review</cite>, that old friend of all of us, +a newspaper expressly aiming at an immunity from +the common newspaper-spirit, aiming at being a sort of +organ of reason,—and, by thus aiming, it merits great +gratitude and has done great good,—even the <cite>Saturday +Review</cite>, replying to some foreign criticism on our precautions +against invasion, falls into a strain of this kind:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“To do this” (to take these precautions) “seems to us +eminently worthy of a great nation, and to talk of it as +unworthy of a great nation, seems to us eminently worthy +of a great fool.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>There is what the French mean when they talk of the +<span lang="fr"><i>brutalité des journaux anglais</i></span>; there is a style certainly +as far removed from urbanity as possible,—a style with +what I call the note of provinciality. And the same note +may not unfrequently be observed even in the ideas of this +newspaper, full as it is of thought and cleverness: certain +ideas allowed to become fixed ideas, to prevail too absolutely. +I will not speak of the immediate present, but, to +go a little while back, it had the critic who so disliked the +Emperor of the French; it had the critic who so disliked +the subject of my present remarks—academies; it had the +critic who was so fond of the German element in our +nation, and, indeed, everywhere; who ground his teeth +if one said <em>Charlemagne</em> instead of <em>Charles the Great</em>, and, +in short, saw all things in Teutonism, as Malebranche +saw all things in God. Certainly any one may fairly find +faults in the Emperor Napoleon or in academies, and merit +in the German element; but it is a note of the provincial +<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>spirit not to hold ideas of this kind a little more easily, +to be so devoured by them, to suffer them to become +crotchets.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In England there needs a miracle of genius like Shakspeare’s +to produce balance of mind, and a miracle of +intellectual delicacy like Dr. Newman’s to produce urbanity +of style. How prevalent all round us is the want +of balance of mind and urbanity of style! How much, +doubtless, it is to be found in ourselves,—in each of us! +but, as human nature is constituted, every one can see it +clearest in his contemporaries. There, above all, we +should consider it, because they and we are exposed to the +same influences; and it is in the best of one’s contemporaries +that it is most worth considering, because one then +most feels the harm it does, when one sees what they +would be without it. Think of the difference between +Mr. Ruskin exercising his genius, and Mr. Ruskin exercising +his intelligence; consider the truth and beauty of +this:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Go out, in the spring-time, among the meadows that +slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of +their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller +gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep +and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, +beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,—paths +that forever droop and rise over the green banks +and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to +the blue water studded here and there with new-mown +heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,—look up +towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting +green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows +of the pines....”</p> + +<p class='c001'>There is what the genius, the feeling, the temperament +in Mr. Ruskin, the original and incommunicable part, has +to do with; and how exquisite it is! All the critic could +possibly suggest, in the way of objection, would be, perhaps, +that Mr. Ruskin is there trying to make prose do +more than it can perfectly do; that what he is there +attempting he will never, except in poetry, be able to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>accomplish to his own entire satisfaction: but he accomplishes +so much that the critic may well hesitate to suggest +even this. Place beside this charming passage another,—a +passage about Shakspeare’s names, where the +intelligence and judgment of Mr. Ruskin, the acquired, +trained, communicable part in him, are brought into +play,—and see the difference:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Of Shakspeare’s names I will afterwards speak at more +length; they are curiously—often barbarously—mixed +out of various traditions and languages. Three of the +clearest in meaning have been already noticed. Desdemona—‘δυσδαιμονία,’ +<em>miserable fortune</em>—is also plain +enough. Othello is, I believe, ‘the careful;’ all the +calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and +error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, +‘serviceableness,’ the true, lost wife of Hamlet, is marked +as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes; +and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that +brother’s last word of her, where her gentle preciousness +is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy:—‘A +<em>ministering</em> angel shall my sister be, when thou liest +howling.’ Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way +with ‘homely,’ the entire event of the tragedy turning +on betrayal of home duty. Hermione (ἕρμο), ‘pillar-like’ +(ἥ εἶδος ἕχε χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης); Titania (τιτήνη), ‘the +queen;’ Benedick and Beatrice, ‘blessed and blessing;’ +Valentine and Proteus, ‘enduring or strong’ (<span lang="la"><i>valens</i></span>), +and ‘changeful.’ Iago and Iachimo have evidently the +same root—probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, ‘the supplanter.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now, really, what a <a id='corr52.30'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='pice'>piece</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_52.30'><ins class='correction' title='pice'>piece</ins></a></span> of extravagance all that is! I +will not say that the meaning of Shakspeare’s names (I +put aside the question as to the correctness of Mr. Ruskin’s +etymologies) has no effect at all, may be entirely +lost sight of; but to give it that degree of prominence is +to throw the reins to one’s whim, to forget all moderation +and proportion, to lose the balance of one’s mind altogether. +It is to show in one’s criticism, to the highest +excess, the note of provinciality.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>Again there is Mr. Palgrave, certainly endowed with a +very fine critical tact: his <cite>Golden Treasury</cite> abundantly +proves it. The plan of arrangement which he devised +for that work, the mode in which he followed his plan +out, nay, one might even say, merely the juxtaposition, +in pursuance of it, of two such pieces as those of Wordsworth +and Shelley which form the 285th and 286th in his +collection, show a delicacy of feeling in these matters +which is quite indisputable and very rare. And his notes +are full of remarks which show it too. All the more +striking, conjoined with so much justness of perception, +are certain freaks and violences in Mr. Palgrave’s criticism, +mainly imputable, I think, to the critic’s isolated +position in this country, to his feeling himself too much +left to take his own way, too much without any central +authority representing high culture and sound judgment, +by which he may be, on the one hand, confirmed as against +the ignorant, on the other, held in respect when he himself +is inclined to the liberties. I mean such things as +this note on Milton’s line,—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“The great Emathian conqueror bade spare”....</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>“When Thebes was destroyed, Alexander ordered the +house of Pindar to be spared. <i>He was as incapable of appreciating +the poet as Louis XIV. of appreciating Racine; +but even the narrow and barbarian mind of Alexander +could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage +to poetry.</i>” A note like that I call a freak or a violence; +if this disparaging view of Alexander and Louis XIV., +so unlike the current view, is wrong,—if the current +view is, after all, the truer one of them,—the note is a +freak. But, even if its disparaging view is right, the +note is a violence; for, abandoning the true mode of intellectual +action—persuasion, the instilment of conviction,—it +simply astounds and irritates the hearer by contradicting +without a word of proof or preparation, his fixed and +familiar notions; and this is mere violence. In either +case, the fitness, the measure, the centrality, which is +<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>the soul of all good criticism, is lost, and the note of +provinciality shows itself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Thus, in the famous <cite>Handbook</cite>, marks of a fine +power of perception are everywhere discernible, but +so, too, are marks of the want of sure balance, of the +check and support afforded by knowing one speaks +before good and severe judges. When Mr. Palgrave dislikes +a thing, he feels no pressure constraining him either +to try his dislike closely or to express it moderately; he +does not mince matters, he gives his dislike all its own +way; both his judgments and his style would gain if he +were under more restraint. “The style which has filled +London with the dead monotony of Gower or Harley +Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia, +and Kensington; which has pierced Paris and Madrid +with the feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada +de Toledo.” He dislikes the architecture of the Rue +Rivoli, and he puts it on a level with the architecture of +Belgravia and Gower Street; he lumps them all together +in one condemnation, he loses sight of the shade, the distinction, +which is everything here; the distinction, namely, +that the architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses show, +splendor, pleasure,—unworthy things, perhaps, to express +alone and for their own sakes, but it expresses them; +whereas the architecture of Gower Street and Belgravia +merely expresses the impotence of the architect to express +anything. Then, as to style: “sculpture which stands in +a contrast with Woolner hardly more shameful than diverting.” ... +“passing from Davy or Faraday to the art of +the mountebank or the science of the spirit-rapper.” ... +“it is the old, old story with Marochetti, the frog trying +to blow himself out to bull dimensions. He may puff and +he puffed, but he will never do it.” We all remember +that shower of amenities on poor M. Marochetti. Now, +here Mr. Palgrave himself enables us to form a contrast +which lets us see just what the presence of an academy +does for style; for he quotes a criticism by M. Gustave +Planche on this very M. Marochetti. M. Gustave Planche +was a critic of the very first order, a man of strong opinions, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>which he expressed with severity; he, too, condemns +M. Marochetti’s work, and Mr. Palgrave calls him as a +witness to back what he has himself said; certainly Mr. +Palgrave’s translation will not exaggerate M. Planche’s +urbanity in dealing with M. Marochetti, but, even in this +translation, see the difference in sobriety, in measure, +between the critic writing in Paris and the critic writing +in London:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“These conditions are so elementary, that I am at a +perfect loss to comprehend how M. Marochetti has neglected +them. There are soldiers here like the leaden +playthings of the nursery: it is almost impossible to guess +whether there is a body beneath the dress. We have here +no question of style, not even of grammar; it is nothing +beyond mere matter of the alphabet of art. To break +these conditions is the same as to be ignorant of spelling.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>That is really more formidable criticism than Mr. Palgrave’s, +and yet in how perfectly temperate a style! M. +Planche’s advantage is, that he feels himself to be speaking +before competent judges, that there is a force of cultivated +opinion for him to appeal to. Therefore, he must +not be extravagant, and he need not storm; he must +satisfy the reason and taste,—that is his business. Mr. +Palgrave, on the other hand, feels himself to be speaking +before a promiscuous multitude, with the few good judges +so scattered through it as to be powerless; therefore, he +has no calm confidence and no self-control; he relies on +the strength of his lungs; he knows that big words impose +on the mob, and that, even if he is outrageous, most of his +audience are apt to be a great deal more so.<a id='r9'></a><a href='#f9' class='c007'><sup>[9]</sup></a></p> + +<p class='c001'>Again, the first two volumes of Mr. Kinglake’s <cite>Invasion +of the Crimea</cite> were certainly among the most successful +and renowned English books of our time. Their style +was one of the most renowned things about them, and yet +how conspicuous a fault in Mr. Kinglake’s style is this +<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>over-charge of which I have been speaking! Mr. James +Gordon Bennett, of the <cite>New York Herald</cite>, says, I believe, +that the highest achievement of the human intellect is +what he calls “a good editorial.” This is not quite so; +but, if it were so, on what a height would these two volumes +by Mr. Kinglake stand! I have already spoken of +the Attic and the Asiatic styles; besides these, there is +the Corinthian style. That is the style for “a good editorial,” +and Mr. Kinglake has really reached perfection +in it. It has not the warm glow, blithe movement, and +soft pliancy of life, as the Attic style has; it has not the +over-heavy richness and encumbered gait of the Asiatic +style; it has glitter without warmth, rapidity without +ease, effectiveness without charm. Its characteristic is, +that it has no <em>soul</em>; all it exists for, is to get its ends, to +make its points, to damage its adversaries, to be admired, +to triumph. A style so bent on effect at the expense of +soul, simplicity, and delicacy; a style so little studious +of the charm of the great models; so far from classic +truth and grace, must surely be said to have the note of +provinciality. Yet Mr. Kinglake’s talent is a really eminent +one, and so in harmony with our intellectual habits +and tendencies, that to the great bulk of English people, +the faults of his style seem its merits; all the more needful +that criticism should not be dazzled by them.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We must not compare a man of Mr. Kinglake’s literary +talent with French writers like M. de Bazancourt. We +must compare him with M. Thiers. And what a superiority +in style has M. Thiers from being formed in a good +school, with severe traditions, wholesome restraining +influences! Even in this age of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, +his style has nothing Corinthian about it, its lightness +and brightness make it almost Attic. It is not quite +Attic, however; it has not the infallible sureness of Attic +taste. Sometimes his head gets a little hot with the +fumes of patriotism, and then he crosses the line, he loses +perfect measure, he declaims, he raises a momentary smile. +France condemned <span lang="fr">‘à être l’effroi du monde <em>dont elle +pourrait être l’amour</em>,’</span>—Cæsar, whose exquisite simplicity +<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>M. Thiers so much admires, would not have written like +that. There is, if I may be allowed to say so, the slightest +possible touch of fatuity in such language,—of that +failure in good sense which comes from too warm a self-satisfaction. +But compare this language with Mr. Kinglake’s +Marshal St. Arnaud—“dismissed from the presence” +of Lord Raglan or Lord Stratford, “cowed and pressed +down” under their “stern reproofs,” or under “the +majesty of the great Elchi’s Canning brow and tight, +merciless lips!” The failure in good sense and good +taste there reaches far beyond what the French mean by +<em>fatuity</em>; they would call it by another word, a word +expressing blank defect of intelligence, a word for which +we have no exact equivalent in English,—<span lang="fr"><i>bête</i></span>. It is +the difference between a venial, momentary, good-tempered +excess, in a man of the world, of an amiable and +social weakness,—vanity; and a serious, settled, fierce, +narrow, provincial misconception of the whole relative +value of one’s own things and the things of others. So +baneful to the style of even the cleverest man may be the +total want of checks.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In all I have said, I do not pretend that the examples +given prove my rule as to the influence of academies; they +only illustrate it. Examples in plenty might very likely +be found to set against them; the truth of the rule depends, +no doubt, on whether the balance of all the examples +is in its favor or not; but actually to strike this balance +is always out of the question. Here, as everywhere else, +the rule, the idea, if true, commends itself to the judicious, +and then the examples make it clearer still to them. This +is the real use of examples, and this alone is the purpose +which I have meant mine to serve. There is also another +side to the whole question,—as to the limiting and prejudicial +operation which academies may have; but this side of +the question it rather behoves the <a id='corr57.36'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Freneh'>French</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_57.36'><ins class='correction' title='Freneh'>French</ins></a></span>, not us, to +study.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The reader will ask for some practical conclusion about +the establishment of an Academy in this country, and perhaps +I shall hardly give him the one he expects. But +<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>nations have their own modes of acting, and these modes +are not easily changed; they are even consecrated, when +great things have been done in them. When a literature +has produced Shakspeare and Milton, when it has even +produced Barrow and Burke, it cannot well abandon its +traditions; it can hardly begin, at this late time of day, +with an institution like the French Academy. I think +academies with a limited, special, scientific scope, in the +various lines of intellectual work,—academies like that of +Berlin, for instance,—we with time may, and probably +shall, establish. And no doubt they will do good; no +doubt the presence of such influential centers of correct +information will tend to raise the standard amongst us for +what I have called the <em>journeyman-work</em> of literature, and +to free us from the scandal of such biographical dictionaries +as Chalmers’s, or such translations as a recent one +of Spinoza, or perhaps, such philological freaks as Mr. +Forster’s about the one primeval language. But an academy +quite like the French Academy, a sovereign organ of +the highest literary opinion, a recognized authority in +matters of intellectual tone and taste, we shall hardly have, +and perhaps we ought not to wish to have it. But then +every one amongst us with any turn for literature will do +well to remember to what shortcomings and excesses, which +such an academy tends to correct, we are liable; and the +more liable, of course, for not having it. He will do well +constantly to try himself in respect of these, steadily to +widen his culture, severely to check in himself the provincial +spirit; and he will do this the better the more he +keeps in mind that all mere glorification by ourselves of +ourselves or our literature, in the strain of what, at the +beginning of these remarks I quoted from Lord Macaulay, +is both vulgar, and, besides being vulgar retarding.</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span> + <h2 class='c005'>III. <br> <br> MAURICE DE GUÉRIN.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>I will not presume to say that I now know the French +language well; but at a time when I knew it even less well +than at present,—some fifteen years ago,—I remember pestering +those about me with this sentence, the rhythm of +which had lodged itself in my head, and which, with the +strangest pronunciation possible, I kept perpetually declaiming: +“<span lang="fr"><i>Les dieux jaloux ont enfoui quelque part les +témoignages de la descendance des choses; mais au bord de +quel Océan ont-ils roulé la pierre qui les couvre, ô +Macarée!</i></span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>These words came from a short composition called the +<cite>Centaur</cite>, of which the author, Georges-Maurice de Guérin, +died in the year 1839, at the age of twenty-eight, without +having published anything. In 1840, Madame Sand +brought out the <cite>Centaur</cite> in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Revue des Deux Mondes</cite></span>, +with a short notice of its author, and a few extracts from +his letters. A year or two afterwards she reprinted these +at the end of a volume of her novels; and there it was +that I fell in with them. I was so much struck with the +<cite>Centaur</cite> that I waited anxiously to hear something more +of its author, and of what he had left; but it was not till +the other day—twenty years after the first publication <a id='corr259.24'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='of of'>of</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_259.24'><ins class='correction' title='of of'>of</ins></a></span> +the <cite>Centaur</cite> in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Revue des Deux Mondes</cite></span>, that my +anxiety was satisfied. At the end of 1860 appeared two +volumes with the title <span lang="fr"><cite>Maurice de Guérin</cite></span>, <span lang="fr"><cite>Reliquiæ</cite></span>, containing +the <cite>Centaur</cite>, several poems of Guérin, his journals, +and a number of his letters, collected and edited by a devoted +friend, M. Trebutien, and preceded by a notice of +Guérin by the first of living critics, M. Sainte-Beuve.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power; +by which I mean, not a power of drawing out in black and +white an explanation of the mystery of the universe, but +the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a +wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of +our relations with them. When this sense is awakened in +us, as to objects without us, we feel ourselves to be in +contact with the essential nature of those objects, to be +no longer bewildered and oppressed by them, but to have +their secret, and to be in harmony with them; and this +feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can. Poetry, +indeed, interprets in another way besides this; but one of +its two ways of interpreting, of exercising its highest +power, is by awakening this sense in us. I will not now +inquire whether this sense is illusive, whether it can be +proved not to be illusive, whether it does absolutely make +us possess the real nature of things; all I say is, that +poetry can awaken it in us, and that to awaken it is one +of the highest powers of poetry. The interpretations of +science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the +interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited +faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnæus or +Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of +animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, +who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare, +with his</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in26'>“daffodils</div> + <div class='line'>That come before the swallow dares, and take</div> + <div class='line'>The winds of March with beauty;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>it is Wordsworth, with his</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in22'>“voice ... heard</div> + <div class='line'>In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird</div> + <div class='line'>Breaking the silence of the seas</div> + <div class='line'>Among the farthest Hebrides;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>it is Keats, with his</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in2'>“moving waters at their priestlike task</div> + <div class='line'>Of cold ablution round Earth’s human shores;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>it is Chateaubriand, with his, “<span lang="fr"><i>cîme indéterminée des +forêts</i>;</span>” it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree: +“<span lang="fr"><i>Cette écorce blanche, lisse et crevassée; cette tige agreste; +ces branches qui s’inclinent vers la terre; la mobilité des +feuilles, et tout cet abandon, simplicité de la nature, attitude +des déserts.</i></span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Eminent manifestations of this magical power of poetry +are very rare and very precious; the compositions of +Guérin manifest it, I think, in singular eminence. Not +his poems, strictly so called,—his verse,—so much as his +prose; his poems in general take for their vehicle that +favorite meter of French poetry, the Alexandrine; and, +in my judgment, I confess they have thus, as compared +with his prose, a great disadvantage to start with. In +prose, the character of the vehicle for the composer’s +thoughts is not determined beforehand; every composer +has to make his own vehicle; and who has ever done this +more admirably than the great prose-writers of France,—Pascal, +Bossuet, Fénelon, Voltaire? But in verse the +composer has (with comparatively narrow liberty of +modification) to accept his vehicle ready-made; it is +therefore of vital importance to him that he should find +at his disposal a vehicle adequate to convey the highest +matters of poetry. We may even get a decisive test of the +poetical power of a language and nation by ascertaining +how far the principal poetical vehicle which they have +employed, how far (in plainer words) the established +national meter for high poetry, is adequate or inadequate. +It seems to me that the established meter of this kind in +France,—the Alexandrine,—is inadequate; that as a +vehicle for high poetry it is greatly inferior to the +hexameter or to the iambics of Greece (for example), or to +the blank verse of England. Therefore the man of genius +who uses it is at a disadvantage as compared with the man +of genius who has for conveying his thoughts a more +adequate vehicle, metrical or not. Racine is at a disadvantage +as compared with Sophocles or Shakspeare, and +he is likewise at a disadvantage as compared with Bossuet.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The same may be said of our own poets of the eighteenth +<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>century, a century which gave them as the main vehicle for +their high poetry a meter inadequate (as much as the +French Alexandrine, and nearly in the same way) for this +poetry,—the ten-syllable couplet. It is worth remarking, +that the English poet of the eighteenth century whose +compositions wear best and give one the most entire +satisfaction,—Gray,—hardly uses that couplet at all: this +abstinence, however, limits Gray’s productions to a few +short compositions, and (exquisite as these are) he is a +poetical nature repressed and without free issue. For +English poetical production on a great scale, for an English +poet deploying all the forces of his genius, the ten-syllable +couplet was, in the eighteenth century, the established, +one may almost say the inevitable, channel. Now this +couplet, admirable (as Chaucer uses it) for story-telling +not of the epic pitch, and often admirable for a few lines +even in poetry of a very high pitch, is for continuous use in +poetry of this latter kind inadequate. Pope, in his <cite>Essay +on Man</cite>, is thus at a disadvantage compared with +Lucretius in his poem on Nature: Lucretius has an +adequate vehicle, Pope has not. Nay, though Pope’s +genius for didactic poetry was not less than that of +Horace, while his satirical power was certainly greater, still +one’s taste receives, I cannot but think, a certain satisfaction +when one reads the Epistles and Satires of Horace, +which it fails to receive when one reads the Satires and +Epistles of Pope. Of such avail is the superior adequacy +of the vehicle used to compensate even an inferiority of +genius in the user! In the same way Pope is at a disadvantage +as compared with Addison. The best of Addison’s +composition (the “Coverley Papers” in the <cite>Spectator</cite>, +for instance) wears better than the best of Pope’s, because +Addison has in his prose an intrinsically better vehicle for +his genius than Pope in his couplet. But Bacon has no +such advantage over Shakspeare; nor has Milton, writing +prose (for no contemporary English prose-writer must be +matched with Milton except Milton himself), any such +advantage over Milton writing verse: indeed, the advantage +here is all the other way.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>It is in the prose remains of Guérin,—his journals, his +letters, and the striking composition which I have already +mentioned, the <cite>Centaur</cite>,—that his extraordinary gift +manifests itself. He has a truly interpretative faculty; +the most profound and delicate sense of the life of Nature, +and the most exquisite felicity in finding expressions to +render that sense. To all who love poetry, Guérin deserves +to be something more than a name; and I shall try, +in spite of the impossibility of doing justice to such a +master of expression by translations, to make English +readers see for themselves how gifted an organization his +was, and how few artists have received from Nature a more +magical faculty of interpreting her.</p> + +<p class='c006'>In the winter of the year 1832 there was collected in +Brittany, around the well-known Abbé Lamennais, a +singular gathering. At a lonely place, La Chênaie, he +had founded a religious retreat, to which disciples, attracted +by his powers or by his reputation, repaired. +Some came with the intention of preparing themselves for +the ecclesiastical profession; others merely to profit by +the society and discourse of so distinguished a master. +Among the inmates were men whose names have since become +known to all Europe,—Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert; +there were others, who have acquired a reputation, +not European, indeed, but considerable,—the Abbé +Gerbet, the Abbé Rohrbacher; others, who have never +quitted the shade of private life. The winter of 1832 was +a period of crisis in the religious world of France: Lamennais’s +rupture with Rome, the condemnation of his opinions +by the Pope, and his revolt against that condemnation, +were imminent. Some of his followers, like Lacordaire, +had already resolved not to cross the Rubicon with their +leader, not to go into rebellion against Rome; they were +preparing to separate from him. The society of La +Chênaie was soon to dissolve; but, such as it is shown to +us for a moment, with its voluntary character, its simple +and severe life in common, its mixture of lay and clerical +members, the genius of its chiefs, the sincerity of its +<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>disciples,—above all, its paramount fervent interest in matters +of spiritual and religious concernment,—it offers a +most instructive spectacle. It is not the spectacle we +most of us think to find in France, the France we have +imagined from common English notions, from the streets +of Paris, from novels; it shows us how, wherever there is +greatness like that of France, there are, as its foundation, +treasures of fervor, pure-mindedness, and spirituality +somewhere, whether we know of them or not;—a store of +that which Goethe calls <em>Halt</em>;—since greatness can never +be founded upon frivolity and corruption.</p> + +<p class='c001'>On the evening of the 18th of December in this year +1832, M. de Lamennais was talking to those assembled in +the sitting-room of La Chênaie of his recent journey to +Italy. He talked with all his usual animation; “but,” +writes one of his hearers, a Breton gentleman, M. de Marzan, +“I soon became inattentive and absent, being struck +with the reserved attitude of a young stranger some +twenty-two years old, pale in face, his black hair already +thin over his temples, with a southern eye, in which +brightness and melancholy were mingled. He kept himself +somewhat aloof, seeming to avoid notice rather than +to court it. All the old faces of friends which I found +about me at this my re-entry into the circle of La Chênaie +failed to occupy me so much as the sight of this stranger, +looking on, listening, observing, and saying nothing.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The unknown was Maurice de Guérin. Of a noble but +poor family, having lost his mother at six years old, he +had been brought up by his father, a man saddened by his +wife’s death, and austerely religious, at the château of Le +Cayla, in Languedoc. His childhood was not gay; he +had not the society of other boys; and solitude, the sight +of his father’s gloom, and the habit of accompanying the +curé of the parish on his rounds among the sick and dying, +made him prematurely grave and familiar with sorrow. +He went to school first at Toulouse, then at the Collège +Stanislas at Paris, with a temperament almost as unfit as +Shelley’s for common school life. His youth was ardent, +sensitive, agitated, and unhappy. In 1832 he procured +<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>admission to La Chênaie to brace his spirit by the teaching +of Lamennais, and to decide whether his religious feelings +would determine themselves into a distinct religious +vocation. Strong and deep religious feelings he had, implanted +in him by nature, developed in him by the circumstances +of his childhood; but he had also (and here is the +key to his character) that temperament which opposes itself +to the fixedness of a religious vocation, or of any vocation +of which fixedness is an essential attribute; a temperament +mobile, inconstant, eager, thirsting for new impressions, +abhorring rules, aspiring to a “renovation without +end;” a temperament common enough among artists, but +with which few artists, who have it to the same degree as +Guérin, unite a seriousness and a sad intensity like his. +After leaving school, and before going to La Chênaie, he +had been at home at Le Cayla with his sister Eugénie (a +wonderfully gifted person, whose genius so competent a +judge as M. Sainte-Beuve is inclined to pronounce even +superior to her brother’s) and his sister Eugénie’s friends. +With one of these friends he had fallen in love,—a slight +and transient fancy, but which had already called his +poetical powers into exercise; and his poems and fragments, +in a certain green note-book (<span lang="fr"><cite>le Cahier Vert</cite></span>) +which he long continued to make the depository of his +thoughts, and which became famous among his friends, +he brought with him to La Chênaie. There he found +among the younger members of the Society several who, +like himself, had a secret passion for poetry and literature; +with these he became intimate, and in his letters and +journal we find him occupied, now with a literary commerce +established with these friends, now with the fortunes, +fast coming to a crisis, of the Society, and now with +that for the sake of which he came to La Chênaie,—his +religious progress and the state of his soul.</p> + +<p class='c001'>On Christmas-day, 1832, having been then three weeks +at La Chênaie, he writes thus of it to a friend of his family, +M. de Bayne:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“La Chênaie is a sort of oasis in the midst of the steppes +of Brittany. In front of the château stretches a very +<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>large garden cut in two by a terrace with a lime avenue, +at the end of which is a tiny chapel. I am extremely fond +of this little oratory, where one breathes a twofold peace,—the +peace of solitude and the peace of the Lord. When +spring comes we shall walk to prayers between two borders +of flowers. On the east side, and only a few yards from +the château, sleeps a small mere between two woods, +where the birds in warm weather sing all day long; and +then,—right, left, on all sides,—woods, woods, everywhere +woods. It looks desolate just now that all is bare and the +woods are rust-color, and under this Brittany sky, which is +always clouded and so low that it seems as if it were going +to fall on your head; but as soon as spring comes the +sky raises itself up, the woods come to life again, and +everything will be full of charm.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Of what La Chênaie will be when spring comes he has +a foretaste on the 3d of March.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“To-day” (he writes in his journal) “has enchanted +me. For the first time for a long while the sun has shown +himself in all his beauty. He has made the buds of the +leaves and flowers swell, and he has waked up in me a +thousand happy thoughts. The clouds assume more and +more their light and graceful shapes, and are sketching, +over the blue sky, the most charming fancies. The woods +have not yet got their leaves, but they are taking an indescribable +air of life and gaiety, which gives them quite +a new physiognomy. Everything is getting ready for the +great festival of Nature.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Storm and snow adjourn this festival a little longer. +On the 11th of March he writes:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“It has snowed all night. I have been to look at our +primroses; each of them has its small load of snow, and +was bowing its head under its burden. These pretty +flowers, with their rich yellow color, had a charming effect +under their white hoods. I saw whole tufts of them +roofed over by a single block of snow; all these laughing +flowers thus shrouded and leaning one upon another, made +one think of a group of young girls surprised by a shower, +and sheltering under a white apron.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>The burst of spring comes at last, though late. On the +5th of April we find Guérin “sitting in the sun to penetrate +himself to the very marrow with the divine spring.” +On the 3d of May, “one can actually <em>see</em> the progress of +the green; it has made a start from the garden to the +shrubberies, it is getting the upper hand all along the +mere; it leaps, one may say, from tree to tree, from thicket +to thicket, in the fields and on the hillsides; and I can see it +already arrived at the forest edge and beginning to spread +itself over the broad back of the forest. Soon it will have +overrun everything as far as the eye can reach, and all +those wide spaces between here and the horizon will be +moving and sounding like one vast sea, a sea of emerald.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Finally, on the 16th of May, he writes to M. de Bayne +that “the gloomy and bad days,—bad because they bring +temptation by their gloom,—are, thanks to God and the +spring, over; and I see approaching a long file of shining +and happy days, to do me all the good in the world. This +Brittany of ours,” he continues, “gives one the idea of +the grayest and most wrinkled old woman possible suddenly +changed back by the touch of a fairy’s wand into a +girl of twenty, and one of the loveliest in the world; the +fine weather has so decked and beautified the dear old +country.” He felt, however, the cloudiness and cold of +the “dear old country” with all the sensitiveness of a +child of the South. “What a difference,” he cries, +“between the sky of Brittany, even on the finest day, +and the sky of our South! Here the summer has, even +on its highdays and holidays, something mournful, overcast, +and stinted about it. It is like a miser who is making +a show; there is a niggardliness in his magnificence. +Give me our Languedoc sky, so bountiful of light, so +blue, so largely vaulted!” And somewhat later, complaining +of the short and dim sunlight of a February day +in Paris, “What a sunshine,” he exclaims, “to gladden +eyes accustomed to all the wealth of light of the South!—<span lang="fr"><i>aux +larges et libérales effusions de lumière du ciel du Midi</i></span>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>In the long winter of La Chênaie his great resource +was literature. One has often heard that an educated +<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>Frenchman’s reading seldom goes much beyond French +and Latin, and that he makes the authors in these two +languages his sole literary standard. This may or may +not be true of Frenchmen in general, but there can be no +question as to the width of the reading of Guérin and his +friends, and as to the range of their literary sympathies. +One of the circle, Hippolyte la Morvonnais,—a poet who +published a volume of verse, and died in the prime of +life,—had a passionate admiration for Wordsworth, and +had even, it is said, made a pilgrimage to Rydal Mount to +visit him; and in Guérin’s own reading I find, besides +the French names of Bernardin de St. Pierre, Chateaubriand, +Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, the names of Homer, +Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe; and he quotes +both from Greek and from English authors in the +original. His literary tact is beautifully fine and true. +“Every poet,” he writes to his sister, “has his own art +of poetry written on the ground of his own soul; there is +no other. Be constantly observing Nature in her smallest +details, and then write as the current of your thoughts +guides you;—that is all.” But with all this freedom from +the bondage of forms and rules, Guérin marks with perfect +precision the faults of the <em>free</em> French literature of +his time,—the <span lang="fr"><i>littérature facile</i></span>,—and judges the romantic +school and its prospects like a master: “that youthful +literature which has put forth all its blossom prematurely, +and has left itself a helpless prey to the returning frost, +stimulated as it has been by the burning sun of our century, +by this atmosphere charged with a perilous heat, +which has overhastened every sort of development, and will +most likely reduce to a handful of grains the harvest of our +age.” And the popular authors,—those “whose name +appears once and disappears forever, whose books, unwelcome +to all serious people, welcome to the rest of the +world, to novelty-hunters and novel-readers, fill with +vanity these vain souls, and then, falling from hands heavy +with the languor of satiety, drop forever into the gulf of +oblivion;” and those, more noteworthy, “the writers of +books celebrated, and, as works of art, deserving celebrity, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>but which have in them not one grain of that hidden +manna, not one of those sweet and wholesome thoughts +which nourish the human soul and refresh it when it is +weary,”—these he treats with such severity that he may +in some sense be described, as he describes himself, as +“invoking with his whole heart a classical restoration.” +He is best described, however, not as a partisan of any +school, but as an ardent seeker for that mode of expression +which is the most natural, happy, and true. He +writes to his sister Eugénie:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I want you to reform your system of composition; +it is too loose, too vague, too Lamartinian. Your verse +is too sing-song; it does not <em>talk</em> enough. Form for +yourself a style of your own, which shall be your real expression. +Study the French language by attentive reading, +making it your care to remark constructions, turns +of expression, delicacies of style, but without ever adopting +the manner of any master. In the works of these +masters we must learn our language, but we must use it +each in our own fashion.”<a id='r10'></a><a href='#f10' class='c007'><sup>[10]</sup></a></p> + +<p class='c001'>It was not, however, to perfect his literary judgment +that Guérin came to La Chênaie. The religious feeling, +which was as much a part of his essence as the passion +for Nature and the literary instinct, shows itself at moments +jealous of these its rivals, and alarmed at their predominance. +Like all powerful feelings, it wants to +exclude every other feeling and to be absolute. One +Friday in April, after he has been delighting himself +with the shapes of the clouds and the progress of the +spring, he suddenly bethinks himself that the day is Good +Friday, and exclaims in his diary:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“My God, what is my soul about that it can thus go +running after such fugitive delights on Good Friday, on +this day all filled with thy death and our redemption? +There is in me I know not what damnable spirit, that +<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>awakens in me strong discontents, and is forever prompting +me to rebel against the holy exercises and the devout +collectedness of soul which are the meet preparation for +these great solemnities of our faith. Oh how well can I +trace here the old leaven, from which I have not yet perfectly +cleared my soul!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And again, in a letter to M. de Marzan: “Of what, my +God, are we made,” he cries, “that a little verdure and +a few trees should be enough to rob us of our tranquillity +and to distract us from thy love?” And writing, three +days after Easter Sunday, in his journal he records the +reception at La Chênaie of a fervent neophyte, in words +which seem to convey a covert blame of his own want of +fervency:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Three days have passed over our heads since the +great festival. One anniversary the less for us yet to +spend of the death and resurrection of our Saviour! +Every year thus bears away with it its solemn festivals; +when will the everlasting festival be here? I have been +witness of a most touching sight; François has brought +us one of his friends whom he has gained to the faith. +This neophyte joined us in our exercises during the Holy +week, and on Easter day he received the communion with +us. François was in raptures. It is a truly good work +which he has thus done. François is quite young, hardly +twenty years old; M. de la M. is thirty, and is married. +There is something most touching and beautifully simple +in M. de la M. letting himself thus be brought to God by +quite a young man; and to see friendship, on François’s +side, thus doing the work of an Apostle, is not less +beautiful and touching.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Admiration for Lamennais worked in the same direction +with this feeling. Lamennais never appreciated Guérin; +his combative, rigid, despotic nature, of which the characteristic +was energy, had no affinity with Guérin’s elusive, +undulating, impalpable nature, of which the characteristic +was delicacy. He set little store by his new disciple, +and could hardly bring himself to understand what others +found so remarkable in him, his own genuine feeling +<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>towards him being one of indulgent compassion. But the +intuition of Guérin, more discerning than the logic of +his master, instinctively felt what there was commanding +and tragic in Lamennais’s character, different as this was +from his own; and some of his notes are among the most +interesting records of Lamennais which remain.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Do you know what it is,’ M. Féli<a id='r11'></a><a href='#f11' class='c007'><sup>[11]</sup></a> said to us on the +evening of the day before yesterday, ‘which makes man +the most suffering of all creatures? It is that he has one +foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and that +he is torn asunder, not by four horses, as in the horrible +old times, but between two worlds.’ Again he said to us +as we heard the clock strike: ‘If that clock knew that it +was to be destroyed the next instant, it would still keep +striking its hour until that instant arrived. My children, +be as the clock; whatever may be going to happen to you, +strike always your hour.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Another time Guérin writes:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“To-day M. Féli startled us. He was sitting behind +the chapel, under the two Scotch firs; he took his stick +and marked out a grave on the turf, and said to Elie, ‘It +is there I wish to be buried, but no tombstone! only a +simple hillock of grass. Oh, how well I shall be there!’ +Elie thought he had a presentiment that his end was near. +This is not the first time he has been visited by such a +presentiment; when he was setting out for Rome, he said +to those here: ‘I do not expect ever to come back to +you; you must do the good which I have failed to do.’ He +is impatient for death.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Overpowered by the ascendency of Lamennais, Guérin, +in spite of his hesitations, in spite of his confession to +himself that, “after a three weeks’ close scrutiny of his +soul, in the hope of finding the pearl of a religious vocation +hidden in some corner of it,” he had failed to find +what he sought, took, at the end of August 1833, a decisive +step. He joined the religious order which Lamennais +<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>had founded. But at this very moment the deepening +displeasure of Rome with Lamennais determined the +Bishop of Rennes to break up, in so far as it was a religious +congregation, the Society of La Chênaie, to transfer +the novices to Ploërmel, and to place them under other +superintendence. In September, Lamennais, “who had +not yet ceased,” writes M. de Marzan, a faithful Catholic, +“to be a Christian and a priest, took leave of his beloved +colony of La Chênaie, with the anguish of a general who +disbands his army down to the last recruit, and withdraws +annihilated from the field of battle.” Guérin went to +Ploërmel. But here, in the seclusion of a real religious +house, he instantly perceived how alien to a spirit like +his,—a spirit which, as he himself says somewhere, “had +need of the open air, wanted to see the sun and the +flowers,”—was the constraint and the monotony of a monastic +life, when Lamennais’s genius was no longer present +to enliven this life for him. On the 7th of October he +renounced the novitiate, believing himself a partisan of +Lamennais in his quarrel with Rome, reproaching the life +he had left with demanding passive obedience instead of +trying “to put in practice the admirable alliance of order +with liberty, and of variety with unity,” and declaring +that, for his part, he preferred taking the chances of a +life of adventure to submitting himself to be “<span lang="fr"><i>garotté par +un réglement</i></span>,—tied hand and foot by a set of rules.” In +real truth, a life of adventure, or rather a life free to +wander at its own will, was that to which his nature irresistibly +impelled him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For a career of adventure, the inevitable field was Paris. +But before this career began, there came a stage, the +smoothest, perhaps, and the most happy in the short life +of Guérin. M. la Morvonnais, one of his La Chênaie +friends,—some years older than Guérin, and married to a +wife of singular sweetness and charm,—had a house by +the seaside at the mouth of one of the beautiful rivers of +Brittany, the Arguenon. He asked Guérin, when he left +Ploërmel, to come and stay with him at this place, called +Le Val de l’Arguenon, and Guérin spent the winter of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>1833-4 there. I grudge every word about Le Val and its +inmates which is not Guérin’s own, so charming is the +picture drawn of them, so truly does his talent find itself +in its best vein as he draws it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“How full of goodness” (he writes in his journal of +the 7th of December) “is Providence to me! For fear +the sudden passage from the mild and temperate air of a +religious life to the torrid clime of the world should be +too trying to my soul, it has conducted me, after I have +left my sacred shelter, to a house planted on the frontier +between the two regions, where, without being in solitude, +one is not yet in the world; a house whose windows look +on the one side towards the plain where the tumult of +men is rocking, on the other towards the wilderness where +the servants of God are chanting. I intend to write down +the record of my sojourn here, for the days here spent +are full of happiness, and I know that in the time to come +I shall often turn back to the story of these past felicities. +A man, pious, and a poet; a woman, whose spirit is in +such perfect sympathy with his that you would say they +had but one being between them; a child, called Marie +like her mother, and who sends, like a star, the first rays +of her love and thought through the white cloud of infancy; +a simple life in an old-fashioned house; the ocean, +which comes morning and evening to bring us its harmonies; +and lastly, a wanderer who descends from Carmel +and is going to Babylon, and who has laid down at this +threshold his staff and his sandals, to take his seat at the +hospitable table;—here is matter to make a biblical poem +of, if I could only describe things as I can feel them!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Every line written by Guérin during this stay at Le +Val is worth quoting, but I have only room for one extract +more:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Never” (he writes, a fortnight later, on the 20th of +December), “never have I tasted so inwardly and deeply +the happiness of home-life. All the little details of this +life, which in their succession makes up the day, are to +me so many stages of a continuous charm carried from +one end of the day to the other. The morning greeting, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>which in some sort renews the pleasure of the first arrival, +for the words with which one meets are almost the same, +and the separation at night, through the hours of darkness +and uncertainty, does not ill represent longer separations; +then breakfast, during which you have the fresh +enjoyment of having met together again; the stroll afterwards, +when we go out and bid Nature good morning; +the return and setting to work in an old paneled chamber +looking out on the sea, inaccessible to all the stir of the +house, a perfect sanctuary of labor; dinner, to which we +are called, not by a bell, which reminds one too much of +school or a great house, but by a pleasant voice; the +gaiety, the merriment, the talk flitting from one subject +to another and never dropping so long as the meal lasts; +the crackling fire of dry branches to which we draw our +chairs directly afterwards, the kind words that are spoken +round the warm flame which sings while we talk; and +then, if it is fine, the walk by the seaside, when the sea has +for its visitors a mother with her child in her arms, this +child’s father and a stranger, each of these two last with a +stick in his hand; the rosy lips of the little girl, which +keep talking at the same time with the waves,—now and +then tears shed by her and cries of childish fright at the +edge of the sea; our thoughts, the father’s and mine, as +we stand and look at the mother and child smiling at one +another, or at the child in tears and the mother trying to +comfort it by her caresses and exhortations; the Ocean, +going on all the while rolling up his waves and noises; +the dead boughs which we go and cut, here and there, +out of the copse-wood, to make a quick and bright fire +when we get home,—this little taste of the woodman’s +calling which brings us closer to Nature and makes us +think of M. Féli’s eager fondness for the same work; the +hours of study and poetical flow which carry us to supper-time; +this meal, which summons us by the same gentle +voice as its predecessor, and which is passed amid the same +joys, only less loud, because evening sobers everything, +tones everything down; then our evening, ushered in by +the blaze of a cheerful fire, and which with its alternations +<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>of reading and talking brings us at last to bed-time:—to +all the charms of a day so spent add the dreams which +follow it, and your imagination will still fall far short of +these home-joys in their delightful reality.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>I said the foregoing should be my last extract, but who +could resist this picture of a January evening on the coast +of Brittany?—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“All the sky is covered over with gray clouds just +silvered at the edges. The sun, who departed a few minutes +ago, has left behind him enough light to temper for +awhile the black shadows, and to soften down, as it were, +the approach of night. The winds are hushed, and the +tranquil ocean sends up to me, when I go out on the +doorstep to listen, only a melodious murmur, which dies +away in the soul like a beautiful wave on the beach. The +birds, the first to obey the nocturnal influence, make their +way towards the woods, and you hear the rustle of their +wings in the clouds. The copses which cover the whole +hillside of Le Val, which all the day-time are alive with +the chirp of the wren, the laughing whistle of the <a id='corr75.21'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='woodpecker.'>woodpecker,</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_75.21'><ins class='correction' title='woodpecker.'>woodpecker,</ins></a></span><a id='r12'></a><a href='#f12' class='c007'><sup>[12]</sup></a> +and the different notes of a multitude of birds, +have no longer any sound in their paths and thickets, unless +it be the prolonged high call of the blackbirds at play +with one another and chasing one another, after all the +other birds have their heads safe under their wings. The +noise of man, always the last to be silent, dies gradually +out over the face of the fields. The general murmur +fades away, and one hears hardly a sound except what +comes from the villages and hamlets, in which, up till far +into the night, there are cries of children and barking of +dogs. Silence wraps me round; everything seeks repose +except this pen of mine, which perhaps disturbs the rest +of some living atom asleep in a crease of my note-book, +for it makes its light scratching as it puts down these idle +thoughts. Let it stop, then! for all I write, have written, +or shall write, will never be worth setting against the sleep +of an atom.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>On the 1st of February we find him in a lodging at +Paris. “I enter the world” (such are the last words +written in his journal at Le Val) “with a secret horror.” +His outward history for the next five years is soon told. +He found himself in Paris, poor, fastidious, and with +health which already, no doubt, felt the obscure presence +of the malady of which he died—consumption. One of +his Brittany acquaintances introduced him to editors, tried +to engage him in the periodical literature of Paris; and +so unmistakable was Guérin’s talent that even his first +essays were immediately accepted. But Guérin’s genius +was of a kind which unfitted him to get his bread +in this manner. At first he was pleased with the notion +of living by his pen; “<span lang="fr"><i>je n’ai qu’à écrire</i>,</span>” he says to his +sister,—“I have only got to write.” But to a nature like +his, endued with the passion for perfection, the necessity +to produce, to produce constantly, to produce whether in +the vein or out of the vein, to produce something good or +bad or middling, as it may happen, but at all events <em>something</em>,—is +the most intolerable of tortures. To escape +from it he betook himself to that common but most perfidious +refuge of men of letters, that refuge to which Goldsmith +and poor Hartley Coleridge had betaken themselves +before him,—the profession of teaching. In September, +1834, he procured an engagement at the Collège Stanislas, +where he had himself been educated. It was vacation-time, +and all he had to do was to teach a small class composed +of boys who did not go home for the holidays,—in +his own words, “scholars left like sick sheep in the fold, +while the rest of the flock are frisking in the fields.” +After the vacation he was kept on at the college as a supernumerary. +“The master of the fifth class has asked +for a month’s leave of absence; I am taking his place, and +by this work I get one hundred francs (£4). I have been +looking about for pupils to give private lessons to, and I +have found three or four. Schoolwork and private lessons +together fill my day from half-past seven in the morning +till half-past nine at night. The college dinner serves +me for breakfast, and I go and dine in the evening at +<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>twenty-four <span lang="fr"><i>sous</i></span>, as a young man beginning life should.” +To better his position in the hierarchy of public teachers +it was necessary that he should take the degree of <span lang="fr"><i>agrégé-èslettres</i></span>, +corresponding to our degree of Master of Arts; +and to his heavy work in teaching, there was thus added +that of preparing for a severe examination. The drudgery +of this life was very irksome to him, although less +insupportable than the drudgery of the profession of +letters; inasmuch as to a sensitive man like Guérin, to +silence his genius is more tolerable than to hackney it. +Still the yoke wore him deeply, and he had moments of +bitter revolt; he continued, however, to bear it with resolution, +and on the whole with patience, for four years. +On the 15th of November, 1838, he married a young Creole +lady of some fortune, Mademoiselle Caroline de Gervain, +“whom,” to use his own words, “Destiny, who loves +these surprises, has wafted from the farthest Indies into +my arms.” The marriage was happy, and it insured to +Guérin liberty and leisure; but now “the blind Fury +with the abhorred shears” was hard at hand. Consumption +declared itself in him: “I pass my life,” he writes, +with his old playfulness and calm, to his sister on the 8th +of April, 1839, “within my bed-curtains, and wait patiently +enough, thanks to Caro’s<a id='r13'></a><a href='#f13' class='c007'><sup>[13]</sup></a> goodness, books, and dreams, +for the recovery which the sunshine is to bring with it.” +In search of this sunshine he was taken to his native country, +Languedoc, but in vain. He died at Le Cayla on the +19th of July, 1839.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The vicissitudes of his inward life during these five +years were more considerable. His opinions and tastes +underwent great, or what seem to be great, changes. He +came to Paris the ardent partisan of Lamennais: even in +April, 1834, after Rome had finally condemned Lamennais,—“To-night +there will go forth from Paris,” he writes, +“with his face set to the west, a man whose every step I +would fain follow, and who returns to the desert for +which I sigh. M. Féli departs this evening for La +Chênaie.” But in October, 1835,—“I assure you,” he +<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>writes to his sister, “I am at last weaned from M. de Lamennais; +one does not remain a babe and suckling for +ever; I am perfectly freed from his influence.” There +was a greater change than this. In 1834 the main cause +of Guérin’s aversion to the literature of the French romantic +school, was that this literature, having had a religious +origin, had ceased to be religious: “it has forgotten,” +he says, “the house and the admonitions of its Father.” +But his friend M. de Marzan tells us of a “deplorable +revolution” which, by 1836, had taken place in him. +Guérin had become intimate with the chiefs of this very +literature; he no longer went to church; “the bond of +a common faith, in which our friendship had its birth, +existed between us no longer.” Then, again, “this interregnum +was not destined to last.” Reconverted to his +old faith by suffering and by the pious efforts of his sister +Eugénie, Guérin died a Catholic. His feelings about +society underwent a like change. After “entering the +world with a secret horror,” after congratulating himself +when he had been some months at Paris on being “disengaged +from the social tumult, out of the reach of those +blows which, when I live in the thick of the world, bruise +me, irritate me, or utterly crush me,” M. Sainte-Beuve +tells us of him, two years afterwards, appearing in society +“a man of the world, elegant, even fashionable; a talker +who could hold his own against the most brilliant talkers +of Paris.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>In few natures, however, is there really such essential +consistency as in Guérin’s. He says of himself, in the +very beginning of his journal: “I owe everything to +poetry, for there is no other name to give to the sum total +of my thoughts; I owe to it whatever I now have pure, +lofty and solid in my soul; I owe to it all my consolations +in the past; I shall probably owe to it my future.” +Poetry, the poetical instinct, was indeed the basis of his +nature; but to say so thus absolutely is not quite enough. +One aspect of poetry fascinated Guérin’s imagination and +held it prisoner. Poetry is the interpretress of the natural +world, and she is the interpretress of the moral world; it +<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>was as the interpretress of the natural world that she had +Guérin for her mouthpiece. To make magically near +and real the life of Nature, and man’s life only so far as +it is a part of that Nature, was his faculty; a faculty of +naturalistic, not of moral interpretation. This faculty +always has for its basis a peculiar temperament, an extraordinary +delicacy of organization and susceptibility to impressions; +in exercising it the poet is in a great degree +passive (Wordsworth thus speaks of a <em>wise passiveness</em>); +he aspires to be a sort of human Æolian harp, catching +and rendering every rustle of Nature. To assist at the +evolution of the whole life of the world is his craving, and +intimately to feel it all:</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in2'>... “The glow, the thrill of life,</div> + <div class='line'>Where, where do these abound?”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>is what he asks: he resists being riveted and held stationary +by any single impression, but would be borne on forever +down an enchanted stream. He goes into religion +and out of religion into society and out of society, not from +the motives which impel men in general, but to feel what +it is all like; he is thus hardly a moral agent, and, like the +passive and ineffectual Uranus of Keats’s <a id='corr79.22'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='peem'>poem</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_79.22'><ins class='correction' title='peem'>poem</ins></a></span>, he may +say:</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in4'>... “I am but a voice;</div> + <div class='line'>My life is but the life of winds and tides;</div> + <div class='line'>No more than winds and tides can I avail.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>He hovers over the tumult of life, but does not really put +his hand to it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>No one has expressed the aspirations of this temperament +better than Guérin himself. In the last year of his +life he writes:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I return, as you see, to my old brooding over the +world of Nature, that line which my thoughts, irresistibly +take; a sort of passion which gives me enthusiasm, tears, +bursts of joy, and an eternal food for musing; and yet I +am neither philosopher nor naturalist, nor anything +learned whatsoever. There is one word which is the God +<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>of my imagination, the tyrant, I ought rather to say, that +fascinates it, lures it onward, gives it work to do without +ceasing, and will finally carry it I know not where; the +word <em>life</em>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And in one place in his journal he says:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“My imagination welcomes every dream, every impression, +without attaching itself to any, and goes on forever +seeking something new.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And again in another:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The longer I live, and the clearer I discern between +true and false in society, the more does the inclination to +live, not as a savage or a misanthrope, but as a solitary +man on the frontiers of society, on the outskirts of the +world, gain strength and grow in me. The birds come +and go and make nests around our habitations, they are +fellow-citizens of our farms and hamlets with us; but they +take their flight in a heaven which is boundless, but the +hand of God alone gives and measures to them their daily +food, but they build their nests in the heart of the thick +bushes, or hang them in the height of the trees. So +would I, too, live, hovering round society, and having +always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>In the same spirit he longed for travel. “When one is +a wanderer,” he writes to his sister, “one feels that one +fulfils the true condition of humanity.” And the last +entry in his journal is,—“The stream of travel is full of +delight. Oh, who will set me adrift on this Nile!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Assuredly it is not in this temperament that the active +virtues have their rise. On the contrary, this temperament, +considered in itself alone, indisposes for the discharge +of them. Something morbid and excessive, as +manifested in Guérin, it undoubtedly has. In him, as in +Keats, and as in another youth of genius, whose name, +but the other day unheard of, Lord Houghton has so gracefully +written in the history of English poetry,—David +Gray,—the temperament, the talent itself, is deeply influenced +by their mysterious malady; the temperament +is <em>devouring</em>; it uses vital power too hard and too fast, +paying the penalty in long hours of unutterable exhaustion +<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>and in premature death. The intensity of Guérin’s +depression is described to us by Guérin himself with the +same incomparable touch with which he describes happier +feelings; far oftener than any pleasurable sense of his +gift he has “the sense profound, near, immense, of my +misery, of my inward poverty.” And again: “My inward +misery gains upon me; I no longer dare look within.” +And on another day of gloom he does look within, and +here is the terrible analysis:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Craving, unquiet, seeing only by glimpses, my spirit +is stricken by all those ills which are the sure fruit of a +youth doomed never to ripen into manhood. I grow old +and wear myself out in the most futile mental strainings, +and make no progress. My head seems dying, and when +the wind blows I fancy I feel it, as if I were a tree, blowing +through a number of withered branches in my top. +Study is intolerable to me, or rather it is quite out of +my power. Mental work brings on, not drowsiness, but an +irritable and nervous disgust which drives me out, I know +not where, into the streets and public places. The +Spring, whose delights used to come every year stealthily +and mysteriously to charm me in my retreat, crushes me +this year under a weight of sudden hotness. I should +be glad of any event which delivered me from the situation +in which I am. If I were free I would embark for some +distant country where I could begin life anew.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Such is this temperament in the frequent hours when +the sense of its own weakness and isolation crushes it to +the ground. Certainly it was not for Guérin’s happiness, +or for Keats’s, as men count happiness, to be as they were. +Still the very excess and predominance of their temperament +has given to the fruits of their genius a unique brilliancy +and flavor. I have said that poetry interprets in +two ways; it interprets by expressing with magical felicity +the physiognomy and movement of the outward world, and +it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the +ideas and laws of the inward world of man’s moral and +spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative +both by having <em>natural magic</em> in it, and by having <em>moral +<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>profundity</em>. In both ways it illuminates man; it gives +him a satisfying sense of reality; it reconciles him with +himself and the universe. Thus Æschylus’s “δράσαντι +παθεῖν” and his “ὰνήριθμον γέλασμα” are alike interpretative. +Shakspeare interprets both when he says,</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Full many a glorious morning have I seen,</div> + <div class='line'>Flatter the mountain-tops with sovran eye;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and when he says,</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,</div> + <div class='line'>Rough-hew them as we will.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>These great poets unite in themselves the faculty of both +kinds of interpretation, the naturalistic and the moral. +But it is observable that in the poets who unite both +kinds, the latter (the moral) usually ends by making itself +the master. In Shakspeare the two kinds seem wonderfully +to balance one another; but even in him the balance +leans; his expression tends to become too little sensuous +and simple, too much intellectualized. The same thing +may be yet more strongly affirmed of Lucretius and of +Wordsworth. In Shelley there is not a balance of the +two gifts, nor even a co-existence of them, but there is a +passionate straining after them both, and this is what +makes Shelley, as a man, so interesting: I will not now +inquire how much Shelley achieves as a poet, but whatever +he achieves, he in general fails to achieve natural +magic in his expression; in Mr. Palgrave’s charming +<cite>Treasury</cite> may be seen a gallery of his failures.<a id='r14'></a><a href='#f14' class='c007'><sup>[14]</sup></a> But in +<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>Keats and Guérin, in whom the faculty of naturalistic interpretation +is overpoweringly predominant, the natural +magic is perfect; when they speak of the world they +speak like Adam naming by divine inspiration the creatures; +their expression corresponds with the thing’s essential +reality. Even between Keats and Guérin, however, +there is a distinction to be drawn. Keats has, above all, +a sense of what is pleasurable and open in the life of +nature; for him she is the <span lang="la"><i>Alma Parens</i></span>: his expression +has, therefore, more than Guérin’s, something genial, outward, +and sensuous. Guérin has, above all, a sense of +what there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature; +for him she is the <span lang="la"><i>Magna Parens</i></span>; his expression has, +therefore, more than Keats’s, something mystic, inward, +and profound.</p> + +<p class='c001'>So he lived like a man possessed; with his eye not on +his own career, not on the public, not on fame, but on the +Isis whose veil he had uplifted. He published nothing: +“There is more power and beauty,” he writes, “in the +well-kept secret of one’s-self and one’s thoughts, than in +the display of a whole heaven that one may have inside +one.” “My spirit,” he answers the friends who urge him +to write, “is of the home-keeping order, and has no fancy +for adventure; literary adventure is above all distasteful +to it; for this, indeed (let me say so without the least +self-sufficiency), it has a contempt. The literary career +seems to me unreal, both in its own essence and in the rewards +which one seeks from it, and therefore fatally +marred by a secret absurdity.” His acquaintances, and +among them distinguished men of letters, full of admiration +for the originality and delicacy of his talent, laughed +at his self-depreciation, warmly assured him of his powers. +He received their assurances with a mournful incredulity, +which contrasts curiously with the self-assertion of poor +David Gray, whom I just now mentioned. “It seems to +me intolerable,” he writes, “to appear to men other than +one appears to God. My worst torture at this moment is +the over-estimate which generous friends form of me. +We are told that at the last judgment the secret of all +<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>consciences will be laid bare to the universe; would that +mine were so this day, and that every passer-by could see +me as I am!” “High above my head,” he says at another +time, “far, far away, I seem to hear the murmur of +that world of thought and feeling to which I aspire so +often, but where I can never attain. I think of those of +my own age who have wings strong enough to reach it, +but I think of them without jealousy, and as men on earth +contemplate the elect and their felicity.” And, criticising +his own composition, “When I begin a subject, my +self-conceit” (says this exquisite artist) “imagines I am +doing wonders; and when I have finished, I see nothing +but a wretched made-up imitation, composed of odds and +ends of color stolen from other people’s palettes, and +tastelessly mixed together on mine.” Such was his <em>passion +for perfection</em>, his disdain for all poetical work not perfectly +adequate and felicitous. The magic of expression, +to which by the force of this passion he won his way, will +make the name of Maurice de Guérin remembered in +literature.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I have already mentioned the <cite>Centaur</cite>, a sort of prose +poem by Guérin, which Madame Sand published after his +death. The idea of this composition came to him, M. +Sainte-Beuve says, in the course of some visits which he +made with his friend, M. Trebutien, a learned antiquarian, +to the Museum of Antiquities in the Louvre. The free +and wild life which the Greeks expressed by such creations +as the Centaur had, as we might well expect, a strong +charm for him; under the same inspiration he composed +a <cite>Bacchante</cite>, which was meant by him to form part of a +prose poem on the adventures of Bacchus in India. Real +as was the affinity which Guérin’s nature had for these +subjects, I doubt whether, in treating them, he would +have found the full and final employment of his talent. +But the beauty of his <cite>Centaur</cite> is extraordinary; in its +whole conception and expression this piece has in a +wonderful degree that natural magic of which I have said +so much, and the rhythm has a charm which bewitches +even a foreigner. An old Centaur on his mountain is +<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>supposed to relate to Melampus, a human questioner, the +life of his youth. Untranslatable as the piece is, I shall +conclude with some <a id='corr85.3'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='exrtacts'>extracts</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_85.3'><ins class='correction' title='exrtacts'>extracts</ins></a></span> from it:—</p> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>“<span class='sc'>The Centaur.</span></div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'>“I had my birth in the caves of these mountains. Like +the stream of this valley, whose first drops trickle from +some weeping rock in a deep cavern, the first moment of +my life fell in the darkness of a remote abode, and without +breaking the silence. When our mothers draw near +to the time of their delivery, they withdraw to the caverns, +and in the depth of the loneliest of them, in the thickest +of its gloom, bring forth, without uttering a plaint, a fruit +silent as themselves. Their puissant milk makes us surmount, +without weakness or dubious struggle, the first +difficulties of life; and yet we leave our caverns later than +you your cradles. The reason is that we have a doctrine +that the early days of existence should be kept apart and +enshrouded, as days filled with the presence of the gods. +Nearly the whole term of my growth was passed in the +darkness where I was born. The recesses of my dwelling +ran so far under the mountain that I should not have +known on which side was the exit, had not the winds, +when they sometimes made their way through the opening, +sent fresh airs in, and a sudden trouble. Sometimes, too, +my mother came back to me, having about her the odors +of the valleys, or streaming from the waters which were +her haunt. Her returning thus, without a word said of +the valleys or the rivers, but with the emanations from +them hanging about her, troubled my spirit, and I moved +up and down restlessly in my darkness. ‘What is it,’ I +cried, ‘this outside world whither my mother is borne, +and what reigns there in it so potent as to attract her so +<a id='corr85.33'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='often?”'>often?’</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_85.33'><ins class='correction' title='often?”'>often?’</ins></a></span> At these moments my own force began to make +me unquiet. I felt in it a power which could not remain +idle; and betaking myself either to toss my arms or to +gallop backwards and forwards in the spacious darkness of +the cavern, I tried to make out from the blows which I +dealt in the empty space, or from the transport of my +<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>course through it, in what direction my arms were meant +to reach, or my feet to bear me. Since that day, I have +wound my arms round the bust of Centaurs, and round +the body of heroes, and round the trunk of oaks; my +hands have assayed the rocks, the waters, plants without +number, and the subtlest impressions of the air,—for I +uplift them in the dark and still nights to catch the +breaths of wind, and to draw signs whereby I may augur +my road; my feet,—look, O Melampus, how worn they +are! And yet, all benumbed as I am in this extremity of +age, there are days when, in broad sunlight, on the mountain-tops, +I renew these gallopings of my youth in the +cavern, and with the same object, brandishing my arms +and employing all the fleetness which yet is left to me.</p> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .</div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'>“O Melampus, thou who wouldst know the life of the +Centaurs, wherefore have the gods willed that thy steps +should lead thee to me, the oldest and most forlorn of +them all? It is long since I have ceased to practise any +part of their life. I quit no more this mountain summit +to which age has confined me. The point of my arrows +now serves me only to uproot some tough-fibred plant; +the tranquil lakes know me still, but the rivers have forgotten +me. I will tell thee a little of my youth; but these +recollections, issuing from a worn memory, come like the +drops of a niggardly libation poured from a damaged urn.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The course of my youth was rapid and full of agitation. +Movement was my life, and my steps knew no +bound. One day when I was following the course of a +valley seldom entered by the Centaurs, I discovered a man +making his way up the stream-side on the opposite bank. +He was the first whom my eyes had lighted on: I despised +him. ‘Behold,’ I cried, ‘at the utmost but the half of +what I am! How short are his steps! and his movement +how full of labor! Doubtless he is a Centaur overthrown +by the gods, and reduced by them to drag himself along +thus.’</p> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .</div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>“Wandering along at my own will like the rivers, feeling +wherever I went the presence of Cybele, whether in +the bed of the valleys, or on the height of the mountains, +I bounded whither I would, like a blind and chainless life. +But when Night, filled with the charm of the gods, overtook +me on the slopes of the mountain, she guided me to +the mouth of the caverns, and there tranquillized me as she +tranquillizes the billows of the sea. Stretched across the +threshold of my retreat, my flanks hidden within the cave, +and my head under the open sky, I watched the spectacle +of the dark. The sea-gods, it is said, quit during the +hours of darkness their palaces under the deep; they seat +themselves on the promontories, and their eyes wander +over the expanse of the waves. Even so I kept watch, +having at my feet an expanse of life like the hushed sea. +My regards had free range, and traveled to the most distant +points. Like sea beaches which never lose their wetness, +the line of mountains to the west retained the imprint +of gleams not perfectly wiped out by the shadows. In +that quarter still survived, in pale clearness, mountain-summits +naked and pure. There I beheld at one time the +god Pan descend, ever solitary; at another, the choir of +the mystic divinities; or I saw pass some mountain nymph +charm-struck by the night. Sometimes the eagles of +Mount Olympus traversed the upper sky, and were lost to +view among the far-off constellations, or in the shade of +the dreaming forests.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus, which is +the science of the will of the gods; and thou roamest from +people to people like a mortal driven by the destinies. In +the times <a id='corr87.31'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='wheu'>when</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_87.31'><ins class='correction' title='wheu'>when</ins></a></span> I kept my night-watches before the caverns, +I have sometimes believed <a id='corr87.32'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='thas'>that</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_87.32'><ins class='correction' title='thas'>that</ins></a></span> I was about to surprise the +thought of the sleeping Cybele, and that the mother of +the gods, betrayed by her dreams, would let fall some of +her secrets; but I have never made out more than sounds +which faded away in the murmur of night, or words inarticulate +as the bubbling of the rivers.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘O Macareus,’ one day said the great Chiron to me, +whose old age I tended; ‘we are, both of us, Centaurs of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>the mountain; but how different are our lives! Of my +days all the study is (thou seest it) the search for plants; +thou, thou art like those mortals who have picked up on +the waters or in the woods, and carried to their lips, some +pieces of the reed-pipe thrown away by the god Pan. +From that hour these mortals, having caught from their +relics of the god a passion for wild life, or perhaps smitten +with some secret madness, enter into the wilderness, +plunge among the forests, follow the course of the streams, +bury themselves in the heart of the mountains, restless, +and haunted by an unknown purpose. The mares beloved +of the winds in the farthest Scythia are not wilder than +thou, nor more cast down at nightfall, when the North +Wind has departed. Seekest thou to know the gods. O +Macareus, and from what source men, animals, and the +elements of the universal fire have their origin? But the +aged Ocean, the father of all things, keeps locked within +his own breast these secrets; and the nymphs, who stand +around, sing as they weave their eternal dance before +him, to cover any sound which might escape from his lips +half-opened by slumber. The mortals, dear to the gods +for their virtue, have received from their hands lyres to +give delight to man, or the seeds of new plants to make +him rich; but from their inexorable lips, nothing!’</p> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .</div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'>“Such were the lessons which the old Chiron gave me. +Waned to the very extremity of life, the Centaur yet nourished +in his spirit the most lofty discourse.</p> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .</div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'>“For me, O Melampus, I decline into my last days, +calm as the setting of the constellations. I still retain +enterprise enough to climb to the top of the rocks, and +there I linger late, either gazing on the wild and restless +clouds, or to see come up from the horizon the rainy +Hyades, the Pleiades, or the great Orion; but I feel myself +perishing and passing quickly away, like a snow-wreath +floating on the stream; and soon shall I be mingled with +the waters which flow in the vast bosom of Earth.”</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span> + <h2 class='c005'>IV. <br> <br> EUGÉNIE DE GUÉRIN.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Who that had spoken of Maurice de Guérin could +refrain from speaking of his sister Eugénie, the most +devoted of sisters, one of the rarest and most beautiful of +souls? “There is nothing fixed, no duration, no vitality +in the sentiments of women towards one another; their +attachments are mere pretty knots of ribbon, and no more. +In all the friendships of women I observe this slightness of +the tie. I know no instance to the contrary, even in history. +Orestes and Pylades have no sisters.” So she herself +speaks of the friendships of her own sex. But Electra +can attach herself to Orestes, if not to Chrysothemis. And +to her brother Maurice, Eugénie de Guérin was Pylades +and Electra in one.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The name of Maurice de Guérin,—that young man so +gifted, so attractive, so careless of fame, and so early +snatched away; who died at twenty-nine; who, says his +sister, “let what he did be lost with a carelessness so unjust +to himself, set no value on any of his own productions, +and departed hence without reaping the rich harvest +which seemed his due;” who, in spite of his immaturity, +in spite of his fragility, exercised such a charm, “furnished +to others so much of that which all live by,” that +some years after his death his sister found in a country-house +where he used to stay, in the journal of a young +girl who had not known him, but who heard her family +speak of him, his name, the date of his death, and these +words, “<span lang="fr"><i>it était leur vie</i></span>” (he was their life); whose talent, +exquisite as that of Keats, with much less of sunlight, +abundance, inventiveness, and facility in it than that of +Keats, but with more of distinction and power, had “that +<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>winning, delicate, and beautifully happy turn of expression” +which is the stamp of the master,—is beginning to +be well known to all lovers of literature. This establishment +of Maurice’s name was an object for which his sister +Eugénie passionately labored. While he was alive, she +placed her whole joy in the flowering of this gifted nature; +when he was dead, she had no other thought than to +make the world know him as she knew him. She outlived +him nine years, and her cherished task for those years was +to rescue the fragments of her brother’s composition, to +collect them, to get them published. In pursuing this +task she had at first cheering hopes of success; she had at +last baffling and bitter disappointment. Her earthly business +was at an end; she died. Ten years afterwards, it +was permitted to the love of a friend, M. Trebutien, to +effect for Maurice’s memory what the love of a sister had +failed to accomplish. But those who read, with delight +and admiration, the journal and letters of Maurice de +Guérin, could not but be attracted and touched by this +sister Eugénie, who met them at every page. She seemed +hardly less gifted, hardly less interesting, than Maurice +himself. And presently Mr. Trebutien did for the sister +what he had done for the brother. He published the +journal of Mdlle. Eugénie de Guérin, and a few (too few, +alas!) of her letters.<a id='r15'></a><a href='#f15' class='c007'><sup>[15]</sup></a> The book has made a profound impression +in France; and the fame which she sought only +for her brother now crowns the sister also.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Parts of Mdlle. de Guérin’s journal were several years +ago printed for private circulation, and a writer in the +<cite>National Review</cite> had the good fortune to fall in with them. +The bees of our English criticism do not often roam so far +afield for their honey, and this critic deserves thanks for +having flitted upon in his quest of blossom to foreign parts, +and for having settled upon a beautiful flower found there. +He had the discernment to see that Mdlle. de Guérin was +well worth speaking of, and he spoke of her with feeling +<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>and appreciation. But that, as I have said, was several +years ago; even a true and feeling homage needs to be +from time to time renewed, if the memory of its object is +to endure; and criticism must not lose the occasion offered +by Mdlle. de Guérin’s journal being for the first time published +to the world, of directing notice once more to this +religious and beautiful character.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Eugénie de Guérin was born in 1805, at the château +of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. Her family, though reduced +in circumstances, was noble; and even when one is a saint +one cannot quite forget that one comes of the stock of the +Guarini of Italy, or that one counts among one’s ancestors +a Bishop of Senlis, who had the marshaling of the French +order of battle on the day of Bouvines. Le Cayla was a +solitary place, with its terrace looking down upon a stream-bed +and valley; “one may pass days there without seeing +any living thing but the sheep, without hearing any living +thing but the birds.” M. de Guérin, Eugénie’s father, +lost his wife when Eugénie was thirteen years old, and +Maurice seven; he was left with four children,—Eugénie, +Marie, Erembert, and Maurice,—of whom Eugénie was +the eldest, and Maurice was the youngest. This youngest +child, whose beauty and delicacy had made him the object +of his mother’s most anxious fondness, was commended +by her in dying to the care of his sister Eugénie. Maurice +at eleven years old went to school at Toulouse; then he +went to the Collège Stanislas at Paris; then he became a +member of the religious society which M. de Lamennais +had formed at La Chênaie in Brittany; afterwards he +lived chiefly at Paris, returning to Le Cayla, at the age of +twenty-nine, to die. Distance, in those days, was a great +obstacle to frequent meetings of the separated members +of a French family of narrow means. Maurice de Guérin +was seldom at Le Cayla after he had once quitted it, though +his few visits to his home were long ones; but he passed +five years,—the period of his sojourn in Brittany, and of +his first settlement in Paris,—without coming home at all. +In spite of the check from these absences, in spite of the +more serious check from a temporary alteration in Maurice’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>religious feelings, the union between the brother and +sister was wonderfully close and firm. For they were knit +together, not only by the tie of blood and early attachment, +but also by the tie of a common genius. “We +were,” says Eugénie, “two eyes looking out of one head.” +She, on her part, brought to her love for her brother the +devotedness of a woman, the intensity of a recluse, almost +the solicitude of a mother. Her home duties prevented +her from following the wish, which often arose in her, to +join a religious sisterhood. There is a trace,—just a trace,—of +an early attachment to a cousin; but he died when +she was twenty-four. After that, she lived for Maurice. +It was for Maurice that, in addition to her constant correspondence +with him by letter, she began in 1834 her +journal, which was sent to him by portions as it was finished. +After his death she tried to continue it, addressing +it to “Maurice in heaven.” But the effort was beyond +her strength; gradually the entries become rarer and +rarer; and on the last day of December 1840 the pen +dropped from her hand: the journal ends.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Other sisters have loved their brothers, and it is not her +affection for Maurice, admirable as this was, which alone +could have made Eugénie de Guérin celebrated. I have +said that both brother and sister had genius: M. Sainte-Beuve +goes so far as to say that the sister’s genius was +equal, if not superior, to her brother’s. No one has a more +profound respect for M. Sainte-Beuve’s critical judgments +than I have, but it seems to me that this particular judgment +needs to be a little explained and guarded. In +Maurice’s special talent, which was a talent for interpreting +nature, for finding words which incomparably render +the subtlest impressions which nature makes upon us, +which bring the intimate life of nature wonderfully near +to us, it seems to me that his sister was by no means his +equal. She never, indeed, expresses herself without grace +and intelligence; but her words, when she speaks of the +life and appearances of nature, are in general but intellectual +signs; they are not like her brother’s—symbols equivalent +with the thing symbolized. They bring the notion +<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>of the thing described to the mind, they do not bring the +feeling of it to the imagination. Writing from the Nivernais, +that region of vast woodlands in the center of France: +“It does one good,” says Eugénie, “to be going about in +the midst of this enchanting nature, with flowers, birds, +and verdure all round one, under this large and blue sky +of the Nivernais. How I love the gracious form of it, and +those little white clouds here and there, like cushions of +cotton, hung aloft to rest the eye in this immensity!” It +is pretty and graceful, but how different from the grave +and pregnant strokes of Maurice’s pencil! “I have been +along the Loire, and seen on its banks the plains where +nature is puissant and gay; I have seen royal and antique +dwellings, all marked by memories which have their place +in the mournful legend of humanity,—Chambord, Blois, +Amboise, Chenonceaux; then the towns on the two banks +of the river,—Orleans, Tours, Saumur, Nantes; and at +the end of it all, the Ocean rumbling. From these I passed +back into the interior of the country, as far as Bourges +and Nevers, a region of vast woodlands, in which murmurs +of an immense range and fulness” (<span lang="fr"><i>ce beau torrent de rumeurs</i></span>, +as, with an expression worthy of Wordsworth, he +elsewhere calls them) “prevail and never cease.” Words +whose charm is like that of the sounds of the murmuring +forest itself, and whose reverberations, like theirs, die +away in the infinite distance of the soul.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Maurice’s life was in the life of nature, and the passion +for it consumed him; it would have been strange if his +accent had not caught more of the soul of nature than +Eugénie’s accent, whose life was elsewhere. “You will +find in him,” Maurice says to his sister of a friend whom +he was recommending to her, “you will find in him that +which you love, and which suits you better than anything +else,—<span lang="fr"><i>l’onction, l’effusion, la mysticité</i></span>.” Unction, the +pouring out of the soul, the rapture of the mystic, were +dear to Maurice also; but in him the bent of his genius +gave even to those a special direction of its own. In +Eugénie they took the direction most native and familiar +to them; their object was the religious life.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>And yet, if one analyzes this beautiful and most interesting +character quite to the bottom, it is not exactly as a +saint that Eugénie de Guérin is remarkable. The ideal +saint is a nature like Saint François de Sales or Fénelon; +a nature of ineffable sweetness and serenity, a nature in +which struggle and revolt is over, and the whole man (so +far as is possible to human infirmity) swallowed up in love. +Saint Theresa (it is Mdlle. de Guérin herself who reminds +us of it) endured twenty years of unacceptance and of repulse +in her prayers; yes, but the Saint Theresa whom +Christendom knows <a id='corr94.11'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='in'>is</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_94.11'><ins class='correction' title='in'>is</ins></a></span> Saint Theresa repulsed no longer! +it is Saint Theresa accepted, rejoicing in love, radiant with +ecstasy. Mdlle. de Guérin is not one of these saints +arrived at perfect sweetness and calm, steeped in ecstasy; +there is something primitive, indomitable in her, which +she governs, indeed, but which chafes, which revolts. +Somewhere in the depths of that strong nature there +is a struggle, an impatience, an inquietude, an ennui, +which endures to the end, and which leaves one, when +one finally closes her journal, with an impression of +profound melancholy. “There are days,” she writes to +her brother, “when one’s nature rolls itself up, and becomes +a hedgehog. If I had you here at this moment, +here close by me, how I should prick you! how sharp and +hard!” “Poor soul, poor soul,” she cries out to herself +another day, “what is the matter, what would you have? +Where is that which will do you good? Everything is +green, everything is in bloom, all the air has a breath of +flowers. How beautiful it is! well, I will go out. No, I +should be alone, and all this beauty, when one is alone, +is worth nothing. What shall I do then? Read, write, +pray, take a basket of sand on my head like that hermit-saint, +and walk with it? Yes, work, work! keep busy +the body which does mischief to the soul! I have been +too little occupied to-day, and that is bad for one, and it +gives a certain ennui which I have in me time to ferment.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><em>A certain ennui which I have in me</em>: her wound is there. +In vain she follows the counsel of Fénelon: “If God tires +you, <em>tell him that he tires you</em>.” No doubt she obtained +<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>great and frequent solace and restoration from prayer: +“This morning I was suffering; well, at present I am +calm, and this I owe to faith simply to faith, to an act of +faith. I can think of death and eternity without trouble, +without alarm. Over a deep of sorrow there floats a divine +calm, a suavity which is the work of God only. In vain +have I tried other things at a time like this: nothing +human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds it:—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">‘A l’enfant il faut sa mère,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">A mon âme il faut mon Dieu.’”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Still the ennui reappears, bringing with it hours of unutterable +forlornness, and making her cling to her one great +earthly happiness,—her affection for her brother,—with +an intenseness, an anxiety, a desperation in which there is +something morbid, and by which she is occasionally carried +into an irritability, a jealousy which she herself is the first, +indeed, to censure, which she severely represses, but which +nevertheless leaves a sense of pain.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Mdlle. de Guérin’s admirers have compared her to +Pascal, and in some respects the comparison is just. But +she cannot exactly be classed with Pascal, any more than +with Saint Francois de Sales. Pascal is a man, and the +inexhaustible power and activity of his mind leave him no +leisure for ennui. He has not the sweetness and serenity +of the perfect saint; he is, perhaps, “der strenge, kranke +Pascal—<em>the severe, morbid Pascal</em>,”—as Goethe (and, +strange to say, Goethe at twenty-three, an age which +usually feels Pascal’s charm most profoundly) calls him. +But the stress and movement of the lifelong conflict waged +in him between his soul and his reason keep him full of +fire, full of agitation, and keep his reader, who witnesses +this conflict, animated and excited; the sense of forlornness +and dejected weariness which clings to Eugénie de +Guérin does not belong to Pascal. Eugénie de Guérin is +a woman, and longs for a state of firm happiness, for an +affection in which she may repose. The inward bliss of +Saint Theresa or Fénelon would have satisfied her; denied +<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>this, she cannot rest satisfied with the triumphs of self-abasement, +with the somber joy of trampling the pride of +life and of reason underfoot, of reducing all human hope +and joy to insignificance; she repeats the magnificent +words of Bossuet, words which both Catholicism and Protestantism +have uttered with indefatigable iteration: <span lang="fr">“On +trouve au fond de tout le vide et le néant</span>—<em>at the bottom of +everything one finds emptiness and nothingness</em>,” but she +feels, as every one but the true mystic must ever feel, their +incurable sterility.</p> + +<p class='c001'>She resembles Pascal, however, by the clearness and +firmness of her intelligence, going straight and instinctively +to the bottom of any matter she is dealing with, and +expressing herself about it with incomparable precision; +never fumbling with what she has to say, never imperfectly +seizing or imperfectly presenting her thought. And to +this admirable precision she joins a lightness of touch, a +feminine ease and grace, a flowing facility which are her +own. “I do not say,” writes her brother Maurice, an excellent +judge, “that I find in myself a dearth of expression; +but I have not this abundance of yours, this productiveness +of soul which streams forth, which courses along +without ever failing, and always with an infinite charm.” +And writing to her of some composition of hers, produced +after her religious scruples had for a long time kept her +from the exercise of her talent: “You see, my dear Tortoise,” +he writes, “that your talent is no illusion, since +after a period, I know not how long, of poetical inaction,—a +trial to which any half-talent would have succumbed,—it +rears its head again more vigorous than ever. It is +really heart-breaking to see you repress and bind down, +with I know not what scruples, your spirit, which tends +with all the force of its nature to develop itself in this +direction. Others have made it a case of conscience for +you to resist this impulse, and I make it one for you to +follow it.” And she says of herself, on one of her freer +days: “It is the instinct of my life to write, as it is the +instinct of the fountain to flow.” The charm of her expression +is not a sensuous and imaginative charm like that +<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>of Maurice, but rather an intellectual charm; it comes +from the texture of the style rather than from its elements; +it is not so much in the words as in the turn of the phrase, +in the happy cast and flow of the sentence. Recluse as +she was, she had a great correspondence: every one wished +to have letters from her; and no wonder.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To this strength of intelligence and talent of expression +<a id='corr97.8'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='sne'>she</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_97.8'><ins class='correction' title='sne'>she</ins></a></span> joined a great force of character. Religion had early +possessed itself of this force of <a id='corr97.9'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='characser'>character</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_97.9'><ins class='correction' title='characser'>character</ins></a></span>, and reinforced +it: in the shadow of the Cevennes, in the sharp and tonic +nature of this region of Southern France, which has seen +the Albigensians, which has seen the Camisards, Catholicism +too is fervent and intense. Eugénie de Guérin was +brought up amidst strong religious influences, and they +found in her a nature on which they could lay firm hold. +I have said that she was not a saint of the order of Saint +François de Sales or Fénelon; perhaps she had too keen +an intelligence to suffer her to be this, too forcible and +impetuous a character. But I did not mean to imply the +least doubt of the reality, the profoundness, of her <a id='corr97.19'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='reiigious'>religious</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_97.19'><ins class='correction' title='reiigious'>religious</ins></a></span> +life. She was penetrated by the power of religion; +religion was the master-influence of her life; she derived +immense consolations from religion, she earnestly strove +to conform her whole nature to it; if there was an element +in her which religion could not perfectly reach, perfectly +transmute, she groaned over this element in her, she chid +it, she made it bow. Almost every thought in her was +brought into harmony with religion; and what few +thoughts were not thus brought into harmony were brought +into subjection.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Then she had her affection for her brother; and this, +too, though perhaps there might be in it something a little +over-eager, a little too absolute, a little too susceptible, +was a pure, a devoted affection. It was not only passionate, +it was tender. It was tender, pliant, and self-sacrificing +to a degree that not in one nature out of a thousand,—of +natures with a mind and will like hers,—is found attainable. +She thus united extraordinary power of intelligence, +extraordinary force of character, and extraordinary +<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>strength of affection; and all these under the control of a +deep religious feeling.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This is what makes her so remarkable, so interesting. +I shall try and make her speak for herself, that she may +show us the characteristic sides of her rare nature with +her own inimitable touch.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It must be remembered that her journal is written for +Maurice only; in her lifetime no eye but his ever saw it. +“<span lang="fr"><i>Ceci n’est pas pour le public</i>,</span>” she writes; “<span lang="fr"><i>c’est de l’intime, +c’est de l’âme, c’est pour un</i>.</span>” “This is not for the +public; it contains my inmost thoughts, my very soul; it +is for <em>one</em>.” And Maurice, this <em>one</em>, was a kind of second +self to her. “We see things with the same eyes; what +you find beautiful, I find beautiful; God has made our +souls of one piece.” And this genuine confidence in her +brother’s sympathy gives to the entries in her journal a +naturalness and simple freedom rare in such compositions. +She felt that he would understand her, and be interested +in all that she wrote.</p> + +<p class='c001'>One of the first pages of her journal relates an incident +of the home-life of Le Cayla, the smallest detail of which +Maurice liked to hear; and in relating it she brings this +simple life before us. She is writing in November, +1834:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I am furious with the gray cat. The mischievous +beast has made away with a little half-frozen pigeon, +which I was trying to thaw by the side of the fire. The +poor little thing was just beginning to come round; I +meant to tame him; he would have grown fond of me; +and there is my whole scheme eaten up by a cat! This +event, and all the rest of to-day’s history, has passed in +the kitchen. Here I take up my abode all the morning +and a part of the evening, ever since I am without Mimi.<a id='r16'></a><a href='#f16' class='c007'><sup>[16]</sup></a> +I have to superintend the cook; sometimes papa comes +down, and I read to him by the oven, or by the fireside, +some bits out of the <cite>Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church</cite>. +This book struck Pierril<a id='r17'></a><a href='#f17' class='c007'><sup>[17]</sup></a> with astonishment. <span lang="fr"><i>Que de +<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>mouts aqui dédins!</i></span> What a lot of words there are inside +it!’ This boy is a real original. One evening he asked +me if the soul was immortal; then afterwards, what a +philosopher was? We had got upon great questions, as +you see. When I told him that a philosopher was a +person who was wise and learned: ‘Then, mademoiselle, +you are a philosopher.’ This was said with an air of simplicity +and sincerity which might have made even Socrates +take it as a compliment; but it made me laugh so much +that my gravity as catechist was gone for that evening. +A day or two ago Pierril left us, to his great sorrow: his +time with us was up on Saint Brice’s day. Now he goes +about with his little dog, truffle-hunting. If he comes +this way I shall go and ask him if he still thinks I look +like a philosopher.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Her good sense and spirit made her discharge with +alacrity her household tasks in this patriarchal life of +Le Cayla, and treat them as the most natural thing in the +world. She sometimes complains, to be sure, of burning +her fingers at the kitchen-fire. But when a literary friend +of her brother expresses enthusiasm about her and her +poetical nature: “The poetess,” she says, “whom this +gentleman believes me to be, is an ideal being, infinitely +removed from the life which is actually mine—a life of +occupations, a life of household-business, which takes up +all my time. How could I make it otherwise? I am +sure I do not know; and, besides, my duty is in this sort +of life, and I have no wish to escape from <a id='corr99.28'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='it.'>it.”</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_99.28'><ins class='correction' title='it.'>it.”</ins></a></span></p> + +<p class='c001'>Among these occupations of the patriarchal life of the +châtelaine of Le Cayla intercourse with the poor fills a +prominent place:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“To-day,” she writes on the 9th of December, 1834, “I +have been warming myself at every fireside in the village. +It is a round which Mimi and I often make, and in which +I take pleasure. To-day we have been seeing sick people, +and holding forth on doses and sick-room drinks. ‘Take +this, do that;’ and they attend to us just as if we were +the doctor. We prescribed shoes for a little thing who +was amiss from having gone barefoot; to the brother, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>who, with a bad headache, was lying quite flat, we prescribed +a pillow; the pillow did him good, but I am afraid +it will hardly cure him. He is at the beginning of a bad +feverish cold: and these poor people live in the filth of +their hovels like animals in their stable; the bad air +poisons them. When I come home to Le Cayla I seem to +be in a palace.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>She had books, too; not in abundance, not for the +fancying them; the list of her library is small, and it is +enlarged slowly and with difficulty. The <cite>Letters of Saint +Theresa</cite>, which she had long wished to get, she sees in the +hands of a poor servant girl, before she can procure them +for herself. “What then?” is her comment: “very +likely she makes a better use of them than I could.” But +she has the <cite>Imitation</cite>, the <cite>Spiritual Works</cite> of Bossuet +and Fénelon, the <cite>Lives of the Saints</cite>, Corneille, Racine, +André Chénier, and Lamartine; Madame de Staël’s book +on Germany, and French translations of Shakspeare’s +plays, Ossian, the <cite>Vicar of Wakefield</cite>, Scott’s <cite>Old Mortality</cite> +and <cite>Redgauntlet</cite>, and the <span lang="it"><cite>Promessi Sposi</cite></span> of Manzoni. +Above all, she has her own mind; her meditations +in the lonely fields, on the oak-grown hill-side of “The +Seven Springs;” her meditations and writing in her own +room, her <span lang="fr"><i>chambrette</i></span>, her <span lang="fr"><i>délicieux chez moi</i></span>, where every +night, before she goes to bed, she opens the window to +look out upon the sky,—the balmy moonlit sky of Languedoc. +This life of reading, thinking, and writing was +the life she liked best, the life that most truly suited her. +“I find writing has become almost a necessity to me. +Whence does it arise, this impulse to give utterance to the +voice of one’s spirit, to pour out my thoughts before God +and one human being? I say one human being, because +I always imagine that you are present, that you see what +I write. In the stillness of a life like this my spirit is +happy, and, as it were, dead to all that goes on up-stairs +or down-stairs, in the house or out of the house. But this +does not last long. ‘Come, my poor spirit,’ I then say to +myself, ‘we must go back to the things of this world.’ +And I take my spinning, or a book, or a saucepan, or I +<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>play with Wolf or Trilby. Such a life as this I call heaven +upon earth.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Tastes like these, joined with a talent like Mdlle. de +Guérin’s, naturally inspire thoughts of literary composition. +Such thoughts she had, and perhaps she would +have been happier if she had followed them; but she +never could satisfy herself that to follow them was quite +consistent with the religious life, and her projects of composition +were gradually relinquished:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Would to God that my thoughts, my spirit, had never +taken their flight beyond the narrow round in which it is +my lot to live! In spite of all that people say to the contrary, +I feel that I cannot go beyond my needlework and +my spinning without going too far: I feel it, I believe it: +well, then I will keep in my proper sphere; however much +I am tempted, my spirit shall not be allowed to occupy itself +with great matters until it occupies itself with them +in Heaven.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And again:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“My journal has been untouched for a long while. +Do you want to know why? It is because the time seems +to me misspent which I spend in writing it. We owe God +an account of every minute; and is it not a wrong use of +our minutes to employ them in writing a history of our +transitory days?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>She overcomes her scruples, and goes on writing the +journal; but again and again they return to her. Her +brother tells her of the pleasure and comfort something she +has written gives to a friend of his in affliction. She +answers:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“It is from the Cross that those thoughts come, which +your friend finds so soothing, so unspeakably tender. +None of them come from me. I feel my own aridity; but +I feel, too, that God, when he will, can make an ocean +flow upon this bed of sand. It is the same with so many +simple souls, from which proceed the most admirable +things; because they are in direct relation with God, +without false science and without pride. And thus I am +gradually losing my taste for books; I say to myself: +<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>‘What can they teach me which I shall not one day know +in Heaven? let God be my master and my study here!’ +I try to make him so, and I find myself the better for it. +I read little; I go out little; I plunge myself in the inward +life. How infinite are the sayings, doings, feelings, +events of that life! Oh, if you could but see them! But +what avails it to make them known? God alone should +be admitted to the sanctuary of the soul.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Beautifully as she says all this, one cannot, I think, +read it without a sense of disquietude, without a presentiment +that this ardent spirit is forcing itself from its +natural bent, that the beatitude of the true mystic will +never be its earthly portion. And yet how simple and +charming is her picture of the life of religion which she +chose as her ark of refuge, and in which she desired to +place all her happiness:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Cloaks, clogs, umbrellas, all the apparatus of winter, +went with us this morning to Andillac, where we have +passed the whole day; some of it at the curé’s house, the +rest in church. How I like this life of a country Sunday, +with its activity, its journeys to church, its liveliness! +You find all your neighbors on the road; you have a +curtsey from every woman you meet, and then, as you go +along, such a talk about the poultry, the sheep and cows, +the good man and the children! My great delight is to +give a kiss to these children, and see them run away and +hide their blushing faces in their mother’s gown. They +are alarmed at <span lang="fr"><i>las doumaϊsèlos</i></span>,<a id='r18'></a><a href='#f18' class='c007'><sup>[18]</sup></a> as at a being of another +world. One of these little things said the other day to its +grandmother, who was talking of coming to see us: +‘<em>Minino</em>, you mustn’t go to that castle; there is a black +hole there.’ What is the reason that in all ages the +noble’s château has been an object of terror? Is it +because of the horrors that were committed there in old +times? I suppose so.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>This vague horror of the château, still lingering in the +mind of the French peasant fifty years after he has stormed +it, is indeed curious, and is one of the thousand indications +<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>how unlike aristocracy on the Continent has been to aristocracy +in England. But this is one of the great matters +with which Mdlle. de Guérin would not have us occupied; +let us pass to the subject of Christmas in Languedoc:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Christmas is come; the beautiful festival, the one I +love most, and which gives me the same joy as it gave the +shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, one’s whole soul +sings with joy at this beautiful coming of God upon +earth,—a coming which here is announced on all sides of +us by music and by our charming <span lang="fr"><i>nadalet</i></span>.<a id='r19'></a><a href='#f19' class='c007'><sup>[19]</sup></a> Nothing at +Paris can give you a notion of what Christmas is with us. +You have not even the midnight-mass. We all of us went +to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect night possible. +Never was there a finer sky than ours was that midnight; +so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back +the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. +The ground was white with hoar-frost, but we were not +cold; besides, the air, as we met it, was warmed by the +bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants carried +in front of us to light us on our way. It was delightful, +I do assure you; and I should like you to have seen us +there on our road to church, in those lanes with the bushes +along their banks as white as if they were in flower. The +hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long +spray so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a +garland for the communion-table, but it melted in <a id='corr103.28'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='our our'>our</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_103.28'><ins class='correction' title='our our'>our</ins></a></span> +hands: all flowers fade so soon! I was very sorry +about my garland; it was mournful to see it drip away, +and get smaller and smaller every minute!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The religious life is at bottom everywhere alike; but it +is curious to note the variousness of its setting and outward +circumstance. Catholicism has these so different from +Protestantism! and in Catholicism these accessories have, +it cannot be denied, a nobleness and amplitude which in +Protestantism is often wanting to them. In Catholicism +they have, from the antiquity of this form of religion, +from its pretensions to universality, from its really +widespread prevalence, from its sensuousness, something +<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>European, august, and imaginative: in Protestantism +they often have, from its inferiority in all these +respects, something provincial, mean, and prosaic. In +revenge, Protestantism has a future before it, a prospect +of growth in alliance with the vital movement of modern +society; while Catholicism appears to be bent on widening +the breach between itself and the modern spirit, to be fatally +losing itself in the multiplication of dogmas, Mariolatry, +and miracle-mongering. But the style and circumstance +of actual Catholicism is grander than its present tendency, +and the style and circumstance of Protestantism is meaner +than its tendency. While I was reading the journal of +Mdle. de Guérin there came into my hands the memoir +and poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss Emma Tatham; +and one could not but be struck with the singular contrast +which the two lives,—in their setting rather than in their +inherent quality,—present. Miss Tatham had not, certainly, +Mdlle. de Guérin’s talent, but she had a sincere +vein of poetic feeling, a genuine aptitude for composition. +Both were fervent Christians, and, so far, the two lives +have a real resemblance; but, in the setting of them, what +a difference! The Frenchwoman is a Catholic in Languedoc; +the Englishwoman is a Protestant at Margate; +Margate, that brick-and-mortar image of English Protestantism, +representing it in all its prose, all its uncomeliness,—let +me add, all its salubrity. Between the external form +and fashion of these two lives, between the Catholic +Mdle. de Guérin’s <span lang="fr"><i>nadalet</i></span> at the Languedoc Christmas, +her chapel of moss at Easter-time, her daily reading of the +life of a saint, carrying her to the most diverse times, +places, and peoples,—her quoting, when she wants to fix +her mind upon the staunchness which the religious +aspirant needs, the words of Saint Macedonius to a hunter +whom he met in the mountains, “I pursue after God, as +you pursue after game,”—her quoting, when she wants to +break a village girl of disobedience to her mother, the +story of the ten disobedient children whom at Hippo Saint +Augustine saw palsied;—between all this and the bare, +blank, narrowly English setting of Miss Tatham’s Protestantism, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>her “union in church-fellowship with the +worshipers at Hawley Square Chapel, Margate;” her +“singing with soft, sweet voice, the animating lines—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘My Jesus to know, and feel His blood flow,</div> + <div class='line'>’Tis life everlasting, ’tis heaven below;’”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>her “young female teachers belonging to the Sunday-school,” +and her “Mr. Thomas Rowe, a venerable class-leader,”—what +a dissimilarity! In the ground of the two +lives, a likeness; in all their circumstance, what unlikeness! +An unlikeness, it will be said, in that which is +non-essential and indifferent. Non-essential,—yes; indifferent,—no. +The signal want of grace and charm in +English Protestantism’s setting of its religious life is not +an indifferent matter; it is a real weakness. <em>This ought +ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.</em></p> + +<p class='c001'>I have said that the present tendency of Catholicism,—the +Catholicism of the main body of the Catholic clergy +and laity,—seems likely to exaggerate rather than to +remove all that in this form of religion is most repugnant +to reason; but this Catholicism was not that of Mdlle. de +Guérin. The insufficiency of her Catholicism comes from +a doctrine which Protestantism, too, has adopted, although +Protestantism, from its inherent element of freedom, may +find it easier to escape from it; a doctrine with a certain +attraction for all noble natures, but, in the modern world +at any rate, incurably sterile,—the doctrine of the emptiness +and nothingness of human life, of the superiority of +renouncement to activity, of quietism to energy; the +doctrine which makes effort for things on this side of the +grave a folly, and joy in things on this side of the grave a +sin. But her Catholicism is remarkably free from the +faults which Protestants commonly think inseparable from +Catholicism; the relation to the priest, the practice of +confession, assume, when she speaks of them, an aspect +which is not that under which Exeter Hall knows them, +but which,—unless one is of the number of those who +prefer regarding that by which men and nations die to +regarding that by which they live,—one is glad to study. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>“<span lang="fr"><i>La confession</i>,</span>” she says twice in her journal, “<span lang="fr"><i>n’est +qu’une expansion du repentir dans l’amour</i>;</span>” and her +weekly journey to the confessional in the little church of +Cahuzac is her “<span lang="fr"><i>cher pélerinage</i>;</span>” the little church is the +place where she has “<span lang="fr"><i>laissé tant de misères</i>.</span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>“This morning,” she writes on 28th of November, “I +was up before daylight, dressed quickly, said my prayers, +and started with Marie for Cahuzac. When we got there, +the chapel was occupied, which I was not sorry for. I like +not to be hurried, and to have time, before I go in, to lay +bare my soul before God. This often takes me a long +time, because my thoughts are apt to be flying about like +these autumn leaves. At ten o’clock I was on my knees, +listening to words the most salutary that were ever spoken; +and I went away, feeling myself a better being. Every +burden thrown off leaves us with a sense of brightness; +and when the soul has lain down the load of its sins at God’s +feet, it feels as if it had wings. What an admirable thing +is confession! What comfort, what light, what strength +is given me every time after I have said, <em>I have sinned</em>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>This blessing of confession is the greater, she says, “the +more the heart of the priest to whom we confide our +repentance is like that divine heart which ‘has so loved +us.’ This is what attaches me to M. Bories.” M. Bories +was the curé of her parish, a man no longer young, and of +whose loss, when he was about to leave them, she thus +speaks:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“What a grief for me! how much I lose in losing this +faithful guide of my conscience, heart, and mind, of my +whole self, which God has appointed to be in his charge, +and which let itself be in his charge so gladly! He knew +the resolves which God had put in my heart, and I had +need of his help to follow them. Our new curé cannot +supply his place: he is so young! and then he seems so +inexperienced, so undecided! It needs firmness to pluck +a soul out of the midst of the world, and to uphold it +against the assaults of flesh and blood. It is Saturday, my +day for going to Cahuzac; I am just going there, perhaps +I shall come back more tranquil. God has always given +<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>me some good thing there, in that chapel where I have +left behind me so many miseries.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Such is confession for her when the priest is worthy; +and, when he is not worthy, she knows how to separate +the man from the office:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“To-day I am going to do something which I dislike; +but I will do it, with God’s help. Do not think I am on +my way to the stake; it is only that I am going to confess +to a priest in whom I have not confidence, but who is the +only one here. In this act of religion the man must always +be separated from the priest, and sometimes the man must +be annihilated.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The same clear sense, the same freedom from superstition, +shows itself in all her religious life. She tells us, to +be sure, how once, when she was a little girl, she stained +a new frock, and on praying, in her alarm, to an image of +the Virgin which hung in her room, saw the stains vanish: +even the austerest Protestant will not judge such Mariolatry +as this very harshly. But, in general, the Virgin +Mary fills in the religious parts of her journal no prominent +place; it is Jesus, not Mary. “Oh, how well has +Jesus said: ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are +heavy laden.’ It is only there, only in the bosom of God, +that we can rightly weep, rightly rid ourselves of our +burden.” And again: “The mystery of suffering makes +one grasp the belief of something to be expiated, something +to be won. I see it in Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrow. +<em>It was necessary that the Son of Man should suffer.</em> That +is all we know in the troubles and calamities of life.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And who has ever spoken of justification more impressively +and piously than Mdlle. de Guérin speaks of it, when, +after reckoning the number of minutes she has lived, she +exclaims:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“My God, what have we done with all these minutes of +ours, which thou, too, wilt one day reckon? Will there +be any of them to count for eternal life? will there be +many of them? will there be one of them? ‘If thou, +O Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O +Lord, who may abide it!’ This close scrutiny of our +<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>time may well make us tremble, all of us who have advanced +more than a few steps in life; for God will judge +us otherwise than as he judges the lilies of the field. I +have never been able to understand the security of those +who placed their whole reliance, in presenting themselves +before God, upon a good conduct in the ordinary relations +of human life. As if all our duties were confined +within the narrow sphere of this world! To be a good +parent, a good child, a good citizen, a good brother or +sister, is not enough to procure entrance into the kingdom +of heaven. God demands other things besides these +kindly social virtues of him whom he means to crown with +an eternity of glory.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And, with this zeal for the spirit and power of religion, +what prudence in her counsels of religious practice; what +discernment, what measure! She has been speaking of +the charm of the <cite>Lives of the Saints</cite>, and she goes on:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Notwithstanding this, the <cite>Lives of the Saints</cite> seem to +me, for a great many people, dangerous reading. I would +not recommend them to a young girl, or even to some +women who are no longer young. What one reads has such +power over one’s feelings; and these, even in seeking God, +sometimes go astray. Alas, we have seen it in poor C.’s +case. What care one ought to take with a young person; +with what she reads, what she writes, her society, her +prayers,—all of them matters which demand a mother’s tender +watchfulness! I remember many things I did at fourteen, +which my mother, had she lived, would not have let +me do. I would have done anything for God’s sake; I +would have cast myself into an oven, and assuredly things +like that are not God’s will; He is not pleased by the hurt +one does to one’s health through that ardent but ill-regulated +piety which, while it impairs the body, often leaves +many a fault flourishing. And, therefore, Saint François +de Sales used to say to the nuns who asked his leave to +go bare-foot: <a id='corr108.36'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Change'>‘Change</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_108.36'><ins class='correction' title='Change'>‘Change</ins></a></span> your brains and keep your shoes.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Meanwhile Maurice, in a five years’ absence, and amid +the distractions of Paris, lost, or seemed to his sister to +<a id='corr108.39'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='close'>lose</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_108.39'><ins class='correction' title='close'>lose</ins></a></span>, something of his fondness for his home and its inmates: +<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>he certainly lost his early religious habits and feelings. +It is on this latter loss that Mdlle. de Guérin’s +journal oftenest touches,—with infinite delicacy, but with +infinite anguish:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Oh, the agony of being in fear for a soul’s salvation, +who can describe it! That which caused our Saviour the +keenest suffering, in the agony of his Passion, was not so +much the thought of the torments he was to endure, as the +thought that these torments would be of no avail for a +multitude of sinners; for all those who set themselves +against their redemption, or who do not care for it. The +mere anticipation of this obstinacy and this heedlessness +has power to make sorrowful, even unto death, the divine +Son of Man. And this feeling all Christian souls, according +to the measure of faith and love granted them, more +or less share.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Maurice returned to Le Cayla in the summer of 1837, and +passed six months there. This meeting entirely restored +the union between him and his family. “These six months +with us,” writes his sister, “he ill, and finding himself +so loved by us all, had entirely reattached him to us. +Five years without seeing us, had perhaps made him a +little lose sight of our affection for him; having found it +again, he met it with all the strength of his own. He had +so firmly renewed, before he left us, all family-ties, that +nothing but death could have broken them.” The separation +in religious matters between the brother and sister +gradually diminished, and before Maurice died it had +ceased. I have elsewhere spoken of Maurice’s religious +feeling and his character. It is probable that his divergence +from his sister in this sphere of religion was never +so wide as she feared, and that his reunion with her was +never so complete as she hoped. “His errors were +passed,” she says, “his illusions were cleared away; by +the call of his nature, by original disposition, he had +come back to sentiments of order. I knew all, I followed +each of his steps; out of the fiery sphere of the passions +(which held him but a little moment) I saw him pass into +the sphere of the Christian life. It was a beautiful soul, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>the soul of Maurice.” But the illness which had caused +his return to Le Cayla reappeared after he got back to +Paris in the winter of 1837-8. Again he seemed to recover; +and his marriage with a young Creole lady, Mdlle. Caroline +de Gervain, took place in the autumn of 1838. At the +end of September in that year Mdlle. de Guérin had +joined her brother in Paris; she was present at his marriage, +and stayed with him and his wife for some months +afterwards. Her journal recommences in April 1839. +Zealously as she promoted her brother’s marriage, cordial +as were her relations with her sister-in-law, it is evident +that a sense of loss, of loneliness, invades her, and sometimes +weighs her down. She writes in her journal on the +4th of May:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“God knows when we shall see one another again! My +own Maurice, must it be our lot to live apart, to find +that this marriage which I had so much share in bringing +about, which I hoped would keep us so much together, +leaves us more asunder than ever? For the present and +for the future, this troubles me more than I can say. My +sympathies, my inclinations, carry me more towards you +than towards any other member of our family. I have the +misfortune to be fonder of you than of anything else in the +world, and my heart had from of old built in you its +happiness. Youth gone and life declining, I looked forward +to quitting the scene with Maurice. At any time of +life a great affection is a great happiness; the spirit comes +to take refuge in it entirely. O delight and joy which will +never be your sister’s portion! Only in the direction of +God shall I find an issue for my heart to love as it has the +notion of loving, as it has the power of loving.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>For such complainings, in which there is undoubtedly +something morbid,—complainings which she herself +blamed, to which she seldom gave way, but which, in presenting +her character, it is not just to put wholly out of +sight,—she was called by the news of an alarming return +of her brother’s illness. For some days the entries in the +journal show her agony of apprehension. “He coughs, +he coughs still! Those words keep echoing forever in my +<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>ears, and pursue me wherever I go; I cannot look at the +leaves on the trees without thinking that the winter will +come, and then the consumptive die.” She went to +him, and brought him back by slow stages to Le Cayla, +dying. He died on the 19th of July 1839.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Thenceforward the energy of life ebbed in her; but the +main chords of her being, the chord of affection, the chord +of religious longing, the chord of intelligence, the chord +of sorrow, gave, so long as they answered to the touch at +all, a deeper and finer sound than ever. Always she saw +before her, “that beloved pale face;” “that beautiful +head, with all its different expressions, smiling, suffering, +dying,” regarded her always:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I have seen his coffin in the same room, in the same +spot where I remember seeing, when I was a very little +girl, his cradle, when I was brought home from Gaillac, +where I was then staying, for his christening. This christening +was a grand one, full of rejoicing, more than that +of any of the rest of us; specially marked. I enjoyed +myself greatly, and went back to Gaillac next day, charmed +with my new little brother. Two years afterwards I +came home, and brought with me a frock for him of my +own making. I dressed him in the frock, and took +him out with me along by the warren at the north of the +house, and there he walked a few steps alone,—his first +walking alone,—and I ran with delight to tell my mother +the news: ‘Maurice, Maurice has begun to walk by himself!’—Recollections +which, coming back to-day, break +one’s heart.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The shortness and suffering of her brother’s life filled +her with an agony of pity. “Poor beloved soul, you have +had hardly any happiness here below; your life has been +so short, your repose so rare. O God, uphold me, establish +my heart in thy faith! Alas, I have too little of this supporting +me! How we have gazed at him and loved him, +and kissed him,—his wife, and we, his sisters; he lying +lifeless in his bed, his head on the pillow as if he were +asleep! Then we followed him to the churchyard, to the +grave, to his last resting-place, and prayed over him, and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>wept over him; and we are here again, and I am writing +to him again, as if he were staying away from home, as if +he were in Paris. My beloved one, can it be, shall we +never see one another again on earth?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But in heaven?—and here, though love and hope finally +prevailed, the very passion of the sister’s longing sometimes +inspired torturing inquietudes:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I am broken down with misery. I want to see him. +Every moment I pray to God to grant me this grace. +Heaven, the world of <a id='corr112.10'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='sprits'>spirits</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_112.10'><ins class='correction' title='sprits'>spirits</ins></a></span>, is it so far from us? O depth, +O mystery of the other life which separates us! I, who +was so eagerly anxious about him, who wanted so to know +all that happened to him,—wherever he may be now, it is +over! I follow him unto the three abodes; I stop wistfully +before the place of bliss, I pass on to the place of suffering,—to +the gulf of fire. My God, my God, no! Not +there let my brother be! not there! And he is not: his +soul, the soul of Maurice, among the lost ... horrible +fear, no! But in purgatory, where the soul is cleansed by +suffering, where the failings of the heart are expiated, the +doubtings of the spirit, the half-yieldings to evil? Perhaps +my brother is there and suffers, and calls to us amidst +his anguish of repentance, as he used to call to us amidst +his bodily suffering: ‘Help me, you who love me.’ Yes, +beloved one, by prayer. I will go and pray; prayer <a id='corr112.25'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='has has'>has</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_112.25'><ins class='correction' title='has has'>has</ins></a></span> +been such a power to me, and I will pray to the end. +Prayer! Oh! and prayer for the dead; it is the dew of +purgatory.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Often, alas, the gracious dew would not fall; the air +of her soul was parched; the arid wind, which was somewhere +in the depths of her being, blew. She marks in +her journal the 1st of May, “this return of the loveliest +month in the year,” only to keep up the old habit; even +the mouth of May can no longer give her any pleasure: +“<span lang="fr"><i>Tout est changé</i></span>—all is changed.” She is crushed by +“the misery which has nothing good in it, the tearless, +dry misery, which bruises the heart like a hammer.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I am dying to everything. I am dying of a slow moral +agony, a condition of unutterable suffering. Lie there, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>my poor journal! be forgotten with all this world which +is fading away from me. I will write here no more until +I come to life again, until God re-awakens me out of this +tomb in which my soul lies buried. Maurice, my beloved! +it was not thus with me when I had <em>you</em>! The thought +of Maurice could revive me from the most profound depression: +to have him in the world was enough for me. +With Maurice, to be buried alive would have not seemed +dull to me.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And, as a burden to this funeral strain, the old <span lang="fr"><i>vide et +néant</i></span> of Bossuet, profound, solemn, sterile:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“So beautiful in the morning, and in the evening, <em>that!</em> +how the thought disenchants one, and turns one from the +world! I can understand that Spanish grandee who, +after lifting up the winding-sheet of a beautiful queen, +threw himself into the cloister and became a great saint. +I would have all my friends at La Trappe, in the interest +of their eternal welfare. Not that in the world one cannot +be saved, not that there are not in the world duties to +be discharged as sacred and as beautiful as there are in the +cloister, but....”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And there she stops, and a day or two afterwards her +journal comes to an end. A few fragments, a few letters +carry us on a little later, but after the 22d of August 1845 +there is nothing. To make known her brother’s genius to +the world was the one task she set herself after his death; +in 1840 came Madame Sand’s noble tribute to him in the +<span lang="fr"><cite>Révue des Deux Mondes</cite></span>; then followed projects of raising +a yet more enduring monument to his fame, by collecting +and publishing his scattered compositions; these projects +I have already said, were baffled;—Mdlle. de Guérin’s +letter of the 22d of August 1845 relates to this disappointment. +In silence, during nearly three years more, +she faded away at Le Cayla. She died on the 31st of May +1848.</p> + +<p class='c001'>M. Trebutien has accomplished the pious task in which +Mdlle. de Guérin was baffled, and has established Maurice’s +fame; by publishing this journal he has established +Eugénie’s also. She was very different from her brother; +<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>but she too, like him, had that in her which preserves a +reputation. Her soul had the same characteristic quality +as his talent,—<em>distinction</em>. Of this quality the world is +impatient; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, hates +it;—it ends by receiving its influence, and by undergoing +its law. This quality at last inexorably corrects the world’s +blunders, and fixes the world’s ideals. It procures that +the popular poet shall not finally pass for a Pindar, nor +the popular historian for a Tacitus, nor the popular +preacher for a Bossuet. To the circle of spirits marked +by this rare quality, Maurice and Eugénie de Guérin belong; +they will take their place in the sky which these +inhabit, and shine close to one another, <span lang="la"><i>lucida sidera</i></span>.</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span> + <h2 class='c005'>V. <br> <br>HEINRICH HEINE.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>“I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should +one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have +loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I +have never attached any great value to poetical fame; and +I trouble myself very little whether people praise my +verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a <em>sword</em>; for +I was a brave soldier in the Liberation War of humanity.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared quite +as much as his brethren of the <span lang="la"><i>genus irritabile</i></span> whether +people praised his verses or blamed them. And he was +very little of a hero. Posterity will certainly decorate his +tomb with the emblem of the laurel rather than with the +emblem of the sword. Still, for his contemporaries, for +us, for the Europe of the present century, he is significant +chiefly for the reason which he himself in the words just +quoted assigns. He is significant because he was, if not +pre-eminently a brave, yet a brilliant, a most effective soldier +in the Liberation War of humanity.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To ascertain the master-current in the literature of an +epoch, and to distinguish this from all minor currents, is +one of the critic’s highest functions; in discharging it he +shows how far he possesses the most indispensable quality +of his office,—justness of spirit. The living writer who +has done most to make England acquainted with German +authors, a man of genius, but to whom precisely this one +quality of justness of spirit is perhaps wanting,—I mean +Mr. Carlyle,—seems to me in the result of his labors on +German literature to afford a proof how very necessary to +the critic this quality is. Mr. Carlyle has spoken admirably +of Goethe; but then Goethe stands before all men’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>eyes, the manifest center of German literature; and from +this central source many rivers flow. Which of these rivers +is the main stream? which of the courses of spirit which +we see active in Goethe is the course which will most influence +the future, and attract and be continued by the +most powerful of Goethe’s successors?—that is the question. +Mr. Carlyle attaches, it seems to me, far too much importance +to the romantic school of Germany,—Tieck, Novalis, +Jean Paul Richter,—and gives to these writers, really +gifted as two, at any rate, of them are, an undue prominence. +These writers, and others with aims and a general +tendency the same as theirs, are not the real inheritors +and continuators of Goethe’s power; the current of their +activity is not the main current of German literature after +Goethe. Far more in Heine’s works flows this main current, +Heine, far more than Tieck or Jean Paul Richter, is +the continuator of that which, in Goethe’s varied activity, +is the most powerful and vital; on Heine, of all German +authors who survived Goethe, incomparably the largest +portion of Goethe’s mantle fell. I do not forget that when +Mr. Carlyle was dealing with German literature, Heine, +though he was clearly risen above the horizon, had not +shone forth with all his strength; I do not forget, too, +that after ten or twenty years many things may come out +plain before the critic which before were hard to be discerned +by him; and assuredly no one would dream of imputing +it as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty years ago +he mistook the central current in German literature, overlooked +the rising Heine, and attached undue importance +to that romantic school which Heine was to destroy; one +may rather note it as a misfortune, sent perhaps as a delicate +chastisement to a critic, who,—man of genius as he +is, and no one recognizes his genius more admirably than +I do,—has, for the functions of the critic, a little too much +of the self-will and eccentricity of a genuine son of Great +Britain.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most important +German successor and continuator of Goethe in Goethe’s +most important line of activity. And which of Goethe’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>lines of activity is this?—His line of activity as “a soldier +in the war of liberation of humanity.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Heine himself would hardly have admitted this affiliation, +though he was far too powerful-minded a man to decry, +with some of the vulgar German liberals, Goethe’s genius. +“The wind of the Paris Revolution,” he writes after the +three days of 1830, “blew about the candles a little in the +dark night of Germany, so that the red curtains of a German +throne or two caught fire; but the old watchmen, +who do the police of the German kingdoms, are already +bringing out the fire engines, and will keep the candles +closer snuffed for the future. Poor, fast-bound German +people, lose not all heart in thy bonds! The fashionable +coating of ice melts off from my heart, my soul quivers +and my eyes burn, and that is a disadvantageous state of +things for a writer, who should control his subject-matter +and keep himself beautifully objective, as the artistic +school would have us, and as Goethe has done; he has +come to be eighty years old doing this, and minister, and +in good condition:—poor German people! that is thy +greatest man!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But hear Goethe himself: “If I were to say what I had +really been to the Germans in general, and to the young +German poets in particular, I should say I had been their +<em>liberator</em>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Modern times find themselves with an immense system +of institutions, established facts, accredited dogmas, customs, +rules, which have come to them from times not +modern. In this system their life has to be carried forward; +yet they have a sense that this system is not of their +own creation, that it by no means corresponds exactly with +the wants of their actual life, that, for them, it is customary, +not rational. The awakening of this sense is the +awakening of the modern spirit. The modern spirit is +now awake almost everywhere; the sense of want of correspondence +between the forms of modern Europe and its +spirit, between the new wine of the eighteenth and nineteenth +centuries, and the old bottles of the eleventh and +twelfth centuries, or even of the sixteenth and seventeenth, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>almost every one now perceives; it is no longer dangerous +to affirm that this want of correspondence exists; people +are even beginning to be shy of denying it. To remove +this want of correspondence is beginning to be the settled +endeavor of most persons of good sense. Dissolvents of +the old European system of dominant ideas and facts we +must all be, all of us who have any power of working; +what we have to study is that we may not be acrid dissolvents +of it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in an age +when there were fewer of them than at present, proceed +in his task of dissolution, of liberation of the modern +European from the old routine? He shall tell us himself. +“Through me the German poets have become aware that, +as man must live from within outwards, so the artist must +work from within outwards, seeing that, make what contortions +he will, he can only bring to light his own individuality. +I can clearly mark where this influence of mine +has made itself felt; there arises out of it a kind of poetry +of nature, and only in this way is it possible to be original.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>My voice shall never be joined to those which decry +Goethe, and if it is said that the foregoing is a lame +and impotent conclusion to Goethe’s declaration that +he had been the liberator of the Germans in general, +and of the young German poets in particular, I say it is +not. Goethe’s profound, imperturbable naturalism is +absolutely fatal to all routine thinking, he puts the +standard, once for all, inside every man instead of outside +him; when he is told, such a thing must be so, there is immense +authority and custom in favor of its being so, it has +been held to be so for a thousand years, he answers with +Olympian politeness, “But <em>is</em> it so? is it so to <em>me</em>?” Nothing +could be more really subversive of the foundations +on which the old European order rested; and it may be +remarked that no persons are so radically detached from +this order, no persons so thoroughly modern, as those +who have felt Goethe’s influence most deeply. If it is +said that Goethe professes to have in this way deeply influenced +but a few persons, and those persons poets, one +<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>may answer that he could have taken no better way to +secure, in the end, the ear of the world; for poetry is +simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective +mode of saying things, and hence its importance. Nevertheless +the process of liberation, as Goethe worked it, though +sure, is undoubtedly slow; he came, as Heine says, to be +eighty years old in thus working it, and at the end of that +time the old Middle-Age machine was still creaking on, +the thirty German courts and their chamberlains subsisted +in all their glory; Goethe himself was a minister, and the +visible triumph of the modern spirit over prescription and +routine seemed as far off as ever. It was the year 1830; the +German sovereigns had passed the preceding fifteen years in +breaking the promises of freedom they had made to their +subjects when they wanted their help in the final struggle +with Napoleon. Great events were happening in France; +the revolution, defeated in 1815, had arisen from its defeat, +and was wresting from its adversaries the power. Heinrich +Heine, a young man of genius, born at Hamburg,<a id='r20'></a><a href='#f20' class='c007'><sup>[20]</sup></a> +and with all the culture of Germany, but by race a Jew; +with warm sympathies for France, whose revolution had +given to his race the rights of citizenship, and whose rule +had been, as is well known, popular in the Rhine provinces, +where he passed his youth; with a passionate admiration +for the great French Emperor, with a passionate contempt +for the sovereigns who had overthrown him, for their +agents, and for their policy,—Heinrich Heine was in 1830 +in no humor for any such gradual process of liberation +from the old order of things as that which Goethe had +followed. His counsel was for open war. Taking that +terrible modern weapon, the pen, in his hand, he passed +the remainder of his life in one fierce battle. What was +that battle? the reader will ask. It was a life and death +battle with <a id='corr119.34'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Philistinism,'>Philistinism.</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_119.34'><ins class='correction' title='Philistinism,'>Philistinism.</ins></a></span></p> + +<p class='c001'><em>Philistinism!</em>—we have not the expression in English. +Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much +of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they did not talk of +solecisms; and here, at the very headquarters of Goliath, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>nobody talks of Philistinism. The French have adopted +the term <span lang="fr"><i>épicier</i></span> (grocer), to designate the sort of being +whom the Germans designate by the Philistine; but the +French term,—besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable +class, composed of living and susceptible members, +while the original Philistines are dead and buried long +ago,—is really, I think, in itself much less apt and expressive +than the German term. Efforts have been made +to obtain in English some term equivalent to <span lang="fr"><i>Philister</i></span> +or <span lang="fr"><i>épicier</i></span>; Mr. Carlyle has made several such efforts: +“respectability with its thousand gigs,” he says;—well, +the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. Carlyle +means, a Philistine. However, the word <em>respectable</em> is +far too valuable a word to be thus perverted from its +proper meaning; if the English are ever to have a word for +the thing we are speaking of,—and so prodigious are the +changes which the modern spirit is introducing, that even +we English shall perhaps one day come to want such a +word,—I think we had much better take the term <em>Philistine</em> +itself.</p> + +<p class='c001'><em>Philistine</em> must have originally meant, in the mind of +those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened +opponent of the chosen people, of the children +of the light. The party of change, the would-be remodelers +of the old traditional European order, the invokers +of reason against custom, the representatives of the modern +spirit in every sphere where it is applicable, regarded +themselves, with the robust self-confidence natural to reformers +as a chosen people, as children of the light. They +regarded their adversaries as humdrum people, slaves to +routine, enemies to light; stupid and oppressive, but at +the same time very strong. This explains the love which +Heine, that Paladin of the modern spirit, has for France; +it explains the preference which he gives to France over +Germany: “the French,” he says, “are the chosen +people of the new religion, its first gospels and dogmas +have been drawn up in their language; Paris is the +new Jerusalem, and the Rhine is the Jordan which divides +the consecrated land of freedom from the land of the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>Philistines.” He means that the French, as a people, +have shown more accessibility to ideas than any other +people; that prescription and routine have had less hold +upon them than upon any other people; that they have +shown most readiness to move and to alter at the bidding +(real or supposed) of reason. This explains, too, +the detestation which Heine had for the English: “I +might settle in England,” he says, in his exile, “if it +were not that I should find there two things, coal-smoke and +Englishmen; I cannot abide either.” What he hated in +English was the “<span lang="de">ächtbrittische Beschränktheit,</span>” as he +calls it,—the <em>genuine British narrowness</em>. In truth, the +English, profoundly as they have modified the old Middle-Age +order, great as is the liberty which they have +secured for themselves, have in all their changes proceeded, +to use a familiar expression, by the rule of thumb; +what was intolerably inconvenient to them they have +suppressed, and as they have suppressed it, not because +it was irrational, but because it was practically inconvenient, +they have seldom in suppressing it appealed +to reason, but always, if possible, to some precedent, +or form, or letter, which served as a convenient +instrument for their purpose, and which saved them +from the necessity of recurring to general principles. +They have thus become, in a certain sense, of all people +the most inaccessible to ideas and the most impatient of +them; inaccessible to them, because of their want of +familiarity with them; and impatient of them because +they have got on so well without them, that they despise +those who, not having got on as well as themselves, still +make a fuss for what they themselves have done so well +without. But there has certainly followed from hence, +in this country, somewhat of a general depression of pure +intelligence: Philistia has come to be thought by us the +true Land of Promise, and it is anything but that; the +born lover of ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must +feel in this country, that the sky over his head is of brass +and iron. The enthusiast for the idea, for reason, values +reason, the idea, in and for themselves; he values them, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>irrespectively of the practical conveniences which their +triumph may obtain for him; and the man who regards +the possession of these practical conveniences as something +sufficient in itself, something which compensates for the +absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, +a Philistine. This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly +attacks the liberals; much as he hates conservatism he +hates Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conservatism +itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in the +name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett is thus +for him, much as he disliked our clergy and aristocracy +whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with six fingers on +every hand and on every foot six toes, four-and-twenty +in number: a Philistine, the staff of whose spear is like a +weaver’s beam. Thus he speaks of him:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“While I translate Cobbett’s words, the man himself +comes bodily before my mind’s eye, as I saw him at that +uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, with +his scolding red face and his radical laugh, in which venomous +hate mingles with a mocking exultation at his enemies’ +surely approaching downfall. He is a chained cur, who +falls with equal fury on every one whom he does not know, +often bites the best friend of the house in his calves, barks +incessantly, and just because of this incessantness of his +barking cannot get listened to, even when he barks at a +real thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves who plunder +England do not think it necessary to throw the growling +Cobbett a bone to stop his mouth. This makes the +dog furiously savage, and he shows all his hungry teeth. +Poor old Cobbett! England’s dog! I have no love for +thee, for every vulgar nature my soul abhors; but thou +touchest me to the inmost soul with pity, as I see how +thou strainest in vain to break loose and to get at those +thieves, who make off with their booty before thy very +eyes, and mock at thy fruitless springs and thine impotent +howling.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A chosen +circle of children of the modern spirit, perfectly emancipated +from prejudice and commonplace, regarding the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>ideal side of things in all its efforts for change, passionately +despising half-measures and condescension to human folly +and obstinacy,—with a bewildered, timid, torpid multitude +behind,—conducts a country to the government of +Herr von Bismarck. A nation regarding the practical side +of things in its efforts for change, attacking not what is +irrational, but what is pressingly inconvenient, and attacking +this as one body, “moving altogether if it move at +all,” and treating children of light like the very harshest +of stepmothers, comes to the prosperity and liberty of +modern England. For all that, however, Philistia (let me +say it again) is not the true promised land, as we English +commonly imagine it to be; and our excessive neglect of +the idea, and consequent inaptitude for it, threatens us, +at a moment when the idea is beginning to exercise a real +power in human society, with serious future inconvenience, +and, in the meanwhile, cuts us off from the sympathy of +other nations, which feel its power more than we do.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that the fire-engines +of the German governments were too much for +his direct efforts at incendiarism. “What demon drove +me,” he cries, “to write my <span lang="de"><cite>Reisebilder</cite></span>, to edit a newspaper, +to plague myself with our time and its interests, to +try and shake the poor German Hodge out of his thousand +years’ sleep in his hole? What good did I get by it? +Hodge opened his eyes, only to shut them again immediately; +he yawned, only to begin snoring again the next +minute louder than ever; he stretched his stiff ungainly +limbs, only to sink down again directly afterwards, and +lie like a dead man in the old bed of his accustomed habits. +I must have rest; but where am I to find a resting-place? +In Germany I can no longer stay.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>This is Heine’s jesting account of his own efforts to +rouse Germany: now for his pathetic account of them; it +is because he unites so much wit with so much pathos that +he is so effective a writer:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The Emperor Charles the Fifth sate in sore straits, +in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies. All his knights +and courtiers had forsaken him; not one came to his help. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>I know not if he had at that time the cheese face with which +Holbein has painted him for us. But I am sure that +under lip of his, with its contempt for mankind, stuck out +even more than it does in his portraits. How could he but +contemn the tribe which in the sunshine of his prosperity +had fawned on him so devotedly, and now, in his +dark distress, left him all alone? Then suddenly his door +opened, and there came in a man in disguise, and, as he +threw back his cloak, the Kaiser recognized in him his faithful +Conrad von der Rosen, the court jester. This man +brought him comfort and counsel, and he was the court +jester!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“O German fatherland! dear German people! I am +thy Conrad von der Rosen. The man whose proper business +was to amuse thee, and who in good times should have +catered only for thy mirth, makes his way into thy prison +in time of need; here, under my cloak, I bring thee thy +scepter and crown; dost thou not recognize me, my +Kaiser? If I cannot free thee, I will at least comfort thee, +and thou shalt at least have one with thee who will prattle +with thee about thy sorest affliction, and whisper courage +to thee, and love thee, and whose best joke and best +blood shall be at thy service. For thou, my people, art +the true Kaiser, the true lord of the land; thy will is sovereign, +and more legitimate far than that purple <span lang="fr"><i>Tel est +notre plaisir</i></span>, which invokes a divine right with no better +warrant than the anointings of shaven and shorn jugglers; +thy will, my people, is the sole rightful source of power. +Though now thou liest down in thy bonds, yet in the end +will thy rightful cause prevail; the day of deliverance is +at hand, a new time is beginning. My Kaiser, the night +is over, and out there glows the ruddy dawn.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou art mistaken; +perhaps thou takest a headsman’s gleaming axe for the +sun, and the red of dawn is only blood.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is rising in +the west; these six thousand years it has always risen in +the east; it is high time there should come a change.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou hast lost the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>bells out of thy red cap, and it has now such an odd look, +that red cap of thine!’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake my +head so hard and fierce, that the fool’s bells have dropped +off my cap; the cap is none the worse for that.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, what is that noise +of breaking and cracking outside there?’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Hush! that is the saw and the carpenter’s axe, and +soon the doors of thy prison will be burst open, and thou +wilt be free, my Kaiser!’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Am I then really Kaiser? Ah, I forgot, it is the +fool who tells me so!’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy prison +makes thee so desponding! when once thou hast got thy +rights again, thou wilt feel once more the bold imperial +blood in thy veins, and thou wilt be proud like a Kaiser, +and violent, and gracious, and unjust, and smiling, and +ungrateful, as princes are.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, when I am free, +what wilt thou do then?’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘I will then sew new bells on to my cap.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘And how shall I recompense thy <a id='corr125.22'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='fidelity?”'>fidelity?’</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_125.22'><ins class='correction' title='fidelity?”'>fidelity?’</ins></a></span></p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a +ditch!’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>I wish to mark Heine’s place in modern European literature, +the scope of his activity, and his value. I cannot +attempt to give here a detailed account of his life, or a +description of his separate works. In May 1831 he went +over his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed himself in his new +Jerusalem, Paris. There, henceforward, he lived, going +in general to some French watering-place in the summer, +but making only one or two short visits to Germany during +the rest of his life. His works, in verse and prose, succeeded +each other without stopping; a collected edition +of them, filling seven closely-printed octavo volumes, has +been published in America;<a id='r21'></a><a href='#f21' class='c007'><sup>[21]</sup></a> in the collected editions of +few people’s works is there so little to skip. Those who +wish for a single good specimen of him should read his +<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>first important work, the work which made his reputation, +the <span lang="de"><cite>Reisebilder</cite></span>, or “Traveling Sketches:” prose and +verse, wit and seriousness, are mingled in it, and the +mingling of these is characteristic of Heine, and is nowhere +to be seen practised more naturally and happily +than in his <span lang="de"><cite>Reisebilder</cite></span>. In 1847 his health, which till +then had always been perfectly good, gave way. He had +a kind of paralytic stroke. His malady proved to be a +softening of the spinal marrow: it was incurable; it made +rapid progress. In May 1848, not a year after his first +attack, he went out of doors for the last time; but his +disease took more than eight years to kill him. For +nearly eight years he lay helpless on a couch, with the use +of his limbs gone, wasted almost to the proportions of a +child, wasted so that a woman could carry him about; +the sight of one eye lost, that of the other greatly dimmed, +and requiring, that it might be exercised, to have the +palsied eyelid lifted and held up by the finger; all this, +and, besides this, suffering at short intervals paroxysms +of nervous agony. I have said he was not pre-eminently +brave; but in the astonishing force of spirit with which +he retained his activity of mind, even his gayety, amid all +his suffering, and went on composing with undiminished +fire to the last, he was truly brave. Nothing could clog +that aërial lightness. “<span lang="fr">Pouvez-vous siffler?</span>” his doctor +asked him one day, when he was almost at his last gasp;—“<span lang="fr">siffler,</span>” +as every one knows, has the double meaning of +<em>to whistle</em> and <em>to hiss</em>:—“<span lang="fr">Hélas! non,</span>” was his whispered +answer; “<span lang="fr">pas même une comédie de M. Scribe!</span>” Μ. +Scribe is, or was, the favorite dramatist of the French +Philistine. “My nerves,” he said to some one who asked +him about them in 1855, the year of the great Exhibition +in Paris, “my nerves are of that quite singularly remarkable +miserableness of nature, that I am convinced they +would get at the Exhibition the grand medal for pain and +misery.” He read all the medical books which treated of +his complaint. “But,” said he to some one who found +him thus engaged, “what good this reading is to do me I +don’t know, except that it will qualify me to give lectures +<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth about +diseases of the spinal marrow.” What a matter of grim +seriousness are our own ailments to most of us! yet with +this gayety Heine treated his to the end. That end, so +long in coming, came at last. Heine died on the 17th of +February, 1856, at the age of fifty-eight. By his will he +forbade that his remains should be transported to Germany. +He lies buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, at +Paris.</p> + +<p class='c001'>His direct political action was null, and this is neither +to be wondered at nor regretted; direct political action is +not the true function of literature, and Heine was a born +man of letters. Even in his favorite France the turn +taken by public affairs was not at all what he wished, +though he read French politics by no means as we in +England, most of us, read them. He thought things +were tending there to the triumph of communism; and to +a champion of the idea like Heine, what there is gross and +narrow in communism was very repulsive, “It is all of +no use,” he cried on his death-bed, “the future belongs +to our enemies, the Communists, and Louis Napoleon is +their John the Baptist.” “And yet,”—he added with all +his old love for that remarkable entity, so full of attraction +for him, so profoundly unknown in England, the +French people,—“do not believe that God lets all this go +forward merely as a grand comedy. Even though the +Communists deny him to-day, he knows better than they +do, that a time will come when they will learn to believe +in him.” After 1831, his hopes of soon upsetting the +German Governments had died away, and his propagandism +took another, a more truly literary, character. It +took the character of an intrepid application of the modern +spirit to literature. To the ideas with which the burning +questions of modern life filled him, he made all his subject-matter +minister. He touched all the great points in the +career of the human race, and here he but followed the +tendency of the wide culture of Germany; but he touched +them with a wand which brought them all under a light +where the modern eye cares most to see them, and here he +<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>gave a lesson to the culture of Germany,—so wide, so impartial, +that it is apt to become slack and powerless, and +to lose itself in its materials for want of a strong central +idea round which to group all its other ideas. So the +mystic and romantic school of Germany lost itself in the +Middle Ages, was overpowered by their influence, came to +ruin by its vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a +far profounder sense of the mystic and romantic charm of +the Middle Age than Gœrres, or Brentano, or Arnim, +Heine the chief romantic poet of Germany, is yet also +much more than a romantic poet; he is a great modern +poet, he is not conquered by the Middle Age, he has a +talisman by which he can feel,—along with but above the +power of the fascinating Middle Age itself,—the power of +modern ideas.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A French critic of Heine thinks he has said enough in +saying that Heine proclaimed in German countries, with +beat of drum, the ideas of 1789, and that at the cheerful +noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle Age took to +flight. But this is rather too French an account of the +matter. Germany, that vast mine of ideas, had no need +to import ideas, as such, from any foreign country; and +if Heine had carried ideas, as such, from France into +Germany, he would but have been carrying coals to Newcastle. +But that for which France, far less meditative +than Germany, is eminent, is the prompt, ardent, and +practical application of an idea, when she seizes it, in all +departments of human activity which admit it. And that +in which Germany most fails, and by failing in which she +appears so helpless and impotent, is just the practical +application of her innumerable ideas. “When Candide,” +says Heine himself, “came to Eldorado, he saw in the +streets a number of boys who were playing with gold-nuggets +instead of marbles. This degree of luxury made +him imagine that they must be the king’s children, and +he was not a little astonished when he found that in +Eldorado gold-nuggets are of no more value than marbles +are with us, and that the schoolboys play with them. A +similar thing happened to a friend of mine, a foreigner, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>when he came to Germany and first read German books. +He was perfectly astounded at the wealth of ideas which +he found in them; but he soon remarked that ideas in +Germany are as plentiful as gold-nuggets in Eldorado, and +that those writers whom he had taken for intellectual +princes, were in reality only common schoolboys.” +Heine was, as he called himself, a “Child of the French +Revolution,” an “Initiator,” because he vigorously assured +the Germans that ideas were not counters or marbles, to +be played with for their own sake; because he exhibited +in literature modern ideas applied with the utmost freedom, +clearness, and originality. And therefore he declared +that the great task of his life had been the endeavor +to establish a cordial relation between France and Germany. +It is because he thus operates a junction between +the French spirit, and German ideas and German culture, +that he founds something new, opens a fresh period, and +deserves the attention of criticism far more than the German +poets his contemporaries, who merely continue an +old period till it expires. It may be predicted that in the +literature of other countries, too, the French spirit is +destined to make its influence felt,—as an element, in +alliance with the native spirit, of novelty and movement,—as +it has made its influence felt in German literature; +fifty years hence a critic will be demonstrating to our +grandchildren how this phenomenon has come to pass.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We in England, in our great burst of literature during +the first thirty years of the present century, had no manifestation +of the modern spirit, as this spirit manifests +itself in Goethe’s works or Heine’s. And the reason is +not far to seek. We had neither the German wealth of +ideas, nor the French enthusiasm for applying ideas. +There reigned in the mass of the nation that inveterate +inaccessibility to ideas, that Philistinism,—to use the +German nickname,—which reacts even on the individual +genius that is exempt from it. In our greatest literary +epoch, that of the Elizabethan age, English society at +large was accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, was +vivified by them, to a degree which has never been reached +<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>in England since. Hence the unique greatness in English +literature of Shakspeare and his contemporaries. They +were powerfully upheld by the intellectual life of their +nation; they applied freely in literature the then modern +ideas,—the ideas of the Renascence and the Reformation. +A few years afterwards the great English middle class, the +kernel of the nation, the class whose intelligent sympathy +had upheld a Shakspeare, entered the prison of Puritanism, +and had the key turned on its spirit there for two +hundred years. <em>He enlargeth a nation</em>, says Job, <em>and +straiteneth it again</em>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In the literary movement of the beginning of the nineteenth +century the signal attempt to apply freely the +modern spirit was made in England by two members of +the aristocratic class, Byron and Shelley. Aristocracies +are, as such, naturally impenetrable by ideas; but their +individual members have a high courage and a turn for +breaking bounds; and a man of genius, who is the born +child of the idea, happening to be born in the aristocratic +ranks, chafes against the obstacles which prevent him +from freely developing it. But Byron and Shelley did not +succeed in their attempt freely to apply the modern spirit +in English literature; they could not succeed in it; the +resistance to baffle them, the want of intelligent sympathy +to guide and uphold them, were too great. Their literary +creation, compared with the literary creation of Shakspeare +and Spenser, compared with the literary creation +of Goethe and Heine, is a failure. The best literary creation +of that time in England proceeded from men who +did not make the same bold attempt as Byron and Shelley. +What, in fact, was the career of the chief English men of +letters, their contemporaries? The gravest of them, +Wordsworth, retired (in Middle-Age phrase) into a monastery. +I mean, he plunged himself in the inward life, he +voluntarily cut himself off from the modern spirit. Coleridge +took to opium. Scott became the historiographer-royal +of feudalism. Keats passionately gave himself up to +a sensuous genius, to his faculty for interpreting nature; +and he died of consumption at twenty-five. Wordsworth, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>Scott, and Keats have left admirable works; far more +solid and complete works than those which Byron and +Shelley have left. But their works have this defect,—they +do not belong to that which is the main current of +the literature of modern epochs, they do not apply modern +ideas to life; they constitute, therefore, <em>minor currents</em>, +and all other literary work of our day, however popular, +which has the same defect, also constitutes but a minor +current. Byron and Shelley will long be remembered, +long after the inadequacy of their actual work is clearly +recognized for their passionate, their Titanic effort to flow +in the main stream of modern literature; their names will +be greater than their writings; <span lang="la"><i>stat magni nominis umbra</i></span>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Heine’s literary good fortune was superior to that of +Byron and Shelley. His theater of operations was Germany, +whose Philistinism does not consist in her want of +ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she teems with +them and loves them, but, as I have said, in her feeble +and hesitating application of modern ideas to life. Heine’s +intense modernism, his absolute freedom, his utter rejection +of stock classicism and stock romanticism, his bringing +all things under the point of view of the nineteenth +century, were understood and laid to heart by Germany, +through virtue of her immense, tolerant intellectualism, +much as there was in all Heine said to affront +and wound Germany. The wit and ardent modern spirit +of France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, the +thought of Germany. This is what makes him so remarkable; +his wonderful clearness, lightness, and freedom, +united with such power of feeling, and width of range. +Is there anywhere keener wit than in his story of the +French abbé who was his tutor, and who wanted to get +from him that <span lang="fr"><i>la religion</i></span> is French for <span lang="de"><i>der Glaube</i></span>: “Six +times did he ask me the question: ‘Henry, what is <span lang="de"><i>der +Glaube</i></span> in French?’ and six times, and each time with a +greater burst of tears, did I answer him—‘It is <span lang="fr"><i>le crédit</i></span>.’ +And at the seventh time, his face purple with rage, the +infuriated questioner screamed out: ‘It is <span lang="fr"><i>la religion</i></span>;’ +and a rain of cuffs descended upon me, and all the other +<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>boys burst out laughing. Since that day I have never +been able to hear <span lang="fr"><i>la religion</i></span> mentioned, without feeling a +tremor run through my back, and my cheeks grow red +with shame.” Or in that comment on the fate of Professor +Saalfeld, who had been addicted to writing furious +pamphlets against Napoleon, and who was a professor at +Göttingen, a great seat, according to Heine, of pedantry +and Philistinism: “It is curious,” says Heine, “the +three greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all of them +ended miserably. Castlereagh cut his own throat; Louis +the Eighteenth rotted upon his throne; and Professor +Saalfeld is still a professor at Göttingen.” It is impossible +to go beyond that.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What wit, again, in that saying which every one has +heard: “The Englishman loves liberty like his lawful +wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mistress, the +German loves her like his old grandmother.” But the +turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so +well known; and it is by that turn he shows himself the +born poet he is,—full of delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible +resource, infinitely new and striking:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things +may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper +with his wife, is capable of some day putting a rope round +her neck, and taking her to be sold at Smithfield. The +inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his +adored mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais +Royal after another. <em>But the German will never quite +abandon his old grandmother</em>; he will always keep for her +a nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell her fairy +stories to the listening children.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily both +the weakness and the strength of Germany;—pedantic, +simple, enslaved, free, ridiculous, admirable Germany?</p> + +<p class='c001'>And Heine’s verse,—his <span lang="de"><i>Lieder</i></span>? Oh, the comfort, +after dealing with French people of genius, irresistibly +impelled to try and express themselves in verse, launching +out into a deed which destiny has sown with so many +rocks for them,—the comfort of coming to a man of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>genius, who finds in verse his freest and most perfect expression, +whose voyage over the deep of poetry destiny +makes smooth! After the rhythm, to us, at any rate, +with the German paste in our composition, so deeply unsatisfying, +of—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">“Ah! que me dites-vous, et que vous dit mon âme?</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Que dit le ciel à l’aube et la flamme à la flamme?”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Take, oh, take those lips away,</div> + <div class='line'>That so sweetly were forsworn—”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="de">“Siehst sehr sterbeblässlich aus,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="de">Doch getrost! du bist zu Haus—”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>in which one’s soul can take pleasure! The magic of +Heine’s poetical form is incomparable; he chiefly uses a +form of old German popular poetry, a ballad-form which +has more rapidity and grace than any ballad-form of ours; +he employs this form with the most exquisite lightness +and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn fulness, +pathos, and old-world charm of all true forms of +popular poetry. Thus in Heine’s poetry, too, one perpetually +blends the impression of French modernism and +clearness, with that of German sentiment and fulness; +and to give this blended impression is, as I have said, +Heine’s great characteristic. To feel it, one must read +him; he gives it in his form as well as in his contents, +and by translation I can only reproduce it so far as his +contents give it. But even the contents of many of his +poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. Here, +for instance, is a poem in which he makes his profession +of faith to an innocent beautiful soul, a sort of Gretchen, +the child of some simple mining people having their hut +among the pines at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who +reproaches him with not holding the old articles of the +Christian creed:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while I yet +<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>sate upon my mother’s knee, I believed in God the Father, +who rules up there in Heaven, good and great;</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Who created the beautiful earth, and the beautiful +men and women thereon; who ordained for sun, moon, +and stars their courses.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended yet a +great deal more than this, and comprehended, and grew +intelligent; and I believe on the Son also;</p> + +<p class='c001'>“On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealed love +to us; and, for his reward, as always happens, was crucified +by the people.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have +traveled much, my heart swells within me, and with my +whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The greatest miracles were of his working, and still +greater miracles doth he even now work; he burst in +sunder the oppressor’s stronghold, and he burst in sunder +the bondsman’s yoke.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old right; +all mankind are one race of noble equals before him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“He chases away the evil clouds and the dark cobwebs +of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy for us, which +day and night have loured on us.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy +Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, and he has put courage +into their souls.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Their good swords flash, their bright banners wave; +what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to look upon +such gallant knights?</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Well, on me, my child, look! kiss me, and look boldly +upon me! one of those knights of the Holy Ghost am I.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>One has only to turn over the pages of his <span lang="fr"><cite>Romancero</cite></span>,—a +collection of poems written in the first years of his illness, +with his whole power and charm still in them, and +not, like his latest poems of all, painfully touched by the +air of his <span lang="de"><cite>Matrazzen-gruft</cite></span>, his “mattress-grave,”—to see +Heine’s width of range; the most varied figures succeed +one another,—Rhampsinitus, Edith with the Swan Neck, +Charles the First, Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine +<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>of <span lang="fr"><cite>Mabille</cite></span>, Melisanda of Tripoli, Richard Cœur de Lion, +Pedro the Cruel, Firdusi, Cortes, Dr. Döllinger;—but +never does Heine attempt to be <span lang="de"><i>hübsch objectiv</i></span>, “beautifully +objective,” to become in spirit an old Egyptian, or +an old Hebrew, or a Middle-Age knight, or a Spanish adventurer, +or an English royalist; he always remains Heinrich +Heine, a son of the nineteenth century. To give a +notion of his tone, I will quote a few stanzas at the end of +the <cite>Spanish Atridæ</cite>, in which he describes, in the character +of a visitor at the court of Henry of Transtamare at +Segovia, Henry’s treatment of the children of his brother, +Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego Albuquerque, his neighbor, +strolls after dinner through the castle with him:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels +where are kept the king’s hounds, that with their growling +and yelping let you know a long way off where they +are.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong +iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Two human figures sate therein, two young boys; +chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the other +not much older; their faces fair and noble, but pale and +wan with sickness.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“They were all in rags, almost naked; and their lean +bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage; both of +them shivered with fever.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“They looked up at me out of the depth of their +misery; ‘who,’ I cried in horror to Don Diego, ‘are these +pictures of wretchedness?’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Don Diego seemed embarrassed; he looked round to +see that no one was listening; then he gave a deep sigh; +and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man of the world, +he said:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘These are a pair of king’s sons, who were early left +orphans; the name of their father was King Pedro, the +name of their mother, Maria de Padilla.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>Transtamare had relieved his brother, King Pedro, of the +troublesome burden of the crown.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘And likewise of that still more troublesome burden, +which is called life, then Don Henry’s victorious magnanimity +had to deal with his brother’s children.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘He has adopted them, as an uncle should; and he +has given them free quarters in his own castle.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘The room which he has assigned to them is certainly +rather small, but then it is cool in summer, and not intolerably +cold in winter.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Their fare is rye-bread, which tastes as sweet as if +the goddess Ceres had baked it express for her beloved +Proserpine.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Not unfrequently, too, he sends a scullion to them +with garbanzos, and then the young gentlemen know that +it is Sunday in Spain.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos do +not come every day; and the master of the hounds gives +them the treat of his whip.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘For the master of the hounds, who has under his +superintendence the kennels and the pack, and the nephews’ +cage also.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced +woman with the white ruff, whom we remarked to-day at +dinner.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband +snatches his whip, and rushes down here, and gives it to +the dogs and to the poor little boys.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘But his majesty has expressed his disapproval of +such proceedings, and has given orders that for the +future his nephews are to be treated differently from the +dogs.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘He has determined no longer to entrust the disciplining +of his nephews to a mercenary stranger, but to carry +it out with his own hands.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Don Diego stopped abruptly; for the seneschal of the +castle joined us, and politely expressed his hope that we +had dined to our satisfaction.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finishing +<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>with the grim innuendo of the last stanza but one, is at +once truly masterly and truly modern.</p> + +<p class='c001'>No account of Heine is complete which does not notice +the Jewish element in him. His race he treated with the +same freedom with which he treated everything else, but +he derived a great force from it, and no one knew this +better than he himself. He has excellently pointed out +how in the sixteenth century there was a double renascence,—a +Hellenic renascence and a Hebrew renascence,—and +how both have been great powers ever since. He +himself had in him both the spirit of Greece and the spirit +of Judæa; both these spirits reach the infinite, which is +the true goal of all poetry and all art,—the Greek spirit by +beauty, the Hebrew spirit by sublimity. By his perfection +of literary form, by his love of clearness, by his love of +beauty, Heine is Greek; by his intensity, by his untamableness, +by his “longing which cannot be uttered,” he is +Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew ever treated the things of the +Hebrews like this?—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging in +the Baker’s Broad Walk, a man whose name is Moses +Lump; all the week he goes about in wind and rain, with +his pack on his back, to earn his few shillings; but when +on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the candlestick +with seven candles lighted, and the table covered with a +fair white cloth, and he puts away from him his pack <a id='corr137.25'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='and and'>and</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_137.25'><ins class='correction' title='and and'>and</ins></a></span> +his cares, and he sits down to table with his squinting +wife and yet more squinting daughter, and eats fish with +them, fish which has been dressed in beautiful white garlic +sauce, sings therewith the grandest psalms of King +David, rejoices with his whole heart over the deliverance +of the children of Israel out of Egypt, rejoices, too, that +all the wicked ones who have done the children of Israel +hurt, have ended by taking themselves off; that King +Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and +all such people, are well dead, while he, Moses Lump, is +yet alive, and eating fish with wife and daughter; and I +can tell you, Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man is +happy, he has no call to torment himself about culture, he +<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>sits contented in his religion and in his green bedgown, +like Diogenes in his tub, he contemplates with satisfaction +his candles, which he on no account will snuff for himself; +and I can tell you, if the candles burn a little dim, and +the snuffers-woman, whose business it is to snuff them, is +not at hand, and Rothschild the Great were at that moment +to come in, with all his brokers, bill discounters, +agents, and chief clerks, with whom he conquers the world, +and Rothschild were to say: ‘Moses Lump, ask of me what +favor you will, and it shall be granted you;’—Doctor, I +am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly answer: ‘Snuff +me those candles!’ and Rothschild the Great would exclaim +with admiration: ‘If I were not Rothschild, I would be +Moses Lump.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>There Heine shows us his own people by its comic side; +in the poem of the <cite>Princess Sabbath</cite> he shows it to us by a +more serious side. The Princess Sabbath, “the <em>tranquil +Princess</em>, pearl and flower of all beauty, fair as the Queen +of Sheba, Solomon’s bosom friend, that blue stocking from +Ethiopia, who wanted to shine by her <span lang="fr"><i>esprit</i></span>, and with her +wise riddles made herself in the long run a bore” (with +Heine the sarcastic turn is never far off), this princess has +for her betrothed a prince whom sorcery has transformed +into an animal of lower race, the Prince Israel.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“A dog with the desires of a dog, he wallows all the +week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst the jeers +of the boys in the street.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, suddenly +the magic passes off, and the dog becomes once more +a human being.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“A man with the feelings of a man, with head and +heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean garb, he +enters the halls of his Father.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father! Ye tents of +Jacob, I kiss with my lips your holy door-posts!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful +poem on Jehuda ben Halevy, a poet belonging to “the +great golden age of the Arabian, Old-Spanish, Jewish school +of poets,” a contemporary of the troubadours:—</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>“He, too,—the hero whom we sing,—Jehuda ben +Halevy, too, had his lady-love; but she was of a special +sort.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“She was no Laura, whose eyes, mortal stars, in the +cathedral on Good Friday kindled that world-renowned +flame.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“She was no châtelaine, who in the blooming glory of +her youth presided at tourneys, and awarded the victor’s +crown.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady <span lang="fr"><i>doctrinaire</i></span>, +who delivered her oracles in the judgment-chamber +of a Court of Love.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a woe-begone poor +darling, a mourning picture of desolation ... and her +name was Jerusalem.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his +pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and there, amid the ruins, sings +a song of Sion which has become famous among his people:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed Lament, +which is sung in all the scattered tents of Jacob throughout +the world.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“On the ninth day of the month which is called Ab, +on the anniversary of Jerusalem’s destruction by Titus +Vespasianus.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben +Halevy sang with his dying breath amid the holy ruins of +Jerusalem.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sate there upon +the fragment of a fallen column; down to his breast fell,</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Like a gray forest, his hair; and cast a weird shadow +on the face which looked out through it,—his troubled +pale face, with the spiritual eyes.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“So he sate and sang, like unto a seer out of the foretime +to look upon; Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to have +risen out of his grave.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft on his +barb, lolling in his saddle, and brandishing a naked +javelin;</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>“Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his +deadly shaft, and shot away like a winged shadow.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Quietly flowed the Rabbi’s life-blood, quietly he sang +his song to an end; and his last dying sigh was Jerusalem!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a strange +poem describing a public dispute, before King Pedro and +his Court, between a Jewish and a Christian champion, on +the merits of their respective faiths. In the strain of the +Jew all the fierceness of the old Hebrew genius, all its +rigid defiant Monotheism, appear:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Our God has not died like a poor innocent lamb for +mankind; he is no gushing philanthropist, no declaimer.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Our God is not love, caressing is not his line; but he +is a God of thunder, and he is a God of revenge.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The lightnings of his wrath strike inexorably every +sinner, and the sins of the fathers are often visited upon +their remote posterity.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Our God, he is alive, and in his hall of heaven he goes +on existing away, throughout all the eternities.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Our God, too is a God in robust health, no myth, pale +and thin as sacrificial wafers, or as shadows by Cocytus.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Our God is strong. In his hand he upholds sun, +moon, and stars; thrones break, nations reel to and fro, +when he knits his forehead.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Our God loves music, the voice of the harp and the +song of feasting; but the sound of church-bells he hates, +as he hates the grunting of pigs.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nor must Heine’s sweetest note be unheard,—his plaintive +note, his note of melancholy. Here is a strain which +came from him as he lay, in the winter night, on his “mattress-grave” +at Paris, and let his thoughts wander home to +Germany, “the great child, entertaining herself with her +Christmas-tree.” “Thou tookest,”—he cries to the +German exile,—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine and happiness; +naked and poor returnest thou back. German +truth, German shirts,—one gets them worn to tatters in +foreign parts.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>“Deadly pale are thy looks, but take comfort, thou art +at home! one lies warm in German earth, warm as by the +old pleasant fireside.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Many a one, alas, became crippled, and could get home +no more! longingly he stretches out his arms; God have +mercy upon him!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>God have mercy upon him! for what remain of the +days of the years of his life are few and evil. “Can it be +that I still actually exist? My body is so shrunk that +there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and my +bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the +enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in +Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green +flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, brother +Merlin, and their fresh waving! for over my mattress-grave +here in Paris no green leaves rustle; and early and late I +hear nothing but the rattle of carriages, hammering, scolding, +and the jingle of the piano. A grave without rest, +death without the privileges of the departed, who have no +longer any need to spend money, or to write letters, or to +compose books. What a melancholy situation!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>He died, and has left a blemished name; with his crying +faults,—his intemperate susceptibility, his unscrupulousness +in passion, his inconceivable attacks on his enemies, +his still more inconceivable attacks on his friends, his want +of generosity, his sensuality, his incessant mocking,—how +could it be otherwise? Not only was he not one of Mr. +Carlyle’s “respectable” people, he was profoundly <em>dis</em>respectable; +and not even the merit of not being a Philistine +can make up for a man’s being that. To his intellectual +deliverance there was an addition of something else wanting, +and that something else was something immense; the +old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliverance. +Goethe says that he was deficient in <i>love</i>; to me his +weakness seems to be not so much a deficiency in love as a +deficiency in self-respect, in true dignity of character. +But on this negative side of one’s criticism of a man of +great genius, I for my part, when I have once clearly +marked that this negative side is and must be there, have +<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>no pleasure in dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine something +positive. He is not an adequate interpreter of the +modern world. He is only a brilliant soldier in the +Liberation War of humanity. But, such as he is, he is +(and posterity too, I am quite sure, will say this), in the +European poetry of that quarter of a century which follows +the death of Goethe, incomparably the most important +figure.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is Nature! +With what prodigality, in the march of generations, she +employs human power, content to gather almost always +little result from it, sometimes none! Look at Byron, +that Byron whom the present generation of Englishmen +are forgetting; Byron, the greatest natural force, the +greatest elementary power, I cannot but think which has +appeared in our literature since Shakspeare. And what +became of this wonderful production of nature? He +shattered himself, he inevitably shattered himself to pieces +against the huge, black, cloud-topped, interminable precipice +of British Philistinism. But Byron, it may be said, +was eminent only by his genius, only by his inborn force +and fire; he had not the intellectual equipment of a supreme +modern poet; except for his genius he was an +ordinary nineteenth-century English gentleman, with +little culture and with no ideas. Well, then, look at +Heine. Heine had all the culture of Germany; in his head +fermented all the ideas of modern Europe. And what +have we got from Heine? A half-result, for want of +moral balance, and of nobleness of soul and character. +That is what I say; there is so much power, so many seem +able to run well, so many give promise of running well;—so +few reach the goal, so few are chosen. <em>Many are called, +few chosen.</em></p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span> + <h2 class='c005'>VI.<br> <br> PAGAN AND MEDIÆVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>I read the other day in the <cite>Dublin Review</cite>:—“We +Catholic are apt to be cowed and scared by the lordly oppression +of public opinion, and not to bear ourselves as +men in the face of the anti-Catholic society of England. +It is good to have an habitual consciousness that the public +opinion of Catholic Europe looks upon Protestant England +with a mixture of impatience and compassion, which more +than balances the arrogance of the English people towards +the Catholic Church in these countries.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, can +take very good care of herself, and I am not going to defend +her against the scorn of Exeter Hall. Catholicism is +not a great visible force in this country, and the mass of +mankind will always treat lightly even things the most +venerable, if they do not present themselves as visible +forces before its eyes. In Catholic countries, as the <cite>Dublin +Review</cite> itself says with triumph, they make very little account +of the greatness of Exeter Hall. The majority has +eyes only for the things of the majority, and in England +the immense majority is Protestant. And yet, in spite of +all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic, like the +writer in the <cite>Dublin Review</cite>, has in this Protestant country +inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous +insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so +general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console +him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion +may he see if he has his eyes open! I will tell him of +one of them. Let him go in London to that delightful +spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room +<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, +the region where its theological books are placed. I am +almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr. +Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the +library to the flames. He will find an immense Catholic +work, the collection of the Abbé Migne, lording it over +that whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble +Protestant forces which hang upon its skirts. Protestantism +is duly represented, indeed: the librarian knows his +business too well to suffer it to be otherwise; all the varieties +of Protestantism are there; there is the Library of +Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exemplary, +but a little uninteresting; there are the works of Calvin, +rigid, militant, menacing; there are the works of Dr. +Chalmers, the Scotch thistle valiantly doing duty as the +rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about +it all the time; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the +last word of religious philosophy in a land where every one +has some culture, and where superiorities are discountenanced,—the +flower of moral and intelligent mediocrity. +But how are all these divided against one another, and +how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by +the Catholic Leviathan, their neighbor! Majestic in its +blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after shelf and compartment +after compartment, its right mounting up into +heaven among the white folios of the <span lang="la"><cite>Acta Sanctorum</cite></span>, its +left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of +the <cite>Law Digest</cite>. Everything is there, in that immense +<span lang="la"><cite>Patrologiæ Cursus Completus</cite></span>, in that <span lang="fr"><cite>Encyclopédie Théologique</cite></span>, +that <span lang="fr"><cite>Nouvelle Encyclopédie Théologique</cite></span>, that +<span lang="fr"><cite>Troisième Encyclopédie Théologique</cite></span>; religion, philosophy, +history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. +The work embraces the whole range of human interests; +like one of the great Middle-Age Cathedrals, it is in itself +a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags +everything to land, bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, +sacred and profane, so that it be but matter of human +concern. Wide-embracing as the power whose product it +is! a power, for history at any rate, eminently <em>the Church</em>; +<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>not, perhaps, the Church of the future, but indisputably +the Church of the past and, in the past, the Church of +the multitude.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This is why the man of imagination—nay, and the philosopher +too, in spite of her propensity to burn him—will +always have a weakness for the Catholic Church; because +of the rich treasures of human life which have been stored +within her pale. The mention of other religious bodies, +or of their leaders, at once calls up in our mind the thought +of men of a definite type as their adherents; the mention +of Catholicism suggests no such special following. Anglicanism +suggests the English episcopate; Calvin’s name +suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers’s, the Duke of Argyll; +Channing’s, Boston society; but Catholicism suggests,—what +shall I say?—all the pell-mell of the men and women +of Shakspeare’s plays. This abundance the Abbé Migne’s +collection faithfully reflects. People talk of this or that +work which they would choose, if they were to pass their +life with only one; for my part I think I would choose the +Abbé Migne’s collection. <span lang="la"><i>Quicquid agunt homines</i></span>,—everything, +as I have said, is there. Do not seek in it +splendor of form, perfection of editing; its paper is common, +its type ugly, its editing indifferent, its printing careless. +The greatest and most baffling crowd of misprints I +ever met in my life occurs in a very important page of the +introduction to the <span lang="fr"><cite>Dictionnaire des Apocryphes</cite></span>. But +this is just what you have in the world,—quantity rather +than quality. Do not seek in it impartiality, the critical +spirit; in reading it you must do the criticism for yourself; +it loves criticism as little as the world loves it. Like +the world, it chooses to have things all its own way, to +abuse its adversary, to back its own notion through thick +and thin, to put forward all the <em>pros</em> for its own notion, to +suppress all the <em>contras</em>; it does just all that the world +does, and all that the critical shrinks from. Open the +<span lang="fr"><cite>Dictionnaire des Erreurs Sociales</cite></span>: “The religious persecutions +of Henry the Eighth’s and Edward the Sixth’s +time abated a little in the reign of Mary, to break out +again with new fury in the reign of Elizabeth.” There is +<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>a summary of the history of religious persecution under +the Tudors! But how unreasonable to reproach the Abbé +Migne’s work with wanting a criticism, which, by the very +nature of things, it cannot have, and not rather to be +grateful to it for its abundance, its variety, its infinite suggestiveness, +its happy adoption, in many a delicate circumstance, +of the urbane tone and temper of the man of +the world, instead of the acrid tone and temper of the +fanatic!</p> + +<p class='c001'>Still, in spite of their fascinations, the contents of this +collection sometimes rouse the critical spirit within one. +It happened that lately, after I had been thinking much of +Marcus Aurelius and his times, I took down the <span lang="fr"><cite>Dictionnaire +des Origines du Christianisme</cite></span>, to see what it had +to say about paganism and pagans. I found much what I +expected. I read the article, <span lang="fr"><cite>Révélation Évangélique, sa +Nécessité</cite></span>. There I found what a sink of iniquity was the +whole pagan world; how one Roman fed his oysters on his +slaves, how another put a slave to death that a curious +friend might see what dying was like; how Galen’s +mother tore and bit her waiting-women when she was in a +passion with them. I found this account of the religion +of paganism: “Paganism invented a mob of divinities +with the most hateful character, and attributed to them +the most monstrous and abominable crimes. It personified +in them drunkenness, incest, kidnapping, adultery, sensuality, +knavery, cruelty, and rage.” And I found that +from this religion there followed such practice as was to +be expected: “What must naturally have been the state +of morals under the influence of such a religion, which +penetrated with its own spirit the public life, the family +life, and the individual life of antiquity?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The colors in this picture are laid on very thick, and I +for my part cannot believe that any human societies, with +a religion and practice such as those just described, could +ever have endured as the societies of Greece and Rome +endured, still less have done what the societies of Greece and +Rome did. We are not brought far by descriptions of the +vices of great cities, or even of individuals driven mad by +<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>unbounded means of self-indulgence. Feudal and aristocratic +life in Christendom has produced horrors of selfishness +and cruelty not surpassed by the grandee of pagan +Rome; and then, again, in antiquity there is Marcus +Aurelius’s mother to set against Galen’s. Eminent examples +of vice and virtue in individuals prove little as to +the state of societies. What, under the first emperors, +was the condition of the Roman poor upon the Aventine +compared with that of our poor in Spitalfields and Bethnal +Green? What, in comfort, morals, and happiness, were +the rural population of the Sabine country under Augustus’s +rule, compared with the rural population of Hertfordshire +and Buckinghamshire under the rule of Queen Victoria?</p> + +<p class='c001'>But these great questions are not now for me. Without +trying to answer them, I ask myself, when I read such +declamation as the foregoing, if I can find anything that +will give me a near, distinct sense of the real difference in +spirit and sentiment between paganism and Christianity, +and of the natural effect of this difference upon people in +general. I take a representative religious poem of paganism,—of +the paganism which all the world has in its mind +when it speaks of paganism. To be a representative poem, +it must be one for popular use, one that the multitude +listens to. Such a religious poem may be at the end of one +of the best and happiest of Theocritus’s idylls, the fifteenth. +In order that the reader may the better go along with me +in the line of thought I am following, I will translate it; +and, that he may see the medium in which religious poetry +of this sort is found existing, the society out of which it +grows, the people who form it and are formed by it, I will +translate the whole, or nearly the whole, of the idyll (it is +not long) in which the poem occurs.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The idyll is dramatic. Somewhere about two hundred +and eighty years before the Christian era, a couple of +Syracusan women, staying at Alexandria, agreed on the +occasion of a great religious solemnity,—the feast of +Adonis,—to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy +Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the +queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy’s wife, had had decorated with +<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, +was to be recited over the image. The names of the two +women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are +mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. +Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe’s house to fetch +her, and there the dialogue begins:—</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Is Praxinoe at home?</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I am. +Eunoe, find a chair,—get a cushion for it.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—It will do beautifully as it is.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Do sit down.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Oh, this gad-about spirit! I could hardly get +to you, Praxinoe, through all the crowd and all the +carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but men in +uniform. And what a journey it is! My dear child, you +really live <em>too</em> far off.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—It is all that insane husband of mine. He +has chosen to come out here to the end of the world, and +take a hole of a place,—for a house it is not,—on purpose +that you and I might not be neighbors. He is always just +the same; anything to quarrel with one! anything for +spite!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—My dear, don’t talk so of your husband before +the little fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. +Never mind, Zopyrio, my pet, she is not talking about +papa.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Good heavens! the child does really understand.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Pretty papa!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—That pretty papa of his the other day +(though I told him beforehand to mind what he was about), +when I sent him to a shop to buy soap and rouge, brought +me home salt instead;—stupid, great, big, interminable +animal!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Mine is just the fellow to him.... But never +mind now, get on your things and let us be off to the +palace to see the Adonis. I hear the Queen’s decorations +are something splendid.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—In grand people’s houses everything is grand. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>What things you have seen in Alexandria! What a deal +you will have to tell to anybody who has never been here!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Come, we ought to be going.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Every day is holiday to people who have +nothing to do. Eunoe, pick up your work; and take care, +lazy girl, how you leave it lying about again; the cats find +it just the bed they like. Come, stir yourself, fetch me +some water, quick! I wanted the water first, and the girl +brings me the soap. Never mind; give it me. Not all +that, extravagant! Now pour out the water;—stupid! +why don’t you take care of my dress? That will do. I +have got my hands washed as it pleased God. Where is +the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here;—quick!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Praxinoe, you can’t think how well that dress, +made full, as you have got it, suits you. Tell me, how +much did it cost?—the dress by itself, I mean.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Don’t talk of it, Gorgo: more than eight +guineas of good hard money. And about the work on it +I have almost worn my life out.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Well, you couldn’t have done better.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put +my hat properly on my head;—properly. No, child (<em>to +her little boy</em>), I am not going to take you; there’s a bogy +on horseback, who bites. Cry as much as you like; I’m +not going to have you lamed for life. Now we’ll start. +Nurse, take the little one and amuse him; call the dog +in, and shut the street-door. (<em>They go out.</em>) Good +heavens! what a crowd of people! How on earth are we +ever to get through all this? They are like ants: you +can’t count them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become +of us? here are the royal Horse Guards. My good man, +don’t ride over me! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt +upright; what a vicious one! Eunoe, you mad girl, do +take care!—that horse will certainly be the death of the +man on his back. How glad I am now, that I left the +child safe at home!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind them; +and they have gone on to where they are stationed.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i><a id='corr149.39'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Praxinoe'>Praxinoe.</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_149.39'><ins class='correction' title='Praxinoe'>Praxinoe.</ins></a></span></i>—Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From +<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>the time I was a little girl I have had more horror of +horses and snakes than of anything in the world. Let us +get on; here’s a great crowd coming this way upon us.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo</i> (<i>to an old woman</i>).—Mother, are you from the +palace?</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Old Woman.</i>—Yes, my dears.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Has one a tolerable chance of getting there?</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Old Woman.</i>—My pretty young lady, the Greeks got +to Troy by dint of trying hard; trying will do anything +in this world.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—The old creature has delivered herself of an +oracle and departed.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Women can tell you everything about everything, +Jupiter’s marriage with Juno not excepted.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the palace +gates!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Tremendous! Take hold of me, Gorgo; +and you, Eunoe, take hold of Eutychis!—tight hold, or +you’ll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold tight to +us, Eunoe! Oh, dear! oh, dear! Gorgo, there’s my +scarf torn right in two. For heaven’s sake, my good man, +as you hope to be saved, take care of my dress!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Stranger.</i>—I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t depend +upon me.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—What heaps of people! They push like a +drove of pigs.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Stranger.</i>—Don’t be frightened, ma’am, we are all +right.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—May you be all right, my dear sir, to the +last day you live, for the care you have taken of us! +What a kind, considerate man! There is Eunoe jammed +in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push! Capital! We are +all of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom +said when he had locked himself in with the bride.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at +that work, how delicate it is!—how exquisite! Why, +they might wear it in heaven.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Heavenly patroness of needlewomen, what +hands were hired to do that work? Who designed those +<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>beautiful patterns? They seem to stand up and move +about, as if they were real;—as if they were living things, +and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature! +And look, look, how charming he lies there on his silver +couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, that beloved +Adonis,—Adonis, whom one loves even though he is +dead!</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Another Stranger.</i>—You wretched women, do stop your +incessant chatter! Like turtles, you go on forever. They +are enough to kill one with their broad lingo—nothing +but <i>a, a, a</i>.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Lord, where does the man come from? What +is it to you if we <em>are</em> chatterboxes? Order about your +own servants! Do you give orders to Syracusan women? +If you want to know, we came originally from Corinth, as +Bellerophon did; we speak Peloponnesian. I suppose +Dorian women may be allowed to have a Dorian accent.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Praxinoe.</i>—Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no +more masters than the one we’ve got! We don’t the least +care for <em>you</em>; pray don’t trouble yourself for nothing.</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Gorgo.</i>—Be quiet, Praxinoe! That first-rate singer, +the Argive woman’s daughter, is going to sing the <cite>Adonis</cite> +hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge +last year. We are sure to have something first-rate from +<em>her</em>. She is going through her airs and graces ready to +begin.—</p> + +<p class='c001'>So far the dialogue; and, as it stands in the original, it +can hardly be praised too highly. It is a page torn fresh +out of the book of human life. What freedom! What +animation! What gaiety! What naturalness! It is +said that Theocritus, in composing this poem, borrowed +from a work of Sophron, a poet of an earlier and better +time; but, even if this is so, the form is still Theocritus’s +own, and how excellent is that form, how masterly! And +this in a Greek poem of the decadence!—for Theocritus’s +poetry, after all, is poetry of the decadence. When such +is Greek poetry of the decadence, what must be Greek +poetry of the prime?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Then the singer begins her hymn:—</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>“Mistress, who loveth the haunts of Golgi, and Idalium, +and high-peaked Eryx, Aphrodite that playest with gold! +how have the delicate-footed Hours, after twelve months, +brought thy Adonis back to thee from the ever-flowing +Acheron! Tardiest of the immortals are the boon Hours, +but all mankind wait their approach with longing, for +they ever bring something with them. O Cypris, Dione’s +child! thou didst change—so is the story among men—Berenice +from mortal to immortal, by dropping ambrosia +into her fair bosom; and in gratitude to thee for this, O +thou of many names and many temples! Berenice’s +daughter, Arsinoe, lovely Helen’s living counterpart, makes +much of Adonis with all manner of braveries.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“All fruits that the tree bears are laid before him, all +treasures of the garden in silver baskets, and alabaster +boxes, gold-inlaid, of Syrian ointment; and all confectionery +that cunning women make on their kneading-tray, +kneading up every sort of flowers with white meal, and +all that they make of sweet honey and delicate oil, and all +winged and creeping things are here set before him. And +there are built for him green bowers with wealth of tender +anise, and little boy-loves flutter about over them, like +young nightingales trying their new wings on the tree, +from bough to bough. Oh, the ebony, the gold, the eagle +of white ivory that bears aloft his cup-bearer to Cronos-born +Zeus! And up there, see! a second couch strewn +for lovely Adonis, scarlet coverlets softer than sleep itself +(so Miletus and the Samian wool-grower will say); Cypris +has hers, and the rosy-armed Adonis has his, that eighteen +or nineteen-year-old bridegroom. His kisses will not +wound, the hair on his lip is yet light.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Now, Cypris, good-night, we leave thee with thy bridegroom; +but to-morrow morning, with the earliest dew, +we will one and all bear him forth to where the waves +splash upon the sea-strand, and letting loose our locks, +and letting fall our robes, with bosoms bare, we will set +up this, our melodious strain:</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Beloved Adonis, alone of the demigods (so men say) +thou art permitted to visit both us and Acheron! This +<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>lot had neither Agamemnon, nor the mighty moon-struck +hero Ajax, nor Hector the first-born of Hecuba’s twenty +children, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus who came home from +Troy, nor those yet earlier Lapithæ and the sons of Deucalion, +nor the Pelasgians, the root of Argos and of Pelop’s +isle. Be gracious to us now, loved Adonis, and be favorable +to us for the year to come! Dear to us hast thou +been at this coming, dear to us shalt thou be when thou +comest again.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The poem concludes with a characteristic speech from +Gorgo:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things. +That lucky woman to know all that! and luckier still to +have such a splendid voice! And now we must see about +getting home. My husband has not had his dinner. That +man is all vinegar, and nothing else; and if you keep him +waiting for his dinner, he’s dangerous to go near. Adieu, +precious Adonis, and may you find us all well when you +come next year!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>So, with the hymn still in her ears, says the incorrigible +Gorgo.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But what a hymn that is! Of religious emotion, in our +acceptation of the words, and of the comfort springing +from religious emotion, not a particle. And yet many +elements of religious emotion are contained in the beautiful +story of Adonis. Symbolically treated, as the thoughtful +man might treat it, as the Greek mysteries undoubtedly +treated it, this story was capable of a noble and touching +application, and could lead the soul to elevating and consoling +thoughts. Adonis was the sun in his summer and +in his winter course, in his time of triumph and his time +of defeat; but in his time of triumph still moving towards +his defeat, in his time of defeat still returning towards his +triumph. Thus he became an emblem of the power of life +and the bloom of beauty, the power of human life and +the bloom of human beauty, hastening inevitably to diminution +and decay, yet in that very decay finding</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Hope, and a renovation without end.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>But nothing of this appears in the story as prepared for +popular religious use, as presented to the multitude in a +popular religious ceremony. Its treatment is not devoid +of a certain grace and beauty, but it has nothing whatever +that is elevating, nothing that is consoling, nothing that +is in our sense of the word religious. The religious ceremonies +of Christendom, even on occasion of the most joyful +and mundane matters, present the multitude with +strains of profoundly religious character, such as the <span lang="la"><i>Kyrie +eleison</i></span> and the <span lang="la"><cite>Te Deum</cite></span>. But this Greek hymn to Adonis +adapts itself exactly to the tone and temper of a gay and +pleasure-loving multitude,—of light-hearted people, like +Gorgo and Praxinoe, whose moral nature is much of the +same caliber as that of Phillina in Goethe’s <span lang="de"><cite>Wilhelm +Meister</cite></span>, people who seem never made to be serious, never +made to be sick or sorry. And, if they happen to be +sick or sorry, what will they do then? But that we have +no right to ask. Phillina, within the enchanted bounds +of Goethe’s novel, Gorgo and Praxinoe, within the enchanted +bounds of Theocritus’s poem, never will be sick +and sorry, never can be sick and sorry. The ideal, cheerful, +sensuous, pagan life is not sick or sorry. No; yet +its natural end is in the sort of life which Pompeii +and Herculaneum bring so vividly before us,—a life which +by no means in itself suggests the thought of horror and +misery, which even, in many ways, gratifies the senses and +the understanding; but by the very intensity and unremittingness +of its appeal to the senses and the understanding, +by its stimulating a single side of us too absolutely, +ends by fatiguing and revolting us; ends by leaving us +with a sense of confinement, of oppression,—with a desire +for an utter change, for clouds, storms, effusion, and relief.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the +clouds and storms had come, when the gay sensuous pagan +life was gone, when men were not living by the senses and +understanding, when they were looking for the speedy +coming of Antichrist, there appeared in Italy, to the north +of Rome, in the beautiful Umbrian country at the foot of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>the Apennines, a figure of the most magical power and +charm, St. Francis. His century is, I think, the most +interesting in the history of Christianity after its primitive +age, more interesting than even the century of the Reformation; +and one of the chief figures, perhaps the very +chief, to which this interest attaches itself, is St. Francis. +And why? Because of the profound popular instinct +which enabled him, more than any man since the primitive +age, to fit religion for popular use. He brought religion +to the people. He founded the most popular body of +ministers of religion that has ever existed in the Church. +He transformed monachism by uprooting the stationary +monk, delivering him from the bondage of property, and +sending him, as a mendicant friar, to be a stranger and +sojourner, not in the wilderness, but in the most crowded +haunts of men, to console them and to do them good. +This popular instinct of his is at the bottom of his famous +marriage with poverty. Poverty and suffering are the +condition of the people, the multitude, the immense +majority of mankind; and it was towards this <em>people</em> that +his soul yearned. “He listens,” it was said of him, “to +those to whom God himself will not listen.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>So in return, as no other man he was listened to. +When an Umbrian town or village heard of his approach, +the whole population went out in joyful procession to +meet him, with green boughs, flags, music, and songs of +gladness. The master, who began with two disciples, +could in his own lifetime (and he died at forty-four) collect +to keep Whitsuntide with him, in presence of an immense +multitude, five thousand of his Minorites. And thus he +found fulfilment to his prophetic cry: “I hear in my ears +the sound of the tongues of all the nations who shall come +unto us; Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen. +The Lord will make of us a great people, even unto the +ends of the earth.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made +poetry. Latin was too learned for this simple, popular +nature, and he composed in his mother tongue, in Italian. +The beginnings of the mundane poetry of the Italians are +<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>in Sicily, at the court of kings; the beginnings of their +religious poetry are in Umbria, with St. Francis. His are +the humble upper waters of a mighty stream; at the +beginning of the thirteenth century it is St. Francis, at +the end, Dante. Now it happens that St. Francis, too, +like the Alexandrian songstress, has his hymn for the sun, +for Adonis. <cite>Canticle of the Sun</cite>, <cite>Canticle of the Creatures</cite>,—the +poem goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian +hymn, it is designed for popular use, but not for use by +King Ptolemy’s people; artless in language, irregular in +rhythm, it matches with the childlike genius that produced +it, and the simple natures that loved and repeated it:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong +praise, glory, honor, and all blessing!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures; and +specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day, +and who brings us the light; fair is he, and shining +with a very great splendor: O Lord, he signifies to us +thee!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for +the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for +air and cloud, calms and all weather, by the which thou +upholdest in life all creatures.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very +serviceable unto us, and humble, and precious, and clean.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom +thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright, and +pleasant, and very mighty, and strong.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the +which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth +divers fruits, and flowers of many colors, and grass.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one +another for his love’s sake, and who endure weakness and +tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure, +for thou, O most Highest, shalt give them a crown!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the +body, from whom no man escapeth. Woe to him who +dieth in mortal sin! Blessed are they who are found +<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>walking by thy most holy will, for the second death shall +have no power to do them harm.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Praise ye, and bless ye the Lord, and give thanks +unto him, and serve him with great humility.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is natural that man should take pleasure in his senses. +But it is natural, also, that he should take refuge in his +heart and imagination from his misery. And when one +thinks what human life is for the vast majority of mankind, +how little of a feast for their senses it can possibly be, one +understands the charm for them of a refuge offered in the +heart and imagination. Above all, when one thinks what +human life was in the Middle Ages, one understands the +charm of such a refuge.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now, the poetry of Theocritus’s hymn is poetry treating +the world according to the demand of the senses; the +poetry of St. Francis’s hymn is poetry treating the world +according to the demand of the heart and imagination. +The first takes the world by its outward, sensible side; +the second by its inward, symbolical side. The first admits +as much of the world as is pleasure-giving; the second +admits the whole world, rough and smooth, painful and +pleasure-giving, all alike, but all transfigured by the power +of a spiritual emotion, all brought under a law of super-sensual +love, having its seat in the soul. It can thus even +say: “Praised be my Lord for <em>our sister, the death of the +body</em>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But these very words are, perhaps, an indication that we +are touching upon an extreme. When we see Pompeii, +we can put our finger upon the pagan sentiment in its +extreme. And when we read of Monte Alverno and the +<span lang="la"><i>stigmata</i></span>; when we read of the repulsive, because self-caused, +sufferings of the end of St. Francis’s life; when +we find him even saying, “I have sinned against my +brother the ass,” meaning by these words that he had been +too hard upon his own body; when we find him assailed, +even himself, by the doubt “whether he who had destroyed +himself by the severity of his penances could find mercy +in eternity,” we can put our finger on the mediæval +Christian sentiment in its extreme. Human nature is +<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>neither all senses and understanding, nor all heart and +imagination. Pompeii was a sign that for humanity at +large the measure of sensualism had been overpassed; St. +Francis’s doubt was a sign that for humanity at large the +measure of spiritualism had been overpassed. Humanity, +in its violent rebound from one extreme, had swung from +Pompeii to Monte Alverno; but it was sure not to stay +there.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The Renascence is, in part, a return towards the pagan +spirit, in the special sense in which I have been using the +word pagan; a return towards the life of the senses and +the understanding. The Reformation, on the other hand, +is the very opposite to this; in Luther there is nothing +Greek or pagan; vehemently as he attacked the adoration of +St. Francis, Luther had himself something of St. Francis +in him; he was a thousand times more akin to St. Francis +than to Theocritus or to Voltaire. The Reformation—I +do not mean the inferior piece given under that name, by +Henry the Eighth and a second-rate company, in this +island, but the real Reformation, the German Reformation, +Luther’s Reformation—was a reaction of the moral and +spiritual sense against the carnal and pagan sense; it was +a religious revival like St. Francis’s, but this time against +the Church of Rome, not within her; for the carnal and +pagan sense had now, in the government of the Church +of Rome herself, its prime representative. But the grand +reaction against the rule of the heart and imagination, the +strong return towards the rule of the senses and understanding, +is in the eighteenth century. And this reaction +has had no more brilliant champion than a man of the +nineteenth, of whom I have already spoken; a man who +could feel not only the pleasurableness but the poetry of +the life of the senses (and the life of the senses has its +deep poetry); a man who, in his very last poem, divided +the whole world into “barbarians and Greeks,”—Heinrich +Heine. No man has reproached the Monte Alverno +extreme in sentiment, the Christian extreme, the heart +and imagination subjugating the senses and understanding, +more bitterly than Heine; no man has +<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>extolled the Pompeii extreme, the pagan extreme, more +rapturously.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“All through the Middle Age these sufferings, this +fever, this over-tension lasted; and we moderns still feel +in all our limbs the pain and weakness from them. Even +those of us who are cured have still to live with a hospital +atmosphere all around us, and find ourselves as wretched +in it as a strong man among the sick. Some day or other, +when humanity shall have got quite well again, when the +body and soul shall have made their peace together, the +fictitious quarrel which Christianity has cooked up between +them will appear something hardly comprehensible. The +fairer and happier generations, offspring of unfettered +unions, that will rise up and bloom in the atmosphere of +a religion of pleasure, will smile sadly when they think of +their poor ancestors, whose life was passed in melancholy +abstinence from the joys of this beautiful earth, and who +faded away into specters, from the mortal compression +which they put upon the warm and glowing emotions of +sense. Yes, with assurance, I say it, our descendants will +be fairer and happier than we are; for I am a believer in +progress, and I hold God to be a kind being who has +intended man to be happy.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>That is Heine’s sentiment, in the prime of life, in the +glow of activity, amid the brilliant whirl of Paris. I will +no more blame it than I blamed the sentiment of the +Greek hymn to Adonis. I wish to decide nothing as of +my own authority; the great art of criticism is to get +oneself out of the way and to let humanity decide. Well, +the sentiment of the “religion of pleasure” has much +that is natural in it; humanity will gladly accept it if it +can live by it; to live by it one must never be sick or +sorry, and the old, ideal, limited, pagan world never, I +have said, <em>was</em> sick or sorry, never at least shows itself +to us sick or sorry:—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“What pipes and timbrels! What wild ecstasy!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>For our imagination, Gorgo and Praxinoe cross the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>human stage chattering in their blithe Doric,—<em>like turtles</em>, +as the cross stranger said,—and keep gaily chattering on +till they disappear. But in the new, real, immense, post-pagan +world,—in the barbarian world,—the shock of +accident is unceasing, the serenity of existence is perpetually +troubled, not even a Greek like Heine can get +across the mortal stage without bitter calamity. How +does the sentiment of the “religion of pleasure” serve +then? does it help, does it console? Can a man live by +it? Heine again shall answer; Heine just twenty years +older, stricken with incurable disease, waiting for death:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The great pot stands smoking before me, but I have +no spoon to help myself. What does it profit me that my +health is drunk at banquets out of gold cups and in most +exquisite wines, if I myself, while these ovations are going +on, lonely and cut off from the pleasures of the world, +can only just wet my lips with barley-water? What good +does it do me that all the roses of Shiraz open their leaves +and burn for me with passionate tenderness? Alas! +Shiraz is some two thousand leagues from the Rue d’Amsterdam, +where in the solitude of my sick chamber all the +perfume I smell is that of hot towels. Alas! the mockery +of God is heavy upon me! The great author of the +universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, has determined to +make the petty earthly author, the so-called Aristophanes +of Germany, feel to his heart’s core what pitiful needle-pricks +his cleverest sarcasms have been, compared with +the thunderbolts which his divine humor can launch +against feeble mortals!...</p> + +<p class='c001'>“In the year 1340, says the Chronicle of Limburg, all +over Germany everybody was strumming and humming +certain songs more lovely and delightful than any which +had ever yet been known in German countries; and all +people, old and young, the women particularly, were +perfectly mad about them, so that from morning till night +you heard nothing else. Only the Chronicle adds, the +author of these songs happened to be a young clerk, +afflicted with leprosy, and living apart from all the world +in a desolate place. The excellent reader does not require +<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>to be told how horrible a complaint was leprosy in the +Middle Ages, and how the poor wretches who had this +incurable plague were banished from society, and had to +keep at a distance from every human being. Like living +corpses, in a gray gown reaching down to the feet, and +with the hood brought over their face, they went about, +carrying in their hands an enormous rattle, called Saint +Lazarus’s rattle. With this rattle they gave notice of +their approach, that every one might have time to get out +of their way. This poor clerk, then, whose poetical gift +the Limburg Chronicle extols, was a leper, and he sate +moping in the dismal deserts of his misery, whilst all +Germany, gay and tuneful, was praising his songs.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Sometimes, in my somber visions of the night, I +imagine that I see before me the poor leprosy-stricken +clerk of the Limburg Chronicle, and then from under his +gray hood his distressed eyes look out upon me in a fixed +and strange fashion; but the next instant he disappears, +and I hear dying away in the distance, like the echo of a +dream, the dull creak of Saint Lazarus’s rattle.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>We have come a long way from Theocritus there? the +expression of that has nothing of the clear, positive, happy, +pagan character; it has much more the character of one +of the indeterminate grotesques of the suffering Middle +Age. Profoundness and power it has, though at the same +time it is not truly poetical; it is not natural enough for +that, there is too much waywardness in it, too much bravado. +But as a condition of sentiment to be popular,—to +be a comfort for the mass of mankind, under the pressure +of calamity, to live by,—what a manifest failure is +this last word of the religion of pleasure! One man in +many millions, a Heine, may console himself, and keep +himself erect in suffering, by a colossal irony of this sort, +by covering himself and the universe with the red fire of +this sinister mockery; but the many millions cannot,—cannot +if they would. That is where the sentiment of a +religion of sorrow has such a vast advantage over the sentiment +of a religion of pleasure; in its power to be a +general, popular, religious sentiment, a stay for the mass +<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>of mankind, whose lives are full of hardship. It really +<a id='corr162.2'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='suceeeds'>succeeds</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_162.2'><ins class='correction' title='suceeeds'>succeeds</ins></a></span> in conveying far more joy, far more of what the +mass of mankind are so much without, than its rival. I +do not mean joy in prospect only, but joy in possession, +actual enjoyment of the world. Mediæval Christianity is +reproached with its gloom and austerities; it assigns the +material world, says Heine, to the devil. But yet what a +fulness of delight does St. Francis manage to draw from +this material world itself, and from its commonest and +most universally enjoyed elements,—sun, air, earth, water, +plants! His hymn expresses a far more cordial sense of +happiness, even in the material world, than the hymn of +Theocritus. It is this which made the fortune of Christianity,—its +gladness, not its sorrow; not its assigning the +spiritual world to Christ, and the material world to the +devil, but its drawing from the spiritual world a source of +joy so abundant that it ran over upon the material world +and transfigured it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I have said a great deal of harm of paganism; and, +taking paganism to mean a state of things which it is +commonly taken to mean, and which did really exist, no +more harm than it well deserved. Yet I must not end +without reminding the reader, that before this state of +things appeared, there was an epoch in Greek life,—in +pagan life,—of the highest possible beauty and value. +That epoch by itself goes far towards making Greece the +Greece we mean when we speak of Greece,—a country +hardly less important to mankind than Judæa. The +poetry of later paganism lived by the senses and understanding; +the poetry of mediæval Christianity lived by +the heart and imagination. But the main element of the +modern spirit’s life is neither the senses and understanding, +nor the heart and imagination; it is the imaginative +reason. And there is a century in Greek life,—the +century preceding the Peloponnesian war, from about the +year 530 to the year 430 <span class='fss'>B. C.</span>,—in which poetry made, it +seems to me, the noblest, the most successful effort she +has ever made as the priestess of the imaginative reason, +of the element by which the modern spirit, if it would +<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>live right, has chiefly to live. Of this effort, of which the +four great names are Simonides, Pindar, Æschylus, Sophocles, +I must not now attempt more than the bare mention; +but it is right, it is necessary, after all I have said, to +indicate it. No doubt that effort was imperfect. Perhaps +everything, take it at what point in its existence +you will, carries within itself the fatal law of its own +ulterior development. Perhaps, even of the life of Pindar’s +time, Pompeii was the inevitable bourne. Perhaps +the life of their beautiful Greece could not afford to its +poets all that fulness of varied experience, all that power +of emotion, which</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘... the heavy and the weary weight</div> + <div class='line'>Of all this <a id='corr163.14'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='unitelligible'>unintelligible</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_163.14'><ins class='correction' title='unitelligible'>unintelligible</ins></a></span> world</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>affords the poet of after-times. Perhaps in Sophocles the +thinking-power a little overbalances the religious sense, as +in Dante the religious sense overbalances the thinking-power. +The present has to make its own poetry, and not +even Sophocles and his compeers, any more than Dante and +Shakspeare, are enough for it. That I will not dispute; nor +will I set up the Greek poets, from Pindar to Sophocles, as +objects of blind worship. But no other poets so well show +to the poetry of the present the way it must take; no +other poets have lived so much by the imaginative reason; +no other poets have made their work so well balanced; no +other poets, who have so well satisfied the thinking-power, +have so well satisfied, the religious sense:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Oh! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy innocence +of word and deed, the path which august laws ordain, +laws that in the highest empyrean had their birth, +of which Heaven is the father alone, neither did the race +of mortal men beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them +to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and +groweth not old.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Let St. Francis,—nay, or Luther either,—beat that!</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>VII.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Everybody has this last autumn<a id='r22'></a><a href='#f22' class='c007'><sup>[22]</sup></a> been either seeing the +Ammergau Passion Play or hearing about it; and to find +any one who has seen it and not been deeply interested +and moved by it, is very rare. The peasants of the neighboring +country, the great and fashionable world, the +ordinary tourist, were all at Ammergau, and were all delighted; +but what is said to have been especially remarkable +was the affluence there of ministers of religion of all +kinds. That Catholic peasants, whose religion has accustomed +them to show and spectacle, should be attracted +by an admirable scenic representation of the great moments +in the history of their religion, was natural; that tourists +and the fashionable world should be attracted by what was +at once the fashion and a new sensation of a powerful sort, +was natural; that many of the ecclesiastics present should +be attracted there, was natural too. Roman Catholic +priests mustered strong, of course. The Protestantism of +a great number of the Anglican clergy is supposed to be +but languid, and Anglican ministers at Ammergau were +sympathizers to be expected. But Protestant ministers of +the most unimpeachable sort, Protestant Dissenting ministers, +were there, too, and showing favor and sympathy; +and this, to any one who remembers the almost universal +feeling of Protestant Dissenters in this country, not many +years ago, towards Rome and her religion,—the sheer abhorrence +of Papists and all their practices,—could not +but be striking. It agrees with what is seen also in literature, +in the writings of Dissenters of the younger and +more progressive sort, who show a disposition for regarding +<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>the Church of Rome historically rather than polemically, +a wish to do justice to the undoubted grandeur of certain +institutions and men produced by that Church, quite novel, +and quite alien to the simple belief of earlier times, that +between Protestants and Rome there was a measureless +gulf fixed. Something of this may, no doubt, be due to +that keen eye for Nonconformist business in which our +great bodies of Protestant Dissenters, to do them justice, +are never wanting; to a perception that the case against +the Church of England may be yet further improved by +contrasting her with the genuine article in her own ecclesiastical +line, by pointing out that she is neither one thing +nor the other to much purpose, by dilating on the magnitude, +reach, and impressiveness, on the great place in history, +of her rival, as compared with anything she can herself +pretend to. Something of this there is, no doubt, in some +of the modern Protestant sympathy for things Catholic. +But in general that sympathy springs, in Churchmen and +Dissenters alike, from another and a better cause,—from +the spread of larger conceptions of religion, of man, and of +history, than were current formerly. We have seen lately +in the newspapers, that a clergyman, who in a popular +lecture gave an account of the Passion Play at Ammergau, +and enlarged on its impressiveness, was admonished by +certain remonstrants, who told him it was his business, +instead of occupying himself with these sensuous shows, +to learn to walk by faith, not by sight, and to teach his +fellow-men to do the same. But this severity seems to +have excited wonder rather than praise; so far had those +wider notions about religion and about the range of our +interest in religion, of which I have just spoken, conducted +us. To this interest I propose to appeal in what +I am going to relate. The Passion Play at Ammergau, +with its immense audiences, the seriousness of its actors, +the passionate emotion of its spectators, brought to my +mind something of which I had read an account lately; +something produced, not in Bavaria nor in Christendom +at all, but far away in that wonderful East, from which, +whatever airs of superiority Europe may justly give itself, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>all our religion has come and where religion, of some sort +or other, has still an empire over men’s feelings such as it +has nowhere else. This product of the remote East I wish +to exhibit while the remembrance of what has been seen +at Ammergau is still fresh; and we will see whether that +bringing together of strangers and enemies who once +seemed to be as far as the poles asunder, which Ammergau +in such a remarkable way effected, does not hold good and +find a parallel even in Persia.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Count Gobineau, formerly Minister of France at Teheran +and at Athens, published, a few years ago, an interesting +book on the present state of religion and philosophy in +Central Asia. He is favorably known also by his studies +in ethnology. His accomplishments and intelligence deserve +all respect, and in his book on religion and philosophy +in Central Asia he has the great advantage of writing +about things which he has followed with his own observation +and inquiry in the countries where they happened. +The chief purpose of his book is to give a history of the +career of Mirza Ali Mahommed, a Persian religious reformer, +the original <em>Bâb</em>, and the founder of <em>Bâbism</em>, of +which most people in England have at least heard the name. +Bab means <em>gate</em>, the door or gate of life; and in the ferment +which now works in the Mahometan East, Mirza Ali Mahommed,—who +seems to have been made acquainted by +Protestant missionaries with our Scriptures and by the +Jews of Shiraz with Jewish traditions, to have studied, besides, +the religion of the Ghebers, the old national religion +of Persia, and to have made a sort of amalgam of the whole +with Mahometanism,—presented himself, about five-and-twenty +twenty years ago, as <em>the door</em>, <em>the gate</em> of life; found disciples, +sent forth writings, and finally became the cause of +disturbances which led to his being executed on the 19th +of July, 1849, in the citadel of Tabriz. The Bâb and his +doctrines are a theme on which much might be said; but +I pass them by, except for one incident in the Bâb’s life, +which I will notice. Like all religious Mahometans, he +made the pilgrimage to Mecca; and his meditations at +that center of his religion first suggested his mission to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>him. But soon after his return to Bagdad he made another +pilgrimage; and it was in this pilgrimage that his mission +became clear to him, and that his life was fixed. “He +desired”—I will give an abridgment of Count Gobineau’s +own words—“to complete his impressions by going to +Kufa, that he might visit the ruined mosque where Ali +was assassinated, and where the place of his murder is still +shown. He passed several days there in meditation. The +place appears to have made a great impression on him; +he was entering on a course which might and must lead +to some such catastrophe as had happened on the very +spot where he stood, and where his mind’s eye showed him +the Imam Ali lying at his feet, with his body pierced and +bleeding. His followers say that he then passed through +a sort of moral agony which put an end to all the hesitations +of the natural man within him. It is certain that +when he arrived at Shiraz, on his return, he was a changed +man. No doubts troubled him any more: he was penetrated +and persuaded; his part was taken.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>This Ali also, at whose tomb the Bâb went through the +spiritual crisis here recorded, is a familiar name to most of +us. In general our knowledge of the East goes but a very +little way; yet almost every one has at least heard the +name of Ali, the Lion of God, Mahomet’s young cousin, +the first person, after his wife, who believed in him, and +who was declared by Mahomet in his gratitude his brother, +delegate, and vicar. Ali was one of Mahomet’s best and +most successful captains. He married Fatima, the +daughter of the Prophet; his sons, Hassan and Hussein, +were, as children, favorites with Mahomet, who had no +son of his own to succeed him, and was expected to name +Ali as his successor. He named no successor. At his +death (the year 632 of our era) Ali was passed over, and +the first caliph, or <em>vicar</em> and <em>lieutenant</em> of Mahomet in +the government of the state, was Abu-Bekr; only the +spiritual inheritance of Mahomet, the dignity of Imam, +or <em>Primate</em>, devolved by right on Ali and his children. +Ali, lion of God as in war he was, held aloof from politics +and political intrigue, loved retirement and prayer, was +<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>the most pious and disinterested of men. At Abu-Bekr’s +death he was again passed over in favor of Omar. +Omar was succeeded by Othman, and still Ali remained +tranquil. Othman was assassinated, and then Ali, chiefly +to prevent disturbance and bloodshed, accepted (<span class='fss'>A. D.</span> +655) the caliphate. Meanwhile, the Mahometan armies +had conquered Persia, Syria, and Egypt; the Governor of +Syria, Moawiyah, an able and ambitious man, set himself +up as caliph, his title was recognized by Amrou, the +Governor of Egypt, and a bloody and indecisive battle +was fought in Mesopotamia between Ali’s army and +Moawiyah’s. Gibbon shall tell the rest:—“In the temple +of Mecca three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed of +the disorders of the church and state; they soon agreed +that the deaths of Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend +Amrou, the Viceroy of Egypt, would restore the peace and +unity of religion. Each of the assassins chose his victim, +poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly repaired +to the scene of action. Their resolution was +equally desperate; but the first mistook the person of +Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied his seat; +the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the +second; Ali, the lawful caliph, in the mosque of Kufa, +received a mortal wound from the hand of the third.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The events through which we have thus rapidly run +ought to be kept in mind, for they are the elements of +Mahometan history: any right understanding of the state +of the Mahometan world is impossible without them. For +that world is divided into the two great sects of Shiahs +and Sunis. The Shiahs are those who reject the first three +caliphs as usurpers, and begin with Ali as the first lawful +successor of Mahomet; the Sunis recognize Abu-Bekr, +Omar, and Othman, as well as Ali, and regard the Shiahs +as impious heretics. The Persians are Shiahs, and the +Arabs and Turks are Sunis. Hussein, one of Ali’s two +sons, married a Persian princess, the daughter of Yezdejerd +the last of the Sassanian kings, the king whom the +Mahometan conquest of Persia expelled; and Persia, +through this marriage, became specially connected with +<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>the house of Ali. “In the fourth age of the Hegira,” +says Gibbon, “a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the +ruins of Kufa. Many thousands of the Shiahs repose in +holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God; and the +desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of the +Persians, who esteem their devotion not less meritorious +than the pilgrimage of Mecca.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But to comprehend what I am going to relate from +Count Gobineau, we must push our researches into Mahometan +history a little further than the assassination of +Ali. Moawiyah died in the year 680 of our era, nearly +fifty years after the death of Mahomet. His son Yezid +succeeded him on the throne of the caliphs at Damascus. +During the reign of Moawiyah Ali’s two sons, the Imams, +Hassan and Hussein, lived with their families in religious +retirement at Medina, where their grandfather Mahomet +was buried. In them the character of abstention and renouncement, +which we have noticed in Ali himself, was +marked yet more strongly; but, when Moawiyah died, the +people of Kufa, the city on the lower Euphrates where Ali +had been assassinated, sent offers to make Hussein caliph +if he would come among them, and to support him against +the Syrian troops of Yezid. Hussein seems to have +thought himself bound to accept the proposal. He left +Medina, and, with his family and relations, to the number +of about eighty persons, set out on his way to Kufa. +Then ensued the tragedy so familiar to every Mahometan, +and to us so little known, the tragedy of Kerbela. “O +death,” cries the bandit-minstrel of Persia, Kurroglou, in +his last song before his execution, “O death, whom didst +thou spare? Were even Hassan and Hussein, those footstools +of the throne of God on the seventh heaven, spared +by thee. <em>No! thou madest them martyrs at Kerbela.</em>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>We cannot do better than again have recourse to Gibbon’s +history for an account of this famous tragedy. +“Hussein traversed the desert of Arabia with a timorous +retinue of women and children; but, as he approached +the confines of Irak, he was alarmed by the solitary or +hostile face of the country, and suspected either the defection +<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>or the ruin of his party. His fears were just; +Obeidallah, the governor of Kufa, had extinguished the +first sparks of an insurrection; and Hussein, in the plain +of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of 5000 horse, who +intercepted his communication with the city and the +river. In a conference with the chief of the enemy he +proposed the option of three conditions:—that he should +be allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier +garrison against the Turks, or safely conducted to the +presence of Yezid. But the commands of the caliph or +his lieutenant were stern and absolute, and Hussein was +informed that he must either submit as a captive and a +criminal to the Commander of the Faithful, or expect the +consequences of his rebellion. “Do you think,” replied +he, “to terrify me with death?” And during the short +respite of a night he prepared, with calm and solemn +resignation, to encounter his fate. He checked the +lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending +ruin of his house. “Our trust,” said Hussein, +“is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and earth, +must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, my +father, my mother, were better than I, and every Mussulman +has an example in the Prophet.” He pressed his +friends to consult their safety by a timely flight; they +unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved +master, and their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer +and the assurance of paradise. On the morning of the +fatal day he mounted on horseback, with his sword in one +hand and the Koran in the other; the flanks and rear of +his party were secured by the tent-ropes and by a deep +trench, which they had filled with lighted fagots, according +to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced +with reluctance; and one of their chiefs deserted, with +thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevitable +death. In every close onset or single combat the despair +of the Fatimites was invincible; but the surrounding +multitudes galled them from a distance with a cloud of +arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain. +A truce was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; +<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>and the battle at length expired by the death of the last +of the companions of Hussein.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The details of Hussein’s own death will come better +presently; suffice it at this moment to say he was slain, +and that the women and children of his family were taken +in chains to the Caliph Yezid at Damascus. Gibbon concludes +the story thus: “In a distant age and climate, the +tragic scene of the death of Hussein will awaken the sympathy +of the coldest reader. On the annual festival of his +martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulcher, his +Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious +phrenzy of sorrow and indignation.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Thus the tombs of Ali and of his son, the Meshed Ali +and the Meshed Hussein, standing some thirty miles apart +from one another in the plain of the Euphrates, had, +when Gibbon wrote, their yearly pilgrims and their tribute +of enthusiastic mourning. But Count Gobineau relates, +in his book of which I have spoken, a development of +these solemnities which was unknown to Gibbon. Within +the present century there has arisen, on the basis of this +story of the martyrs of Kerbela, a drama, a Persian national +drama, which Count Gobineau, who has seen and +heard it, is bold enough to rank with the Greek drama as +a great and serious affair, engaging the heart and life of +the people who have given birth to it; while the Latin, +English, French, and German drama is, he says, in comparison +a mere pastime or amusement, more or less intellectual +and elegant. To me it seems that the Persian +<span lang="fa"><i>tazyas</i></span>—for so these pieces are called—find a better parallel +in the Ammergau Passion Play than in the Greek +drama. They turn entirely on one subject—the sufferings +of the <em>Family of the Tent</em>, as the Imam Hussein and the +company of persons gathered around him at Kerbela are +called. The subject is sometimes introduced by a prologue, +which may perhaps one day, as the need of variety +is more felt, become a piece by itself; but at present the +prologue leads invariably to the martyrs. For instance: +the Emperor Tamerlane, in his conquering progress +through the world, arrives at Damascus. The keys of the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>city are brought to him by the governor; but the governor +is a descendant of one of the murderers of the Imam Hussein; +Tamerlane is informed of it, loads him with reproaches, +and drives him from his presence. The emperor +presently sees the governor’s daughter splendidly dressed, +thinks of the sufferings of the holy women of the Family +of the Tent, and upbraids and drives her away as he did +her father. But after this he is haunted by the great +tragedy which has been thus brought to his mind, and he +cannot sleep and cannot be comforted. He calls his +vizier, and his vizier tells him that the only way to soothe +his troubled spirit is to see a <span lang="fa"><i>tazya</i></span>. And so the <span lang="fa"><i>tazya</i></span> +commences. Or, again (and this will show how strangely, +in the religious world which is now occupying us, what is +most familiar to us is blended with that of which we +know nothing): Joseph and his brethren appear on the +stage, and the old Bible story is transacted. Joseph is +thrown into the pit and sold to the merchants, and his +blood-stained coat is carried by his brothers to Jacob; +Jacob is then left alone, weeping and bewailing himself; +the angel Gabriel enters, and reproves him for his want +of faith and constancy, telling him that what he suffers is +not a hundredth part of what Ali, Hussein, and the +children of Hussein will one day suffer. Jacob seems to +doubt it; Gabriel, to convince him, orders the angels to +perform a <span lang="fa"><i>tazya</i></span> of what will one day happen at Kerbela. +And so the <span lang="fa"><i>tazya</i></span> commences.</p> + +<p class='c001'>These pieces are given in the first ten days of the month +of Moharrem, the anniversary of the martyrdom at Kerbela. +They are so popular that they now invade other +seasons of the year also; but this is the season when the +world is given up to them. King and people, every one +is in mourning; and at night and while the <span lang="fa"><i>tazyas</i></span> are +not going on, processions keep passing, the air resounds +with the beating of breasts and with litanies of “O Hassan! +Hussein!” while the Seyids,—a kind of popular +friars claiming to be descendants of Mahomet, and in +whose incessant popularizing and amplifying of the legend +of Kerbela in their homilies during pilgrimages and at the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>tombs of the martyrs, the <span lang="fa"><i>tazyas</i></span>, no doubt, had their +origin,—keep up by their sermons and hymns the enthusiasm +which the drama of the day has excited. It seems as +if no one went to bed; and certainly no one who went to +bed could sleep. Confraternities go in procession with a +black flag and torches, every man with his shirt torn open, +and beating himself with the right hand on the left +shoulder in a kind of measured cadence to accompany a +canticle in honor of the martyrs. These processions come +and take post in the theaters where the Seyids are preaching. +Still more noisy are the companies of dancers, striking +a kind of wooden castanets together, at one time in +front of their breasts, at an other time behind their heads, +and marking time with music and dance to a dirge set up +by the bystanders, in which the names of the Imams +perpetually recur as a burden. Noisiest of all are the +Berbers, men of a darker skin and another race, their feet +and the upper part of their body naked, who carry, some +of them tambourines and cymbals, others iron chains and +long needles. One of their race is said to have formerly +derided the Imams in their affliction, and the Berbers now +appear in expiation of that crime. At first their music +and their march proceed slowly together, but presently +the music quickens, the chain and needle-bearing Berbers +move violently round, and begin to beat themselves +with their chains and to prick their arms and cheeks with +the needles—first gently, then with more vehemence; till +suddenly the music ceases, and all stops. So we are +carried back, on this old Asiatic soil, where beliefs and +usages are heaped layer upon layer and ruin upon ruin, +far past the martyred Imams, past Mahometanism, past +Christianity, to the priests of Baal gashing themselves +with knives and to the worship of Adonis.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The <span lang="fa"><i>tekyas</i></span>, or theaters for the drama which calls forth +these celebrations, are constantly multiplying. The +king, the great functionaries, the towns, wealthy citizens +like the king’s goldsmith, or any private person who has +the means and the desire, provide them. Every one sends +contributions; it is a religious act to furnish a box or to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>give decorations for a <span lang="fa"><i>tekya</i></span>; and as religious offerings, all +gifts down to the smallest are accepted. There are tekyas +for not more than three or four hundred spectators, and +there are tekyas for three or four thousand. At Ispahan +there are representations which bring together more than +twenty thousand people. At Teheran, the Persian capital, +each quarter of the town has its tekyas, every square and +open place is turned to account for establishing them, and +spaces have been expressly cleared, besides, for fresh tekyas. +Count Gobineau describes particularly one of these +theaters,—a tekya of the best class, to hold an audience +of about four thousand,—at Teheran. The arrangements +are very simple. The tekya is a walled parallelogram, +with a brick platform, <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>, in the center of it; this +sakou is surrounded with black poles at some distance +from each other, the poles are joined at the top by horizontal +rods of the same color, and from these rods hang +colored lamps, which are lighted for the praying and +preaching at night when the representation is over. The +<span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>, or central platform, makes the stage; in connection +with it, at one of the opposite extremities of the parallelogram +lengthwise, is a reserved box, <span lang="fa"><i>tâgnumâ</i></span>, higher than +the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>. This box is splendidly decorated, and is used +for peculiarly interesting and magnificent tableaux,—the +court of the Caliph, for example—which occur in the +course of the piece. A passage of a few feet wide is left +free between the stage and this box; all the rest of the +space is for the spectators, of whom the foremost rows are +sitting on their heels close up to this passage, so that they +help the actors to mount and descend the high steps of the +<span lang="fa"><i>tâgnumâ</i></span> when they have to pass between that and the +<span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>. On each side of the <span lang="fa"><i>tâgnumâ</i></span> are boxes, and along +one wall of the enclosure are other boxes with fronts of +elaborate woodwork, which are left to stand as a permanent +part of the construction; facing these, with the floor and +stage between, rise tiers of seats as in an amphitheater. +All places are free; the great people have generally provided +and furnished the boxes, and take care to fill them; +but if a box is not occupied when the performance begins, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>any ragged street-urchin or beggar may walk in and seat +himself there. A row of gigantic masts runs across the +middle of the space, one or two of them being fixed in the +<span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span> itself; and from these masts is stretched an immense +awning which protects the whole audience. Up to a certain +height these masts are hung with tiger and panther +skins, to indicate the violent character of the scenes to be +represented. Shields of steel and of hippopotamus skin, +flags, and naked swords, are also attached to these masts. +A sea of color and splendor meets the eye all round. +Woodwork and brickwork disappear under cushions, rich +carpets, silk hangings, India muslin embroidered with +silver and gold, shawls from Kerman and from Cashmere. +There are lamps, lusters of colored crystal, mirrors, Bohemian +and Venetian glass, porcelain vases of all degrees of +magnitude from China and from Europe, paintings and +engravings, displayed in profusion everywhere. The taste +may not always be soberly correct, but the whole spectacle +has just the effect of prodigality, color, and sumptuousness +which we are accustomed to associate with the splendors +of the Arabian Nights.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In marked contrast with this display is the poverty of +scenic contrivance and stage illusion. The subject is far +too interesting and too solemn to need them. The actors +are visible on all sides, and the exits, entrances, and stage-play +of our theaters are impossible; the imagination of +the spectator fills up all gaps and meets all requirements. +On the Ammergau arrangements one feels that the archæologists +and artists of Munich have laid their correct finger; +at Teheran there has been no schooling of this sort. A +copper basin of water represents the Euphrates; a heap of +chopped straw in a corner is the sand of the desert of +Kerbela, and the actor goes and takes up a handful of it, +when his part requires him to throw, in Oriental fashion, +dust upon his head. There is no attempt at proper costume; +all that is sought is to do honor to the personages +of chief interest by dresses and jewels which would pass +for rich and handsome things to wear in modern Persian +life. The power of the actors is in their genuine sense of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>the seriousness of the business they are engaged in. They +are, like the public around them, penetrated with this, and +so the actor throws his whole soul into what he is about, +the public meets the actor halfway, and effects of extraordinary +impressiveness are the result. “The actor is +under a charm,” says Count Gobineau; “he is under it +so strongly and completely that almost always one sees +Yezid himself (the usurping caliph), the wretched Ibn-Said +(Yezid’s general), the infamous Shemer (Ibn-Said’s +lieutenant), at the moment they vent the cruellest insults +against the Imams whom they are going to massacre, or +against the women of the Imam’s family whom they are +ill-using, burst into tears and repeat their part with sobs. +The public is neither surprised nor displeased at this; on +the contrary, it beats its breast at the sight, throws up its +arms towards heaven with invocations of God, and redoubles +its groans. So it often happens that the actor +identifies himself with the personage he represents to such +a degree that, when the situation carries him away, he cannot +be said to act, he <em>is</em> with such truth, such complete +enthusiasm, such utter self-forgetfulness, what he represents, +that he reaches a reality at one time sublime, at another +terrible, and produces impressions on his audience +which it would be simply absurd to look for from our more +artificial performances. There is nothing stilted, nothing +false, nothing conventional; nature, and the facts represented, +themselves speak.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The actors are men and boys, the parts of angels and +women being filled by boys. The children who appear in +the piece are often the children of the principal families +of Teheran; their appearance in this religious solemnity +(for such it is thought) being supposed to bring a blessing +upon them and their parents. “Nothing is more touching,” +says Count Gobineau, “than to see these little things +of three or four years old, dressed in black gauze frocks +with large sleeves, and having on their heads small round +black caps embroidered with silver and gold, kneeling +beside the body of the actor who represents the martyr of +the day, embracing him, and with their little hands covering +<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>themselves with chopped straw for sand in sign of +grief. These children evidently,” he continues, “do not +consider themselves to be acting; they are full of the feeling +that what they are about is something of deep seriousness +and importance; and though they are too young to +comprehend fully the story, they know, in general, that it +is a matter sad and solemn. They are not distracted by +the audience, and they are not shy, but go through their +prescribed part with the utmost attention and seriousness, +always crossing their arms respectfully to receive the blessing +of the Imam Hussein; the public beholds them with +emotions of the liveliest satisfaction and sympathy.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The dramatic pieces themselves are without any author’s +name. They are in popular language, such as the commonest +and most ignorant of the Persian people can understand, +free from learned Arabic words,—free, comparatively +speaking, from Oriental fantasticality and hyperbole. +The Seyids, or popular friars, already spoken of, have +probably had a hand in the composition of many of them. +The Moollahs, or regular ecclesiastical authorities, condemn +the whole thing. It is an innovation which they +disapprove and think dangerous; it is addressed to the +eye, and their religion forbids to represent religious things +to the eye; it departs from the limits of what is revealed +and appointed to be taught as the truth, and brings in +novelties and heresies;—for these dramas keep growing +under the pressure of the actor’s imagination and emotion, +and of the imagination and emotion of the public, and +receive new developments every day. The learned, again, +say that these pieces are a heap of lies, the production of +ignorant people, and have no words strong enough to express +their contempt for them. Still, so irresistible is +the vogue of these sacred dramas that, from the king on +the throne to the beggar in the street, every one, except +perhaps the Moollahs, attends them, and is carried away +by them. The Imams and their families speak always in +a kind of lyrical chant, said to have rhythmical effects, +often of great pathos and beauty; their persecutors, the +villains of the piece, speak always in prose.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>The stage is under the direction of a choragus, called +<span lang="fa"><i>oostad</i></span>, or “master,” who is a sacred personage by reason +of the functions which he performs. Sometimes he addresses +to the audience a commentary on what is passing +before them, and asks their compassion and tears for the +martyrs; sometimes in default of a Seyid, he prays and +preaches. He is always listened to with veneration, for +it is he who arranges the whole sacred spectacle which so +deeply moves everybody. With no attempt at concealment, +with the book of the piece in his hand, he remains +constantly on the stage, gives the actors their cue, puts +the children and any inexperienced actor in their right +places, dresses the martyr in his winding-sheet when he +is going to his death, holds the stirrup for him to mount +his horse, and inserts a supply of chopped straw into the +hands of those who are about to want it. Let us now see +him at work.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The theater is filled, and the heat is great; young men +of rank, the king’s pages, officers of the army, smart +functionaries of State, move through the crowd with water-skins +slung on their backs, dealing out water all round, +in memory of the thirst which on these solemn days the +Imams suffered in the sands of Kerbela. Wild chants and +litanies, such as we have already described, are from time +to time set up, by a dervish, a soldier, a workman in the +crowd. These chants are taken up, more or less, by the +audience: sometimes they flag and die away for want of +support, sometimes they are continued till they reach a +paroxysm, and then abruptly stop. Presently a strange, +insignificant figure in a green cotton garment, looking like +a petty tradesman of one of the Teheran bazaars, mounts +upon the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>. He beckons with his hand to the <a id='corr178.32'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='audiance'>audience</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_178.32'><ins class='correction' title='audiance'>audience</ins></a></span>, +who are silent directly, and addresses them in a tone +of lecture and expostulation, thus:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Well, you seem happy enough, Mussulmans, sitting +there at your ease under the awning; and you imagine +Paradise already wide open to you. Do you know what +Paradise is? It is a garden, doubtless, but such a garden +as you have no idea of. You will say to me: ‘Friend, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>tell us what it is <a id='corr179.1'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='like.”'>like.’</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_179.1'><ins class='correction' title='like.”'>like.’</ins></a></span> I have never been there, certainly; +but plenty of prophets have described it, and angels have +brought news of it. However, all I will tell you is, that +there is room for all good people there, for it is 330,000 +cubits long. If you do not believe, inquire. As for getting +to be one of the good people, let me tell you it is not +enough to read the Koran of the Prophet (the salvation +and blessing of God be upon him!); it is not enough to do +everything which this divine book enjoins; it is not enough +to come and weep at the <span lang="fa"><i>tazyas</i></span>, as you do every day, you +sons of dogs you, who know nothing which is of any use; +it behoves, besides, that your good works (if you ever do +any, which I greatly doubt) should be done in the name +and for the love of Hussein. It is Hussein, Mussulmans, +who is the door to Paradise; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, +who upholds the world; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, by +whom comes salvation! Cry, Hassan, Hussein!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And all the multitude cry: “O Hassan! O Hussein!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>“That is well; and now cry again.” And again all cry: +“O Hassan! O Hussein!” “And now,” the strange +speaker goes on, “pray to God to keep you continually in +the love of Hussein. Come, make your cry to God.” +Then the multitude, as one man, <a id='corr179.23'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='thow'>throw</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_179.23'><ins class='correction' title='thow'>throw</ins></a></span> up their arms into +the air, and with a deep and long-drawn cry exclaim: +“<em>Ya Allah!</em> O God!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Fifes, drums, and trumpets break out; the <span lang="fa"><i>kernas</i></span>, +great copper trumpets five or six feet long, give notice +that the actors are ready and that the <span lang="fa"><i>tazya</i></span> is to commence. +The preacher descends from the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>, and the +actors occupy it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To give a clear notion of the cycle which these dramas +fill, we should begin, as on the first day of the Moharrem +the actors begin, with some piece relating to the childhood +of the Imams, such as, for instance, the piece called <cite>The +Children Digging</cite>. Ali and Fatima are living at Medina +with their little sons Hassan and Hussein. The simple +home and occupations of the pious family are exhibited; +it is morning, Fatima is seated with the little Hussein on +<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>her lap, dressing him. She combs his hair, talking caressingly +to him all the while. A hair comes out with the +comb; the child starts. Fatima is in distress at having +given the child even this momentary uneasiness, and stops +to gaze upon him tenderly. She falls into an anxious +reverie, thinking of her fondness for the child, and of the +unknown future in store for him. While she muses, the +angel Gabriel stands before her. He reproves her weakness: +“A hair falls from the child’s head,” he says, +“and you weep; what would you do if you knew the +destiny that awaits him, the countless wounds with which +that body shall one day be pierced, the agony that shall +rend your own soul!” Fatima, in despair, is comforted +by her husband Ali, and they go together into the town +to hear Mahomet preach. The boys and some of their +little friends begin to play; every one makes a great deal +of Hussein; he is at once the most spirited and the most +amiable child of them all. The party amuse themselves +with digging, with making holes in the ground and building +mounds. Ali returns from the sermon and asks what +they are about; and Hussein is made to reply in ambiguous +and prophetic answers, which convey that by these +holes and mounds in the earth are prefigured interments +and tombs. Ali departs again; there rush in a number +of big and fierce boys, and begin to pelt the little Imams +with stones. A companion shields Hussein with his own +body, but he is struck down with a stone, and with +another stone Hussein, too, is stretched on the ground +senseless. Who are those boy-tyrants and persecutors? +They are Ibn-Said, and Shemer, and others, the future +murderers at Kerbela. The audience perceive it with +a shudder; the hateful assailants go off in triumph; Ali +re-enters, picks up the stunned and wounded children, +brings them round, and takes Hussein back to his mother +Fatima.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But let us now come at once to the days of martyrdom +and to Kerbela. One of the most famous pieces of the +cycle is a piece called the <cite>Marriage of Kassem</cite>, which +brings us into the very middle of these crowning days. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>Count Gobineau has given a translation of it, and from +this translation we will take a few extracts. Kassem is +the son of Hussein’s elder brother, the Imam Hassan, who +had been poisoned by Yezid’s instigation at Medina. Kassem +and his mother are with the Imam Hussein at Kerbela; +there, too, are the women and children of the holy +family, Omm-Leyla, Hussein’s wife, the Persian princess, +the last child of Yezdejerd the last of the Sassanides; +Zeyneb, Hussein’s sister, the offspring, like himself, of Ali +and Fatima, and the granddaughter of Mahomet; his +nephew Abdallah, still a little child; finally, his beautiful +daughter Zobeyda. When the piece begins, the Imam’s +camp in the desert has already been cut off from the Euphrates +and besieged several days by the Syrian troops +under Ibn-Said and Shemer, and by the treacherous men +of Kufa. The Family of the Tent were suffering torments +of thirst. One of the children had brought an empty +water-bottle, and thrown it, a silent token of distress, before +the feet of Abbas, the uncle of Hussein; Abbas had sallied +out to cut his way to the river, and had been slain. +Afterwards Ali-Akber, Hussein’s eldest son, had made +the same attempt and met with the same fate. Two +younger brothers of Ali-Akber followed his example, and +were likewise slain. The Imam Hussein had rushed amidst +the enemy, beaten them from the body of Ali-Akber, and +brought the body back to his tent; but the river was still +inaccessible. At this point the action of the <cite>Marriage of +Kassem</cite> begins. Kassem, a youth of sixteen, is burning +to go out and avenge his cousin. At one end of the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span> +is the Imam Hussein seated on his throne; in the middle +are grouped all the members of his family; at the other +end lies the body of Ali-Akber, with his mother Omm-Leyla, +clothed and veiled in black, bending over it. The +<span lang="fa"><i>kernas</i></span> sound, and Kassem, after a solemn appeal from +Hussein and his sister Zeyneb to God and to the founders +of their house to look upon their great distress, rises and +speaks to himself:</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Kassem.</i>—“Separate thyself from the women of the +harem, Kassem. Consider within thyself for a little; +<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>here thou sittest, and presently thou wilt see the body of +Hussein, that body like a flower, torn by arrows and lances +like thorns, Kassem.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Thou sawest Ali-Akber’s head severed from his body +on the field of battle, and yet thou livedst!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Arise, obey that which is written of thee by thy father; +to be slain, that is thy lot, Kassem!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Go, get leave from the son of Fatima, most honorable +among women, and submit thyself to thy fate, Kassem.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Hussein sees him approach. “Alas,” he says, “it is +the orphan nightingale of the garden of Hassan, my +brother!” Then Kassem speaks:</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Kassem.</i>—“O God, what shall I do beneath this load of +affliction? My eyes are wet with tears, my lips are dried up +with thirst. To live is worse than to die. What shall I +do, seeing what hath befallen Ali-Akber? If Hussein +suffereth me not to go forth, oh misery! For then what +shall I do, O God, in the day of the resurrection, when I +see my father Hassan? When I see my mother in the day +of the resurrection, what shall I do, O God, in my sorrow +and shame before her? All my kinsmen are gone to +appear before the Prophet: shall not I also one day stand +before the Prophet; and what shall I do, O God, in that +day?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Then he addresses the Imam:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Hail, threshold of the honor and majesty on high, +threshold of heaven, threshold of God! In the roll of +martyrs thou art the chief; in the book of creation thy +story will live for ever. An orphan, a fatherless child, +downcast and weeping, comes to prefer a request to thee.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Hussein bids him tell it, and he answers:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“O light of the eyes of Mahomet the mighty, O lieutenant +of Ali the lion! Abbas has perished, Ali-Akber has +suffered martyrdom. O my uncle, thou hast no warriors +left, and no standard-bearer! The roses are gone and gone +are their buds; the jessamine is gone, the poppies are gone. +I alone, I am still left in the garden of the Faith, a thorn, +and miserable. If thou hast any kindness for the orphan, +suffer me to go forth and fight.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>Hussein refuses. “My child,” he says, “thou wast +the light of the eyes of the Imam Hassan, thou art my +beloved remembrance of him; ask me not this; urge me +not, entreat me not; to have lost Ali-Akber is enough.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Kassem answers:—“That Kassem should live and Ali-Akber +be marytred—sooner let the earth cover me! O +king, be generous to the beggar at thy gate. See how my +eyes run over with tears and my lips are dried up with +thirst. Cast thine eyes toward the waters of the heavenly +Euphrates! I die of thirst; grant me, O thou marked of +God, a full pitcher of the water of life! it flows in the +Paradise which awaits me.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Hussein still refuses; Kassem breaks forth in complaints +and lamentations, his mother comes to him and learns the +reason. She then says:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Complain not against the Imam, light of my eyes; +only by his order can the commission of martyrdom be +given. In that commission are sealed two-and-seventy +witnesses, all righteous, and among the two-and-seventy is +thy name. Know that thy destiny of death is commanded +in the writing which thou wearest on thine arm.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>This writing is the testament of his father Hassan. He +bears it in triumph to the Imam Hussein, who finds +written there that he should, on the death-plain of Kerbela, +suffer Kassem to have his will, but that he should +marry him first to his daughter Zobeyda. Kassem consents, +though in astonishment. “Consider,” he says, “there +lies Ali-Akber, mangled by the enemies’ hands! Under +this sky of ebon blackness, how can joy show her face? +Nevertheless if thou commandest it, what have I to do +but obey? Thy commandment is that of the Prophet, and +his voice is that of God.” But Hussein has also to overcome +the reluctance of the intended bride and of all the +women of his family.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Heir of the vicar of God,” says Kassem’s mother to +the Imam, “bid me die, but speak not to me of a bridal. +If Zobeyda is to be a bride and Kassem a bridegroom, +where is the henna to tinge their hands, where is the +bridal chamber?” “Mother of Kassem,” answers the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>Imam solemnly, “yet a few moments, and in this field of +anguish the tomb shall be for marriage-bed, and the winding-sheet +for bridal garment!” All give way to the will +of their sacred Head. The women and children surround +Kassem, sprinkle him with rose-water, hang bracelets and +necklaces on him, and scatter bon-bons around; and then +the marriage procession is formed. Suddenly drums and +trumpets are heard, and the Syrian troops appear. Ibn-Said +and Shemer are at their head. “The Prince of the +Faith celebrates a marriage in the desert,” they exclaim +tauntingly; “we will soon change his festivity into +mourning.” They pass by, and Kassem takes leave of his +bride. “God keep thee, my bride,” he says, embracing +her, “for I must forsake thee!” “One moment,” she +says, “remain in thy place one moment! thy countenance +is as the lamp which giveth us light; suffer me to turn +around thee as the butterfly turneth, gently, gently!” +And making a turn around him, she performs the ancient +Eastern rites of respect from a new-married wife to her +husband. Troubled, he rises to go: “The reins of my +will are slipping away from me!” he murmurs. She lays +hold of his robe: “Take off thy hand,” he cries, “we belong +not to ourselves!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Then he asks the Imam to array him in his winding-sheet. +“O nightingale of the divine orchard of martyrdom,” +says Hussein, as he complies with his wish, “I +clothe thee with thy winding-sheet, I kiss thy face; there +is no fear, and no hope, but of God!” Kassem commits +his little brother Abdallah to the Imam’s care. Omm-Leyla +looks up from her son’s corpse, and says to Kassem: +“When thou enterest the garden of Paradise, kiss for me +the head of Ali-Akber!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The Syrian troops again appear. Kassem rushes upon +them and they all go off fighting. The Family of the +Tent, at Hussein’s command, put the Koran on their heads +and pray, covering themselves with sand. Kassem reappears +victorious. He has slain Azrek, a chief captain of +the Syrians, but his thirst is intolerable. “Uncle,” he +says to the Imam, who asks him what reward he wishes for +<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>his valor, “my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth; +the reward I wish is <em>water</em>.” “Thou coverest me with +shame, Kassem,” his uncle answers; “what can I do? +Thou askest water; there is no water!”</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Kassem.</i>—“If I might but wet my mouth, I could presently +make an end of the men of Kufa.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Hussein.</i>—“As I live, I have not one drop of +water!”</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Kassem.</i>—“Were it but lawful, I would wet my mouth +with my own blood.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Hussein.</i>—“Beloved child, what the Prophet forbids, +that cannot I make lawful.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><i>Kassem.</i>—“I beseech thee, let my lips be but once +moistened, and I will vanquish thine enemies!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Hussein presses his own lips to those of Kassem, who, refreshed, +again rushes forth, and returns bleeding and +stuck with darts, to die at the Imam’s feet in the tent. +So ends the marriage of Kassem.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But the great day is the tenth day of the Moharrem, +when comes the death of the Imam himself. The narrative +of Gibbon well sums up the events of this great +tenth day. “The battle at length expired by the death +of the last of the companions of Hussein. Alone, weary, +and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. +He was pierced in the mouth with a dart. He lifted his +hands to heaven—they were full of blood—and he uttered +a funeral prayer for the living and the dead. In a transport +of despair, his sister issued from the tent, and adjured +the general of the Kufians that he would not suffer +Hussein to be murdered before his eyes. A tear trickled +down the soldier’s venerable beard; and the boldest of his +men fell back on every side as the dying Imam threw himself +among them. The remorseless Shemer—a name detested +by the faithful—reproached their cowardice; and +the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three and thirty +strokes of lances and swords. After they had trampled on +his body, they carried his head to the castle of Kufa, and +the inhuman Obeidallah (the governor) struck him on the +mouth with a cane. ‘Alas!’ exclaimed an aged Mussulman, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>‘on those lips have I seen the lips of the Apostle +of God!’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>For this catastrophe no one <span lang="fa"><i>tazya</i></span> suffices; all the companies +of actors unite in a vast open space; booths and +tents are pitched round the outside circle for the spectators; +in the center is the Imam’s camp, and the day ends with +its conflagration.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nor are there wanting pieces which carry on the story +beyond the death of Hussein. One which produces an +extraordinary effect is <cite>The Christian Damsel</cite>. The carnage +is over, the enemy are gone. To the awe-struck beholders, +the scene shows the silent plain of Kerbela and +the tombs of the martyrs. Their bodies, full of wounds, +and with weapons sticking in them still, are exposed to +view; but around them all are crowns of burning candles, +circles of light, to show that they have entered into glory. +At one end of the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span> is a high tomb by itself; it is the +tomb of the Imam Hussein, and his pierced body is seen +stretched out upon it. A brilliant caravan enters, with +camels, soldiers, servants, and a young lady on horseback, +in European costume, or what passes in Persia for +European costume. She halts near the tombs and proposes +to encamp. Her servants try to pitch a tent; but +wherever they drive a pole into the ground, blood springs +up, and a groan of horror bursts from the audience. Then +the fair traveler, instead of encamping, mounts into the +<span lang="fa"><i>tâgnumâ</i></span>, lies down to rest there, and falls asleep. Jesus +Christ appears to her, and makes known that this is Kerbela, +and what has happened here. Meanwhile, an Arab +of the desert, a Bedouin who had formerly received +Hussein’s bounty, comes stealthily, intent on plunder, +upon the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>. He finds nothing, and in a paroxysm of +brutal fury he begins to ill-treat the corpses. Blood flows. +The feeling of Asiatics about their dead is well known, and +the horror of the audience rises to its height. Presently +the ruffian assails and wounds the corpse of the Imam himself, +over whom white doves are hovering; the voice of +Hussein, deep and mournful, calls from his tomb: “<em>There +is no God but God!</em>” The robber flies in terror; the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>angels, the prophets, Mahomet, Jesus Christ, Moses, the +Imams, the holy women, all come upon the <span lang="fa"><i>sakou</i></span>, press +round Hussein, load him with honors. The Christian +damsel wakes, and embraces Islam, the Islam of the sect +of the Shiahs.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Another piece closes the whole story, by bringing the +captive women and children of the Iman’s family to +Damascus, to the presence of the Caliph Yezid. It is in +this piece that there comes the magnificent tableau, already +mentioned, of the court of the caliph. The crown jewels +are lent for it, and the dresses of the ladies of Yezid’s +court, represented by boys chosen for their good looks, are +said to be worth thousands and thousands of pounds; but +the audience see them without favor, for this brilliant +court of Yezid is cruel to the captives of Kerbela. The +captives are thrust into a wretched dungeon under the +palace walls; but the Caliph’s wife had formerly been a +slave of Mahomet’s daughter Fatima, the mother of +Hussein and Zeyneb. She goes to see Zeyneb in prison, +her heart is touched, she passes into an agony of repentance, +returns to her husband, upbraids him with his crimes, and +intercedes for the women of the holy family, and for the +children, who keep calling for the Imam Hussein. Yezid +orders his wife to be put to death, and sends the head of +Hussein to the children. Sekyna, the Imam’s youngest +daughter, a child of four years old, takes the beloved head +in her arms, kisses it, and lies down beside it. Then +Hussein appears to her as in life: “Oh! my father,” she +cries, “where wast thou? I was hungry, I was cold, I +was beaten—where wast thou?” But now she sees him +again, and is happy. In the vision of her happiness she +passes away out of this troublesome life, she enters into +rest, and the piece ends with her mother and her aunts +burying her.</p> + +<p class='c001'>These are the martyrs of Kerbela; and these are the +sufferings which awaken in an Asiatic audience sympathy +so deep and serious, transports so genuine of pity, love, +and gratitude, that to match them at all one must take +the feelings raised at Ammergau. And now, where are +<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>we to look, in the subject-matter of the Persian passion-play, +for the source of all this emotion?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Count Gobineau suggests that it is to be found in the +feeling of patriotism; and that our Indo-European kinsmen, +the Persians, conquered by the Semitic Arabians, +find in the sufferings of Hussein a portrait of their own +martyrdom. “Hussein,” says Count Gobineau, “is not +only the son of Ali, he is the husband of a princess of the +blood of the Persian kings; he, his father Ali, the whole +body of Imams taken together, represent the nation, +represent Persia, invaded, ill-treated, despoiled, stripped +of its inhabitants, by the Arabians. The right which is +insulted and violated in Hussein, is identified with the +right of Persia. The Arabians, the Turks, the Afghans,—Persia’s +implacable and hereditary enemies,—recognize +Yezid as legitimate caliph; Persia finds therein an excuse +for hating them the more, and identifies herself the more +with the usurper’s victims. It is <em>patriotism</em> therefore, +which has taken the form, here, of the drama to express +itself.” No doubt there is much truth in what Count +Gobineau thus says; and it is certain that the division of +Shiahs and Sunis has its true cause in a division of races, +rather than in a difference of religious belief.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But I confess that if the interest of the Persian passion-plays +had seemed to me to lie solely in the curious evidence +they afford of the workings of patriotic feeling in a +conquered people, I should hardly have occupied myself +with them at all this length. I believe that they point to +something much more interesting. What this is, I cannot +do more than simply indicate; but indicate it I will, +in conclusion, and then leave the student of human nature +to follow it out for himself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>When Mahomet’s cousin Jaffer, and others of his first +converts, persecuted by the idolaters of Mecca, fled in the +year of our era 615, seven years before the Hegira, into +Abyssinia, and took refuge with the King of that country, +the people of Mecca sent after the fugitives to demand +that they should be given up to them. Abyssinia was +then already Christian. The king asked Jaffer and his +<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>companions what was this new religion for which they +had left their country. Jaffer answered: “We were +plunged in the darkness of ignorance, we were worshipers +of idols. Given over to all our passions, we knew no law +but that of the strongest, when God raised up among us a +man of our own race, of noble descent, and long held in +esteem by us for his virtues. This apostle called us to +believe in one God, to worship God only, to reject the +superstitions of our fathers, to despise divinities of wood +and stone. He commanded us to eschew wickedness, to +be truthful in speech, faithful to our engagements, kind +and helpful to our relations and neighbors. He bade us +respect the chastity of women, and not to rob the orphan. +He exhorted us to prayer, alms-giving, and fasting. We +believed in his mission, and we accepted the doctrines and +the rule of life which he brought to us from God. For +this our countrymen have persecuted us; and now they +want to make us return to their idolatry.” The king of +Abyssinia refused to surrender the fugitives, and then, +turning again to Jaffer, after a few more explanations, he +picked up a straw from the ground, and said to him: +“Between your religion and ours there is not the thickness +of this straw difference.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>That is not quite so; yet thus much we may affirm, +that Jaffer’s account of the religion of Mahomet is a great +deal truer than the accounts of it which are commonly +current amongst us. Indeed, for the credit of humanity, +as more than a hundred millions of men are said to profess +the Mahometan religion, one is glad to think so. To +popular opinion everywhere, religion is proved by miracles. +All religions but a man’s own are utterly false and vain; +the authors of them are mere impostors; and the miracles +which are said to attest them, fictitious. We forget that +this is a game which two can play at; although the believer +of each religion always imagines the prodigies which +attest his own religion to be fenced by a guard granted to +them alone. Yet how much more safe is it, as well as +more fruitful, to look for the main confirmation of a religion +in its intrinsic correspondence with urgent wants of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>human nature, in its profound necessity! Differing +religions will then be found to have much in common, but +this will be an additional proof of the value of that religion +which does most for that which is thus commonly recognized +as salutary and necessary. In Christendom one +need not go about to establish that the religion of the +Hebrews is a better religion than the religion of the Arabs, +or that the Bible is a greater book than the Koran. The +Bible <em>grew</em>, the Koran <em>was made</em>; there lies the immense +difference in depth and truth between them! This very +inferiority may make the Koran, for certain purposes and +for people at a low stage of mental growth, a more powerful +instrument than the Bible. From the circumstances +of its origin, the Koran has the intensely dogmatic character, +it has the perpetual insistence on the motive of future +rewards and punishments, the palpable exhibition of paradise +and hell, which the Bible has not. Among the little +known and little advanced races of the great African continent, +the Mahometan missionaries, by reason of the sort +of power which this character of the Koran gives, are said +to be more successful than ours. Nevertheless even in +Africa it will assuredly one day be manifest, that whereas +the Bible-people trace themselves to Abraham through +Isaac, and the Koran-people trace themselves to Abraham +through Ishmael, the difference between the religion of +the Bible and the religion of the Koran is almost as the +difference between Isaac and Ishmael. I mean that the +seriousness about righteousness, which is what the hatred +of idolatry really means, and the profound and inexhaustible +doctrines that the righteous Eternal loveth +righteousness, that there is no peace for the wicked, that +the righteous is an everlasting foundation, are exhibited +and inculcated in the Old Testament with an authority, +majesty, and truth which leave the Koran immeasurably +behind, and which, the more mankind grows and gains +light, the more will be felt to have no fellows. Mahomet +was no doubt acquainted with the Jews and their documents, +and gained something from this source for his +religion. But his religion is not a mere plagiarism from +<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>Judea, any more than it is a mere mass of falsehood. No; +in the seriousness, elevation, and moral energy of himself +and of that Semitic race from which he sprang and to +which he spoke, Mahomet mainly found that scorn and +hatred of idolatry, that sense of the worth and truth of +righteousness, judgment, and justice, which make the +real greatness of him and his Koran, and which are thus +rather an independent testimony to the essential doctrines +of the Old Testament, than a plagiarism from them. +The world needs righteousness, and the Bible is the grand +teacher of it, but for certain times and certain men Mahomet +too, in his way, was a teacher of righteousness.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But we know how the Old Testament conception of +righteousness ceased with time to have the freshness and +force of an intuition, became something petrified, narrow, +and formal, needed renewing. We know how Christianity +renewed it, carrying into these hard waters of Judaism a +sort of warm gulf-stream of tender emotion, due chiefly to +qualities which may be summed up as those of inwardness, +mildness, and self-renouncement. Mahometanism had no +such renewing. It began with a conception of righteousness, +lofty indeed, but narrow, and which we may call old +Jewish; and there it remained. It is not a <em>feeling</em> religion. +No one would say that the virtues of gentleness, +mildness, and self-sacrifice were its virtues; and the more +it went on, the more the faults of its original narrow basis +became visible, more and more it became fierce and militant, +less and less was it amiable. Now, what are Ali, +and Hassan, and Hussein and the Imams, but an insurrection +of noble and pious natures against this hardness +and aridity of the religion round them? an insurrection +making its authors seem weak, helpless, and unsuccessful +to the world and amidst the struggles of the world, but +enabling them to know the joy and peace for which the +world thirsts in vain, and inspiring in the heart of mankind +an irresistible sympathy. “The twelve Imams,” +says Gibbon, “Ali, Hassan, Hussein, and the lineal descendants +of Hussein, to the ninth generation, without +arms, or treasures, or subjects, successively enjoyed the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>veneration of the people. Their names were often the +pretense of sedition and civil war; but these royal saints +despised the pomp of the world, submitted to the will of +God and the injustice of man, and devoted their innocent +lives to the study and practice of religion.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Abnegation and mildness, based on the depth of the +inner life, and visited by unmerited misfortune, made the +power of the first and famous Imams, Ali, Hassan, and +Hussein, over the popular imagination. “O brother,” +said Hassan, as he was dying of poison, to Hussein who +sought to find out and punish his murderer, “O brother, +let him alone till he and I meet together before God!” +So his father Ali had stood back from his rights instead of +snatching at them. So of Hussein himself it was said by +his successful rival, the usurping Caliph Yezid: “God +loved Hussein, <em>but he would not suffer him to attain to +anything</em>.” They might attain to nothing, they were too +pure, these great ones of the world as by birth they were; +but the people, which itself also can attain to so little, +loved them all the better on that account, loved them for +their abnegation and mildness, felt that they were dear to +God, that God loved them, and that they and their lives +filled a void in the severe religion of Mahomet. These +saintly self-deniers, these resigned sufferers, who would +not strive nor cry, supplied a tender and pathetic side in +Islam. The conquered Persians, a more mobile, more impressionable, +and gentler race than their concentrated, +narrow, and austere Semitic conquerors, felt the need of it +most, and gave most prominence to the ideals which satisfied +the need; but in Arabs and Turks also, and in all the +Mahometan world, Ali and his sons excite enthusiasm and +affection. Round the central sufferer, Hussein, has come +to group itself everything which is most tender and touching. +His person brings to the Mussulman’s mind the +most human side of Mahomet himself, his fondness for +children,—for Mahomet had loved to nurse the little +Hussein on his knee, and to show him from the pulpit to +his people. The Family of the Tent is full of women +and children, and their devotion and sufferings,—blameless +<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>and saintly women, lovely and innocent children. +There, too, are lovers with their story, the beauty and the +love of youth; and all follow the attraction of the pure +and resigned Imam, all die for him. The tender pathos +from all these flows into the pathos from him and enhances +it, until finally there arises for the popular imagination +an immense ideal of mildness and self-sacrifice, +melting and overpowering the soul.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Even for us, to whom almost all the names are strange, +whose interest in the places and persons is faint, who have +them before us for a moment to-day, to see them again, +probably, no more forever,—even for us, unless I err +greatly, the power and pathos of this ideal are recognizable. +What must they be for those to whom every name +is familiar, and calls up the most solemn and cherished +associations; who have had their adoring gaze fixed all +their lives upon this exemplar of self-denial and gentleness, +and who have no other? If it was superfluous to +say to English people that the religion of the Koran has +not the value of the religion of the Old Testament, still +more is it superfluous to say that the religion of the Imams +has not the value of Christianity. The character and +discourse of Jesus Christ possess, I have elsewhere often +said, two signal powers: mildness and sweet reasonableness. +The latter, the power which so puts before our view +duty of every kind as to give it the force of an intuition, +as to make it seem,—to make the total sacrifice of our +ordinary self seem,—the most simple, natural, winning, +necessary thing in the world, has been hitherto applied +with but a very limited range, it is destined to an infinitely +wider application, and has a fruitfulness which will yet +transform the world. Of this the Imams have nothing, +except so far as all mildness and self-sacrifice have in them +something of sweet reasonableness and are its indispensable +preliminary. This they have, <em>mildness and self-sacrifice</em>; +and we have seen what an attraction it exercises. +Could we ask for a stronger testimony to Christianity? +Could we wish for any sign more convincing, that Jesus +Christ was indeed, what Christians call him, <em>the desire of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>all nations</em>? So salutary, so necessary is what Christianity +contains, that a religion,—a great, powerful, successful +religion,—arises without it, and the missing virtue forces +its way in! Christianity may say to these Persian Mahometans, +with their gaze fondly turned towards the martyred +Imams, what in our Bible God says by Isaiah to +Cyrus, their great ancestor:—“<em>I girded thee, though thou +hast not known me.</em>” It is a long way from Kerbela to +Calvary; but the sufferers of Kerbela hold aloft to the +eyes of millions of our race the lesson so loved by the sufferer +of Calvary. For he said: “Learn of me, that I am +<em>mild</em>, and <em>lowly of heart</em>; and ye shall find <em>rest unto your +souls</em>.”</p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span> + <h2 class='c005'>VIII.<br> <br> JOUBERT.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Why should we ever treat of any dead authors but the +famous ones? Mainly for this reason: because, from +these famous personages, home or foreign, whom we all +know so well, and of whom so much has been said, the +amount of stimulus which they contain for us has been in +a great measure disengaged; people have formed their +opinion about them, and do not readily change it. One +may write of them afresh, combat received opinions about +them, even interest one’s readers in so doing; but the interest +one’s readers receive has to do, in general, rather +with the treatment than with the subject; they are +susceptible of a lively impression rather of the course of +the discussion itself,—its turns, vivacity, and novelty,—than +of the genius of the author who is the occasion of it. +And yet what is really precious and inspiring, in all that +we get from literature, except this sense of an immediate +contact with genius itself, and the stimulus towards what +is true and excellent which we derive from it? Now in +literature, besides the eminent men of genius who have +had their deserts in the way of fame, besides the eminent +men of ability who have often had far more than their +deserts in the way of fame, there are a certain number of +personages who have been real men of genius,—by which +I mean, that they have had a genuine gift for what is true +and excellent, and are therefore capable of emitting a +life-giving stimulus,—but who, for some reason or other, +in most cases for very valid reasons, have remained obscure, +nay, beyond a narrow circle in their own country, unknown. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>It is salutary from time to time to come across +a genius of this kind, and to extract his honey. Often he +has more of it for us, as I have already said, than greater +men; for, though it is by no means true that from +what is new to us there is most to be learnt, it is yet +indisputably true that from what is new to us we in general +learn most.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Of a genius of this kind, Joseph Joubert, I am now +going to speak. His name is, I believe, almost unknown +in England; and even in France, his native country, it is +not famous. M. Sainte-Beuve has given of him one of +his incomparable portraits; but,—besides that even M. +Sainte-Beuve’s writings are far less known amongst us +than they deserve to be,—every country has its own point +of view from which a remarkable author may most profitably +be seen and studied.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Joseph Joubert was born (and his date should be remarked) +in 1754, at Montignac, a little town in Périgord. +His father was a doctor with small means and a large +family; and Joseph, the eldest, had his own way to make in +the world. He was for eight years, as pupil first, and +afterwards as an assistant-master, in the public school of +Toulouse, then managed by the Jesuits, who seem to have +left in him a most favorable opinion, not only of their +tact and address, but of their really good qualities as +teachers and directors. Compelled by the weakness of +his health to give up, at twenty-two, the profession of +teaching, he passed two important years of his life in hard +study, at home at Montignac; and came in 1778 to try +his fortune in the literary world of Paris, then perhaps +the most tempting field which has ever yet presented itself +to a young man of letters. He knew Diderot, D’Alembert, +Marmontel, Laharpe; he became intimate with one of +the celebrities of the next literary generation, then, like +himself, a young man,—Chateaubriand’s friend, the +future Grand Master of the University, Fontanes. But, +even then, it began to be remarked of him, that M. +Joubert “<span lang="fr"><i>s’inquiétait de perfection bien plus que de gloire</i></span>—cared +far more about perfecting himself than about +<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>making himself a reputation.” His severity of morals may +perhaps have been rendered easier to him by the delicacy of +his health; but the delicacy of his health will not by +itself account for his changeless preference of being to +seeming, knowing to showing, studying to publishing; +for what terrible public performers have some invalids +been! This preference he retained all through his life, +and it is by this that he is characterized. “He has +chosen,” Chateaubriand (adopting Epicurus’s famous +words) said of him, “<em>to hide his life</em>.” Of a life which +its owner was bent on hiding there can be but little to tell. +Yet the only two public incidents of Joubert’s life, slight +as they are, do all concerned in them so much credit that +they deserve mention. In 1790 the Constituent Assembly +made the office of justice of the peace elective throughout +France. The people of Montignac retained such an impression +of the character of their young townsman,—one +of Plutarch’s men of virtue, as he had lived amongst +them, simple, studious, severe,—that, though he had left +them for years, they elected him in his absence without +his knowing anything about it. The appointment little +suited Joubert’s wishes or tastes; but at such a moment +he thought it wrong to decline it. He held it for two +years, the legal term, discharging its duties with a firmness +and integrity which were long remembered; and +then, when he went out of office, his fellow-townsmen +reelected him. But Joubert thought that he had now accomplished +his duty towards them, and he went back to +the retirement which he loved. That seems to me a +little episode of the great French Revolution worth remembering. +The sage who was asked by the king, why +sages were seen at the doors of kings, but not kings at the +doors of sages, replied, that it was because sages knew +what was good for them, and kings did not. But at Montignac +the king—for in 1790 the people in France was +king with a vengeance—knew what was good for him, and +came to the door of the sage.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The other incident was this. When Napoleon, in 1809, +reorganized the public instruction of France, founded the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>University, and made M. de Fontanes its Grand Master, +Fontanes had to submit to the Emperor a list of persons +to form the council or governing body of the new University. +Third on his list, after two distinguished names, +Fontanes placed the unknown name of Joubert. “This +name,” he said in his accompanying memorandum to the +Emperor, “is not known as the two first are; and yet +this is the nomination to which I attach most importance. +I have known M. Joubert all my life. His character and +intelligence are of the very highest order. I shall rejoice +if your Majesty will accept my guarantee for him.” +Napoleon trusted his Grand Master, and Joubert became +a councilor of the University. It is something that a +man, elevated to the highest posts of State, should not +forget his obscure friends; or that, if he remembers and +places them, he should regard in placing them their merit +rather than their obscurity. It is more, in the eyes of +those whom the necessities, real or supposed, of a political +system have long familiarized with such cynical disregard +of fitness in the distribution of office, to see a minister +and his master alike zealous, in giving away places, +to give them to the best men to be found.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Between 1792 and 1809 Joubert had married. His life +was passed between Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where his +wife’s family lived,—a pretty little Burgundian town, by +which the Lyons railroad now passes,—and Paris. Here, +in a house in the Rue St.-Honoré, in a room very high up, +and admitting plenty of the light which he so loved,—a +room from which he saw, in his own words, “a great deal +of sky and very little earth,”—among the treasures of a +library collected with infinite pains, taste, and skill, from +which every book he thought ill of was rigidly excluded,—he +never would possess either a complete Voltaire or a +complete Rousseau,—the happiest hours of his life were +passed. In the circle of one of those women who leave a +sort of perfume in literary history, and who have the gift +of inspiring successive generations of readers with an indescribable +regret not to have known them,—Pauline de +Montmorin, Madame de Beaumont,—he had become intimate +<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>with nearly all which at that time, in the Paris +world of letters or of society, was most attractive and +promising. Amongst his acquaintances one only misses +the names of Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant. +Neither of them was to his taste, and with Madame de Staël +he always refused to become acquainted; he thought she +had more vehemence than truth, and more heat than light.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Years went on, and his friends became conspicuous +authors or statesmen; but Joubert remained in the shade. +His constitution was of such fragility that how he lived so +long, or accomplished so much as he did, is a wonder: +his soul had, for its basis of operations, hardly any body +at all: both from his stomach and from his chest he +seems to have had constant suffering, though he lived by +rule, and was as abstemious as a Hindoo. Often, after +overwork in thinking, reading, or talking, he remained for +days together in a state of utter prostration,—condemned +to absolute silence and inaction; too happy if the agitation +of his mind would become quiet also, and let him have the +repose of which he stood in so much need. With this +weakness of health, these repeated suspensions of energy, +he was incapable of the prolonged contention of spirit +necessary for the creation of great works. But he read +and thought immensely; he was an unwearied note-taker, +a charming letter-writer; above all, an excellent and +delightful talker. The gaiety and amenity of his natural +disposition were inexhaustible; and his spirit, too, was of +astonishing elasticity; he seemed to hold on to life by a +single thread only, but that single thread was very tenacious. +More and more, as his soul and knowledge ripened +more and more, his friends pressed to his room in the Rue +St.-Honoré; often he received them in bed, for he seldom +rose before three o’clock in the afternoon; and at his bedroom-door, +on his bad days, Madame Joubert stood sentry, +trying, not always with success, to keep back the thirsty +comers from the fountain which was forbidden to flow. +Fontanes did nothing in the University without consulting +him, and Joubert’s ideas and pen were always at his +friend’s service.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>When he was in the country, at Villeneuve, the young +priests of his neighborhood used to resort to him, in order to +profit by his library and by his conversation. He, like our +Coleridge, was particularly qualified to attract men of this +kind and to benefit them: retaining perfect independence +of mind, he was a religious philosopher. As age came on, +his infirmities became more and more overwhelming; some +of his friends, too, died; others became so immersed in +politics, that Joubert, who hated politics, saw them seldomer +than of old; but the moroseness of age and infirmity +never touched him, and he never quarreled with a +friend or lost one. From these miseries he was preserved +by that quality in him of which I have already spoken; a +quality which is best expressed by a word, not of common +use in English,—alas, we have too little in our national +character of the quality which this word expresses,—his +inborn, his constant amenity. He lived till the year 1824. +On the 4th of May in that year he died, at the age of +seventy. A day or two after his death M. de Chateaubriand +inserted in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Journal des Débats</cite></span> a short notice +of him, perfect for its feeling, grace, and propriety. <span lang="fr"><i>On +ne vit dans la mémoire du monde</i></span>, he says and says truly, +<span lang="fr"><i>que par des travaux pour le monde</i></span>,—“a man can live in +the world’s memory only by what he has done for the world.” +But Chateaubriand used the privilege which his great +name gave him to assert, delicately but firmly, Joubert’s +real and rare merits, and to tell the world what manner of +man had just left it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Joubert’s papers were accumulated in boxes and drawers. +He had not meant them for publication; it was very difficult +to sort them and to prepare them for it. Madame +Joubert, his widow, had a scruple about giving them a +publicity which her husband, she felt, would never have +permitted. But, as her own end approached, the natural +desire to leave of so remarkable a spirit some enduring +memorial, some memorial to outlast the admiring recollection +of the living who were so fast passing away, made +her yield to the entreaties of his friends, and allow the +printing, but for private circulation only, of a volume of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>his fragments. Chateaubriand edited it; it appeared in +1838, fourteen years after Joubert’s death. The volume +attracted the attention of those who were best fitted to +appreciate it, and profoundly impressed them. M. Sainte-Beuve +gave of it, in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Revue des Deux Mondes</cite></span>, the +admirable notice of which I have already spoken; and so +much curiosity was excited about Joubert, that the collection +of his fragments, enlarged by many additions, was +at last published for the benefit of the world in general. +It has since been twice reprinted. The first or preliminary +chapter has some fancifulness and affectation in it; the +reader should begin with the second.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I have likened Joubert to Coleridge; and indeed the +points of resemblance between the two men are numerous. +Both of them great and celebrated talkers, Joubert attracting +pilgrims to his upper chamber in the Rue St.-Honoré, +as Coleridge attracted pilgrims to Mr. Gilman’s at Highgate; +both of them desultory and incomplete writers,—here +they had an outward likeness with one another. +Both of them passionately devoted to reading in a class of +books, and to thinking on a class of subjects, out of the +beaten line of the reading and thought of their day; both +of them ardent students and critics of old literature, poetry, +and the metaphysics of religion; both of them curious explorers +of words, and of the latent significance hidden +under the popular use of them; both of them, in a certain +sense, conservative in religion and politics, by antipathy +to the narrow and shallow foolishness of vulgar modern +liberalism;—here they had their inward and real likeness. +But that in which the essence of their likeness consisted +is this,—that they both had from nature an ardent impulse +for seeking the genuine truth on all matters they thought +about, and a gift for finding it and recognizing it when it +was found. To have the impulse for seeking this truth is +much rarer than most people think; to have the gift for +finding it is, I need not say, very rare indeed. By this +they have a spiritual relationship of the closest kind with +one another, and they become, each of them, a source of +stimulus and progress for all of us.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>Coleridge had less delicacy and penetration than Joubert, +but more richness and power; his production, though far +inferior to what his nature at first seemed to promise, was +abundant and varied. Yet in all his production how much +is there to dissatisfy us! How many reserves must be +made in praising either his poetry, or his criticism, or his +philosophy! How little either of his poetry, or of his +criticism, or of his philosophy, can we expect permanently +to stand! But that which will stand of Coleridge is this: +the stimulus of his continual effort,—not a moral effort, +for he had no morals,—but of his continual instinctive +effort, crowned often with rich success, to get at and to +lay bare the real truth of his matter in hand, whether that +matter were literary, or philosophical, or political, or religious; +and this in a country where at that moment such +an effort was almost unknown; where the most powerful +minds threw themselves upon poetry, which conveys truth, +indeed, but conveys it indirectly; and where ordinary +minds were so habituated to do without thinking altogether, +to regard considerations of established routine and practical +convenience as paramount, that any attempt to introduce +within the domain of these the disturbing element +of thought, they were prompt to resent as an outrage. +Coleridge’s great usefulness lay in his supplying in England, +for many years and under critical circumstances, by the +spectacle of this effort of his, a stimulus to all minds +capable of profiting by it; in the generation which grew +up around him. His action will still be felt as long as +the need for it continues. When, with the cessation of +the need, the action too has ceased, Coleridge’s memory, +in spite of the disesteem—nay, repugnance—which his +character may and must inspire, will yet forever remain +invested with that interest and gratitude which invests +the memory of founders.</p> + +<p class='c001'>M. de Rémusat, indeed, reproaches Coleridge with his +<span lang="fr"><i>jugements saugrenus</i></span>; the criticism of a gifted truth-finder +ought not to be <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span>, so on this reproach we must +pause for a moment. <span lang="fr"><i>Saugrenu</i></span> is a rather vulgar French +word, but, like many other vulgar words, very expressive; +<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>used as an epithet for a judgment, it means something +like <em>impudently absurd</em>. The literary judgments of +one nation about another are very apt to be <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenus</i></span>. +It is certainly true, as M. Sainte-Beuve remarks in answer +to Goethe’s complaint against the French that they have +undervalued Du Bartas, that as to the estimate of its own +authors every nation is the best judge; the <em>positive</em> estimate +of them, be it understood, not, of course, the +estimate of them in comparison with the authors of +other nations. Therefore a foreigner’s judgments about +the intrinsic merit of a nation’s authors will generally, +when at complete variance with that nation’s own be +wrong; but there is a permissible wrongness in these +matters, and to that permissible wrongness there is a +limit. When that limit is exceeded, the wrong judgment +becomes more than wrong, it becomes <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span>, or impudently +absurd. For instance, the high estimate which +the French have of Racine is probably in great measure +deserved; or, to take a yet stronger case, even the high +estimate which Joubert had of the Abbé Delille is probably +in great measure deserved; but the common disparaging +judgment passed on Racine by English readers is +not <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span>, still less is that passed by them on <a id='corr203.23'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='thǝ'>the</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_203.23'><ins class='correction' title='thǝ'>the</ins></a></span> +Abbé Delille <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span>, because the beauty of Racine, +and of Delille too, so far as Delille’s beauty goes, is +eminently in their language, and this is a beauty which +a foreigner cannot perfectly seize;—this beauty of diction, +<span lang="la"><i>apicibus verborum ligata</i></span>, as M. Sainte-Beuve, quoting +Quintilian, says of Chateaubriand’s. As to Chateaubriand +himself, again, the common English judgment, +which stamps him as a mere shallow rhetorician, all froth +and vanity, is certainly wrong, one may even wonder +that we English should judge Chateaubriand so wrongly, +for his power goes far beyond beauty of diction; it +is a power, as well, of passion and sentiment, and this +sort of power the English can perfectly well appreciate. +One production of Chateaubriand’s, <span lang="fr"><cite>René</cite></span>, is akin to the +most popular productions of Byron,—to the <cite>Childe +Harold</cite> or <cite>Manfred</cite>,—in spirit, equal to them in power, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>superior to them in form. But this work, I hardly know +why, is almost unread in England. And only consider +this criticism of Chateaubriand’s on the true pathetic! +“It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many +other dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that +the best works of imagination are those which draw +most tears. One could name this or that melodrama, +which no one would like to own having written, and +which yet harrows the feelings far more than the <cite>Æneid</cite>. +The true tears are those which are called forth by the +<em>beauty</em> of poetry; there must be as much admiration in +them as sorrow. They are the tears which come to our +eyes when Priam says to Achilles, ἔτλην δ’, oἷ’ οὔπω ...—‘And +I have endured,—the like whereof no soul upon +the earth hath yet endured,—to carry to my lips the hand +of him who slew my child;’ or when Joseph cries out: ‘I +am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.’” +Who does not feel that the man who wrote that was no +shallow rhetorician, but a born man of genius, with the +true instinct of genius for what is really admirable? Nay, +take these words of Chateaubriand, an old man of eighty, +dying, amidst the noise and bustle of the ignoble revolution +of February 1848: “<span lang="fr">Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, quand +donc, quand donc serai-je délivré de tout ce monde, ce +bruit; quand donc, quand donc cela finira-t-il?</span>” Who, +with any ear, does not feel that those are not the accents +of a trumpery rhetorician, but of a rich and puissant nature,—the +cry of the dying lion? I repeat it, Chateaubriand +is most ignorantly underrated in England; and we English +are capable of rating him far more correctly if we +knew him better. Still Chateaubriand has such real and +great faults, he falls so decidedly beneath the rank of the +truly greatest authors, that the depreciatory judgment +passed on him in England, though ignorant and wrong, +can hardly be said to transgress the limits of permissible +ignorance; it is not a <span lang="fr"><i>jugement saugrenu</i></span>. But when a +critic denies genius to a literature which has produced +Bossuet and Molière, he passes the bounds; and Coleridge’s +judgments on French literature and the French +<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>genius are undoubtedly, as M. de Rémusat calls them, +<span lang="fr"><i>saugrenus</i></span>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And yet, such is the impetuosity of our poor human +nature, such its proneness to rush to a decision with imperfect +knowledge, that his having delivered a <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span> +judgment or two in his life by no means proves a man not +to have had, in comparison with his fellow-men in general, +a remarkable gift for truth, or disqualifies him for being, +by virtue of that gift, a source of vital stimulus for us. +Joubert had far less smoke and turbid vehemence in him +than Coleridge; he had also a far keener sense of what was +absurd. But Joubert can write to M. Molé (the M. Molé +who was afterwards Louis Philippe’s well-known minister): +“As to your Milton, whom the merit of the Abbé Delille” +(the Abbé Delille translated <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>) “makes me +admire, and with whom I have nevertheless still plenty of +fault to find, why, I should like to know, are you scandalized +that I have not enabled myself to read him? I don’t +understand the language in which he writes, and I don’t +much care to. If he is a poet one cannot put up with, +even in the prose of the younger Racine, am I to blame +for that? If by force you mean beauty manifesting itself +with power, I maintain that the Abbé Delille has more +force than Milton.” That, to be sure, is a petulant outburst +in a private letter; it is not, like Coleridge’s, a deliberate +proposition in a printed philosophical essay. But +is it possible to imagine a more perfect specimen of a <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span> +judgment? It is even worse than Coleridge’s, +because it is <span lang="fr"><i>saugrenu</i></span> with reasons. That, however, does +not prevent Joubert from having been really a man of +extraordinary ardor in the search for truth, and of extraordinary +fineness in the perception of it; and so was +Coleridge.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Joubert had around him in France an atmosphere of +literary, philosophical, and religious opinion as alien to +him as that in England was to Coleridge. This is what +makes Joubert, too, so remarkable, and it is on this account +that I begged the reader to remark his date. He +was born in 1754; he died in 1824. He was thus in the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>fulness of his powers at the beginning of the present century, +at the epoch of Napoleon’s consulate. The French +criticism of that day—the criticism of Laharpe’s successors, +of Geoffroy and his colleagues in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Journal des +Débats</cite></span>—had a dryness very unlike the telling vivacity of +the early Edinburgh reviewers, their contemporaries, +but a fundamental narrowness, a want of genuine insight, +much on a par with theirs. Joubert, like Coleridge, has +no respect for the dominant oracle; he treats his Geoffroy +with about as little deference as Coleridge treats his +Jeffrey. “Geoffroy,” he says in an article in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Journal +des Débats</cite></span> criticising Chateaubriand’s <span lang="fr"><cite>Génie du Christianisme</cite></span>—“Geoffroy +in this article begins by holding out his +paw prettily enough; but he ends by a volley of kicks, +which lets the whole world see but too clearly the four +iron shoes of the four-footed animal.” There is, however, +in France a sympathy with intellectual activity for its own +sake, and for the sake of its inherent pleasurableness and +beauty, keener than any which exists in England; and +Joubert had more effect in Paris,—though his conversation +was his only weapon, and Coleridge wielded besides +his conversation his pen,—than Coleridge had or could +have in London. I mean, a more immediate, appreciable +effect; an effect not only upon the young and enthusiastic, +to whom the future belongs, but upon formed and important +personages to whom the present belongs, and who are +actually moving society. He owed this partly to his real +advantages over Coleridge. If he had, as I have already +said, less power and richness than his English parallel, he +had more tact and penetration. He was more <em>possible</em> +than Coleridge; his doctrine was more intelligible than +Coleridge’s, more receivable. And yet with Joubert, the +striving after a consummate and attractive clearness of +expression came from no mere frivolous dislike of labor +and inability for going deep, but was a part of his native +love of truth and perfection. The delight of his life he +found in truth, and in the satisfaction which the enjoying +of truth gives to the spirit; and he thought the truth was +never really and worthily said, so long as the least cloud, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>clumsiness, and repulsiveness hung about the expression +of it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Some of his best passages are those in which he upholds +this doctrine. Even metaphysics he would not allow to +remain difficult and abstract: so long as they spoke a professional +jargon, the language of the schools, he maintained,—and +who shall gainsay him?—that metaphysics +were imperfect; or, at any rate, had not yet reached their +ideal perfection.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The true science of metaphysics,” he says, “consists +not in rendering abstract that which is sensible, but in +rendering sensible that which is abstract; apparent that +which is hidden; imaginable, if so it may be, that which is +only intelligible; and intelligible, finally, that which an +ordinary attention fails to seize.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And therefore:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Distrust, in books on metaphysics, words which have +not been able to get currency in the world, and are only +calculated to form a special language.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nor would he suffer common words to be employed in a +special sense by the schools:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Which is the best, if one wants to be useful and to be +really understood, to get one’s words in the world, or to +get them in the schools. I maintain that the good plan +is to employ words in their popular sense rather than in +their philosophical sense; and the better plan still, to +employ them in their natural sense rather than in their +popular sense. By their natural sense, I mean the popular +and universal acceptation of them brought to that which in +this is essential and invariable. To prove a thing by definition +proves nothing, if the definition is purely philosophical; +for such definitions only bind him who makes +them. To prove a thing by definition, when the definition +expresses the necessary, inevitable, and clear idea which +the world at large attaches to the object, is, on the contrary, +all in all; because then what one does is simply to +show people what they do really think, in spite of themselves +and without knowing it. The rule that one is free +to give to words what sense one will, and that the only +<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>thing needful is to be agreed upon the sense one gives +them, is very well for the mere purposes of argumentation, +and may be allowed in the schools where this sort of fencing +is to be practised; but in the sphere of the true-born +and noble science of metaphysics, and in the genuine world +of literature, it is good for nothing. One must never quit +sight of realities, and one must employ one’s expressions +simply as media,—as glasses, through which one’s thoughts +can be best made evident. I know, by my own experience, +how hard this rule is to follow; but I judge of its importance +by the failure of every system of metaphysics. Not +one of them has succeeded; for the simple reason, that in +every one ciphers have been constantly used instead of +values, artificial ideas instead of native ideas, jargon instead +of idiom.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>I do not know whether the metaphysician will ever adopt +Joubert’s rules; but I am sure that the man of letters, +whenever he has to speak of metaphysics, will do well to +adopt them. He, at any rate, must remember:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“It is by means of familiar words that style takes hold +of the reader and gets possession of him. It is by means +of these that great thoughts get currency and pass for +true metal, like gold and silver which have had a recognized +stamp put upon them. They beget confidence in +the man who, in order to make his thoughts more clearly +perceived, uses them; for people feel that such an employment +of the language of common human life betokens +a man who knows that life and its concerns, and who keeps +himself in contact with them. Besides, these words make +a style frank and easy. They show that an author has +long made the thought or the feeling expressed his mental +food; that he has so assimilated them and familiarized +them, that the most common expressions suffice him in +order to express ideas which have become every-day ideas +to him by the length of time they have been in his mind. +And lastly, what one says in such words looks more true; +for, of all the words in use, none are so clear as those +which we call common words; and clearness is so eminently +one of the characteristics of truth, that often it even +passes for truth itself.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>These are not, in Joubert, mere counsels of rhetoric; +they come from his accurate sense of perfection, from his +having clearly seized the fine and just idea that beauty +and light are properties of truth, and that truth is incompletely +exhibited if it is exhibited without beauty and +light:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Be profound with clear terms and not with obscure +terms. What is difficult will at last become easy; but as +one goes deep into things, one must still keep a charm, +and one must carry into these dark depths of thought, +into which speculation has only recently penetrated, the +pure and antique clearness of centuries less learned than +ours, but with more light in them.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And elsewhere he speaks of those “spirits, lovers of +light, who, when they have an idea to put forth, brood +long over it first, and wait patiently till it <em>shines</em>, as Buffon +enjoined, when he defined genius to be the aptitude for +patience; spirits who know by experience that the driest +matter and the dullest words hide within them the germ +and spark of some brightness, like those fairy nuts in +which were found diamonds if one broke the shell and was +the right person; spirits who maintain that, to see and +exhibit things in beauty, is to see and show things as in +their essence they really are, and not as they exist for the +eye of the careless, who do not look beyond the outside; +spirits hard to satisfy, because of a keen-sightedness in +them, which makes them discern but too clearly both the +models to be followed and those to be shunned; spirits +active though meditative, who cannot rest except in solid +truths, and whom only beauty can make happy; spirits +far less concerned for glory than for perfection, who, because +their art is long and life is short, often die without +leaving a monument, having had their own inward sense +of life and fruitfulness for their best reward.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>No doubt there is something a little too ethereal in all +this, something which reminds one of Joubert’s physical +want of body and substance; no doubt, if a man wishes +to be a great author, it is to consider too curiously, to +consider as Joubert did; it is a mistake to spend so much +<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>of one’s time in setting up one’s ideal standard of perfection, +and in contemplating it. Joubert himself knew this +very well: “I cannot build a house for my ideas,” said +he; “I have tried to do without words, and words take +their revenge on me by their difficulty.” “If there is a +man upon earth tormented by the cursed desire to get a +whole book into a page, a whole page into a phrase, and +this phrase into one word,—that man is myself.” “I can +sow, but I cannot build.” Joubert, however, makes no +claim to be a great author; by renouncing all ambition to +be this, by not trying to fit his ideas into a house, by +making no compromise with words in spite of their difficulty, +by being quite single-minded in his pursuit of perfection, +perhaps he is enabled to get closer to the truth of +the objects of his study, and to be of more service to us by +setting before us ideals, than if he had composed a celebrated +work. I doubt whether, in an elaborate work on +the philosophy of religion, he would have got his ideas +about religion to <em>shine</em>, to use his own expression, as they +shine when he utters them in perfect freedom. Penetration +in these matters is valueless without soul, and soul is +valueless without penetration; both of these are delicate +qualities, and, even in those who have them, easily lost; +the charm of Joubert is, that he has and keeps both. +Let us try and show that he does.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“One should be fearful of being wrong in poetry when +one thinks differently from the poets, and in religion when +one thinks differently from the saints.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“There is a great difference between taking for idols +Mahomet and Luther, and bowing down before Rousseau +and Voltaire. People at any rate imagined they were +obeying God when they followed Mahomet, and the Scriptures +when they hearkened to Luther. And perhaps one +ought not too much to disparage that inclination which +leads mankind to put into the hands of those whom it +thinks the friends of God the direction and government +of its heart and mind. It is the subjection to irreligious +spirits which alone is fatal, and, in the fullest sense of the +word, depraving.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>“May I say it? It is not hard to know God, provided +one will not force oneself to define him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Do not bring into the domain of reasoning that which +belongs to our innermost feeling. State truths of sentiment, +and do not try to prove them. There is a danger +in such proofs; for in arguing it is necessary to treat that +which is in question as something problematic: now that +which we accustom ourselves to treat as problematic ends +by appearing to us as really doubtful. In things that are +visible and palpable, never prove what is believed already; +in things that are certain and mysterious,—mysterious by +their greatness and by their nature,—make people believe +them, and do not prove them; in things that are matters +of practice and duty, command, and do not explain. +‘Fear God,’ has made many men pious; the proofs of the +existence of God have made many men atheists. From +the defense springs the attack; the advocate begets in his +hearer a wish to pick holes; and men are almost always +led on, from the desire to contradict the doctor, to the +desire to contradict the doctrine. Make truth lovely, and +do not try to arm her; mankind will then be far less +inclined to contend with her.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Why is even a bad preacher almost always heard by +the pious with pleasure? <em>Because he talks to them about +what they love.</em> But you who have to expound religion to +children of this world, you who have to speak to them of +that which they once loved perhaps, or which they would +be glad to love,—remember that they do not love it yet, +and to make them love it take heed to speak with power.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“You may do what you like, mankind will believe no +one but God; and he only can persuade mankind who believes +that God has spoken to him. No one can give faith +unless he has faith; the persuaded persuade, as the indulgent +disarm.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The only happy people in the world are the good man, +the sage, and the saint; but the saint is happier than +either of the others, so much is man by his nature formed +for sanctity.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The same delicacy and penetration which he here shows +<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>in speaking of the inward essence of religion. Joubert +shows also in speaking of its outward form, and of its +manifestation in the world:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Piety is not a religion, though it is the soul of all <a id='corr212.4'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='re igions'>religions</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_212.4'><ins class='correction' title='re igions'>religions</ins></a></span>. +A man has not a religion simply by having pious +inclinations, any more than he has a country simply by +having philanthropy. A man has not a country until he +is a citizen in a state, until he undertakes to follow and +uphold certain laws, to obey certain magistrates, and to +adopt certain ways of living and acting.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is +more than all this; it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble +engagement.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Who, again, has ever shown with more truth and beauty +the good and imposing side of the wealth and splendor of +the Catholic Church, than Joubert in the following passage?—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The pomps and magnificence with which the Church +is reproached are in truth the result and the proof of her +incomparable excellence. From whence, let me ask, have +come this power of hers and these excessive riches, except +from the enchantment into which she threw all the world? +Ravished with her beauty, millions of men from age to age +kept loading her with gifts, bequests, cessions. She had +the talent of making herself loved, and the talent of making +men happy. It is that which wrought prodigies for +her; it is from thence that she drew her power.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>“She had the talent of making herself <em>feared</em>,”—one +should add that too, in order to be perfectly just; but +Joubert, because he is a true child of light, can see that +the wonderful success of the Catholic Church must have +been due really to her good rather than to her bad qualities; +to her making herself loved rather than to her making +herself feared.</p> + +<p class='c001'>How striking and suggestive, again, is this remark on +the Old and New Testaments:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The Old Testament teaches the knowledge of good +and evil; the Gospel, on the other hand, seems written +for the predestinated; it is the book of innocence. The +<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>one is made for earth, the other seems made for heaven. +According as the one or the other of these books takes +hold of a nation, what may be called the <em>religious humors</em> +of nations differ.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>So the British and North American Puritans are the +children of the Old Testament, as Joachim of Flora and +St. Francis are the children of the New. And does not +the following maxim exactly fit the Church of England, +of which Joubert certainly never thought when he was +writing it?—“The austere sects excite the most enthusiasm +at first; but the temperate sects have always been the +most durable.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And these remarks on the Jansenists and Jesuits, interesting +in themselves, are still more interesting because +they touch matters we cannot well know at first-hand, and +which Joubert, an impartial observer, had had the means +of studying closely. We are apt to think of the Jansenists +as having failed by reason of their merits; Joubert shows +us how far their failure was due to their defects:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“We ought to lay stress upon what is clear in Scripture, +and to pass quickly over what is obscure; to light up what +in Scripture is troubled, by what is serene in it; what +puzzles and checks the reason, by what satisfies the +reason. The Jansenists have done just the reverse. They +lay stress upon what is uncertain, obscure, afflicting, and +they pass lightly over all the rest; they eclipse the luminous +and consoling truths of Scripture, by putting between +us and them its opaque and dismal truths. For +example, ‘Many are called;’ there is a clear truth: ‘Few +are chosen;’ there is an obscure truth. ‘We are children +of wrath;’ there is a somber, cloudy, terrifying truth: +‘We are all the children of God;’ ‘I came not to call +the righteous, but sinners to repentance;’ there are truths +which are full of clearness, mildness, serenity, light. The +Jansenists trouble our cheerfulness, and shed no cheering +ray on our trouble. They are not, however, to be condemned +for what they say, because what they say is true; +but they are to be condemned for what they fail to say, +for that is true too,—truer, even, than the other; that is, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>its truth is easier for us to seize, fuller, rounder, and more +complete. Theology, as the Jansenists exhibit her, has +but the half of her disk.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Again:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The Jansenists erect ‘grace’ into a kind of fourth +person of the Trinity. They are, without thinking or +intending it, Quaternitarians. St. Paul and St. Augustine, +too exclusively studied, have done all the mischief. +Instead of ‘grace,’ say help, succor, a divine influence, a +dew of heaven; then one can come to a right understanding. +The word ‘grace’ is a sort of talisman, all the baneful +spell of which can be broken by translating it. The +trick of personifying words is a fatal source of mischief in +theology.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Once more:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The Jansenists tell men to love God; the Jesuits +make men love him. The doctrine of these last is full of +loosenesses, or, if you will, of errors; still,—singular as it +may seem, it is undeniable,—they are the better directors +of souls.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The Jansenists have carried into religion more +thought than the Jesuits, and they go deeper; they are +faster bound with its sacred bonds. They have in their +way of thinking an austerity which incessantly constrains +the will to keep the path of duty; all the habits of their +understanding, in short, are more Christian. But they +seem to love God without affection, and solely from +reason, from duty, from justice. The Jesuits, on the +other hand, seem to love him from pure inclination; out +of admiration, gratitude, tenderness; for the pleasure of +loving him, in short. In their books of devotion you find +joy, because with the Jesuits nature and religion go hand +in hand. In the books of the Jansenists there is a sadness +and a moral constraint, because with the Jansenists religion +is forever trying to put nature in <a id='corr214.35'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='bonds.'>bonds.”</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_214.35'><ins class='correction' title='bonds.'>bonds.”</ins></a></span></p> + +<p class='c001'>The Jesuits have suffered, and deservedly suffered, +plenty of discredit from what Joubert gently calls their +“loosenesses;” let them have the merit of their amiability.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The most characteristic thoughts one can quote from +<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>any writer are always his thoughts on matters like these; +but the maxims of Joubert are purely literary subjects +also, have the same purged and subtle delicacy; they +show the same sedulousness in him to preserve perfectly +true the balance of his soul. Let me begin with this, +which contains a truth too many people fail to perceive:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates the +crime, is itself, in matters of literature, a crime of the first +order.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And here is another sentence, worthy of Goethe, to +clear the air at one’s entrance into the region of literature:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the passions, +the weakness of the spirit; with the storms of the +passing time and with the great scourges of human life,—hunger, +thirst, dishonor, diseases, and death,—authors +may as long as they like go on making novels which shall +harrow our hearts; but the soul says all the while, ‘You +hurt me.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And again:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Fiction has no business to exist unless it is more +beautiful than reality. Certainly the monstrosities of +fiction may be found in the booksellers’ shops; you buy +them there for a certain number of francs, and you talk +of them for a certain number of days; but they have no +place in literature, because in literature the one aim of +art is the beautiful. Once lose sight of that, and you +have the mere frightful reality.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>That is just the right criticism to pass on these “monstrosities:” +<em>they have no place in literature</em>, and those who +produce them are not really men of letters. One would +think that this was enough to deter from such production +any man of genuine ambition. But most of us, alas! are +what we must be, not what we ought to be,—not even +what we know we ought to be.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The following, of which the first part reminds one of +Wordsworth’s sonnet, “If thou indeed derive thy light +from heaven,” excellently defines the true salutary function +of literature, and the limits of this function:—</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>“Whether one is an eagle or an ant, in the intellectual +world, seems to me not to matter much; the essential +thing is to have one’s place marked there, one’s station +assigned, and to belong decidedly to a regular and wholesome +order. A small talent, if it keeps within its limits +and rightfully fulfils its task, may reach the goal just as well +as a greater one. To accustom mankind to pleasures +which depend neither upon the bodily appetites nor upon +money, by giving them a taste for the things of the mind, +seems to me, in fact, the one proper fruit which nature +has meant our literary productions to have. When they +have other fruits, it is by accident, and, in general, not for +good. Books which absorb our attention to such a degree +that they rob us of all fancy for other books, are absolutely +pernicious. In this way they only bring fresh crotchets +and sects into the world; they multiply the great variety +of weights, rules, and measures already existing; they are +morally and politically a nuisance.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Who can read these words and not think of the limiting +effect exercised by certain works in certain spheres and +for certain periods; exercised even by the works of men +of genius or virtue,—by the works of Rousseau, the works +of Wesley, the works of Swedenborg? And what is it +which makes the Bible so admirable a book, to be the one +book of those who can have only one, but the miscellaneous +character of the contents of the Bible?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Joubert was all his life a passionate lover of Plato; I +hope other lovers of Plato will forgive me for saying that +their adored object has never been more truly described +than he is here:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Plato shows us nothing, but he brings brightness with +him; he puts light into our eyes, and fills us with a clearness +by which all objects afterwards become illuminated. +He teaches us nothing; but he prepares us, fashions us, +and makes us ready to know all. Somehow or other, the +habit of reading him augments in us the capacity for +discerning and entertaining whatever fine truths may +afterwards present themselves. Like mountain-air, it +sharpens our organs, and gives us an appetite for wholesome +food.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>“Plato loses himself in the void” (he says again); +“but one sees the play of his wings, one hears their +rustle.” And the conclusion is: “It is good to breathe +his air, but not to live upon him.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>As a pendant to the criticism on Plato, this on the +French moralist Nicole is excellent:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Nicole is a Pascal without style. It is not what he +says which is sublime, but what he thinks; he rises, not +by the natural elevation of his own spirit, but by that of +his doctrines. One must not look to the form in him, but +to the matter, which is exquisite. He ought to be read +with a direct view of practice.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>English people have hardly ears to hear the praises of +Bossuet, and the Bossuet of Joubert is Bossuet at his very +best; but this is a far truer Bossuet than the “declaimer” +Bossuet of Lord Macaulay, himself a born rhetorician, if +ever there was one:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Bossuet employs all our idioms, as Homer employed +all the dialects. The language of kings, of statesmen, and +of warriors; the language of the people and of the student, +of the country and of the schools, of the sanctuary +and of the courts of law; the old and the new, the trivial +and the stately, the quiet and the resounding,—he turns +all to his use; and out of all this he makes a style, simple, +grave, majestic. His ideas are, like his words, varied,—common +and sublime together. Times and doctrines in +all their multitude were ever before his spirit, as things +and words in all their multitude were ever before it. He +is not so much a man as a human nature, with the temperance +of a saint, the justice of a bishop, the prudence of +a doctor, and the might of a great spirit.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>After this on Bossuet, I must quote a criticism on +Racine, to show that Joubert did not indiscriminately +worship all the French gods of the grand century:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Those who find Racine enough for them are poor +souls and poor wits; they are souls and wits which have +never got beyond the callow and boarding-school stage. +Admirable, as no doubt he is, for his skill in having made +poetical the most humdrum sentiments and the most +<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>middling sort of passions, he can yet stand us in stead of +nobody but himself. He is a superior writer; and, in literature, +that at once puts a man on a pinnacle. But he is not +an inimitable writer.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And again: “The talent of Racine is in his works, but +Racine himself is not there. That is why he himself +became disgusted with them.” “Of Racine, as of his +ancients, the genius lay in taste. His elegance is perfect, +but it is not supreme, like that of Virgil.” And, indeed, +there is something <em>supreme</em> in an elegance which exercises +such a fascination as Virgil’s does; which makes one return +to his poems again and again, long after one thinks +one has done with them; which makes them one of those +books that, to use Joubert’s words, “lure the reader back +to them, as the proverb says good wine lures back the +wine-bibber.” And the highest praise Joubert can at last +find for Racine is this, that he is the Virgil of the ignorant;—“<span lang="fr"><cite>Racine +est le Virgile des ignorants.</cite></span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Of Boileau, too, Joubert says: “Boileau is a powerful +poet, but only in the world of half poetry.” How true is +that of Pope also! And he adds: “Neither Boileau’s +poetry nor Racine’s flows from the fountain-head.” No +Englishman, controverting the exaggerated French estimate +of these poets, could desire to use fitter words.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I will end with some remarks on Voltaire and Rousseau, +remarks in which Joubert eminently shows his prime +merit as a critic,—the soundness and completeness of his +judgments. I mean that he has the faculty of judging +with all the powers of his mind and soul at work together +in due combination; and how rare is this faculty! how +seldom is it exercised towards writers who so powerfully +as Voltaire and Rousseau stimulate and call into activity +a single side in us!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Voltaire’s wits came to their maturity twenty years +sooner than the wits of other men, and remained in full +vigor thirty years longer. The charm which our style in +general gets from our ideas, his ideas get from his style. +Voltaire is sometimes afflicted, sometimes strongly moved; +but serious he never is. His very graces have an effrontery +<span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>about them. He had correctness of judgment, liveliness +of imagination, nimble wits, quick taste, and a moral +sense in ruins. He is the most debauched of spirits, and +the worst of him is that one gets debauched along with +him. If he had been a wise man, and had had the self-discipline +of wisdom, beyond a doubt half his wit would +have been gone; it needed an atmosphere of <em>licence</em> in +order to play freely. Those people who read him every +day, create for themselves, by an invincible law, the +necessity of liking him. But those people who, having +given up reading him, gaze steadily down upon the influences +which his spirit has shed abroad, find themselves +in simple justice and duty compelled to detest him. It is +impossible to be satisfied with him, and impossible not to +be fascinated by him.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The literary sense in us is apt to rebel against so severe +a judgment on such a charmer of the literary sense as +Voltaire, and perhaps we English are not very liable to +catch Voltaire’s vices, while of some of his merits we have +signal need; still, as the real definitive judgment on Voltaire, +Joubert’s is undoubtedly the true one. It is nearly +identical with that of Goethe. Joubert’s sentence on +Rousseau is in some respects more favorable:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“That weight in the speaker (<span lang="la"><i>auctoritas</i></span>) which the ancients +talk of, is to be found in Bossuet more than in any +other French author; Pascal, too, has it, and La Bruyère; +even Rousseau has something of it, but Voltaire not a +particle. I can understand how a Rousseau—I mean a +Rousseau cured of his faults—might at the present day do +much good, and may even come to be greatly wanted; +but under no circumstances can a Voltaire be of any use.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The peculiar power of Rousseau’s style has never been +better hit off than in the following passage:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Rousseau imparted, if I may so speak, <em>bowels of feeling</em> +to the words he used (<span lang="fr"><i>donna des entrailles à tous les mots</i></span>), +and poured into them such a charm, sweetness so penetrating, +energy so puissant, that his writings have an effect +upon the soul something like that of those illicit pleasures +which steal away our taste and intoxicate our reason.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>The final judgment, however, is severe, and justly +severe:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Life without actions; life entirely resolved into affections +and half-sensual thoughts; do-nothingness setting +up for a virtue; cowardliness with voluptuousness; fierce +pride with nullity underneath it; the strutting phrase of +the most sensual of vagabonds, who has made his system +of philosophy and can give it eloquently forth: there is +Rousseau! A piety in which there is no religion; a +severity which brings corruption with it; a dogmatism +which serves to ruin all authority: there is Rousseau’s +philosophy! To all tender, ardent, and elevated natures, +I say: Only Rousseau can detach you from religion, and +only true religion can cure you of Rousseau.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>I must yet find room, before I end, for one at least +of Joubert’s sayings on political matters; here, too, the +whole man shows himself; and here, too, the affinity with +Coleridge is very remarkable. How true, how true in +France especially, is this remark on the contrasting direction +taken by the aspirations of the community in ancient +and in modern states:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The ancients were attached to their country by three +things,—their temples, their tombs, and their forefathers. +The two great bonds which united them to their government +were the bonds of habit and antiquity. With the +moderns, hope and the love of novelty have produced a +total change. The ancients said <em>our forefathers</em>, we say +<em>posterity</em>: we do not, like them, love our <span lang="la"><i>patria</i></span>, that is +to say, the country and the laws of our fathers, rather we +love the laws and the country of our children; the charm +we are most sensible to is the charm of the future, and not +the charm of the past.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And how keen and true is this criticism on the changed +sense of the word “liberty”:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“A great many words have changed their meaning. +The word <em>liberty</em>, for example, had at bottom among the +ancients the same meaning as the word <em>dominion</em>. <em>I would +be free</em> meant, in the mouth of the ancient, <em>I would take +part in governing or administering the State</em>; in the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>mouth of a modern it means, <em>I would be independent</em>. +The word <em>liberty</em> has with us a moral sense; with them +its sense was purely political.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Joubert had lived through the French Revolution, and +to the modern cry for liberty he was prone to answer:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Let your cry be for free souls rather even than for +free men. Moral liberty is the one vitally important +liberty, the one liberty which is indispensable; the other +liberty is good and salutary only so far as it favors this. +Subordination is in itself a better thing than independence. +The one implies order and arrangement; the other implies +only self-sufficiency with isolation. The one means harmony, +the other a single tone; the one is the whole, the +other is but the part.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Liberty! liberty!” he cries again; “in all things let +us have <em>justice</em>, and then we shall have enough liberty.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough +liberty! The wise man will never refuse to echo those +words; but then, such is the imperfection of human governments, +that almost always, in order to get justice, one +has first to secure liberty.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I do not hold up Joubert as a very astonishing and +powerful genius, but rather as a delightful and edifying +genius. I have not cared to exhibit him as a sayer of brilliant +epigrammatic things, such things as “<span lang="fr">Notre vie est +du vent tissu . . . les dettes abrègent la vie . . . celui +qui a de l’imagination sans érudition a des ailes et n’a pas +de pieds</span> (<em>Our life is woven wind</em> . . . <em>debts take from life</em> +. . . <em>the man of imagination without learning has wings +and no feet</em>),” though for such sayings he is famous. In +the first place, the French language is in itself so favorable +a vehicle for such sayings, that the making them in +it has the less merit; at least half the merit ought to go, +not to the maker of the saying, but to the French language. +In the second place, the peculiar beauty of Joubert +is not there; it is not in what is exclusively intellectual,—it +is in the union of <em>soul</em> with intellect, and in the +delightful, satisfying result which this union produces. +“<span lang="fr">Vivre, c’est penser et sentir son âme . . . le bonheur +<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>est de sentir son âme bonne ... toute vérité nue et crue +n’a pas assez passé par l’âme ... les hommes ne sont +justes qu’envers ceux qu’ils aiment</span> (<i>The essence of life +lies in thinking and being conscious of one’s soul ... +happiness is the sense of one’s soul being good ... if +a truth is nude and crude, that is a proof it has not been +steeped long enough in the soul, ... man cannot even +be just to his neighbor, unless he loves him</i>);” it is much +rather in sayings like these that Joubert’s best and innermost +nature manifests itself. He is the most prepossessing +and convincing of witnesses to the good of loving +light. Because he sincerely loved light, and did not prefer +to it any little private darkness of his own, he found +light; his eye was single, and therefore his whole body +was full of light. And because he was full of light, he +was also full of happiness. In spite of his infirmities, +in spite of his sufferings, in spite of his obscurity, he +was the happiest man alive; his life was as charming as +his thoughts. For certainly it is natural that the love +of light, which is already, in some measure, the possession +of light, should irradiate and beatify the whole life of him +who has it. There is something unnatural and shocking +where, as in the case of Coleridge, it does not. Joubert +pains us by no such contradiction; “the same penetration +of spirit which made him such delightful company to +his friends, served also to make him perfect in his own +personal life, by enabling him always to perceive and do +what was right;” he loved and sought light till he became +so habituated to it, so accustomed to the joyful +testimony of a good conscience, that, to use his own +words, “he could no longer exist without this, and was +obliged to live without reproach if he would live without +misery.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Joubert was not famous while he lived, and he will not +be famous now that he is dead. But, before we pity him for +this, let us be sure what we mean, in literature, by +<em>famous</em>. There are the famous men of genius in literature,—the +Homers, Dantes, Shakspeares: of them we need +not speak; their praise is forever and ever. Then there +<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>are the famous men of ability in literature: their praise +is in their own generation. And what makes this difference? +The work of the two orders of men is at the +bottom the same,—<em>a criticism of life</em>. The end and aim +of all literature, if one considers it attentively, is, in truth, +nothing but that. But the criticism which the men of +genius pass upon human life is permanently acceptable to +mankind; the criticism which the men of ability pass +upon human life is transitorily acceptable. Between +Shakspeare’s criticism of human life and Scribe’s the +difference is there;—the one is permanently acceptable, +the other transitorily. Whence then, I repeat, this difference? +It is that the acceptableness of Shakspeare’s criticism +depends upon its inherent truth: the acceptableness +of Scribe’s upon its suiting itself, by its subject-matter, +ideas, mode of treatment, to the taste of the generation +that hears it. But the taste and ideas of one generation +are not those of the next. This next generation in its +turn arrives;—first its sharpshooters, its quick-witted, +audacious light troops; then the elephantine main body. +The imposing array of its predecessor it confidently assails, +riddles it with bullets, passes over its body. It goes hard +then with many once popular reputations, with many authorities +once oracular. Only two kinds of authors are +safe in the general havoc. The first kind are the great +abounding fountains of truth, whose criticism of life is a +source of illumination and joy to the whole human race +forever,—the Homers, the Shakspeares. These are the +sacred personages, whom all civilized warfare respects. +The second are those whom the out-skirmishers of the +new generation, its forerunners,—quick-witted soldiers, +as I have said, the select of the army,—recognize, though +the bulk of their comrades behind might not, as of the +same family and character with the sacred personages, +exercising like them an immortal function, and like them +inspiring a permanent interest. They snatch them up, +and set them in a place of shelter, where the on-coming +multitude may not overwhelm them. These are the Jouberts. +They will never, like the Shakspeares, command +<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>the homage of the multitude; but they are safe; the +multitude will not trample them down. Except these two +kinds, no author is safe. Let us consider, for example, +Joubert’s famous contemporary, Lord Jeffrey. All his +vivacity and accomplishment avail him nothing; of the +true critic he had in an eminent degree no quality, except +one,—curiosity. Curiosity he had, but he had no +gift for truth; he cannot illuminate and rejoice us; no +intelligent out-skirmisher of the new generation cares +about him, cares to put him in safety; at this moment we +are all passing over his body. Let us consider a greater +than Jeffrey, a critic whose reputation still stands firm,—will +stand, many people think, forever,—the great apostle +of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay was, +as I have already said, a born rhetorician; a splendid +rhetorician doubtless, and, beyond that, an <em>English</em> rhetorician +also, an <em>honest</em> rhetorician; still, beyond the apparent +rhetorical truth of things he never could penetrate; +for their vital truth, for what the French call the <span lang="fr"><i>vraie +vérité</i></span>, he had absolutely no organ; therefore his reputation, +brilliant as it is, is not secure. Rhetoric so good as +his excites and gives pleasure; but by pleasure alone you +cannot permanently bind men’s spirits to you. Truth +illuminates and gives joy, and it is by the bond of joy, +not of pleasure, that men’s spirits are indissolubly held. +As Lord Macaulay’s own generation dies out, as a new +generation arrives, without those ideas and tendencies of +its predecessor which Lord Macaulay so deeply shared and +so happily satisfied, will he give the same pleasure? and, +if he ceases to give this, has he enough of light in him to +make him last? Pleasure the new generation will get +from its own novel ideas and tendencies; but light is +another and a rarer thing, and must be treasured where-ever +it can be found. Will Macaulay be saved, in the +sweep and pressure of time, for his light’s sake, as Johnson +has already been saved by two generations, Joubert by +one? I think it very doubtful. But for a spirit of any +delicacy and dignity, what a fate, if he could foresee it! +to be an oracle for one generation, and then of little or no +<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>account forever. How far better, to pass with scant +notice through one’s own generation, but to be singled +out and preserved by the very iconoclasts of the next, +then in their turn by those of the next, and so, like the +lamp of life itself, to be handed on from one generation +to another in safety! This is Joubert’s lot, and it is a +very enviable one. The new men of the new generations, +while they let the dust deepen on a thousand Laharpes, +will say of him: “He lived in the Philistine’s day, in a +place and time when almost every idea current in literature +had the mark of Dagon upon it, and not the mark of +the children of light. Nay, the children of light were as +yet hardly so much as heard of: the Canaanite was then +in the land. Still, there were even then a few, who, +nourished on some secret tradition, or illumined, perhaps, +by a divine inspiration, kept aloof from the reigning +superstitions, never bowed the knee to the gods of Canaan; +and one of these few was called <span lang="fr"><i>Joubert</i></span>.”</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span> + <h2 class='c005'>IX.<br> <br> SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>“By the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the +saints, we anathematize, cut off, curse, and execrate +Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of these sacred books +with the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are +written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua +anathematized Jericho; with the cursing wherewith Elisha +cursed the children; and with all the cursings which are +written in the Book of the Law: cursed be he by day, and +cursed by night; cursed when he lieth down, and cursed +when he riseth up; cursed when he goeth out, and cursed +when he cometh in; the Lord pardon him never; the +wrath and fury of the Lord burn upon this man, and +bring upon him all the curses which are written in the +Book of the Law. The Lord blot out his name under +heaven. The Lord set him apart for destruction from all +the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament +which are written in the Book of this Law.... There +shall be no man speak to him, no man write to him, no +man show him any kindness, no man stay under the same +roof with him, no man come nigh him.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>With these amenities, the current compliments of theological +parting, the Jews of the Portuguese synagogue at +Amsterdam took in 1656 (and not in 1660, as has till now +been commonly supposed) their leave of their erring +brother, Baruch or Benedict Spinoza. They remained +children of Israel, and he became a child of modern +Europe.</p> + +<p class='c001'>That was in 1656, and Spinoza died in 1677, at the +early age of forty-four. Glory had not found him out. +His short life—a life of unbroken diligence, kindliness, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>and purity—was passed in seclusion. But in spite of that +seclusion, in spite of the shortness of his career, in spite +of the hostility of the dispensers of renown in the 18th +century,—of Voltaire’s disparagement and Bayle’s detraction,—in +spite of the repellent form which he has given +to his principal work, in spite of the exterior semblance of +a rigid dogmatism alien to the most essential tendencies +of modern philosophy, in spite, finally, of the immense +weight of disfavor cast upon him by the long-repeated +charge of atheism, Spinoza’s name has silently risen in +importance, the man and his work have attracted a +steadily increasing notice, and bid fair to become soon +what they deserve to become,—in the history of modern +philosophy the central point of interest. An avowed +translation of one of his works,—his <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span>,—has +at last made its appearance in English. +It is the principal work which Spinoza published in his +lifetime; his book on ethics, the work on which his fame +rests, is posthumous.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The English translator has not done his task well. Of +the character of his version there can, I am afraid, be no +doubt; one such passage as the following is decisive:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I confess that, <em>while with them</em> (the theologians) <em>I +have never been able sufficiently to admire the unfathomed +mysteries of Scripture, I have still found them giving utterance +to nothing but Aristotelian and Platonic speculations</em>, +artfully dressed up and cunningly accommodated +to Holy Writ, lest the speakers should show themselves +too plainly to belong to the sect of the Grecian heathens. +<i>Nor was it enough for these men to discourse with the +Greeks; they have further taken to raving with the Hebrew +prophets.</i>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>This professes to be a translation of these words of Spinoza: +<span lang="la">“Fateor, eos nunquam satis mirari potuisse Scripturæ +profundissima mysteria; attamen præter Aristotelicorum +vel Platonicorum speculationes nihil docuisse video, atque +his, ne gentiles sectari viderentur, Scripturam accommodaverunt. +Non satis his fuit cum Graecis insanire, sed +prophetas cum iisdem deliravisse voluerunt.”</span> After one +<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>such specimen of a translator’s force, the experienced +reader has a sort of instinct that he may as well close the +book at once, with a smile or a sigh, according as he +happens to be a follower of the weeping or of the laughing +philosopher. If, in spite of this instinct, he persists +in going on with the English version of the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus +Theologico-Politicus</cite></span>, he will find many more such specimens. +It is not, however, my intention to fill my space +with these, or with strictures upon their author. I prefer +to remark, that he renders a service to literary history by +pointing out, in his preface, how “to Bayle may be traced +the disfavor in which the name of Spinoza was so long +held;” that, in his observations on the system of the +Church of England, he shows a laudable freedom from the +prejudices of ordinary English Liberals of that advanced +school to which he clearly belongs; and lastly, that, +though he manifests little familiarity with Latin, he seems +to have considerable familiarity with philosophy, and +to be well able to follow and comprehend speculative +reasoning. Let me advise him to unite his forces with +those of some one who has that accurate knowledge of +Latin which he himself has not, and then, perhaps, of that +union a really good translation of Spinoza will be the +result. And, having given him this advice, let me again +turn, for a little, to the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> +itself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This work, as I have already said, is a work on the interpretation +of Scripture,—it treats of the Bible. What +was it exactly which Spinoza thought about the Bible and +its inspiration? That will be, at the present moment, the +central point of interest for the English readers of his +Treatise. Now, it is to be observed, that just on this very +point the Treatise, interesting and remarkable as it is, +will fail to satisfy the reader. It is important to seize this +notion quite firmly, and not to quit hold of it while one is +reading Spinoza’s work. The scope of that work is this. +Spinoza sees that the life and practice of Christian nations +professing the religion of the Bible, are not the due fruits +of the religion of the Bible; he sees only hatred, bitterness, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>and strife, where he might have expected to see love, +joy, and peace in believing; and he asks himself the reason +of this. The reason is, he says, that these people +misunderstand their Bible. Well, then, is his conclusion, +I will write a <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span>. I will show +these people, that, taking the Bible for granted, taking it +to be all which it asserts itself to be, taking it to have all +the authority which it claims, it is not what they imagine +it to be, it does not say what they imagine it to say. I +will show them what it really does say, and I will show +them that they will do well to accept this real teaching +of the Bible, instead of the phantom with which they have +so long been cheated. I will show their governments <a id='corr229.13'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='that that'>that</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_229.13'><ins class='correction' title='that that'>that</ins></a></span> +they will do well to remodel the national churches, +to make of them institutions informed with the spirit of +the true Bible, instead of institutions informed with the +spirit of this false phantom.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The comments of men, Spinoza said, had been foisted +into the Christian religion; the pure teaching of God had +been lost sight of. He determined, therefore, to go again +to the Bible, to read it over and over with a perfectly unprejudiced +mind, and to accept nothing as its teaching +which it did not clearly teach. He began by constructing +a method, or set of conditions indispensable for the adequate +interpretation of Scripture. These conditions are +such, he points out, that a perfectly adequate interpretation +of Scripture is now impossible. For example, to +understand any prophet thoroughly, we ought to know +the life, character, and pursuits of that prophet, under +what circumstances his book was composed, and in what +state and through what hands it has come down to us; +and, in general, most of this we cannot now know. Still, +the main sense of the Books of Scripture may be clearly +seized by us. Himself a Jew with all the learning of his +nation, and a man of the highest natural powers, Spinoza +had in the difficult task of seizing this sense every aid +which special knowledge or pre-eminent faculties could +supply.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In what then, he asks, does Scripture, interpreted by +<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>its own aid, and not by the aid of Rabbinical traditions +or Greek philosophy, allege its own divinity to consist? +In a revelation given by God to the prophets. Now all +knowledge is a divine revelation; but prophecy, as represented +in Scripture, is one of which the laws of human +nature, considered in themselves alone, cannot be the +cause. Therefore nothing must be asserted about it, except +what is clearly declared by the prophets themselves; +for they are our only source of knowledge on a matter +which does not fall within the scope of our ordinary +knowing faculties. But ignorant people, not knowing the +Hebrew genius and phraseology, and not attending to the +circumstances of the speaker, often imagine the prophets, +to assert things which they do not.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The prophets clearly declare themselves to have received +the revelation of God through the means of words and +images;—not, as Christ, through immediate communication +of the mind with the mind of God. Therefore the +prophets excelled other men by the power and vividness of +their representing and imagining faculty, not by the perfection +of their mind. This is why they perceived almost +everything through figures, and express themselves so variously, +and so improperly, concerning the nature of God. +Moses imagined that God could be seen, and attributed to +him the passions of anger and jealousy; Micaiah imagined +him sitting on a throne, with the host of heaven on his +right and left hand; Daniel as an old man, with a white +garment and white hair; Ezekiel as a fire; the disciples +of Christ thought they saw the Spirit of God in the form +of a dove; the apostles in the form of fiery tongues.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Whence, then, could the prophets be certain of the truth +of a revelation which they received through the imagination, +and not by a mental process?—for only an idea can +carry the sense of its own certainty along with it, not an +imagination. To make them certain of the truth of what +was revealed to them, a reasoning process came in; they +had to rely on the testimony of a sign; and (above all) on +the testimony of their own conscience, that they were good +men, and spoke for God’s sake. Either testimony was incomplete +<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>without the other. Even the good prophet +needed for his message the confirmation of a sign; but the +bad prophet, the utterer of an immoral doctrine, had no +certainty for his doctrine, no truth in it, even though he +confirmed it by a sign. The testimony of a good conscience +was, therefore, the prophet’s grand source of certitude. +Even this, however, was only a moral certitude, +not a mathematical; for no man can be perfectly sure of +his own goodness.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The power of imagining, the power of feeling what goodness +is, and the habit of practising goodness, were therefore +the sole essential qualifications of a true prophet. But +for the purpose of the message, the revelation, which God +designed him to convey, these qualifications were enough. +The sum and substance of this revelation was simply: +<em>Believe in God, and lead a good life</em>. To be the organ of +this revelation, did not make a man more learned; it left +his scientific knowledge as it found it. This explains the +contradictory and speculatively false opinions about God, +and the laws of nature, which the patriarchs, the prophets, +the apostles entertained. Abraham and the patriarchs +knew God only as <em>El Sadai</em>, the power which gives to every +man that which suffices him; Moses knew him as <em>Jehovah</em>, +a self-existent being, but imagined him with the passions of +a man. Samuel imagined that God could not repent of +his sentences; Jeremiah, that he could. Joshua, on a day +of great victory, the ground being white with hail, seeing +the daylight last longer than usual, and imaginatively seizing +this as a special sign of the help divinely promised to +him, declared that the sun was standing still. To be obeyers +of God themselves, and inspired leaders of others to +obedience and good life, did not make Abraham and Moses +metaphysicians, or Joshua a natural philosopher. His +revelation no more changed the speculative opinions of +each prophet, than it changed his temperament or style. +The wrathful Elisha required the natural sedative of music, +before he could be the messenger of good fortune to Jehoram. +The high-bred Isaiah and Nahum have the style +proper to their condition, and the rustic Ezekiel and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>Amos the style proper to theirs. We are not therefore +bound to pay heed to the speculative opinions of this or +that prophet, for in uttering these he spoke as a mere +man: only in exhorting his hearers to obey God and lead +a good life was he the organ of a divine revelation.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To know and love God is the highest blessedness of man, +and of all men alike; to this all mankind are called, and +not any one nation in particular. The divine law, properly +named, is the method of life for attaining this height of +human blessedness: this law is universal, written in the +heart, and one for all mankind. Human law is the +method of life for attaining and preserving temporal security +and prosperity: this law is dictated by a lawgiver, +and every nation has its own. In the case of the Jews, +this law was dictated, by revelation, through the prophets; +its fundamental precept was to obey God and to keep his +commandments, and it is therefore, in a secondary sense, +called divine; but it was, nevertheless, framed in respect +of temporal things only. Even the truly moral and divine +precept of this law, to practise for God’s sake justice and +mercy towards one’s neighbor, meant for the Hebrew of +the Old Testament this Hebrew neighbor only, and had +respect to the concord and stability of the Hebrew commonwealth. +The Jews were to obey God and to keep his +commandments, that they might continue long in the land +given to them, and that it might be well with them there. +Their election was a temporal one, and lasted only so long +as their State. It is now over; and the only election the +Jews now have is that of the <em>pious</em>, the <em>remnant</em> which +takes place, and has always taken place, in every other +nation also. Scripture itself teaches that there is a universal +divine law, that this is common to all nations alike, +and is the law which truly confers eternal blessedness. +Solomon, the wisest of the Jews, knew this law, as the few +wisest men in all nations have ever known it; but for the +mass of the Jews, as for the mass of mankind everywhere, +this law was hidden, and they had no notion of its moral +action, its <span lang="la"><i>vera vita</i></span> which conducts to eternal blessedness, +except so far as this action was enjoined upon them by the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>prescriptions of their temporal law. When the ruin of +their State brought with it the ruin of their temporal law, +they would have lost altogether their only clue to eternal +blessedness.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Christ came when that fabric of the Jewish State, +for the sake of which the Jewish law existed, was +about to fall; and he proclaimed the universal divine +law. A certain moral action is prescribed by this +law, as a certain moral action was prescribed by the +Jewish law: but he who truly conceives the universal +divine law conceives God’s decrees adequately as +eternal truths, and for him moral action has liberty +and self-knowledge; while the prophets of the Jewish +law inadequately conceived God’s decrees as mere rules +and commands, and for them moral action had no liberty +and no self-knowledge. Christ, who beheld the decrees +of God as God himself beholds them,—as eternal truths,—proclaimed +the love of God and the love of our neighbor +as <em>commands</em>, only because of the ignorance of the multitude: +to those to whom it was “given to know the mysteries +of the kingdom of God,” he announced them, as he +himself perceived them, as eternal truths. And the +apostles, like Christ, spoke to many of their hearers “as +unto carnal not spiritual;” presented to them, that +is, the love of God and their neighbor as a divine command +authenticated by the life and death of Christ, not as an +eternal idea of reason carrying its own warrant along with it. +The presentation of it as this latter their hearers “were +not able to bear.” The apostles, moreover, though they +preached and confirmed their doctrine by signs as +prophets, wrote their Epistles, not as prophets, but as +doctors and reasoners. The essentials of their doctrine, +indeed, they took not from reason, but, like the prophets, +from fact and revelation; they preached belief in God and +goodness of life as a catholic religion existing by virtue of the +passion of Christ, as the prophets had preached belief in +God and goodness of life as a national religion existing by +virtue of the Mosaic covenant: but while the prophets +announced their message in a form purely dogmatical the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>apostles developed theirs with the forms of reasoning and +argumentation, according to each apostle’s ability and +way of thinking, and as they might best commend their +message to their hearers; and for their reasonings they +themselves claim no divine authority, submitting them to +the judgment of their hearers. Thus each apostle built +essential religion on a non-essential foundation of his own, +and, as St. Paul says, avoided building on the foundations +of another apostle, which might be quite different from +his own. Hence the discrepancies between the doctrine +of one apostle and another,—between that of St. Paul, for +example, and that of St. James; but these discrepancies +are in the non-essentials not given to them by revelation, +and not in essentials. Human churches, seizing these +discrepant non-essentials as essentials, one maintaining one +of them, another another, have filled the world with unprofitable +disputes, have “turned the Church into an +academy, and religion into a science, or rather a wrangling,” +and have fallen into endless schism.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What, then, are the essentials of religion according +both to the Old and to the New Testament? Very few +and very simple. The precept to love God and our +neighbor. The precepts of the first chapter of Isaiah: +“Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings +from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do +well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge the +fatherless; plead for the widow.” The precepts of the Sermon +on the Mount, which add to the foregoing the injunction +that we should cease to do evil and learn to do well, not +to our brethren and fellow-citizens only, but to all mankind. +It is by following these precepts that belief in God +is to be shown: if we believe in him, we shall keep his +commandment; and this is his commandment, that we +love one another. It is because it contains these precepts +that the Bible is properly called the Word of God, in spite +of its containing much that is mere history, and, like all +history, sometimes true, sometimes false; in spite of its +containing much that is mere reasoning, and, like all +reasoning, sometimes sound, sometimes hollow. These +<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>precepts are also the precepts of the universal divine law +written in our hearts; and it is only by this that the divinity +of Scripture is established;—by its containing, namely, +precepts identical with those of this inly-written and self-proving +law. This law was in the world, as St. John says, +before the doctrine of Moses or the doctrine of Christ. And +what need was there, then, for these doctrines? Because the +world at large “knew not” this original divine law, in which +precepts are ideas, and the belief in God the knowledge and +contemplation of him. Reason gives us this law, reason +tells us that it leads to eternal blessedness, and that those +who follow it have no need of any other. But reason +could not have told us that the moral action of the universal +divine law,—followed not from a sense of its intrinsic +goodness, truth, and necessity, but simply in proof of +obedience (for both the Old and New Testament are but +one long discipline of obedience), simply because it is so +commanded by Moses in virtue of the covenant, simply +because it is so commanded by Christ in virtue of his life +and passion,—can lead to eternal blessedness, which +means, for reason, eternal knowledge. Reason could not +have told us this, and this is what the Bible tells us. This +is that “thing which had been kept secret since the +foundation of the world.” It is thus that by means of the +foolishness of the world God confounds the wise, and with +things that are not brings to nought things that are. Of +the truth of the promise thus made to obedience without +knowledge, we can have no mathematical certainty; for +we can have a mathematical certainty only of things +deduced by reason from elements which she in herself +possesses. But we can have a moral certainty of it; a +certainty such as the prophets had themselves, arising out +of the goodness and pureness of those to whom this revelation +has been made, and rendered possible for us by its +contradicting no principles of reason. It is a great comfort +to believe it; because “as it is only the very small +minority who can pursue a virtuous life by the sole guidance +of reason, we should, unless we had this testimony of +Scripture, be in doubt respecting the salvation of nearly +the whole human race.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>It follows from this that philosophy has her own independent +sphere, and theology hers, and that neither has +the right to invade and try to subdue the other. Theology +demands perfect obedience, philosophy perfect knowledge; +the obedience demanded by theology and the knowledge +demanded by philosophy are alike saving. As speculative +opinions about God, theology requires only such as are +indispensable to the reality of this obedience; the belief +that God is, that he is a rewarder of them that seek him, +and that the proof of seeking him is a good life. These +are the fundamentals of faith, and they are so clear and +simple that none of the inaccuracies provable in the Bible +narrative the least affect them, and they have indubitably +come to us uncorrupted. He who holds them may make, +as the patriarchs and prophets did, other speculations +about God most erroneous, and yet their faith is complete +and saving. Nay, beyond these fundamentals, speculative +opinions are pious or impious, not as they are true or +false, but as they confirm or shake the believer in the +practice of obedience. The truest speculative opinion +about the nature of God is impious if it makes its holder +rebellious; the falsest speculative opinion is pious if it +makes him obedient. Governments should never render +themselves the tools of ecclesiastical ambition by promulgating +as fundamentals of the national Church’s faith +more than these, and should concede the fullest liberty +of speculation.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But the multitude, which respects only what astonishes, +terrifies, and overwhelms it, by no means takes this simple +view of its own religion. To the multitude, religion seems +imposing only when it is subversive of reason, confirmed +by miracles, conveyed in documents materially sacred and +infallible, and dooming to damnation all without its pale. +But this religion of the multitude is not the religion which +a true interpretation of Scripture finds in Scripture. +Reason tells us that a miracle,—understanding by a miracle +a breach of the laws of nature,—is impossible, and that +to think it possible is to dishonor God; for the laws of +nature are the laws of God, and to say that God violates +<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>the laws of nature is to say that he violates his own nature. +Reason sees, too, that miracles can never attain their professed +object,—that of bringing us to a higher knowledge +of God; since our knowledge of God is raised only by +perfecting and clearing our conceptions, and the alleged +design of miracles is to baffle them. But neither does +Scripture anywhere assert, as a general truth, that <a id='corr237.7'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='miraacles'>miracles</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_237.7'><ins class='correction' title='miraacles'>miracles</ins></a></span> +are possible. Indeed, it asserts the contrary; for +Jeremiah declares that Nature follows an invariable order. +Scripture, however, like Nature herself, does not lay down +speculative propositions (<span lang="la"><i>Scriptura definitiones non tradit, +ut nec etiam natura</i></span>). It relates matters in such an order +and with such phraseology as a speaker (often not perfectly +instructed himself) who wanted to impress his hearers +with a lively sense of God’s greatness and goodness would +naturally employ; as Moses, for instance, relates to the +Israelites the passage of the Red Sea without any mention +of the east wind which attended it, and which is +brought accidentally to our knowledge in another place. +So that to know exactly what Scripture means in the relation +of each seeming miracle, we ought to know (besides +the tropes and phrases of the Hebrew language) the circumstances, +and also,—since every one is swayed in his +manner of presenting facts by his own preconceived opinions, +and we have seen what those of the prophets were,—the +preconceived opinions of each speaker. But this mode +of interpreting Scripture is fatal to the vulgar notion of +its verbal inspiration, of a sanctity and absolute truth in +all the words and sentences of which it is composed. This +vulgar notion is, indeed, a palpable error. It is demonstrable +from the internal testimony of the Scriptures themselves, +that the books from the first of the Pentateuch +to the last of Kings were put together, after the first destruction +of Jerusalem, by a compiler (probably Ezra) who +designed to relate the history of the Jewish people from +its origin to that destruction; it is demonstrable, moreover, +that the compiler did not put his last hand to the +work, but left it with its extracts from various and conflicting +sources sometimes unreconciled, left it with errors +<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>of text and unsettled readings. The prophetic books are +mere fragments of the prophets, collected by the Rabbins +where they could find them, and inserted in the Canon +according to their discretion. They, at first, proposed to +admit neither the Book of Proverbs nor the Book of Ecclesiastes +into the Canon, and only admitted them because +there were found in them passages which commended the +law of Moses. Ezekiel also they had determined to exclude; +but one of their number remodeled him, so as to +procure his admission. The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, +Esther, and Daniel are the work of a single author, and +were not written till after Judas Maccabeus had restored +the worship of the Temple. The Book of Psalms was collected +and arranged at the same time. Before this time, +there was no Canon of the sacred writings, and the great +synagogue, by which the Canon was fixed, was first convened +after the Macedonian conquest of Asia. Of that +synagogue none of the prophets were members; the learned +men who composed it were guided by their own fallible +judgment. In like manner the uninspired judgment of +human counsels determined the Canon of the New Testament.</p> + +<p class='c006'>Such, reduced to the briefest and plainest terms possible, +stripped of the developments and proofs with which +he delivers it, and divested of the metaphysical language +in which much of it is clothed by him, is the doctrine of +Spinoza’s treatise on the interpretation of Scripture. By +the whole scope and drift of its argument, by the spirit +in which the subject is throughout treated, his work undeniably +is most interesting and stimulating to the general +culture of Europe. There are errors and contradictions in +Scripture; and the question which the general culture +of Europe, well aware of this, asks with real interest is: +What then? What follows from all this? What change +is it, if true, to produce in the relations of mankind to +the Christian religion? If the old theory of Scripture +inspiration is to be abandoned, what place is the Bible +henceforth to hold among books? What is the new Christianity +<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>to be like? How are governments to deal with +National Churches founded to maintain a very different +conception of Christianity? Spinoza addresses himself +to these questions. All secondary points of criticism he +touches with the utmost possible brevity. He points out +that Moses could never have written: “And the Canaanite +was then in the land,” because the Canaanite was +in the land still at the death of Moses. He points out that +Moses could never have written: “There arose not a +prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.” He points out +how such a passage as, “These are the kings that reigned +in Edom <em>before there reigned any king over the children +of Israel</em>,” clearly indicates an author writing not before +the times of the Kings. He points out how the account +of Og’s iron bedstead: “Only Og the king of Bashan remained +of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead +was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children +of Ammon?”—probably indicates an author writing after +David had taken Rabbath, and found there “abundance +of spoil,” amongst it this iron bedstead, the gigantic relic +of another age. He points out how the language of this +passage, and of such a passage as that in the Book of +Samuel: “Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire +of God, thus he spake: Come and let us go to the +seer; for he that is now called prophet was aforetime +called seer”—is certainly the language of a writer describing +the events of a long-past age, and not the language of +a contemporary. But he devotes to all this no more space +than is absolutely necessary. He apologizes for delaying +over such matters so long: <i>non est cur circa hæc diu +detinear—nolo tædiosâ lectione lectorem detinere</i>. For him +the interesting question is, not whether the fanatical +devotee of the letter is to continue, for a longer or for +a shorter time, to believe that Moses sate in the land +of Moab writing the description of his own death, but +what he is to believe when he does not believe this. Is +he to take for the guidance of his life a great gloss put +upon the Bible by theologians, who, “not content with +going mad themselves with Plato and Aristotle, want to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>make Christ and the prophets go mad with them too,”—or +the Bible itself? Is he to be presented by his national +church with metaphysical formularies for his creed, or +with the real fundamentals of Christianity? If with the +former, religion will never produce its due fruits. A few +elect will still be saved; but the vast majority of mankind +will remain without grace and without good works, +hateful and hating one another. Therefore he calls urgently +upon governments to make the national church +what it should be. This is the conclusion of the whole +matter for him; a fervent appeal to the State, to save us +from the untoward generation of metaphysical Article-makers. +And therefore, anticipating Mr. Gladstone, he +called his book <cite>The Church in its Relations with the +State</cite>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Such is really the scope of Spinoza’s work. He pursues +a great object, and pursues it with signal ability. But it +is important to observe that he nowhere distinctly gives +his own opinion about the Bible’s fundamental character. +He takes the Bible as it stands, as he might take the <a id='corr240.20'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='pheenomena'>phenomena</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_240.20'><ins class='correction' title='pheenomena'>phenomena</ins></a></span> +of nature, and he discusses it as he finds it. +Revelation differs from natural knowledge, he says, not by +being more divine or more certain than natural knowledge, +but by being conveyed in a different way; it differs from +it because it is a knowledge “of which the laws of human +nature considered in themselves alone cannot be the +cause.” What is really its cause, he says, we need not +here inquire (<span lang="la"><i>verum nec nobis jam opus est propheticæ +cognitionis causam scire</i></span>), for we take Scripture, which +contains this revelation, as it stands, and do not ask how +it arose (<span lang="la"><i>documentorum causas nihil curamus</i></span>).</p> + +<p class='c001'>Proceeding on this principle, Spinoza leaves the attentive +reader somewhat baffled and disappointed, clear, +as is his way of treating his subject, and remarkable as +are the conclusions with which he presents us. He starts +we feel, from what is to him a hypothesis, and we want to +know what he really thinks about this hypothesis. His +greatest novelties are all within limits fixed for him by +this hypothesis. He says that the voice which called +<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>Samuel was an imaginary voice; he says that the waters +of the Red Sea retreated before a strong wind; he says +that the Shunammite’s son was revived by the natural heat +of Elisha’s body; he says that the rainbow which was +made a sign to Noah appeared in the ordinary course of +nature. Scripture itself, rightly interpreted, says, he +affirms, all this. But he asserts that the divine voice +which uttered the commandments on Mount Sinai was a +real voice <span lang="la"><i>vera vox</i></span>. He says, indeed, that this voice could +not really give to the Israelites that proof which they imagined +it gave to them of the existence of God, and that +God on Sinai was dealing with the Israelites only according +to their imperfect knowledge. Still he asserts the divine +voice to have been a real one; and for this reason, that +we do violence to Scripture if we do not admit it to have +been a real one (<span lang="la"><i>nisi Scripturæ vim inferre velimus, omnino +concedendum est, Israëlitas veram vocem audivisse</i></span>). +The attentive reader wants to know what Spinoza himself +thought about this <span lang="la"><i>vera vox</i></span> and its possibility; he is much +more interested in knowing this than in knowing what +Spinoza considered Scripture to affirm about the matter.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The feeling of perplexity thus caused is not diminished +by the language of the chapter on miracles. +In this chapter Spinoza broadly affirms a miracle to +be an impossibility. But he himself contrasts the +method of demonstration <span lang="la"><i>à priori</i></span>, by which he claims +to have established this proposition, with the method +which he has pursued in treating of prophetic revelation. +“This revelation,” he says, “is a matter out of +human reach, and therefore I was bound to take it as +I found it.” <span lang="la"><i>Monere volo, me aliâ prorsus methodo circa +miracula processisse, quam circa prophetiam ... quod +etiam consulto feci, quia de prophetiâ, quandoquidem ipsa +captum humanum superat et quæstio mere theologica est, +nihil affirmare, neque etiam scire poteram in quo ipsa +potissimum constiterit, nisi ex fundamentis revelatis.</i></span> The +reader feels that Spinoza, proceeding on a hypothesis, has +presented him with the assertion of a miracle, and afterwards, +proceeding <span lang="la"><i>à priori</i></span>, has presented him with the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>assertion that a miracle is impossible. He feels that +Spinoza does not adequately reconcile these two assertions +by declaring that any event really miraculous, if found +recorded in Scripture, must be “a spurious addition made +to Scripture by sacrilegious men.” Is, then, he asks the +<span lang="la"><i>vera vox</i></span> of Mount Sinai in Spinoza’s opinion a spurious +addition made to Scripture by sacrilegious men; or, if +not, how is it not miraculous?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Spinoza, in his own mind, regarded the Bible as a vast +collection of miscellaneous documents, many of them +quite disparate and not at all to be harmonized with +others; documents of unequal value and of varying applicability, +some of them conveying ideas salutary for one +time, others for another. But in the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> +he by no means always deals in this free spirit +with the Bible. Sometimes he chooses to deal with it in +the spirit of the veriest worshiper of the letter; sometimes +he chooses to treat the Bible as if all its parts were +(so to speak) equipollent; to snatch an isolated text which +suits his purpose, without caring whether it is annulled +by the context, by the general drift of Scripture, or by +other passages of more weight and authority. The great +critic thus becomes voluntarily as uncritical as Exeter +Hall. The Epicurean Solomon, whose <cite>Ecclesiastes</cite> the +Hebrew doctors, even after they had received it into the +canon, forbade the young and weak-minded among their +community to read, Spinoza quotes as of the same authority +with the severe Moses; he uses promiscuously, as +documents of identical force, without discriminating between +their essentially different character, the softened +cosmopolitan teaching of the prophets of the captivity and +the rigid national teaching of the instructors of Israel’s +youth. He is capable of extracting, from a chance expression +of Jeremiah, the assertion of a speculative idea +which Jeremiah certainly never entertained, and from +which he would have recoiled in dismay,—the idea, +namely, that miracles are impossible; just as the ordinary +Englishman can extract from God’s words to Noah, <em>Be +fruitful and multiply</em>, an exhortation to himself to have +<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>a large family. Spinoza, I repeat, knew perfectly well +what this verbal mode of dealing with the Bible was +worth: but he sometimes uses it because of the hypothesis +from which he set out; because of his having agreed “to +take Scripture as it stands, and not to ask how it arose.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>No doubt the sagacity of Spinoza’s rules for Biblical interpretation, +the power of his analysis of the contents of +the Bible, the interest of his reflections on Jewish history, +are, in spite of this, very great, and have an absolute worth +of their own, independent of the silence or ambiguity of +their author upon a point of cardinal importance. Few +candid people will read his rules of interpretation without +exclaiming that they are the very dictates of good sense, +that they have always believed in them; and without +adding, after a moment’s reflection, that they have passed +their lives in violating them. And what can be more interesting, +than to find that perhaps the main cause of the +decay of the Jewish polity was one of which from our +English Bible, which entirely mistranslates the 26th verse +of the 20th chapter of Ezekiel, we hear nothing,—the perpetual +reproach of impurity and rejection cast upon the +priesthood of the tribe of Levi? What can be more suggestive, +after Mr. Mill and Dr. Stanley have been telling +us how great an element of strength to the Hebrew nation +was the institution of prophets, than to hear from the +ablest of Hebrews how this institution seems to him to +have been to his nation one of her main elements of weakness? +No intelligent man can read the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> +without being profoundly instructed by it; +but neither can he read it without feeling that, as a speculative +work, it is, to use a French military expression, <em>in +the air</em>; that, in a certain sense, it is in want of a base +and in want of supports; that this base and these supports +are, at any rate, not to be found in the work itself, and, +if they exist, must be sought for in other works of the +author.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The genuine speculative opinions of Spinoza, which the +<span lang="de"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> but imperfectly reveals, +may in his Ethics and in his Letters be found set forth +<span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>clearly. It is, however, the business of criticism to deal +with every independent work as with an independent +whole, and, instead of establishing between the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus +Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> and the Ethics of Spinoza a relation +which Spinoza himself has not established,—to seize, in +dealing with the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span>, the important +fact that this work has its source, not in the +axioms and definition of the Ethics, but in a hypothesis. +The Ethics are not yet translated into English, and I have +not here to speak of them. Then will be the right time +for criticism to try and seize the special character and +tendencies of that remarkable work, when it is dealing +with it directly. The criticism of the Ethics is far too +serious a task to be undertaken incidentally, and merely +as a supplement to the criticism of the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span>. +Nevertheless, on certain governing ideas +of Spinoza, which receive their systematic expression, indeed, +in the Ethics, and on which the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> +is not formally based, but which are yet never +absent from Spinoza’s mind in the composition of any +work, which breathe through all his works, and fill them +with a peculiar effect and power, I have a word or two to say.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A philosopher’s real power over mankind resides not in +his metaphysical formulas, but in the spirit and tendencies +which have led him to adopt those formulas. Spinoza’s +critic, therefore, has rather to bring to light that spirit +and those tendencies of his author, than to exhibit his +metaphysical formulas. Propositions about substance +pass by mankind at large like the idle wind, which mankind +at large regards not; it will not even listen to a word +about these propositions, unless it first learns what their +author was driving at with them, and finds that this object +of his is one with which it sympathizes, one, at any +rate, which commands its attention. And mankind is so +far right that this object of the author is really, as has +been said, that which is most important, that which sets +all his work in motion, that which is the secret of his attraction +for other minds, which, by different ways, pursue +the same object.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>Mr. Maurice, seeking for the cause of Goethe’s great +admiration for Spinoza, thinks that he finds it in Spinoza’s +Hebrew genius. “He spoke of God,” says Mr. Maurice, +“as an actual being, to those who had fancied him a +name in a book. The child of the circumcision had a +message for Lessing and Goethe which the pagan schools +of philosophy could not bring.” This seems to me, I confess, +fanciful. An intensity and impressiveness, which +came to him from his Hebrew nature, Spinoza no doubt +has; but the two things which are most remarkable about +him, and by which, as I think, he chiefly impressed +Goethe, seem to me not to come to him from his Hebrew +nature at all,—I mean his denial of final causes, and his +stoicism, a stoicism not passive, but active. For a mind +like Goethe’s,—a mind profoundly impartial and passionately +aspiring after the science, not of men only, but of +universal nature,—the popular philosophy which explains +all things by reference to man, and regards universal nature +as existing for the sake of man, and even of certain +classes of men, was utterly repulsive. Unchecked, this +philosophy would gladly maintain that the donkey exists +in order that the invalid Christian may have donkey’s +milk before breakfast; and such views of nature as this +were exactly what Goethe’s whole soul abhorred. Creation, +he thought, should be made of sterner stuff; he +desired to rest the donkey’s existence on larger grounds. +More than any philosopher who has ever lived, Spinoza +satisfied him here. The full exposition of the counter-doctrine +to the popular doctrine of final causes is to be +found in the Ethics; but this denial of final causes was so +essential an element of all Spinoza’s thinking that we +shall, as has been said already, find it in the work with +which we are here concerned, the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span>, +and, indeed, permeating that work and all his +works. From the <span lang="la"><cite>Tractatus Theologico-Politicus</cite></span> one may +take as good a general statement of this denial as any +which is to be found in the Ethics:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“<span lang="la">Deus naturam dirigit, prout ejus leges universales, +non autem prout humanæ naturæ particulares leges exigunt, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>adeoque Deus non solius humani generis, sed totius +naturæ rationem habet.</span> (<i>God directs nature, according +as the universal laws of nature, but not according as the +particular laws of human nature require; and so God has +regard, not of the human race only, but of entire nature.</i>)”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And, as a pendant to this denial by Spinoza of final +causes, comes his stoicism:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“<span lang="la">Non studemus, ut natura nobis, sed contra ut nos +naturæ pareamus. (<i>Our desire is not that nature may +obey us, but, on the contrary, that we may obey nature.</i>)</span>”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Here is the second source of his attractiveness for +Goethe; and Goethe is but the eminent representative of +a whole order of minds whose admiration has made Spinoza’s +fame. Spinoza first impresses Goethe and any man +like Goethe, and then he composes him; first he fills and +satisfies his imagination by the width and grandeur of his +view of nature, and then he fortifies and stills his mobile, +straining, passionate poetic temperament by the moral +lesson he draws from his view of nature. And a moral +lesson not of mere resigned acquiescence, not of melancholy +quietism, but of joyful activity within the limits of +man’s true sphere:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“<span lang="la">Ipsa hominis essentia est conatus quo unusquisque +suum esse conservare conatur.... Virtus hominis est +ipsa hominis essentia, quatenus a solo conatu suum esse +conservandi definitur.... Felicitas in eo consistit quod +homo suum esse conservare potest.... Lætitia est hominis +transitio ad majorem perfectionem.... Tristitia +est hominis transitio ad minorem perfectionem.</span> (<i>Man’s +very essence is the effort wherewith each man strives to +maintain his own being.... Man’s virtue is this very +essence, so far as it is defined by this single effort to maintain +his own being.... Happiness consists in a man’s +being able to maintain his own being.... Joy is man’s +passage to a greater perfection.... Sorrow is man’s +passage to a lesser perfection.</i>)”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It seems to me that by neither of these, his grand +characteristic doctrines, is Spinoza truly Hebrew or truly +Christian. His denial of final causes is essentially alien +<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>to the spirit of the Old Testament, and his cheerful and +self-sufficing stoicism is essentially alien to the spirit of +the New. The doctrine that “God directs nature, not +according as the particular laws of human nature, but +according as the universal laws of nature require,” is at +utter variance with that Hebrew mode of representing +God’s dealings, which makes the locusts visit Egypt to +punish Pharaoh’s hardness of heart, and the falling dew +avert itself from the fleece of Gideon. The doctrine that +“all sorrow is a passage to a lesser perfection” is at utter +variance with the Christian recognition of the blessedness +of sorrow, working “repentance to salvation not to be +repented of;” of sorrow, which, in Dante’s words, “re-marries +us to God.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Spinoza’s repeated and earnest assertions that the love +of God is man’s <span lang="la"><i>summum bonum</i></span> do not remove the fundamental +diversity between his doctrine and the Hebrew and +Christian doctrines. By the love of God he does not mean +the same thing which the Hebrew and Christian religions +mean by the love of God. He makes the love of God to +consist in the knowledge of God; and, as we know God +only through his manifestation of himself in the laws of +all nature, it is by knowing these laws that we love God, +and the more we know them the more we love him. This +may be true, but this is not what the Christian means by +the love of God. Spinoza’s ideal is the intellectual life; +the Christian’s ideal is the religious life. Between the +two conditions there is all the difference which there is +between the being in love, and the following, with delighted +comprehension, a reasoning of Plato. For Spinoza, +undoubtedly, the crown of the intellectual life is a transport, +as for the saint the crown of the religious life is a +transport; but the two transports are not the same.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This is true; yet it is true, also, that by thus crowning +the intellectual life with a sacred transport, by thus retaining +in philosophy, amid the discontented murmurs of +all the army of atheism, the name of God, Spinoza maintains +a profound affinity with that which is truest in religion, +and inspires an indestructible interest. One of his +<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>admirers, M. Van Vloten, has recently published at Amsterdam +a supplementary volume to Spinoza’s works, containing +the interesting document of Spinoza’s sentence of +excommunication, from which I have already quoted, and +containing, besides, several lately found works alleged to +be Spinoza’s, which seem to me to be of doubtful authenticity, +and, even if authentic, of no great importance. +M. Van Vloten (who, let me be permitted to say in passing, +writes a Latin which would make one think that the +art of writing Latin must be now a lost art in the country +of Lipsius) is very anxious that Spinoza’s unscientific retention +of the name of God should not afflict his readers +with any doubts as to his perfect scientific orthodoxy:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“It is a great mistake,” he cries, “to disparage Spinoza +as merely one of the dogmatists before Kant. By keeping +the name of God, while he did away with his person and +character, he has done himself an injustice. Those who +look to the bottom of things will see, that, long ago as he +lived, he had even then reached the point to which the +post-Hegelian philosophy and the study of natural science +has only just brought our own times. Leibnitz expressed +his apprehension lest those who did away with final causes +should do away with God at the same time. But it is in +his having done away with final causes, <em>and with God along +with them</em>, that Spinoza’s true merit consists.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now it must be remarked that to use Spinoza’s denial of +final causes in order to identify him with the Coryphæi of +atheism, is to make a false use of Spinoza’s denial of final +causes, just as to use his assertion of the all-importance of +loving God to identify him with the saints would be to +make a false use of his assertion of the all-importance of +loving God. He is no more to be identified with the post-Hegelian +philosophers than he is to be identified with St. +Augustine. Unction, indeed, Spinoza’s writings have not; +that name does not precisely fit any quality which they +exhibit. And yet, so all-important in the sphere of religious +thought is the power of edification, that in this +sphere a great fame like Spinoza’s can never be founded +without it. A court of literature can never be very severe +<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>to Voltaire: with that inimitable wit and clear sense of +his, he cannot write a page in which the fullest head may +not find something suggestive: still, because, handling +religious ideas, he yet, with all his wit and clear sense, +handles them wholly without the power of edification, his +fame as a great man is equivocal. Strauss has treated the +question of Scripture miracles with an acuteness and fulness +which even to the most informed minds is instructive; +but because he treats it almost wholly without the power +of edification, his fame as a serious thinker is equivocal. +But in Spinoza there is not a trace either of Voltaire’s +passion for mockery or of Strauss’s passion for demolition. +His whole soul was filled with desire of the love and knowledge +of God, and of that only. Philosophy always proclaims +herself on the way to the <span lang="la"><i>summum bonum</i></span>; but too +often on the road she seems to forget her destination, and +suffers her hearers to forget it also. Spinoza never forgets +his destination: “The love of God is man’s highest happiness +and blessedness, and the final end and aim of all +human actions;”—“The supreme reward for keeping +God’s Word is that Word itself—namely, to know him and +with free will and pure and constant heart love him:” +these sentences are the keynote to all he produced, and +were the inspiration of all his labors. This is why he +turns so sternly upon the worshipers of the letter,—the +editors of the <cite>Masora</cite>, the editor of the <cite>Record</cite>,—because +their doctrine imperils our love and knowledge of God. +“What!” he cries, “our knowledge of God to depend +upon these perishable things, which Moses can dash to the +ground and break to pieces like the first tables of stone, or +of which the originals can be lost like the original book of +the Covenant, like the original book of the Law of God, +like the book of the Wars of God!... which can come to +us confused, imperfect, mis-written by copyists, tampered +with by doctors! And you accuse others of impiety! It +is you who are impious, to believe that God would commit +the treasure of the true record of himself to any substance +less enduring than the heart!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And Spinoza’s life was not unworthy of this elevated +<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>strain. A philosopher who professed that knowledge was +its own reward, a devotee who professed that the love of +God was its own reward, this philosopher and this devotee +believed in what he said. Spinoza led a life the most spotless, +perhaps, to be found among the lives of philosophers; +he lived simple, studious, even-tempered, kind; declining +honors, declining riches, declining notoriety. He was +poor, and his admirer Simon de Vries sent him two thousand +florins:—he refused them. The same friend left +him his fortune;—he returned it to the heir. He was +asked to dedicate one of his works to the magnificent +patron of letters in his century, Louis the Fourteenth;—he +declined. His great work, his Ethics, published after +his death, he gave injunctions to his friends to publish +anonymously, for fear he should give his name to a school. +Truth, he thought, should bear no man’s name. And +finally,—“Unless,” he said, “I had known that my writings +would in the end advance the cause of true religion, +I would have suppressed them,—<span lang="la"><i>tacuissem</i></span>.” It was in +this spirit that he lived; and this spirit gives to all he +writes not exactly unction,—I have already said so,—but +a kind of sacred solemnity. Not of the same order as +the saints, he yet follows the same service: <i>Doubtless thou +art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and +Israel acknowledge us not</i>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Therefore he has been, in a certain sphere, edifying, and +has inspired in many powerful minds an interest and an +admiration such as no other philosopher has inspired since +Plato. The lonely precursor of German philosophy, he +still shines when the light of his successors is fading away; +they had celebrity, Spinoza has fame. Not because his +peculiar system of philosophy has had more adherents than +theirs; on the contrary, it has had fewer. But schools of +philosophy arise and fall; their bands of adherents inevitably +dwindle; no master can long persuade a large +body of disciples that they give to themselves just the +same account of the world as he does; it is only the very +young and the very enthusiastic who can think themselves +sure that they possess the whole mind of Plato, or Spinoza, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>or Hegel, at all. The very mature and the very sober can +even hardly believe that these philosophers possessed it +themselves enough to put it all into their works, and to +let us know entirely how the world seemed to them. What +a remarkable philosopher really does for human thought, +is to throw into circulation a certain number of new and +striking ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with them +the thought and imagination of his century or of after-times. +So Spinoza has made his distinction between +adequate and inadequate ideas a current notion for educated +Europe. So Hegel seized a single pregnant sentence +of Heracleitus, and cast it, with a thousand striking applications, +into the world of modern thought. But to do +this is only enough to make a philosopher noteworthy; it +is not enough to make him great. To be great, he must +have something in him which can influence character, +which is edifying; he must, in short, have a noble and +lofty character himself, a character,—to recur to that +much-criticised expression of mine,—<em>in the grand style</em>. +This is what Spinoza had; and because he had it, he stands +out from the multitude of philosophers, and has been able +to inspire in powerful minds a feeling which the most remarkable +philosophers, without this grandiose character, +could not inspire. “There is no possible view of life but +Spinoza’s,” said Lessing. Goethe has told us how he was +calmed and edified by him in his youth, and how he again +went to him for support in his maturity. Heine, the man +(in spite of his faults) of truest genius that Germany +has produced since Goethe,—a man with faults, as +I have said, immense faults, the greatest of them being +that he could reverence so little,—reverenced Spinoza. +Hegel’s influence ran off him like water: “I have seen +Hegel,” he cries, “seated with his doleful air of a hatching +hen upon his unhappy eggs, and I have heard his dismal +clucking. How easily one can cheat oneself into +thinking that one understands everything, when one has +learned only how to construct dialectical formulas!” But +of Spinoza, Heine said: “His life was a copy of the life +of his divine kinsman, Jesus Christ.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>And therefore, when M. Van Vloten violently presses +the parallel with the post-Hegelians, one feels that the +parallel with St. Augustine is the far truer one. Compared +with the soldier of irreligion M. Van Vloten would +have him to be, Spinoza is religious. “It is true,” one +may say to the wise and devout Christian, “Spinoza’s +conception of beatitude is not yours, and cannot satisfy +you, but whose conception of beatitude would you accept +as satisfying? Not even that of the devoutest of your +fellow-Christians. Fra Angelico, the sweetest and most +inspired of devout souls, has given us, in his great picture +of the Last Judgment, his conception of beatitude. The +elect are going round in a ring on long grass under laden +fruit-trees; two of them, more restless than the others, +are flying up a battlemented street,—a street blank with +all the ennui of the Middle Ages. Across a gulf is visible, +for the delectation of the saints, a blazing caldron in which +Beelzebub is sousing the damned. This is hardly more +your conception of beatitude than Spinoza’s is. But ‘in +my Father’s house are many mansions;’ only, to reach +any one of these mansions, there are needed the wings of a +genuine sacred transport, of an ‘immortal longing.’” +These wings Spinoza had; and, because he had them, his +own language about himself, about his aspirations and his +course, are true: his foot is in the <span lang="la"><i>vera vita</i></span>, his eye on +the beatific vision.</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span> + <h2 class='c005'>X.<br> <br> MARCUS AURELIUS.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Mr. Mill says, in his book on Liberty, that “Christian +morality is in great part merely a protest against paganism; +its ideal is negative rather than positive, passive +rather than active.” He says, that, in certain most important +respects, “it falls far below the best morality of the ancients.” +Now, the object of systems of morality is to take +possession of human life, to save it from being abandoned +to passion or allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happiness +by establishing it in the practice of virtue; and this +object they seek to attain by prescribing to human life +fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct. In its +uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, in its days +of languor and gloom as well as in its days of sunshine and +energy, human life has thus always a clue to follow, and +may always be making way towards its goal. Christian +morality has not failed to supply to human life aids of this +sort. It has supplied them far more abundantly than +many of its critics imagine. The most exquisite document +after those of the New Testament, of all the documents +the Christian spirit has ever inspired,—the <cite>Imitation</cite>,—by +no means contains the whole of Christian morality; +nay, the disparagers of this morality would think themselves +sure of triumphing if one agreed to look for it in the +<cite>Imitation</cite> only. But even the <cite>Imitation</cite> is full of passages +like these: “<span lang="la">Vita sine proposito languida et vaga +est;</span>”—“<span lang="la">Omni die renovare debemus propositum nostrum, +dicentes: nunc hodiè perfectè incipiamus, quia nihil est +quod hactenus fecimus;</span>”—“<span lang="la">Secundum propositum +nostrum est cursus profectûs nostri;</span>”—“<span lang="la">Raro etiam +unum vitium perfectè vincimus, et ad <i>quotidianum</i> profectum +non accendimur;</span>” “<span lang="la">Semper aliquid certi proponendum +<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>est;</span>” “<span lang="la">Tibi ipsi violentiam frequenter fac;</span>” +(<i>A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing;—Every +day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: +This day let us make a sound beginning, for what +we have hitherto done is nought;—Our improvement is in +proportion to our purpose;—We hardly ever manage to get +completely rid even of one fault, and do not set our hearts +on daily improvement;—Always place a definite purpose before +thee;—Get the habit of mastering thine inclination.</i>) +These are moral precepts, and moral precepts of the best +kind. As rules to hold possession of our conduct, and to +keep us in the right course through outward troubles and +inward perplexity, they are equal to the best ever furnished +by the great masters of morals—Epictetus or Marcus +Aurelius.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then +rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, for the sage +only. The mass of mankind have neither force of intellect +enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force of +character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The +mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of +hardship for the natural man, can be borne over the +thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide +of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to +rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a +sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that +the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he +can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet +have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor +and sorrow in his march towards the goal constitutes a +relative inferiority; the noblest souls of whatever creed, +the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian Paul, have +insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a joyful emotion, +to make moral action perfect; an obscure indication of +this necessity is the one drop of truth in the ocean of verbiage +with which the controversy on justification by faith +has flooded the world. But, for the ordinary man, this +sense of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualification; +it paralyzes him; under the weight of it, he +<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>cannot make way towards the goal at all. The paramount +virtue of religion is, that it has <em>lighted up</em> morality; that +it has supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for +carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for +carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religious +with most dross in them have had something of +this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with +unexampled splendor. “Lead me, Zeus and Destiny!” +says the prayer of Epictetus, “whithersoever I am appointed +to go; I will follow without wavering; even +though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow +all the same.” The fortitude of that is for the strong, +for the few; even for them the spiritual atmosphere with +which it surrounds them is bleak and gray, But, “Let +thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of righteousness;”—“The +Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, +and thy God thy glory;”—“Unto you that fear +my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing +in his wings,” says the Old Testament; “Born, not of +blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, +but of God;”—“Except a man be born again, he cannot +see the kingdom of God;”—“Whatsoever is born of God, +overcometh the world,” says the New. The ray of sunshine +is there, the glow of a divine warmth;—the austerity +of the sage melts away under it, the paralysis of the +weak is healed; he who is vivified by it renews his strength; +“all things are possible to him;” “he is a new creature.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Epictetus says: “Every matter has two handles, one +of which will bear taking hold of, the other not. If thy +brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the matter by +this, that he sins against thee; for by this handle the +matter will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold +of it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate; and +thou wilt take hold of it by what will bear handling.” +Jesus, being asked whether a man is bound to forgive his +brother as often as seven times, answers: “I say not +unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times +seven.” Epictetus here suggests to the reason grounds +for forgiveness of injuries which Jesus does not; but it is +<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>vain to say that Epictetus is on that account a better +moralist than Jesus, if the warmth, the emotion, of Jesus’s +answer fires his hearer to the practice of forgiveness of +injuries, while the thought in Epictetus’s leaves him cold. +So with Christian morality in general: its distinction is +not that it propounds the maxim, “Thou shalt love God +and thy neighbor,” with more development, closer reasoning, +truer sincerity, than other moral systems; it is that +it propounds this maxim with an inspiration which wonderfully +catches the hearer and makes him act upon it. It +is because Mr. Mill has attained to the perception of truths +of this nature, that he is,—instead of being, like the +school from which he proceeds, doomed to sterility,—a +writer of distinguished mark and influence, a writer deserving +all attention and respect; it is (I must be pardoned +for saying) because he is not sufficiently leavened with +them, that he falls just short of being a great writer.</p> + +<p class='c001'>That which gives to the moral writings of the Emperor +Marcus Aurelius their peculiar character and charm, is +their being suffused and softened by something of this +very sentiment whence Christian morality draws its best +power. Mr. Long has recently published in a convenient +form a translation of these writings, and has thus enabled +English readers to judge Marcus Aurelius for themselves; +he has rendered his countrymen a real service by so doing. +Mr. Long’s reputation as a scholar is a sufficient guarantee +of the general fidelity and accuracy of his translation; on +these matters, besides, I am hardly entitled to speak, and +my praise is of no value. But that for which I and the +rest of the unlearned may venture to praise Mr. Long is +this; that he treats Marcus Aurelius’s writings, as he +treats all the other remains of Greek and Roman antiquity +which he touches, not as a dead and dry matter of learning, +but as documents with a side of modern applicability +and living interest, and valuable mainly so far as this side +in them can be made clear; that as in his notes on Plutarch’s +Roman Lives he deals with the modern epoch of +Cæsar and Cicero, not as food for schoolboys, but as food +for men, and men engaged in the current of contemporary +<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>life and action, so in his remarks and essays on Marcus +Aurelius he treats this truly modern striver and thinker +not as a Classical Dictionary hero, but as a present source +from which to draw “example of life, and instruction of +manners.” Why may not a son of Dr. Arnold say, what +might naturally here be said by any other critic, that in +this lively and fruitful way of considering the men and +affairs of ancient Greece and Rome, Mr. Long resembles +Dr. Arnold?</p> + +<p class='c001'>One or two little complaints, however, I have against +Mr. Long, and I will get them off my mind at once. In +the first place, why could he not have found gentler and +juster terms to describe the translation of his predecessor, +Jeremy Collier,—the redoubtable enemy of stage plays,—than +these: “a most coarse and vulgar copy of the +original?” As a matter of taste, a translator should deal +leniently with his predecessor; but putting that out of +the question, Mr. Long’s language is a great deal too hard. +Most English people who knew Marcus Aurelius before +Mr. Long appeared as his introducer, knew him through +Jeremy Collier. And the acquaintance of a man like +Marcus Aurelius is such an imperishable benefit, that one +can never lose a peculiar sense of obligation towards the +man who confers it. Apart from this claim upon one’s +tenderness, however, Jeremy Collier’s version deserves respect +for its genuine spirit and vigor, the spirit and vigor +of the age of Dryden. Jeremy Collier too, like Mr. Long, +regarded in Marcus Aurelius the living moralist, and not +the dead classic; and his warmth of feeling gave to his +style an impetuosity and rhythm which from Mr Long’s +style (I do not blame it on that account) are absent. Let +us place the two side by side. The impressive opening +of Marcus Aurelius’s fifth book, Mr. Long translates +thus:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this +thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human +being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do +the things for which I exist and for which I was brought +into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in +<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>the bed clothes and keep myself warm?—But this is more +pleasant.—Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and +not at all for action or exertion?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Jeremy Collier has:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the +morning, make this short speech to yourself: ‘I am getting +up now to do the business of a man; and am I out of +humor for going about that which I was made for, and for +the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then +designed for nothing but to doze and batten beneath the +counterpane? I thought action had been the end of your +being.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'>In another striking passage, again, Mr. Long has:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“No longer wonder at hazard; for neither wilt thou +read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient Romans +and Hellenes, and the selections from books which thou +wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten then to the end +which thou hast before thee, and, throwing away idle +hopes, come to thine own aid, if thou carest at all for thyself, +while it is in thy power.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Here his despised predecessor has:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Don’t go too far in your books and overgrasp yourself. +Alas, you have no time left to peruse your diary, to +read over the Greek and Roman history: come, don’t flatter +and deceive yourself; look to the main chance, to the end +and design of reading, and mind life more than notion: I +say, if you have a kindness for your person, drive at the +practice and help yourself, for that is in your own power.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It seems to me that here for style and force Jeremy Collier +can (to say the least) perfectly stand comparison with +Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier’s real defect as a translator is +not his coarseness and vulgarity, but his imperfect acquaintance +with Greek; this is a serious defect, a fatal one; +it rendered a translation like Mr. Long’s necessary. +Jeremy Collier’s work will now be forgotten, and Mr. +Long stands master of the field; but he may be content, +at any rate, to leave his predecessor’s grave unharmed, +even if he will not throw upon it, in passing, a handful of +kindly earth.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, that +he is not quite idiomatic and simple enough. It is a little +formal, at least, if not pedantic, to say <em>Ethic</em> and <em>Dialectic</em>, +instead of <em>Ethics</em> and <em>Dialectics</em>, and to say “<em>Hellenes</em> +and Romans” instead of “<em>Greeks</em> and Romans.” +And why, too,—the name of Antoninus being preoccupied +by Antoninus Pius,—will Mr. Long call his author Marcus, +<em>Antoninus</em> instead of Marcus <em>Aurelius</em>? Small as these +matters appear, they are important when one has to deal +with the general public, and not with a small circle of +scholars; and it is the general public that the translator +of a short masterpiece on morals, such as is the book of +Marcus Aurelius, should have in view; his aim should be +to make Marcus Aurelius’s work as popular as the <cite>Imitation</cite>, +and Marcus Aurelius’s name as familiar as Socrates’s. +In rendering or naming him, therefore, punctilious +accuracy of phrase is not so much to be sought as +accessibility and currency; everything which may best +enable the Emperor and his precepts <em>vilotare per ora virum</em>. +It is essential to render him in language perfectly plain +and unprofessional, and to call him by the name by which +he is best and most distinctly known. The translators of +the Bible talk of <em>pence</em> and not <em>denarii</em>, and the admirers +of Voltaire do not celebrate him under the name of Arouet.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But, after these trifling complaints are made, one must +end, as one began, in unfeigned gratitude to Mr. Long +for his excellent and substantial reproduction in English +of an invaluable work. In general the substantiality, +soundness, and precision of Mr. Long’s rendering are (I +will venture, after all, to give my opinion about them) as +conspicuous as the living spirit with which he treats antiquity; +and these qualities are particularly desirable in the +translator of a work like that of Marcus Aurelius, of which +the language is often corrupt, almost always hard and +obscure. Any one who wants to appreciate Mr. Long’s +merits as a translator may read, in the original and in Mr. +Long’s translation, the seventh chapter of the tenth book; +he will see how, through all the dubiousness and involved +manner of the Greek, Mr. Long has firmly seized upon the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>clear thought which is certainly at the bottom of that +troubled wording, and, in distinctly rendering this thought, +has at the same time thrown round its expression a characteristic +shade of painfulness and difficulty which just +suits it. And Marcus Aurelius’s book is one which, when +it is rendered so accurately as Mr. Long renders it, even +those who know Greek tolerably well may choose to read +rather in the translation than in the original. For not +only are the contents here incomparably more valuable +than the external form, but this form, the Greek of a +Roman, is not exactly one of those styles which have a +physiognomy, which are an essential part of their author, +which stamp an indelible impression of him on the reader’s +mind. An old Lyons commentator finds, indeed, in Marcus +Aurelius’s Greek, something characteristic, something +specially firm and imperial; but I think an ordinary mortal +will hardly find this: he will find crabbed Greek, without +any great charm of distinct physiognomy. The Greek +of Thucydides and Plato has this charm, and he who reads +them in a translation, however accurate, loses it, and loses +much in losing it; but the Greek of Marcus Aurelius, like +the Greek of the New Testament, and even more than +the Greek of the New Testament, is wanting in it. If +one could be assured that the English Testament were +made perfectly accurate, one might be almost content +never to open a Greek Testament again; and, Mr. Long’s +version of Marcus Aurelius being what it is, an Englishman +who reads to live, and does not live to read, may +henceforth let the Greek original repose upon its shelf.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The man whose thoughts Mr. Long has thus faithfully +reproduced, is perhaps the most beautiful figure in history. +He is one of those consoling and hope-inspiring marks, +which stand forever to remind our weak and easily discouraged +race how high human goodness and perseverance +have once been carried, and may be carried again. The +interest of mankind is peculiarly attracted by examples +of signal goodness in high places; for that testimony to +the worth of goodness is the most striking which is borne +by those to whom all the means of pleasure and self-indulgence +<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>lay open, by those who had at their command +the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Marcus +Aurelius was the ruler of the grandest of empires; and +he was one of the best of men. Besides him, history presents +one or two sovereigns eminent for their goodness, +such as Saint Louis or Alfred. But Marcus Aurelius has, +for us moderns, this great superiority in interest over Saint +Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of society +modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin +to our own, in a brilliant center of civilization. Trajan +talks of “our enlightened age” just as glibly as the <cite>Times</cite> +talks of it. Marcus Aurelius thus becomes for us a man +like ourselves, a man in all things tempted as we are. +Saint Louis inhabits an atmosphere of mediæval Catholicism, +which the man of the nineteenth century may admire, +indeed, may even passionately wish to inhabit, but +which, strive as he will, he cannot really inhabit. Alfred +belongs to a state of society (I say it with all deference to +the <cite>Saturday Review</cite> critic who keeps such jealous watch +over the honor of our Saxon ancestors) half barbarous. +Neither Alfred nor Saint Louis can be morally and intellectually +as near to us as Marcus Aurelius.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The record of the outward life of this admirable man +has in it little of striking incident. He was born at +Rome on the 26th of April, in the year 121 of the Christian +era. He was nephew and son-in-law to his predecessor +on the throne, Antoninus Pius. When Antoninus died, he +was forty years old, but from the time of his earliest manhood +he had assisted in administering public affairs. +Then, after his uncle’s death in 161, for nineteen years he +reigned as emperor. The barbarians were pressing on the +Roman frontier, and a great part of Marcus Aurelius’s +nineteen years of reign was passed in campaigning. His +absences from Rome were numerous and long. We hear +of him in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece; but, above +all, in the countries on the Danube, where the war with +the barbarians was going on,—in Austria, Moravia, +Hungary. In these countries much of his Journal seems +to have been written; parts of it are dated from them; and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>there, a few weeks before his fifty-ninth birthday, he fell +sick and died.<a id='r23'></a><a href='#f23' class='c007'><sup>[23]</sup></a> The record of him on which his fame +chiefly rests is the record of his inward life,—his <cite>Journal</cite>, +or <cite>Commentaries</cite>, or <cite>Meditations</cite>, or <cite>Thoughts</cite>, for by all +these names has the work been called. Perhaps the most +interesting of the records of his outward life is that which +the first book of this work supplies, where he gives an account +of his education, recites the names of those to whom +he is indebted for it, and enumerates his obligations to +each of them. It is a refreshing and consoling picture, a +priceless treasure for those, who, sick of the “wild and +dreamlike trade of blood and guile,” which seems to be +nearly the whole of what history has to offer to our view, +seek eagerly for that substratum of right thinking and +well-doing which in all ages must surely have somewhere +existed, for without it the continued life of humanity +would have been impossible. “From my mother I learnt +piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil +deeds but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity +in my way of living, far removed from the habits +of the rich.” Let us remember that, the next time +we are reading the sixth satire of Juvenal. “From my +tutor I learnt” (hear it, ye tutors of princes!) “endurance +of labor, and to want little and to work with my own +hands, and not to meddle with other people’s affairs, and +not to be ready to listen to slander.” The vices and +foibles of the Greek sophist or rhetorician—the <span lang="la"><i>Græculus +esuriens</i></span>—are in everybody’s mind; but he who reads +Marcus Aurelius’s account of his Greek teachers and +masters, will understand how it is that, in spite of the +vices and foibles of individual <span lang="la"><i>Græculi</i></span>, the education of +the human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be +overrated. The vague and colorless praise of history leaves +on the mind hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius: it +is only from the private memoranda of his nephew that +we learn what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise, +virtuous man he was; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind +<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>less than his immortal nephew only because he has +left in writing no record of his inner life,—<span lang="la"><i>caret quia vate +sacro</i></span>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus +Aurelius, beyond these notices which he has himself supplied, +there are few of much interest and importance. +There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard of +the assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius, against +whom he was marching; <em>he was sorry</em>, he said, <em>to be deprived +of the pleasure of pardoning him</em>. And there are +one or two more anecdotes of him which show the same +spirit. But the great record for the outward life of a man +who has left such a record of his lofty inward aspirations +as that which Marcus Aurelius has left, is the clear consenting +voice of all his contemporaries,—high and low, +friend and enemy, pagan and Christian,—in praise of his +sincerity, justice, and goodness. The world’s charity does +not err on the side of excess, and here was a man occupying +the most conspicuous station in the world, and professing +the highest possible standard of conduct;—yet the +world was obliged to declare that he walked worthily +of his profession. Long after his death, his bust +was to be seen in the houses of private men through the +wide Roman empire. It may be the vulgar part of human +nature which busies itself with the semblance and doings +of living sovereigns, it is its nobler part which busies itself +with those of the dead; these busts of Marcus Aurelius, +in the homes of Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bear witness, +not to the inmates’ frivolous curiosity about princes and +palaces, but to their reverential memory of the passage of +a great man upon the earth.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Two things, however, before one turns from the outward +to the inward life of Marcus Aurelius, force themselves +upon one’s notice, and demand a word of comment; +he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son the +vicious and brutal Commodus. The persecution at +Lyons, in which Attalus and Pothinus suffered, the persecution +at Smyrna, in which Polycarp suffered, took place +<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>in his reign. Of his humanity, of his tolerance, of his +horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain from +severe measures against the Christians, of his anxiety to +temper the severity of these measures when they appeared +to him indispensable, there is no doubt: but, on the one +hand, it is certain that the letter, attributed to him, +directing that no Christian should be punished for being +a Christian, is spurious; it is almost certain that his +alleged answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which he +directs that Christians persisting in their profession shall +be dealt with according to law, is genuine. Mr. Long +seems inclined to try and throw doubt over the persecution +at Lyons, by pointing out that the letter of the Lyons +Christians relating it, alleges it to have been attended by +miraculous and incredible incidents. “A man,” he says, +“can only act consistently by accepting all this letter or +rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either.” +But it is contrary to all experience to say that because a +fact is related with incorrect additions, and embellishments, +therefore it probably never happened at all; or +that it is not, in general, easy for an impartial mind to +distinguish between the fact and the embellishments. I +cannot doubt that the Lyons persecution took place, and +that the punishment of Christians for being Christians +was sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius. But then I must add +that nine modern readers out of ten, when they read this, +will, I believe, have a perfectly false notion of what the +moral action of Marcus Aurelius, in sanctioning that punishment, +really was. They imagine Trajan, or Antoninus +Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh from the perusal of the +Gospel, fully aware of the spirit and holiness of the Christian +saints ordering their extermination because he loved +darkness rather than light. Far from this, the Christianity +which these emperors aimed at repressing was, in their +conception of it, something philosophically contemptible, +politically subversive, and morally abominable. As men, +they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned people, +with us, regard Mormonism; as rulers, they regarded +it much as Liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>A kind of Mormonism, constituted as a vast secret society, +with obscure aims of political and social subversion, was +what Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed themselves +to be repressing when they punished Christians. +The early Christian apologists again and again declare to +us under what odious imputations the Christians lay, how +general was the belief that these imputations were well-grounded, +how sincere was the horror which the belief inspired. +The multitude, convinced that the Christians +were atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no +crime, displayed against them a fury so passionate as to embarrass +and alarm their rulers. The severe expressions of +Tacitus, <i>exitiabilis superstitio—odio humani generis convicti</i>, +show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude +imbued the educated class also. One asks oneself with +astonishment how a doctrine so benign as that of Jesus +Christ can have incurred misrepresentation so monstrous. +The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, +no doubt, in this,—that Christianity was a new spirit in +the Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; +and it was inevitable that Christianity in the +Roman world, like democracy in the modern world, like +every new spirit with a similar mission assigned to it, +should at its first appearance occasion an instinctive +shrinking and repugnance in the world which it was to +dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of the misrepresentation +were, for the Roman public at large, the confounding +of the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, +fierce, and stubborn race, whose stubbornness, fierceness, +and isolation, real as they were, the fancy of a civilized +Roman yet further exaggerated; the atmosphere of +mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian rites; +the very simplicity of Christian theism. For the Roman +statesman, the cause of mistake lay in that character of +secret assemblages which the meetings of the Christian +community wore, under a State-system as jealous of unauthorized +associations as in the State-system of modern +France.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A Roman of Marcus Aurelius’s time and position could +<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>not well see the Christians except through the mist of +these prejudices. Seen through such a mist, the Christians +appeared with a thousand faults not their own; but +it has not been sufficiently remarked that faults really +their own many of them assuredly appeared with besides, +faults especially likely to strike such an observer as Marcus +Aurelius, and to confirm him in the prejudices of his +race, station, and rearing. We look back upon Christianity +after it has proved what a future it bore within it, and +for us the sole representatives of its early struggles are the +pure and devoted spirits through whom it proved this; +Marcus Aurelius saw it with its future yet unshown, and +with the tares among its professed progeny not less conspicuous +than the wheat. Who can doubt that among the +professing Christians of the second century, as among the +professing Christians of the nineteenth, there was plenty +of folly, plenty of rabid nonsense, plenty of gross fanaticism? +who will even venture to affirm that, separated in +great measure from the intellect and civilization of the +world for one or two centuries, Christianity, wonderful as +have been its fruits, had the development perfectly worthy +of its inestimable germ? Who will venture to affirm that, +by the alliance of Christianity with the virtue and intelligence +of men like the Antonines,—of the best product of +Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman +civilization had yet life and power,—Christianity and the +world, as well as the Antonines themselves, would not +have been gainers? That alliance was not to be. The +Antonines lived and died with an utter misconception of +Christianity; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not +on the Palatine. And Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral +reproach by having authorized the punishment of the +Christians; he does not thereby become in the least what +we mean by a <em>persecutor</em>. One may concede that it was +impossible for him to see Christianity as it really was;—as +impossible as for even the moderate and sensible Fleury +to see the Antonines as they really were;—one may concede +that the point of view from which Christianity appeared +something anti-civil and anti-social, which the State +<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>had the faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was inevitably +his. Still, however, it remains true that this sage, +who made perfection his aim and reason his law, did Christianity +an immense injustice and rested in an idea of +State-attributes which was illusive. And this is, in truth, +characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, +yet, in a certain sense, unfortunate; in his character, +beautiful as it is, there is something melancholy, circumscribed, +and ineffectual.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one +must say that he is not to be blamed on that account, but +that he is unfortunate. Disposition and temperament are +inexplicable things; there are natures on which the best +education and example are thrown away; excellent fathers +may have, without any fault of theirs, incurably vicious +sons. It is to be remembered, also, that Commodus was +left, at the perilous age of nineteen, master of the world; +while his father, at that age, was but beginning a twenty +years’ apprenticeship to wisdom, labor, and self-command, +under the sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus. +Commodus was a prince apt to be led by favorites; and +if the story is true which says that he left, all through his +reign, the Christians untroubled, and ascribes this lenity +to the influence of his mistress Marcia, it shows that he +could be led to good as well as to evil. But for such a +nature to be left at a critical age with absolute power, and +wholly without good counsel and direction, was the more +fatal. Still one cannot help wishing that the example of +Marcus Aurelius could have availed more with his own +only son. One cannot but think that with such virtue as +his there should go, too, the ardor which removes mountains, +and that the ardor which removes mountains might +have even won Commodus. The word <em>ineffectual</em> again +rises to one’s mind; Marcus Aurelius saved his own soul +by his righteousness, and he could do no more. Happy +they who can do this! but still happier, who can do more!</p> + +<p class='c001'>Yet, when one passes from his outward to his inward +life, when one turns over the pages of his <cite>Meditations</cite>,—entries +jotted down from day to day, amid the business of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>the city or the fatigues of the camp, for his own guidance +and support, meant for no eye but his own, without the +slightest attempt at style, with no care, even, for correct +writing, not to be surpassed for naturalness and sincerity,—all +disposition to carp and cavil dies away, and one is +overpowered by the charm of a character of such purity, +delicacy, and virtue. He fails neither in small things nor +in great; he keeps watch over himself both that the great +springs of action may be right in him, and that the minute +details of action may be right also. How admirable in a +hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler too, with a passion for thinking +and reading, is such a memorandum as the following:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, +or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually +to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation +to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupation.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And, when that ruler is a Roman emperor, what an +“idea” is this to be written down and meditated by him:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The idea of a polity in which there is the same law +for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights +and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government +which respects most of all the freedom of the +governed.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And, for all men who “drive at practice,” what practical +rules may not one accumulate out of these <cite>Meditations</cite>:—-</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The greatest part of what we say or do being unnecessary, +if a man takes this away, he will have more leisure +and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on every occasion a man +should ask himself: ‘Is this one of the unnecessary +things?’ Now a man should take away not only unnecessary +acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous +acts will not follow after.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And again:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“We ought to check in the series of our thoughts everything +that is without a purpose and useless, but most of +all the over curious feeling and the malignant; and a man +should use himself to think of those things only about +<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>which if one should suddenly ask, ‘What hast thou now +in thy thoughts?’ with perfect openness thou mightest immediately +answer, ‘This or That;’ so that from thy words +it should be plain that everything in thee is simple and +benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one that +cares not for thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any +rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which +thou wouldst blush if thou shouldst say thou hadst it in +thy mind.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, he +discourses on his favorite text, <em>Let nothing be done without +a purpose</em>. But it is when he enters the region where +Franklin cannot follow him, when he utters his thoughts +on the ground-motives of human action, that he is most +interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable +Marcus Aurelius. Christianity uses language very +liable to be misunderstood when it seems to tell men to do +good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly +interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but “that +their Father which seeth in secret may reward them +openly.” The motives of reward and punishment have +come, from the misconception of language of this kind, <a id='corr269.22'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='to to'>to</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_269.22'><ins class='correction' title='to to'>to</ins></a></span> +to be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, +to the deterioration and disfigurement of Christianity. +Marcus Aurelius says, truly and nobly:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“One man, when he has done a service to another, is +ready to set it down to his account as a favor conferred. +Another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind +he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows what he +has done. A third in a manner does not even know what +he has done, <em>but he is like a vine which has produced +grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced +its proper fruit</em>. As a horse when he has run, a dog +when he has caught the game, a bee when it has made its +honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call +out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another +act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season. +Must a man, then, be one of these, who in a manner acts +thus without observing it? Yes.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>And again:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“What more dost thou want when thou hast done a +man a service? Art thou not content that thou hast +done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou +seek to be paid for it, <em>just as if the eye demanded a recompense +for seeing, or the feet for walking</em>?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Christianity, in order to match morality of this strain, +has to correct its apparent offers of external reward, and +to say: <em>The kingdom of God is within you</em>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the +morality of Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, +and reminds one of Christian morality. The sentences of +Seneca are stimulating to the intellect; the sentences of +Epictetus are fortifying to the character; the sentences +of Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul. I have said +that religious emotion has the power to <em>light up</em> morality: +the emotion of Marcus Aurelius does not quite light up +his morality, but it suffuses it; it has not power to melt +the clouds of effort and austerity quite away, but it shines +through them and glorifies them; it is a spirit, not so +much of gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweetness; +a delicate and tender sentiment, which is less than +joy and more than resignation. He says that in his youth +he learned from Maximus, one of his teachers, “cheerfulness +in all circumstances as well as in illness; <em>and a just +admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity</em>:” +and it is this very admixture of sweetness with his +dignity which makes him so beautiful a moralist. It +enables him to carry even into his observation of nature, +a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tenderness, worthy +of Wordsworth; the spirit of such a remark as the following +has hardly a parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, +in the whole range of Greek and Roman literature:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the +ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to +rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And the +ears of corn bending down, and the lion’s eyebrows, and +the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and +many other things,—though they are far from being beautiful, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>in a certain sense,—still, because they come in the +course of nature, have a beauty in them, and they please +the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and a deeper +insight with respect to the things which are produced in the +universe, there is hardly anything which comes in the +course of nature which will not seem to him to be in a +manner disposed so as to give pleasure.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>But it is when his strain passes to directly moral subjects +that his delicacy and sweetness lend to it the greatest +charm. Let those who can feel the beauty of spiritual +refinement read this, the reflection of an emperor who +prized mental superiority highly:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Thou sayest, ‘Men cannot admire the sharpness of +thy wits,’ Be it so; but there are many other things of +which thou canst not say, ‘I am not formed for them by +nature.’ Show those qualities, then, which are altogether +in thy power,—sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, +aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and +with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, +freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou +not see how many qualities thou art at once able to exhibit, +as to which there is no excuse of natural incapacity and +unfitness, and yet thou still remainest voluntarily below +the mark? Or art thou compelled, through being defectively +furnished by nature, to murmur, and to be mean, +and to flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to +try to please men, and to make great display, and to be so +restless in thy mind? No, indeed; but thou mightest +have been delivered from these things long ago. Only, if +in truth thou canst be charged with being rather slow +and dull of comprehension, thou must exert thyself about +this also, not neglecting nor yet taking pleasure in thy +dulness.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, +when he sees the isolation and moral death caused by +sin, not on the cheerless thought of the misery of this +condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is +blest with the power to escape from it:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>natural unity,—for thou wast made by nature a part, but +now thou hast cut thyself off,—yet here is this beautiful +provision, that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. +God has allowed this to no other part,—after it has been +separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But +consider the goodness with which he has privileged man; +for he has put it in his power, when he has been separated, +to return and to be united and to resume his place.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It enables him to control even the passion for retreat +and solitude, so strong in a soul like his, to which the +world could offer no abiding city:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the country, +seashores, and mountains; and thou, too, art wont to +desire such things very much. But this is altogether a +mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy +power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. +For no where either with more quiet or more freedom from +trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly +when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into +them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity. Constantly, +then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and +let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which as soon +as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse +the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all +discontent with the things to which thou returnest.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, so +natural to the great for whom there seems nothing left to +desire or to strive after, but so enfeebling to them, so +deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased to struggle. +With resolute thankfulness he kept in remembrance the +blessings of his lot; the true blessings of it, not the +false:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a +ruler and a father (Antoninus Pius) who was able to take +away all pride from me, and to bring me to the knowledge +that it is possible for a man to live in a palace without +either guards, or embroidered dresses, or any show of this +kind; but that it is in such a man’s power to bring himself +very near to the fashion of a private person, without +<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>being for this reason either meaner in thought or more +remiss in action with respect to the things which must be +done for public interest.... I have to be thankful that +my children have not been stupid nor deformed in body; +that I did not make more proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, +and the other studies, by which I should perhaps have +been completely engrossed, if I had seen that I was making +great progress in them; ... that I knew Apollonius, +Rusticus, Maximus; ... that I received clear and frequent +impressions about living according to nature, and +what kind of a life that is, so that, so far as depended on +Heaven, and its gifts, help, and inspiration, nothing hindered +me from forthwith living according to nature, +though I still fall short of it through my own fault, and +through not observing the admonitions of Heaven, and, I +may almost say, its direct instructions; that my body has +held out so long in such a kind of life as mine; that +though it was my mother’s lot to die young, she spent the +last years of her life with me; that whenever I wished to +help any man in his need, I was never told that I had not +the means of doing it; that, when I had an inclination to +philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and +blessings vouchsafed to him, his mind (so, at least, it +seems to me) would sometimes revert with awe to the +perils and temptations of the lonely height where he stood, +to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, in their +hideous blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down +for himself such a warning entry as this, significant and +terrible in its abruptness:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn +character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, +scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Or this:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“About what am I now employing my soul? On every +occasion I must ask myself this question, and inquire, +What have I now in this part of me which they call the +ruling principle, and whose soul have I now?—that of a +child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, or of a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>tyrant, or of one of the lower animals in the service of +man, or of a wild beast?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The character he wished to attain he knew well, and +beautifully he has marked it, and marked, too his sense +of shortcoming:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“When thou hast assumed these names,—good, modest, +true, rational, equal-minded, magnanimous,—take care +that thou dost not change these names; and, if thou +shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. If thou +maintainest thyself in possession of these names without +desiring that others should call thee by them, thou wilt +be another being, and wilt enter on another life. For to +continue to be such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be +torn in pieces and defiled in such a life, is the character of +a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and like +those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though +covered with wounds and gore still entreat to be kept to +the following day, though they will be exposed in the +same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix +thyself in the possession of these few names: and if thou +art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed +to the Happy Islands.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man’s point +of life “between two infinities” (of that expression Marcus +Aurelius is the real owner) was to him anything but a +Happy Island, and the performances on it he saw through +no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more gloomy +and monotonous than declamations on the hollowness and +transitoriness of human life and grandeur: but here, too, +the great charm of Marcus Aurelius, his emotion, comes +in to relieve the monotony and to break through the +gloom; and even on this eternally used topic he is imaginative, +fresh, and striking:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou +wilt see all these things, people marrying, bringing up +children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, cultivating +the ground, flattering, obstinately arrogant, suspecting, +plotting, wishing for somebody to die, grumbling +about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring +<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>to be consuls or kings. Well then that life of these people +no longer exists at all. Again, go to the times of +Trajan. All is again the same. Their life too is gone. +But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast +thyself known distracting themselves about idle things, +neglecting to do what was in accordance with their proper +constitution, and to hold firmly to this and to be content +with it.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Again:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“The things which are much valued in life are empty, +and rotten, and trifling; and people are like little dogs, +biting one another, and little children quarreling, crying, +and then straightway laughing. But fidelity, and modesty, +and justice, and truth, are fled</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>What then is there which still detains thee here?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And once more:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Look down from above on the countless herds of men, +and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied +voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among +those who are born, who live together, and die. And +consider too the life lived by others in olden time, and +the life now lived among barbarous nations, and how +many know not even thy name, and how many will soon +forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising thee +will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous +name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) “the +prime principle in man’s constitution is the social;” and +he labored sincerely to make not only his acts towards his +fellow-men, but his thoughts also, suitable to this conviction:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the +virtues of those who live with thee; for instance, the activity +of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality +of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in +a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his +<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>fellow-creatures; above all it is hard, when such a man is +placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed, and has had the +meanness and perversity of his fellow-creatures thrust, in +no common measure, upon his notice,—has had, time after +time, to experience how “within ten days thou wilt seem +a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape.” +His true strain of thought as to his relations with his fellow-men +is rather the following. He has been enumerating +the higher consolations which may support a man at the +approach of death, and he goes on:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort +which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled +to death by observing the objects from which thou +art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom +thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right +to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them +and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that +thy departure will not be from men who have the same +principles as thyself. For this is the only thing, if there +be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach +us to life, to be permitted to live with those who have the +same principles as ourselves. But now thou seest how +great is the distress caused by the difference of those who +live together, so that thou mayest say: ‘Come quick, O +death, lest perchance I too should forget myself.’”</p> + +<p class='c001'><em>O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be +with you? how long shall I suffer you?</em> Sometimes this +strain rises even to passion:—</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live +as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know, a real +man, who lives as he was meant to live. If they cannot +endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to +live as men do.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary +character, how little of those <span lang="la"><i>scoriæ</i></span> which a reader +has to clear away before he gets to the precious ore, how +little that even admits of doubt or question, the morality +of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. Perhaps as to one point we +must make an exception. Marcus Aurelius is fond of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>urging as a motive for man’s cheerful acquiescence in whatever +befalls him, that “whatever happens to every man <em>is +for the interest of the universal</em>;” that the whole contains +nothing <em>which is not for its advantage</em>; that everything +which happens to a man is to be accepted, “even if it +seems disagreeable, <em>because it leads to the health of the universe</em>.” +And the whole course of the universe, he adds, has +a providential reference to man’s welfare: “<em>all other +things have been made for the sake of rational beings</em>.” Religion +has in all ages freely used this language, and it is +not religion which will object to Marcus Aurelius’s use +of it; but science can hardly accept as severely accurate +this employment of the terms <em>interest</em> and <em>advantage</em>. To +a sound nature and a clear reason the proposition that +things happen “for the interest of the universal,” as men +conceive of interest, may seem to have no meaning at +all, and the proposition that “all things have been made +for the sake of rational beings” may seem to be false. Yet +even to this language, not irresistibly cogent when it is +thus absolutely used, Marcus Aurelius gives a turn which +makes it true and useful, when he says: “The ruling +part of man can make a material for itself out of that +which opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, +and rises higher by means of this very material;”—when +he says: “What else are all things except exercises +for the reason? Persevere then until thou shalt have +made all things thine own, as the stomach which is strengthened +makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes +flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown +into it;”—when he says: “Thou wilt not cease to be +miserable till thy mind is in such a condition, that, what +luxury is to those who enjoy pfleasure, such shall be to +thee, in every matter which presents itself, the doing of +the things which are conformable to man’s constitution; +for a man ought to consider as an enjoyment everything +which it is in his power to do according to his own nature,—and +it is in his power everywhere.” In this sense it is, +indeed, most true that “all things have been made for the +sake of rational beings;” that “all things work together +for good.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius prescribes +is action which every sound nature must recognize +as right, and the motives he assigns are motives which +every clear reason must recognize as valid. And so he remains +the especial friend and comforter of all clear-headed +and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward striving men, +in those ages most especially that walk by sight, not by +faith, but yet have no open vision. He cannot give such +souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much; +and what he gives them, they can receive.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such +souls love him most! it is rather because of the emotion +which lends to his voice so touching an accent, it is because +he too yearns as they do for something unattained by him. +What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor of the +Christians! The effusion of Christianity, its relieving +tears, its happy self-sacrifice, were the very element, one +feels, for which his soul longed; they were near him, they +brushed him, he touched them, he passed them by. One +feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one reads must still +have remained, even had Christianity been fully known to +him, in a great measure himself; he would have been no +Justin;—but how would Christianity have affected him? +in what measure would it have changed him? Granted +that he might have found, like the <cite>Alogi</cite> of modern times, +in the most beautiful of the Gospels, the Gospel which +has leavened Christendom most powerfully, the Gospel of +St. John, too much Greek metaphysics, too much <em>gnosis</em>; +granted that this Gospel might have looked too like what +he knew already to be a total surprise to him: what, then, +would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the +twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew? What would have +become of his notions of the <span lang="la"><i>exitiabilis superstitio</i></span>, of the +“obstinacy of the Christians”? Vain question! yet the +greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us +ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, +thankful, blameless; yet, with all this, agitated, stretching +out his arms for something beyond,—<span lang="la"><i>tendentemque +manus ripæ uterioris amore</i></span>.</p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span> + <h2 class='c005'>I. <br> <br>THE STUDY OF POETRY.<a id='r24'></a><a href='#f24' class='c007'><sup>[24]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>“The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, +where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time +goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is +not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma +which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition +which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion +has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it +has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is +failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest +is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches +its emotion to the idea; the idea <em>is</em> the fact. The strongest +part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, +as uttering the thought which should, in my opinion, go +with us and govern us in all our study of poetry. In the +present work it is the course of one great contributory +stream to the world-river of poetry that we are invited to +follow. We are here invited to trace the stream of English +poetry. But whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow +only one of the several streams that make the mighty +river of poetry, or whether we seek to know them all, our +governing thought should be the same. We should conceive +of poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been +the custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as +capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, +than those which in general men have assigned to it +<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we +have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, +to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; +and most of what now passes with us for religion +and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. Science, I say, +will appear incomplete without it. For finely and truly +does Wordsworth call poetry “the impassioned expression +which is in the countenance of all science”; and what is +a countenance without its expression? Again, Wordsworth +finely and truly calls poetry “the breath and finer +spirit of all knowledge”: our religion, parading evidences +such as those on which the popular mind relies now; our +philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about causation +and finite and infinite being; what are they but the +shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge? The +day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves for having +trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; and +the more we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall +prize “the breath and finer spirit of knowledge” offered to +us by poetry.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, +we must also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, +to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be +poetry of a high order of excellence. We must accustom +ourselves to a high standard and to a strict judgment. +Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, when +somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan: +“Charlatan as much as you please; but where is there <em>not</em> +charlatanism?”—“Yes,” answers Sainte-Beuve, “in politics, +in the art of governing mankind, that is perhaps +true. But in the order of thought, in art, the glory, the +eternal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance; +herein lies the inviolableness of that noble portion of man’s +being.” It is admirably said, and let us hold fast to it. +In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, +the eternal honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; +that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and inviolable. +Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the distinctions +between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound +<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true. It is +charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, whenever we confuse +or obliterate these. And in poetry, more than anywhere +else, it is unpermissible to confuse or obliterate +them. For in poetry the distinction between excellent +and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true +and untrue or only half-true, is of paramount importance. +It is of paramount importance because of the high destinies +of poetry. In poetry, as a criticism of life under the conditions +fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic +truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find, +we have said, as time goes on and as other helps fail, its +consolation and stay. But the consolation and stay will +be of power in proportion to the power of the criticism of +life. And the criticism of life will be of power in proportion +as the poetry conveying it is excellent rather than +inferior, sound rather than unsound or half-sound, true +rather than untrue or half-true.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will +be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting +us, as nothing else can. A clearer, deeper sense +of the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy to be +drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can +gather from a poetical collection such as the present. And +yet in the very nature and conduct of such a collection +there is inevitably something which tends to obscure in us +the consciousness of what our benefit should be, and to +distract us from the pursuit of it. We should therefore +steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should +compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it +as we proceed.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, +the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be +drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should +govern our estimate of what we read. But this real +estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if +we are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the +historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which +are fallacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historically, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves, +and they may count to us really. They may count +to us historically. The course of development of a nation’s +language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; +and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course of +development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of +more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we +may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise +in criticising it; in short, to over-rate it. So arises in +our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate +which we may call historic. Then, again, a poet or a poem +may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves. Our +personal affinities, likings, and circumstances, have great +power to sway our estimate of this or that poet’s work, +and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry +than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has +been, of high importance. Here also we over-rate the +object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise +which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source +of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments—the fallacy +caused by an estimate which we may call personal.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally +the study of the history and development of a poetry may +incline a man to pause over reputations and works once +conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a careless +public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition +and habit, from one famous name or work in its national +poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the +reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole +process of growth in its poetry. The French have become +diligent students of their own early poetry, which +they long neglected; the study makes many of them dissatisfied +with their so-called classical poetry, the court-tragedy +of the seventeenth century, a poetry which Pellisson +long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic +stamp, with its <span lang="fr"><i>politesse stérile et rampante</i></span>, but which +nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if it +had been the perfection of classical poetry indeed. The +dissatisfaction is natural; yet a lively and accomplished +<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>critic, M. Charles d’Héricault, the editor of Clément +Marot, goes too far when he says that “the cloud of glory +playing round a classic is a mist as dangerous to the +future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes +of history.” “It hinders,” he goes on, “it hinders us +from seeing more than one single point, the culminating +and exceptional point; the summary, fictitious and +arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It substitutes a +halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was +once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor, the +attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study +but veneration; it does not show us how the thing is +done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for the +historian this creation of classic personages is inadmissible; +for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his +proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds +criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the investigation +of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us +a human personage no longer, but a God seated immovable +amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; and +hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom +such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to +believe that it did not issue ready made from that divine +head.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must +plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the +reality of a poet’s classic character. If he is a dubious +classic, let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode +him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs +to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right +meaning of the word <em>classic</em>, <em>classical</em>), then the great +thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever +we can, and to appreciate the wide difference between it +and all work which has not the same high character. This +is what is salutary, this is what is formative; this is the +great benefit to be got from the study of poetry. Everything +which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious. +True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and +not with eyes blinded with superstition; we must perceive +<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>when his work comes short, when it drops out of the class +of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its +proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is +not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a +clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. +To trace the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, +the failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint oneself with +his time and his life and his historical relationships, is +mere literary dilettantism, unless it has that clear sense +and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that +the more we know about a classic the better we shall enjoy +him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all +of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, +this might be true in fact as it is plausible in +theory. But the case here is much the same as the case +with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The +elaborate philological groundwork which we require them +to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating +the Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more +thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be +able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time +were not so short, and schoolboys’ wits not so soon tired +and their power of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the +elaborate philological preparation goes on, but the authors +are little known and less enjoyed. So with the investigator +of “historic origins” in poetry. He ought to enjoy +the true classic all the better for his investigations; he +often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and +with the less good he overbusies himself, and is prone to +over-rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost +him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relationships +cannot be absent from a compilation, like the +present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it +will be assigned to those persons for exhibition who are +known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have +no special inclination towards them. Moreover the very +occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting +him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance. In +<span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>the present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent +temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal +estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, +nevertheless, we must employ if we are to make poetry +yield us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit +of clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, +the truly classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, +to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying +poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it +the one principle to which, as the <cite>Imitation</cite> says, whatever +we may read or come to know, we always return. +<span lang="la"><i>Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet +redire principium.</i></span></p> + +<p class='c001'>The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect +our judgment and our language when we are dealing +with ancient poets; the personal estimate when we +are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate +modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate +are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. +Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they +do not always impose even on the literary men who adopt +them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. +So we hear Cædmon, amongst our own poets, compared +to Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one +accomplished French critic for “historic origins.” Another +eminent French critic, M. Vitet, comments upon +that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, +the <span lang="fr"><cite>Chanson de Roland</cite></span>. It is indeed a most interesting +document. The <span lang="fr"><i>joculator</i></span> or <span lang="fr"><i>jongleur</i></span> Taillefer, who was +with William the Conqueror’s army at Hastings, marched +before the Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing +“of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of +the vassals who died at Roncevaux;” and it is suggested +that in the <span lang="fr"><cite>Chanson de Roland</cite></span> by one Turoldus or +Théroulde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of the +twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we +have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the +words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has +vigor and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some +poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic +value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument +of epic genius. In its general design he finds the +grandiose conception, in its details he finds the constant +union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, +he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from +the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; +this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and +justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it +is the praise due to epic poetry of the highest order only, +and to no other. Let us try, then, the <span lang="fr"><cite>Chanson de Roland</cite></span> +at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down +under a pine-tree, with his face turned towards Spain and +the enemy—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">“De plusurs choses à remembrer li prist,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">De tantes teres cume li bers cunquist,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">De dulce France, des humes de sun lign,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l’nurrit.”</span><a id='r25'></a><a href='#f25' class='c007'><sup>[25]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable +poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and +such praise is sufficient for it. But now turn to Homer—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>Ὣς φάτο· τοὺς δ ἤδη κατέχεν φυσίζοος αἶα</div> + <div class='line'>ἐ Λακεδαίμονι αὖθι, φίλῃ ἐν πατρίδι λαίῃ<a id='r26'></a><a href='#f26' class='c007'><sup>[26]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>We are here in another world, another order of poetry +altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as +that which M. Vitet gives to the <span lang="fr"><cite>Chanson de Roland</cite></span>. If +<span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are +to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise +upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering +what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, +and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in +one’s mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and +to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course +we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; +it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we +shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our +minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence +or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of +this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside +them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our +turn quite sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have +just quoted from Homer, the poet’s comment on Helen’s +mention of her brothers;—or take his</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>Ἆ δειλώ, τί σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἄνακτι</div> + <div class='line'>θνητᾷ; ὑμεῖς δ’ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε.</div> + <div class='line'>ἦ ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἄλγε’ ἔχητον;<a id='r27'></a><a href='#f27' class='c007'><sup>[27]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus;—or take +finally his</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>Καὶ σέ, γέρον, τὸ πρίν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὂλβιον εἶναι·<a id='r28'></a><a href='#f28' class='c007'><sup>[28]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. +Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino’s +tremendous words—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“<span lang="it">Io no piangeva; sì dentro impietrai.</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">Piangevan elli....</span>”<a id='r29'></a><a href='#f29' class='c007'><sup>[29]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">“Io son fatta da Dio, sua mercè, tale,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">Che la vostra miseria non mi tange,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">Nè flamma d’esto incendio non m’assale....”</span><a id='r30'></a><a href='#f30' class='c007'><sup>[30]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>take the simple, but perfect, single line—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">“In la sua vòlontade è nostra pace.”</span><a id='r31'></a><a href='#f31' class='c007'><sup>[31]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth’s +expostulation with sleep—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast</div> + <div class='line'>Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains</div> + <div class='line'>In cradle of the rude imperious surge....”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and take, as well, Hamlet’s dying request to Horatio—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,</div> + <div class='line'>Absent thee from felicity awhile,</div> + <div class='line'>And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain</div> + <div class='line'>To tell my story....”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Take of Milton that Miltonic passage—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in14'>“Darken’d so, yet shone</div> + <div class='line'>Above them all the archangel; but his face</div> + <div class='line'>Deep scars of thunder had intrench’d, and care</div> + <div class='line'>Sat on his faded cheek..”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>add two such lines as—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“And courage never to submit or yield</div> + <div class='line'>And what is else not to be overcome....”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, +the loss</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“... which cost Ceres all that pain</div> + <div class='line'>To seek her through the world.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are +enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our +judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates +of it, to conduct us to a real estimate.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one +another, but they have in common this: the possession of +the very highest poetical quality. If we are thoroughly +penetrated by their power, we shall find that we have +acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be +laid before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical +quality is present or wanting there. Critics give themselves +great labor to draw out what in the abstract constitutes +the characters of a high quality of poetry. It is +much better simply to have recourse to concrete examples;—to +take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest +quality, and to say: The characters of a high quality +of poetry are what is expressed <em>there</em>. They are far better +recognized by being felt in the verse of the master, than +by being perused in the prose of the critic. Nevertheless +if we are urgently pressed to give some critical account of +them, we may safely, perhaps, venture on laying down, +not indeed how and why the characters arise, but where +and in what they arise. They are in the matter and substance +of the poetry, and they are in its manner and style. +Both of these, the substance and matter on the one hand, +the style and manner on the other, have a mark, an accent, +of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are +asked to define this mark and accent in the abstract, our +answer must be: No, for we should thereby be darkening +the question, not clearing it. The mark and accent +are as given by the substance and matter of that poetry, +by the style and manner of that poetry, and of all other +poetry which is akin to it in quality.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Only one thing we may add as to the substance and +matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle’s profound +observation that the superiority of poetry over history +consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness +(φιλοσοφώτερον χαὶ σπουδαιότερον). Let us add, +therefore, to what we have said, this: that the substance +<span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>and matter of the best poetry acquire their +special character from possessing, in an eminent degree, +truth and seriousness. We may add yet further, what +is in itself evident, that to the style and manner of the +best poetry their special character, their accent, is given +by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. +And though we distinguish between the two characters, +the two accents, of superiority, yet they are nevertheless +vitally connected one with the other. The superior +character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance +of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority +of diction and movement marking its style and manner. +The two superiorities are closely related, and are in steadfast +proportion one to the other. So far as high poetic +truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet’s matter and +substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high poetic +stamp of diction and movement be wanting to his style +and manner. In proportion as this high stamp of diction +and movement, again, is absent from a poet’s style and +manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and +seriousness are absent from his substance and matter.</p> + +<p class='c001'>So stated, these are but dry generalities; their whole +force lies in their application. And I could wish every +student of poetry to make the application of them for himself. +Made by himself, the application would impress itself +upon his mind far more deeply than made by me. Neither +will my limits allow me to make any full application of +the generalities above propounded; but in the hope of +bringing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and +of establishing an important principle more firmly by their +means, I will, in the space which remains to me, follow +rapidly from the commencement the course of our English +poetry with them in my view.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with +which our own poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly connected. +In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that +seed-time of all modern language and literature, the poetry +of France had a clear predominance in Europe. Of the +two divisions of that poetry, its productions in the <span lang="fr"><i>langue +<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>d’oil</i></span> and its productions in the <span lang="fr"><i>langue d’oc</i></span>, the poetry of +the <span lang="fr"><i>langue d’oc</i></span>, of southern France, of the troubadours, is +of importance because of its effect on Italian literature;—the +first literature of modern Europe to strike the true +and grand note, and to bring forth, as in Dante and +Petrarch it brought forth, classics. But the predominance +of French poetry in Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries, is due to its poetry of the <span lang="fr"><i>langue d’oil</i></span>, the +poetry of northern France and of the tongue which is now +the French language. In the twelfth century the bloom +of this romance-poetry was earlier and stronger in England, +at the court of our Anglo-Norman kings, than in +France itself. But it was a bloom of French poetry; and +as our native poetry formed itself, it formed itself out of +this. The romance-poems which took possession of the +heart and imagination of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth +centuries are French; “they are,” as Southey justly +says, “the pride of French literature, nor have we anything +which can be placed in competition with them.” +Themes were supplied from all quarters; but the romance-setting +which was common to them all, and which gained +the ear of Europe, was French. This constituted for the +French poetry, literature, and language, at the height of +the Middle Age, an unchallenged predominance. The +Italian Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, wrote his +<cite>Treasure</cite> in French because, he says, “<span lang="fr">la parleure en est +plus délitable et plus commune à toutes gens.</span>” In the +same century, the thirteenth, the French romance-writer, +Christian of Troyes, formulates the claims, in chivalry +and letters, of France, his native country, as follows:—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">“Or vous ert par ce livre apris,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Que Gresse ot de chevalerie</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Le premier los et de clergie;</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Puis vint chevalerie à Rome,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Et de la clergie la some,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Qui ore est en France venue.</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Diex doinst qu’ele i soit retenu</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Et que li lius li abelisse</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Tant que de France n’isse</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">L’onor qui s’i est arestée!”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>“Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had +the renown for chivalry and letters: then chivalry and +the primacy in letters passed to Rome, and now it is come +to France. God grant it may be kept there; and that the +place may please it so well, that the honor which has +come to make stay in France may never depart thence!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Yet it is now all gone, this French romance poetry, of +which the weight of substance and the power of style are +not unfairly represented by this extract from Christian of +Troyes. Only by means of the historic estimate can we +persuade ourselves now to think that any of it is of poetical +importance.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But in the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman +nourished on this poetry; taught his trade by this +poetry, getting words, rhyme, meter from this poetry; for +even of that stanza which the Italians used, and which +Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis +and suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer +(I have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, +but so too did Christian of Troyes the Wolfram of Eschenbach. +Chaucer’s power of fascination, however, is enduring; +his poetical importance does not need the assistance +of the historic estimate; it is real. He is a genuine +source of joy and strength, which is flowing still for us +and will flow always. He will be read, as time goes on, +far more generally than he is read now. His language is +a cause of difficulty for us; but so also, and I think in +quite as great a degree, is the language of Burns. In +Chaucer’s case, as in that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be +unhesitatingly accepted and overcome.</p> + +<p class='c001'>If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense +superiority of Chaucer’s poetry over the romance-poetry—why +it is that in passing from this to Chaucer we suddenly +feel ourselves to be in another world, we shall find that his +superiority is both in the substance of his poetry and in +the style of his poetry. His superiority in substance is +given by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of +human life,—so unlike the total want, in the romance-poets, +of all intelligent command of it. Chaucer has not +<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>their helplessness; he has gained the power to survey the +world from a central, a truly human point of view. We +have only to call to mind the Prologue to <cite>The Canterbury +Tales</cite>. The right comment upon it is Dryden’s: “It is +sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that <em>here is +God’s plenty</em>.” And again: “He is a perpetual fountain +of good sense.” It is by a large, free, sound representation +of things, that poetry, this high criticism of life, has +truth of substance; and Chaucer’s poetry has truth of +substance.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Of his style and manner, if we think first of the +romance-poetry and then of Chaucer’s divine liquidness +of diction, his divine fluidity of movement, it is difficult +to speak temperately. They are irresistible, and justify +all the rapture with which his successors speak of his +“gold dew-drops of speech.” Johnson misses the point +entirely when he finds fault with Dryden for ascribing to +Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, and says +that Gower also can show smooth numbers and easy +rhymes. The refinement of our numbers means something +far more than this. A nation may have versifiers +with smooth numbers and easy rhymes, and yet may have +no real poetry at all. Chaucer is the father of our splendid +English poetry; he is our “well of English undefiled,” +because by the lovely charm of his diction, the +lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch and +founds a tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, +Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, +the fluid movement, of Chaucer; at one time it is his +liquid diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, +and at another time it is his fluid movement. And the +virtue is irresistible.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Bounded as in space, I must yet find room for an example +of Chaucer’s virtue, as I have given examples to +show the virtue of the great classics. I feel disposed to +say that a single line is enough to show the charm of +Chaucer’s verse; that merely one line like this—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“O martyr souded<a id='r32'></a><a href='#f32' class='c007'><sup>[32]</sup></a> in virginitee!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall +not find in all the verse of romance-poetry;—but this is +saying nothing. The virtue is such as we shall not find, +perhaps, in all English poetry, outside the poets whom I +have named as the special inheritors of Chaucer’s tradition. +A single line, however, is too little if we have not +the strain of Chaucer’s verse well in our memory; let us +take a stanza. It is from <cite>The Prioress’s Tale</cite>, the story +of the Christian child murdered in a Jewry—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“My throte is cut unto my nekke-bone</div> + <div class='line'>Said<em>è</em> this child, and as by way of kinde</div> + <div class='line'>I should have dyed, yea, longè time agone</div> + <div class='line'>But Jesu Christ, as ye in book<em>è</em>s finde,</div> + <div class='line'>Will that his glory last and be in minde,</div> + <div class='line'>And for the worship of his mother dere</div> + <div class='line'>Yet may I sing <i>O Alma</i> loud and clere.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Wordsworth has modernized this Tale, and to feel how +delicate and evanescent is the charm of verse, we have +only to read Wordsworth’s first three lines of this stanza +after Chaucer’s—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow,</div> + <div class='line'>Said this young child, and by the law of kind</div> + <div class='line'>I should have died, yea, many hours ago.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>The charm is departed. It is often said that the power +of liquidness and fluidity in Chaucer’s verse was dependent +upon a free, a licentious dealing with language, such +as is now impossible; upon a liberty, such as Burns too +enjoyed, of making words like <em>neck</em>, <em>bird</em>, into a dissyllable +by adding to them, and words like <em>cause</em>, <em>rhyme</em>, into a +dissyllable by sounding the <em>e</em> mute. It is true that +Chaucer’s fluidity is conjoined with this liberty, and is +admirably served by it; but we ought not to say that it +was dependent upon it. It was dependent upon his +talent. Other poets with a like liberty do not attain to the +fluidity of Chaucer; Burns himself does not attain to it. +Poets, again, who have a talent akin to Chaucer’s, such as +Shakespeare or Keats, have known how to attain to his +fluidity without the like liberty.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>And yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics. His +poetry transcends and effaces, easily and without effort, +all the romance-poetry of Catholic Christendom; it transcends +and effaces all the English poetry contemporary +with it, it transcends and effaces all the English poetry +subsequent to it down to the age of Elizabeth. Of such +avail is poetic truth of substance, in its natural and +necessary union with poetic truth of style. And yet, I +say, Chaucer is not one of the great classics. He has not +their accent. What is wanting to him is suggested by the +mere mention of the name of the first great classic of +Christendom, the immortal poet who died eighty years +before Chaucer,—Dante. The accent of such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">“In la sua voluntade è nostra pace....”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>is altogether beyond Chaucer’s reach; we praise him, but +we feel that this accent is out of the question for him. +It may be said that it was necessarily out of the reach of +any poet in the England of that stage of growth. Possibly; +but we are to adopt a real, not a historic, estimate +of poetry. However we may account for its absence, +something is wanting, then, to the poetry of Chaucer, +which poetry must have before it can be placed in the +glorious class of the best. And there is no doubt what +that something is. It is the οπουδαιότης, the high and +excellent seriousness, which Aristotle assigns as one of the +grand virtues of poetry. The substance of Chaucer’s +poetry, his view of things and his criticism of life, has +largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity; but it has not +this high seriousness. Homer’s criticism of life has it, +Dante’s has it, Shakespeare’s has it. It is this chiefly which +gives to our spirits what they can rest upon; and with the +increasing demands of our modern ages upon poetry, this +virtue of giving us what we can rest upon will be more and +more highly esteemed. A voice from the slums of Paris, +fifty or sixty years after Chaucer, the voice of poor Villon +out of his life of riot and crime, has at its happy moments +(as, for instance, in the last stanza of <span lang="fr"><cite>La Belle Heaulmière</cite></span><a id='r33'></a><a href='#f33' class='c007'><sup>[33]</sup></a>) +<span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>more of this important poetic virtue of seriousness than +all the productions of Chaucer. But its apparition in +Villon, and in men like Villon, is fitful; the greatness of +the great poets, the power of their criticism of life, is that +their virtue is sustained.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To our praise, therefore, of Chaucer as a poet there +must be this limitation; he lacks the high seriousness of +the great classics, and therewith an important part of +their virtue. Still, the main fact for us to bear in mind +about Chaucer is his sterling value according to that real +estimate which we firmly adopt for all poets. He has +poetic truth of substance, though he has not high poetic +seriousness, and corresponding to his truth of substance +he has an exquisite value of style and manner. With him +is born our real poetry.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For my present purpose I need not dwell on our Elizabethan +poetry, or on the continuation and close of this +poetry in Milton. We all of us profess to be agreed in +the estimate of this poetry; we all of us recognize it as +great poetry, our greatest, and Shakespeare and Milton +as our poetical classics. The real estimate, here, has +universal currency. With the next age of our poetry +divergency and difficulty began. An historic estimate of +that poetry has established itself; and the question is, +whether it will be found to coincide with the real estimate.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>The age of Dryden, together with our whole eighteenth +century which followed it, sincerely believed itself to have +produced poetical classics of its own, and even to have +made advance, in poetry, beyond all its predecessors. +Dryden regards as not seriously disputable the opinion +“that the sweetness of English verse was never understood +or practised by our fathers.” Cowley could see nothing +at all in Chaucer’s poetry. Dryden heartily admired it, +and, as we have seen, praised its matter admirably; but +of its exquisite manner and movement all he can find to +say is that “there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune +in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.” +Addison, wishing to praise Chaucer’s numbers, compares +them with Dryden’s own. And all through the eighteenth +century, and down even into our own times, the stereotyped +phrase of approbation for good verse found in our early +poetry has been, that it even approached the verse of +Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Johnson.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics? Is the historic +estimate, which represents them as such, and which has +been so long established that it cannot easily give way, +the real estimate? Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is well +known, denied it; but the authority of Wordsworth and +Coleridge does not weigh much with the young generation, +and there are many signs to show that the eighteenth century +and its judgments are coming into favor again. Are +the favorite poets of the eighteenth century classics?</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is impossible within my present limits to discuss the +question fully. And what man of letters would not shrink +from seeming to dispose dictatorially of the claims of two +men who are, at any rate, such masters in letters as Dryden +and Pope; two men of such admirable talent, both of +them, and one of them, Dryden, a man, on all sides, of +such energetic and genial power? And yet, if we are to +gain the full benefit from poetry, we must have the real +estimate of it. I cast about for some mode of arriving, +in the present case, at such an estimate without offence. +And perhaps the best way is to begin, as it is easy to begin, +with cordial praise.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of +Homer, expressing himself in his preface thus: “Though +truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from +Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I +hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm that, +the date being out of her darkness in this morning of our +poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun,”—we +pronounce that such a prose is intolerable. When we find +Milton writing: “And long it was not after, when I was +confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate +of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, +ought himself to be a true poem,”—we pronounce that +such a prose has its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete +and inconvenient. But when we find Dryden telling us: +“What Virgil wrote in the vigor of his age, in plenty and +at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining +years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, +curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I +write,”—then we exclaim that here at last we have the +true English prose, a prose such as we would all gladly +use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton’s contemporary.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But after the Restoration the time had come when our +nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the +time had likewise come when our nation felt the imperious +need of freeing itself from the absorbing preoccupation +which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was +impossible that this freedom should be brought about without +some negative excess, without some neglect and impairment +of the religious life of the soul; and the spiritual +history of the eighteenth century shows us that the freedom +was not achieved without them. Still, the freedom +was achieved; the preoccupation, an undoubtedly baneful +and retarding one if it had continued, was got rid of. +And as with religion amongst us at that period, so it was +also with letters. A fit prose was a necessity; but it was +impossible that a fit prose should establish itself amongst +us without some touch of frost to the imaginative life of +the soul. The needful qualities for a fit prose are regularity, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>uniformity, precision, balance. The men of letters, +whose destiny it may be to bring their nation to the attainment +of a fit prose, must of necessity, whether they +work in prose or in verse, give a predominating, an almost +exclusive attention to the qualities of regularity, uniformity, +precision, balance. But an almost exclusive attention +to these qualities involves some repression and +silencing of poetry.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious +founder, Pope as the splendid high priest, of our age of +prose and reason, of our excellent and indispensable +eighteenth century. For the purposes of their mission +and destiny <a id='corr299.13'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='their their'>their</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_299.13'><ins class='correction' title='their their'>their</ins></a></span> poetry, like their prose, is admirable. +Do you ask me whether Dryden’s verse, take it +almost where you will, is not good?</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,</div> + <div class='line'>Fed on the lawns and in the forest <a id='corr299.17'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='ranged.’'>ranged.”</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_299.17'><ins class='correction' title='ranged.’'>ranged.”</ins></a></span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the inaugurator +of an age of prose and reason. Do you ask me whether +Pope’s verse, take it almost where you will, is not good?</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down;</div> + <div class='line'>Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the high priest of +an age of prose and reason. But do you ask me whether +such verse proceeds from men with an adequate poetic +criticism of life, from men whose criticism of life has a +high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, +has poetic largeness, freedom, insight, benignity? Do +you ask me whether the application of ideas to life in the +verse of these men, often a powerful application, no doubt, +is a powerful <em>poetic</em> application? Do you ask me whether +the poetry of these men has either the matter or the inseparable +manner of such an adequate poetic criticism; +whether it has the accent of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Absent thee from felicity awhile....”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“And what is else not to be overcome....”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“O martyr souded in virginitee!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>I answer: It has not and cannot have them; it is the +poetry of the builders of an age of prose and reason. +Though they may write in verse, though they may in a certain +sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden +and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics +of our prose.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and age; +the position of Gray is singular, and demands a word of +notice here. He has not the volume or the power of poets +who, coming in times more favorable, have attained to +an independent criticism of life. But he lived with the +great poets, he lived, above all, with the Greeks, through +perpetually studying and enjoying them; and he caught +their poetic point of view for regarding life, caught their +poetic manner. The point of view and the manner are not +self-sprung in him, he caught them of others; and he had +not the free and abundant use of them. But whereas +Addison and Pope never had the use of them, Gray had +the use of them at times. He is the scantiest and frailest +of classics in our poetry, but he is a classic.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw towards +the end of the eighteenth century, we are met by the great +name of Burns. We enter now on times where the personal +estimate of poets begins to be rife, and where the +real estimate of them is not reached without difficulty. +But in spite of the disturbing pressures of personal partiality, +of national partiality, let us try to reach a real +estimate of the poetry of Burns.</p> + +<p class='c001'>By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to the +eighteenth century, and has little importance for us.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Mark ruffian Violence, distain’d with crimes,</div> + <div class='line'>Rousing elate in these degenerate times;</div> + <div class='line'>View unsuspecting Innocence a prey,</div> + <div class='line'>As guileful Fraud points out the erring way;</div> + <div class='line'>While subtle Litigation’s pliant tongue</div> + <div class='line'>The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame +would have disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda’s love-poet, +Sylvander, the real Burns either. But he tells us +<span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>himself: “These English songs gravel me to death. I +have not the command of the language that I have of my +native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more +barren in English than in Scotch. I have been at <cite>Duncan +Gray</cite> to dress it in English, but all I can do is desperately +stupid.” We English turn naturally, in Burns, +to the poems in our own language, because we can read +them easily; but in those poems we have not the real +Burns.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let +us boldly say that of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing +perpetually with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch +manners, a Scotchman’s estimate is apt to be personal. +A Scotchman is used to this world of Scotch drink, Scotch +religion, and Scotch manners; he has a tenderness for it; +he meets its poet half way. In this tender mood he reads +pieces like the <em>Holy Fair</em> or <em>Halloween</em>. But this world +of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners is +against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial countryman +who reads him; for in itself it is not a beautiful +world, and no one can deny that it is of advantage to a +poet to deal with a beautiful world. Burns’s world of +Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, is +often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world; even the world +of his <cite>Cotter’s Saturday Night</cite> is not a beautiful world. +No doubt a poet’s criticism of life may have such truth +and power that it triumphs over its world and delights us. +Burns may triumph over his world, often he does triumph +over his world, but let us observe how and where. Burns +is the first case we have had where the bias of the personal +estimate tends to mislead; let us look at him closely, he +can bear it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, +convivial, genuine, delightful, here—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair</div> + <div class='line in2'>Than either school or college;</div> + <div class='line'>It kindles wit, it waukens lair,</div> + <div class='line in2'>It pangs us fou o’ knowledge.</div> + <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>Be’t whisky gill or penny wheep</div> + <div class='line in2'>Or ony stronger portion,</div> + <div class='line'>It never fails, on drinking deep,</div> + <div class='line in2'>To kittle up our notion</div> + <div class='line in20'>By night or day.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and +it is unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, +but because it has not that accent of sincerity which bacchanalian +poetry, to do it justice, very often has. There +is something in it of bravado, something which makes us +feel that we have not the man speaking to us with his +real voice; something, therefore, poetically unsound.</p> + +<p class='c001'>With still more confidence will his admirers tell us +that we have the genuine Burns, the great poet, when his +strain asserts the independence, equality, dignity, of men, +as in the famous song <i>For a’ that and a’ that</i></p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“A prince can mak’ a belted knight,</div> + <div class='line in2'>A marquis, duke, and a’ that;</div> + <div class='line'>But an honest man’s aboon his might,</div> + <div class='line in4'>Guid faith he mauna fa’ that!</div> + <div class='line in6'>For a’ that, and a’ that,</div> + <div class='line in8'>Their dignities, and a’ that,</div> + <div class='line in6'>The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,</div> + <div class='line in8'>Are higher rank than a’ that.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Here they find his grand, genuine touches; and still +more, when this puissant genius, who so often set morality +at defiance, falls moralizing—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“The sacred lowe o’ weel-placed love</div> + <div class='line in2'>Luxuriantly indulge it;</div> + <div class='line'>But never tempt th’ illicit rove,</div> + <div class='line in2'>Tho’ naething should divulge it.</div> + <div class='line'>I waive the quantum o’ the sin,</div> + <div class='line in2'>The hazard o’ concealing,</div> + <div class='line'>But och! it hardens a’ within,</div> + <div class='line in2'>And pertrifies the feeling.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Or in a higher strain—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>Who made the heart, ’tis He alone</div> + <div class='line in2'>Decidedly can try us</div> + <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>He knows each chord, its various tone;</div> + <div class='line in2'>Each spring its various bias.</div> + <div class='line'>Then at the balance let’s be mute,</div> + <div class='line in2'>We never can adjust it;</div> + <div class='line'>What’s <em>done</em> we partly may compute,</div> + <div class='line in2'>But know not what’s resisted.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will say, +unsurpassable—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“To make a happy fire-side clime</div> + <div class='line in14'>To weans and wife,</div> + <div class='line'>That’s the true pathos and sublime</div> + <div class='line in14'>Of human life.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>There is criticism of life for you, the admirers of Burns +will say to us; there is the application of ideas to life! +There is, undoubtedly. The doctrine of the last-quoted +lines coincides almost exactly with what was the aim and +end, Xenophon tells us, of all the teaching of Socrates. +And the application is a powerful one; made by a man +of vigorous understanding, and (need I say?) a master +of language.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But for the supreme poetical success more is required +than the powerful application of ideas to life; it must +be an application under the conditions fixed by the laws +of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Those laws fix as an +essential condition, in the poet’s treatment of such matters +as are here in question, high seriousness;—the high +seriousness which comes from absolute sincerity. The +accent of high seriousness, born of absolute sincerity, is +what gives to such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“<span lang="it">In la sua volontade è nostra pace ...</span>”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>to such criticism of life as Dante’s, its power. Is this +accent felt in the passages which I have been quoting from +Burns? Surely not; surely, if our sense is quick, we +must perceive that we have not in those passages a voice +from the very inmost soul of the genuine Burns; he is not +speaking to us from these depths, he is more or less +preaching. And the compensation for admiring such +<span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>passages less, from missing the perfect poetic accent in +them, will be that we shall admire more the poetry where +that accent is found.</p> + +<p class='c001'>No; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high +seriousness of the great classics, and the virtue of matter +and manner which goes with that high seriousness is +wanting to his work. At moments he touched it in a +profound and passionate melancholy, as in those four +immortal lines taken by Byron as a motto for <cite>The Bride +of Abydos</cite>, but which have in them a depth of poetic +quality such as resides in no verse of Byron’s own—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Had we never loved sae kindly,</div> + <div class='line'>Had we never loved sae blindly,</div> + <div class='line'>Never met, or never parted,</div> + <div class='line'>We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make; the +rest, in the <cite>Farewell to Nancy</cite>, is verbiage.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I think, +by conceiving his work as having truth of matter and +truth of manner, but not the accent or the poetic +virtue of the highest masters. His genuine criticism of +life, when the sheer poet in him speaks, is ironic; it is +not—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme</div> + <div class='line in2'>These woes of mine fulfil,</div> + <div class='line'>Here firm I rest, they must be best</div> + <div class='line in2'>Because they are Thy will!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>It is far rather: <em>Whistle owre the lave o’t!</em> Yet we may +say of him as of Chaucer, that of life and the world, as +they come before him, his view is large, free, shrewd, +benignant,—truly poetic, therefore; and his manner of +rendering what he sees is to match. But we must note, +at the same time, his great difference from Chaucer. The +freedom of Chaucer is heightened, in Burns, by a fiery, +reckless energy; the benignity of Chaucer deepens, in +Burns, into an overwhelming sense of the pathos of things;—of +the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also, of non-human +nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>manner, the manner of Burns has spring, bounding +swiftness. Burns is by far the greater force, though he +has perhaps less charm. The world of Chaucer is fairer, +richer, more significant than that of Burns; but when the +largeness and freedom of Burns get full sweep, as in +<i>Tam o’ Shanter</i>, or still more in that puissant and +splendid production, <cite>The Jolly Beggars</cite>, his world may be +what it will, his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the +world of <cite>The Jolly Beggars</cite> there is more than hideousness +and squalor, there is bestiality; yet the piece is a superb +poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power which +make the famous scene in Auerbach’s Cellar, of Goethe’s +<cite>Faust</cite>, seem artificial and tame beside it, and which are +only matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so +admirably, and also in those poems and songs where to +shrewdness he adds infinite archness and wit, and to +benignity infinite pathos, where his manner is flawless, and +a perfect poetic whole is the result,—in things like the address +to the mouse whose home he had ruined, in things like +<cite>Duncan Gray</cite>, <cite>Tam Glen</cite>, <cite>Whistle and I’ll come to you my +Lad</cite>, <cite>Auld Lang Syne</cite> (this list might be made much +longer),—here we have the genuine Burns, of whom the +real estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor +with the excellent οπουδαιότης of the great classics, nor +with a verse rising to a criticism of life and a virtue like +theirs; but a poet with thorough truth of substance and +an answering truth of style, giving us a poetry sound to +the core. We all of us have a leaning towards the +pathetic, and may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns +most for his touches of piercing, sometimes almost intolerable, +pathos; for verse like—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“We twa hae paidl’t i’ the burn</div> + <div class='line in2'>From mornin’ sun till dine;</div> + <div class='line'>But seas between us braid hae roar’d</div> + <div class='line in2'>Sin auld lang syne....”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by +the perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer +masterpieces that he is poetically most wholesome for us. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>For the votary misled by a personal estimate of Shelley, +as so many of us have been, are, and will be,—of that +beautiful spirit building his many-colored haze of words +and images.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Pinnacled dim in the intense inane”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>no contact can be wholesomer than the contact with +Burns at his archest and soundest. Side by side with +the</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“On the brink of the night and the morning</div> + <div class='line in2'>My coursers are wont to respire,</div> + <div class='line'>But the Earth has just whispered a warning</div> + <div class='line in2'>That their flight must be swifter than fire ...”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>of <cite>Prometheus Unbound</cite>, how salutary, how very salutary, +to place this from <cite>Tam Glen</cite>—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘My minnie does constantly deave me</div> + <div class='line in2'>And bids me beware o’ young men;</div> + <div class='line'>They flatter, she says, to deceive me;</div> + <div class='line in2'>But wha can think sae o’ Tam Glen?”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>But we enter on burning ground as we approach the +poetry of times so near to us—poetry like that of Byron, +Shelley, and Wordsworth—of which the estimates are so +often not only personal, but personal with passion. For +my purpose, it is enough to have taken the single case of +Burns, the first poet we come to of whose work the estimate +formed is evidently apt to be personal, and to have +suggested how we may proceed, using the poetry of the +great classics as a sort of touchstone, to correct this estimate, +as we had previously corrected by the same means +the historic estimate where we met with it. A collection +like the present, with its succession of celebrated names +and celebrated poems, offers a good opportunity to us for +resolutely endeavoring to make our estimates of poetry +real. I have sought to point out a method which will +help us in making them so, and to exhibit it in use so far +as to put any one who likes in a way of applying it for +himself.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>At any rate the end to which the method and the estimate +are designed to lead, and from leading to which, if +they do lead to it, they get their whole value,—the benefit +of being able clearly to feel and deeply to enjoy the +best, the truly classic, in poetry,—is an end, let me say it +once more at parting, of supreme importance. We are +often told that an era is opening in which we are to see +multitudes of a common sort of readers, and masses of a +common sort of literature; that such readers do not want +and could not relish anything better than such literature, +and that to provide it is becoming a vast and profitable +industry. Even if good literature entirely lost currency +with the world, it would still be abundantly worth while +to continue to enjoy it by oneself. But it never will lose +currency with the world, in spite of momentary appearances; +it never will lose supremacy. Currency and +supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the world’s deliberate +and conscious choice, but by something far deeper,—by +the instinct of self-preservation in humanity.</p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span> + <h2 class='c005'>XII. <br> <br> MILTON<a id='r34'></a><a href='#f34' class='c007'><sup>[34]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>The most eloquent voice of our century uttered, shortly +before leaving the world, a warning cry against “the +Anglo-Saxon contagion.” The tendencies and aims, the +view of life and the social economy of the ever-multiplying +and spreading Anglo-Saxon race, would be found +congenial, this prophet feared, by all the prose, all the +vulgarity amongst mankind, and would invade and overpower +all nations. The true ideal would be lost, a general +sterility of mind and heart would set in.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The prophet had in view, no doubt, in the warning thus +given, us and our colonies, but the United States still +more. There the Anglo-Saxon race is already most +numerous, there it increases fastest; there material interests +are most absorbing and pursued with most energy; +there the ideal, the saving ideal, of a high and rare excellence, +seems perhaps to suffer most danger of being obscured +and lost. Whatever one may think of the general +danger to the world from the Anglo-Saxon contagion, it +appears to me difficult to deny that the growing greatness +and influence of the United States does bring with it some +<a id='corr308.23'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='donger'>danger</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_308.23'><ins class='correction' title='donger'>danger</ins></a></span> to the ideal of a high and rare excellence. The +<em>average man</em> is too much a religion there; his performance +is unduly magnified, his shortcomings are not duly seen +and admitted. A lady in the State of Ohio sent to me +only the other day a volume on American authors; the +praise given throughout was of such high pitch that in +<span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>thanking her I could not forbear saying that for only one +or two of the authors named was such a strain of praise +admissible, and that we lost all real standard of excellence +by praising so uniformly and immoderately. She answered +me with charming good temper, that very likely I was +quite right, but it was pleasant to her to think that excellence +was common and abundant. But excellence is not +common and abundant; on the contrary, as the Greek +poet long ago said, excellence dwells among rocks hardly +accessible, and a man must almost wear his heart out before +he can reach her. Whoever talks of excellence as +common and abundant, is on the way to lose all right +standard of excellence. And when the right standard of +excellence is lost, it is not likely that much which is excellent +will be produced.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To habituate ourselves, therefore, to approve, as the +Bible says, things that are really excellent, is of the highest +importance. And some apprehension may justly be +caused by a tendency in Americans to take, or, at any +rate, attempt to take, profess to take, the average man +and his performances too seriously, to over-rate and over-praise +what is not really superior.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But we have met here to-day to witness the unveiling of +a gift in Milton’s honor, and a gift bestowed by an American, +Mr. Childs of Philadelphia; whose cordial hospitality +so many Englishmen, I myself among the number, have +experienced in America. It was only last autumn that +Stratford-upon-Avon celebrated the reception of a gift +from the same generous donor in honor of Shakespeare. +Shakespeare and Milton—he who wishes to keep his +standard of excellence high, cannot choose two better objects +of regard and honor. And it is an American who +has chosen them, and whose beautiful gift in honor of one +of them, Milton, with Mr. Whittier’s simple and true lines +inscribed upon it, is unveiled to-day. Perhaps this gift +in honor of Milton, of which I am asked to speak, is, even +more than the gift in honor of Shakespeare, one to suggest +edifying reflections to us.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Like Mr. Whittier, I treat the gift of Mr. Childs as a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>gift in honor of Milton, although the window given is in +memory of his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, the +“late espoused saint” of the famous sonnet, who died in +child-bed at the end of the first year of her marriage with +Milton, and who lies buried here with her infant. Milton +is buried in Cripplegate, but he lived for a good while in +this parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and here he +composed part of <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, and the whole of <cite>Paradise +Regained</cite> and <cite>Samson Agonistes</cite>. When death deprived +him of the Catherine whom the new window commemorates, +Milton had still some eighteen years to live, +and Cromwell, his “chief of men,” was yet ruling England. +But the Restoration, with its “Sons of Belial,” +was not far off; and in the meantime Milton’s heavy +affliction had laid fast hold upon him, his eyesight had +failed totally, he was blind. In what remained to him of +life he had the consolation of producing the <cite>Paradise Lost</cite> +and the <cite>Samson Agonistes</cite>, and such a consolation we may +indeed count as no slight one. But the daily life of happiness +in common things and in domestic affections—a +life of which, to Milton as to Dante, too small a share +was given—he seems to have known most, if not only, in +his one married year with the wife who is here buried. +Her form “vested all in white,” as in his sonnet he relates +that after her death she appeared to him, her face +veiled, but with “love, sweetness, and goodness” shining +in her person,—this fair and gentle daughter of the rigid +sectarist of Hackney, this lovable companion with whom +Milton had rest and happiness one year, is a part of Milton +indeed, and in calling up her memory, we call up +his.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And in calling up Milton’s memory we call up, let me +say, a memory upon which, in prospect of the Anglo-Saxon +contagion and of its dangers supposed and real, it +may be well to lay stress even more than upon Shakespeare’s. +If to our English race an inadequate sense for +perfection of work is a real danger, if the discipline of +respect for a high and flawless excellence is peculiarly +needed by us, Milton is of all our gifted men the best +<span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>lesson, the most salutary influence. In the sure and flawless +perfection of his rhythm and diction he is as admirable +as Virgil or Dante, and in this respect he is unique +amongst us. No one else in English literature and art +possesses the like distinction.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth, all of them good poets +who have studied Milton, followed Milton, adopted his +form, fail in their diction and rhythm if we try them +by that high standard of excellence maintained by +Milton constantly. From style really high and pure +Milton never departs; their departures from it are +frequent.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Shakespeare is divinely strong, rich, and attractive. +But sureness of perfect style Shakespeare himself does +not possess. I have heard a politician express wonder at +the treasures of political wisdom in a certain celebrated +scene of <cite>Troilus and Cressida</cite>; for my part I am at least +equally moved to wonder at the fantastic and false diction +in which Shakespeare has in that scene clothed them. +Milton, from one end of <cite>Paradise Lost</cite> to the other, is +in his diction and rhythm constantly a great artist in the +great style. Whatever may be said as to the subject of +his poem, as to the conditions under which he received +his subject and treated it, that praise, at any rate, is +assured to him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For the rest, justice is not at present done, in my opinion, +to Milton’s management of the inevitable matter of a +Puritan epic, a matter full of difficulties, for a poet. +Justice is not done to the <em>architectonics</em>, as Goethe would +have called them, of <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>; in these, too, the +power of Milton’s art is remarkable. But this may be a +proposition which requires discussion and development +for establishing it, and they are impossible on an occasion +like the present.</p> + +<p class='c001'>That Milton, of all our English race, is by his diction +and rhythm the one artist of the highest rank in the great +style whom we have; this I take as requiring no discussion, +this I take as certain.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The mighty power of poetry and art is generally admitted. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>But where the soul of this power, of this power +at its best, chiefly resides, very many of us fail to see. It +resides chiefly in the refining and elevation wrought in us +by the high and rare excellence of the great style. We +may feel the effect without being able to give ourselves +clear account of its cause, but the thing is so. Now, no +race needs the influences mentioned, the influences of refining +and elevation, more than ours; and in poetry and +art our grand source for them is Milton.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To what does he owe this supreme distinction? To +nature first and foremost, to that bent of nature for inequality +which to the worshippers of the average man is +so unacceptable; to a gift, a divine favor. “The older +one grows,” says Goethe, “the more one prizes natural +gifts, because by no possibility can they be procured and +stuck on.” Nature formed Milton to be a great poet. +But what other poet has shown so sincere a sense of the +grandeur of his vocation, and a moral effort so constant +and sublime to make and keep himself worthy of it? +The Milton of religious and political controversy, and +perhaps of domestic life also, is not seldom disfigured by +want of amenity, by acerbity. The Milton of poetry, on +the other hand, is one of those great men “who are +modest”—to quote a fine remark of Leopardi, that gifted +and stricken young Italian, who in his sense for poetic +style is worthy to be named with Dante and Milton—“who +are modest, because they continually compare +themselves, not with other men, but with that idea of the +perfect which they have before their mind.” The Milton +of poetry is the man, in his own magnificent phrase, of +“devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich +with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim +with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and +purify the lips of whom he pleases.” And finally, the +Milton of poetry is, in his own words again, the man of +“industrious and select reading.” Continually he lived +in companionship with high and rare excellence, with the +great Hebrew poets and prophets, with the great poets of +Greece and Rome. The Hebrew compositions were not in +<span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>verse, and can be not inadequately represented by the +grand, measured prose of our English Bible. The verse +of the poets of Greece and Rome no translation can +adequately reproduce. Prose cannot have the power <a id='corr313.4'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='of of'>of</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_313.4'><ins class='correction' title='of of'>of</ins></a></span> +verse; verse-translation may give whatever of charm is +in the soul and talent of the translator himself, but never +the specific charm of the verse and poet translated. In +our race are thousands of readers, presently there will be +millions, who know not a word of Greek and Latin, and +will never learn those languages. If this host of readers +are ever to gain any sense of the power and charm of the +great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is not through +translations of the ancients, but through the original +poetry of Milton, who has the like power and charm, because +he has the like great style.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Through Milton they may gain it, for, in conclusion, +Milton is English; this master in the great style of the +ancients is English. Virgil, whom Milton loved and +honored, has at the end of the <cite>Æneid</cite> a noble passage, +where Juno, seeing the defeat of Turnus and the Italians +imminent, the victory of the Trojan invaders assured, entreats +Jupiter that Italy may nevertheless survive and be +herself still, may retain her own mind, manners, and +language, and not adopt those of the conqueror.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“<span lang="la">Sit Latium, sint Albani per secula reges!</span>”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Jupiter grants the prayer; he promises perpetuity and the +future to Italy—Italy reinforced by whatever virtue the +Trojan race has, but Italy, not Troy. This we may take +as a sort of parable suiting ourselves. All the Anglo-Saxon +contagion, all the flood of Anglo-Saxon commonness, +beats vainly against the great style but cannot shake it, +and has to accept its triumph. But it triumphs in Milton, +in one of our own race, tongue, faith, and morals. +Milton has made the great style no longer an exotic here; +he has made it an inmate amongst us, a leaven, and a +power. Nevertheless he, and his hearers on both sides of +the Atlantic, are English, and will remain English—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span><span lang="la">“Sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt.”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>The English race overspreads the world, and at the same +time the ideal of an excellence the most high and the most +rare abides a possession with it forever.</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span> + <h2 class='c005'>III. <br> <br> THOMAS GRAY.</h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>James Brown, Master of Pembroke Hall at Cambridge, +Gray’s friend and executor, in a letter written a fortnight +after Gray’s death to another of his friends, Dr. Wharton +of Old Park, Durham, has the following passage:—<a id='r35'></a><a href='#f35' class='c007'><sup>[35]</sup></a></p> + +<p class='c001'>“Everything is now dark and melancholy in Mr. Gray’s +room, not a trace of him remains there; it looks as if it +had been for some time uninhabited, and the room bespoke +for another inhabitant. The thoughts I have of him +will last, and will be useful to me the few years I can expect +to live. He never spoke out, but I believe from +some little expressions I now remember to have dropped +from him, that for some time past he thought himself +nearer his end than those about him apprehended.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><em>He never spoke out.</em> In these four words is contained +the whole history of Gray, both as a man and as a poet. +The words fell naturally, and as it were by chance, from +their writer’s pen; but let us dwell upon them, and press +into their meaning, for in following it we shall come to +understand Gray.</p> + +<p class='c001'>He was in his fifty-fifth year when he died, and he lived +in ease and leisure, yet a few pages hold all his poetry; +<em>he never spoke out</em> in poetry. Still, the reputation which +he had achieved by his few pages is extremely high. True, +Johnson speaks of him with coldness and disparagement. +Gray disliked Johnson, and refused to make his acquaintance; +one might fancy that Johnson wrote with some irritation +from this cause. But Johnson was not by nature +<span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>fitted to do justice to Gray and to his poetry; this by itself +is a sufficient explanation of the deficiencies of his +criticism of Gray. We may add a further explanation of +them which is supplied by Mr. Cole’s papers. “When +Johnson was publishing his Life of <a id='corr316.5'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Gray.”'>Gray,”</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_316.5'><ins class='correction' title='Gray.”'>Gray,”</ins></a></span> says Mr. Cole, +“I gave him several anecdotes, <em>but he was very anxious as +soon as possible to get to the end of his labors</em>.” Johnson +was not naturally in sympathy with Gray, whose life he +had to write, and when he wrote it he was in a hurry besides. +He did Gray injustice, but even Johnson’s authority +failed to make injustice, in this case, prevail. Lord +Macaulay calls the Life of Gray the worst of Johnson’s +Lives, and it had found many censurers before Macaulay. +Gray’s poetical reputation grew and flourished in spite of +it. The poet Mason, his first biographer, in his epitaph +equaled him with Pindar. Britain has known, says +Mason,</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in2'>“... a Homer’s fire in Milton’s strains,</div> + <div class='line'>A Pindar’s rapture in the lyre of Gray.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>The immense vogue of Pope and of his style of versification +had at first prevented the frank reception of Gray by +the readers of poetry. The <cite>Elegy</cite> pleased; it could not +but please: but Gray’s poetry, on the whole, astonished +his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them; it +was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue. +It made its way, however, after his death, with the public +as well as with the few; and Gray’s second biographer, +Mitford, remarks that “the works which were either +neglected or ridiculed by their contemporaries have now +raised Gray and Collins to the rank of our two greatest +lyric poets.” Their reputation was established, at any +rate, and stood extremely high, even if they were not +popularly read. Johnson’s disparagement of Gray was +called “petulant,” and severely blamed. Beattie, at the +end of the eighteenth century, writing to Sir William +Forbes, says: “Of all the English poets of this age Mr. +Gray is most admired, and I think with justice.” Cowper +writes: “I have been reading Gray’s works, and think +<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the character +of sublime. Perhaps you will remember that I once +had a different opinion of him. I was prejudiced.” Adam +Smith says: “Gray joins to the sublimity of Milton the +elegance and harmony of Pope; and nothing is wanting +to render him, perhaps, the first poet in the English language, +but to have written a little more.” And, to come +nearer to our own times, Sir James Mackintosh speaks of +Gray thus: “Of all English poets he was the most finished +artist. He attained the highest degree of splendor of +which poetical style seemed to be capable.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>In a poet of such magnitude, how shall we explain his +scantiness of production? Shall we explain it by saying +that to make of Gray a poet of this magnitude is absurd; +that his genius and resources were small, and that his production, +therefore, was small also, but that the popularity +of a single piece, the <cite>Elegy</cite>,—a popularity due in great +measure to the subject,—created for Gray a reputation to +which he has really no right? He himself was not deceived +by the favor shown to the <cite>Elegy</cite>. “Gray told me +with a good deal of acrimony,” writes Dr. Gregory, “that +the <cite>Elegy</cite> owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and +that the public would have received it as well if it had been +written in prose.” This is too much to say; the <cite>Elegy</cite> is +a beautiful poem, and in admiring it the public showed a +true feeling for poetry. But it is true that the <cite>Elegy</cite> +owed much of its success to its subject, and that it has received +a too unmeasured and unbounded praise.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Gray himself, however, maintained that the <cite>Elegy</cite> was +not his best work in poetry, and he was right. High as +is the praise due to the <cite>Elegy</cite>, it is yet true that in other +productions of Gray he exhibits poetical qualities even +higher than those exhibited in the <cite>Elegy</cite>. He deserves, +therefore, his extremely high reputation as a poet, although +his critics and the public may not always have praised him +with perfect judgment. We are brought back, then, to +the question: How, in a poet so really considerable, are +we to explain his scantiness of production?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Scanty Gray’s production, indeed, is; so scanty that to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>supplement our knowledge of it by a knowledge of the +man is in this case of peculiar interest and service. Gray’s +letters and the records of him by his friends have happily +made it possible for us thus to know him, and to appreciate +his high qualities of mind and soul. Let us see these +in the man first, and then observe how they appear in his +poetry; and why they cannot enter into it more freely +and inspire it with more strength, render it more abundant.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We will begin with his acquirements. “Mr. Gray was,” +writes his friend Temple, “perhaps the most learned man +in Europe. He knew every branch of history both natural +and civil; had read all the original historians of England, +France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, +metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part +of his study. Voyages and travels of all sorts were his +favorite amusements; and he had a fine taste in painting, +prints, architecture, and gardening.” The notes in his +interleaved copy of Linnæus remained to show the extent +and accuracy of his knowledge in the natural sciences, +particularly in botany, zoology, and entomology. Entomologists +testified that his account of English insects was +more perfect than any that had then appeared. His notes +and papers, of which some have been published, others +remain still in manuscript, give evidence, besides, of his +knowledge of literature ancient and modern, geography +and topography, painting, architecture and antiquities, +and of his curious researches in heraldry. He was an excellent +musician. Sir James Mackintosh reminds us, +moreover, that to all the other accomplishments and merits +of Gray we are to add this: “That he was the first discoverer +of the beauties of nature in England, and has +marked out the course of every picturesque journey that +can be made in it.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Acquirements take all their value and character from +the power of the individual storing them. Let us take, +from amongst Gray’s observations on what he read, enough +to show us his power. Here are criticisms on three very +different authors, criticisms without any study or pretension, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>but just thrown out in chance letters to his friends. +First, on Aristotle:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>‘In the first place he is the hardest author by far I ever meddled +with. Then he has a dry conciseness that makes one imagine +one is perusing a table of contents rather than a book; it +tastes for all the world like chopped hay, or rather like chopped +logic; for he has a violent affection to that art, being in some +sort his own invention; so that he often loses himself in little +trifling distinctions and verbal niceties, and what is worse, leaves +you to extricate yourself as you can. Thirdly, he has suffered +vastly by his transcribers, as all authors of great brevity necessarily +must. Fourthly and lastly, he has abundance of fine, +uncommon things, which make him well worth the pains he +gives one. You see what you have to expect.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Next, on Isocrates:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“It would be strange if I should find fault with you for reading +Isocrates; I did so myself twenty years ago, and in an +edition at least as bad as yours. The Panegyric, the De Pace, +Areopagitic, and Advice to Philip, are by far the noblest remains +we have of this writer, and equal to most things extant in the +Greek tongue; but it depends on your judgment to distinguish +between his real and occasional opinion of things, as he directly +contradicts in one place what he has advanced in another; for +example, in the Panathenaic and the De Pace, on the naval power +of Athens; the latter of the two is undoubtedly his own undisguised +sentiment.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>After hearing Gray on Isocrates and Aristotle, let us hear +him on Froissart:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I rejoice you have met with Froissart, he is the Herodotus of +a barbarous age; had he but had the luck of writing in as good +a language, he might have been immortal. His locomotive disposition +(for then there was no other way of learning things), +his simple curiosity, his religious credulity, were much like those +of the old Grecian. When you have <span lang="fr"><i>tant chevauché</i></span> as to get to +the end of him, there is Monstrelet waits to take you up, and +will set you down at Philip de Commines; but previous to all +these, you should have read Villehardouin and Joinville.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Those judgments, with their true and clear ring, evince +the high quality of Gray’s mind, his power to command +and use his learning. But Gray was a poet; let us hear +<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>him on a poet, on Shakespeare. We must place ourselves +in the full midst of the eighteenth century and of its +criticism: Gray’s friend, West, had praised Racine for +using it in his dramas “the language of the times and +that of the purest sort”; and he had added: “I will not +decide what style is fit for our English stage, but I should +rather choose one that bordered upon Cato, than upon +Shakespeare.” Gray replies:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“As to matter of style, I have this to say: The language of +the age is never the language of poetry; except among the +French, whose verse, where the thought does not support it, +differs in nothing from prose. Our poetry, on the contrary, has +a language peculiar to itself, to which almost every one that +has written has added something. In truth, Shakespeare’s language +is one of his principal beauties; and he has no less advantage +over your Addisons and Rowes in this, than in those +other great excellences you mention. Every word in him is a +picture. Pray put me the following lines into the tongue of our +modern dramatics—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,</div> + <div class='line'>Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass’—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and what follows? To me they appear untranslatable; and if +this be the case, our language is greatly degenerated.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>It is impossible for a poet to lay down the rules of his +own art with more insight, soundness, and certainty. +Yet at that moment in England there was perhaps not +one other man, besides Gray, capable of writing the passage +just quoted.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Gray’s quality of mind, then, we see; his quality of +soul will no less bear inspection. His reserve, his delicacy, +his distaste for many of the persons and things surrounding +him in the Cambridge of that day,—“this silly, +dirty place,” as he calls it,—have produced an impression +of Gray as being a man falsely fastidious, finical, effeminate. +But we have already had that grave testimony to +him from the Master of Pembroke Hall: “The thoughts I +have of him will last, and will be useful to me the few +years I can expect to live.” And here is another to the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>same effect from a younger man, from Gray’s friend +Nicholls:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“You know,” he writes to his mother, from abroad, when he +heard of Gray’s death, “that I considered Mr. Gray as a second +parent, that I thought only of him, built all my happiness on +him, talked of him forever, wished him with me whenever I +partook of any pleasure, and flew to him for revenge whenever +I felt any uneasiness. To whom now shall I talk of all I have +seen here? Who will teach me to read, to think, to feel? I protest +to you, that whatever I did or thought had a reference to +him. If I met with any chagrins, I comforted myself that I +had a treasure at home; if all the world had despised and hated +me, I should have thought myself perfectly recompensed in his +friendship. There remains only one loss more; if I lose you, I +am left alone in the world. At present I feel that I have lost +half of myself.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Testimonies such as these are not called forth by a fastidious +effeminate weakling; they are not called forth, +even, by mere qualities of mind; they are called forth by +qualities of soul. And of Gray’s high qualities of soul, of +his σπουδαιότης, his excellent seriousness, we may gather +abundant proof from his letters. Writing to Mason who +had just lost his father, he says:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I have seen the scene you describe, and know how dreadful +it is; I know too I am the better for it. We are all idle and +thoughtless things, and have no sense, no use in the world any +longer than that sad impression lasts; the deeper it is engraved +the better.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And again, on a like occasion to another friend:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“He who best knows our nature (for he made us what we are) +by such afflictions recalls us from our wandering thoughts and +idle merriment, from the insolence of youth and prosperity, to +serious reflection, to our duty, and to himself; nor need we +hasten to get rid of these impressions. Time (by appointment +of the same Power) will cure the smart and in some hearts soon +blot out all the traces of sorrow; but such as preserve them +longest (for it is partly left in our own power) do perhaps best +acquiesce in the will of the chastiser.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And once more to Mason, in the very hour of his wife’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>death; Gray was not sure whether or not his letter would +reach Mason before the end:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“If the worst be not yet past, you will neglect and pardon +me; but if the last struggle be over, if the poor object of your +long anxieties be no longer sensible to your kindness or to her +own sufferings, allow me, at least an idea (for what could I do, +were I present, more than this?) to sit by you in silence and pity +from my heart not her, who is at rest, but you, who lose her. +May he, who made us, the Master of our pleasures and of our +pains, support you! Adieu.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Seriousness, character, was the foundation of things +with him; where this was lacking he was always severe, +whatever might be offered to him in its stead. Voltaire’s +literary genius charmed him, but the faults of Voltaire’s +nature he felt so strongly that when his young friend +Nicholls was going abroad in 1771, just before Gray’s +death, he said to him: “I have one thing to beg of you +which you must not refuse.” Nicholls answered: “You +know you have only to command; what is it?”—“Do +not go to see Voltaire,” said Gray; and then added: +“No one knows the mischief that man will do.” Nicholls +promised compliance with Gray’s injunction; “But +what,” he asked, “could a visit from me signify?”—“Every +tribute to such a man signifies,” Gray answered. +He admired Dryden, admired him, even, too much; had +too much felt his influence as a poet. He told Beattie +“that if there was any excellence in his own numbers he +had learned it wholly from that great poet;” and writing +to Beattie afterwards he recurs to Dryden, whom Beattie, +he thought, did not honor as a poet: “Remember Dryden,” +he writes, “and be blind to all his faults.” Yes, his +faults as a poet; but on the man Dryden, nevertheless, his +sentence is stern. Speaking of the Poet-Laureateship, +“Dryden,” he writes to Mason, “was as disgraceful to +the office from his character, as the poorest scribbler could +have been from his <a id='corr322.36'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='verses.'>verses.”</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_322.36'><ins class='correction' title='verses.'>verses.”</ins></a></span> Even where crying blemishes +were absent, the want of weight and depth of character +in a man deprived him, in Gray’s judgment, of serious significance. +He says of Hume: “Is not that <span lang="fr"><i>naïveté</i></span> and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>good-humor, which his admirers celebrate in him, owing +to this, that he has continued all his days an infant, but +one that has unhappily been taught to read and write?”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And with all this strenuous seriousness, a pathetic sentiment, +and an element, likewise, of sportive and charming +humor. At Keswick, by the lakeside on an autumn evening, +he has the accent of the <span lang="fr"><cite>Rêveries</cite></span>, or of Obermann, or +Wordsworth:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“In the evening walked down alone to the lake by the side of +Crow Park after sunset and saw the solemn coloring of light +draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading away on the hill-tops, +the deep serene of the waters, and the long shadows of the mountains +thrown across them, till they nearly touched the hithermost +shore. At a distance heard the murmur of many waterfalls, +not audible in the daytime. Wished for the Moon, but +she was <em>dark to me and silent hid in her vacant interlunar +cave</em>.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Of his humor and sportiveness his delightful letters are +full; his humor appears in his poetry too, and is by no +means to be passed over there. Horace Walpole said that +“Gray never wrote anything easily but things of humor; +humor was his natural and original turn.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Knowledge, penetration, seriousness, sentiment, humor, +Gray had them all; he had the equipment and endowment +for the office of poet. But very soon in his life appear +traces of something obstructing, something disabling; of +spirits failing, and health not sound; and the evil increases +with years. He writes to West in 1737:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Low spirits are my true and faithful companions; they get +up with me, go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I +do; nay, pay visits and will even affect to be jocose and force a +feeble laugh with me; but most commonly we sit alone together, +and are the prettiest insipid company in the world.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The tone is playful, Gray was not yet twenty-one. +“Mine,” he tells West four or five years later, “mine, +you are to know, is a white Melancholy, or rather <em>Leucocholy</em>, +for the most part; which, though it seldom laughs +or dances, nor ever amounts to what one calls joy or +<span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>pleasure, yet is a good easy sort of a state.” But, he adds +in the same letter:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“But there is another sort, black indeed, which I have now and +then felt, that has something in it like Tertullian’s rule of faith, +<span lang="la"><i>Credo quia impossibile est</i></span>; for it believes, nay, is sure of everything +that is unlikely, so it be but frightful; and on the other hand +excludes and shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and everything +that is pleasurable; from this the Lord deliver us! for +none but he and sunshiny weather can do it.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Six or seven years pass, and we find him writing to +Wharton from Cambridge thus:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“The spirit of laziness (the spirit of this place) begins to possess +even me, that have so long declaimed against it. Yet has it +not so prevailed, but that I feel that discontent with myself, +that <span lang="fr"><i>ennui</i></span>, that ever accompanies it in its beginnings. Time +will settle my conscience, time will reconcile my languid companion +to me; we shall smoke, we shall tipple, we shall doze +together, we shall have our little jokes, like other people, and +our long stories. Brandy will finish what port began; and, a +month after the time, you will see in some corner of a London +Evening Post, ‘Yesterday died the Rev. Mr. John Gray, Senior-Fellow +of Clare Hall, a facetious companion, and well-respected +by all who knew him.’”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The humorous advertisement ends, in the original letter, +with a Hogarthian touch which I must not quote. Is it +Leucocholy or is it Melancholy which predominates here? +at any rate, this entry in his diary, six years later, is black +enough:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“<span lang="la"><i>Insomnia crebra, atque expergiscenti surdus quidam doloris +sensus; frequens etiam in regione sterni oppressio, et cardialgia +gravis, fere sempiterna.</i></span>”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And in 1757 he writes to Hurd:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“To be employed is to be happy. This principle of mine (and +I am convinced of its truth) has, as usual, no influence on my +practice. I am alone, and <span lang="fr"><i>ennuyé</i></span> to the last degree, yet do +nothing. Indeed I have no excuse; my health (which you have +so kindly inquired after) is not extraordinary. It is no great +malady, but several little ones, that seem brewing no good to +me.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>From thence to the end his languor and depression, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>though still often relieved by occupation and travel, keep +fatally gaining on him. At last the depression became +constant, became mechanical. “Travel I must,” he +writes to Dr. Wharton, “or cease to exist. Till this year +I hardly knew what <em>mechanical</em> low spirits were; but now +I <a id='corr325.6'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='eʌen'>even</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_325.6'><ins class='correction' title='eʌen'>even</ins></a></span> tremble at an east wind.” Two months afterwards +he died.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What wonder, that with this troublous cloud, throughout +the whole term of his manhood, brooding over him and +weighing him down, Gray, finely endowed though he was, +richly stored with knowledge though he was, yet produced +so little, found no full and sufficient utterance, “<em>never</em>,” +as the Master of Pembroke Hall said, “<em>spoke out</em>.” He +knew well enough, himself, how it was with him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“My <em>verve</em> is at best, you know” (he writes to Mason), +“of so delicate a constitution, and has such weak nerves, +as not to stir out of its chamber above three days in a +year.” And to Horace Walpole he says: “As to what you +say to me civilly, that I ought to write more, I will be +candid, and avow to you, that till fourscore and upward, +whenever the humor takes me, I will write; because I +like it, and because I like myself better when I do so. If +I do not write much, it is because I cannot.” How simply +said, and how truly also! Fain would a man like Gray +speak out if he could, he “likes himself better” when he +speaks out; if he does not speak out, “it is because I +cannot.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Bonstetten, that mercurial Swiss who died in 1832 at +the age of eighty-seven, having been younger and livelier +from his sixtieth year to his eightieth than at any other +time in his life, paid a visit in his early days to Cambridge, +and saw much of Gray, to whom he attached himself with +devotion. Gray, on his part, was charmed with his young +friend; “I never saw such a boy,” he writes; “our breed +is not made on this model.” Long afterwards Bonstetten +published his reminiscences of Gray. “I used to tell +Gray,” he says, “about my life and my native country, +but <em>his</em> life was a sealed book to me; he never would +talk of himself, never would allow me to speak to him of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>his poetry. If I quoted lines of his to him, he kept +silence like an obstinate child. I said to him sometimes: +‘Will you have the goodness to give me an answer?’ +But not a word issued from his lips.” <em>He never spoke out.</em> +Bonstetten thinks that Gray’s life was poisoned by an unsatisfied +sensibility, was withered by his having never +loved; by his days being passed in the dismal cloisters of +Cambridge, in the company of a set of monastic bookworms, +“whose existence no honest woman ever came to +cheer.” Sainte-Beuve, who was much attracted and interested +by Gray, doubts whether Bonstetten’s explanation +of him is admissible; the secret of Gray’s melancholy he +finds rather in the sterility of his poetic talent, “so distinguished, +so rare, but so stinted;” in the poet’s despair +at his own unproductiveness.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But to explain Gray, we must do more than allege his +sterility, as we must look further than to his reclusion at +Cambridge. What caused his sterility? Was it his ill-health, +his hereditary gout? Certainly we will pay all +respect to the powers of hereditary gout for afflicting us +poor mortals. But Goethe, after pointing out that Schiller, +who was so productive, was “almost constantly ill,” +adds the true remark that it is incredible how much the +spirit can do, in these cases, to keep up the body. Pope’s +animation and activity through all the course of what he +pathetically calls “that long disease, my life,” is an example +presenting itself signally, in Gray’s own country +and time, to confirm what Goethe here says. What gave +the power to Gray’s reclusion and ill-health to induce his +sterility?</p> + +<p class='c001'>The reason, the indubitable reason as I cannot but think +it, I have already given elsewhere. Gray, a born poet, fell +upon an age of prose. He fell upon an age whose task +was such as to call forth in general men’s powers of understanding, +wit and cleverness, rather than their deepest +powers of mind and soul. As regards literary production, +the task of the eighteenth century in England was not the +poetic interpretation of the world, its task was to create +a plain, clear, straightforward, efficient prose. Poetry +<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>obeyed the bent of mind requisite for the due fulfilment +of this task of the century. It was intellectual, argumentative, +ingenious; not seeing things in their truth and +beauty, not interpretative. Gray, with the qualities of +mind and soul of a genuine poet, was isolated in his century. +Maintaining and fortifying them by lofty studies, +he yet could not fully educe and enjoy them; the want of +a genial atmosphere, the failure of sympathy in his contemporaries, +were too great. Born in the same year with +Milton, Gray would have been another man; born in the +same year with Burns, he would have been another man. +A man born in 1608 could profit by the larger and more +poetic scope of the English spirit in the Elizabethan age; +a man born in 1759 could profit by that European renewing +of men’s minds of which the great historical manifestation +is the French Revolution. Gray’s alert and brilliant +young friend, Bonstetten, who would explain the +void in the life of Gray by his having never loved, Bonstetten +himself loved, married, and had children. Yet at +the age of fifty he was bidding fair to grow old, dismal and +torpid like the rest of us, when he was roused and made +young again for some thirty years, says M. Sainte-Beuve, +by the events of 1789. If Gray, like Burns, had been just +thirty years old when the French Revolution broke out, +he would have shown, probably, productiveness and animation +in plenty. Coming when he did, and endowed as +he was, he was a man born out of date, a man whose full +spiritual flowering was impossible. The same thing is to +be said of his great contemporary, Butler, the author of +the <cite>Analogy</cite>. In the sphere of religion, which touches +that of poetry, Butler was impelled by the endowment of +his nature to strive for a profound and adequate conception +of religious things, which was not pursued by his contemporaries, +and which at that time, and in that atmosphere +of mind, was not fully attainable. Hence, in Butler +too, a dissatisfaction, a weariness, as in Gray; “great +labor and weariness, great disappointment, pain and even +vexation of mind.” A sort of spiritual east wind was at +<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>that time blowing; neither Butler nor Gray could flower. +They <em>never spoke out</em>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Gray’s poetry was not only stinted in quantity by reason +of the age wherein he lived, it suffered somewhat in quality +also. We have seen under what obligation to Dryden +Gray professed himself to be—“if there was any excellence +in his numbers, he had learned it wholly from that great +poet.” It was not for nothing that he came when Dryden +had lately “embellished,” as Johnson says, English poetry; +had “found it brick and left it marble.” It was not for +nothing that he came just when “the English ear,” to +quote Johnson again, “had been accustomed to the mellifluence +of Pope’s numbers, and the diction of poetry had +grown more splendid.” Of the intellectualities, ingenuities, +personifications, of the movement and diction of +Dryden and Pope, Gray caught something, caught too +much. We have little of Gray’s poetry, and that little is +not free from the faults of his age. Therefore it was important +to go for aid, as we did, to Gray’s life and letters, +to see his mind and soul there, and to corroborate from +thence that high estimate of his quality which his poetry +indeed calls forth, but does not establish so amply and +irresistibly as one could desire.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For a just criticism it does, however, clearly establish +it. The difference between genuine poetry and the poetry +of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is briefly this: their +poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine +poetry is conceived and composed in the soul. The difference +between the two kinds of poetry is immense. They differ +profoundly in their modes of language, they differ profoundly +in their modes of evolution. The poetic language +of our eighteenth century in general is the language of +men composing <em>without their eye on the object</em>, as Wordsworth +excellently said of Dryden; language merely recalling +the object, as the common language of prose +does, and then dressing it out with a certain smartness +and brilliancy for the fancy and understanding. This is +called “splendid diction.” The evolution of the poetry of +our eighteenth century is likewise intellectual; it proceeds +<span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>by ratiocination, antithesis, ingenious turns and conceits. +This poetry is often eloquent, and always, in the hands of +such masters as Dryden and Pope, clever; but it does not +take us much below the surface of things, it does not give +us the emotion of seeing things in their truth and beauty. +The language of genuine poetry, on the other hand, is the +language of one composing with his eye on the object; its +evolution is that of a thing which has been plunged in the +poet’s soul until it comes forth naturally and necessarily. +This sort of evolution is infinitely simpler than the other, +and infinitely more satisfying; the same thing is true of +the genuine poetic language likewise. But they are both +of them also infinitely harder of attainment; they come +only from those who, as Emerson says, “live from a great +depth of being.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Goldsmith disparaged Gray who had praised his <cite>Traveller</cite>, +and indeed in the poem on the <cite>Alliance of Education and +Government</cite> had given him hints which he used for it. +In retaliation let us take from Goldsmith himself a specimen +of the poetic language of the eighteenth century.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>there is exactly the poetic diction of our prose century! +rhetorical, ornate,—and, poetically, quite <a id='corr329.24'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='false'>false.</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_329.24'><ins class='correction' title='false'>false.</ins></a></span> Place +beside it a line of genuine poetry, such as the</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“In cradle of the rude, imperious surge</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>of Shakespeare; and all its falseness instantly becomes +apparent.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Dryden’s poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew is, says +Johnson, “undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language +ever has produced.” In this vigorous performance Dryden +has to say, what is interesting enough, that not only in +poetry did Mrs. Killigrew excel, but she excelled in +painting also. And thus he says it—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“To the next realm she stretch’d her sway,</div> + <div class='line'>For Painture near adjoining lay—</div> + <div class='line'>A plenteous province and alluring prey.</div> + <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>A Chamber of Dependencies was framed</div> + <div class='line in2'>(As conquerors will never want pretence</div> + <div class='line in4'>When arm’d, to justify the offence),</div> + <div class='line'>And the whole fief, in right of Poetry, she claim’d.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>The intellectual, ingenious, superficial evolution of poetry +of this school could not be better illustrated. Place beside +it Pindar’s</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in14'>αἰὼν ὰσφαλὴς</div> + <div class='line'>οὐχ ἔγεντ’ οὔτ’ Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ <a id='corr330.9'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Πηλ'>Πηλεῖ</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_330.9'><ins class='correction' title='Πηλ'>Πηλεῖ</ins></a></span></div> + <div class='line'>οὔτε παρ’ ἀντιθέῳ Κάδμῳ ...</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>“A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of +Æacus, nor of the godlike Cadmus; howbeit these are said to +have had, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard +the golden-snooded Muses sing,—on the mountain the one heard +them, the other in seven-gated Thebes.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c017'>There is the evolution of genuine poetry, and such poetry +kills Dryden’s the moment it is put near it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Gray’s production was scanty, and scanty, as we have +seen, it could not but be. Even what he produced is not +always pure in diction, true in evolution. Still, with +whatever drawbacks, he is alone, or almost alone (for Collins +has something of the like merit) in his age. Gray said +himself that <a id='corr330.23'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='the'>“the</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_330.23'><ins class='correction' title='the'>“the</ins></a></span> style he aimed at was extreme conciseness +of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical.” +Compared, not with the work of the great masters of the +golden ages of poetry, but with the poetry of his own contemporaries +in general, Gray’s may be said to have reached, +in style, the excellence at which he aimed; while the evolution +also of such a piece as his <cite>Progress of Poesy</cite> must +be accounted not less noble and sound than its style.</p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span> + <h2 class='c005'>IV. <br> <br> JOHN KEATS.<a id='r36'></a><a href='#f36' class='c007'><sup>[36]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Poetry, according to Milton’s famous saying, should be +“simple, sensuous, impassioned.” No one can question +the eminency, in Keat’s poetry, of the quality of sensuousness. +Keats as a poet is abundantly and enchantingly +sensuous; the question with some people will be, +whether he is anything else. Many things may be brought +forward which seem to show him as under the fascination +and sole dominion of sense, and desiring nothing better. +There is the exclamation in one of his letters: “O for a +life of sensations rather than of thoughts!” There is +the thesis, in another, “that with a great Poet the sense +of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather +obliterates all consideration.” There is Haydon’s story of +him, how “he once covered his tongue and throat as far +as he could reach with Cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate +the delicious coldness of claret in all its glory—his +own expression.” One is not much surprised when +Haydon further tells us, of the hero of such a story, that +once for six weeks together he was hardly ever sober. +“He had no decision of character,” Haydon adds; “no +object upon which to direct his great powers.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Character and self-control, the <span lang="la"><i>virtus verusque labor</i></span> so +necessary for every kind of greatness, and for the great +artist, too, indispensable, appear to be wanting, certainly, +to this Keats of Haydon’s portraiture. They are wanting +also to the Keats of the <cite>Letters to Fanny Brawne</cite>. These +<span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>letters make as unpleasing an impression as Haydon’s +anecdotes. The editor of Haydon’s journals could not +well omit what Haydon said of his friend, but for the +publication of the <cite>Letters to Fanny Brawne</cite> I can see no +good reason whatever. Their publication appears to me, +I confess, inexcusable; they ought never to have been +published. But published they are, and we have to take +notice of them. Letters written when Keats was near +his end, under the throttling and unmanning grasp of +mortal disease, we will not judge. But here is a letter +written some months before he was taken ill. It is +printed just as Keats wrote it.</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“You have absorb’d me. I <a id='corr332.13'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='haye'>have</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_332.13'><ins class='correction' title='haye'>have</ins></a></span> a sensation at the present +moment as though I was dissolving—I should be exquisitely +miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be +afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will +your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit +now to my love.... Your note came in just here. I cannot be +happier away from you. ’Tis richer than an Argosy of Pearles. +Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men +could die Martyrs for religion—I have shuddered at it. I shudder +no more—I could be martyred for my Religion—Love is my +religion—I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is +Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravished me away +by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; +and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often ‘to +reason against the reasons of my Love.’ I can do that no more—the +pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot +breathe without you.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>A man who writes love-letters in this strain is probably +predestined, one may observe, to misfortune in his love-affairs; +but that is nothing. The complete enervation of +the writer is the real point for remark. We have the +tone, or rather the entire want of tone, the abandonment +of all reticence and all dignity, of the merely sensuous +man, of the man who “is passion’s slave.” Nay, we have +them in such wise that one is tempted to speak even as +<cite>Blackwood</cite> or the <cite>Quarterly</cite> were in the old days wont to +speak; one is tempted to say that Keats’s love-letter is the +love-letter of a surgeon’s apprentice. It has in its relaxed +<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>self-abandonment something underbred and ignoble, as of +a youth ill brought up, without the training which teaches +us that we must put some constraint upon our feelings +and upon the expression of them. It is the sort of love-letter +of a surgeon’s apprentice which one might hear +read out in a breach of promise case, or in the Divorce +Court. The sensuous man speaks in it, and the sensuous +man of a badly bred and badly trained sort. That many +who are themselves also badly bred and badly trained +should enjoy it, and should even think it a beautiful and +characteristic production of him whom they call their +“lovely and beloved Keats,” does not make it better. +These are the admirers whose pawing and fondness does +not good but harm to the fame of Keats; who concentrate +attention upon what in him is least wholesome and +most questionable; who worship him, and would have +the world worship him too, as the poet of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair,</div> + <div class='line'>Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy <a id='corr333.20'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='breast.'>breast.’</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_333.20'><ins class='correction' title='breast.'>breast.’</ins></a></span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>This sensuous strain Keats had, and a man of his poetic +powers could not, whatever his strain, but show his talent +in it. But he has something more, and something better. +We who believe Keats to have been by his promise, at +any rate, if not fully by his performance, one of the very +greatest of English poets, and who believe also that a +merely sensuous man cannot either by promise or by performance +be a very great poet, because poetry interprets +life, and so large and noble a part of life is outside of such +a man’s ken,—we cannot but look for signs in him of +something more than sensuousness, for signs of character +and virtue. And indeed the elements of high character +Keats undoubtedly has, and the effort to develop them; +the effort is frustrated and cut short by misfortune, and +disease, and time, but for the due understanding of +Keats’s worth the recognition of this effort, and of the +elements on which it worked, is necessary.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Lord Houghton, who praises very discriminatingly the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>poetry of Keats, has on his character also a remark full +of discrimination. He says: “The faults of Keats’s disposition +were precisely the contrary of those attributed to +him by common opinion.” And he gives a letter written +after the death of Keats by his brother George, in which +the writer, speaking of the fantastic <cite>Johnny Keats</cite> invented +for common opinion by Lord Byron and by the reviewers, +declares indignantly: “John was the very soul of manliness +and courage, and as much like the Holy Ghost as +<cite>Johnny Keats</cite>.” It is important to note this testimony, +and to look well for whatever illustrates and confirms it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Great weight is laid by Lord Houghton on such a direct +profession of faith as the following: “That sort of probity +and disinterestedness,” Keats writes to his brothers, +“which such men as Bailey possess, does hold and grasp +the tip-top of any spiritual honors that can be paid to anything +in this world.” Lord Houghton says that “never +have words more effectively expressed the conviction of +the superiority of virtue above beauty than those.” But +merely to make a profession of faith of the kind here +made by Keats is not difficult; what we should rather +look for is some evidence of the instinct for character, for +virtue, passing into man’s life, passing into his work.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Signs of virtue, in the true and large sense of the word, +the instinct for virtue passing into the life of Keats and +strengthening it, I find in the admirable wisdom and +temper of what he says to his friend Bailey on the occasion +of a quarrel between Reynolds and Haydon:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Things have happened lately of great perplexity; you must +have heard of them; Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating, +and parting forever. The same thing has happened between +Haydon <a id='corr334.32'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='und'>and</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_334.32'><ins class='correction' title='und'>and</ins></a></span> Hunt. It is unfortunate; men should bear +with each other; there lives not the man who may not be cut up, +aye, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best of men have +but a portion of good in them.... The sure way, Bailey, is first +to know a man’s faults, and then be passive. If, after that, he +insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no power to +break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or +Haydon, I was well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I +have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for +<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>them both, for reasons almost opposite; and to both must I of necessity +cling, supported always by the hope that when a little time, +a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may +be able to bring them together.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Butler has well said that “endeavoring to enforce upon our +own minds a practical sense of virtue, or to beget in others +that practical sense of it which a man really has himself, is +a virtuous <em>act</em>.” And such an “endeavoring” is that of +Keats in those words written to Bailey. It is more than +mere words; so justly thought and so discreetly urged as +it is, it rises to the height of a virtuous <em>act</em>. It is proof of +character.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The same thing may be said of some words written to his +friend Charles Brown, whose kindness, willingly exerted +whenever Keats chose to avail himself of it, seemed to free +him from any pressing necessity of earning his own living. +Keats felt that he must not allow this state of things to +continue. He determined to set himself to “fag on as +others do” at periodical literature, rather than to endanger +his independence and his self-respect; and he writes to +Brown:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I had got into a habit of mind of looking towards you as a help +in all difficulties. This very habit would be the parent of idleness +and difficulties. You will see it is a duty I owe to myself to +break the neck of it. I do nothing for my subsistence—make no +exertion. At the end of another year you shall applaud me, not +for verses, but for conduct.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>He had not, alas, another year of health before him +when he announced that wholesome resolve; it then +wanted but six months of the day of his fatal attack. But +in the brief time allowed to him he did what he could to +keep his word.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What character, again, what strength and clearness of +judgment, in his criticism of his own productions, of the +public, and of the “literary circles!” His words after the +severe reviews of <cite>Endymion</cite> have often been quoted; they +cannot be quoted too often:—</p> + +<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span></div> +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose +love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his +own works. My own criticism has given me pain without comparison +beyond what <cite>Blackwood</cite> or the <cite>Quarterly</cite> could possibly +inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no external praise +can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and +ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to +the “slip-shod Endymion.” That it is so is no fault of mine. +No! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I +had power to make it by myself.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And again, as if he had foreseen certain of his admirers +gushing over him, and was resolved to disengage his +responsibility:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I have done nothing, except for the amusement of a few people +who refine upon their feelings till anything in the un-understandable +way will go down with them. I have no cause to complain, because +I am certain anything really fine will in these days be felt. +I have no doubt that if I had written <cite>Othello</cite> I should have been +cheered. I shall go on with patience.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Young poets almost inevitably overrate what they call +“the might of poesy,” and its power over the world which +now is. Keats is not a dupe on this matter any more than +he is a dupe about the merit of his own performances:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I have no trust whatever in poetry. I don’t wonder at it; +the marvel is to me how people read so much of it.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>His attitude towards the public is that of a strong man, +not of a weakling avid of praise, and made to “be snuff’d +out by an article”:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I shall ever consider the public as debtors to me for verses, +not myself to them for admiration, which can I do without.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And again, in a passage where one may perhaps find +fault with the capital letters, but surely with nothing +else:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the public or +to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the Principle of +Beauty, and the Memory of great Men.... I would be subdued +before my friends, and thank them for subduing me; but among +<span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping; I hate the idea of +humility to them. I never wrote one single line of poetry with +the least shadow of thought about their opinion. Forgive me for +vexing you, but it eases me to tell you; I could not live without +the love of my friends: I would jump down Etna for any great +public good—but I hate a mawkish popularity. I cannot be subdued +before them. My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the +thousand jabberers about pictures and books.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Against these artistic and literary “jabberers,” amongst +whom Byron fancied Keats, probably, to be always living, +flattering them and flattered by them, he has yet another +outburst:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Just so much as I am humbled by the genius above my grasp, +am I exalted and look with hate and contempt upon the literary +world. Who could wish to be among the commonplace crowd of +the little famous, who are each individually lost in a throng made +up of themselves?”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And he loves Fanny Brawne the more, he tells her, because +he believes that she has <a id='corr337.19'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='linked'>liked</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_337.19'><ins class='correction' title='linked'>liked</ins></a></span> him for his own sake +and for nothing else. “I have met with women who I +really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be +given away by a Novel.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>There is a tone of too much bitterness and defiance in +all this, a tone which he with great propriety subdued and +corrected when he wrote his beautiful preface to <cite>Endymion</cite>. +But the thing to be seized is, that Keats had flint +and iron in him, that he had character; that he was, as +his brother George says, “as much like the Holy Ghost as +<cite>Johnny Keats</cite>,”—as that imagined sensuous weakling, the +delight of the literary circles of Hampstead.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is a pity that Byron, who so misconceived Keats, +should never have known how shrewdly Keats, on the +other hand, had characterized <em>him</em>, as “a fine thing” in +the sphere of “the worldly, theatrical, and pantomimical.” +But indeed nothing is more remarkable in Keats +than his clear-sightedness, his lucidity; and lucidity is in +itself akin to character and to high and severe work. In +spite, therefore, of his overpowering feeling for beauty, in +<span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>spite of his sensuousness, in spite of his facility, in spite +of his gift of expression, Keats could say resolutely:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I know nothing, I have read nothing; and I mean to follow +Solomon’s directions: ‘Get learning, get understanding.’ +There is but one way for me. The road lies through application, +study, and thought. I will pursue it.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And of Milton, instead of resting in Milton’s incomparable +phrases, Keats could say, although indeed all the +while “looking upon fine phrases,” as he himself tells us, +“like a lover”—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Milton had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the +sense of ease and pleasure, poetical luxury; and with that, it +appears to me, he would fain have been content, if he could, so +doing, preserve his self-respect and feeling of duty performed; +but there was working in him, as it were, that same sort of thing +which operates in the great world to the end of a prophecy’s +being accomplished. Therefore he devoted himself rather to the +ardors than the pleasures of song, solacing himself at intervals +with cups of old wine.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>In his own poetry, too, Keats felt that place must be +found for “the ardors rather than the pleasures of +song,” although he was aware that he was not yet ripe for +it—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in6'>“But, my flag is not unfurl’d</div> + <div class='line'>On the Admiral-staff, and to philosophize</div> + <div class='line'>I dare not yet.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>Even in his pursuit of “the pleasures of song,” however, +there is that stamp of high work which is akin to +character, which is character passing into intellectual +production. “<em>The best sort of poetry</em>—that,” he truly +says, “is all I care for, all I live for.” It is curious to +observe how this severe addiction of his to the best sort +of poetry affects him with a certain coldness, as if the +addiction had been to mathematics, towards those prime +<a id='corr338.35'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='obejcts'>objects</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_338.35'><ins class='correction' title='obejcts'>objects</ins></a></span> of a sensuous and passionate poet’s regard, love +and women. He speaks of “the opinion I have formed +of the generality of women, who appear to me as children +to whom I would rather give a sugar-plum than my time.” +<span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>He confesses “a tendency to class women in my books +with roses and sweetmeats—they never see themselves +dominant;” and he can understand how the unpopularity +of his poems may be in part due to “the offense which +the ladies,” not unnaturally “take at him” from this +cause. Even to Fanny Brawne he can write “a flint-worded +letter,” when his “mind is heaped to the full” +with poetry:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I know the generality of women would hate me for this; +that I should have so unsoftened, so hard a mind as to forget +them; forget the brightest realities for the dull imaginations of +my own brain.... My heart seems now made of iron—I could +not write a proper answer to an invitation to Idalia.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The truth is that “the yearning passion for the Beautiful,” +which was with Keats, as he himself truly says, the +master-passion, is not a passion, of the sensuous or sentimental +man, is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental +poet. It is an intellectual and spiritual passion. It +is “connected and made one,” as Keats declares that in +his case it was, “with the ambition of the intellect.” It +is, as he again says, “the mighty <em>abstract idea</em> of Beauty +in all things.” And in his last days Keats wrote: “If I +should die, I have left no immortal work behind me—nothing +to make my friends proud of my memory; <em>but +I have loved the principle of beauty in all things</em>, and if I +had had time I would have made myself remembered.” +He <em>has</em> made himself remembered, and remembered as no +merely sensuous poet could be; and he has done it by +having “loved the principle of beauty in all things.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>For to see things in their beauty is to see things in their +truth, and Keats knew it. “What the Imagination +seizes as Beauty must be Truth,” he says in prose; and in +immortal verse he has said the same thing—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all</div> + <div class='line'>Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>No, it is not all; but it is true, deeply true, and we +have deep need to know it. And with beauty goes not +only truth, joy goes with her also; and this too Keats +<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>saw and said, as in the famous first line of his <cite>Endymion</cite> +it stands written—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>It is no small thing to have so loved the principle of +beauty as to perceive the necessary relation of beauty with +truth, and of both with joy. Keats was a great spirit, +and counts for far more than many even of his admirers +suppose, because this just and high perception made itself +clear to him. Therefore a dignity and a glory shed +gleams over his life, and happiness, too, was not a stranger +to it. “Nothing startles me beyond the moment,” he +says; “the setting sun will always set me to rights, or if +a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence +and pick about the gravel.” But he had terrible +bafflers,—consuming disease and early death. “I think,” +he writes to Reynolds, “If I had a free and healthy and +lasting organization of heart, and lungs as strong as an +ox’s, so as to be able to bear unhurt the shock of extreme +thought and sensation without weariness, I could pass my +life very nearly alone, though it should last eighty years. +But I feel my body too weak to support me to the height; +I am obliged continually to check myself, and be nothing.” +He had against him even more than this; he had against +him the blind power which we call Fortune. “O that +something fortunate,” he cries in the closing months of +his life, “had ever happened to me or my brothers!—then +I might hope,—but despair is forced upon me as a habit.” +So baffled and so sorely tried,—while laden, at the same +time, with a mighty formative thought requiring health, +and many days, and favoring circumstances, for its +adequate manifestation,—what wonder if the achievement +of Keats be partial and incomplete?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nevertheless, let and hindered as he was, and with a +short term and imperfect experience,—“young,” as he +says of himself, “and writing at random, straining after +particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, without +knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one +opinion,”—notwithstanding all this, by virtue of his feeling +<span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>for beauty and of his perception of the vital connection +of beauty with truth, Keats accomplished so much in +poetry, that in one of the two great modes by which poetry +interprets, in the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in +what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare. +“The tongue of Kean,” he says in an admirable criticism +of that great actor and of his enchanting elocution, “the +tongue of Kean must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees +and left them honeyless. There is an indescribable <em>gusto</em> +in his voice; in <cite>Richard</cite>, ‘Be stirring with the lark tomorrow, +gentle Norfolk!’ comes from him as through the +morning atmosphere towards which he yearns.” This +magic, this “indescribable <em>gusto</em> in the voice,” Keats himself, +too, exhibits in his poetic expression. No one else +in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression +quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of +loveliness. “I think,” he said humbly, “I shall be among +the English poets after my death.” He is; he is with +Shakespeare.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For the second great half of poetic interpretation, for +that faculty of moral interpretation which is in Shakespeare, +and is informed by him with the same power of +beauty as his naturalistic interpretation, Keats was not +ripe. For the architectonics of poetry, the faculty which +presides at the evolution of works like the <cite>Agamemnon</cite> or +<cite>Lear</cite>, he was not ripe. His <cite>Endymion</cite>, as he himself well +saw, is a failure, and his <cite>Hyperion</cite>, fine things as it contains, +is not a success. But in shorter things, where the +matured power of moral interpretation, and the high architectonics +which go with complete poetic development, are +not required, he <a id='corr341.31'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='his'>is</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_341.31'><ins class='correction' title='his'>is</ins></a></span> perfect. The poems which follow +prove it,—prove it far better by themselves than anything +which can be said about them will prove it. Therefore I +have chiefly spoken here of the man, and of the elements +in him which explain the production of such work. +Shakespearian work it is; not imitative, indeed, of Shakespeare, +but Shakespearian, because its expression has that +rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which +Shakespeare is the great master. To show such work is +<span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>to praise it. Let us now end by delighting ourselves with +a fragment of it, too broken to find a place among the +pieces which follow, but far too beautiful to be lost. It +is a fragment of an ode for May-day. O might I, he cries +to May, O might I</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in26'>“... thy smiles</div> + <div class='line'>Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,</div> + <div class='line'>By bards who died content on pleasant sward,</div> + <div class='line'>Leaving great verse unto a little clan!</div> + <div class='line'>O, give me their old vigor, and unheard</div> + <div class='line'>Save of the quiet primrose, and the span</div> + <div class='line in14'>Of heaven, and few years,</div> + <div class='line'>Rounded by thee, my song should die away,</div> + <div class='line in14'>Content as theirs,</div> + <div class='line'>Rich in the simple worship of a day!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span> + <h2 class='c005'>V. <br> <br> WORDSWORTH.<a id='r37'></a><a href='#f37' class='c007'><sup>[37]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>I remember hearing Lord Macaulay say, after Wordsworth’s +death, when subscriptions were being collected to +found a memorial of him, that ten years earlier more money +could have been raised in Cambridge alone, to do honor +to Wordsworth, than was now raised all through the country. +Lord Macaulay had, as we know, his own heightened +and telling way of putting things, and we must always +make allowance for it. But probably it is true that Wordsworth +has never, either before or since, been so accepted +and popular, so established in possession of the minds of +all who profess to care for poetry, as he was between the +years 1830 and 1840, and at Cambridge. From the very +first, no doubt, he had his believers and witnesses. But I +have myself heard him declare that, for he knew not how +many years, his poetry had never brought him in enough +to buy his shoe-strings. The poetry-reading public was +very slow to recognize him, and was very easily drawn +away from him. Scott effaced him with this public, +Byron effaced him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The death of Byron, seemed, however, to make an opening +for Wordsworth. Scott, who had for some time ceased +to produce poetry himself, and stood before the public as +a great novelist; Scott, too genuine himself not to feel the +profound genuineness of Wordsworth, and with an instinctive +recognition of his firm hold on nature and of +his local truth, always admired him sincerely, and praised +him generously. The influence of Coleridge upon young +<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>men of ability was then powerful, and was still gathering +strength; this influence told entirely in favor of Wordsworth’s +poetry. Cambridge was a place where Coleridge’s +influence had great action, and where Wordsworth’s +poetry, therefore, flourished especially. But even amongst +the general public its sale grew large, the eminence of its +author was widely recognized, and Rydal Mount became +an object of pilgrimage. I remember Wordsworth relating +how one of the pilgrims, a clergyman, asked him if he +had ever written anything besides the <cite>Guide to the Lakes</cite>. +Yes, he answered modestly, he had written verses. Not +every pilgrim was a reader, but the vogue was established +and the stream of pilgrims came.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Mr. Tennyson’s decisive appearance dates from 1842. +One cannot say that he effaced Wordsworth as Scott and +Byron had effaced him. The poetry of Wordsworth had +been so long before the public, the suffrage of good judges +was so steady and so strong in its favor, that by 1842 the +verdict of posterity, one may almost say, had been already +pronounced, and Wordsworth’s English fame was secure. +But the vogue, the ear and applause of the great body of +poetry-readers, never quite thoroughly perhaps his, he +gradually lost more and more, and Mr. Tennyson gained +them. Mr. Tennyson drew to himself, and away from +Wordsworth, the poetry-reading public, and the new generations. +Even in 1850, when Wordsworth died, this diminution +of popularity was visible, and occasioned the +remark of Lord Macaulay which I quoted at starting.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The diminution has continued. The influence of Coleridge +has waned, and Wordsworth’s poetry can no longer +draw succor from this ally. The poetry has not, however, +wanted eulogists; and it may be said to have brought its +eulogists luck, for almost every one who has praised +Wordsworth’s poetry has praised it well. But the public +has remained cold, or, at least, undetermined. Even the +abundance of Mr. Palgrave’s fine and skilfully chosen +specimens of Wordsworths, in the <cite>Golden Treasury</cite>, surprised +many readers, and gave offense to not a few. To +tenth-rate critics and compilers, for whom any violent +<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>shock to the public taste would be a temerity not to be +risked, it is still quite permissible to speak of Wordsworth’s +poetry, not only with ignorance, but with impertinence. +On the Continent he is almost unknown.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I cannot think, then, that Wordsworth has, up to this +time, at all obtained his deserts. “Glory,” said M. Renan +the other day, “glory after all is the thing which has the +best chance of not being altogether vanity.” Wordsworth +was a homely man, and himself would certainly never have +thought of talking of glory as that which, after all, has +the best chance of not being altogether vanity. Yet we +may well allow that few things are less vain than <em>real</em> +glory. Let us conceive of the whole group of civilized +nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, +one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working +towards a common result; a confederation whose +members have a due knowledge both of the past, out of +which they all proceed, and of one another. This was +the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will impose +itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies more and +more. Then to be recognized by the verdict of such +a confederation as a master, or even as a seriously and +eminently worthy workman, in one’s own line of intellectual +or spiritual activity, is indeed glory; a glory which it +would be difficult to rate too highly. For what could be +more beneficent, more salutary? The world is forwarded +by having its attention fixed on the best things; and here +is a tribunal, free from all suspicion of national and provincial +partiality, putting a stamp on the best things, and +recommending them for general honor and acceptance. +A nation, again, is furthered by recognition of its real +gifts and successes; it is encouraged to develop them further. +And here is an honest verdict, telling us which of +our supposed successes are really, in the judgment of the +great impartial world, and not only in our own private +judgment only, successes, and which are not.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is so easy to feel pride and satisfaction in one’s own +things, so hard to make sure that one is right in feeling +it! We have a great empire. But so had Nebuchadnezzar. +<span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>We extol the “unrivaled happiness” of our national +civilization. But then comes a candid friend, and remarks +that our upper class is materialized, our middle class vulgarized, +and our lower class brutalized. We are proud of +our painting, our music. But we find that in the judgment +of other people our painting is questionable, and our +music non-existent. We are proud of our men of science. +And here it turns out that the world is with us; we find +that in the judgment of other people, too, Newton among +the dead, and Mr. Darwin among the living, hold as high +a place as they hold in our national opinion.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Finally, we are proud of our poets and poetry. Now +poetry is nothing less than the most perfect speech of +man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to utter +the truth. It is no small thing, therefore, to succeed eminently +in poetry. And so much is required for duly estimating +success here, that about poetry it is perhaps hardest +to arrive at a sure general verdict, and takes longest. +Meanwhile, our own conviction of the superiority of our +national poets is not decisive, is almost certain to be +mingled, as we see constantly in English eulogy of Shakespeare, +with much of provincial infatuation. And we +know what was the opinion current amongst our neighbors +the French—people of taste, acuteness, and quick +literary tact—not a hundred years ago, about our great +poets. The old <cite>Biographie Universelle</cite> notices the pretension +of the English to a place for their poets among the +chief poets of the world, and says that this is a pretension +which to no one but an Englishman can ever seem admissible. +And the scornful, disparaging things said by +foreigners about Shakespeare and Milton, and about our +national over-estimate of them, have been often quoted, +and will be in every one’s remembrance.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A great change has taken place, and Shakespeare is +now generally recognized, even in France, as one of the +greatest of poets. Yes, some anti-Gallican cynic will say, +the French rank him with Corneille and with Victor +Hugo! But let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence +about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident +<span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>not long ago in the <cite>Correspondant</cite>, a French review which +not a dozen English people, I suppose, look at. The +writer is praising Shakespeare’s prose. With Shakespeare, +he says, “prose comes in whenever the subject, +being more familiar, is unsuited to the majestic English +iambic.” And he goes on: “Shakespeare is the king of +poetic rhythm and style, as well as the king of the realm +of thought; along with his dazzling prose, Shakespeare +has succeeded in giving us the most varied, the most harmonious +verse which has ever sounded upon the human +ear since the verse of the Greeks.” M. Henry Cochin, the +writer of this sentence, deserves our gratitude for it; it +would not be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sentence, +more justly. And when a foreigner and a Frenchman +writes thus of Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of +Milton, in whom there was so much to repel Goethe rather +than to attract him, that “nothing has been ever done so +entirely in the sense of the Greeks as <cite>Samson Agonistes</cite>,” +and that “Milton is in very truth a poet whom we must +treat with all reverence,” then we understand what constitutes +a European recognition of poets and poetry as +contradistinguished from a merely national recognition, +and that in favor both of Milton and of Shakespeare the +judgment of the high court of appeal has finally gone.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I come back to M. Renan’s praise of glory, from which +I started. Yes, real glory is a most serious thing, glory +authenticated by the Amphiotyonic Court of final appeal, +definite glory. And even for poets and poetry, long and +difficult as may be the process of arriving at the right +award, the right award comes at last, the definite glory +rests where it is deserved. Every establishment of such a +real glory is good and wholesome for mankind at large, +good and wholesome for the nation which produced the +poet crowned with it. To the poet himself it can seldom +do harm; for he, poor man, is in his grave, probably, long +before his glory crowns him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, +and certainly his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves +that this great and steady light of glory as yet shines +<span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>over him. He is not fully recognized at home; he is not +recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the +poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare +and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes +the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language +from the Elizabethan age to the present time. +Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot +well be brought into the comparison. But taking +the roll of our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare +and Milton, from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and +going through it,—Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, +Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, +Byron, Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are +dead),—I think it certain that Wordsworth’s name deserves +to stand, and will finally stand, above them all. +Several of the poets named have gifts and excellences +which Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance +of each as a whole, I say that Wordsworth seems to me to +have left a body of poetical work superior in power, in +interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, +to that which any one of the others has left.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But this is not enough to say. I think it certain, further, +that if we take the chief poetical names of the Continent +since the death of Molière, and, omitting Goethe, +confront the remaining names with that of Wordsworth, +the result is the same. Let us take Klopstock, Lessing, +Schiller, Uhland, Rückert, and Heine for Germany; Filicaia, +Alfieri, Manzoni, and Leopardi for Italy; Racine, +Boileau, Voltaire, André Chenier, Béranger, Lamartine, +Musset, M. Victor Hugo (he has been so long celebrated +that although he still lives I may be permitted to name +him) for France. Several of these, again, have evidently +gifts and excellences to which Wordsworth can make no +pretension. But in real poetical achievement it seems to +me indubitable that to Wordsworth, here again, belongs +the palm. It seems to me that Wordsworth has left behind +him a body of poetical work which wears, and will +wear, better on the whole than the performance of any +one of these personages, so far more brilliant and celebrated, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>most of them, than the homely poet of Rydal. +Wordsworth’s performance in poetry is on the whole, in +power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring +freshness, superior to theirs.</p> + +<p class='c001'>This is a high claim to make for Wordsworth. But if +it is a just claim, if Wordsworth’s place among the poets +who have appeared in the last two or three centuries is +after Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, indeed, but +before all the rest, then in time Wordsworth will have his +due. We shall recognize him in his place, as we recognize +Shakespeare and Milton; and not only we ourselves +shall recognize him, but he will be recognized by Europe +also. Meanwhile, those who recognize him already may +do well, perhaps, to ask themselves whether there are not +in the case of Wordsworth certain special obstacles which +hinder or delay his due recognition by others, and whether +these obstacles are not in some measure removable.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The <cite>Excursion</cite> and the <cite>Prelude</cite>, his poems of greatest +bulk, are by no means Wordsworth’s best work. His best +work is in his shorter pieces, and many indeed are there +of these which are of first-rate excellence. But in his +seven volumes the pieces of high merit are mingled with +a mass of pieces very inferior to them; so inferior to them +that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have +produced both. Shakespeare frequently has lines and +passages in a strain quite false, and which are entirely unworthy +of him. But one can imagine him smiling if one +could meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; +smiling and replying that he knew it perfectly well himself, +and what did it matter? But with Wordsworth the +case is different. Work altogether inferior, work quite +uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by him with evident +unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us +with the same faith and seriousness as his best work. +Now a drama or an epic fill the mind, and one does not +look beyond them; but in a collection of short pieces the +impression made by one piece requires to be continued +and sustained by the piece following. In reading Wordsworth +the impression made by one of his fine pieces is too +<span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>often dulled and spoiled by a very inferior piece coming +after it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some +sixty years; and it is no exaggeration to say that within +one single decade of those years, between 1798 and 1808, +almost all his really first-rate work was produced. A mass +of inferior work remains, work done before and after this +golden prime, imbedding the first-rate work and clogging +it, obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not unfrequently, +the high-wrought mood with which we leave it. +To be recognized far and wide as a great poet, to be possible +and receivable as a classic, Wordsworth needs to be +relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage which now +encumbers him. To administer this relief is indispensable, +unless he is to continue to be a poet for the few only,—a +poet valued far below his real worth by the world.</p> + +<p class='c001'>There is another thing. Wordsworth classified his +poems not according to any commonly received plan of +arrangement, but according to a scheme of mental physiology. +He has poems of the fancy, poems of the imagination, +poems of sentiment and reflection, and so on. His +categories are ingenious but far-fetched, and the result +of his employment of them is unsatisfactory. Poems are +separated one from another which possess a kinship of +subject or of treatment far more vital and deep than the +supposed unity of mental origin, which was Wordsworth’s +reason for joining them with others.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was infallible. +We may rely upon it that we shall not improve +upon the classification adopted by the Greeks for kinds of +poetry; that their categories of epic, dramatic, lyric, and +so forth, have a natural propriety, and should be adhered +to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two +categories a poem belongs; whether this or that poem is +to be called, for instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. +But there is to be found in every good poem a strain, a +predominant note, which determines the poem as belonging +to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here +is the best proof of the value of the classification, and of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>the advantage of adhering to it. Wordsworth’s poems +will never produce their due effect until they are freed +from their present artificial arrangement, and grouped +more naturally.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Disengaged from the quantity of inferior work which +now obscures them, the best poems of <a id='corr351.6'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Wordworth'>Wordsworth</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_351.6'><ins class='correction' title='Wordworth'>Wordsworth</ins></a></span>, I hear +many people say, would indeed stand out in great beauty, +but they would prove to be very few in number, scarcely +more than a half a dozen. I maintain, on the other hand, +that what strikes me with admiration, what establishes in +my opinion Wordsworth’s superiority, is the great and +ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even +after all his inferior work has been cleared away. He +gives us so much to rest upon, so much which communicates +his spirit and engages ours!</p> + +<p class='c001'>This is of very great importance. If it were a comparison +of single pieces, or of three or four pieces, by each +poet, I do not say that Wordsworth would stand decisively +above Gray, or Burns, or Coleridge, or Keats, or Manzoni, +or Heine. It is in his ampler body of powerful work that +I find his superiority. His good work itself, his work +which counts, is not all of it, of course, of equal value. +Some kinds of poetry are in themselves lower kinds than +others. The ballad kind is a lower kind; the didactic +kind, still more, is a lower kind. Poetry of this latter +sort counts, too, sometimes, by its biographical interest +partly, not by its poetical interest pure and simple; but +then this can only be when the poet producing it has the +power and importance of Wordsworth, a power and importance +which he assuredly did not establish by such +didactic poetry alone. Altogether, it is, I say, by the +great body of powerful and significant work which remains +to him, after every reduction and deduction has been +made, that Wordsworth’s superiority is proved.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To exhibit this body of Wordsworth’s best work, to +clear away obstructions from around it, and to let it speak +for itself, is what every lover of Wordsworth should desire. +Until this has been done, Wordsworth, whom we, to whom +he is dear, all of us know and feel to be so great a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>poet, has not had a fair chance before the world. When +once it has been done, he will make his way best, not by +our advocacy of him, but by his own worth and power. +We may safely leave him to make his way thus, we who +believe that a superior worth and power in poetry finds in +mankind a sense responsive to it and disposed at last to +recognize it. Yet at the outset, before he has been duly +known and recognized, we may do Wordsworth a service, +perhaps, by indicating in what his superior power and +worth will be found to consist, and in what it will not.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Long ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the noble +and profound application of ideas to life is the most +essential part of poetic greatness. I said that a great poet +receives his distinctive character of superiority from his +application, under the conditions immutably fixed by the +laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth, from his application, +I say, to his subject, whatever it may be, of the +ideas.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“On man, on nature, and on human life,”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is +Wordsworth’s own; and his superiority arises from his +powerful use, in his best pieces, his powerful application +to his subject, of ideas “on man, on nature, and on +human life.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Voltaire, with his signal acuteness, most truly remarked +that “no nation has treated in poetry moral ideas with +more energy and depth than the English nation.” And +he adds: “There, it seems to me, is the great merit of +the English poets.” Voltaire does not mean, by “treating +in poetry moral ideas,” the composing moral and didactic +poems;—that brings us but a very little way in poetry. +He means just the same thing as was meant when I spoke +above “of the noble and profound application of ideas to +life”; and he means the application of these ideas under +the conditions fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty +and poetic truth. If it is said that to call these ideas <em>moral</em> +ideas is to introduce a strong and injurious limitation, I answer +that it is to do nothing of the kind, because moral ideas +<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>are really so main a part of human life. The question, +<em>how to live</em>, is itself a moral idea; and it is the question +which most interests every man, and with which, in some +way or other, he is perpetually occupied. A large sense is +of course to be given to the term <em>moral</em>. Whatever bears +upon the question, “how to live,” comes under it.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv’st,</div> + <div class='line'>Live well; how long or short, permit to heaven.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once perceives, +a moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles +the forward-bending lover on the Grecian Urn, the +lover arrested and presented in immortal relief by the +sculptor’s hand before he can kiss, with the line,</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair—”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in20'>“We are such stuff</div> + <div class='line'>As dreams are made of, and our little life</div> + <div class='line'>Is rounded with a sleep,”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>he utters a moral idea.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Voltaire was right in thinking that the energetic and +profound treatment of moral ideas, in this large sense, is +what distinguishes the English poetry. He sincerely +meant praise, not dispraise or hint of limitation; and +they err who suppose that poetic limitation is a necessary +consequence of the fact, the fact being granted as Voltaire +states it. If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their +powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which +surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the term +ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, +because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree +moral.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that +poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness +of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of +ideas to life,—to the question: How to live. Morals are +<span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span>often treated in a narrow and false fashion; they are +bound up with systems of thought and belief which have +had their day; they are fallen into the hands of pedants +and professional dealers; they grow tiresome to some of +us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of +revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its +motto Omar Kheyam’s words: “Let us make up in the +tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque.” +Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in +a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but +where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves +in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is +to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible +word <em>life</em>, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A +poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt +against <em>life</em>; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas +is a poetry of indifference towards <em>life</em>.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the play of +the senses, or literary form and finish, or argumentative +ingenuity, in comparison with “the best and master +thing” for us, as he called it, the concern, how to live. +Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked +and undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they +were unthankful or cowardly. But the things might also +be over-prized, and treated as final when they are not. +They bear to life the relation which inns bear to home. +“As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on +the road, and liking it, were to stay forever at the inn! +Man, thou hast forgotten thine object; thy journey was +not <em>to</em> this, but <em>through</em> this. ‘But this inn is taking.’ +And how many other inns, too, are taking, and how many +fields and meadows! but as places of passage merely. +You have an object, which is this: to get home, to do +your duty to your family, friends, and fellow-countrymen, +to attain inward freedom, serenity, happiness, contentment. +Style takes your fancy, arguing takes your fancy, and you +forget your home and want to make your abode with them +and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking. +Who denies that they are taking? but as places, of passage, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>as inns. And when I say this, you suppose me to be +attacking the care for style, the care for argument. I am +not; I attack the resting in them, the not looking to the +end which is beyond them.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now, when we come across a poet like Théophile Gautier, +we have a poet who has taken up his abode at an inn, +and never got farther. There may be inducements to +this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to find delight +in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not +change the truth about him,—we only stay ourselves in +his inn along with him. And when we come across a +poet like Wordsworth, who sings</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope.</div> + <div class='line'>And melancholy fear subdued by faith,</div> + <div class='line'>Of blessed consolations in distress,</div> + <div class='line'>Of moral strength and intellectual power,</div> + <div class='line'>Of joy in widest commonalty spread”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>then we have a poet intent on “the best and master +thing,” and who prosecutes his journey home. We say, +for brevity’s sake, that he deals with <em>life</em>, because he deals +with that in which life really consists. This is what +Voltaire means to praise in the English poets,—this dealing +with what is really life. But always it is the mark of +the greatest poets that they deal with it; and to say that +the English poets are remarkable for dealing with it, is +only another way of saying, what is true, that in poetry +the English genius has especially shown its power.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Wordsworth deals with it, and his greatness lies in his +dealing with it so powerfully. I have named a number +of celebrated poets above all of whom he, in my +opinion, deserves to be placed. He is to be placed above +poets like Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, Schiller, +because these famous personages, with a thousand gifts +and merits, never, or scarcely ever, attain the distinctive +accent and utterance of the high and genuine poets—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="la">“Quique pii vates et Phœbo digna locuti,”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>at all. Burns, Keats, Heine, not to speak of others in +<span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>our list, have this accent;—who can doubt it? And at +the same time they have treasures of humor, felicity, +passion, for which in Wordsworth we shall look in vain. +Where, then, is Wordsworth’s superiority? It is here; +he deals with more of <em>life</em> than they do; he deals with +<em>life</em>, as a whole, more powerfully.</p> + +<p class='c001'>No Wordsworthian will doubt this. Nay, the fervent +Wordsworthian will add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen does, that +Wordsworth’s poetry is precious because his philosophy is +sound; that his “ethical system is as distinctive and capable +of exposition as Bishop Butler’s;” that his poetry is +informed by ideas which “fall spontaneously into a scientific +system of thought.” But we must be on our guard +against the Wordsworthians, if we want to secure for +Wordsworth his due rank as a poet. The Wordsworthians +are apt to praise him for the wrong things, and to lay far +too much stress upon what they call his philosophy. His +poetry is the reality, his philosophy,—so far, at least, as it +may put on the form and habit of “a scientific system of +thought,” and the more that it puts them on,—is the illusion. +Perhaps we shall one day learn to make this +proposition general, and to say: Poetry is the reality, philosophy +the illusion. But in Wordsworth’s case, at any +rate, we cannot do him justice until we dismiss his formal +philosophy.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The <cite>Excursion</cite> abounds with philosophy, and therefore +the <cite>Excursion</cite> is to the Wordsworthian what it never can +be to the disinterested lover of poetry,—a satisfactory +work. “Duty exists,” says Wordsworth, in the <cite>Excursion</cite>; +and then he proceeds thus—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in4'>“... Immutably survive,</div> + <div class='line'>For our support, the measures and the forms,</div> + <div class='line'>Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,</div> + <div class='line'>Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that +here is a sweet union of philosophy and poetry. But the +disinterested lover of poetry will feel that the lines carry +us really not a step farther than the proposition which +<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>they would interpret; that they are a tissue of elevated +but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Or let us come direct to the center of Wordsworth’s +philosophy, as “an ethical system, as distinctive and capable +of systematical exposition as Bishop Butler’s”—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“... One adequate support</div> + <div class='line'>For the calamities of mortal life</div> + <div class='line'>Exists, one only;—an assured belief</div> + <div class='line'>That the procession of our fate, howe’er</div> + <div class='line'>Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being</div> + <div class='line'>Of infinite benevolence and power;</div> + <div class='line'>Whose everlasting purposes embrace</div> + <div class='line'>All accidents, converting them to good.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, religious +and philosophic doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian +loves passages of such doctrine, and brings them +forward in proof of his poet’s excellence. But however +true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, none +of the characters of <em>poetic</em> truth, the kind of truth which +we require from a poet, and in which Wordsworth is really +strong.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Even the “intimation” of the famous Ode, those cornerstones +of the supposed philosophic system of Wordsworth,—the +idea of the high instincts and affections coming +out in childhood, testifying of a divine home recently +left, and fading away as our life proceeds,—this idea, of +undeniable beauty as a play of fancy, has itself not the +character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no real +solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her +beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth +himself as a child. But to say that universally this +instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die away +afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful. In many +people, perhaps with the majority of educated persons, +the love of nature is nearly imperceptible at ten years old, +but strong and operative at thirty. In general we may +say of these high instincts of early childhood, the base of +the alleged systematic philosophy of Wordsworth, what +Thucydides says of the early achievements of the Greek +<span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span>race: “It is impossible to speak with certainty of what is +so remote; but from all that we can really investigate, I +should say that they were no very great things.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Finally, the “scientific system of thought” in Wordsworth +gives us at least such poetry as this, which the +devout Wordsworthian accepts—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><a id='corr358.7'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='O'>“O</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_358.7'><ins class='correction' title='O'>“O</ins></a></span> for the coming of that glorious time</div> + <div class='line'>When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth</div> + <div class='line'>And best protection, this Imperial Realm,</div> + <div class='line'>While she exacts allegiance, shall admit</div> + <div class='line'>An obligation, on her part, to <em>teach</em></div> + <div class='line'>Them who are born to serve her and obey;</div> + <div class='line'>Binding herself by statute to secure,</div> + <div class='line'>For all the children whom her soil maintains,</div> + <div class='line'>The rudiments of letters, and inform</div> + <div class='line'>The mind with moral and religious truth.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the production +of these un-Voltairian lines must have been imposed on +him as a judgment! One can hear them being quoted at +a Social Science Congress; one can call up the whole +scene. A great room in one of our dismal provincial +towns; dusty air and jaded afternoon daylight; benches +full of men with bald heads and women in spectacles; +an orator lifting up his face from a manuscript written +within and without to declaim these lines of Wordsworth; +and in the soul of any poor child of nature who +may have wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of +lamentation, and mourning, and woe!</p> + +<p class='c001'>“But turn we,” as Wordsworth says, “from these bold, +bad men,” the haunters of Social Science Congresses. And +let us be on our guard, too, against the exhibitors and extollers +of a “scientific system of thought” in Wordsworth’s +poetry. The poetry will never be seen aright while they +thus exhibit it. The cause of its greatness is simple, and +may be told quite simply. Wordsworth’s poetry is great +because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth +feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered +to us in the simple primary affections and duties; and +because of the extraordinary power with which, in case +<span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to +make us share it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest +and most unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is +also accessible universally. Wordsworth brings us word, +therefore, according to his own strong and characteristic +line, he brings us word</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Of joy in widest commonalty spread.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Here is an immense advantage for a poet. Wordsworth +tells of what all seek, and tells of it at its truest and best +source, and yet a source where all may go and draw for it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything is +precious which Wordsworth, standing even at this perennial +and beautiful source, may give us. Wordsworthians +are apt to talk as if it must be. They will speak with the +same reverence of <cite>The Sailor’s Mother</cite>, for example, as of +<cite>Lucy Gray</cite>. They do their master harm by such lack of +discrimination. <cite>Lucy Gray</cite> is a beautiful success; <cite>The +Sailor’s Mother</cite> is a failure. To give aright what he +wishes to give, to interpret and render successfully, is not +always within Wordsworth’s own command. It is within +no poet’s command; here is the part of the Muse, the inspiration, +the God, the “not ourselves.” In Wordsworth’s +case, the accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration, +is of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, is +so evidently filled with a new and sacred energy when the +inspiration is upon him; no poet, when it fails him, is so +left “weak as is a breaking wave.” I remember hearing +him say that “Goethe’s poetry was not inevitable enough.” +The remark is striking and true; no line in Goethe, as +Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came +there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe’s poetry is not inevitable; +not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth’s +poetry, when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as +Nature herself. It might seem that Nature not only gave +him the matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him. +He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not +<span class='pageno' id='Page_360'>360</span>to catch at times his master’s manner, and he has fine Miltonic +lines; but he has no assured poetic style of his own, +like Milton. When he seeks to have a style he falls into +ponderosity and pomposity. In the <cite>Excursion</cite> we have +his style, as an artistic product of his own creation; and +although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize Wordsworth’s +real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of +the <cite>Excursion</cite>, as a work of poetic style: “This will never +do.” And yet magical as is that power, which Wordsworth +has not, of assured and possessed poetic style, he +has something which is an equivalent for it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Every one who has any sense for these things feels the +subtle turn, the heightening, which is given to a poet’s +verse by his genius for style. We can feel it in the</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>of Shakespeare; in the</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in4'>“... though fall’n on evil days,</div> + <div class='line'>On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton’s +power of poetic style which gives such worth to <cite>Paradise +Regained</cite>, and makes a great poem of a work in which +Milton’s imagination does not soar high. Wordsworth +has in constant possession, and at command, no style +of this kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had +read the great poets too well, not to catch, as I have +already remarked, something of it occasionally. We find +it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in such a +phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton’s—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in8'>“the fierce confederate storm</div> + <div class='line'>Of sorrow barricadoed evermore</div> + <div class='line'>Within the walls of cities;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is +undeniable, is more properly that of eloquent prose than +the subtle heightening and change wrought by genuine +poetic style. It is style, again, and the elevation given +by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of <cite>Laodameia</cite>. +Still the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span>if we are to seize his true and most characteristic +form of expression, is a line like this from <cite>Michael</cite>—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“And never lifted up a single stone.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of +poetic style, strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression +of the highest and most truly expressive kind.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect +plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight and +force of that which with entire fidelity it utters, Burns +could show him.</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“The poor inhabitant below</div> + <div class='line'>Was quick to learn and wise to know,</div> + <div class='line'>And keenly felt the friendly glow</div> + <div class='line in2'>And softer flame;</div> + <div class='line'>But thoughtless follies laid him low</div> + <div class='line in2'>And stain’d his name.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to Wordsworth; +and if Wordsworth did great things with this +nobly plain manner, we must remember, what indeed he +himself would always have been forward to acknowledge, +that Burns used it before him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Still Wordsworth’s use of it has something unique and +unmatchable. Nature herself seems, I say, to take the +pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own +bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two +causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth +feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere +and natural character of his subject itself. He can +and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most +plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression +may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem +of <cite>Resolution and Independence</cite>; but it is bald as the bare +mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of +grandeur.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, +of profound truth of subject with profound truth +of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those +<span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span>which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a +warm admiration for <cite>Laodameia</cite> and for the great <cite>Ode</cite>; +but if I am to tell the very truth, I find <cite>Laodameia</cite> not +wholly free from something artificial, and the great <cite>Ode</cite> +not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to +pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth’s +unique power, I should rather choose poems such +as <cite>Michael</cite>, <cite>The Fountain</cite>, <cite>The Highland Reaper</cite>. And +poems with the peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes +these, Wordsworth produced in considerable +number; besides very many other poems of which the +worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still +exceedingly high.</p> + +<p class='c001'>On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not only +is Wordsworth eminent by reason of the goodness of his +best work, but he is eminent also by reason of the great +body of good work which he has left to us. With the ancients +I will not compare him. In many respects the ancients +are far above us, and yet there is something that we +demand which they can never give. Leaving the ancients, +let us come to the poets and poetry of Christendom. +Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are altogether +larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical +heaven than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, +among the moderns, we are to find his superiors.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To disengage the poems which show his power, and to +present them to the English-speaking public and to the +world, is the object of this volume. I by no means say +that it contains all which in Wordsworth’s poems is interesting. +Except in the case of <cite>Margaret</cite>, a story composed +separately from the rest of the <cite>Excursion</cite>, and which belongs +to a different part of England, I have not ventured +on detaching portions of poems, or on giving any piece +otherwise than as Wordsworth himself gave it. But under +the conditions imposed by this reserve, the volume contains, +I think, everything, or nearly everything, which +may best serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, +nothing which may disserve him.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians; and if we are +<span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>to get Wordsworth recognized by the public and by the +world, we must recommend him not in the spirit of a +clique, but in the spirit of disinterested lovers of poetry. +But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I can read with +pleasure and edification <cite>Peter Bell</cite>, and the whole series +of <cite>Ecclesiastical Sonnets</cite>, and the address to Mr. Wilkinson’s +spade, and even the <cite>Thanksgiving Ode</cite>;—everything +of Wordsworth, I think, except <cite>Vaudracour and Julia</cite>. +It is not for nothing that one has been brought up in the +veneration of a man so truly worthy of homage; that one +has seen him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, +and been familiar with his country. No Wordsworthian +has a tenderer affection for this pure and sage master than +I, or is less really offended by his defects. But Wordsworth +is something more than the pure and sage master of +a small band of devoted followers, and we ought not to +rest satisfied until he is seen to be what he is. He is one +of the very chief glories of English Poetry; and by +nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. Let us +lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him recognized +as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, +as widely as possible and as truly as possible, his own word +concerning his poems: ‘They will co-operate with the benign +tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in +their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, +and happier.’</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_364'>364</span> + <h2 class='c005'>VI. <br> <br> BYRON.<a id='r38'></a><a href='#f38' class='c007'><sup>[38]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>When at last I held in my hand the volume of poems +which I had chosen from Wordsworth, and began to turn +over its pages, there arose in me almost immediately the +desire to see beside it, as a companion volume, a like collection +of the best poetry of Byron. Alone amongst our +poets of the earlier part of this century, Byron and Wordsworth +not only furnish material enough for a volume of +this kind, but also, as it seems to me, they both of them +gain considerably by being thus exhibited. There are +poems of Coleridge and of Keats equal, if not superior, to +anything of Byron or Wordsworth; but a dozen pages or +two will contain them, and the remaining poetry is of a +quality much inferior. Scott never, I think, rises as a +poet to the level of Byron and Wordsworth at all. On the +other hand, he never falls below his own usual level very +far; and by a volume of selections from him, therefore, +his effectiveness is not increased. As to Shelley there +will be more question; and indeed Mr. Stopford Brooke, +whose accomplishments, eloquence, and love of poetry we +must all recognize and admire, has actually given us Shelley +in such a volume. But for my own part I cannot +think that Shelley’s poetry, except by snatches and fragments, +has the value of the good work of Wordsworth and +Byron; or that it is possible for even Mr. Stopford Brooke +to make up a volume of selections from him which, for +real substance, power, and worth, can at all take rank with +a like volume from Byron or Wordsworth.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Shelley knew quite well the difference between the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span>achievement of such a poet as Byron and his own. He +praises Byron too unreservedly, but he sincerely felt, and +he was right in feeling, that Byron was a greater poetical +power than himself. As a man, Shelley is at a number of +points immeasurably Byron’s superior; he is a beautiful +and enchanting spirit, whose vision, when we call it up, +has far more loveliness, more charm for our soul, than +the vision of Byron. But all the personal charm of Shelley +cannot hinder us from at last discovering in his poetry +the incurable want, in general, of a sound subject-matter, +and the incurable fault, in consequence, of unsubstantiality. +Those who extol him as the poet of clouds, the +poet of sunsets, are only saying that he did not, in fact, +lay hold upon the poet’s right subject-matter; and in +honest truth, with all his charm of soul and spirit, and +with all his gift of musical diction and movement, he +never, or hardly ever, did. Except, as I have said, for a +few short things and single stanzas, his original poetry is +less satisfactory than his translations, for in these the +subject-matter was found for him. Nay, I doubt whether +his delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far +more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and +tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than +his poetry.</p> + +<p class='c001'>There remain to be considered Byron and Wordsworth. +That Wordsworth affords good material for a volume of +selections, and that he gains by having his poetry thus presented, +is an old belief of mine which led me lately to make +up a volume of poems chosen out of Wordsworth, and to +bring it before the public. By its kind reception of the +volume, the public seems to show itself a partaker in my belief. +Now Byron also supplies plenty of material for a like +volume, and he too gains, I think, by being so presented. +Mr. Swinburne urges, indeed, that “Byron, who rarely +wrote anything either worthless or faultless, can only be +judged or appreciated in the mass; the greatest of his works +was his whole work taken together.” It is quite true that +Byron rarely wrote anything either worthless or faultless; +it is quite true also that in the appreciation of Byron’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span>power a sense of the amount and variety of his work, +defective though much of his work is, enters justly into +our estimate. But although there may be little in Byron’s +poetry which can be pronounced either worthless or faultless, +there are portions of it which are far higher in worth +and far more free from fault than others. And although, +again, the abundance and variety of his production is undoubtedly +a proof of his power, yet I question whether +by reading everything which he gives us we are so likely +to acquire an admiring sense even of his variety and abundance, +as by reading what he gives us at his happier +moments. Varied and abundant he amply proves himself +even by this taken alone. Receive him absolutely without +omission or compression, follow his whole out-pouring +stanza by stanza and line by line from the very commencement +to the very end, and he is capable of being tiresome.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Byron has told us himself that the <cite>Giaour</cite> “is but a +string of passages.” He has made full confession of his +own negligence. “No one,” says he, “has done more +through negligence to corrupt the language.” This accusation +brought by himself against his poems is not just; +but when he goes on to say of them, that “their faults, +whatever they may be, are those of negligence and not of +labor,” he says what is perfectly true. “<cite>Lara</cite>,” he declares, +“I wrote while undressing after coming home from +balls and masquerades, in the year of revelry, 1814. The +<cite>Bride</cite> was written in four, the <cite>Corsair</cite> in ten days.” He +calls this “a humiliating confession, as it proves my own +want of judgment in publishing, and the public’s in reading, +things which cannot have stamina for permanence.” +Again he does his poems injustice; the producer of such +poems could not but publish them, the public could not +but read them. Nor could Byron have produced his work +in any other fashion; his poetic work could not have +first grown and matured in his own mind, and then come +forth as an organic whole; Byron had not enough of the +artist in him for this, nor enough of self-command. +He wrote, as he truly tells us, to relieve himself, and he +<span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span>went on writing because he found the relief become indispensable. +But it was inevitable that works so produced +should be, in general, “a string of passages,” poured out, +as he describes them, with rapidity and excitement, and +with new passages constantly suggesting themselves, and +added while his work was going through the press. It is +evident that we have here neither deliberate scientific construction, +nor yet the instinctive artistic creation of poetic +wholes; and that to take passages from work produced as +Byron’s was is a very different thing from taking passages +out of the <cite><a id='corr367.11'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Ædipus'>Œdipus</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_367.11'><ins class='correction' title='Ædipus'>Œdipus</ins></a></span></cite> or the <cite>Tempest</cite>, and deprives the poetry +far less of its advantage.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Nay, it gives advantage to the poetry, instead of depriving +it of any. Byron, I said, has not a great artist’s +profound and patient skill in combining an action or in +developing a character,—a skill which we must watch and +follow if we are to do justice to it. But he has a wonderful +power of vividly conceiving a single incident, a single +situation; of throwing himself upon it, grasping it as if it +were real and he saw and felt it, and of making us see +and feel it too. The <cite>Giaour</cite> is, as he truly called it, “a +string of passages,” not a work moving by a deep internal +law of development to a necessary end; and our total impression +from it cannot but receive from this, its inherent +defect, a certain dimness and indistinctness. But the incidents +of the journey and death of Hassan, in that poem, +are conceived and presented with a vividness not to be +surpassed; and our impression from them is correspondingly +clear and powerful. In <cite>Lara</cite>, again, there is no adequate +development either of the character of the chief +personage or of the action of the poem; our total impression +from the work is a confused one. Yet such an incident +as the disposal of the slain Ezzelin’s body passes before +our eyes as if we actually saw it. And in the same +way as these bursts of incident, bursts of sentiment also, +living and vigorous, often occur in the midst of poems +which must be admitted to be but weakly-conceived and +loosely-combined wholes. Byron cannot but be a gainer +by having attention concentrated upon what is vivid, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>powerful, effective in his work, and withdrawn from what +is not so.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Byron, I say, cannot but be a gainer by this, just as +Wordsworth is a gainer by a like proceeding. I esteem +Wordsworth’s poetry so highly, and the world, in my opinion, +has done it such scant justice, that I could not rest +satisfied until I had fulfilled, on Wordsworth’s behalf, a +long-cherished desire;—had disengaged, to the best of my +power, his good work from the inferior work joined with +it, and had placed before the public the body of his good +work by itself. To the poetry of Byron the world has +ardently paid homage; full justice from his contemporaries, +perhaps even more than justice, his torrent of +poetry received. His poetry was admired, adored, “with +all its imperfections on its head,”—in spite of negligence, +in spite of diffuseness, in spite of repetitions, in spite of +whatever faults it possessed. His name is still great and +brilliant. Nevertheless the hour of irresistible vogue has +passed away for him; even for Byron it could not but pass +away. The time has come for him, as it comes for all +poets, when he must take his real and permanent place, no +longer depending upon the vogue of his own day and upon +the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. Whatever we may +think of him, we shall not be subjugated by him as they +were; for, as he cannot be for us what he was for them, +we cannot admire him so hotly and indiscriminately as +they. His faults of negligence, of diffuseness, of repetition, +his faults of whatever kind, we shall abundantly feel +and unsparingly criticise; the mere interval of time between +us and him makes disillusion of this kind inevitable. +But how then will Byron stand, if we relieve him too, so +far as we can, of the encumbrance of his inferior and weakest +work, and if we bring before us his best and strongest +work in one body together? That is the question which +I, who can even remember the latter years of Byron’s +vogue, and have myself felt the expiring wave of that +mighty influence, but who certainly also regard him, and +have long regarded him, without illusion, cannot but ask +myself, cannot but seek to answer. The present volume +<span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>is an attempt to provide adequate data for answering +it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Byron has been over-praised, no doubt. “Byron is one +of our French superstitions,” says M. Edmond Scherer; +but where has Byron not been a superstition? He pays +now the penalty of this exaggerated worship. “Alone +among the English poets his contemporaries, Byron,” said +M. Taine, “<span lang="fr"><i>atteint à la cîme</i></span>,—gets to the top of the +poetic mountain.” But the idol that M. Taine had thus +adored M. Scherer is almost for burning. “In Byron,” +he declares, “there is a remarkable inability ever to lift +himself into the region of real poetic art,—art impersonal +and disinterested,—at all. He has fecundity, eloquence, +wit, but even these qualities themselves are confined within +somewhat narrow limits. He has treated hardly any +subject but one,—himself; now the man, in Byron, is of +a nature even less sincere than the poet. This beautiful +and blighted being is at bottom a coxcomb. He posed all +his life long.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Our poet could not well meet with more severe and unsympathetic +criticism. However, the praise often given +to Byron has been so exaggerated as to provoke, perhaps, +a reaction in which he is unduly disparaged. “As various +in composition as Shakespeare himself, Lord Byron has +embraced,” says Sir Walter Scott, “every topic of human +life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its +slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones.” +It is not surprising that some one with a cool head should +retaliate, on such provocation as this, by saying: “He +has treated hardly any subject but one, <em>himself</em>.” “In +the very grand and tremendous drama of <cite>Cain</cite>,” says +Scott, “Lord Byron has certainly matched Milton on his +own ground.” And Lord Byron has done all this, Scott +adds “while managing his pen with the careless and negligent +ease of a man of quality.” Alas, “managing his +pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality,” +Byron wrote in his <cite>Cain</cite>—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Souls that dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in</div> + <div class='line'>His everlasting face, and tell him that</div> + <div class='line'>His evil is not good;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span>or he wrote—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in10'>“... And <em>thou</em> would’st go on aspiring</div> + <div class='line'>To the great double Mysteries! the <em>two Principles</em>!”<a id='r39'></a><a href='#f39' class='c007'><sup>[39]</sup></a></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>One has only to repeat to oneself a line from <cite>Paradise +Lost</cite> in order to feel the difference.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Sainte-Beuve, speaking of that exquisite master of language, +the Italian poet Leopardi, remarks how often we +see the alliance, singular though it may at first sight appear, +of the poetical genius with the genius for scholarship +and philology. Dante and Milton are instances which +will occur to every one’s mind. Byron is so negligent in +his poetical style, he is often, to say the truth, so slovenly, +slipshod, and infelicitous, he is so little haunted by the +true artist’s fine passion for the correct use and <a id='corr370.14'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='consummamate'>consummate</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_370.14'><ins class='correction' title='consummamate'>consummate</ins></a></span> +management of words, that he may be described as +having for this artistic gift the insensibility of the barbarian;—which +is perhaps only another and a less flattering +way of saying, with Scott, that he “manages his pen with +the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality.” Just +of a piece with the rhythm of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Dare you await the event of a few minutes’</div> + <div class='line'>Deliberation?”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“All shall be void—</div> + <div class='line in2'>Destroy’d!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>is the diction of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>‘Which now is painful to these eyes,</div> + <div class='line'>Which had not seen the sun to rise;</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“... there let him lay!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or of the famous passage beginning</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“He who hath bent him o’er the dead;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>with those trailing relatives, that crying grammatical +solecism, that inextricable anacolouthon! To class the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>work of the author of such things with the work of the +authors of such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“In the dark backward and abysm of time”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,</div> + <div class='line'>Or the tale of Troy divine”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>is ridiculous. Shakespeare and Milton, with their secret of +consummate felicity in diction and movement, are of another +and an altogether higher order from Byron, nay, for +that matter, from Wordsworth also; from the author of +such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Sol hath dropt into his harbour”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or (if Mr. Ruskin pleases) as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Parching summer hath no warrant”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>as from the author of</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“All shall be void—</div> + <div class='line in2'>Destroy’d!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>With a poetical gift and a poetical performance of the very +highest order, the slovenliness and tunelessness of much of +Byron’s production, the pompousness and ponderousness +of much of Wordsworth’s are incompatible. Let us admit +this to the full.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Moreover, while we are hearkening to M. Scherer, and +going along with him in his faultfinding, let us admit, +too, that the man in Byron is in many respects as unsatisfactory +as the poet. And, putting aside all direct moral +criticism of him,—with which we need not concern ourselves +here,—we shall find that he is unsatisfactory in the +same way. Some of Byron’s most crying faults as a man,—his +vulgarity, his affectation,—are really akin to the +faults of commonness, of want of art, in his workmanship +as a poet. The ideal nature for the poet and artist is that +of the finely touched and finely gifted man, the εὐφυής of +the Greeks; now, Byron’s nature was in substance not +<span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span>that of the εὐφυής at all, but rather, as I have said, of the +barbarian. The want of fine perception which made it +possible for him to formulate either the comparison between +himself and Rousseau, or his reason for getting Lord +Delawarr excused from a “licking” at Harrow, is exactly +what made possible for him also his terrible dealings in, +<em>An ye wool</em>; <em>I have redde thee</em>; <em>Sunburn me</em>; <em>Oons, and +it is excellent well</em>. It is exactly, again, what made possible +for him his precious dictum that Pope is a Greek +temple, and a string of other criticisms of the like force; +it is exactly, in fine, what deteriorated the quality of his +poetic production. If we think of a good representative +of that finely touched and exquisitely gifted nature which +is the ideal nature for the poet and artist,—if we think of +Raphael, for instance, who truly is εὐφυής just as Byron is +not,—we shall bring into clearer light the connection in +Byron between the faults of the man and the faults of the +poet. With Raphael’s character Byron’s sins of vulgarity +and false criticism would have been impossible, just as with +Raphael’s art Byron’s sins of common and bad workmanship.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Yes, all this is true, but it is not the whole truth about +Byron nevertheless; very far from it. The severe criticism +of M. Scherer by no means gives us the whole truth +about Byron, and we have not yet got it in what has been +added to that criticism here. The negative part of the +true criticism of him we perhaps have; the positive part, +by far the more important, we have not. Byron’s admirers +appeal eagerly to foreign testimonies in his favor. +Some of these testimonies do not much move me; but one +testimony there is among them which will always carry, +with me at any rate, very great weight,—the testimony of +Goethe. Goethe’s sayings about Byron were uttered, it +must however be remembered, at the height of Byron’s +vogue, when that puissant and splendid personality was +exercising its full power of attraction. In Goethe’s own +household there was an atmosphere of glowing Byron-worship; +his daughter-in-law was a passionate admirer of +Byron, nay, she enjoyed and prized his poetry, as did +<span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span>Tieck and so many others in Germany at that time, much +above the poetry of Goethe himself. Instead of being irritated +and rendered jealous by this, a nature like Goethe’s +was inevitably led by it to heighten, not lower, the note of +his praise. The Time-Spirit, or <em>Zeit-Geist</em>, he would himself +have said, was working just then for Byron. This working +of the <em>Zeit-Geist</em> in his favor was an advantage added +to Byron’s other advantages, an advantage of which he +had a right to get the benefit. This is what Goethe would +have thought and said to himself; and so he would have +been led even to heighten somewhat his estimate of Byron, +and to accentuate the emphasis of praise. Goethe speaking +of Byron at that moment was not and could not be quite the +same cool critic as Goethe speaking of Dante, or Molière, +or Milton. This, I say, we ought to remember in reading +Goethe’s judgments on Byron and his poetry. Still, if we +are careful to bear this in mind, and if we quote Goethe’s +praise correctly,—which is not always done by those who +in this country quote it,—and if we add to it that great and +due qualification added to it by Goethe himself,—which +so far as I have seen has never yet been done by his quoters +in this country at all,—then we shall have a judgment on +Byron, which comes, I think, very near to the truth, and +which may well command our adherence.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In his judicious and interesting Life of Byron, Professor +Nichol quotes Goethe as saying that Byron “is undoubtedly +to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century.” +What Goethe did really say was “the greatest <em>talent</em>,” not +“the greatest <em>genius</em>.” The difference is important, because, +while talent gives the notion of power in a man’s +performance, genius gives rather the notion of felicity and +perfection in it; and this divine gift of consummate +felicity by no means, as we have seen, belongs to Byron +and to his poetry. Goethe said that Byron “must unquestionably +be regarded as the greatest talent of the +century.”<a id='r40'></a><a href='#f40' class='c007'><sup>[40]</sup></a> He said of him moreover: “The English +may think of Byron what they please, but it is certain that +<span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span>they can point to no poet who is his like. He is different +from all the rest, and in the main greater.” Here, again, +<a id='corr374.3'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Professer'>Professor</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_374.3'><ins class='correction' title='Professer'>Professor</ins></a></span> Nichol translates: “They can show no (living) +poet who is to be compared to him;”—inserting the word +<em>living</em>, I suppose, to prevent its being thought that Goethe +would have ranked Byron, as a poet, above Shakespeare +and Milton. But Goethe did not use, or, I think, mean +to imply, any limitation such as is added by Professor +Nichol. Goethe said simply, and he meant to say, “<em>no</em> +poet.” Only the words which follow<a id='r41'></a><a href='#f41' class='c007'><sup>[41]</sup></a> ought not, I think, +to be rendered, “who is to be compared to him,” that is +to say, “<em>who is his equal as a poet</em>.” They mean rather, +“who may properly be compared with him,” “<em>who is +his parallel</em>.” And when Goethe said that Byron was “in +the main greater” than all the rest of the English poets, +he was not so much thinking of the strict rank, as poetry, +of Byron’s production; he was thinking of that wonderful +personality of Byron which so enters into his poetry, +and which Goethe called “a personality such, for its eminence, +as has never been yet, and such as is not likely to +come again.” He was thinking of that “daring, dash, +and grandiosity,”<a id='r42'></a><a href='#f42' class='c007'><sup>[42]</sup></a> of Byron, which are indeed so splendid; +and which were, so Goethe maintained, of a character to +do good, because “everything great is formative,” and +what is thus formative does us good.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The faults which went with this greatness, and which +impaired Byron’s poetical work, Goethe saw very well. +He saw the constant state of warfare and combat, the +“negative and polemical working,” which makes Byron’s +poetry a poetry in which we can so little find rest; he saw +the <span lang="de"><i>Hang zum Unbegrenzten</i></span>, the straining after the unlimited, +which made it impossible for Byron to produce +poetic wholes such as the <cite>Tempest</cite> or <cite>Lear</cite>; he saw the <span lang="de"><i>zu +viel Empirie</i></span>, the promiscuous adoption of all the matter +offered to the poet by life, just as it was offered, without +thought or patience for the mysterious transmutation to +<span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span>be operated on this matter by poetic form. But in a sentence +which I cannot, as I say, remember to have yet seen +quoted in any English criticism of Byron, Goethe lays his +finger on the cause of all these defects in Byron, and on his +real source of weakness both as a man and as a poet. +“The moment he reflects, he is a child,” says Goethe;—“<span lang="de"><i>sobald +er reflectirt ist er ein Kind</i></span>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now if we take the two parts of Goethe’s criticism of +Byron, the favorable and the unfavorable, and put them +together, we shall have, I think, the truth. On the one +hand, a splendid and puissant personality—a personality +“in eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely +to come again”; of which the like, therefore, is not to be +found among the poets of our nation, by which Byron “is +different from all the rest, and in the main greater.” Byron +is, moreover, “the greatest talent of our century.” On +the other hand, this splendid personality and unmatched +talent, this unique Byron, “is quite too much in the dark +about himself;”<a id='r43'></a><a href='#f43' class='c007'><sup>[43]</sup></a> nay, “the moment he begins to reflect, +he is a child.” There we have, I think, Byron complete; +and in estimating him and ranking him we have to strike +a balance between the gain which accrues to his poetry, as +compared with the productions of other poets, from his +superiority, and the loss which accrues to it from his +defects.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A balance of this kind has to be struck in the case of all +poets except the few supreme masters in whom a profound +criticism of life exhibits itself in indissoluble connection +with the laws of poetic truth and beauty. I have seen it +said that I allege poetry to have for its characteristic this: +that it is a criticism of life; and that I make it to be thereby +distinguished from prose, which is something else. So +far from it, that when I first used this <a id='corr375.33'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='expressson'>expression</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_375.33'><ins class='correction' title='expressson'>expression</ins></a></span>, <em>a criticism +of life</em>, now many years ago, it was to literature in +general that I applied it, and not to poetry in especial. +“The end and aim of all literature,” I said, “is, if one +considers it attentively, nothing but that: <em>a criticism of +life</em>.” And so it surely is; the main end and aim of all +<span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>our utterance, whether in prose or in verse, is surely a +criticism of life. We are not brought much on our way, +I admit, towards an adequate definition of poetry as distinguished +from prose by that truth; still a truth it is, +and poetry can never prosper if it is forgotten. In poetry, +however, the criticism of life has to be made conformably +to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and +seriousness of substance and matter, felicity and perfection +of diction and manner, as these are exhibited in the best +poets, are what constitute a criticism of life made in conformity +with the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty; and +it is by knowing and feeling the work of those poets, that +we learn to recognize the fulfilment and non-fulfilment of +such conditions.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The moment, however, that we leave the small band of +the very best poets, the true classics, and deal with poets +of the next rank, we shall find that perfect truth and +seriousness of matter, in close alliance with perfect truth +and felicity of manner, is the rule no longer. We have +now to take what we can get, to forego something here, +to admit compensation for it there; to strike a balance, +and to see how our poets stand in respect to one another +when that balance has been struck. Let us observe how +this is so.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We will take three poets, among the most considerable +of our century: Leopardi, Byron, Wordsworth. Giacomo +Leopardi was ten years younger than Byron, and he died +thirteen years after him; both of them, therefore, died +young—Byron at the age of thirty-six, Leopardi at the +age of thirty-nine. Both of them were of noble birth, +both of them suffered from physical defect, both of them +were in revolt against the established facts and beliefs of +their age; but here the likeness between them ends. The +stricken poet of Recanati had no country, for an Italy in +his day did not exist; he had no audience, no celebrity. +The volume of his poems, published in the very year of +Byron’s death, hardly sold, I suppose, its tens, while the +volumes of Byron’s poetry were selling their tens of thousands. +And yet Leopardi has the very qualities which +<span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span>we have found wanting to Byron; he has the sense for +form and style, the passion for just expression, the sure +and firm touch of the true artist. Nay, more, he has a +grave fulness of knowledge, an insight into the real bearings +of the questions which as a sceptical poet he raises, a +power of seizing the real point, a lucidity, with which the +author of <cite>Cain</cite> has nothing to compare. I can hardly +imagine Leopardi reading the</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in4'>“... And <em>thou</em> would’st go on aspiring</div> + <div class='line'>To the great double Mysteries! the <em>two Principles</em>!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or following Byron in his theological controversy with +Dr. Kennedy, without having his features overspread by +a calm and fine smile, and remarking of his brilliant contemporary, +as Goethe did, that “the moment he begins +to reflect, he is a child.” But indeed whoever wishes to +feel the full superiority of Leopardi over Byron in philosophic +thought, and in the expression of it, has only to +read one paragraph of one poem, the paragraph of <em>La +Ginestra</em>, beginning</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“<span lang="it">Sovente in queste piagge,</span>”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and ending</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">“Non so se il riso o la pietà prevale.”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c016'>In like manner, Leopardi is at many points the poetic +superior of Wordsworth too. He has a far wider culture +than Wordsworth, more mental lucidity, more freedom +from illusions as to the real character of the established +fact and of reigning conventions; above all, this Italian, +with his pure and sure touch, with his fineness of perception, +is far more of the artist. Such a piece of pompous +dulness as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“O for the coming of that glorious time,”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and all the rest of it, or such lumbering verse as Mr. +Ruskin’s enemy,</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Parching summer hath no warrant”—</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>would have been as impossible to Leopardi as to Dante. +Where, then, is Wordsworth’s superiority? for the worth +of what he has given us in poetry I hold to be greater, on +the whole, than the worth of what Leopardi has given us. +It is in Wordsworth’s sound and profound sense</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Of joy in widest commonalty spread;”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>whereas Leopardi remains with his thoughts ever fixed +upon the <span lang="it"><i>essenza insanabile</i></span>, upon the <span lang="it"><i>acerbo, indegno mistero +delle cose</i></span>. It is in the power with which Wordsworth +feels the resources of joy offered to us in nature, offered +to us in the primary human affections and duties, and in +the power with which, in his moments of inspiration, he +renders this joy, and makes us, too, feel it; a force greater +than himself seeming to lift him and to prompt his tongue, +so that he speaks in a style far above any style of which +he has the constant command, and with a truth far beyond +any philosophic truth of which he has the conscious +and assured possession. Neither Leopardi nor Wordsworth +are of the same order with the great poets who made +such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>Τλητὸν γὰρ Moῖραι θυμὸν θέσαν ὰνθρώποισιν·</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="it">“In la sua volontade e nostra <a id='corr378.23'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='pace;'>pace;”</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_378.23'><ins class='correction' title='pace;'>pace;”</ins></a></span></span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>or as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line in20'>“... Men must endure</div> + <div class='line'>Their going hence, even as their coming hither;</div> + <div class='line'>Ripeness is all.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>But as compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at +many points less lucid, though far less a master of style, +far less of an artist, gains so much by his criticism of life +being, in certain matters of profound importance, healthful +and true, whereas Leopardi’s pessimism is not, that the +value of Wordsworth’s poetry, on the whole, stands higher +for us than that of Leopardi’s, as it stands higher for us, +I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe’s.</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>Byron’s poetic value is also greater, on the whole, than +Leopardi’s; and his superiority turns in the same way +upon the surpassing worth of something which he had and +was, after all deduction has been made for his shortcomings. +We talk of Byron’s <em>personality</em>, “a personality in +eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely to +come again;” and we say that by this personality Byron +is “different from all the rest of English poets, and in the +main greater.” But can we not be a little more circumstantial, +and name that in which the wonderful power of +this personality consisted? We can; with the instinct of +a poet Mr. Swinburne has seized upon it and named it +for us. The power of Byron’s personality lies in “the +splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his +offences and outweighs all his defects: <em>the excellence of +sincerity and strength</em>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Byron found our nation, after its long and victorious +struggle with revolutionary France, fixed in a system of +established facts and dominant ideas which revolted him. +The mental bondage of the most powerful part of our nation, +of its strong middle-class, to a narrow and false system +of this kind, is what we call British Philistinism. +That bondage is unbroken to this hour, but in Byron’s +time it was even far more deep and dark than it is now. +Byron was an aristocrat, and it is not difficult for an aristocrat +to look on the prejudices and habits of the British +Philistine with scepticism and disdain. Plenty of young +men of his own class Byron met at Almack’s or at Lady +Jersey’s, who regarded the established facts and reigning +beliefs of the England of that day with as little reverence +as he did. But these men, disbelievers in British Philistinism +in private, entered English public life, the most +conventional in the world, and at once they saluted with +respect the habits and ideas of British Philistinism as if +they were a part of the order of creation, and as if in +public no sane man would think of warring against them. +With Byron it was different. What he called the <em>cant</em> of +the great middle part of the English nation, what we call +its Philistinism, revolted him; but the cant of his own class, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_380'>380</span>deferring to this Philistinism and profiting by it, while +they disbelieved in it, revolted him even more. “Come +what may,” are his own words, “I will never flatter the +million’s canting in any shape.” His class in general, on +the other hand, shrugged their shoulders at this cant, +laughed at it, pandered to it, and ruled by it. The falsehood, +cynicism, insolence, misgovernment, oppression, +with their consequent unfailing crop of human misery, +which were produced by this state of things, roused Byron +to irreconcilable revolt and battle. They made him indignant, +they infuriated him; they were so strong, so defiant, +so maleficent,—and yet he felt that they were doomed. +“You have seen every trampler down in turn,” he comforts +himself with saying, “from Buonaparte to the simplest +individuals.” The old order, as after 1815 it stood +victorious, with its ignorance and misery below, its cant, +selfishness, and cynicism above, was at home and abroad +equally hateful to him. “I have simplified my politics,” +he writes, “into an utter detestation of all existing governments.” +And again: “Give me a republic. The +king-times are fast finishing; there will be blood shed like +water and tears like mist, but the peoples will conquer in +the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Byron himself gave the preference, he tells us, to politicians +and doers, far above writers and singers. But the +politics of his own day and of his own class,—even of the +Liberals of his own class,—were impossible for him. Nature +had not formed him for a Liberal peer, proper to +move the Address in the House of Lords, to pay compliments +to the energy and self-reliance of British middle-class +Liberalism, and to adapt his politics to suit it. Unfitted +for such politics, he threw himself upon poetry as +his organ; and in poetry his topics were not Queen Mab, +and the Witch of Atlas, and the Sensitive Plant—they +were the upholders of the old order. George the Third and +Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington and Southey, +and they were the canters and tramplers of the great world, +and they were his enemies and himself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Such was Byron’s personality, by which “he is different +<span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span>from all the rest of English poets, and in the main greater.” +But he posed all his life, says M. Scherer. Let us distinguish. +There is the Byron who posed, there is the Byron +with his affectations and silliness, the Byron whose weakness +Lady Blessington, with a woman’s acuteness, so admirably +seized; “his great defect is flippancy and a total +want of self-possession.” But when this theatrical and +easily criticized personage betook himself to poetry, and +when he had fairly warmed to his work, then he became +another man; then the theatrical personage passed away; +then a higher power took possession of him and filled him; +then at last came forth into light that true and puissant +personality, with its direct strokes, its ever-welling force, +its satire, its energy, and its agony. This is the real +Byron; whoever stops at the theatrical preludings does +not know him. And this real Byron may well be superior +to the stricken Leopardi, he may well be declared “different +from all the rest of English poets, and in the main +greater,” in so far as it is true of him, as M. Taine well +says, that “all other souls, in comparison with his, seem +inert”; in so far as it is true of him that with superb, +exhaustless energy, he maintained, as Professor Nichol +well says, “the struggle that keeps alive, if it does not +save, the soul;” in so far, finally, as he deserves (and he +does deserve) the noble praise of him which I have already +quoted from Mr. Swinburne; the praise for “the splendid +and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences +and outweighs all his defects: <em>the excellence of sincerity +and strength</em>.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>True, as a man, Byron could not manage himself, could +not guide his ways aright, but was all astray. True, he +has no light, cannot lead us from the past to the future; +“the moment he reflects, he is a child.” The way out of +the false state of things which enraged him he did not see,—the +slow and laborious way upward; he had not the patience, +knowledge, self-discipline, virtue, requisite for seeing +it. True, also, as a poet, he has no fine and exact +sense for word and structure and rhythm; he has not the +artist’s nature and gifts. Yet a personality of Byron’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_382'>382</span>force counts for so much in life, and a rhetorician of +Byron’s force counts for so much in literature! But it +would be most unjust to label Byron, as M. Scherer is disposed +to label him, as a rhetorician only. Along with his +astounding power and passion he had a strong and deep +sense for what is beautiful in nature, and for what is beautiful +in human action and suffering. When he warms to +his work, when he is inspired, Nature herself seems to take +the pen from him as she took it from Wordsworth, and to +write for him as she wrote for Wordsworth, though in a +different fashion, with her own penetrating simplicity. +Goethe has well observed of Byron, that when he is at his +happiest his representation of things is as easy and real as +if he were improvising. It is so; and his verse then exhibits +quite another and a higher quality from the rhetorical +quality,—admirable as this also in its own kind of +merit is,—of such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Minions of splendor shrinking from distress,”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>and of so much more verse of Byron’s of that stamp. Nature, +I say, takes the pen for him; and then, assured +master of a true poetic style though he is not, any more +than Wordsworth, yet as from Wordsworth at his best +there will come such verse as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Will no one tell me what she sings?”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>so from Byron, too, at his best, there will come such verse +as</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes</div> + <div class='line'>Were with his heart, and that was far away.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>Of verse of this high quality, Byron has much; of verse +of a quality lower than this, of a quality rather rhetorical +than truly poetic, yet still of extraordinary power and +merit, he has still more. To separate, from the mass of +poetry which <a id='corr382.33'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Bryon'>Byron</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_382.33'><ins class='correction' title='Bryon'>Byron</ins></a></span> poured forth, all this higher portion, +so superior to the mass, and still so considerable in quantity, +and to present it in one body by itself, is to do a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span>service, I believe, to Byron’s reputation, and to the poetic +glory of our country.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Such a service I have in the present volume attempted +to perform. To Byron, after all the tributes which have +been paid to him, here is yet one tribute more—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Among thy mightier offerings here are mine!”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>not a tribute of boundless homage certainly, but sincere; +a tribute which consists not in covering the poet with eloquent +eulogy of our own, but in letting him, at his best +and greatest, speak for himself. Surely the critic who +does most for his author is the critic who gains readers +for his author himself, not for any lucubrations on his +author:—gains more readers for him, and enables those +readers to read him with more admiration.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And in spite of his prodigious vogue, Byron has never +yet, perhaps, had the serious admiration which he deserves. +Society read him and talked about him, as it reads +and talks about <cite>Endymion</cite> to-day; and with the same sort +of result. It looked in Byron’s glass as it looks in Lord +Beaconsfield’s, and sees, or fancies that it sees, its own +face there; and then it goes its way, and straightway forgets +what manner of man it saw. Even of his passionate +admirers, how many never got beyond the theatrical Byron, +from whom they caught the fashion of deranging their +hair, or of knotting their neck-handkerchief, or of leaving +their shirt-collar unbuttoned; how few profoundly felt his +vital influence, the influence of his splendid and imperishable +excellence of sincerity and strength!</p> + +<p class='c001'>His own aristocratic class, whose cynical make-believe +drove him to fury; the great middle-class, on whose impregnable +Philistinism he shattered himself to pieces,—how +little have either of these felt Byron’s vital influence! +As the inevitable break-up of the old order comes, as the +English middle-class slowly awakens from its intellectual +sleep of two centuries, as our actual present world, to +which this sleep has condemned us, shows itself more +clearly,—our world of an aristocracy materialized and null, +a middle-class purblind and hideous, a lower class crude +<span class='pageno' id='Page_384'>384</span>and brutal,—we shall turn our eyes again, and to more +purpose, upon this passionate and dauntless soldier of a +forlorn hope, who, ignorant of the future and unconsoled +by its promises, nevertheless waged against the conversation +of the old impossible world so fiery battle; waged +it till he fell,—waged it with such splendid and imperishable +excellence of sincerity and strength.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Wordsworth’s value is of another kind. Wordsworth +has an insight into permanent sources of joy and consolation +for mankind which Byron has not; his poetry gives +us more which we may rest upon than Byron’s,—more +which we can rest upon now, and which men may rest +upon always. I place Wordsworth’s poetry, therefore, +above Byron’s on the whole, although in some points he +was greatly Byron’s inferior, and although Byron’s poetry +will always, probably, find more readers than Wordsworth, +and will give pleasure more easily. But these two, Wordsworth +and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and preeminent +in actual performance, a glorious pair, among the +English poets of this century. Keats had probably, indeed, +a more consummate poetic gift than either of them: +but he died having produced too little and being as yet too +immature to rival them. I for my part can never even +think of equalling with them any other of their contemporaries;—either +Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked +in a mist of opium; or Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual +angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain. +Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves. When +the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount +her poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, +the first names with her will be these.</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span> + <h2 class='c005'>VII.<br> <br> SHELLEY<a id='r44'></a><a href='#f44' class='c007'><sup>[44]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>Nowadays all things appear in print sooner or later; +but I have heard from a lady who knew Mrs. Shelley a +story of her which, so far as I know, has not appeared in +print hitherto. Mrs. Shelley was choosing a school for her +son, and asked the advice of this lady, who gave for advice—to +use her own words to me—“Just the sort of banality, +you know, one does come out with: Oh, send him +somewhere where they will teach him to think for himself!” +I have had far too long a training as a school inspector +to presume to call an utterance of this kind a <em>banality</em>; +however, it is not on this advice that I now wish to +lay stress, but upon Mrs. Shelley’s reply to it. Mrs. Shelley +answered: “Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my +God, teach him rather to think like other people!”</p> + +<p class='c001'>To the lips of many and many a reader of Professor +Dowden’s volumes a cry of this sort will surely rise, called +forth by Shelley’s life as there delineated. I have read +those volumes with the deepest interest, but I regret their +publication, and am surprised, I confess, that Shelley’s +family should have desired or assisted it. For my own +part, at any rate, I would gladly have been left with the +impression, the ineffaceable impression, made upon me by +Mrs. Shelley’s first edition of her husband’s collected +poems. Medwin and Hogg and Trelawny had done little +to change the impression made by those four delightful +volumes of the original edition of 1839. The text of the +poems has in some places been mended since; but Shelley +is not a classic, whose various readings are to be noted +with earnest attention. The charm of the poems flowed +<span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span>in upon us from that edition and the charm of the character. +Mrs. Shelley had done her work admirably; her +introductions to the poems of each year, with Shelley’s prefaces +and passages from his letters, supplied the very picture +of Shelley to be desired. Somewhat idealized by +tender regret and exalted memory Mrs. Shelley’s representation +no doubt was. But without sharing her conviction +that Shelley’s character, impartially judged, “would stand +in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary,” +we learned from her to know the soul of affection, of +“gentle and cordial goodness,” of eagerness and ardor for +human happiness, which was in this rare spirit,—so mere +a monster unto many. Mrs. Shelley in her general preface +to her husband’s poems: “I abstain from any remark +on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as +the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry; +this is not the time to relate the truth.” I for my part +could wish, I repeat, that that time had never come.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But come it has, and Professor Dowden has given us the +Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley in two very thick volumes. +If the work was to be done, Professor Dowden has indeed +done it thoroughly. One or two things in his biography +of Shelley I could wish different, even waiving the question +whether it was desirable to relate in full the occurrences +of Shelley’s private life. Professor Dowden holds a +brief for Shelley; he pleads for Shelley as an advocate +pleads for his client, and this strain of pleading, united +with an attitude of adoration which in Mrs. Shelley had +its charm, but which Professor Dowden was not bound to +adopt from her, is unserviceable to Shelley, nay, injurious +to him, because it inevitably begets, in many readers of +the story which Professor Dowden has to tell, impatience +and revolt. Further, let me remark that the biography +before us is of prodigious length, although its hero died +before he was thirty years old, and that it might have been +considerably shortened if it had been more plainly and +simply written. I see that one of Professor Dowden’s +critics, while praising his style for “a certain poetic quality +of fervor and picturesqueness,” laments that in some important +<span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span>passages Professor Dowden “fritters away great +opportunities for sustained and impassioned narrative.” I +am inclined much rather to lament that Professor Dowden +has not steadily kept his poetic quality of fervor and picturesqueness +more under control. Is it that the Home +Rulers have so loaded the language that even an Irishman +who is not one of them catches something of their full +habit of style? No, it is rather, I believe, that Professor +Dowden, of poetic nature himself, and dealing with a poetic +nature like Shelley, is so steeped in sentiment by his subject +that in almost every page of the biography the sentiment +runs over. A curious note of his style, suffused +with sentiment, is that it seems incapable of using the +common word <em>child</em>. A great many births are mentioned +in the biography, but always it is a poetic <em>babe</em> that is born, +not a prosaic <em>child</em>. And so, again, André Chénier is not +guillotined, but “too foully done to death.” Again, +Shelley after his runaway marriage with Harriet Westbrook +was in Edinburgh without money and full of anxieties +for the future, and complained of his hard lot in being unable +to get away, in being “chained to the filth and commerce +of Edinburgh.” Natural enough; but why should +Professor Dowden improve the occasion as follows? “The +most romantic of northern cities could lay no spell upon +his spirit. His eye was not fascinated by the presences of +mountains and the sea, by the fantastic outlines of aërial +piles seen amid the wreathing smoke of Auld Reekie, by +the gloom of the Canongate illuminated with shafts of +sunlight streaming from its interesting wynds and alleys; +nor was his imagination kindled by storied house or palace, +and the voices of old, forgotten, far-off things, which +haunt their walls.” If Professor Dowden, writing a book +in prose, could have brought himself to eschew poetic excursions +of this kind and to tell his story in a plain way, +lovers of simplicity, of whom there are some still left in the +world, would have been gratified, and at the same time +his book would have been the shorter by scores of pages.</p> + +<p class='c001'>These reserves being made, I have little except praise +for the manner in which Professor <a id='corr387.39'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Dowdon'>Dowden</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_387.39'><ins class='correction' title='Dowdon'>Dowden</ins></a></span> has performed +<span class='pageno' id='Page_388'>388</span>his task; whether it was a task which ought to be performed +at all, probably did not lie with him to decide. +His ample materials are used with order and judgment; +the history of Shelley’s life develops itself clearly before +our eyes; the documents of importance for it are given +with sufficient fulness, nothing essential seems to have +been kept back, although I would gladly, I confess, have +seen more of Miss Clairmont’s journal, whatever arrangement +she may in her later life have chosen to exercise upon +it. In general all documents are so fairly and fully cited, +that Professor Dowden’s pleadings for Shelley, though +they may sometimes indispose and irritate the reader, produce +no obscuring of the truth; the documents manifest +it of themselves. Last but not least of Professor Dowden’s +merits, he has provided his book with an excellent +index.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Undoubtedly this biography, with its full account of +the occurrences of Shelley’s private life, compels one to +review one’s former <a id='corr388.19'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='impresssion'>impression</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_388.19'><ins class='correction' title='impresssion'>impression</ins></a></span> of him. Undoubtedly +the brilliant and attaching rebel who in thinking for himself +had of old our sympathy so passionately with him, +when we come to read his full biography makes us often +and often inclined to cry out: “My God! he had far +better have thought like other people.” There is a passage +in Hogg’s capitally written and most interesting +account of Shelley which I wrote down when I first read it +and have borne in mind ever since; so beautifully it +seemed to render the true Shelley. Hogg has been speaking +of the intellectual expression of Shelley’s features, and +he goes on: “Nor was the moral expression less beautiful +than the intellect; for there was a softness, a delicacy, +a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise +many) that air of profound religious veneration that characterizes +the best work and chiefly the frescoes (and into +these they infused their whole souls) of the great masters +of Florence and of Rome.” What we have of Shelley in +poetry and prose suited with this charming picture of him; +Mrs. Shelley’s account suited with it; it was a possession +which one would gladly have kept unimpaired. It still +<span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>subsists, I must now add; it subsists even after one has +read the present biography; it consists, but so as by fire. +It subsists with many a scar and stain; never again will +it have the same pureness and beauty which it had +formerly. I regret this, as I have said, and I confess +I do not see what has been gained. Our ideal Shelley +was the true Shelley after all; what has been gained by making +us at moments doubt it? What has been gained by +forcing upon as much in him which is ridiculous and +odious, by compelling any fair mind, if it is to retain with +a good conscience its ideal Shelley, to do that which I propose +to do now? I propose to mark firmly what is ridiculous +and odious in the Shelley brought to our knowledge +by the new materials, and then to show that our former +beautiful and lovable Shelley nevertheless survives.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Almost everybody knows the main outline of the events of +Shelley’s life. It will be necessary for me, however, up to +the date of his second marriage, to go through them here. +Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near Horsham, +in Sussex, on the 4th of August 1792. He was of +an old family of country gentlemen, and the heir to a baronetcy. +He had one brother and five sisters, but the +brother so much younger than himself as to be no companion +for him in his boyhood at home, and after he was +separated from home and England he never saw him. +Shelley was brought up at Field Place with his sisters. +At ten years old he was sent to a private school at Isleworth, +where he read Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances and was +fascinated by a popular scientific lecturer. After two +years of private school he went in 1804 to Eton. Here he +took no part in cricket or football, refused to fag, <a id='corr234.31'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='was was'>was</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_234.31'><ins class='correction' title='was was'>was</ins></a></span> +known as “mad Shelley” and much tormented; when +tormented beyond endurance he could be dangerous. +Certainly he was not happy at Eton; but he had friends, +he boated, he rambled about the country. His school +lessons were easy to him, and his reading extended far beyond +them; he read books on chemistry, he read Pliny’s +<cite>Natural History</cite>, Godwin’s <cite>Political Justice</cite>, Lucretius, +Franklin, Condorcet. It is said he was called “atheist +<span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span>Shelley” at Eton, but this is not so well established as his +having been called “mad Shelley.” He was full, at any +rate, of new and revolutionary ideas, and he declared at a +later time that he was twice expelled from the school but +recalled through the interference of his father.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In the spring of 1810 Shelley, now in his eighteenth year, +entered University College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner. +He had already written novels and poems; a poem on the +Wandering Jew, in seven or eight cantos, he sent to +Campbell, and was told by Campbell, that there were +but two good lines in it. He had solicited the correspondence +of Mrs. Hemans, then Felicia Browne and +unmarried; he had fallen in love with a charming +cousin, Harriet Grove. In the autumn of 1810 he found +a publisher for his verse; he also found a friend in a +very clever and free-minded commoner of his college, +Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who has admirably described +the Shelley of those Oxford days, with his chemistry, +his eccentric habits, his charm of look and character, +his conversation, his shrill discordant voice. Shelley read +incessantly. Hume’s <cite>Essays</cite> produced a powerful impression +on him; his free speculation led him to what his father, +and worse still his cousin Harriet, thought “detestable +principles”; his cousin and family became estranged from +him. He, on his part, became more and more incensed +against the “bigotry” and “intolerance” which produced +such estrangement. “Here I swear, and as I break +my oaths, may Infinity, Eternity, blast me—here I swear +that never will I forgive intolerance.” At the beginning +of 1811 he prepared and published what he called a “leaflet +for letters,” having for its title <cite>The Necessity of +Atheism</cite>. He sent copies to all the bishops, to the Vice-Chancellor +of Oxford, and to the heads of houses. On +Lady Day he was summoned before the authorities of his +College, refused to answer the question whether he had +written <cite>The Necessity of Atheism</cite>, told the Master and +Fellows that <a id='corr390.37'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='their'>“their</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_390.37'><ins class='correction' title='their'>“their</ins></a></span> proceedings would become a court of +inquisitors but not free men in a free country,” and +was expelled for contumacy. Hogg wrote a letter of remonstrance +<span class='pageno' id='Page_391'>391</span>to the authorities was in his turn summoned +before them and questioned as to his share in the “leaflet,” +and, refusing to answer, he also was expelled.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Shelley settled with Hogg in lodgings in London. His +father, excusably indignant, was not a wise man and +managed his son ill. His plan of recommending Shelley +to read Paley’s <cite>Natural Theology</cite>, and of <em>reading it with +him himself</em>, makes us smile. Shelley, who about this +time wrote of his younger sister, then at school at Clapham, +“There are some hopes of this dear little girl, she +would be a divine little scion of infidelity if I could get +hold of her,” was not to have been cured by Paley’s +<cite>Natural Theology</cite> administered through Mr. Timothy +Shelley. But by the middle of May Shelley’s father had +agreed to allow him two hundred pounds a year. Meanwhile +in visiting his sisters at their school in Clapham, +Shelley made the acquaintance of a schoolfellow of theirs, +Harriet Westbrook. She was a beautiful and lively girl, +with a father who had kept a tavern in Mount Street, but had +now retired from business, and one sister much older than +herself, who encouraged in every possible way the acquaintance +of her sister of sixteen with the heir to a +baronetcy and a great estate. Soon Shelley heard that +Harriet met with cold looks at her school for associating +with an atheist; his generosity and his ready indignation +against “intolerance” were roused. In the summer +Harriet wrote to him that she was persecuted not at school +only but at home also, that she was lonely and miserable, +and would gladly put an end to her life. Shelley went to +see her; she owned her love for him, and he engaged +himself to her. He told his cousin Charles Grove that +his happiness had been blighted when the other Harriet, +Charles’s sister, cast him off; that now the only thing +worth living for was self-sacrifice. Harriet’s persecutors +became yet more troublesome, and Shelley, at the end of +August, went off with her to Edinburgh and they were +married. The entry in the register is this:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“<i>August 28, 1811.</i>—Percy Bysshe Shelley, farmer, Sussex, and +Miss Harriet Westbrook, St. Andrew Church Parish, daughter of +Mr. John Westbrook, London.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_392'>392</span>After five weeks in Edinburgh the young farmer and +his wife came southwards and took lodgings at York, +under the shadow of what Shelley calls that “gigantic +pile of superstition,” the Minster. But his friend Hogg +was in a lawyer’s office in York, and Hogg’s society made +the Minster endurable. Mr. Timothy Shelley’s happiness +in his son was naturally not increased by the runaway +marriage; he stopped his allowance, and Shelley determined +to visit “this thoughtless man,” as he calls his +parent, and to “try the force of truth” upon him. Nothing +could be effected; Shelley’s mother, too, was now +against him. He returned to York to find that in his absence +his friend Hogg had been making love to Harriet, +who had indignantly repulsed him. Shelley was shocked, +but after a “terrible day” of explanation from Hogg, he +“fully, freely pardoned him,” promised to retain him +still as “his friend, his bosom friend,” and “hoped soon +to convince him how lovely virtue was.” But for the +present it seemed better to separate. In November he and +Harriet, with her sister Eliza, took a cottage at Keswick. +Shelley was now in great straits for money; the great +Sussex neighbor of the Shelleys, the Duke of Norfolk, +interposed in his favor, and his father and grandfather +seem to have offered him at this time an income of £2000 +a year, if he would consent to entail the family estate. +Shelley indignantly refused to “forswear his principles,” +by accepting “a proposal so insultingly hateful.” But in +December his father agreed, though with an ill grace, to +grant him his allowance of £200 a year again, and Mr. +Westbrook promised to allow a like sum to his daughter. +So after four months of marriage the Shelleys began 1812 +with an income of £400 a year.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Early in February they left Keswick and proceeded to +Dublin, where Shelley, who had prepared an address to +the Catholics, meant to “devote himself towards forwarding +the great ends of virtue and happiness in Ireland.” +Before leaving Keswick he wrote to William Godwin, “the +regulator and former of his mind,” making profession of +his mental obligations to him, of his respect and veneration, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_393'>393</span>and soliciting Godwin’s friendship. A correspondence +followed; Godwin pronounced his young disciple’s plans +for “disseminating the doctrines of philanthropy and +freedom” in Ireland to be unwise; Shelley bowed to his +mentor’s decision and gave up his Irish campaign, quitting +Dublin on the 4th of April 1812. He and Harriet +wandered first to Nant-Gwillt in South Wales, near the +upper Wye, and from thence after a month or two to +Lynmouth in North Devon, where he busied himself with +his poem of <cite>Queen Mab</cite>, and with sending to sea boxes +and bottles containing a <cite>Declaration of Rights</cite> by him, in +the hope that the winds and waves might carry his doctrines +where they would do good. But his Irish servant, +bearing the prophetic name of Healy, posted the <cite>Declaration</cite> +on the walls of Barnstaple and was taken up; Shelley +found himself watched and no longer able to enjoy Lynmouth +in peace. He moved in September, 1812, to Tremadoc, +in North Wales, where <a id='corr393.18'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='be'>he</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_393.18'><ins class='correction' title='be'>he</ins></a></span> threw himself ardently +into an enterprise for recovering a great stretch of drowned +land from the sea. But at the beginning of October he +and Harriet visited London, and Shelley grasped Godwin +by the hand at last. At once an intimacy arose, but the +future Mary Shelley—Godwin’s daughter by his first wife, +Mary Wollstonecraft—was absent on a visit in Scotland +when the Shelleys arrived in London. They became acquainted, +however, with the second Mrs. Godwin, on +whom we have Charles Lamb’s friendly comment: “A +very disgusting woman, and wears green <a id='corr393.28'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='spectacles!”'>spectacles!”;</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_393.28'><ins class='correction' title='spectacles!”'>spectacles!”;</ins></a></span> +with the amiable Fanny, Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter +by Imlay, before her marriage with Godwin; and probably +also with Jane Clairmont, the second Mrs. Godwin’s +daughter by a first marriage, and herself, afterwards the +mother of Byron’s Allegra. Complicated relationships, as +in the Theban story! and there will be not wanting, presently, +something of the Theban horrors. During this +visit of six weeks to London Shelley renewed his intimacy +with Hogg; in the middle of November he returned to +Tremadoc. There he remained until the end of February +1813, perfectly happy with Harriet, reading widely, and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_394'>394</span>working at his <cite>Queen Mab</cite> and at the notes to that poem. +On the 26th of February an attempt was made, or so he +fancied, to assassinate him, and in high nervous excitement +he hurriedly left Tremadoc and repaired with +Harriet to Dublin again. On this visit to Ireland he saw +Killarney, but early in April he and Harriet were back +again in London.</p> + +<p class='c001'>There in June 1813 their daughter Ianthe was born; at +the end of July they moved to Bracknell, in Berkshire. +They had for neighbors there a Mrs. Boinville and her +married daughter, whom Shelley found to be fascinating +women, with a culture which to his wife was altogether +wanting. Cornelia Turner, Mrs. Boinville’s daughter, was +melancholy, required consolation, and found it, Hogg tells +us, in Petrarch’s poetry; “Bysshe entered at once fully +into her views and caught the soft infection, breathing +the tenderest and sweetest melancholy as every true poet +ought.” Peacock, a man of keen and cultivated mind, +joined the circle at Bracknell. He and Harriet, not yet +eighteen, used sometimes to laugh at the gushing sentiment +and enthusiasm of the Bracknell circle; Harriet had +also given offense to Shelley by getting a wet-nurse for her +child; in Professor Dowden’s words, “the beauty of +Harriet’s motherly relation to her babe was marred in +Shelley’s eyes by the introduction into his home of a hireling +nurse to whom was delegated the mother’s tenderest +office.” But in September Shelley wrote a sonnet to his +child which expresses his deep love for the mother also, +to whom in March, 1814, he was remarried in London, lest +the Scotch marriage should prove to have been in any +point irregular. Harriet’s sister Eliza, however, whom +Shelley had at first treated with excessive deference, had +now become hateful to him. And in the very month of +the London marriage we find him writing to Hogg that he +is staying with the Boinvilles, having “escaped, in the +society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, +from the dismaying solitude of myself.” Cornelia Turner, +he adds, whom he once thought cold and reserved, “is the +reverse of this, as she is the reverse of everything bad; she +<span class='pageno' id='Page_395'>395</span>inherits all the divinity of her mother.” Then comes a +stanza, beginning</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Thy dewy looks sink in my breast,</div> + <div class='line'>Thy gentle words stir poison there.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>It has no meaning, he says; it is only written in thought. +“It is evident from this pathetic letter,” says Professor +Dowden, “that Shelley’s happiness in his home had been +fatally stricken.” This is a curious way of putting the +matter. To me what is evident is rather that Shelley had, +to use Professor Dowden’s words again—for in these things +of high sentiment I gladly let him speak for me—“a too +vivid sense that here (in the society of the Boinville family) +were peace and joy and gentleness and love.” In +April come some more verses to the Boinvilles, which contain +the first good stanza that Shelley wrote. In May +comes a poem to Harriet, of which Professor Dowden’s +prose analysis is as poetic as the poem itself. “If she has +something to endure (from the Boinville attachment), it +is not much, and all her husband’s weal hangs upon her +loving endurance, for see how pale and wildered anguish +has made him!” Harriet, unconvinced, seems to have +gone off to Bath in resentment, from whence, however, +she kept up a constant correspondence with Shelley, who +was now of age, and busy in London raising money on +post-obit bonds for his own wants and those of the friend +and former of his mind, Godwin.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And now, indeed, it was to become true that if from the +inflammable Shelley’s devotion to the Boinville family poor +Harriet had had “something to endure,” yet this was +“not much” compared with what was to follow. At Godwin’s +house Shelley met Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, his +future wife, then in her seventeenth year. She was a +gifted person, but, as Professor Dowden says, she “had +breathed during her entire life an atmosphere of free +thought.” On the 8th of June Hogg called at Godwin’s +with Shelley; Godwin was out, but “a door was partially +and softly opened, a thrilling voice called ‘Shelley!’ a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_396'>396</span>thrilling voice answered ‘Mary!’” Shelley’s summoner +was “a very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, +and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan.” +Already they were “Shelley” and “Mary” to one another; +“before the close of June they knew and felt,” +says Professor Dowden, “that each was to the other inexpressibly +dear.” The churchyard of St. Pancras, where +her mother was buried, became “a place now doubly +sacred to Mary, since on one eventful day Bysshe here +poured forth his griefs, his hopes, his love, and she, in sign +of everlasting union, placed her hand in his.” In July +Shelley gave her a copy of <cite>Queen Mab</cite>, printed but not +published, and under the tender dedication to Harriet he +wrote: “Count Slobendorf was about to marry a woman +who, attracted solely by his fortune, proved her selfishness +by deserting him in prison.” Mary added an inscription +on her part: “I love the author beyond all powers of expression +... by that love we have promised to each other, +although I may not be yours I can never be another’s,”—and +a good deal more to the same effect.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Amid these excitements Shelley was for some days without +writing to Harriet, who applied to Hookham the publisher +to know what had happened. She was expecting +her confinement; “I always fancy something dreadful has +happened,” she wrote, “if I do not hear from him ... +I cannot endure this dreadful state of suspense.” Shelley +then wrote to her, begging her to come to London; and +when she arrived there, he told her the state of his feelings, +and proposed separation. The shock made Harriet ill; +and Shelley, says Peacock, “between his old feelings +towards Harriet, and his new passion for Mary, showed in +his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind +‘suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection.’” +Godwin grew uneasy about his daughter, and +after a serious talk with her, wrote to Shelley. Under +such circumstances, Professor Dowden tells us, “to youth, +swift and decisive measures seem the best.” In the early +morning of the 28th of July 1814 “Mary Godwin stepped +across her father’s threshold into the summer air,” she +<span class='pageno' id='Page_397'>397</span>and Shelley went off together in a post-chaise to Dover, +and from thence crossed to the Continent.</p> + +<p class='c001'>On the 14th of August the fugitives were at Troyes on +their way to Switzerland. From Troyes Shelley addressed +a letter to Harriet, of which the best description I can +give is that it is precisely the letter which a man in the +writer’s circumstances should not have written.</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“<span class='sc'>My dearest Harriet</span> (he begins). I write to you from this +detestable town; I write to show that I do not forget you; I +write to urge you to come to Switzerland, where you will at last +find one firm and constant friend to whom your interests will be +always dear—by whom your feelings will never wilfully be injured. +From none can you expect this but me—all else are +either unfeeling or selfish, or have beloved friends of their own.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Then follows a description of his journey with Mary from +Paris, “through a fertile country, neither interesting +from the character of its inhabitants nor the beauty of +the scenery, with a mule to carry our baggage, as Mary, +who has not been sufficiently well to walk, fears the fatigue +of walking.” Like St. Paul to Timothy, he ends with +commissions:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I wish you to bring with you the two deeds which Tahourdin +has to prepare for you, as also a copy of the settlement. Do not +part with any of your money. But what shall be done about the +books? You can consult on the spot. With love to my sweet +little Ianthe, ever most affectionately yours,    S.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“I write in great haste; we depart directly.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Professor Dowden’s flow of sentiment is here so agitating, +that I relieve myself by resorting to a drier world. +Certainly my comment on this letter shall not be his, that +it “assures Harriet that her interests were still dear to +Shelley, though now their lives had moved apart.” But +neither will I call the letter an odious letter, a hideous +letter. I prefer to call it, applying an untranslated French +word, a <span lang="fr"><i>bête</i></span> letter. And it is <span lang="fr"><i>bête</i></span> from what is the signal, +the disastrous want and weakness of Shelley, with all his +fine intellectual gifts—his utter deficiency in humour.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Harriet did not accept Shelley’s invitation to join him +and Mary in Switzerland. Money difficulties drove the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_398'>398</span>travellers back to England in September. Godwin would +not see Shelley, but he sorely needed, continually demanded +and eagerly accepted, pecuniary help from his erring +“spiritual son.” Between Godwin’s wants and his own, +Shelley was hard pressed. He got from Harriet, who still +believed that he would return to her, twenty pounds which +remained in her hands. In November she was confined; +a son and heir was born to Shelley. He went to see +Harriet, but “the interview left husband and wife each +embittered against the other.” Friends were severe; +“when Mrs. Boinville wrote, her letter seemed cold and +even sarcastic,” says Professor Dowden. “Solitude,” he +continues, “unharassed by debts and duns, with Mary’s +companionship, the society of a few friends, and the delights +of study and authorship, would have made these +winter months to Shelley months of unusual happiness +and calm.” But, alas! creditors were pestering, and +even Harriet gave trouble. In January, 1815, Mary had +to write in her journal this entry: “Harriet sends her +creditors here; nasty woman. Now we must change our +lodgings.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>One day about this time Shelley asked Peacock, “Do +you think Wordsworth could have written such poetry if +he ever had dealings with money-lenders?” Not only +had Shelley dealings with money-lenders, he now had +dealings with bailiffs also. But still he continued to read +largely. In January, 1815, his grandfather, Sir Bysshe +Shelley, died. Shelley went down into Sussex; his father +would not suffer him to enter the house, but he sat outside +the door and read <cite>Comus</cite>, while the reading of his +grandfather’s will went on inside. In February was born +Mary’s first child, a girl, who lived but a few days. All +the spring Shelley was ill and harassed, but by June it +was settled that he should have an allowance from his +father of £1000 a year, and that his debts (including +£1200 promised by him to Godwin) should be paid. He +on his part paid Harriet’s debts and allowed her £200 a +year. In August he took a house on the borders of +Windsor Park, and made a boating excursion up the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_399'>399</span>Thames as far as Lechlade, an excursion which produced +his first entire poem of value, the beautiful <cite>Stanza in +Lechlade Churchyard</cite>. They were followed, later in the +autumn, by <cite>Alastor</cite>. Henceforth, from this winter of +1815 until he was drowned between Leghorn and Spezzia +in July, 1822, Shelley’s literary history is sufficiently given +in the delightful introductions prefixed by Mrs. Shelley +to the poems of each year. Much of the history of his +life is there given also; but with some of those “occurrences +of his private life” on which Mrs. Shelley forbore +to touch, and which are now made known to us in Professor +Dowden’s book, we have still to deal.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Mary’s first son, William, was born in January, 1816, +and in February we find Shelley declaring himself +“strongly urged, by the perpetual experience of neglect +or enmity from almost every one but those who are supported +by my resources, to desert my native country, +hiding myself and Mary from the contempt which we so +unjustly endure.” Early in May he left England with +Mary and Miss Clairmont; they met Lord Byron at +Geneva and passed the summer by the Lake of Geneva in +his company. Miss Clairmont had already in London, +without the knowledge of the Shelleys, made Byron’s +acquaintance and become his mistress. Shelley determined, +in the course of the summer, to go back to England, +and, after all, “to make that most excellent of +nations my perpetual resting-place.” In September he +and his ladies returned; Miss Clairmont was then expecting +her confinement. Of her being Byron’s mistress the +Shelleys were now aware; but “the moral indignation,” +says Professor Dowden, “which Byron’s act might justly +arouse, seems to have been felt by neither Shelley nor +Mary.” If Byron and Claire Clairmont, as she was now +called, loved and were happy, all was well.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The eldest daughter of the Godwin household, the +amiable Fanny, was unhappy at home and in deep dejection +of spirits. Godwin was, as usual, in terrible straits +for money. The Shelleys and Miss Clairmont settled +themselves at Bath; early in October Fanny Godwin +<span class='pageno' id='Page_400'>400</span>passed through Bath without their knowing it, travelled +on to Swansea, took a bedroom at the hotel there, and +was found in the morning dead, with a bottle of laudanum +on the table beside her and these words in her handwriting:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I have long determined that the best thing I could do was +to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate,<a id='r45'></a><a href='#f45' class='c007'><sup>[45]</sup></a> +and whose life has only been a series of pain to those +persons who have hurt their health in endeavoring to promote +her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, +but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a +creature ever existed as ...”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c017'>There is no signature.</p> + +<p class='c001'>A sterner tragedy followed. On the 9th of November +1816 Harriet Shelley left the house in Brompton where +she was then living, and did not return. On the 10th of +December her body was found in the Serpentine; she had +drowned herself. In one respect Professor Dowden resembles +Providence: his ways are inscrutable. His comment +on Harriet’s death is: “There is no doubt she +wandered from the ways of upright living.” But he +adds: “That no act of Shelley’s, during the two years +which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause +the rash act which brought her life to its close, seems +certain.” Shelley had been living with Mary all the time; +only that!</p> + +<p class='c001'>On the 30th of December, 1816, Mary Godwin and +Shelley were married. I shall pursue “the occurrences +of Shelley’s private life” no further. For the five years +and a half which remain, Professor Dowden’s book adds +to our knowledge of Shelley’s life much that is interesting; +but what was chiefly important we knew already. +The new and grave matter which we did not know, or +knew in the vaguest way only, but which Shelley’s family +and Professor Dowden have now thought it well to give +us in full, ends with Shelley’s second marriage.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I regret, I say once more, that it has been given. It is +a sore trial for our love of Shelley. What a set! what a +<span class='pageno' id='Page_401'>401</span>world! is the exclamation that breaks from us as we come +to an end of this history of “the occurrences of Shelley’s +private life.” I used the French word <span lang="fr"><i>bête</i></span> for a letter of +Shelley’s; for the world in which we find him I can only +use another French word, <em>sale</em>. Godwin’s house of sordid +horror, and Godwin’s preaching and holding the hat, and +the green-spectacled Mrs. Godwin, and Hogg the faithful +friend, and Hunt the Horace of this precious world, and, +to go up higher, Sir Timothy Shelley, a great country +gentleman, feeling himself safe while “the exalted mind of +Norfolk [the drinking Duke] protects me with the world,” +and Lord Byron with his deep grain of coarseness and commonness, +his affectation, his brutal selfishness—what a set! +The history carries us to Oxford, and I think of the clerical +and respectable Oxford of those old times, the Oxford of +Copleston and the Kebles and Hawkins, and a hundred +more, with the relief Keble declares himself to experience +from Izaak Walton,</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“When, wearied with the tale thy times disclose,</div> + <div class='line'>The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>I am not only thinking of morals and the house of Godwin, +I am thinking also of tone, bearing, dignity. I appeal to +Cardinal Newman, if perchance he does me the honor to +read these words, is it possible to imagine Copleston or +Hawkins declaring himself safe “while the exalted mind +of the Duke of Norfolk protects me with the world”?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Mrs. Shelley, after her marriage and during Shelley’s +closing years, becomes attractive; up to her marriage her +letters and journal do not please. Her ability is manifest, +but she is not attractive. In the world discovered to us by +Professor Dowden as surrounding Shelley up to 1817, the +most pleasing figure is Poor Fanny Godwin; after Fanny +Godwin, the most pleasing figure is Harriet Shelley herself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Professor Dowden’s treatment of Harriet is not worthy—so +much he must allow me in all kindness, but also in all +seriousness, to say—of either his taste or his judgment. +His pleading for Shelley is constant, and he does more +harm than good to Shelley by it. But here his championship +<span class='pageno' id='Page_402'>402</span>of Shelley makes him very unjust to a cruelly used +and unhappy girl. For several pages he balances the +question whether or not Harriet was unfaithful to Shelley +before he left her for Mary, and he leaves the question +unsettled. As usual Professor Dowden (and it is +his signal merit) supplies the evidence decisive against +himself. Thornton Hunt, not well disposed to Harriet, +Hogg, Peacock, Trelawny, Hookham, and a member of +Godwin’s own family, are all clear in their evidence that +up to her parting from Shelley Harriet was <a id='corr402.10'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='perfectl'>perfectly</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_402.10'><ins class='correction' title='perfectl'>perfectly</ins></a></span> innocent. +But that precious witness, Godwin, wrote in 1817 +that “she had proved herself unfaithful to her husband +before their separation.... Peace be to her shade!” +Why, Godwin was the father of Harriet’s successor. But +Mary believed the same thing. She was Harriet’s successor. +But Shelley believed it too. He had it from Godwin. +But he was convinced of it earlier. The evidence for +this is, that, in writing to Southey in 1820, Shelley declares +that “the single passage of a life, otherwise not only +spotless but spent in an impassioned pursuit of virtue, +which looks like a blot,” bears that appearance “merely +because I regulated my domestic arrangements without +deferring to the notions of the vulgar, although I might +have done so quite as conveniently had I descended to +their base thoughts.” From this Professor Dowden concludes +that Shelley believed he could have got a divorce +from Harriet had he so wished. The conclusion is not +clear. But even were the evidence perfectly clear that +Shelley believed Harriet unfaithful when he parted from +her, we should have to take into account Mrs. Shelley’s +most true sentence in her introduction to <cite>Alastor</cite>: “In +all Shelley did, he, at the time of doing it, believed himself +justified to his own conscience.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Shelley’s asserting a thing vehemently does not prove +more than that he chose to believe it and did believe it. +His extreme and violent changes of opinion about people +show this sufficiently. Eliza Westbrook is at one time “a +diamond not so large” as her sister Harriet but “more +highly polished;” and then: “I certainly hate her with +<span class='pageno' id='Page_403'>403</span>all my heart and soul. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue +of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence +for this miserable wretch.” The antipathy, Hogg +tells us, was as unreasonable as the former excess of deference. +To his friend Miss Hitchener he says: “Never shall +that intercourse cease, which has been the day-dawn of my +existence, the sun which has shed warmth on the cold +drear length of the anticipated prospect of life.” A little +later, and she has become “the Brown Demon, a woman +of desperate views and dreadful passions, but of cool and +undeviating revenge!” Even Professor Dowden admits +that this is absurd; that the real Miss Hitchener was not +seen by Shelley, either when he adored or when he detested.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Shelley’s power of persuading himself was equal to any +occasion; but would not his conscientiousness and high +feeling have prevented his exerting this power at poor Harriet’s +expense? To abandon her as he did, must he not have +known her to be false! Professor Dowden insists always +on Shelley’s “conscientiousness.” Shelley himself speaks +of his “impassioned pursuit of virtue.” Leigh Hunt compared +his life to that of “Plato himself, or, still more, a Pythagorean,” +and added that he “never met a being who +came nearer, perhaps so near, to the height of humanity,” to +being an “angel of charity.” In many respects Shelley +really resembled both a Pythagorean and an angel of +charity. He loved high thoughts, he cared nothing for +sumptuous lodging, fare, and raiment, he was poignantly +afflicted at the sight of misery, he would have given away +his last farthing, would have suffered in his own person, +to relieve it. But in one important point he was like +neither a Pythagorean nor an angel: he was extremely +inflammable. Professor Dowden leaves no doubt on the +matter. After reading his book, one feels sickened for +ever of the subject of irregular relations; God forbid that +I should go into the scandals about Shelley’s “Neapolitan +charge,” about Shelley and Emilia Viviani, about Shelley +and Miss Clairmont, and the rest of it! I will say only +that it is visible enough that when the passion of love was +<span class='pageno' id='Page_404'>404</span>aroused in Shelley (and it was aroused easily) one could +not be sure of him, his friends could not trust him. We +have seen him with the Boinville family. With Emilia +Viviani he is the same. If he is left much alone with +Miss Clairmont, he evidently makes Mary uneasy; nay, +he makes Professor Dowden himself uneasy. And I conclude +that an entirely human inflammability, joined to an +inhuman want of humor and a superhuman power of +self-deception, are the causes which chiefly explain Shelley’s +abandonment of Harriet in the first place, and then +his behavior to her and his defense of himself afterwards.</p> + +<p class='c001'>His misconduct to Harriet, his want of humor his self-deception, +are fully brought before us for the first time by +Professor Dowden’s book. Good morals and good criticism +alike forbid that when all this is laid bare to us we should +deny, or hide, or extenuate it. Nevertheless I go back +after all to what I said at the beginning; still our ideal +Shelley, the angelic Shelley, subsists. Unhappily the +data for this Shelley we had and knew long ago, while the +data for the unattractive Shelley are fresh; and what is +fresh is likely to fix our attention more than what is +familiar. But Professor Dowden’s volumes, which give so +much, which give too much, also afford data for picturing +anew the Shelley who delights, as well as for picturing for +the first time a Shelley who, to speak plainly, disgusts; +and with what may renew and restore our impression of +the delightful Shelley I shall end.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The winter at Marlow, and the ophthalmia caught +among the cottages of the poor, we knew, but we have +from Professor Dowden more details of this winter and +of Shelley’s work among the poor; we have above all, for +the first time I believe, a line of verse of Shelley’s own +which sums up truly and perfectly this most attractive +side of him—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“I am the friend of the unfriended poor.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>But that in Shelley on which I would especially dwell is +that in him which contrasts most with the ignobleness of +<span class='pageno' id='Page_405'>405</span>the world in which we have seen him living, and with the +pernicious nonsense which we have found him talking. +The Shelley of “marvelous gentleness,” of feminine refinement +with gracious and considerate manners, “a perfect +gentleman, entirely without arrogance or aggressive +egotism,” completely devoid of the proverbial and ferocious +vanity of authors and poets, always disposed to make little +of his own work and to prefer that of others, of reverent +enthusiasm for the great and wise, of high and tender +seriousness, of heroic generosity, and of a delicacy in +rendering services which was equal to his generosity—the +Shelley who was all this is the Shelley with whom I wish +to end. He may talk nonsense about tyrants and priests, +but what a high and noble ring in such a sentence as the +following, written by a young man who is refusing £2000 +a year rather than consent to entail a great property!</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“That I should entail £120,000 of command over labour, of +power to remit this, to employ it for benevolent purposes, on +one whom I know not—who might, instead of being the benefactor +of mankind, be its bane, or use this for the worst purposes, +which the real delegates of my chance-given property might +convert into a most useful instrument of benevolence! No! +this you will not suspect me of.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And again:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I desire money because I think I know the use of it. It +commands labor, it give leisure; and to give leisure to those +who will employ it in the forwarding of truth is the noblest +present an individual can make to the whole.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>If there is extravagance here, it is extravagance of a +beautiful and rare sort, like Shelley’s “underhand ways” +also, which differed singularly, the cynic Hogg tells us, +from the underhand ways of other people; “the latter +were concealed because they were mean, selfish, sordid; +Shelley’s secrets, on the contrary (kindnesses done by +stealth), were hidden through modesty, delicacy, generosity, +refinement of soul.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>His forbearance to Godwin, to Godwin lecturing and +renouncing him and at the same time holding out, as I +<span class='pageno' id='Page_406'>406</span>have said, his hat to him for alms, is wonderful; but the +dignity with which he at last, in a letter perfect for propriety +of tone, reads a lesson to his ignoble father-in-law, +is in the best possible style:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Perhaps it is well that you should be informed that I consider +your last letter to be written in a style of haughtiness and +encroachment which neither awes nor imposes on me; but I have +no desire to transgress the limits which you place to our intercourse, +nor in any future instance will I make any remarks but +such as arise from the strict question in discussion.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And again—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“My astonishment, and, I will confess, when I have been +treated with most harshness and cruelty by you, my indignation, +has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my nature, any considerations +should have prevailed on you to have been thus harsh +and cruel. I lamented also over my ruined hopes of all that +your genius once taught me to expect from your virtue, when I +found that for yourself, your family, and your creditors, you +would submit to that communication with me which you once +rejected and abhorred, and which no pity for my poverty or +suffering, assumed willingly for you, could avail to extort.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Moreover, though Shelley has no humor, he can show +as quick and sharp a tact as the most practised man of the +world. He has been with Byron and the Countess Guiccioli, +and he writes of the latter—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“La Guiccioli is a very pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian, +who has sacrificed an immense future for the sake of Lord +Byron, and who, if I know anything of my friend, of her, and +of human nature, will hereafter have plenty of opportunity to +repent her rashness,”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Tact also, and something better than tact, he shows in +his dealings, in order to befriend Leigh Hunt, with Lord +Byron. He writes to Hunt:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Particular circumstances, or rather, I should say, particular +dispositions in Lord Byron’s character, render the close and exclusive +intimacy with him, in which I find myself, intolerable to +me; thus much, my best friend, I will confess and confide to +you. No feelings of my own shall injure or interfere with what +<span class='pageno' id='Page_407'>407</span>is now nearest to them—your interest; and I will take care to +preserve the little influence I may have over this Proteus, in +whom such strange extremes are reconciled, until we meet.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And so we have comeback again, at last, to our original +Shelley—to the Shelley of the lovely and well-known +picture, to the Shelley with “flushed, feminine, artless +face,” the Shelley “blushing like a girl,” of Trelawny. +Professor Dowden gives us some further attempts at portraiture. +One by a Miss Rose, of Shelley at Marlow:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“He was the most interesting figure I ever saw; his eyes like +a deer’s, bright but rather wild; his white throat unfettered; +his slender but to me almost faultless shape; his brown long +coat with curling lambs’ wool collar and cuffs—in fact, his whole +appearance—are as fresh in my recollection as an occurrence of +yesterday.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Feminine enthusiasm may be deemed suspicious, but +a Captain Kennedy must surely be able to keep his head. +Captain Kennedy was quartered at Horsham in 1813, and +saw Shelley when he was on a stolen visit, in his father’s +absence, at Field Place:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“He received me with frankness and kindliness, as if he had +known me from childhood, and at once won my heart. I fancy +I see him now as he sate by the window, and hear his voice, the +tones of which impressed me with his sincerity and simplicity. +His resemblance to his sister Elizabeth was as striking as if they +had been twins. His eyes were most expressive; his complexion +beautifully fair, his features exquisitely fine; his hair was dark, +and no peculiar attention to its arrangement was manifest. In +person he was slender and gentlemanlike, but inclined to stoop; +his gait was decidedly not military. The general appearance +indicated great delicacy of constitution. One would at once +pronounce of him that he was different from other men. There +was an earnestness in his manner and such perfect gentleness of +breeding and freedom from everything artificial as charmed +every one. I never met a man who so immediately won upon +me.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Mrs. Gisborne’s son, who knew Shelley well at Leghorn, +declared Captain Kennedy’s description of him to be “the +best and most truthful I have ever seen.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>To all this we have to add the charm of the man’s +<span class='pageno' id='Page_408'>408</span>writings—of Shelley’s poetry. It is his poetry, above +everything else, which for many people establishes that +he is an angel. Of his poetry I have not space now to +speak. But let no one suppose that a want of humor and +a self-delusion such as Shelley’s have no effect upon a +man’s poetry. The man Shelley, in very truth, is not +entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane +either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty +and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting +nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a +beautiful <em>and ineffectual</em> angel, beating in the void his +luminous wings in vain.”</p> + +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_409'>409</span> + <h2 class='c005'>VIII.<br> <br> COUNT LEO TOLSTOI.<a id='r46'></a><a href='#f46' class='c007'><sup>[46]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>In reviewing at the time of its first publication, thirty +years ago, Flaubert’s remarkable novel of <cite>Madame Bovary</cite>, +Sainte-Beuve observed that in Flaubert we come to another +manner, another kind of inspiration, from those which +had prevailed hitherto; we find ourselves dealing, he said, +with a man of a new and different generation from novelists +like George Sand. The ideal has ceased, the lyric +vein is dried up; the new men are cured of lyricism and +the ideal; “a severe and pitiless truth has made its entry, +as the last word of experience, even into art itself.” The +characters of the new literature of fiction are “science, +a spirit of observation, maturity, force, a touch of hardness.” +<span lang="fr"><i>L’idéal a cessé, le lyrique a tari.</i></span></p> + +<p class='c001'>The spirit of observation and the touch of hardness (let +us retain these mild and inoffensive terms) have since been +carried in the French novel very far. So far have they +been carried, indeed, that in spite of the advantage which +the French language, familiar to the cultivated classes +everywhere, confers on the French novel, this novel has +lost much of its attraction for those classes; it no longer +commands their attention as it did formerly. The famous +English novelists have passed away, and have left no +successors of like fame. It is not the English novel, therefore, +which has inherited the vogue lost by the French +novel. It is a novel of a country new to literature, or at +any rate unregarded, till lately, by the general public of +readers: it is the novel of Russia. The Russian novel +<span class='pageno' id='Page_410'>410</span>has now the vogue, and deserves to have it. If fresh +literary productions maintain this vogue and enhance it, +we shall all be learning Russian.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The Slav nature, or at any rate the Russian nature, the +Russian nature as it shows itself in the Russian novels, +seems marked by an extreme sensitiveness, a consciousness +most quick and acute both for what the man’s self is experiencing, +and also for what others in contact with him +are thinking and feeling. In a nation full of life, but +young, and newly in contact with an old and powerful civilization, +this sensitiveness and self-consciousness are prompt +to appear. In the Americans, as well as in the Russians, +we see them active in a high degree. They are somewhat +agitating and disquieting agents to their possessor, but +they have, if they get fair play, great powers for evoking +and enriching a literature. But the Americans, as we +know, are apt to set them at rest in the manner of my +friend Colonel Higginson of Boston. “As I take it, Nature +said, some years since: “Thus far the English is my +best race; but we have had Englishmen enough; we need +something with a little more buoyancy than the Englishman; +let us lighten the structure, even at some peril in +the process. Put in one drop more of the nervous fluid, +and make the American.” With that drop, a new range +of promise opened on the human race, and a lighter, finer, +more highly organized type of mankind was born.” People +who by this sort of thing give rest to their sensitive +and busy self-consciousness may very well, perhaps, be on +their way to great material prosperity, to great political +power; but they are scarcely on the right way to a great +literature, a serious art.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The Russian does not assuage his sensitiveness in this +fashion. The Russian man of letters does not make Nature +say: “The Russian is my best race.” He finds relief +to his sensitiveness in letting his perceptions have perfectly +free play, and in recording their reports with perfect +fidelity. The sincereness with which the reports are +given has even something childlike and touching. In the +novel of which I am going to speak there is not a line, not +<span class='pageno' id='Page_411'>411</span>a trait, brought in for the glorification of Russia, or to +feel vanity; things and characters go as nature takes +them, and the author is absorbed in seeing how nature +takes them and in relating it. But we have here a condition +of things which is highly favorable to the production +of good literature, of good art. We have great sensitiveness, +subtlety, and finesse, addressing themselves with +entire disinterestedness and simplicity to the representation +of human life. The Russian novelist is thus master +of a spell to which the secrets of human nature—both +what is external and what is internal, gesture and manner +no less than thought and feeling—willingly make themselves +known. The crown of literature is poetry, and the +Russians have not yet had a great poet. But in that form +of imaginative literature which in our day is the most popular +and the most possible, the Russians at the present +moment seem to me to hold, as Mr. Gladstone would say, +the field. They have great novelists, and one of their +great novelists I wish now to speak.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Count Leo Tolstoi is about sixty years old, and tells us +that he shall write novels no more. He is now occupied +with religion and with the Christian life. His writings +concerning these great matters are not allowed, I believe, to +obtain publication in Russia, but instalments of them in +French and English reach us from time to time. I find +them very interesting, but I find his novel of <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> +more interesting still. I believe that many readers +prefer to <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> Count Tolstoi’s other great novel, +<span lang="fr"><cite>La Guerre et la Paix</cite></span>. But in the novel one prefers, I +think, to have the novelist dealing with the life which he +knows from having lived it, rather than with the life +which he knows from books or hearsay. If one has to +choose a representative work of Thackeray, it is <cite>Vanity +Fair</cite> which one could take rather than <cite>The Virginians</cite>. +In like manner I take <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> as the novel best +representing Count Tolstoi. I use the French translation; +in general, as I long ago said, work of this kind is better +done in France than in England, and <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> is +perhaps also a novel which goes better into French than +<span class='pageno' id='Page_412'>412</span>into English, just as Frederika Bremer’s <cite>Home</cite> goes into +English better than into French. After I have done with +<span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> I must say something of Count Tolstoi’s +religious writings. Of these too I use the French translation, +so far as it is available. The English translation, +however, which came into my hands late, seems to be +in general clear and good. Let me say in passing that +it has neither the same arrangement, nor the same titles, +nor altogether the same contents, with the French translation.</p> + +<p class='c001'>There are many characters in <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span>—too many +if we look in it for a work of art in which the action shall +be vigorously one, and to that one action everything shall +converge. There are even two main actions extending +throughout the book, and we keep passing from one of +them to the other—from the affairs of Anna and Wronsky +to the affairs of Kitty and Levine. People appear in connection +with these two main actions whose appearance and +proceedings do not in the least contribute to develop them; +incidents are multiplied which we expect are to lead to +something important, but which do not. What, for instance, +does the episode of Kitty’s friend Warinka and +Levine’s brother Serge Ivanitch, their inclination for one +another and its failure to come to anything, contribute to +the development of either the character or the fortunes of +Kitty and Levine? What does the incident of Levine’s +long delay in getting to church to be married, a delay +which as we read of it seems to have significance, really +import? It turns out to import absolutely nothing, and +to be introduced solely to give the author the pleasure of +telling us that all Levine’s shirts had been packed up.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But the truth is we are not to take <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> as a +work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life. A piece +of life it is. The author has not invented and combined +it, he has seen it; it has all happened before his inward +eye, and it was in this wise that it happened. Levine’s +shirts were packed up, and he was late for his wedding in +consequence; Warinka and Serge Ivanitch met at Levine’s +country-house and went out walking together; Serge was +<span class='pageno' id='Page_413'>413</span>very near proposing, but did not. The author saw it all +happening so—saw it, and therefore relates it; and what +his novel in this way loses in art it gains in reality.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For this is the result which, by his extraordinary fineness +of perception, and by his sincere fidelity to it, the +author achieves; he works in us a sense of the absolute +reality of his personages and their doings. Anna’s +shoulders, and masses of hair, and half-shut eyes; Alexis +Karénine’s up-drawn eyebrows, and tired smile, and cracking +finger-joints; Stiva’s eyes suffused with facile moisture—these +are as real to us as any of those outward +peculiarities which in our own circle of acquaintance we +are noticing daily, while the inner man of our own circle +of acquaintance, happily or unhappily, lies a great deal +less clearly revealed to us than that of Count Tolstoi’s +creations.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I must speak of only a few of these creations, the chief +personages and no more. The book opens with “Stiva,” +and who that has once made Stiva’s acquaintance will ever +forget him? We are living, in Count Tolstoi’s novel, among +the great people of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the nobles +and the high functionaries, the governing class of Russia. +Stépane Arcadiévitch—“Stiva”—is Prince Oblonsky, and +descended from Rurik, although to think of him as anything +except “Stiva” is difficult. His <span lang="fr"><i>air souriant</i></span>, his +good looks, his satisfaction; his “ray,” which made the +Tartar waiter at the club joyful in contemplating it; his +pleasure in oysters and champagne, his pleasure in making +people happy and in rendering services; his need of +money, his attachment to the French governess, his distress +at his wife’s distress, his affection for her and the +children; his emotion and suffused eyes, while he quite +dismisses the care of providing funds for household expenses +and education; and the French attachment, contritely +given up to-day only to be succeeded by some other +attachment to-morrow—no never, certainly, shall we come +to forget Stiva. Anna, the heroine, is Stiva’s sister. His +wife Dolly (these English diminutives are common among +Count Tolstoi’s ladies) is daughter of the Prince and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_414'>414</span>Princess Cherbatzky, grandees who show us Russian high +life by its most respectable side; the Prince, in particular, +is excellent—simple, sensible, right-feeling; a man of +dignity and honor. His daughters, Dolly and Kitty, are +charming. Dolly, Stiva’s wife, is sorely tried by her husband, +full of anxieties for the children, with no money to +spend on them or herself, poorly dressed, worn and aged +before her time. She has moments of despairing doubt +whether the gay people may not be after all in the right, +whether virtue and principle answer; whether happiness +does not dwell with adventuresses and profligates, brilliant +and perfectly dressed adventuresses and profligates, in +a land flowing with roubles and champagne. But in a +quarter of an hour she comes right again and is herself—a +nature straight, honest, faithful, loving, sound to the +core; such she is and such she remains; she can be no +other. Her sister Kitty is at bottom of the same temper, +but she has her experience to get, while Dolly, when the +book begins, has already acquired hers. Kitty is adored +by Levine, in whom we are told that many traits are to be +found of the character and history of Count Tolstoi himself. +Levine belongs to the world of great people by his +birth and property, but he is not at all a man of the world. +He has been a reader and thinker, he has a conscience, he +has public spirit and would ameliorate the condition of the +people, he lives on his estate in the country, and occupies +himself zealously with local business, schools and agriculture. +But he is shy, apt to suspect and to take offence, +somewhat impracticable, out of his element in the gay +world of Moscow. Kitty likes him, but her fancy has +been taken by a brilliant guardsman, Count Wronsky, +who has paid her attentions. Wronsky is described to us by +Stiva; he is “one of the finest specimens of the <span lang="fr"><i>jeunesse +dorée</i></span> of St. Petersburg; immensely rich, handsome, aide-de-camp +to the emperor, great interest at his back, and a +good fellow notwithstanding; more than a good fellow, +intelligent besides and well read—a man who has a splendid +career before him.” Let us complete the picture by +adding that Wronsky is a powerful man, over thirty, bald +<span class='pageno' id='Page_415'>415</span>at the top of his head, with irreproachable manners, cool +and calm, but a little haughty. A hero, one murmurs to +oneself, too much of the Guy Livingstone type, though +without the bravado and exaggeration. And such is, +justly enough perhaps, the first impression, an impression +which continues all through the first volume; but Wronsky, +as we shall see, improves towards the end.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Kitty discourages Levine, who retires in misery and confusion. +But Wronsky is attracted by Anna Karénine, +and ceases his attentions to Kitty. The impression made +on her heart by Wronsky was not deep; but she is so keenly +mortified with herself, so ashamed, and so upset, that she +falls ill, and is sent with her family to winter abroad. +There she regains health and mental composure, and discovers +at the same time that her liking for Levine was +deeper than she knew, that it was a genuine feeling, a +strong and lasting one. On her return they meet, their +hearts come together, they are married; and in spite of +Levine’s waywardness, irritability, and unsettlement of +mind, of which I shall have more to say presently, they +are profoundly happy. Well, and who could help being +happy with Kitty? So I find myself adding impatiently. +Count Tolstoi’s heroines are really so living and charming +that one takes them, fiction though they are, too seriously.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But the interest of the book centers in Anna Karénine. +She is Stiva’s sister, married to a high official at St. Petersburg, +Alexis Karénine. She has been married to him +nine years, and has one child, a boy named Serge. The +marriage had not brought happiness to her, she had found +in it no satisfaction to her heart and soul, she had a sense +of want and isolation; but she is devoted to her boy, occupied, +calm. The charm of her personality is felt even +before she appears, from the moment when we hear of her +being sent for as the good angel to reconcile Dolly with +Stiva. Then she arrives at the Moscow station from St. +Petersburg, and we see the gray eyes with their long eyelashes, +the graceful carriage, the gentle and caressing +smile on the fresh lips, the vivacity restrained but waiting +to break through, the fulness of life, the softness and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_416'>416</span>strength joined, the harmony, the bloom, the charm. +She goes to Dolly, and achieves, with infinite tact and +tenderness, the task of reconciliation. At a ball a few +days later, we add to our first impression of Anna’s beauty, +dark hair, a quantity of little curls over her temples and +at the back of her neck, sculptural shoulders, firm throat, +and beautiful arms. She is in a plain dress of black velvet +with a pearl necklace, a bunch of forget-me-nots in +the front of her dress, another in her hair. This is Anna +Karénine.</p> + +<p class='c001'>She had traveled from St. Petersburg with Wronsky’s +mother; had seen him at the Moscow station, where he +came to meet his mother, had been struck with his looks +and manner, and touched by his behavior in an accident +which happened while they were in the station to a poor +workman crushed by a train. At the ball she meets him +again; she is fascinated by him and he by her. She had +been told of Kitty’s fancy, and had gone to the ball meaning +to help Kitty; but Kitty is forgotten, or any rate +neglected; the spell which draws Wronsky and Anna is +irresistible. Kitty finds herself opposite to them in a +quadrille together:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“She seemed to remark in Anna the symptoms of an over-excitement +which she herself knew from experience—that of success. +Anna appeared to her as if intoxicated with it. Kitty +knew to what to attribute that brilliant and animated look, that +happy and triumphant smile, those half-parted lips, those movements +full of grace and harmony.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Anna returns to St. Petersburg, and Wronsky returns +there at the same time; they meet on the journey, they +keep meeting in society, and Anna begins to find her husband, +who before had not been sympathetic, intolerable. +Alexis Karénine is much older than herself, a bureaucrat, +a formalist, a poor creature; he has conscience, there is a +root of goodness in him, but on the surface and until +deeply stirred he is tiresome, pedantic, vain, exasperating. +The change in Anna is not in the slightest degree comprehended +by him; he sees nothing which an intelligent +<span class='pageno' id='Page_417'>417</span>man might in such a case see, and does nothing which an +intelligent man would do. Anna abandons herself to her +passion for Wronsky.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I remember M. Nisard saying to me many years ago at +the École Normale in Paris, that he respected the English +because they are <span lang="fr"><i>une nation qui sait se gêner</i></span>—people who +can put constraint on themselves and go through what is +disagreeable. Perhaps in the Slav nature this valuable +faculty is somewhat wanting; a very strong impulse is too +much regarded as irresistible, too little as what can be +resisted and ought to be resisted however difficult and +disagreeable the resistance may be. In our high society +with its pleasure and dissipation, laxer notions may to +some extent prevail; but in general an English mind will +be startled by Anna’s suffering herself to be so overwhelmed +and irretrievably carried away by her passion, +by her almost at once regarding it, apparently, as something +which it was hopeless to fight against. And +this I say irrespectively of the worth of her lover. +Wronsky’s gifts and graces hardly qualify him, one might +think, to be the object of so instantaneous and mighty a +passion on the part of a woman like Anna. But that is +not the question. Let us allow that these passions are incalculable; +let us allow that one of the male sex scarcely +does justice, perhaps, to the powerful and handsome +guardsman and his attractions. But if Wronsky had been +even such a lover as Alcibiades or the Master of Ravenswood, +still that Anna, being what she is and her circumstances +being what they are, should show not a hope, +hardly a thought, of conquering her passion, of escaping +from its fatal power, is to our notions strange and a little +bewildering.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I state the objection; let me add that it is the triumph +of Anna’s charm that it remains paramount for us nevertheless; +that throughout her course, with its failures, errors, +and miseries, still the impression of her large, fresh, +rich, generous, delightful nature, never leaves us—keeps +our sympathy, keeps even, I had almost said, our respect.</p> + +<p class='c001'>To return to the story. Soon enough poor Anna begins +<span class='pageno' id='Page_418'>418</span>to experience the truth of what the Wise Man told us long +ago, that “the way of transgressors is hard.” Her agitation +at a steeple-chase where Wronsky is in danger attracts +her husband’s notice and provokes his remonstrance. He +is bitter and contemptuous. In a transport of passion +Anna declares to him that she is his wife no longer; that +she loves Wronsky, belongs to Wronsky. Hard at first, +formal, cruel, thinking only of himself, Karénine, who, as +I have said, has a conscience, is touched by grace at the +moment when Anna’s troubles reach their height. He +returns to her to find her with a child just born to her and +Wronsky, the lover in the house and Anna apparently +dying. Karénine has words of kindness and forgiveness +only. The noble and victorious effort transfigures him, +and all that her husband gains in the eyes of Anna, her +lover Wronsky loses. Wronsky comes to Anna’s bedside, +and standing there by Karénine, buries his face in his +hands. Anna says to him, in the hurried voice of fever:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Uncover your face; look at that man; he is a saint. Yes, +uncover your face; uncover it,’ she repeated with an angry air. +‘Alexis, uncover his face; I want to see him.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Alexis took the hands of Wronsky and uncovered his face, +disfigured by suffering and humiliation.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Give him your hand; pardon him.’</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Alexis stretched out his hand without even seeking to restrain +his tears.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“‘Thank God, thank God!’ she said; ‘all is ready now. +How ugly those flowers <a id='corr418.28'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='are.”'>are.’</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_418.28'><ins class='correction' title='are.”'>are.’</ins></a></span> she went on, pointing to the wallpaper; +‘they are not a bit like violets. My God, my God! when +will all this end? Give me morphine, doctor—I want morphine. +Oh, my God, my God!’”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>She seems dying, and Wronsky rushes out and shoots +himself. And so, in a common novel, the story would end. +Anna would die, Wronsky would commit suicide, Karénine +would survive, in possession of our admiration and +<a id='corr418.36'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='sympathy,'>sympathy.</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_418.36'><ins class='correction' title='sympathy,'>sympathy.</ins></a></span> But the story does not always end so in life; +neither does it end so in Count Tolstoi’s novel. Anna recovers +from her fever, Wronsky from his wound. Anna’s +passion for Wronsky reawakens, her estrangement from +Karénine returns. Nor does Karénine remain at the +<span class='pageno' id='Page_419'>419</span>height at which in the forgiveness scene we saw him. He +is formal, pedantic, irritating. Alas! even if he were not +all these, perhaps even his <span lang="fr"><i>pince-nez</i></span>, and his rising eyebrows, +and his cracking finger-joints, would have been +provocation enough. Anna and Wronsky depart together. +They stay for a time in Italy, then return to Russia. But +her position is false, her disquietude incessant, and happiness +is impossible for her. She takes opium every night, +only to find that “not poppy nor mandragora shall ever +medicine her to that sweet sleep which she owed yesterday.” +Jealousy and irritability grow upon her; she tortures +Wronsky, she tortures herself. Under these trials +Wronsky, it must be said, comes out well, and rises in our +esteem. His love for Anna endures; he behaves, as our +English phrase is, “like a gentleman”; his patience is in +general exemplary. But then Anna, let us remember, is +to the last, through all the fret and misery, still Anna; +always with something which charms; nay, with something +in her nature, which consoles and does good. Her +life, however, was becoming impossible under its existing +conditions. A trifling misunderstanding brought the inevitable +end. After a quarrel with Anna, Wronsky had +gone one morning into the country to see his mother; +Anna summons him by telegraph to return at once, and +receives an answer from him that he cannot return before +ten at night. She follows him to his mother’s place in +the country, and at the station hears what leads her to +believe that he is not coming back. Maddened with jealousy +and misery, she descends the platform and throws +herself under the wheels of a goods train passing through +the station. It is over—the graceful head is untouched, +but all the rest is a crushed, formless heap. Poor Anna!</p> + +<p class='c006'>We have been in a world which misconducts itself nearly +as much as the world of a French novel all palpitating +with “modernity.” But there are two things in which +the Russian novel—Count Tolstoi’s novel at any rate—is +very advantageously distinguished from the type of novel +now so much in request in France. In the first place, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_420'>420</span>there is no fine sentiment, at once tiresome and false. We +are not told to believe, for example, that Anna is wonderfully +exalted and ennobled by her passion for Wronsky. +The English reader is thus saved from many a groan of +impatience. The other thing is yet more important. Our +Russian novelist deals abundantly with criminal passion and +with adultery, but he does not seem to feel himself owing +any service to the goddess Lubricity, or bound to put in touches +at this goddess’s dictation. Much in <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> +is painful, much is unpleasant, but nothing is of a nature to +trouble the senses, or to please those who wish their senses +troubled. This taint is wholly absent. In the French +novels where it is so abundantly present its baneful effects +do not end with itself. Burns long ago remarked with +deep truth that it <i><a id='corr420.15'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='petrifies feeling,'>petrifies feeling.</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_420.15'><ins class='correction' title='petrifies feeling,'>petrifies feeling.</ins></a></span></i> Let us revert for a +moment to the powerful novel of which I spoke at the +outset, <span lang="fr"><cite>Madame Bovary</cite></span>. Undoubtedly the taint in question +is present in <span lang="fr"><cite>Madame Bovary</cite></span>, although to a much +less degree than in more recent French novels, which will +be in every one’s mind. But <span lang="fr"><cite>Madame Bovary</cite></span>, with this +taint, is a work of <em>petrified feeling</em>; over it hangs an atmosphere +of bitterness, irony, impotence; not a personage +in the book to rejoice or console us; the springs of freshness +and feeling are not there to create such personages. +Emma Bovary follows a course in some respects like that +of Anna, but where, in Emma Bovary, is Anna’s charm? +The treasures of compassion, tenderness, insight, which +alone, amid such guilt and misery, can enable charm to +subsist and to emerge, are wanting to Flaubert. He is cruel +with the cruelty of petrified feeling, to his poor heroine; +he pursues her without pity or pause, as with malignity; +he is harder upon her himself than any reader even, I +think, will be inclined to be.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But where the springs of feeling have carried Count +Tolstoi, since he created Anna ten or twelve years ago, we +have now to see.</p> + +<p class='c001'>We must return to Constantine Dmitrich Levine. +Levine, as I have already said, thinks. Between the age +of twenty and that of thirty-five he had lost, he tells us, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_421'>421</span>the Christian belief in which he had been brought up, a +loss of which examples nowadays abound certainly everywhere, +but which in Russia, as in France, is among all +young men of the upper and cultivated class more a matter +of course, perhaps, more universal, more avowed, than +it is with us. Levine had adopted the scientific notions +current all round him; talked of cells, organisms, the indestructibility +of matter, the conservation of force, and +was of opinion, with his comrades of the university, that +religion no longer existed. But he was of a serious nature, +and the question what his life meant, whence it came, +whither it tended, presented themselves to him in moments +of crisis and affliction with irresistible importunity, and +getting no answer, haunted him, tortured him, made him +think of suicide.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Two things, meanwhile, he noticed. One was, that he +and his university friends had been mistaken in supposing +that Christian belief no longer existed; they had lost it, +but they were not all the world. Levine observed that the +persons to whom he was most attached, his own wife Kitty +amongst the number, retained it and drew comfort from +it; that the women generally, and almost the whole of +the Russian common people, retained it and drew comfort +from it. The other was, that his scientific friends, though +not troubled like himself by questionings about the meaning +of human life, were untroubled by such questionings, +not because they had got an answer to them, but because, +entertaining themselves intellectually with the consideration +of the cell theory, and evolution, and the indestructibility +of matter, and the conservation of force, and the +like, they were satisfied with this entertainment, and did +not perplex themselves with investigating the meaning and +object of their own life at all.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But Levine noticed further that he himself did not actually +proceed to commit suicide; on the contrary, he lived +on his lands as his father had done before him, busied himself +with all the duties of his station, married Kitty, was +delighted when a son was born to him. Nevertheless +he was indubitably not happy at bottom, restless and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_422'>422</span>disquieted, his disquietude sometimes amounting to +agony.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Now on one of his bad days he was in the field with his +peasants, and one of them happened to say to him, in answer +to a question from Levine why one farmer should in +a certain case act more humanly than another: “Men are +not all alike: one man lives for his belly, like Mitiovuck, +another for his soul, for God, like old Plato.”<a id='r47'></a><a href='#f47' class='c007'><sup>[47]</sup></a>—“What do +you call,” <a id='corr422.9'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='eried'>cried</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_422.9'><ins class='correction' title='eried'>cried</ins></a></span> Levine, “living for his soul, for God?” +The peasant answered: “It’s quite simple—living by the +rule of God, of the truth. All men are not the same, +that’s certain. You yourself, for instance, Constantine +Dmitrich, you wouldn’t do wrong by a poor man.” Levine +gave no answer, but turned away with the phrase, <em>living +by the rule of God, of the truth</em>, sounding in his ears.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Then he reflected that he had been born of parents professing +this rule, as their parents again had professed it +before them; that he had sucked it in with his mother’s +milk; that some sense of it, some strength and nourishment +from it, had been ever with him although he knew it +not; that if he had tried to do the duties of his station it +was by help of the secret support ministered by this rule; +that if in his moments of despairing restlessness and agony, +when he was driven to think of suicide, he had yet not committed +suicide, it was because this rule had silently enabled +him to do his duty in some degree, and had given him some +hold upon life and happiness in consequence.</p> + +<p class='c001'>The words came to him as a clue of which he could never +again lose sight, and which with full consciousness and +strenuous endeavor he must henceforth follow. He sees +his nephews and nieces throwing their milk at one another +and scolded by Dolly for it. He says to himself that these +children are wasting their subsistence because they have +not to earn it for themselves and do not know its value, +and he exclaims inwardly: “I, a Christian, brought up in +the faith, my life filled with the benefits of Christianity, +living on these benefits without being conscious of it, I, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_423'>423</span>like these children, I have been trying to destroy what +makes and builds up my life.” But now the feeling has +been borne in upon him, clear and precious, that what he +has to do is <em>be good</em>; he has “cried to <em>Him</em>.” What will +come of it?</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I shall probably continue to get out of temper with my coachman, +to get into useless arguments, to air my ideas unseasonably; +I shall always feel a barrier between the sanctuary of my soul +and the soul of other people, even that of my wife; I shall always +be holding her responsible for my annoyances and feeling sorry +for it directly afterwards. I shall continue to pray without being +able to explain to myself why I pray; but my inner life has +won its liberty; it will no longer be at the mercy of events, and +every minute of my existence will have a meaning sure and profound +which it will be in my power to impress on every single +one of my actions, that of <em>being good</em>.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>With these words the novel of <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> ends. +But in Levine’s religious experiences Count Tolstoi was +relating his own, and the history is continued in three +autobiographical works translated from him, which have +within the last two or three years been published in Paris: +<span lang="fr"><cite>Ma Confession</cite></span>, <span lang="fr"><cite>Ma Religion</cite></span>, and <span lang="fr"><cite>Que Faire</cite></span>. Our author +announces further, “two great works,” on which he has +spent six years: one a criticism of dogmatic theology, the +other a new translation of the four Gospels, with a concordance +of his own arranging. The results which he +claims to have established in these two works, are, however, +indicated sufficiently in the three published volumes +which I have named above.</p> + +<p class='c001'>These autobiographical volumes show the same extraordinary +penetration, the same perfect sincerity, which are +exhibited in the author’s novel. As autobiography they +are of profound interest, and they are full, moreover, of +acute and fruitful remarks. I have spoken of the advantages +which the Russian genius possesses for imaginative +literature. Perhaps for Biblical exegesis, for the criticism +of religion and its documents, the advantage lies more with +the older nations of the West. They will have more of +the experience, width of knowledge, patience, sobriety, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_424'>424</span>requisite for these studies; they may probably be less impulsive, +less heady.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Count Tolstoi regards the change accomplished in himself +during the last half-dozen years, he regards his recent +studies and the ideas which he has acquired through them, +as epoch-making in his life and of capital importance:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine +of Jesus, and all my life suddenly changed. I ceased to desire +that which previously I desired, and, on the other hand, I took +to desiring what I had never desired before. That which formerly +used to appear good in my eyes appeared evil, that which +used to appear evil appeared good.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The novel of <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> belongs to that past which +Count Tolstoi has left behind him; his new studies and +the works founded on them are what is important; light +and salvation are there. Yet I will venture to express my +doubt whether these works contain, as their contribution +to the cause of religion and to the establishment of the +true mind and message of Jesus, much that had not already +been given or indicated by Count Tolstoi in relating, in +<span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span>, Levine’s mental history. Points raised +in that history are developed and enforced; there is an +abundant and admirable exhibition of knowledge of human +nature, penetrating insight, fearless sincerity, wit, sarcasm, +eloquence, style. And we have too the direct autobiography +of a man not only interesting to us from his soul +and talent, but highly interesting also from his nationality, +position, and course of proceeding. But to light and salvation +in the Christian religion we are not, I think, brought +very much nearer than in Levine’s history. I ought to +add that what was already present in that history seems +to me of high importance and value. Let us see what it +amounts to.</p> + +<p class='c001'>I must be general and I must be brief; neither my limits +nor my purpose permit the introduction of what is abstract. +But in Count Tolstoi’s religious philosophy there is very +little which is abstract, arid. The idea of <em>life</em> is his master +idea in studying and establishing religion. He speaks impatiently +<span class='pageno' id='Page_425'>425</span>of St. Paul as a source, in common with the +Fathers and the Reformers, of that ecclesiastical theology +which misses the essential and fails to present Christ’s +Gospel aright. Yet Paul’s “law of the spirit of life in +Christ Jesus freeing me from the law of sin and death” +is the pith and ground of all Count Tolstoi’s theology. +Moral life is the gift of God, is God, and this true life, this +union with God to which we aspire, we reach through +Jesus. We reach it through union with Jesus and by +adopting his life. This doctrine is proved true for us by the +life in God, to be acquired through Jesus, being what our +nature feels after and moves to, by the warning of misery +if we are served from it, the sanction of happiness if we +find it. Of the access for <em>us</em>, at any rate, to the spirit of +life, us who are born in Christendom, are in touch, conscious +or unconscious, with Christianity, this is the true +account. Questions over which the churches spend so +much labor and time—questions about the Trinity, about +the godhead of Christ, about the procession of the Holy +Ghost, are not vital; what is vital is the doctrine of access +to the spirit of life through Jesus.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Sound and saving doctrine, in my opinion, this is. It +may be gathered in a great degree from what Count +Tolstoi had already given us in the novel of <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna +Karénine</cite></span>. But of course it is greatly developed, in the +special works which have followed. Many of these developments +are, I will repeat, of striking force, interest, and +value. In <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span> we had been told of the scepticism +of the upper and educated classes in Russia. But +what reality is added by such an anecdote as the following +from <span lang="fr"><cite>Ma Confession</cite></span>:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I remember that when I was about eleven years old we had +a visit one Sunday from a boy, since dead, who announced to my +brother and me, as great news, a discovery just made at his +public school. This discovery was to the effect that God had no +existence, and that everything which we were taught about Him +was pure invention.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Count Tolstoi touched, in <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span>, on the failure +<span class='pageno' id='Page_426'>426</span>of science to tell a man what his life means. Many a sharp +stroke does he add in his latter writings:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Development is going on, and there are laws which guide it. +You yourself are a part of the whole. Having come to understand +the whole so far as is possible, and having comprehended +the law of development, you will comprehend also your place in +that whole, you will understand yourself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“In spite of all the shame the confession costs me, there was a +time, I declare, when I tried to look as if I was satisfied with this +sort of thing!”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>But the men of science may take comfort from hearing +that Count Tolstoi treats the men of letters no better than +them, although he is a man of letters himself:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“The judgment which my literary companions passed on life +was to the effect that life in general is in a state of progress, and +that in this development we, the men of letters, take the principal +part. The vocation of us artists and poets is to instruct the +world; and to prevent my coming out with the natural question, +‘What am I, and what am I to <a id='corr426.19'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='teach?”'>teach?’</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_426.19'><ins class='correction' title='teach?”'>teach?’</ins></a></span> it was explained to me +that it was useless to know that, and that the artist and the poet +taught without perceiving how. I passed for a superb artist, a +great poet, and consequently it was but natural I should appropriate +this theory. I, the artist, the poet—I wrote, I taught, +without myself knowing what. I was paid for what I did. I +had everything: splendid fare and lodging, women, society; I +had <span lang="fr"><i>la gloire</i></span>. Consequently, what I taught was very good. This +faith in the importance of poetry and of the development of life +was a religion, and I was one of its priests—a very agreeable and +advantageous office.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“And I lived ever so long in this belief, never doubting but +that it was true!”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The adepts of this literary and scientific religion are not +numerous, to be sure, in comparison with the mass of the +people, and the mass of the people, as Levine had remarked, +find comfort still in the old religion of Christendom; +but of the mass of the people our literary and scientific +instructors make no account. Like Solomon and +Schopenhauer, these gentlemen, and “society” along +with them, are, moreover, apt to say that life is, after all, +vanity: but then they all know of no life except their own.</p> + +<div><span class='pageno' id='Page_427'>427</span></div> +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“It used to appear to me that the small number of cultivated, +rich, and idle men, of whom I was one, composed the whole of +humanity, and that the millions and millions of other men who +had lived and are still living were not in reality men at all. Incomprehensible +as it now seems to me, that I should have gone +on considering life without seeing the life which was surrounding +me on all sides, the life of humanity; strange as it is to think +that I should have been so mistaken, and have fancied my life, +the life of the Solomons and the Schopenhauers, to be the veritable +and normal life, while the life of the masses was but a +matter of no importance—strangely odd as this seems to me now,—so +it was, notwithstanding.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And this pretentious minority, who call themselves +“society,” “the world,” and to whom their own life, the +life of “the world,” seems the only life worth naming, +are all the while miserable! Our author found it so in +his own experience:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“In my life, an exceptionally happy one from a worldly point +of view, I can number such a quantity of sufferings endured for +the sake of “the world,” that they would be enough to furnish +a martyr for Jesus. All the most painful passages in my life, +beginning with the orgies and duels of my student days, the +wars I have been in, the illnesses, and the abnormal and unbearable +conditions in which I am living now—all this is but one +martyrdom endured in the name of the doctrine of the world. +Yes, and I speak of my own life, exceptionally happy from the +world’s point of view.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Let any sincere man pass his life in review, and he will perceive +that never, not once, has he suffered through practising the +doctrine of Jesus; the chief part of the miseries of his life have +proceeded solely from his following, contrary to his inclination, +the spell of the doctrine of the world.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>On the other hand, the simple, the multitudes, outside +of this spell, are comparatively contented:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“In opposition to what I saw in our circle, where life without +faith is possible, and where I doubt whether one in a thousand +would confess himself a believer, I conceive that among the +people (in Russia) there is not one sceptic to many thousands of +believers. Just contrary to what I saw in our circle, where life +passes in idleness, amusements, and discontent with life, I saw +<span class='pageno' id='Page_428'>428</span>that of these men of the people the whole life was passed in +severe labor, and yet they were contented with life. Instead +of complaining like the persons in our world of the hardship of +their lot, these poor people received sickness and disappointments +without any revolt, without opposition, but with a firm and +tranquil confidence that so it was to be, that it could not be +otherwise, and that it was all right.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>All this is but development, sometimes rather surprising, +but always powerful and interesting, of what we have +already had in the pages of <span lang="fr"><cite>Anna Karénine</cite></span>. And like +Levine in that novel, Count Tolstoi was driven by his +inward struggle and misery very near to suicide. What +is new in the recent books is the solution and cure announced. +Levine had accepted a provisional solution of +the difficulties oppressing him; he had lived right on, so +to speak, obeying his conscience, but not asking how far +all his actions hung together and were consistent:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“He advanced money to a peasant to get him out of the clutches +of a money-lender, but did not give up the arrears due to himself; +he punished thefts of wood strictly, but would have scrupled to +impound a peasant’s cattle trespassing on his fields; he did not +pay the wages of a laborer whose father’s death caused him to +leave work in the middle of harvest, but he pensioned and maintained +his old servants; he let his peasants wait while he went +to give his wife a kiss after he came home, but would not have +made them wait while he went to visit his bees.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Count Tolstoi has since advanced to a far more definite +and stringent rule of life—the positive doctrine, he thinks, +of Jesus. It is the determination and promulgation of +this rule which is the novelty in our author’s recent works. +He extracts this essential doctrine, or rule of Jesus, from +the Sermon on the Mount, and presents it in a body of +commandments—Christ’s commandments; the pith, he +says, of the New Testament, as the Decalogue is the pith +of the Old. These all-important commandments of Christ +are “commandments of peace,” and five in number. The +first commandment is: “Live in peace with all men; +treat no one as contemptible and beneath you. Not only +allow yourself no anger, but do not rest until you have +<span class='pageno' id='Page_429'>429</span>dissipated even unreasonable anger in others against +yourself.” The second is: “No libertinage and no +divorce; let every man have one wife and every woman +one husband.” The third: “Never on any pretext take +an oath of service of any kind; all such oaths are imposed +for a bad purpose.” The fourth: “Never employ force +against the evil-doer; bear whatever wrong is done to you +without opposing the wrong-doer or seeking to have him +punished.” The fifth and last: “Renounce all distinction +of nationality; do not admit that men of another +nation may ever be treated by you as enemies; love all men +alike as alike near to you; do good to all alike.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>If these five commandments were generally observed, +says Count Tolstoi, all men would become brothers. +Certainly the actual society in which we live would be +changed and dissolved. Armies and wars would be renounced; +courts of justice, police, property, would be +renounced also. And whatever the rest of us may do, +Count Tolstoi at least will do his duty and follow Christ’s +commandments sincerely. He has given up rank, office, +and property, and earns his bread by the labor of his own +hands. “I believe in Christ’s commandments,” he says, +“and this faith changes my whole former estimate of +what is good and great, bad and low, in human life.” At +present—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Everything which I used to think bad and low—the rusticity +of the peasant, the plainness of lodging, food, clothing, manners—all +this has become good and great in my eyes. At present I +can no longer contribute to anything which raises me externally +above others, which separates me from them. I cannot, as +formerly, recognize either in my own case or in that of others +any title, rank, or quality beyond the title and quality of man. +I cannot seek fame and praise; I cannot seek a culture which +separates me from men. I cannot refrain from seeking in my +whole existence—in my lodging, my food, my clothing, and my +ways of going on with people—whatever, far from separating me +from the mass of mankind, draws me nearer to them.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Whatever else we have or have not in Count Tolstoi, we +have at least a great soul and a great writer. In his Biblical +exegesis, in the criticism by which he extracts and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_430'>430</span>constructs his Five Commandments of Christ which are +to be the rule of our lives, I find much which is questionable +along with much which is ingenious and powerful. +But I have neither space, nor, indeed, inclination, to +criticise his exegesis here. The right moment, besides, +for criticising this will come when the “two great works,” +which are in preparation, shall have appeared.</p> + +<p class='c001'>For the present I limit myself to a single criticism only—a +general one. Christianity cannot be packed into any +set of commandments. As I have somewhere or other +said, “Christianity is a <em>source</em>; no one supply of water +and refreshment that comes from it can be called the sum +of Christianity. It is a mistake, and may lead to much +error, to exhibit any series of maxims, even those of the +Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and formula +into which Christianity may be run up.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>And the reason mainly lies in the character of the +Founder of Christianity and in the nature of his utterances. +Not less important than the teachings given by +Jesus in the <em>temper</em> of their giver, his temper of sweetness +and reasonableness, of <em>epieikeia</em>. Goethe calls him a +<span lang="de"><i>Schäwrmer</i></span>, a fanatic; he may much more rightly be called +an opportunist. But he is an opportunist of an opposite +kind from those who in politics, that “wild and dreamlike +trade” of insincerity, give themselves this name. +They push or slacken, press their points hard or let them +be, as may best suit the interests of their self-aggrandizement +and of their party. Jesus has in view simply “the +rule of God, of the truth.” But this is served by waiting +as well as by hasting forward, and sometimes served better.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Count Tolstoi sees rightly that whatever the propertied +and satisfied classes may think, the world, ever since Jesus +Christ came, is judged; “a new earth” is in prospect. +It was ever in prospect with Jesus, and should be ever in +prospect with his followers. And the ideal in prospect +has to be realized. “If ye know these things, happy are +ye if ye do them.” But they are to be done through a +great and widespread and long-continued change, and a +change of the inner man to begin with. The most important +<span class='pageno' id='Page_431'>431</span>and fruitful utterances of Jesus, therefore, are +not things which can be drawn up as a table of stiff and +stark external commands, but the things which have most +soul in them; because these can best sink down into our +soul, work there, set up an influence, form habits of conduct, +and prepare the future. The Beatitudes are on this +account more helpful than the utterances from which +Count Tolstoi builds up his Five Commandments. The +very <em>secret</em> of Jesus, “He that loveth his life shall lose +it, he that will lose his life shall save it,” does not give +us a command to be taken and followed in the letter, but +an idea to work in our mind and soul, and of inexhaustible +value there.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Jesus paid tribute to the government and dined with +the publicans, although neither the empire of Rome nor +the high finance of Judea were compatible with his ideal +and with the “new earth” which that ideal must in the +end create. Perhaps Levine’s provisional solution, in a +society like ours, was nearer to “the rule of God, of the +truth,” than the more trenchant solution which Count +Tolstoi has adopted for himself since. It seems calculated +to be of more use. I do not know how it is in Russia, but +in an English village the determination of “our circle” +to earn their bread by the work of their hands would produce +only dismay, not fraternal joy, amongst that +“majority” who are so earning it already. “There are +plenty of us to compete as things stand,” the gardeners, +carpenters, and smiths would say; “pray stick to your +articles, your poetry, and nonsense; in manual labor you +will interfere with us, and be taking the bread out of our +mouths.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>So I arrive at the conclusion that Count Tolstoi has +perhaps not done well in abandoning the work <a id='corr431.33'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='af'>of</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_431.33'><ins class='correction' title='af'>of</ins></a></span> the poet +and artist, and that he might with advantage return to it. +But whatever he may do in the future, the work which he +has already done, and his work in religion as well as his +work in imaginative literature, is more than sufficient to +signalize him as one of the most marking, interesting, and +sympathy-inspiring men of our time—an honor, I must +add, to Russia, although he forbids us to heed nationality.</p> +<div class='chapter'> + <span class='pageno' id='Page_432'>432</span> + <h2 class='c005'>IX. <br> <br> AMIEL.<a id='r48'></a><a href='#f48' class='c007'><sup>[48]</sup></a></h2> +</div> + +<p class='c006'>It is somewhat late to speak of Amiel, but I was late in +reading him. Goethe says that in seasons of cholera one +should read no books but such as are tonic, and certainly +in the season of old age this precaution is as salutary as in +seasons of cholera. From what I heard I could clearly +make out that Amiel’s Journal was not a tonic book: the +extracts from it which here and there I fell in with did +not much please me; and for a good while I left the book +unread.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But what M. Edmond Scherer writes I do not easily +resist reading, and I found that M. Scherer had prefixed +to Amiel’s Journal a long and important introduction. +This I read; and was not less charmed by the <span lang="la"><i>mitis sapientia</i></span>, +the understanding, kindness and tenderness, with +which the character of Amiel himself, whom M. Scherer +had known in youth, was handled, than interested by the +criticism on the Journal. Then I read Mrs. Humphry +Ward’s interesting notice, and then—for all biography is +attractive, and of Amiel’s life and circumstances I had by +this time become desirous of knowing more—the <span lang="fr"><cite>Etude +Biographique</cite></span> of Mademoiselle Berthe Vadier.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Of Amiel’s cultivation, refinement, and high feeling, of +his singular graces of spirit and character, there could be +no doubt. But the specimens of his work given by his +critics left me hesitating. A poetess herself, Mademoiselle +Berthe Vadier is much occupied with Amiel’s poetry, and +quotes it abundantly. Even Victor Hugo’s poetry leaves +me cold, I am so unhappy as not to be able to admire +<span lang="fr"><cite>Olympio</cite></span>; what am I to say, then, to Amiel’s</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_433'>433</span><span lang="fr"> “Journée</span></div> + <div class='line in4'><span lang="fr">Illuminée,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Riant soleil d’avril,</span></div> + <div class='line in4'><span lang="fr">En quel songe</span></div> + <div class='line in4'><span lang="fr">Se plonge</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Mon cœur, et que veut-il”?</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>But M. Scherer and other critics, who do not require us +to admire Amiel’s poetry, maintain that in his Journal he +has left “a book which will not die,” a book describing a +malady of which “the secret is sublime and the expression +wonderful”; a marvel of “speculative intuition,” a +“psychological experience of the utmost value.” M. +Scherer and Mrs. Humphry Ward give Amiel’s Journal +very decidedly the preference over the letters of an old +friend of mine, Obermann. The quotations made from +Amiel’s Journal by his critics failed, I say, to enable me +quite to understand this high praise. But I remember +the time when a new publication by George Sand or by +Sainte-Beuve was an event bringing to me a shock of +pleasure, and a French book capable of renewing that +sensation is seldom produced now. If Amiel’s Journal +was of the high quality alleged, what a pleasure to make +acquaintance with it, what a loss to miss it! In spite, +therefore, of the unfitness of old age to bear atonic influences, +I at last read Amiel’s Journal,—read it carefully +through. Tonic it is not; but it is to be read with profit, +and shows, moreover, powers of great force and value, +though not quite, I am inclined to think, in the exact +line which his critics with one consent indicate.</p> + +<p class='c001'>In speaking of Amiel at present, after so much has been +written about him, I may assume that the main outlines +of his life are known to my readers: that they know him +to have been born in 1821 and to have died in 1881, to +have passed the three or four best years of his youth at +the University of Berlin, and the remainder of his life +mostly at Geneva, as a professor, first of æsthetics, afterwards +of philosophy. They know that his publications +and lectures, during his lifetime, disappointed his friends, +who expected much from his acquirements, talents, and +<span class='pageno' id='Page_434'>434</span>vivacity; and that his fame rests upon two volumes of extracts +from many thousand pages of a private journal, +<span lang="fr"><cite>Journal Intime</cite></span>, extending over more than thirty years, +from 1848 to 1881, which he left behind him at his death. +This Journal explains his sterility; and displays in explaining +it, say his critics, such sincerity, with such gifts +of expression and eloquence, of profound analysis and +speculative intuition, as to make it most surely “one of +those books which will not die.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>The sincerity is unquestionable. As to the gifts of +eloquence and expression, what are we to say? M. +Scherer speaks of an “ever new eloquence” pouring itself +in the pages of the Journal: M. Paul Bourget, of +“marvelous pages” where the feeling for nature finds +an expression worthy of Shelley or Wordsworth: Mrs. +Humphry Ward, of “magic of style,” of “glow and splendor +of expression,” of the “poet and artist” who fascinates +us in Amiel’s prose. I cannot quite agree. Obermann +has been mentioned: it seems to me that we have +only to place a passage from Sénancour beside a passage +from Amiel, to perceive the difference between a feeling +for nature which gives magic to style and one which does +not. Here and throughout I am to use as far as possible +Mrs. Humphry Ward’s translation, at once spirited and +faithful, of Amiel’s Journal. I will take a passage where +Amiel has evidently some reminiscence of Sénancour +(whose work he knew well), is inspired by Sénancour—a +passage which has been extolled by M. Paul Bourget:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Shall I ever enjoy again those marvelous reveries of past +days,—as, for instance, once, when I was still quite a youth in +the early dawn sitting amongst the ruins of the castle of Faucigny; +another time in the mountains above Lancy, under the +mid-day sun, lying under a tree and visited by three butterflies; +and again another night on the sandy shore of the North Sea, +stretched full length upon the beach, my eyes wandering over +the Milky Way? Will they ever return to me, those grandiose, +immortal, cosmogonic dreams in which one seems to carry the +world in one’s breast, to touch the stars, to possess the infinite? +Divine moments, hours of ecstasy, when thought flies from world +to world, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respiration +<span class='pageno' id='Page_435'>435</span>large, tranquil, and profound like that of the ocean, and +hovers serene and boundless like the blue heaven! Visits from +the Muse Urania, who traces around the foreheads of those she +loves the phosphorescent nimbus of contemplative power, and +who pours into their hearts the tranquil intoxication, if not the +authority of genius,—moments of irresistible intuition in which +a man feels himself great as the universe and calm like God!... +What hours, what memories!”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And now for Obermann’s turn, Obermann by the Lake +of Bienne:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“My path lay beside the green waters of the Thiele. Feeling +inclined to muse, and finding the night so warm that there was +no hardship in being all night out of doors, I took the road to +Saint Blaise. I descended a steep bank, and got upon the shore +of the lake where its ripple came up and expired. The air was +calm; every one was at rest; I remained there for hours. +Towards morning the moon shed over the earth and waters the +ineffable melancholy of her last gleams. Nature seems unspeakably +grand, when, plunged in a long reverie, one hears the rippling +of the waters upon a solitary strand, in the calm of a night +still enkindled and luminous with the setting moon.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Sensibility beyond utterance, charm and torment of our vain +years; vast consciousness of a nature everywhere greater than +we are, and everywhere impenetrable; all-embracing passion, +ripened wisdom, delicious self-abandonment—everything that +a mortal heart can contain of life-weariness and yearning, I felt +it all, I experienced it all, in this memorable night. I have made +a grave step towards the age of decline, I have swallowed up ten +years of life at once. Happy the simple, whose heart is always +young!”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>No translation can render adequately the cadence of +diction, the “dying fall” of reveries like those of Sénancour +or Rousseau. But even in a translation we must +surely perceive that the magic of style is with Sénancour’s +feeling for nature, not Amiel’s; and in the original this is +far more manifest still.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Magic of style is creative: its possessor himself creates, +and he inspires and enables his reader in some sort to +create after him. And creation gives the sense of life +and joy; hence its extraordinary value. But eloquence +may exist without magic of style, and this eloquence, accompanying +thoughts of rare worth and depth, may +<span class='pageno' id='Page_436'>436</span>heighten their effect greatly. And M. Scherer says that +Amiel’s speculative philosophy is “on a far other scale of +vastness” than Sénancour’s, and therefore he gives the +preference to the eloquence of Amiel, which clothes and +conveys this vaster philosophy. Amiel was no doubt +greatly Sénancour’s superior in culture and instruction +generally; in philosophical reading and what is called +philosophical thought he was immensely his superior. +My sense for philosophy, I know, is as far from satisfying +Mr. Frederic Harrison as my sense for Hugo’s poetry is +from satisfying Mr. Swinburne. But I am too old to +change and too hardened to hide what I think; and +when I am presented with philosophical speculations and +told that they are “on a high scale of vastness,” I persist +in looking closely at them and in honestly asking myself +what I find to be their positive value. And we get from +Amiel’s powers of “speculative intuition” things like this—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Created spirits in the accomplishment of their destinies +tend, so to speak, to form constellations and milky ways within +the empyrean of the divinity; in becoming gods, they surround +the throne of the sovereign with a sparkling court.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c017'>Or this—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Is not mind the universal virtuality, the universe latent? +If so, its zero would be the germ of the infinite, which is expressed +mathematically by the double zero (00).”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c017'>Or, to let our philosopher develop himself at more length, +let us take this return to the zero, which Mrs. Humphry +Ward prefers here to render by <em>nothingness</em>:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“This psychological reinvolution is an anticipation of death; +it represents the life beyond the grave, the return to Scheol, the +soul fading into the world of ghosts or descending into the region +of <span lang="de"><i>Die Mütter</i></span>; it implies the simplification of the individual +who, allowing all the accidents of personality to evaporate, +exists henceforward only in the invisible state, the state of +point, of potentiality, of pregnant nothingness. Is not this the +true definition of mind? is not mind, dissociated from space and +time, just this? Its development, past or future, is contained in +it just as a curve is contained in its algebraical <a id='corr436.39'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='fomula'>formula</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_436.39'><ins class='correction' title='fomula'>formula</ins></a></span>. This +nothing is an all. This <span lang="la"><i>punctum</i></span> without dimensions is a <span lang="la"><i>punctum +saliens</i></span>.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_437'>437</span>French critics throw <a id='corr437.1'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='np'>up</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_437.1'><ins class='correction' title='np'>up</ins></a></span> their hands in dismay at the +violence which the Germanized Amiel, propounding his +speculative philosophy, often does to the French language. +My objection is rather that such speculative philosophy, +as that of which I have been quoting specimens has no +value, is perfectly futile. And Amiel’s Journal contains +far too much of it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>What is futile we may throw aside; but when Amiel +tells us of his “protean nature essentially metamorphosable, +polarizable, and virtual,” when he tells us of his +longing for “totality,” we must listen, although these +phrases may in France, as M. Paul Bourget says, +“raise a shudder in a humanist trained on Livy and Pascal.” +But these phrases stood for ideas which did practically +rule, in a great degree, Amiel’s life, which he often +develops not only with great subtlety, but also with force, +clearness, and eloquence, making it both easy and interesting +to us to follow him. But still, when we have +the ideas present before us, I shall ask, what is their +value, what does Amiel obtain in them for the service of +either himself or other people?</p> + +<p class='c001'>Let us take first what, adopting his own phrase, we +may call his “bedazzlement with the infinitê,” his thirst +for “totality.” <span lang="la"><i>Omnis determinatio est negatio.</i></span> Amiel +has the gift and the bent for making his soul “the capacity +for all form, not <em>a</em> soul but <em>the</em> soul.” He finds it +easier and more natural “to be <em>man</em> than <em>a</em> man.” His +permanent instinct is to be “a subtle and fugitive spirit +which no base can absorb or fix entirely.” It costs +him an effort to affirm his own personality: “the infinite +draws me to it, the <em>Henosis</em> of Plotinus intoxicates +me like a philter.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>It intoxicates him until the thought of absorption and +extinction, the <em>Nirvâna</em> of Buddhism, becomes his +thought of refuge:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“The individual life is a nothing ignorant of itself, and as +soon as this nothing knows itself, individual life is abolished in +principle. For as soon as the illusion vanishes, Nothingness +resumes its eternal sway, the suffering of life is over, error has +<span class='pageno' id='Page_438'>438</span>disappeared, time and form have for this enfranchised individuality +ceased to be; the colored air-bubble has burst in the +infinite space, and the misery of thought has sunk to rest in the +changeless repose of all—embracing Nothing.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>With this bedazement with the infinite and this drift +towards Buddhism comes the impatience with all production, +with even poetry and art themselves, because of their +necessary limits and imperfection:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Composition demands a concentration, decision, and pliancy +which I no longer possess. I cannot fuse together materials and +ideas. If we are to give anything a form we must, so to speak, +be the tyrants of it. We must treat our subject brutally and +not be always trembling lest we should be doing it a wrong. +We must be able to transmute and absorb it into our own substance. +This sort of confident effrontery is beyond me; my +whole nature tends to that impersonality which respects and subordinates +itself to the object; it is love of truth which holds me +back from concluding and deciding.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The desire for the all, the impatience with what is partial +and limited, the fascination of the infinite, are the +topics of page after page in the Journal. It is a prosaic +mind which has never been in contact with ideas of this +sort, never felt their charm. They lend themselves well +to poetry, but what are we to say of their value as ideas to +be lived with, dilated on, made the governing ideas of +life? Except for use in passing, and with the power to +dismiss them again, they are unprofitable. Shelley’s</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“Life like a dome of many-colored glass</div> + <div class='line'>Stains the white radiance of eternity</div> + <div class='line'>Until death tramples it to fragments”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>has value as a splendid image nobly introduced in a +beautiful and impassioned poem. But Amiel’s “colored +air-bubble,” as a positive piece of “speculative intuition,” +has no value whatever. Nay, the thoughts which have +positive truth and value, the thoughts to be lived with +and dwelt upon, the thoughts which are a real acquisition +for our minds, are precisely thoughts which counteract +the “vague aspiration and indeterminate desire” +possessing Amiel and filling his Journal: they are thoughts +<span class='pageno' id='Page_439'>439</span>insisting on the need of limit, the feasibility of performance. +Goethe says admirably—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'><span lang="de">“Wer grosses will muss sich zusammenraffen:</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="de">In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister.”</span></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>“He who will do great things must pull himself together: +it is in working within limits that the master +comes out.” Buffon says not less admirably—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'><span lang="fr">“Tout sujet est un; et quelque vaste qu’il soit, il peut être +renfermé dans un seul discours.”</span></p> + +</div> + +<p class='c017'>“Every subject is one; and however vast it may be is +capable of being contained in a single discourse.” The +ideas to live with, the ideas of sterling value to us, are, I +repeat, ideas of this kind: ideas staunchly counteracting +and reducing the power of the infinite and indeterminate, +not paralyzing us with it.</p> + +<p class='c001'>And indeed we have not to go beyond Amiel himself +for proof of this. Amiel was paralyzed by living in these +ideas of “vague aspiration and indeterminate desire,” of +“confounding his personal life in the general life,” by +feeding on these ideas, treating them as august and precious, +and filling hundreds of pages of Journal with them. +He was paralyzed by it, he became impotent and miserable. +And he knew it, and tells us of it himself with a power of +analysis and with a sad eloquence which to me are much +more interesting and valuable than his philosophy of Maïa +and the Great Wheel. “By your natural tendency,” he +says to himself, “you arrive at disgust with life, despair, +pessimism.” And again: “Melancholy outlook on all +sides. Disgust with myself.” And again: “I cannot +deceive myself as to the fate in store for me: increasing +isolation, inward disappointment, enduring regrets, a +melancholy neither to be consoled nor confessed, a mournful +old age, a slow agony, a death in the desert.” And +all this misery by his own fault, his own mistakes. “To +live is to conquer incessantly; one must have the courage +to be happy. I turn in a vicious circle; I have never had +clear sight of my true vocation.”</p> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_440'>440</span>I cannot, therefore, fall in with that particular line of +admiration which critics, praising Amiel’s Journal, have +commonly followed. I cannot join in celebrating his +prodigies of speculative intuition, the glow and splendor +of his beatific vision of absolute knowledge, the marvelous +pages in which his deep and vast philosophic thought is +laid bare, the secret of his sublime malady is expressed. +I hesitate to admit that all this part of the Journal has +even a very profound pyschological interest: its interest +is rather pathological. In reading it we are not so much +pursuing a study of psychology as a study of mental +pathology.</p> + +<p class='c001'>But the Journal reveals a side in Amiel which his critics, +so far as I have seen, have hardly noticed, a side of real +power, originality, and value. He says himself that he +never had clear sight of his true vocation: well, his true +vocation, it seems to me, was that of a literary critic. +Here he is admirable: M. Scherer was a true friend when +he offered to introduce him to an editor, and suggested +an article on Uhland. There is hardly a literary criticism +in these two volumes which is not masterly, and which +does not make one desire more of the same kind. And +not Amiel’s literary criticism only, but his criticism of +society, politics, national character, religion, is in general +well informed, just, and penetrating in an eminent degree. +Any one single page of this criticism is worth, in my +opinion, a hundred of Amiel’s pages about the Infinite +Illusion and the Great Wheel. It is to this side in Amiel +that I desire now to draw attention. I would have abstained +from writing about him if I had only to disparage +and to find fault, only to say that he had been overpraised, +and that his dealings with Maïa seemed to me profitable +neither for himself nor for others.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Let me first take Amiel as a critic of literature, and of +the literature which he naturally knew best, French literature. +Hear him as a critic on the best of critics, Sainte-Beuve, +of whose death (1869) he had just heard:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“The fact is, Sainte-Beuve leaves a greater void behind him +than either Béranger or Lamartine; their greatness was already +<span class='pageno' id='Page_441'>441</span>distant, historical; he was still helping us to think. The true +critic supplies all the world with a basis. He represents the +public judgment, that is to say, the public reason, the touchstone, +the scales, the crucible, which tests the value of each +man and the merit of each work. Infallibility of judgment is +perhaps rarer than anything else, so fine a balance of qualities +does it demand—qualities both natural and acquired, qualities +of both mind and heart. What years of labor, what study and +comparison, are needed to bring the critical judgment to maturity! +Like Plato’s sage, it is only at fifty that the critic is risen +to the true height of his literary priesthood, or, to put it less +pompously, of his social function. Not till then has he compassed +all modes of being, and made every shade of appreciation +his own. And Saint-Beuve joined to this infinitely refined culture +a prodigious memory and an incredible multitude of facts +and anecdotes stored up for the service of his thought.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The criticism is so sound, so admirably put, and so +charming, that one wishes Sainte-Beuve could have read +it himself.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Try Amiel next on the touchstone afforded by that +“half genius, half charlatan,” Victor Hugo:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“I have been again looking through Victor Hugo’s <cite>Paris</cite> (1867). +For ten years event after event has given the lie to the prophet, +but the confidence of the prophet in his own imaginings is not +therefore a whit diminished. Humility and common sense are +only fit for Lilliputians. Victor Hugo superbly ignores everything +which he has not foreseen. He does not know that pride +limits the mind, and that a limitless pride is a littleness of soul. +If he could but learn to rank himself with other men and France +with other nations, he would see things more truly, and would +not fall into his insane exaggerations, his extravagant oracles. +But proportion and justness his chords will never know. He is +vowed to the Titanic; his gold is always mixed with lead, his +insight with childishness, his reason with madness. He cannot +be simple; like the blaze of a house on fire, his light is blinding. +In short, he astonishes but provokes, he stirs but annoys. His +note is always half or two-thirds false, and that is why he perpetually +makes us feel uncomfortable. The great poet in him +cannot get clear of the charlatan. A few pricks of Voltaire’s +irony would have made the inflation of this genius collapse, and +rendered him stronger by rendering him saner. It is a public +misfortune that the most powerful poet of France should not +have better understood his <span lang="fr"><i>rôle</i></span>, and that, unlike the Hebrew +<span class='pageno' id='Page_442'>442</span>prophets who chastised because they loved, he flatters his fellow-citizens +from system and from pride. France is the world, Paris +is France, Hugo is Paris. Bow down and worship, ye nations!”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Finally, we will hear Amiel on a consummate and supreme +French classic, as perfect as Hugo is flawed, <a id='corr442.5'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='L'>La</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_442.5'><ins class='correction' title='L'>La</ins></a></span> +Fontaine:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Went through my La Fontaine yesterday, and remarked his +omissions.... He has not an echo of chivalry haunting him. +His French history dates from Louis XIV. His geography extends +in reality but a few square miles, and reaches neither the +Rhine nor the Loire, neither the mountains nor the sea. He +never invents his subjects, but indolently takes them ready-made +from elsewhere. But with all this, what an adorable +writer, what a painter, what an observer, what a master of the +comic and the satirical, what a teller of a story! I am never tired +of him, though I know half his fables by heart. In the matter +of vocabulary, turns of expression, tones, idioms, his language is +perhaps the richest of the great period, for it combines skilfully +the archaic with the classical, the Gaulish element with what is +French. Variety, finesse, sly fun, sensibility, rapidity, conciseness, +suavity, grace, gaiety—when necessary nobleness, seriousness, +grandeur—you find everything in our fabulist. And the +happy epithets, and the telling proverbs, and the sketches dashed +off and the unexpected audacities, and the point driven well +home! One cannot say what he has not, so many diverse aptitudes +he has.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Compare his <cite>Woodcutter and Death</cite> with Boileau’s, and you +can measure the prodigious difference between the artist and the +critic who wanted to teach him better. La Fontaine brings +visibly before you the poor peasant under the monarchy, Boileau +but exhibits a drudge sweating under his load. The first is a +historic witness, the second a school-versifier. La Fontaine enables +you to reconstruct the whole society of his age; the +pleasant old soul from Champagne, with his animals, turns out +to be the one and only Homer of France.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“His weak side is his epicureanism, with its tinge of grossness. +This, no doubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. +The religious string is wanting to his lyre, he has nothing which +shows him to have known either Christianity or the high tragedies +of the soul. Kind Nature is his goddess, Horace his prophet, and +Montaigne his gospel. In other words, his horizon is that of the +Renascence. This islet of paganism in the midst of a Catholic +society is very curious; the paganism is perfectly simple and +frank.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'><span class='pageno' id='Page_443'>443</span>These are but notes, jottings in his Journal and Amiel +passed from them to broodings over the infinite, and personality, +and totality. Probably the literary criticism +which he did so well, and for which he shows a true +vocation, gave him nevertheless but little pleasure because +he did it thus fragmentarily, and by fits and starts. To +do it thoroughly, to make his fragments into wholes, +to fit them for coming before the public, composition +with its toils and limits was necessary. Toils and +limits composition indeed has; yet all composition is a +kind of creation, creation gives, as I have already said, +pleasure, and when successful and sustained, more than +pleasure joy. Amiel, had he tried the experiment with +literary criticism, where lay his true vocation, would have +found it so. Sainte-Beuve, whom he so much admires, +would have been the most miserable of men if his production +had been but a volume or two of middling poems +and a journal. But Sainte-Beuve’s motto, as Amiel himself +notices, was that of the Emperor Severus: <span lang="fr"><cite>Laboremus</cite></span>. +“Work,” Sainte-Beuve confesses to a friend, “is my +sore burden, but it is also my great resource. I eat my +heart out when I am not up to the neck in work; there +you have the secret of the life I lead.” If M. Scherer’s +introduction to the <span lang="fr"><cite>Revue Germanique</cite></span> could but have +been used, if Amiel could but have written the article on +Uhland, and followed it up by plenty of articles more!</p> + +<p class='c001'>I have quoted largely from Amiel’s literary criticism, +because this side of him has, so far as I have observed, +received so little attention and yet deserves attention so +eminently. But his more general criticism, too, shows, +as I have said, the same high qualities as his criticism +of authors and books. I must quote one or two of his +aphorisms; <span lang="fr"><i>L’esprit sert bien à tout, mais ne suffit à rien</i></span>: +“Wits are of use for everything, sufficient for nothing.” +<span lang="fr"><i>Une société vit de sa foi et se développe par la science</i></span>: “A +society lives on its faith and develops itself by science.” +<i>L’État liberal est irréalisable avec une religion antilibérale, +et presque irréalisable avec l’absence de religion</i>: “Liberal +communities are impossible with an anti-liberal religion, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_444'>444</span>and almost impossible with the absence of religion.” But +epigrammatic sentences of this sort are perhaps not so very +difficult to produce, in French at any rate. Let us take +Amiel when he has room and verge enough to show what he +can really say which is important about society, religion, +national life and character. We have seen what an influence +his years passed in Germany had upon him: we have +seen how severely he judges Victor Hugo’s faults; the +faults of the French nation at large he judges with a like +severity. But what a fine and just perception does the +following passage show of the deficiencies of Germany, +the advantage which the western nations have in their +more finished civilization:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“It is in the novel that the average vulgarity of German +society, and its inferiority to the societies of France and England +are most clearly visible. The notion of a thing’s <em>jarring on the +taste</em> is wanting to German æsthetics. Their elegance knows +nothing of grace; they have no sense of the enormous distance +between distinction (gentlemanly, ladylike) and their stiff <span lang="de"><i>Vornehmlichkeit</i></span>. +Their imagination lacks style, training, education +and knowledge of the world; it is stamped with an ill-bred air +even in its Sunday clothes. The race is practical and intelligent, +but common and ill-mannered. Ease, amiability, manners, +wit, animation, dignity, charm, are qualities which belong to +others.</p> + +<p class='c001'>“Will that inner freedom of soul, that profound harmony of +all the faculties, which I have so often observed among the best +Germans, ever come to the surface? Will the conquerors of to-day +ever civilize their forms of life? It is by their future novels +that we shall be able to judge. As soon as the German novel +can give us quite good society, the Germans will be in the +raw stage no longer.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>And this pupil of Berlin, this devourer of German +books, this victim, say the French critics, to the contagion +of German style, after three hours, one day, of a <span lang="de"><cite>Geschichte +der Æsthetik in Deutschland</cite></span>, breaks out:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Learning and even thought are not everything. A little +<span lang="fr"><i>esprit</i></span>, point, vivacity, imagination, grace, would do no harm. +Do these pedantic books leave a single image or sentence, a +single striking or new fact, in the memory when one lays them +<span class='pageno' id='Page_445'>445</span>down! No, nothing but fatigue and confusion. Oh, for clearness, +terseness, brevity! Diderot, Voltaire, or even Galiani! +A short article by Sainte-Beuve, Scherer, Renan, Victor <a id='corr445.3'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Cherbulioz'>Cherbuliez</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_445.3'><ins class='correction' title='Cherbulioz'>Cherbuliez</ins></a></span>, +gives one more pleasure, and makes one ponder and reflect +more than a thousand of these German pages crammed to the +margin and showing the work itself rather than its result. The +Germans heap the faggots for the pile, the French bring the fire. +Spare me your lucubrations, give me facts or ideas. Keep your +vats, your must, your dregs, to yourselves; I want wine fully +made, wine which will sparkle in the glass, and kindle my spirits +instead of oppressing them.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Amiel may have been led away <span lang="la"><i>deteriora sequi</i></span>: he may +have Germanized until he has become capable of the verb <span lang="fr"><i>dépersonnaliser</i></span> +and the noun <span lang="fr"><i>réimplication</i></span>; but after all, his +heart is in the right place: <span lang="la"><i>videt meliora probatque</i></span>. He +remains at bottom the man who said: <span lang="fr"><i>Le livre serait mon +ambition.</i></span> He adds, to be sure, that it would be <span lang="fr"><i>son ambition</i></span>, +“if ambition were not vanity, and vanity of vanities.”</p> + +<p class='c001'>Yet this disenchanted brooder, “full of a tranquil disgust +at the futility of our ambitions, the void of our existence,” +bedazzled with the infinite, can observe the world +and society with consummate keenness and shrewdness, and +at the same time with a delicacy which to the man of the +world is in general wanting. Is it possible to analyze <span lang="fr"><i>le +grand monde</i></span>, high society, as the Old World knows it and +America knows it not, more acutely than Amiel does in +what follows?—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on +ambrosia and concerned themselves with no interests but such as +are noble. Care, need, passion, do not exist. All realism is suppressed +as brutal. In a word, what is called <span lang="fr"><i>le grand monde</i></span> +gives itself for the moment the flattering illusion that it is moving +in an ethereal atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. +For this reason all vehemence, any cry of nature, all real suffering, +all heedless familiarity, any genuine sign of passion, are startling +and distasteful in this delicate <span lang="fr"><i>milieu</i></span>, and at once destroy +the collective work, the cloud-palace, the imposing architectural +creation raised by common consent. It is like the shrill cock-crow +which breaks the spell of all enchantments, and puts the +fairies to flight. These select gatherings produce without intending +<span class='pageno' id='Page_446'>446</span>it a sort of concert for eye and ear, an improvised work of +art. By the instinctive collaboration of everybody concerned, +wit and taste hold festival, and the associations of reality are exchanged +for the associations of imagination. So understood, +society is a form of poetry; the cultivated classes deliberately +recompose the idyll of the past, and the buried world of +Astræa. Paradox or not, I believe that these fugitive attempts +to reconstruct a dream, whose only end is beauty, represent +confused reminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human +heart; or rather, aspirations towards a harmony of things which +every-day reality denies to us, and of which art alone gives us a +glimpse.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>I remember reading in an American newspaper a solemn +letter by an excellent republican, asking what were a shopman’s +or a laborer’s feelings when he walked through Eaton +or Chatsworth. Amiel will tell him: they are “reminiscences +of an age of gold haunting the human heart, aspirations +towards a harmony of things which every-day reality +denies to us.” I appeal to my friend the author of <cite>Triumphant +Democracy</cite> himself, to say whether these are to be +had in walking through Pittsburg.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Indeed it is by contrast with American life that <em>Nirvâna</em> +appears to Amiel so desirable:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“For the Americans, life means devouring, incessant activity. +They must win gold, predominance, power; they must crush +rivals, subdue nature. They have their heart set on the means, +and never for an instant think of the end. They confound being +with individual being, and the expansion of self with happiness. +This means that they do not live by the soul, that they ignore +the immutable and eternal, bustle at the circumference of their +existence because they cannot penetrate to its center. They are +restless, eager, positive, because they are superficial. To what +end all this stir, noise, greed, struggle? It is all a mere being +stunned and deafened!”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Space is failing me, but I must yet find room for a +less indirect criticism of democracy than the foregoing remarks +on American life:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“<em>Each function to the most worthy</em>: this maxim is the professed +rule of all constitutions, and serves to test them. Democracy is +not forbidden to apply it; but Democracy rarely does apply it, +<span class='pageno' id='Page_447'>447</span>because she holds, for example, that the most worthy man is the +man who pleases her, whereas he who pleases her is not always +the most worthy; and because she supposes that reason guides +the masses, whereas in reality they are most commonly led by +passion. And in the end every falsehood has to be expiated, +for truth always takes its revenge.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>What publicists and politicians have to learn is, that “the +ultimate ground upon which every civilization rests is the +average morality of the masses and a sufficient amount of +practical righteousness.” But where does duty find its inspiration +and sanctions? In religion. And what does +Amiel think of the traditional religion of Christendom, +the Christianity of the Churches? He tells us repeatedly; +but a month or two before his death, with death in +full view, he tells us with peculiar impressiveness:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“The whole Semitic dramaturgy has come to seem to me a +work of the imagination. The apostolic documents have changed +in value and meaning to my eyes. The distinction between belief +and truth has grown clearer and clearer to me. Religious +<a id='corr447.20'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='pyschology'>psychology</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_447.20'><ins class='correction' title='pyschology'>psychology</ins></a></span> has become a simple phenomenon, and has lost its +fixed and absolute value. The apologetics of <a id='corr447.21'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Pascal'>Pascal,</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_447.21'><ins class='correction' title='Pascal'>Pascal,</ins></a></span> Leibnitz, +Secrétan, appear to me no more convincing than those of the +Middle Age, for they assume that which is in question—a revealed +doctrine, a definite and unchangeable Christianity.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>Is it possible, he asks, to receive at this day the common +doctrine of a Divine Providence directing all the circumstances +of our life, and consequently inflicting upon us our +miseries as means of education?</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of +the laws of nature? Hardly. But what this faith makes objective +we may take subjectively. The moral being may moralize +his suffering in turning the natural fact to account for the education +of his inner man. What he cannot change he calls the +will of God, and to will what God wills brings him peace.”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>But can a religion, Amiel asks again, without miracles, +without unverifiable mystery, be efficacious, have influence +with the many? And again he answers:—</p> + +<div class='quote'> + +<p class='c001'>“Pious fiction is still fiction. Truth has superior rights. The +world must adapt itself to truth, not truth to the world. Copernicus +<span class='pageno' id='Page_448'>448</span>upset the astronomy of the Middle Age; so much the +worse for the astronomy. The Everlasting Gospel is revolutionizing +the Churches; what does it matter?”</p> + +</div> + +<p class='c001'>This is water to our mill, as the Germans say, indeed. +But I have come even thus late in the day to speak of +Amiel, not because I found him supplying water for any +particular mill, either mine or any other, but because it +seemed to me that by a whole important side he was eminently +worth knowing, and that to this side of him the +public, here in England at any rate, had not had its attention +sufficiently drawn. If in the seventeen thousand +pages of the Journal there are many pages still unpublished +in which Amiel exercises his true vocation of critic, +of literary critic more especially, let his friends give them +to us, let M. Scherer introduce them to us, let Mrs. +Humphry Ward translate them for us. But <span lang="la"><i>sat patriæ +Priamoque datum</i></span>: Maïa has had her full share of space +already: I will not ask for a word more about the infinite +illusion, or the double zero, or the Great Wheel.</p> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div>THE END.</div> + </div> +</div> + +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c000'> +</div> +<hr class='c018'> +<div class='footnote' id='f1'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r1'>1</a>. When the above was written the author had still the Chair +of Poetry at Oxford, which he has since vacated.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f2'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r2'>2</a>. I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England +during the last century, and still followed in France, of printing +a notice of this kind,—a notice by a competent critic,—to serve +as an introduction to an eminent author’s works, might be revived +among us with advantage. To introduce all succeeding +editions of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp’s notice might, it seems to +me, excellently serve; it is written from the point of view of an +admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right; but then the disciple +must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, a man of letters, +not, as too often happens, some relation or friend with no qualification +for his task except affection for his author.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f3'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r3'>3</a>. So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and controversy, +that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time +from the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which +I criticized Dr. Colenso’s book; I feel bound, however, after all +that has passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere +impenitence for having published them. Nay, I cannot forbear +repeating yet once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, +this sentence from my original remarks upon him; <em>There is +truth of science and truth of religion; truth of science does not +become truth of religion till it is made religious</em>. And I will +add: Let us have all the science there is from the men of +science; from the men of religion let us have religion.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f4'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r4'>4</a>. It has been said I make it “a crime against literary criticism +and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant.” +Need I point out that the ignorant are not informed by being +confirmed in a confusion?</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f5'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r5'>5</a>. La Mesnardière.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f6'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r6'>6</a>. The <cite>Times</cite> has now (1868) abandoned this spelling and +adopted the ordinary one.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f7'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r7'>7</a>. A critic declares I am wrong in saying that M. Renan’s language +implies this. I still think that there is a shade, a <span lang="fr"><i>nuance</i></span> +of expression, in M. Renan’s language, which does imply this; +but, I confess, the only person who can really settle such a +question is M. Renan himself.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f8'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r8'>8</a>. A critic says this is paradoxical, and urges that many second-rate +French academicians have uttered the most commonplace +ideas possible. I agree that many second-rate French academicians +have uttered the most commonplace ideas possible; but +Addison is not a second-rate man. He is a man of the order, I +will not say of Pascal, but at any rate of La Bruyère and Vauve-nargues; +why does he not equal them? I say because of the +medium in which he finds himself, the atmosphere in which he +lives and works; an atmosphere which tells unfavorably, or +rather <em>tends</em> to tell unfavorably (for that is the truer way of +putting it) either upon style or else upon ideas; tends to make +even a man of great ability either a Mr. Carlyle or else a Lord +Macaulay.</p> + +<p class='c001'>It is to be observed, however, that Lord Macaulay’s style has +in its turn suffered by his failure in ideas, and this cannot be +said of Addison’s.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f9'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r9'>9</a>. When I wrote this I had before me the first edition of Mr. +Palgrave’s <cite>Handbook</cite>. I am bound to say that in the second +edition much strong language has been expunged, and what +remains, softened.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f10'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r10'>10</a>. Part of these extracts date from a time a little after Guérin’s +residence at La Chênaie; but already, amidst the readings and +conversations of La Chênaie, his literary judgment was perfectly +formed.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f11'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r11'>11</a>. The familiar name given to M. de Lamennais by his followers +at La Chênaie.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f12'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r12'>12</a>. “The woodpecker <em>laughs</em>,” says White of Selborne; and here +is Guérin, in Brittany, confirming his testimony.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f13'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r13'>13</a>. His wife.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f14'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r14'>14</a>. Compare, for example, his “Lines Written in the Euganean +Hills,” with Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” (<cite>Golden Treasury</cite>, pp. +256, 284). The latter piece <em>renders</em> Nature; the former <em>tries to +render</em> her. I will not deny, however, that Shelley has natural +magic in his rhythm; what I deny is, that he has it in his +language. It always seems to me that the right sphere for +Shelley’s genius was the sphere of music, not of poetry; the +medium of sounds he can master, but to master the more difficult +medium of words he has neither intellectual force enough +nor sanity enough.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f15'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r15'>15</a>. A volume of these, also, has just been brought out by M. Trebutien. +One good book, at least, in the literature of the year +1865!</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f16'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r16'>16</a>. The familiar name of her sister Marie.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f17'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r17'>17</a>. A servant-boy at Le Cayla.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f18'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r18'>18</a>. The young lady.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f19'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r19'>19</a>. A peculiar peal rung at Christmas-time by the church bells of +Languedoc.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f20'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r20'>20</a>. Heine’s birthplace was not Hamburg, but Düsseldorf.—<span class='sc'>Ed.</span></p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f21'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r21'>21</a>. A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f22'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r22'>22</a>. 1871.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f23'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r23'>23</a>. He died on the 17th of March, <span class='fss'>A. D.</span> 180.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f24'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r24'>24</a>. Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to <cite>The English +Poets</cite>, edited by T. H. Ward.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f25'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r25'>25</a>. “Then began he to call many things to remembrance,—all +the lands which his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and +the men of his lineage, and Charlemagne his liege lord who +nourished him.”—<span lang="fr"><cite>Chanson de Roland</cite></span>, iii. 939-942.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f26'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r26'>26</a>. </p> +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“So said she; they long since in Earth’s soft arms were reposing,</div> + <div class='line'>There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedæmon.”</div> + <div class='line in4'><cite>Iliad</cite>, iii. 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtry).</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f27'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r27'>27</a>. “Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a +mortal? but ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that +with men born to misery ye might have sorrow?”—<cite>Iliad</cite>, xvii. +443-445.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f28'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r28'>28</a>. “Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we +hear, happy.”—<cite>Iliad</cite>, xxiv. 543.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f29'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r29'>29</a>. “I wailed not, so of stone grew I within;—<em>they</em> wailed.”—<cite>Inferno</cite>, +xxxiii. 39, 40.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f30'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r30'>30</a>. “Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, +that your misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this +fire strike me.”—<cite>Inferno</cite>, ii. 91-93.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f31'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r31'>31</a>. “In His will is our peace.”—<cite>Paradiso</cite>, iii. 85.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f32'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r32'>32</a>. The French <span lang="fr"><i>soudé</i></span>; soldered, fixed fast.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f33'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r33'>33</a>. The name <span lang="la"><i>Heaulmière</i></span> is said to be derived from a headdress +(helm) worn as a mark by courtesans. In Villon’s ballad, a poor +old creature of this class laments her days of youth and beauty. +The last stanza of the ballad runs thus—</p> + +<div class='lg-container-b c008'> + <div class='linegroup'> + <div class='group'> + <div class='line'>“<span lang="fr">Ainsi le bon temps regretons</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sott</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Assises bas, à croppetons,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Tout en ung tas comme pelottes;</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">A petit feu de chenevottes</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Tost allumées, tost estainctes,</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Et jadis fusmes si mignottes!</span></div> + <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Ainsi en prend à maintz et maintes.</span>”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c009'>“Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor silly +old things, low-seated on our heels, all in a heap like so many +balls: by a little fire of hemp-stalks, soon lighted, soon spent. +And once we were such darlings! So fares it with many and +many a one.”</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f34'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r34'>34</a>. An address delivered in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, +on the 13th of February 1888, at the unveiling of a Memorial +Window presented by Mr. George W. Childs of Philadelphia.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f35'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r35'>35</a>. Prefixed to the Selection from Gray in Ward’s <cite>English Poets</cite>, +vol. iv. 1880.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f36'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r36'>36</a>. Prefixed to the Selection from Keats in Ward’s <cite>English Poets</cite>, +vol. iv. 1880.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f37'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r37'>37</a>. The preface to <cite>The Poems of Wordsworth</cite>, chosen and edited +by Matthew Arnold, 1879.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f38'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r38'>38</a>. Preface to <cite>Poetry of Byron</cite>, chosen and arranged by Matthew +Arnold, 1881.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f39'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r39'>39</a>. The italics are in the original.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f40'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r40'>40</a>. <span lang="de">“Der ohne Frage als das grösste Talent des Jahrhunderts +anzusehen ist.”</span></p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f41'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r41'>41</a>. <span lang="de">“Der ihm zu vergleichen wäre.”</span></p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f42'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r42'>42</a>. <span lang="de">“Byron’s Kühnheit, Keckheit und <a id='corr374.38'></a><span class='htmlonly'><ins class='correction' title='Grandiositat'>Grandiosität</ins></span><span class='epubonly'><a href='#c_374.38'><ins class='correction' title='Grandiositat'>Grandiosität</ins></a></span>, ist das nicht +alles bildend?—Alles Grosse bildet, sobald wir es gewahr werden.”</span></p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f43'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r43'>43</a>. <span lang="de">“Gar zu dunkel über sich selbst.”</span></p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f44'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r44'>44</a>. Published in <cite>The Nineteenth Century</cite>, January, 1888.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f45'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r45'>45</a>. She was Mary Wollstonecraft’s natural daughter by Imlay.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f46'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r46'>46</a>. Published in the <cite>Fortnightly Review</cite>, December, 1887.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f47'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r47'>47</a>. A common name among Russian peasants.</p> +</div> +<div class='footnote' id='f48'> +<p class='c001'><a href='#r48'>48</a>. Published in <cite>Macmillan’s Magazine</cite>, September 1887.</p> +</div> +<div class='pbb'> + <hr class='pb c000'> +</div> +<p class='c001'><a id='endnote'></a></p> +<div class='tnotes'> + +<div class='nf-center-c0'> + <div class='nf-center'> + <div><span class='large'>Transcriber’s Note</span></div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='c001'>The Roman number of the sixth essay of Series One at p. <a href='#Page_143'>143</a> (<cite>Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment</cite>) +was missing, and has been added here.</p> + +<p class='c001'>Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and +are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.</p> + +<table class='table1'> +<colgroup> +<col class='colwidth12'> +<col class='colwidth69'> +<col class='colwidth18'> +</colgroup> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_x.4'></a><a href='#corrx.4'>x.4</a></td> + <td class='c011'>what is our puny war[e]fare against the Philistines</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_8.19'></a><a href='#corr8.19'>8.19</a></td> + <td class='c011'>But the prescriptions of[ of[ reason</td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_41.16'></a><a href='#corr41.16'>41.16</a></td> + <td class='c011'>perceive [e/c]learly what we have to amend</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_52.30'></a><a href='#corr52.30'>52.30</a></td> + <td class='c011'>what a pi[e]ce of extravagance</td> + <td class='c019'>Inserted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_57.36'></a><a href='#corr57.36'>57.36</a></td> + <td class='c011'>behoves the Fren[e/c]h</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_75.21'></a><a href='#corr75.21'>75.21</a></td> + <td class='c011'>the laughing whistle of the woodpecker[./,]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_79.22'></a><a href='#corr79.22'>79.22</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Uranus of Keats’s p[e/o]em</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_85.3'></a><a href='#corr85.3'>85.3</a></td> + <td class='c011'>with some ex[rt/tr]acts from it</td> + <td class='c019'>Transposed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_85.33'></a><a href='#corr85.33'>85.33</a></td> + <td class='c011'>to attract her so often?[”/’]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_87.31'></a><a href='#corr87.31'>87.31</a></td> + <td class='c011'>In the times whe[u/n] I kept my night-watches</td> + <td class='c019'>Inverted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_87.32'></a><a href='#corr87.32'>87.32</a></td> + <td class='c011'>I have sometimes believed tha[s/t] I was</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_94.11'></a><a href='#corr94.11'>94.11</a></td> + <td class='c011'>whom Christendom knows i[n/s] Saint Theresa repulsed</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_97.8'></a><a href='#corr97.8'>97.8</a></td> + <td class='c011'>s[n/h]e joined a great force</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_97.9'></a><a href='#corr97.9'>97.9</a></td> + <td class='c011'>this force of charac[s/t]er,</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_97.19'></a><a href='#corr97.19'>97.19</a></td> + <td class='c011'>of her re[i/l]igious life.</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_99.28'></a><a href='#corr99.28'>99.28</a></td> + <td class='c011'>to escape from it.[”]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_103.28'></a><a href='#corr103.28'>103.28</a></td> + <td class='c011'>but it melted in our[ our] hands</td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_108.36'></a><a href='#corr108.36'>108.36</a></td> + <td class='c011'>[‘]Change your brains</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_108.39'></a><a href='#corr108.39'>108.39</a></td> + <td class='c011'>lose, or seemed to his sister to [c]lose</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_112.10'></a><a href='#corr112.10'>112.10</a></td> + <td class='c011'>the world of sp[i]rits</td> + <td class='c019'>Inserted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_112.25'></a><a href='#corr112.25'>112.25</a></td> + <td class='c011'>prayer has[ has] been such a power to me</td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_119.34'></a><a href='#corr119.34'>119.34</a></td> + <td class='c011'>It was a life and death battle with Philistinism[,/.]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_125.22'></a><a href='#corr125.22'>125.22</a></td> + <td class='c011'>‘And how shall I recompense thy fidelity?[”/’]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_137.25'></a><a href='#corr137.25'>137.25</a></td> + <td class='c011'>his pack and] and] his cares</td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_149.39'></a><a href='#corr149.39'>149.39</a></td> + <td class='c011'><i>Praxinoe[.]</i></td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_162.2'></a><a href='#corr162.2'>162.2</a></td> + <td class='c011'>It really suc[e/c]eeds</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_163.14'></a><a href='#corr163.14'>163.14</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Of all this uni[n]telligible world</td> + <td class='c019'>Inserted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_178.32'></a><a href='#corr178.32'>178.32</a></td> + <td class='c011'>to the audi[a/e]nce</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_179.1'></a><a href='#corr179.1'>179.1</a></td> + <td class='c011'>tell us what it is like.[”/’]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_179.23'></a><a href='#corr179.23'>179.23</a></td> + <td class='c011'>th[r]ow up their arms</td> + <td class='c019'>Inserted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_203.23'></a><a href='#corr203.23'>203.23</a></td> + <td class='c011'>passed by them on th[ǝ/e] Abbé Delille</td> + <td class='c019'>Turned.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_212.4'></a><a href='#corr212.4'>212.4</a></td> + <td class='c011'>is the soul of all re[ /l]igions.</td> + <td class='c019'>Restored.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_214.35'></a><a href='#corr214.35'>214.35</a></td> + <td class='c011'>to put nature in bonds.[”]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_229.13'></a><a href='#corr229.13'>229.13</a></td> + <td class='c011'>show their governments that[ that] they will do well</td> + <td class='c019'>Redundant.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_234.31'></a><a href='#corr234.31'>234.31</a></td> + <td class='c011'>was[ was] known as “mad Shelley”</td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_237.7'></a><a href='#corr237.7'>237.7</a></td> + <td class='c011'>that mira[a]cles are possible.</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_240.20'></a><a href='#corr240.20'>240.20</a></td> + <td class='c011'>the phe[e]nomena of nature</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_259.24'></a><a href='#corr259.24'>259.24</a></td> + <td class='c011'>publication of[ of] the <cite>Centaur</cite></td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_269.22'></a><a href='#corr269.22'>269.22</a></td> + <td class='c011'>to[ to] be strangely overpressed</td> + <td class='c019'>Repeated.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_299.13'></a><a href='#corr299.13'>299.13</a></td> + <td class='c011'>their mission and destiny their[ their] poetry</td> + <td class='c019'>Redundant.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_299.17'></a><a href='#corr299.17'>299.17</a></td> + <td class='c011'>in the forest ranged.[’/”]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_308.23'></a><a href='#corr308.23'>308.23</a></td> + <td class='c011'>some d[o/a]nger to the ideal</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_313.4'></a><a href='#corr313.4'>313.4</a></td> + <td class='c011'>have the power of[ of] verse</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_316.5'></a><a href='#corr316.5'>316.5</a></td> + <td class='c011'>“When Johnson was publishing his Life of Gray[./,]”</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_322.36'></a><a href='#corr322.36'>322.36</a></td> + <td class='c011'>could have been from his verses.[”]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_325.6'></a><a href='#corr325.6'>325.6</a></td> + <td class='c011'>I e[ʌ/v]en tremble at an east wind.</td> + <td class='c019'>Inverted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_329.24'></a><a href='#corr329.24'>329.24</a></td> + <td class='c011'>quite false[.]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_330.9'></a><a href='#corr330.9'>330.9</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλ[εῖ]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_330.23'></a><a href='#corr330.23'>330.23</a></td> + <td class='c011'>“[t]he style he aimed at</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_332.13'></a><a href='#corr332.13'>332.13</a></td> + <td class='c011'>I ha[y/v]e a sensation</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_333.20'></a><a href='#corr333.20'>333.20</a></td> + <td class='c011'>and creamy breast.[’]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_334.32'></a><a href='#corr334.32'>334.32</a></td> + <td class='c011'>between Haydon [u/a]nd Hunt.</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_337.19'></a><a href='#corr337.19'>337.19</a></td> + <td class='c011'>she has li[n]ked him for his own sake</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_338.35'></a><a href='#corr338.35'>338.35</a></td> + <td class='c011'>ob[ej/je]cts of a sensuous</td> + <td class='c019'>Transposed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_341.31'></a><a href='#corr341.31'>341.31</a></td> + <td class='c011'>he [h]is perfect.</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_351.6'></a><a href='#corr351.6'>351.6</a></td> + <td class='c011'>the best poems of Word[s]worth</td> + <td class='c019'>Inserted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_358.7'></a><a href='#corr358.7'>358.7</a></td> + <td class='c011'>[“]O for the coming of that glorious time</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_367.11'></a><a href='#corr367.11'>367.11</a></td> + <td class='c011'>out of the [<i>Æ/Œ</i>]<i>dipus</i></td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_370.14'></a><a href='#corr370.14'>370.14</a></td> + <td class='c011'>correct use and consumma[ma]te management of words,</td> + <td class='c019'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_374.3'></a><a href='#corr374.3'>374.3</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Here, again, Profess[e/o]r Nichol translates:</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_374.38'></a><a href='#corr374.38'>374.38</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Kühnheit, Keckheit und Grandiosit[a/ä]t</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_375.33'></a><a href='#corr375.33'>375.33</a></td> + <td class='c011'>when I first used this express[s/i]on</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_378.23'></a><a href='#corr378.23'>378.23</a></td> + <td class='c011'>“In la sua volontade e nostra pace;[”]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_382.33'></a><a href='#corr382.33'>382.33</a></td> + <td class='c011'>which B[ry/yr]on poured forth</td> + <td class='c019'>Transposed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_387.39'></a><a href='#corr387.39'>387.39</a></td> + <td class='c011'>in which Professor Dowd[o/e]n has performed</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_388.19'></a><a href='#corr388.19'>388.19</a></td> + <td class='c011'>one’s former impress[s]ion of him</td> + <td class='c019'>Removed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_390.37'></a><a href='#corr390.37'>390.37</a></td> + <td class='c011'>that [“]their proceedings would become</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_393.18'></a><a href='#corr393.18'>393.18</a></td> + <td class='c011'>where [b/h]e threw himself</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_393.28'></a><a href='#corr393.28'>393.28</a></td> + <td class='c011'>and wears green spectacles!”[;]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_402.10'></a><a href='#corr402.10'>402.10</a></td> + <td class='c011'>was perfectl[y] innocent.</td> + <td class='c019'> </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_418.36'></a><a href='#corr418.36'>418.36</a></td> + <td class='c011'>our admiration and sympathy[,/.]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_418.28'></a><a href='#corr418.28'>418.28</a></td> + <td class='c011'>How ugly those flowers are.[”/’]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_420.15'></a><a href='#corr420.15'>420.15</a></td> + <td class='c011'>that it <i>petrifies feeling</i>[,/.]</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_422.9'></a><a href='#corr422.9'>422.9</a></td> + <td class='c011'>[e/c]ried Levine,</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_426.19'></a><a href='#corr426.19'>426.19</a></td> + <td class='c011'>what am I to teach?[”/’]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_431.33'></a><a href='#corr431.33'>431.33</a></td> + <td class='c011'>in abandoning the work [a/o]f the poet</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_436.39'></a><a href='#corr436.39'>436.39</a></td> + <td class='c011'>in its algebraical fo[r]mula.</td> + <td class='c019'>Inserted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_437.1'></a><a href='#corr437.1'>437.1</a></td> + <td class='c011'>French critics throw [n/u]p their hands</td> + <td class='c019'>Inverted.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_442.5'></a><a href='#corr442.5'>442.5</a></td> + <td class='c011'>L[a] Fontaine</td> + <td class='c019'>Restored.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_445.3'></a><a href='#corr445.3'>445.3</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Victor Cherbuli[o/e]z</td> + <td class='c019'>Replaced.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_447.20'></a><a href='#corr447.20'>447.20</a></td> + <td class='c011'>Religious p[ys/sy]chology</td> + <td class='c019'>Transposed.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class='c011'><a id='c_447.21'></a><a href='#corr447.21'>447.21</a></td> + <td class='c011'>The apologetics of Pascal[,]</td> + <td class='c019'>Added.</td> + </tr> +</table> + +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77244 ***</div> + </body> + <!-- created with ppgen.py 3.57e on 2025-11-15 13:57:32 GMT --> +</html> |