FRED M. DEW ITT 
 
 BOOKSELLER 
 1000 TELKGRAPH AVE. 
 
 OAKLAND, ( 
 
STUDIES, 
 
 LITERARY AND SOCIAL: 
 
 BY 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS: 
 
 THE BOWEN MERRILL CO. 
 
 1892. 
 
Copyright, 1892, 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
472TOO 
 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER i 
 
 BENJAMIN D ISRAELI, THE JEW 24 
 
 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE . . 44 
 
 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE 69 
 
 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS . . 95 
 
 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE 119 
 
 IRISH LYRIC POETRY .138 
 
 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER . . .167 
 
 THE AUDACITY OF GOETHE 185 
 
 KING HENRY VIII . . . . 205 
 
 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS 222 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 When the manuscript of these "Studies" was first sub 
 mitted to the publishers, it was with expectation of printing 
 in one volume; but as this would have been inconveniently 
 large, it was decided to issue in two series. The kindly noti 
 ces which have been accorded to the First led the author to 
 hope for like indulgence to its successor. 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 "This I consider to be the principal use of annals, that instances of 
 virtue may be recorded; and that by the dread of future infamy and 
 the censures of posterity men may be deterred from depravity in 
 word and deed. But such was the pestilential character of those 
 times, so contaminated with adulation, that not only the first nobles, 
 whose obnoxious splendor found protection only in obsequiousness, 
 but all who had been consuls, a great part of such as had been prae 
 tors, and even many of the inferior senators strove for priority in the 
 fulsomeness and extravagance of their votes. There is a tradition 
 that Tiberius, as often as he went out of the Senate, was wont to cry 
 out in Greek, How fitted for slavery are these men! Yes, even Ti 
 berius, the enemy of public liberty, nauseated the crouching tame- 
 ness of his slaves." 
 
 ^PHIS lesson, taught by the virtuous Tacitus in 
 * his "Annals," has often been neglected. Not 
 always do men, even those most gifted with fore 
 sight, profit by the experiences of others when 
 following on the very lines that led to disaster. 
 With the vicious it is easier to hope for impunity 
 than to turn themselves from evil ways. That Ti 
 berius and his minions should have cared not 
 enough for the judgment of posterity was unfortu 
 nate notwithstanding the doubts of that age regard 
 ing a future life. For good men, even of 
 heathen nations, have ever been wont to hope that 
 
;*. : ; ; JJDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 their names and memories would live in the favora 
 ble speeches of survivors. 
 
 But what shall we think of such disregard among 
 Christian peoples, among a people who were not 
 only Christian, but who had taken upon themselves 
 to reform the whole Christian Charch with allega 
 tions that it had dishonored its Founder; among a 
 people who had been unmolested in their work of 
 reformation for one hundred and fifty years, in the 
 last twenty of which those who had been most pro 
 nounced in their denunciations of Christian con 
 duct of every kind, in high places, had slain a wicked 
 king and in the commonwealth built upon his ruin 
 made laws for the suppression of every species of 
 iniquity, and then, as if fatigued with their own 
 work and responsibilities, called back the exiled 
 son of their deceased ruler with invocations of the 
 blessings of God? 
 
 The period of the Restoration is in some respects 
 the most interesting in British history. Indeed in 
 all history can hardly be found more rapid and 
 eventful changes in some of the most important 
 elements of a nation s being. Recalled because the 
 people had been made sick nigh unto death under 
 Puritan rule, without genius for empire, incapable, 
 apparently not desirous to become a warrior or a 
 statesman, Charles II. took the crown which had 
 been offered to him, and entered upon a career that 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 3 
 
 was singularly eventful. There was an opportun 
 ity for a beneficent ruler, if he could have been 
 surrounded by ministers wise, patriotic and coura 
 geous, who would have led him to avoid the mis 
 takes of his -ancestors. With a monarch not more 
 inclined to shed blood for the violence done to the 
 dynasty of his family, it seems curious that obsequi 
 ousness in courtiers was as base as ever it had been 
 under the rule of the worst Roman emperors. The 
 House of Commons, composed mainly of Dissen 
 ters, in a body must make haste to prostrate them 
 selves before their gracious master, declare that 
 words were inadequate to express their sense of the 
 heinousness of the sins which had been committed 
 against sacred majesty, and after obtaining forgive 
 ness for themselves clamor for a more condign 
 punishment than that which he seemed inclined to 
 inflict upon others who had been as guilty, but less 
 abject. 
 
 The Prime Minister was a man formed by nature 
 for a noble work. In different circumstances he 
 might have achieved what would have made him 
 be numbered among the greatest statesmen. First 
 an opposer of the most arbitrary measures of Charles 
 L, having joined in the impeachment of the Earl 
 of StrafTord, he turned at length from the violent 
 party of the people, followed into exile the son, was 
 his chief counsellor during that period, returned 
 
4 EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 with him when called back to his fathers throne, 
 and led the administration until his ungrateful 
 master gave him up to the clamors of new favorites 
 and drove him into a second exile wherein he was 
 to die. During this last period he got what solace 
 was possible in writing his "History of the Great 
 Rebellion" and the "Account of His Own Life." 
 The latter work we propose now to consider briefly, 
 particularly the part referring to the marriage of 
 his daughter Anne. 
 
 Behavior like that of which Edward Hyde, then 
 Lord Clarendon, wrote with his own hand it would 
 not be easy to find in the biography of any parent, 
 at least one approximating his rank. Whoever 
 reads of this, as well in the father s own "Account," 
 as in the concurrent memoirs of those times, must 
 have, we should suppose, opinions concerning King 
 James II. somewhat different from those generally 
 held. It the father of Anne Hyde was not sincere 
 in the feeling which he expressed on first hearing 
 of the connection between her and the Duke of 
 York, his utterances were sufficiently base. If he 
 was sincere, it would be hardly more than justice to 
 characterize him as the most shamelessly unnatural 
 of all fathers of whom history has transmitted 
 account. 
 
 There is something in feminine honor that ever 
 has seemed to call from the male sex an amount of 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 5 
 
 tender respect, and of the taking of risks for its 
 defence, that are required by no other human con 
 dition. Particularly has this been the case with 
 maidens. The dishonor of wives, indeed, has 
 always been regarded with horror, but to all man 
 ful minds that of daughters has seemed yet more 
 appalling. Mankind praised the suicide of the high 
 born Lucretia for enduring the insult of Tarquinius; 
 but higher was the laudation for the humble centu 
 rion who, by making himself childless, saved his 
 daughter from outrage by the proud Decemvir. 
 The world holds in scorn the husband who condones 
 the ruin of his wife; but there is no depth to its de 
 testation for the parent who tolerates, much less 
 connives at, that of his daughter. We are now 
 contemplating, it is true, a period wherein social 
 and domestic virtues, especially among the highest 
 circles, were as low, or almost as low, as they have 
 ever been among any people of whom we have pub 
 lished accounts. Yet among all the evil examples 
 which that notable period has transmitted, the case 
 of Anne Hyde to us appears the worst. 
 
 In order to mitigate as much as possible her 
 father s conduct, and bring it to that degree wherein 
 it may seem the conduct at least of a human being, 
 not of a devil, we must assume (what indeed is 
 most probable) that the father was acting through 
 out a part of unmixed duplicity, and that the last 
 
6 EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 results, though following so contrary to his counsels 
 and pretended wishes, were such as he had long pre 
 meditated and eagerly hoped to see attained. Such 
 assumptions must be taken and allowed sometimes 
 in order to make certain things credible. For 
 there be some things, as Horace warned the young 
 Pisos, which are so monstrous that a person of ordi 
 nary virtue and credulity cannot forbear, while lis 
 tening to their recital, to exclaim, "Incredulus odi!" 
 
 Yet, let it be remarked that this assumption is ta 
 ken in spite of the fact that the "Account" was 
 drawn up ten years after the occurrences described, 
 and while the father was languishing in exile in a 
 foreign country. 
 
 There is much in the first appointment of Anne 
 Hyde in the household of the Princess of Orange 
 that "sounds of fraud." To the suggestion of 
 O Xeil that he should apply in her behalf for the 
 place, "Hyde answered" (as said in the "Account") 
 "that he had but one daughter, who was all the 
 comfort and company her mother had in her melan 
 cholic retirement, and therefore he was resolved 
 not to separate theni, nor to dispose his daughter 
 to a court life." Yet, when the family-friend s inte 
 rest had prevailed, and an offer was made by the 
 Princess and the King, her brother, the father, 
 though still professing disinclination, left the de 
 cision to the mother, who quickly enough accepted. 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 7 
 
 A father apprehensive of the influence of court 
 life upon an only daughter soon had reason to feel 
 more so from the praise everywhere bestowed upon 
 her. In a few months after her appointment the 
 Queen of Bohemia wrote : 
 
 "We had a Royaltie, though not upon twelf night, at 
 Teiling. Mrs. Hide was a shepardess, and I assure 
 you was verie handsome in it. None but her mis 
 tress looked better than she did. I believe my lady 
 Hide and the Chancellour will not be sorie to heare 
 it". And afterwards: "I pray remember me to Mr. 
 Chancellour, and tell him his ladie and my favorit, 
 his daughter, came hither upon Saturday, and are 
 gone this day to Teiling. I finde my favorit grow- 
 en everie way to her advantage. " 
 
 In spite of anxieties which must have been 
 sharpened by such glowing accounts of the gifts of 
 the new maid of honor in public impersonations of 
 poetic characters, there seemed never to have been 
 as much as a thought of withdrawing her and she 
 was suffered to continue "growen everie way to 
 her advantage. " 
 
 Anne Hyde was not a beauty; but she had the 
 understanding, culture, and manners that often cap 
 tivate more than beauty of person. These on the 
 occasion of a visit paid by the Princess to the Queen 
 mother at Paris, attracted the Duke of York, to 
 whose suit she lent a willing, but entirely honorable 
 
8 EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 consent, and, upon the return to Breda, signed 
 with him a contract of marriage which after the Res 
 toration was secretly ratified at Worcester House, 
 her father s residence, the bride having been given 
 away by the Lord Ossory. Some circumstances 
 there were, not necessary to be mentioned here, 
 that would seem to have made it impossible for the 
 Chancellor not to know the relations of Anne to the 
 Duke.* However we shall see how he admits to have 
 behaved when the latter demanded of his brother the 
 right to publish his marriage, and the Chancellor, Lord 
 Ormcnd and Southampton had been summoned for 
 consultation touching the demand. It would be 
 not easy, we believe, to match the following extracts 
 from an autobiography: 
 
 "The first matter of general and public importance, 
 and which resulted not from any debate in Parlia- 
 
 *Things far less significant than many which must have come 
 constantly within the Chancellor s observation had raised sus 
 picion outside of his family. In Locke s" Memoirs of Lord Shafts- 
 bury" occurs the following: "Soon after the Restoration of King 
 Charles II., the Earl of Southampton and Sir Anthony Ashley Coop 
 er, having dined together at the Chancellor s, as they were returning 
 home, Sir A. said to my Lord Southampton, Yonder Mrs Anne Hyde 
 is certainly married to one of the "Brothers." The Earl who was a 
 friend to the Chancellor treated this as a chimera, and asked how so 
 wild a fancy got into his head. Assure yourself (replied he) it is 
 so. A concealed respect (however suppressed) showed itself so 
 plainly in the looks, voice, and manner wherewith her mother carv 
 ed to her, or offered her of every dish, that it is impossible but it 
 must be so. My Lord S., who thought it a groundless conceit then, 
 was not long after convinced, by the Duke of York s owning 
 of her that Lord Alislcy was no bad guesser," 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 9 
 
 ment was the discovery of a great affection the 
 Duke had for the Chancellor s daughter, who was 
 a maid of honor to the King s sister, the Princess 
 Royal of Orange, and of a contract of marriage be 
 tween them, with which nobody was so surprised 
 and confounded as the Chancellor himself, who, be 
 ing of a nature far from jealousy and very confident 
 of an entire affection and obedience from all his 
 children, and particularly from that daughter whom 
 he had loved dearly, never had in the least degree 
 suspected any such thing, though he knew after 
 wards that the Duke s affection and kindness had 
 been much spoken of beyond seas, but without the 
 least suspicion in any body that it could ever tend 
 
 to marriage But now upon this discovery 
 
 and the consequence thereof, he looked upon him 
 self as a ruined person, and that the King s indigna 
 tion ought to fall upon him as a contriver ot that 
 indignity to the crown, which on himself from his 
 soul be abhorred, and would have had the presump 
 tion of his daughter punished with the utmost seve 
 rity, so he believed the whole kingdom would be in 
 fluenced by the punishment of it and to prevent the 
 dishonor which might result from it. And the least 
 calamity that he expected upon himself and his 
 family, how innocent soever, was an everlasting 
 banishment out of the kingdom and to end his days 
 in foreign parts in poverty and misery 
 
io EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 "The manner of the Chancellor receiving this 
 advertisement made it evident enough that he was 
 struck with it to the heart, and had never had the 
 least jealousy or apprehension of it. He broke out 
 into a very immoderate passion at the wickedness 
 of his daughter, and said with all imaginable earnest 
 ness that as soon as he came home he would turn 
 her out of his house as " 
 
 But some of his words were too shocking to be 
 transcribed upon a clean page. The other lords in 
 council, it seems, endeavored to mitigate somewhat 
 this mighty indignation, and called his attention to 
 the fact that the Duke had admitted the marriage, 
 and that the business in hand was not for devising 
 how it might be prevented, but of what was to be 
 done in existing circumstances. The monstrousness 
 of such a mesalliance on honorable terms at first had 
 seemed incredible to the outraged parent, who, we 
 must conclude from his own words, could easily 
 bear that the grandson who was shortly to appear 
 should come with the mark of ineffaceable infamy 
 upon his innocent front, but not that one so low 
 born should enter among the possibilities of an 
 eventual wearing of the crown. When the awful 
 fact of marriage was mentioned, what must he do? 
 He told what he did, and he told it long afterwards 
 when himself was an exile, and that same daughter 
 was in the enjoyment of wifehood and motherhood 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. n 
 
 obtained by faithful compliance with every behest 
 of honor and religion. 
 
 "Whereupon he fell into new commotions and said, if that were 
 true, he were well prepared to advise what was to be done." 
 
 It makes one shudder to read what he says as to 
 what in this daughter s case he would prefer than 
 for that mighty dynasty to be dishonored and en 
 dangered by a public acknowledgement of such a 
 marriage. Any disgrace upon himself and his fam 
 ily he could endure, but none inflicted upon those 
 in whom was the divine right. "The indignity to 
 himself he would submit to the good pleasure of God. 
 But if there were any reason to suspect the other, 
 he was ready to give a positive judgment in which 
 he hoped their lordships would concur with him, 
 that the King should immediately cause the woman 
 to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dun 
 geon under so strict a guard that no person living 
 should be permitted to come to her; and then that an 
 act of Parliament should be immediately passed for the 
 cutting off her head, to which hewould not only give 
 his consent, but would be very willingly the first 
 man that should propose it. And whoso knew the 
 man will believe that he said this very heartily. . . 
 I had rather submit and bear this disgrace with all 
 humility than that it should be repaired by making 
 her his wife, the thought whereof I do so much 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 abominate that I would rather see her dead with 
 all the infamy that is due to her presumption." 
 
 Even the consoling words of the king, which 
 could not be restrained at sight of the injured 
 father s "swollen eyes from whence a flood of tears 
 were fallen," were answered with chidings for his 
 too great clemency. 
 
 "Your Majesty is too easy and gentle a nature, to contend with 
 those rough affronts which the iniquity and license of the late times 
 is like to put upon you before it be subdued and reformed." 
 
 We will believe, for the honor of fatherhood, that 
 these horribly unnatural words, and others worse 
 which we cannot transcribe, were, simply the 
 grossest lies, uttered tor the purpose of hiding his 
 joy at the consummation of hopes that were the 
 fondest he had ever indulged. It must have been 
 gratifying to the family and friends that, not long 
 afterwards, the sorrowful wailer was able to lift his 
 head, if only a trifle, when the king put into his 
 hands, privately, a gift of twenty thousand pounds. 
 
 "This bounty, flowing from the king at such a melancholic junc 
 ture, and of which nobody could have notice, could not but raise the 
 spirits of the Chancellor." 
 
 If ever a man was sorely tempted to use the op 
 portunities extended for putting away his wife, it 
 surely was the Duke of York. The repugnance of 
 the king, that, more trying still, of the Princess of 
 Orange and the Queen mother, the condemnation 
 of Hyde by his enemies in spite of his disclaiming 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 13 
 
 of complicity, above all, the audacious plot of Sir 
 George Berkeley, his master of horse, with Jermyn, 
 Talbot,Killigrew, and Lord Arran, to disgust him 
 by blackening his wife s name with charges of fa 
 miliarities of which themselves had been recipients 
 all these shook his resolution; but only for a brief 
 time. To the good fortune of the innocent woman, 
 the man by whom she had been espoused, whatever 
 were his infirmities and however he may have been 
 supposed to tire of her society, held the marriage 
 bond to be indissoluble, except by the act of God. 
 Fortunate, also, it was that the stories of her infidel 
 ities were told with circumstantialities so manifest 
 ly absurd that they were obliged to be discredited. 
 For a time, indeed, the duke was perplexed in the 
 extreme by painful doubts. For a husband, if he 
 doubts, or if, to his knowledge, others doubt of the 
 honor that is most precious to him, suffers as a 
 manful spirit can suffer from no other cause. But 
 his incertitude happily was of brief duration. The 
 very grossness of the charges dispelled all suspicion, 
 and the sooner brought about the public acknowl 
 edgment, every day s delay of which added to the 
 injuries of a woman whose innocence was her 
 only possession that had made her capable to en 
 dure them. 
 
 A graphic account was given of this by the Due 
 de Grammont, in his Memoires. With a pleas- 
 
14 EDWARD HYDES DAUGHTER. 
 
 antry of a looker-on at events which only amused 
 him, he speaks of the accusers as "tous gens d hon- 
 neur, mais qui preferoient infiniment celui du Due 
 de York a celui de Mademoiselle Hyde. " After re 
 citing the foul calumnies, and the summons, almost 
 immediately after this utterance, received by Lord 
 Ossory and Sir George Berkeley to attend the Duke 
 at the residence of the Lord Chancellor, he thus 
 concludes : 
 
 "Us trouve rent a leur marquee son Altesse dans 
 la chambre de Mademoiselle Hyde, ses yeux par- 
 oissoient mouilles de quelques larmes qu elle s ef- 
 for9oit de retenir. Le Chancelier, appuye contre la 
 muraille, leur parut bouffi de quelque chose. Us ne 
 douterent point que ce ne fut de rage et de desespbir. 
 Ex Le Due d York leur dit, de cet air content et 
 serein dont on annonce les bonnes nouvelles, Com- 
 mes vous etes les deux hommes de la Cour que j 
 esteme le plus, je veux que vous ayez les premie res 
 1 honneur de saluer la Duchesse d York. La voila. " 
 
 Small place, either in histories or contemporary 
 memoirs, was given to the young woman who had 
 been so sorely tried. That she suffered keenly, we 
 cannot doubt. For there are some injuries that, 
 upon the innocent, inflict anguish which the guilty 
 never feel, even under the hardest blows. Yet, in 
 the midst of her sorrow in secret silence the hope 
 must have been strong in her breast that the deliv- 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 15 
 
 erance she prayed for would come in the good 
 time of God. Not yet being, not yet daring to be, 
 a Catholic herself, she yet could not fail to know the 
 solemn, the awful inviolability in which the church 
 of her husband held the bond of marriage. In the 
 inconstancy of his sex, in the fears concerning her 
 honor by which he had been racked, he might suffer 
 her to fall a victim under the act which her unnatu 
 ral father was ready to propose in Parliament; but 
 she knew that she could never be a repudiated wife 
 of him to whom she had given her entire self; and 
 so she waited with the patience by which Heaven 
 supports the pure in heart, whom, with purposes 
 wise and merciful, it sometimes allows to be afflicted 
 and persecuted. 
 
 Her behavior, after this public recognition, was 
 like what we have read in the lives of saints, and 
 nowhere else. Forgiveness is a solemn duty, and 
 when practised without grudge or reservation, a 
 great virtue. But there was something almost more 
 than human in that extended to those false witnesses 
 by the woman whom they had so foully wronged. 
 At least, it went to the extremest human possibili 
 ties, not only when they were all forgiven by the 
 husband and the wife, but when the wife bestowed 
 praise upon conduct which, as she graciously said, 
 had been acted solely in the cause of the safety of 
 her dearest lord. For the knight, Sir George Berke- 
 
1 6 EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 ley, destined for yet higher honors, had so pleaded 
 in justification of his confessed perjuries. 
 
 There can be little doubt that these assertions of 
 C^ icellor Hyde about his preferring the death and 
 disgrace of his only daughter to her becoming the 
 acknowledged wife of the Duke of York, were 
 wholly false. Their sincerity would have been 
 monstrous, even if his fears of the ruin that the 
 marriage would bring upon himself had been well 
 founded. There might have been something, we 
 must hope there was, in a father s instinct to shield 
 his offspring from threatened condign punishment 
 by himself taking the lead in damnatory epithets to 
 a degree that sometimes diverts the vengeance in 
 pursuit and leaves open a way for pity towards a 
 victim so entirely friendless. But such conduct, 
 pardonable in some cases, was wholly unnecessary 
 in the case of one who knew, as this man must have 
 known, the extent of his power and influence. 
 This is apparent from what he wrote of the hostility 
 of the Queen mother to the match, so fiercely pro 
 nounced at first, but destined soon to subside into a 
 most proper motherly affection. There is much 
 sarcasm, covert as it tried to keep itself, in rehears 
 ing the speech of the Queen, who, in hot haste, had 
 come over from Paris, to put her foot upon the ne 
 farious alliance, that "whenever that woman should 
 be brought into Whitehall by one door, her majesty 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 17 
 
 would go out of it at another door, and never come 
 into it again," and how, afterwards, she received 
 from Cardinal Mazarin a significant warn wig, 
 "that she would not receive a good welcome* n fl > 
 France if she left her sons in her displeasure, and 
 professed an animosity against those ministers who 
 were most trusted by the king." This intimation, 
 in briefest time, wrought a change in the bearing of 
 the offended Henrietta Maria. On the day before 
 that set for her return, the Duke presented his wife, 
 when, as reported by the gossipy Pepys, "the Queen 
 is said to receive her now with much respect and 
 love." 
 
 The duplicity of the great minister appears to 
 have been chronic. He was yet only Chancellor 
 Hyde. The King had several times proposed a 
 peerage, telling him, as he says, "he was assured by 
 many of the lords that it was most necessary for his 
 service in the Parliament." Eagerly as he desired 
 this honor, -his instinctive caution made him de 
 cline then; but he gave his promise that he would 
 accept at some future time, a promise which he 
 faithfully kept. 
 
 The bride who, through so many difficulties, had 
 risen so high, was destined to bear many children, 
 to see four of them die in childhood and to meet 
 an early death herself. Doubtless she never 
 so much as dreamed that two of her surviving off- 
 
1 8 EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 
 
 spring would succeed their father on the English 
 throne. It seemed like one of the dispositions of 
 Nemesis, that when the last of these should decease, 
 those of her high born successor should see the di 
 adem revert through two generations to a kinsman 
 not only distant but a foreigner. 
 
 From the time of his daughter s marriage the 
 rise of Hyde was rapid. Under a virtuous and 
 courageous sovereign such a minister could have 
 done well for his country. His tastes and his feel 
 ings were sincerely against the disgusting immorali 
 ties of the court and the age. It must have been 
 painful to him very often to feel obliged to connive 
 at actions that shocked his moral sense; yet he was 
 too fond ot power even to insist upon those which 
 would have been for the honor and glory of the na 
 tion. He could not but have foreseen how that 
 first secret borrowing of money from the French 
 monarch would result in a dependency that would 
 forever disgrace a reign in which, next to the sov 
 ereign, he was enacting the leading part. Then 
 not only his moral sense, but that of his manhood, 
 must have revolted at the brutalities inflicted upon 
 the unhappy Catharine of Braganza from the very 
 beginning to the very end of her married life. He 
 did, indeed, feebly remonstrate against the King s 
 action in making the infamous Lady Castlemaine a 
 maid of the bedchamber of the pious woman whom 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 19 
 
 he had lately married. Of her, shortly after his 
 marriage, the King had written thus, after much in 
 delicate but hearty praise of her personal attract 
 iveness: "I thinke myself very happy, for I am 
 confident our two humors will agree very well to 
 gether," and "I cannot easily tell you how happy I 
 thinke myself; and I must be the worst man living 
 (which I hope I am not) if I be not a good husband. " 
 Yet one month was sufficient to cloy him who had 
 no relish for happiness honorably obtained. Let us 
 see how he can write after one month to the minis 
 ter who had humbly counselled against the course 
 which he had already shown his intention to pursue. 
 
 "I forgott when you were heere last, to desire you to give Brod- 
 ericke* good counsell not to meddle any more with what concerns 
 my I>ady Castlemaine, and to let him have a care how he is the 
 authorre of any scandalous reports; for if I nnde him guilty of any 
 such thing, I will make him repent it to the last moment of his life. 
 And now I am entered on this matter, I thinke it very necessary to 
 give you a little good counsell in it, least you may thinke that by 
 making a further stirr in the business you may diverte me from my 
 resolution, which all the world shall never do; and I wish I may be 
 unhappy in this world and in the world to come, if I faile in the least 
 degree what I have resolved; which is of making my Lady Castle 
 maine of my wives bedchamber; and whosoever I findeuse any en 
 deavour to hinder this resolution of myne (except it be only to my- 
 selfe), I will be his enemy to the last moment of my life. You know 
 what a true friende I have been to you. If you will oblige me etern 
 ally, make this business as easy as you can of what opinion soever 
 you are of; for I am resolved to go through with this matter lett what 
 will come on it; which againe I solemnly sweare before Almighty 
 God. Therefore, if you desire to have the continuance of my friend- 
 
 *Sir Alan Broderick, Com. of Irish Affairs and M. P. for Dungar- 
 van. 
 
20 EDWARD HYDE ? S DAUGHTER. 
 
 ship, meddle no more with this businesse excepte it be tobeare down 
 all false and scandalous reports, and to facilitate what I am sure my 
 honour is so much concerned in; and whosoever I finde to be my 
 Lady Castlemaine s enimy in this matter, I do promise upon my 
 word, to be his enimy as long as I live. You may show this letter to 
 my I-d. Lnt., and if you have both a minde to oblige me cary your 
 selves like friends to me in this matter. CHARLES R." 
 
 If the limits of a review article would allow such 
 a diversion, we should like to notice, if only in 
 brief, the career of that poor queen; how her atten 
 dants who had followed her from Portugal were one 
 by one driven from her service; how her sense of 
 wifehood at first revolted at the relations with Lady 
 Castlemaine proposed by her husband, and she was 
 forced to yield to the Chancellor s entreaties which 
 his base servility made him employ;* how her sub 
 mission made her no new friends, but lost to her 
 some of her old; how she was rescued from the 
 criminations of Gates, yet with no more feeling than 
 would have been bestowed upon the lowest woman 
 
 *In his "Account" he writes how with the King he urged "the 
 hard-heartedness and cruelty in laying such a command upon the 
 Queen which flesh and blood could not comply with;" how his course 
 had already "lost him some ground," and how its continuance 
 "would break the hearts of all his friends, and be only grateful to 
 those who wished for the destruction of monarchy." Yet in a month 
 after this he writes thus to the Duke of Ormond: "I have likewise 
 twice spoken with the Qtieene. The Lady hath beene atCourte, and 
 kissed her hande, and returned that night. I cannot tell you ther 
 was no discomposure. I am not out of hope, and that is all I can yett 
 say. I shall send this by Sir All. Brodericke, and so shall not neede 
 to use cypher; but hereafter I shall always use cypher upon this ar 
 gument, and I believe rarely xipon any other; and therefore you must 
 take the paynes still to dischyfer yourselfe." 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 21 
 
 of England who was known to be guiltless. It 
 might be interesting to follow the Lady Castle- 
 maine, now become Dutchess of Cleveland, in her 
 ons and offs with her royal lover in her persistent 
 and finally successful endeavors to ruin the Lord 
 Chancellor after the sale of Dunkirk and the disas 
 ters of a war against the undertaking of which he 
 had striven in vain. But we must make an end 
 with that of the statesman whom we have been con 
 sidering. He died hard. Beyond measure it sur 
 prised and pained him that his servile compliances 
 with things which his judgment and his conscience 
 alike had condemned, had lost for him both the 
 confidence of the people and the friendship of the 
 court. It was pitiful to see how tenaciously he 
 clung to power, even after he must have known 
 that his hold upon it was forever broken, how he 
 resisted every intimation to resign, how angui sh 
 ingly he received the orders for his disgrace, and 
 how in his exile he was ever praying and hoping 
 for pardon and permission to return. Among the 
 very last letters written by him were those ad 
 dressed to his daughter and his son-in-law regarding 
 the reports of her conversion to the Roman Catho 
 lic faith. In these was shown his accurate knowl 
 edge of the temper of the English nation upon 
 this subject. After some discussion ot the theolog 
 ical points, he insinuated a caution which, had 
 
22 EDWARD HYDE*S DAUGHTER. 
 
 James been a more politic man, might have been 
 heeded, that if the reported defection from the 
 English Church were true, "it might very probably 
 raise a greater storm against the Roman Catholics 
 in general than modest men can wish." Even in 
 banishment he seemed to hold to the idea that 
 action in matters of most vital importance should 
 be determined upon with views of personal security. 
 His remonstrances had no effect. His daughter 
 died in the consolations of that faith from which, in 
 the want of maternal guidance, her surviving daugh 
 ters were destined to become estranged. 
 
 There is much pathos in the last appeal made by 
 Clarendon a few months before his death at Rouen. 
 In June (1671) he had written to the King and en 
 treated "that an old man who had served the Crown 
 above thirty years in some trust and in seme accep 
 tation, might be allowed to end his days in the 
 society of his children," and in the hope that so 
 humble a petition would not be refused, he had be 
 gun to give directions for some changes and repairs 
 for his former country estate. No answer being 
 received, he wrote again in August. "Seven years," 
 he said "was a time prescribed and limited by God 
 himself for the extirpation of some of his greatest 
 judgments; and it is full that time since I have, with 
 all possible humility, sustained the insupportable 
 weight of the King s displeasure. Since it will be 
 
EDWARD HYDE S DAUGHTER. 23 
 
 in nobody s power long to keep me from dying, me- 
 thinks the desiring a place to die in should not be 
 thought a great presumption, nor unreasonable for 
 me to beg leave to die in my own country and 
 among my own children." No attention was given 
 to this last appeal, and three months afterwards he 
 died in that country in which he had spent so many 
 years in a former exile, and to which he had not 
 even endeavored to save his own from paying 
 dishonorable tribute. To the gratitude which he 
 so humbly prayed to be paid for long, laborious, 
 patient services, many of which had been rendered 
 in pandering to gratifications not only unworthy of 
 a king, but most unmanly and vicious, it must have 
 been anguishing to feel, if he did feel, that he was 
 not entitled. Little affection appears to have been 
 between him and his son-in-law. Probably it is 
 that the latter felt and exhibited contempt for his 
 want of sincerity and courage, qualities which this 
 last of the Stuart kings possessed to a higher degree 
 than any other of that house. 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 A German professor, whose religion, like that of 
 ** many of his contemporaries and more of his 
 successors, was of an uncertain kind, was reported 
 to have said once to his class: Gentleman a Jew is 
 a Jew; he always was a Jew, and he always will be 
 a Jew; and then the savant instanced and com 
 mented humorously upon the pleadings of the great 
 Patriarch in behalf of the wicked Sodom, and his 
 Jewing diOVfici infinite justice itself, from fifty to ten 
 righteous men, who were required to be found in 
 order to save it from destruction. Not admitting 
 the propriety of an illustration that treated with lev 
 ity an instance of such exalted charitableness in 
 an ancient saint, yet we cannot fail, sometimes, to 
 admire anew the patient persistence of this singu 
 lar people, and the magnitude of the successes with 
 which, in individual cases, this persistence has been 
 rewarded. 
 
 The more thoughtful and kindly the understand 
 ing of any Christian man, the more interest he takes 
 in the marvellously eventful history of the Hebrew 
 nation. How melancholy always! The elect of God, 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 25 
 
 how have they been led to study the lessons of suf 
 fering! Those strange lessons, the full value of 
 which so few mortals have learned sufficiently to 
 feel the transports of gratitude that such learning 
 imparts. Public and domestic treasons, partings, 
 exiles, assassinations, wars, pestilences, wearinesses 
 with excesses of prosperity, even the palling upon 
 the taste of consummate earthly wisdom! And 
 then the great sin, the mightiest and deadliest, the 
 denial of their long promised King, followed by 
 their limitless dispersions, and the ever-continuing 
 iterations of the misfortunes belonging to their 
 melancholy heritage. Unhappiest of all, their 
 prophets, who along with contemporaneous circum 
 stances, prosperous and adverse, had to endure 
 fature disasters these no longer exist because of 
 the Fulness of time. The Jew, no longer collective, 
 pursues each his individual way, and longs and 
 dreams for the good predicted by those who, be 
 cause they predicted evil also, were stoned by 
 their ancestors. 
 
 What longings and what dreams! 
 
 For oft nest th unhappy have their desires: 
 But in dreams. 
 
 Neither age nor lowly condition hinders as 
 much as it leads to dreams, sleeping or waking. 
 Was not Isaac born when Sarai was past the age? 
 Was not Saul summoned from his searching for the 
 
26 BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 asses colts, and David from the sheepfolds? 
 Among all the daughters of Jerusalem, of whatever 
 tongue or condition, what dreams are there not for 
 the maternity of the Messias, whom they believe to 
 be yet lingering in His coming! Towards the 
 Holy City according as their estate is the more 
 lonely and unhappy, their eyes are turned with fonder 
 yearnings and hopes for the Captivity s return. 
 
 Therefore, the Jew is patient and persevering. If 
 he fails today, he hopes to win tomorrow. No less 
 hopeful is the aged than the young. Even the dy 
 ing, in the midst of the sad retrospect of his own 
 poor career, lifts up his heart with visions of a better 
 for those whom he leaves behind him. Conversion 
 to Christianity changes their national traits only 
 in kind. The heart of the converted Jew, although 
 with different purposes, yet yearns for the city 
 builded upon a hill. Like Paul, his heart s desire 
 is for Israel. 
 
 Thoughts like these have been in our mind of 
 late, while contemplating the career of that Isra 
 elite, who lately occupied the most conspicuous 
 place among living men. Illustrious as Benjamin 
 D Israeli became, it is not so much in the capacity 
 of author and politician that he impresses us, as 
 in that of a Jew, both as author and politician. 
 What his ancestors had endured in the days of perse 
 cution, more than their brethren in the South, we 
 
BENJAMIN DISRAELI THE JEW. 27 
 
 need not enquire; nor what, if any, intensifica 
 tion of Hebrew characteristics either preceded or 
 followed the change of their family to the national 
 name; nor how cordial may have been their con 
 version to Christianity. A Jew he was, and a Jew 
 he continued to be. Proud of a descent from 
 those who had direct intercourse with the King of 
 kings, whose angels they entertained, and whose 
 Spirit led their armies to innumerable victories, 
 this Jew, when yet a child, loved to muse upon the 
 ancient glories of Israel; their land flowing with milk 
 and honey, their boundless tributes of gold, and sil 
 ver, and precious stones, and wealth of every kind 
 brought from subjugated heathendom : their heroes 
 and poets, and prophets, all so grand, and the 
 grander because so remote, so extending back, as it 
 \vere, to the very beginning of time and the very 
 gates of heaven. If he was proud of his late exal 
 tation, it was not higher than, in his childhood, he 
 hoped to reach; and to his mind it was lower than 
 the eminences on which many a Hebrew had stood 
 during the golden days of his people. 
 
 As an author D Israeli exhibited the national 
 characteristics most prominently. Beginning with 
 Vivian Grey and ending with Lothair, his most in 
 teresting creations are of the Jewish type, and show 
 how fond he is of the serene and solemn majesties 
 of the East, above the bustling activities of the 
 
28 BENJAMIN D lSRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 West. It is not a European who describes those 
 majestic processions and assemblages, those gor 
 geous apparels, those displays of numberless price 
 less jewels; nor are they Europeans who march and 
 are clad in such array. The characters thus de 
 scribed may be European in name, and the author 
 a Christian, so-called; but they are Asiatic of the 
 ancient type, and he a very Hebrew of the Hebrews. 
 Orientalism abounds even among his creations 
 which are avowedly European. But occasionally, 
 as in Tancred, and the Wondrous Tale of Alroy, he 
 is in the very midst of the great East, and, especially 
 in the latter, seems to feel as if there was no earth 
 outside of it. In his younger days the critics often 
 derided inventions so foreign, so ancient, and so un 
 known in European life; but this patient toiler and 
 dreamer toiled on and dreamed on ; and even when 
 long past his youth, and a leader in the politics of 
 England, he invented other tales in the intervals of 
 rest from political labors, and from India, and Ara 
 bia, and all the East, he brought the gold, and the 
 myrrh, and the pearls, and the jewels, and the rich 
 woven vestments, and the pomp and the circum 
 stance, and along with these the voluptuous languor 
 of those to whom such possessions had come down 
 through forty centuries of ancestors. 
 
 Now why did a man so gifted, and a man so am 
 bitious for power and fame as an Englishman, write 
 
BENJAMIN DISRAELI THE JEW. 29 
 
 such things as the Wondrous Tale of Alroy, in 
 which his dreaminess led him almost to oblivion of 
 his native tongue, and into adoption, with no change 
 except the employment of English words, of the 
 measured prose of Asiatic nations? It is pleasing, 
 yet it is sad to speculate why. This strange man 
 seems to us to have been a kind of double man. 
 He was an Englishman, and he was a Jew. An 
 Englishman, he was modern, active, bold, combatant; 
 a Jew he mused, and brooded, and suffered, and 
 dreamed, and waited. To the English people, who, 
 in spite of their devotion to business, have imagina 
 tion he on whom heaven, among other gifts, be 
 stowed that of poesy, recited pleasing tales; not 
 mirthful, but tales in which memories of the best 
 ages are awakened : when kings were patriarchs, 
 and subjects, their children and kinsmen, to whom 
 the world s wealth belonged. Pleasing as. such tales 
 might be to his countrymen to read, they were far 
 more so to him to invent. Sweeter than words 
 could express, were the illusions which the Jew 
 could thus bring over his own mind, as, along with 
 these personages of his own fancy, he mingled among 
 the splendid but solemn pageants of olden Hebrew 
 story. The true poet, like the true prophet is often, 
 unhappy. But the poet, unlike the prophet, can 
 gather consolation, and sometimes exquisite happi 
 ness from illusions. Out of the discordant elements 
 
30 BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 of this life he can make new creations, imparting to 
 them the blessed destiny of his own fancy, and so 
 console his own disappointments with the splendid 
 triumphs of his own begotten. To the imaginative 
 Jew, far more than to the practical and the toiling, 
 the memories of his ancestors are unutterably dear. 
 He may not speak with his own mouth to the 
 stranger of these memories. He may refuse to take 
 down his harp from the willow, and sing the songs 
 of Zion in a strange land to the ears of insolent 
 curiosity. Yet, the more gifted he is, the more mu 
 sical his heart, the sweeter are these unforgotten 
 songs, and the more he feels like repeating the exe 
 cration of him who invoked it when he exclaimed, 
 Ir I forget thee, O Jerusalem ! if I prefer not Jeru 
 salem above my chief joy. 
 
 To him who carefully studies the literary works of 
 D Israeli, ideas like those we have briefly described 
 must frequently occur. And these ideas, we believe, 
 must tend to enhance appreciation of him, both as 
 an author and as a man. Having always been em 
 inently prosperous in the matters of mere material 
 welfare, the inheritor of a competent fortune, 
 trained and educated in the midst of easy, and 
 even felicitous surroundings, yet adhering with fond 
 sadness to the traditions of his people, and con 
 stantly re-presenting to his own mind, and to a not 
 very appreciative public in his adopted land, their 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 31 
 
 ancient glories or things intended to remind of 
 those ancient glories we are touched with feelings 
 of delicate sympathy for the unspoken, but the deep, 
 the honorable, the patriotic grief which such conduct 
 betokens. 
 
 The stories of D Israeli s lovers are the more in 
 teresting when we know how faithful and single was 
 his own only passion. The attachment which the 
 Christian woman gave to him, is said to have in 
 spired a reciprocation almost unique in its fidelity. 
 For conjugal love, as in the days when the sons of 
 God fell in love with the daughters of men, breaks 
 down the barriers of nations and races. Doubtless 
 he loved his wife the more, because in her prefer 
 ence for him of a hated race, he imagined himself 
 to perceive a cordiality of union beyond what 
 might have been attained, where no such barriers 
 were to be overleaped. At all events, it has been 
 often remarked, that this gifted woman, besides 
 being his wife, was his guide, philosopher, and 
 friend : and when rising towards the acme of re 
 nown, in the old age of both, and a peerage was 
 offered to him, he at first declined the offer, with 
 the request that it should be bestowed upon her. 
 Most loving and most knightly conduct ! It would 
 be difficult to find its parallel. 
 
 Early as D Israeli was to begin to rise in author 
 ship, and late in politics, it was in the latter that 
 
32 BENJAMIN DISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 he was to become pre-eminent. And now what 
 contrast in the qualifications of this man for the at 
 tainment of literary and political renown. What 
 contrast in the methods of procedure. A traveller 
 of eighteen years represents the images which a 
 sojourn in the East had raised, and the youth, 
 apparently so ardent and precocious, sees himself at 
 twenty-two an acknowledged rival of the best names 
 in literary circles. Few there were, if any, who 
 then suspected that the young Israelite, so imagina 
 tive, so languidly sensuous, thought, or even hoped 
 to join, much less to lead, in the great struggles 
 of political wartare. Yet, his parlimentary career 
 even then was probably scarcely less an assur 
 ance in his own mind, than it became when it had 
 well begun. The patience and perseverance which 
 he possessed beyond most of his people, joined with 
 extraordinary genius, assured him of ultimate suc 
 cess. It is interesting to speculate upon the feel 
 ings with which he might afterwards recur to his first 
 political essays and their results; his standing as a 
 Radical for Wycombe in 1832, with a defeat; his 
 subsequent defeat before the same constituency in 
 1835; yet another defeat in the same year as a 
 Conservative, before the electors of Taunton; and 
 finally his return in 1837, at thirty-two years of 
 age, for Maidstone, and the hisses that forced him 
 to his seat when he first attempted to address the 
 
BENJAMIN DISRAELI THE JEW. 33 
 
 House of Commons. Who but a Jew, a patient, 
 persevering Jew, could have uttered those memora 
 ble words "I have begun many things several times 
 and have often succeeded at last: I shall sit down 
 now, but the time will come when you will hear 
 me ? Many an ardent young man, with or without 
 powers, has uttered, or felt like uttering such words; 
 but in subdued tones, or in the excitement of un 
 guarded passion. But this young Jew, who saw 
 that he had not yet gotten in hand parliamentary 
 usage and the temper of the House, took his seat 
 with calmness and without resentment, assured as 
 fully that his time would come, as that it was not 
 already at hand. 
 
 It suits not the purpose of this brief notice to 
 consider those adroit movements by which he soon 
 obtained the leadership of the Young England 
 party that rose in such vigorous hostility, on the 
 part of the aristocracy and gentry, to the relaxing 
 protective policy of Sir Robert Peel, whom he 
 denounced as the Great Middleman in British 
 politics; nor the services for which, under the 
 premiership of the latest Earl of Derby, he was 
 rewarded first in 1852, and afterwards in 1858, 
 with the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. In 
 all these times, men could not but wonder that a 
 man, whose imagination in unofficial life was 
 prone to wander in oriental fancies, had taken 
 
34 UKNJAMIN DISRAELI THK JEW. 
 
 time to study and learn the mysteries of trade 
 and finance, and was as familiar with the business 
 of Lombard, and Bishopsgate, and Threadneedle 
 streets, as he was in the traditions and the lore 
 of the East. 
 
 The alterations in those later parliamentary com 
 bats between him and Mr. Gladstone are recent and 
 well known. The ultimate complete overthrow of 
 the latter, beneath which he so passionately and 
 vainly writhed, is a theme on which we used to 
 read in the daily morning newspapers. The irregu 
 lar statesmanship of Mr. Gladstone, his oscillations 
 between liberality and narrowness, in spite of his 
 consummate eloquence and his great natural pow 
 ers, could not fail to bring in time the result which 
 his adversary long foresaw, and for which he so 
 patiently waited. His conduct towards Ireland, 
 generous as it was by comparison, seemed at last 
 only a condescension. Though bom almost in sight 
 of that unhappy land, it was not until Gladstone 
 had delivered up the seals that he went to visit it, 
 and could see for himself the traces of the miseries 
 that several generations of his predecessors had 
 wrought. A factioni st in religion, besides assailing 
 the patriotism of a large number of his fellow-citi 
 zens as incompatible with their religious faith, he 
 wounded and alienated the most gifted and thought 
 ful of the clergy of his own creed. Since his fall, 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 35 
 
 with a misplaced sympathy for the Photians of Tur 
 key, he excused and endeavored to lead his coun 
 trymen to admire and even co-operate with the 
 barbarous policies of Russia, domestic and foreign 
 and seemed as if he would have assisted that mon 
 strous despotism in expelling from Europe the un 
 believing Turk, even as he had hoped to cast out 
 those of his own brethren who refused compliance 
 with his own dogmatic ideas of the regulation of 
 public worship. 
 
 In the midst of these vagaries, the patient and 
 persevering Jew, now ten years advanced beyond 
 his threescore, never having either rested or hasted, 
 found his time to have come for which he had 
 waited, and which he had long foreseen. It did 
 not come too late for a man who reckons time as a 
 Jew. He quietly put on the insignia that his 
 younger rival had been required to lay aside. With 
 a foresight even beyond that of his kinsmen, the 
 Rothschilds, he made haste to purchase a sufficiently 
 controlling interest in that great canal connecting 
 the western with the eastern seas, his eye already 
 turned towards the Levant and the countries beyond. 
 A felicitous thought, yet far less felicitous than 
 that which moved him to have conferred upon his 
 sovereign the title of Empress of India. That 
 vast empire like the peoples of the Italian provinces 
 before they were formally endued with Roman citi- 
 
36 BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 zenship, rendered to the government a reluctant 
 obedience. But cordial subjection had never yet 
 come to those teeming millions, because, for the 
 most part, of a want of perfect assimilation 
 and a recognition of equality with their fellow-sub 
 jects of the West. The nabob whose ancestors had 
 had an Ahasuerus and a Porus for their sovereigns, 
 must sometimes complain, if only in secret that he 
 was called a British subject, and his monarch en 
 throned in a small island thousands of miles away 
 in the German Ocean. It was therefore a sublime 
 idea thus to divide, as well as to double the title ot 
 sovereignty, restore a venerable throne that had 
 fallen, and place upon it a sovereign whose ances 
 tors could be numbered for a thousand years. Af 
 terwards, it was money wdsely spent when the 
 Prince of Wales, their future Emperor, was sent to 
 visit this mighty people, and, along with their rajahs, 
 hunted the tiger in their jungles, and exhibited 
 himself to the multitudes in their grand processions, 
 seated in state upon an elephant, as in the days of 
 their ancient splendor. The idea was Asiatic, and 
 it was Hebraistic. For did not the ships of Hiram 
 of Tyre bring from Ophir to King Solomon gold 
 and algum trees and precious stones? And did 
 not his own navy fetch every third year, from Thar- 
 shish, gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks? 
 Men migjht smile and deride, and complain of what 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 37 
 
 they called the grossness of the foppery of a use 
 less addition and a vain pageantry; but, wiser than 
 them all, this descendant of Israel, years of whose 
 youth had been spent in the East, knew all the ful 
 ness of their significance. 
 
 The Turko-Russian war broke out. He waited 
 until the combatant nations, one ruined and the 
 other well nigh exhausted, had come to a truce, and 
 the conquering army lay in sight of the Bosphorus 
 and the minarets of Constantinople. Then began, 
 destined to progress with incredible rapidity, the 
 most consummate statesmanship that England has 
 seen in a hundred years. We are too near the 
 Berlin Conference to see all the vastness of its at 
 tendants and its results. All Europe opened its 
 eyes, and so did all Asia, or such parts of it as had 
 eyes that could be opened, at the announcement 
 that Cyprus had been ceded to the British crown, 
 and that this cession was not to be considered as 
 among the questions that were to be discussed by 
 the plenipotentiaries. The suddenness, the audac 
 ity with which this feat was accomplished seemed 
 to have astounded the world so far as to hinder it 
 from framing and uttering a complaint, before Sir 
 Garnett Wolseley was in possession of the purchased 
 island, and the adventurous youth of Great Britain 
 were already emigrating to its fertile shores. Pro 
 phetic was this acquisition of what the great Hebrew 
 
38 BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 desired from the review of the treaty of San Stefano. 
 Little concern, it is probable, had he individually 
 for the Danubian principalities and the Turkey in 
 Europe. It was Turkey in Asia to which his eyes, 
 along with his heart, were turned the land of his 
 forefathers, and the lands with which his forefathers 
 had made wars and alliances, of the Assyrian, the 
 Persian, the Mede, the land of the palm and cedar, 
 the fig tree and olive. Europe might settle the 
 West for themselves; England, now so strangely 
 under the lead of a Hebrew, finds her share, and 
 is content with it, in the possession of part and the 
 protectorate of the rest of the East. 
 
 And all this without war! A mighty conquest, 
 and attained by the arts of peace. The peace of 
 Europe, at least of eastern Europe, in all human 
 probability, seemed to be better ascertained than 
 it had been at any time within a century. 
 
 As for the part that England has played and the 
 aquisitions that she has made, all their magnitude 
 can only be imagined; yet they already show some 
 what for themselves in the wonder with which the 
 eyes of all mankind were turned to DTsraeli. The 
 aged Gortchacoff looked grimly to see given to 
 another, those prizes that an expensive and mur 
 derous war had been waged to win for himself; 
 while Bismarck, who by material superiority had 
 conquered for Prussia the States lying on the north, 
 
HF.NJAMIN D ISRAELI THK JEW. 39 
 
 contracted his heavy brows to think that a dog of a 
 Jew, without blood and almost in silence, had made 
 peaceful conquests overpassing his own, and stood 
 before himself that day the foremost man of Europe. 
 
 What Cyprus is to become under British control 
 we may conjecture in part from what has been 
 made of Gibraltar, and Malta, and what the great 
 statesmen of the ages have been accustomed to 
 make of those positions which, in the language of 
 Philip of Macedon, are called the fetters of coun 
 tries. We know what Cyprus was to the Phoenician, 
 the Greek, the Persian, thirty centuries ago and 
 downward, when its more than million people sat 
 and languished among the almost spontaneous gifts 
 of its corn, and wine, and oil, and where the frolic 
 goddess, sprung from the Sea-foam, had her favorite 
 bowers, and listened to the secrets of its large-eyed 
 maidens. It now belongs to a civilization that 
 will know how to develop those resources that were 
 unknown and uninquired of by the luxurious inhab 
 itants of Salamis, Amatteus, Paphos, Leona and 
 Idalium. How complete, how grand that cordon of 
 fetters which, by the acquisition of this island and 
 the Suez Canal, now extends from Gibraltar on the 
 western gate of the Mediterranean, to Aden on the 
 southern extremity of the Red Sea! 
 
 In this culmination, how must have felt this man, 
 one of a long persecuted and universally exiled race ! 
 
4O BENJAMIN 1) ISRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 What did those eyes see or imagine they saw, as they 
 looked towards the ancient city and the sepulchers of 
 his fathers? Yes, the Jew is a Jew. Conversion 
 to Christianity abates not, but multiplies the yearn 
 ings for Jerusalem. Conversion to Christianity, 
 to the objects of former ceaseless veneration, has 
 added Gethsemane, the Mount of Crucifixion, the 
 Holy Sepulchre; and even the ruined Temple has a 
 new and grander attraction in the recognition, how 
 ever late and reluctant, that its walls once re-echoed 
 to the words of God manifest in the flesh, who had 
 condescended to be born of a Virgin daughter of 
 Jerusalem. We have seen with what fondness the 
 Ratisbons are striving for the establishment of 
 Christian institutions, and we have listened to 
 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy s Elijah, when we needed 
 not to be told that it was a Jew who so sang and 
 wailed that we almost imagined we could hear the 
 great prophet, as, having fled from Jezebel, he cast 
 himself down beneath the juniper tree in the wilder 
 ness, and prayed, It is enough; now, O Lord, take 
 away my life! for I am not better than my 
 fathers. 
 
 The Earl of Beaconsfield, Knight of the Garter ! 
 For such services, so flattering to her person and so 
 contributory to her glory, could not pass without 
 distinguishing rewards from a gracious sovereign, 
 Therefore 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 41 
 
 About, about! 
 
 Search Windsor Castle, elves, within, without, 
 Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room, 
 That it may stand till the perpetual doom, 
 In state as wholesome, as in state tis fit; 
 \Vorthy the owner, and the owner it. 
 The several chairs of order look you scour 
 \Vith juice of balm, and every precious flower; 
 Each fair instalment, coat and several crest, 
 With loyal blazon, ever more be blest ! 
 And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, vou sing, 
 Like to the Garter s compass, in a ring : 
 The expressure that it bears, green let it be, 
 More fertile fresh than all the field to see ; 
 And, Honi soit qui mal y pense, write 
 In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white, 
 Like sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery, 
 Buckled below fair knighthood s bending knee. 
 
 To others, this title and this most exalted of so 
 cial distinctions seemed late in coming. Not so 
 to the patient, persevering Jew. We have seen 
 how, a few years before, he had waived a peerage 
 in favor of his wife. For this waiver there was yet 
 another motive besides conjugal fondness and 
 gratitude. The acme, the highest height had not 
 yet been attained by the commoner. He remem 
 bered how the prestige of Pitt had been lost by a 
 too ready acceptance of the Earldom of Chatham. 
 When the long struggle with Mr. Gladstone was 
 terminated, and in great part by means of his ad 
 versary s overweening confidence, leading him to 
 the commission of blunders too great to be retrieva 
 ble, then, with the dignity of one who feels that he 
 
42 BENJAMIN D lSRAELI THE JEW. 
 
 is receiving his own, he took the golden prize. 
 How serene the aged Jew in the possession of these 
 almost unexampled honors ! Yet further, as Earl 
 of Beaconsfield he added largely not only to 
 the power, but to the popularity of D Israeli. The 
 favorite of the Queen was also the idol of the 
 the people. The Knight of the Garter in Windsor 
 and Buckingham Palaces was adored by the poorest 
 in Soho and Whitechapel. Yet how serene, how 
 even alone, in the intervals of labors with the cares 
 of power! They said of him that none but the 
 wife of his bosom (if even she did) ever found en 
 trance into the secrets of his interior being. In 
 that interior being, those who knew and admired 
 him most, if admitted there, would perhaps find 
 little with which to sympathize. The fondest 
 thoughts of Joseph, even while riding in the second 
 chariot of Pharioh and dispensing the whole pOAver 
 of Egypt, were of his kindred in the land of Canaan. 
 Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not 
 sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart. 
 Thus spake Artaxerxes, the king, to his minister 
 Nehemiah, the son of Hachaliah. Then, said the 
 Jew, who had not been beforetime sad in his 
 presence, I was sore afraid. And said unto the 
 king, Let the king live forever. Why should not 
 my countenance be sad when the city, the place of 
 my fathers sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates 
 
BENJAMIN D ISRAELI THE JEW. 43 
 
 thereof are consumed with fire? The sadness of 
 the Jew is his own, be he a convert to Christianity 
 or an adherent to the ancient faith, be he statesman 
 and lawgiver, be he poet and musician; only his 
 own heart knows its own sadness, and that heart not 
 often strives for, and perhaps less often desires, the 
 sympathy which it knows it to be vain to expect. 
 
 In contrast with this serenity, how unbecoming 
 the passionate contestations of his late rival, that 
 betokened a disappointment and an envy that seem to 
 amount to anguish. We can imagine what thoughts 
 were in his mind when, sometimes, in his Sunday 
 readings, taking up perchance the Book of Esther, 
 and following the narrative of Ahasuerus, which 
 reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hun 
 dred and seven and twenty provinces, his eye light 
 ed upon these words : If Mordecai be of the seed of 
 the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou 
 shalt not prevail against him but shalt surely fall 
 before him. And the king took off his ring which 
 he had taken from Haman, and gave it unto Mor 
 decai. And Mordecai went out from the presence 
 of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and 
 with a great crown of gold, and with a garment of 
 fine linen and purple : and the city of Shusha rejoiced 
 and was glad, 
 
A 
 CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 A : 
 
 S fair a sight as one can wish to indulge is that 
 of a great man in whose presence one feels 
 no dread to appear because of any sternness of look 
 or deportment in the majesty that towers so loftily 
 above him. The worshipful feeling that mankind 
 ever have had for such is a part of the awe im 
 parted by Heaven for the divine. In the presence 
 of extraordinary human greatness a mind endued 
 with this higher sensibility cannot fail to become 
 solemnized above the even contemplation of those 
 around him, his equals or not very far his superiors, 
 because of that supreme Greatness to which it sus 
 pects that such excellency looks with far clearer 
 vision than its own, and by which it is sustained, 
 perhaps inspired. Tyrants in time past, some with 
 and some without thrones have availed of this tend 
 ency to enact, often to obtain, service not due. 
 Accidents have made great, or made so appear, a 
 far larger number than prowess of arm or genius, 
 and many a fantastic trick these have played with 
 the fortunes, consciences, and lives of those whom 
 Heaven, with meaning inscrutable to the wisest, 
 
 44 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 45 
 
 has allowed them to mislead and oppress. It is a 
 temptation not easily withstood. Not only men of 
 great parts in high positions, but officials down to 
 the pettiest, sometimes seem to feel that they must 
 assume forbidding manners in order to repress te 
 merity which might venture to approach too nearly. 
 The faculty to support greatness of any kind or de 
 gree, whether of gifts or place, without overbearing, 
 is rare. The precepts of Christ touching humility, 
 as manifestly as his miracles, declared the God. 
 They who had walked with him, and been the 
 special recipients of his confidence, affection, and 
 promises, must become as little children or be unfit 
 for the mission and destiny to which he had ap 
 pointed them. 
 
 These thoughts are preliminary to a brief consid 
 eration of Sir Thomas More, a man who, perhaps, 
 was as near being devoid of this infirmity as any 
 very distinguished personage that ever has lived. 
 The characteristic which made him be so specially 
 loved in his own and all subsequent times is here 
 named, for want of a more significant English term, 
 sweetness. The French have a much more expres 
 sive word douceur. M. Olier, founder of the So 
 ciety of St. Sulpice, in his little book entitled Intro 
 duction a la Vie et aux Vertus Chretiennes, has an 
 interesting chapter on the discussion of this virtue, 
 which he styles "la consommation du Chretien, 
 
46 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Car," he argues, "elle pre suppose en lui 1 anne an- 
 tissement de tout le propre, et la mort a tout inte- 
 ret : en sorte que ni le me pris 1 irrite, ni la perte des 
 biens et du repos de la vie ne le tire de la douceur." 
 In another part of the chapter he points out the two 
 ways in which this gift so rare is imparted: one di 
 rectly to the innocent whom God is raising for 
 special designs, the second obtained by the natu 
 rally perverse after violent efforts attended by pain 
 ful fidelity; the former is by "infusion," the latter 
 by "acquisition." History has recorded not a few 
 instances wherein men in great estate or with great 
 powers of understanding, by the exercise of tem 
 perance and other discipline toward self-mortifica 
 tion, have succeded in subduing to reasonable, 
 sometimes admirable, control the passions that 
 hinder the proper work and full enjoyment of exis 
 tence. Of those to whom this gift has been impar 
 ted by infusion, Sir Thomas More seems the most 
 conspicuous of all mankind. 
 
 Doubtless it is not so easy for a humorous as for 
 a serious nature to lead a life of innocence. Now, 
 More, inheriting such a nature from his father, long 
 one of the judges of the Court of King s Bench, was 
 even in boyhood the readiest and raciest of wits. 
 When a page in the household of Cardinal Morton, 
 Lord Chancellor under Henry VII., his improvised 
 interference in the Christmas entertainments at the 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 47 
 
 palace were such that it was said "he alone made 
 more sport than all the players besides." While at 
 Oxford no fun was to be compared with that 
 aroused by him and Erasmus in the interstices of 
 laborious college engrossments. Yet it is certain 
 that after leaving Oxford he pondered for some 
 time the notion of becoming a monk of the order of 
 Franciscans. For how long his mind was thus em 
 ployed we know not, for, unfortunately, his biog 
 raphies make only brief allusion to it. It is known, 
 however, that he once lived in a lodging near a 
 Carthusian monastery, and as a lay brother practised 
 the usual austerities. His reason for leaving this 
 abode and giving up the intention which had led 
 him there may have been that he feared his love 
 of merriment might prove an obstacle to the just 
 performance of monastic obligations, or that in the 
 English church he saw so much of the tendency to 
 side with the arrogant despotism of the Tudor dy 
 nasty, which was becoming more and more defiant 
 towards the See of Rome. At all events, he with 
 drew, but not without taking with him his hair shirt, 
 which he wore until his death.* Convinced that 
 the priesthood was not his vocation (for the 
 secular was becoming as corrupt as it was regard 
 less of papal authority), he decided for the law. 
 
 *This shirt may yet be seen in a convent at Spilsburg, near Bland- 
 ford, in the county of Dorset. 
 
48 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 "God," said one of his biographers, "had allotted 
 for him not to live solitary, but that he should be a 
 pattern to reverend married men how they should 
 bring up their children how they should employ 
 their endeavors wholly for the good of their country, 
 yet excellently perform the virtues of religious men." 
 It was a brief courtship, wherein the only item of 
 sentiment was of a kind unique, in the affairs of the 
 heart. It seems curious that a young man, hand 
 some, gifted, courteous, after finding himself in love 
 with a girl of a family, the first he had entered since 
 his change of mind, out of compassion for her older 
 sister, who might repine at the younger s marriage 
 before her own, espoused her in preference to the one 
 who had inspired his affections, and afterwards lived 
 with her in unalloyed happiness until her death. After 
 a decent interval he took to wife another rustic, 
 and, notwithstanding her rude ways, her seven 
 years seniority, and her temper not of the best, 
 appeared to live, if not quite as happily as before, 
 in a reasonable contentment. It is pleasing to 
 contemplate how such a man may live with such a 
 family. In his house at Chelsea, which he built at 
 the age of thirty-four and ever afterwards resided 
 therein, besides himself and his new rather we 
 might say his old wife, dwelt his daughters, their 
 husbands and children. In spite of the wife s rude 
 ness and her being given to scolding, particularly 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 49 
 
 for her husband s want of proper ambition, the head 
 of the family gained entire obedience, and even 
 succeeded in inducing her to learn and practise for 
 his entertainment on several instruments of music. 
 Above all duties in that household were those of 
 religion. One of the biographers wrote about 
 the performance of these as follows: 
 
 u His custom was daily (besides his private prayers with his 
 children) to say the seven psalms, the litany and the suffrages fol 
 lowing; so was his guise with his wife and children and household 
 nightly, before he went to bed, to go to his chapel, and there on his 
 knees ordinarily to say certain psalms and collects with them. 11 
 
 If ever a family man performed to perfection his 
 domestic duties, surely it was he. An enthusiast 
 in the love of learning, in which his family, and 
 especially his wife, were not competent to partici 
 pate, yet he would seldom give to it any of the 
 time which he regarded as belonging to domes 
 tic intercourse. In a letter written in Latin to a 
 friend he lamented, yet without complaint, thus: 
 
 "The greater part of the day is spent on other men s affairs, the 
 remainder of it must he given to mv family at home; so that I can 
 reserve no part to myself that is, to study. I must gossip with my 
 wife, chat with my children, and find something to say to my serv 
 ants; for all these things I reckon a part of my business, unless I 
 were to become a stranger in mine own house; for with whomsoever 
 either nature, or choice, or chance hath engaged a man in any rela 
 tion of life, he must endeavor to make himself as acceptable to them 
 as possible for him to be. * * * All the time which I can gain to 
 myself is that which I can steal from my sleep and my meals, and 
 because that is not much I have made but a slow progress." 
 
 Already eminent at twenty-four as a ripe scholar, 
 
50 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 an eloquent lawyer, and a sheriff with judicial as 
 well as executory powers, he was then elected to 
 the Parliament called by Henry VII. , after seven 
 year s intermission, in order to obtain a subsidy 
 on the marriage of his daughter with James IV. of 
 Scotland, and he was the very first who in that 
 assembly became noted for eloquence, and that in 
 opposition to the demands of the crown. The 
 monarch having claimed a sum far in excess of 
 what was just, More boldly spoke against and suc 
 ceeded in dissuading the Commons from acceding 
 to it. The punishment of this audacity first was 
 vicarious. The culprit s visible property being too 
 small, and his invisible dubious, his father was 
 shut up in the Tower, until the payment of a hun 
 dred pounds fine, on a charge of which he was noto 
 riously innocent. It was a commentary on the 
 treacherousness in high places and the already far- 
 gone decline of the English hierarchy, that the Bis 
 hop of Winchester tried to inveigle the courageous 
 boy into a confession of offence which would have 
 ruined him and from which he was saved through 
 an humble priest in that dignitary s household. The 
 death of the king prevented the punishment of More 
 himself, which only had been delayed. 
 
 How often are disappointing the goodly promises 
 of youth! Newly come to the empire, recalling 
 exiles, remitting exorbitant taxes, and dismissing 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 5 I 
 
 profligates from the court, the Roman people were 
 happy, believing that Caligula had inherited all the 
 shining qualities of Germanicus. The young Nerc, 
 a model of condescension, affability, and merciful 
 ness, when called upon to sign a warrant for the ex 
 ecution of some malefactors declared that he wished 
 he had never learned to write. So Henry VIII. , 
 beyond all precedent complaisant and popular, was 
 happily contrasted in men s recollections with the 
 gross despotism and the mean penuriousness of his 
 father. Yet from the very first he was understood 
 by More, who, as long as he could, resisted the so 
 licitations of him and Wolsey to give up his pro 
 fession and take service under the government. 
 The minister wanted him not more because of his 
 great abilities than of his unambitious dispositions, 
 which he believed would shut out all danger of rival- 
 ship. His very courage recommended him to a 
 monarch who for a season seemed as generous as 
 he was accomplished in person and understanding. 
 When a ship belonging to the pope had been seized 
 in an English port for an alleged breach of inter 
 national law, and More had pleaded with success 
 the cause of the defendant, Henry generously com 
 mended his demeanor. Feeling that he might be 
 charged justly with incivism if he persistently kept 
 himself from the service of his country, he retired 
 from the bar, was made Master of the Recuiests, and. 
 
52 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 having been knighted, became member of the Privy 
 Council. It was then that, contrary to the usage 
 among courtiers, he removed to Chelsea, and, rent 
 ing land adjacent to his dwelling, let his family en 
 gage in the raising of farm products. For this 
 home he had the love which, with sound minds in 
 sound bodies, Heaven often bestows upon those 
 whom especially it loves. The only instance of du 
 plicity recorded of him was one which the straitest 
 casuist must have forgiven. Besides the time spent 
 at meetings of the council, the king was ever sen 
 ding for him on holidays, and even at nights, to be 
 entertained by his conversation on science, litera 
 ture, divinity, "and such other faculties," but 
 especially for the sake of his unapproachable humor. 
 
 " When he perceived his pleasant conceits so much to delight them 1 
 (for the queen shared in this pastime) " that he could scarce once in a 
 month get leave to go home to his wife and children, and that he 
 could not be two days absent from the court but he must be sent for 
 again, he, much misliking this restraint of his liberty, began there 
 fore to dissemble his mirth, and so little by little to disuse himself 
 that he from thenceforth at such seasons was no more so ordinarily 
 sent for." 
 
 Have we not pitied sometimes an aged clown 
 who, more in sadness than in jest, must make his 
 jokes, which, more than any serious things possible 
 for him to invent or reproduce, helped to maintain 
 him and his dependents? But the young statesman 
 concealed his redundance of fun for the sake of so 
 ciety far dearer than was to be found in a king s 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 53 
 
 palace. Henry, graciously compassionating the 
 decline of ease in the presence of so sublime maj 
 esty, thought to reassure him by appearing occa 
 sionally at his home in Chelsea, dining, and after 
 wards walking with him in his garden, the while 
 holding his arm about his neck. One day, in 
 answer to congratulation from Roper, husband of 
 his daughter Meg, he answered : 
 
 "I thank our Lord, I find his grace my very good lord indeed, and I 
 believe he doth as singularly favor me as any subject within this 
 realm. Howbeit, son Roper, I may tell thee I have no cause to be 
 proud thereof: for if my head would win him a castle in France it 
 should not fail to go." 
 
 In the Parliament summoned in the year 1523 
 More was made Speaker by the king and the minis 
 ter, with expectation that he would overawe the 
 Commons and force them to grant the full subsidy 
 that was demanded. Yet, to the disgust of Wolsey, 
 whom it pleased to be present on the occasion, 
 More, without passion, resisted the exorbitance, 
 after which the Cardinal, unexpectedly discomfited, 
 said fretfully that he wished that he had been in Rome 
 when he was made Speaker. Still Henry did not 
 withdraw his confidence, especially his affection, 
 which, perhaps, was stronger than what was felt by 
 him for any person whatsoever. The rivalry which 
 Wolsey counted upon having prudently forefended 
 sprang from the very things that had seemed least 
 minatory. The total absence of ambition in the 
 
54 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE- 
 
 man, the most learned, eloquent and witty as he 
 was the most honorable and devout among all the 
 attendants upon the court, at last provoked his 
 jealousy, and he sought to rid himself of his influ 
 ence by having him sent as embassador to Spain. 
 Whether it were the foresight of sore homesickness, 
 or other dangerous malady, in such terms he 
 besought his sovereign not to send a faithful servant 
 to his grave that he was excused and shortly after 
 raised to the chancellorship of the duchy of Lan 
 caster, which he continued to hold until the fall of 
 Wolsey. 
 
 Never were two colleagues who, so similar in 
 some respects, were so unlike in the rest. Great 
 scholars, great politicians both. Both had served 
 king and country with distinguished ability at home 
 and abroad. One gloried in power, pomp, and 
 their circumstance. The other was fondest, fond 
 only, of his plain country home, where, with his 
 wife, children and servants, he could render daily 
 and nightly humble worship to the Most High, and 
 enjoy in humble gratitude the fruits of his labors of 
 every sort. One, a prince of the church, performed 
 his priestly functions in state arrogant as magnifi 
 cent, with marquises and earls for his attendants, 
 seeming not well to remember how meek and lowly 
 was the Lamb whose unbloody Sacrifice he 
 was solemnizing. The other in the silence of 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 55 
 
 eveningtide led his household into his simply ap 
 pointed chapel, knelt in humble supplication for all 
 that they knew it their duty to pray for, and then, 
 after reasonable indulgence in chattings usual among 
 simple country-folk, took such sleep as Heaven be 
 stows upon the industrious and guileless. Wolsey 
 was a minister of two mighty sovereigns, the pope 
 and the king; a delayer and a caviller with one who 
 was a lover of righteousness and a seeker of peace, 
 and at the same time a flatterer of the other and 
 an abetter of his ever-growing despotism. More 
 was a faithful, efficient servant to one of these po 
 tentates within the limits of official obligation, 
 beyond which neither threatenings of danger nor 
 promises of highest exaltation could present even 
 momentarily a temptation to invade unjustly the 
 domain of the other. Wolsey, more exalted in 
 place, was jealous of More, who, in spite of his vir 
 tues or because of them, was nearer to the sove 
 reign s heart. More, never envying but compassion 
 ating him who would regard him as a rival, kept 
 himself as long as possible from the eminence on 
 whose summit the other tottered between pride and 
 apprehension, and desired only that he might be 
 allowed to withdraw wholly from the court, to 
 which he had come with reluctance, and, living 
 constantly in the bosom of his family, give himself 
 to his profession, to philosophy, and to religion. 
 
56 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 The real character of Henry VIII., theretofore 
 hidden from all eyes except those of More, was de 
 veloped when Anne Boleyn had grown up to the 
 beauty whose attractions he could not resist. By 
 some, only a few, writers More has been blamed for 
 apparent dissimulation in declining at first to as 
 sume in the matter of the king s divorce the attitude 
 that he afterwards maintained. Yet it seems 
 strange that this integrity, made so illustrious at 
 the end of this case, should have been questioned 
 by any thoughtful mind during the period through 
 which its discussion was protracted. The learned 
 world seemed to be divided in opinion on the legal 
 ity of a marriage contracted as that with Queen 
 Catherine. In the existing condition of European 
 civilization it was not a question, if indeed it ought 
 ever to have been, for laymen. When asking his 
 opinion by the king he answered by referring 
 him to the writings of the doctors of the church. 
 The question was not as to the lawfulness of the 
 marriage with Anne before the former had been 
 dissolved in pursuance of the canons, on which 
 More could never have felt a doubt; but it was a 
 matter on which the most able and cultured minds 
 throughout Christendom were not, or seemed not, 
 agreed. His silence was of a part with his modest 
 nature, which shrank from the expression of opin 
 ions outside of his studies and official duties. Wol- 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 5 7 
 
 sey, vacillating as ambitious, pursued the double 
 course that ruined his fortunes, embittered his life, 
 and blasted his fame. In his integrity the unhap 
 py Catherine never had had confidence, while of 
 More she was accustomed to say that he was the 
 one sound councillor in the kingdom. For Wolsey 
 it was indeed a great day of redemption when, aged 
 and broken, but sustained by the courage which 
 penance and endurance had imparted, in obedience 
 to the summons to repair to London and answer to 
 the charge of treason, he. rose from the bed of death 
 and, journeying as far as Leicester Abbey, lay 
 down in peace. Not for him the glory that was 
 shed around the sublime death of his successor; but 
 not too far below was the resignation enjoyed when 
 he who had 
 
 " Sounded all the depths and shoals of honor" 
 
 within so brief while had nothing to call his own 
 save his 
 
 " Robe 
 And his integrity to heaven." 
 
 The trust reposed in More by the king, aside 
 from the charm of conversation and bearing that 
 made him beloved of all, was of a kind that princes, 
 however despotic, find it indispensable to put in 
 subjects whose competence for public business is 
 recognised universally, and whose integrity is un 
 questionable. But for the sweetness of his dispo- 
 
58 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 sition and his cheerful religious faith he must have 
 suffered keenly from homesickness during so many 
 prolonged absences. An admission of this was 
 made, though in the merriest words, in a letter to 
 Erasmus written at Cambray, whither he had been 
 sent as embassador to negotiate a treaty between 
 England, France, and the emperor. On his return, 
 after a success far beyond the highest hopes, he 
 learned at Woodstock, where the court was then 
 sojourning, of the destruction by fire of a part of 
 his dwelling and all his outhouses, together with the 
 year s crops stored therein. The letter written to 
 his wife on this occasion is, of its kind, perhaps 
 without an equal. A portion of it is subjoined: 
 
 "Therefore, I pray you, be of good cheere, and take all the howsold 
 with you to church, and there thank God, both for that he hath given 
 us and for that he hath left us, which, if it please hym, he can in 
 crease when he will. And if it please hym to leave us yet lesse, at 
 hys pleasure be it. T pray you make some good ensearche what -rrry 
 poore neighbours have loste, and bidde them take no thought there 
 fore, and if I shold leave myself not a spone, there shall no poore 
 neighbours of mine bere no losse by any chance happened in my 
 house. I praye you be, with my children and howsold, merry in God. 
 And devise somewhat with your friends what way wer best to take 
 for provision to be made for corne for our howsold and sedethys yere 
 coming, if ye thinke it good that we keepe the ground still in our 
 hands. And whether ye think it good yit we so shall do or not, yit 
 I think it wer not best sodenlye thus to leave it all up, and to put 
 away our folk of our farme, till we have somewhat advised us 
 thereon. Howbeit, if we have more nowe than we shall neede, and 
 which can get the other maisters, ye may then discharge us of them. 
 But I Avoid not any were sodenlye sent away he wote not nere 
 wither." 
 
 If history, outside of the Saints, can show a more 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 59 
 
 illustrative example of cheerful pursuance in the 
 line of the lessons of the Redeemer, we should like 
 it to be pointed out. 
 
 If Wolsey had not been a Christian and a peni 
 tent, anguishing must have been his grief at the 
 quick rise upon his ruin of the modest countryman 
 of Chelsea, of whose ambitions he had lived in no 
 dread while he was revelling in that 
 
 " World of wealth he had drawn together 
 
 For his own ends, indeed, to gain the popedom." 
 
 Yet, when reflection had subdued him, the poet well 
 might imagine such a dialogue as this: 
 
 WOLSEY. What news abroad? 
 
 CROMWELL. The heaviest and the worst 
 
 Is your displeasure with the king. 
 
 WOLSEY. God bless him! 
 
 CROMWELL. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen 
 Lord Chancellor in your place. 
 
 WOLSEY. That s somewhat sudden: 
 
 But he is a learned man. May he continue 
 Long in his highness favor, and do justice 
 For truth s sake and his conscience; that his bones 
 When he has run his course, and sleeps in blessings, 
 May have a tomb of orphans tears wept on them. 
 What more? 
 
 CROMWELL. That Cranmer is returned with welcome, 
 Install d Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 WOLSEY. That s news indeed. 
 
 CROMWELL. Last, that the Lady Anne, 
 
 Whom the king hath in secrecy long married. 
 This day was received in open as his queen, 
 Going to chapel; and the voice is now 
 Only about her coronation. 
 
 WOLSEY. There was the weight that pull d me down. 
 
 The call to the lord chancellor was obeyed by 
 
60 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 More with much reluctance. In his speech, when 
 installed, he said : 
 
 " I have been drawn by force, as the king s majesty often professeth, 
 to his highness service as a courtier; but to take this dignity upon 
 me is most of all against my will; yet such is his highness benignity, 
 such is his bounty, that he highly esteemeth the small dutifulness of 
 his meanest subjects, and seeketh still magnificently to recompense 
 his servants. * * * It is a burthen, not a glory; a care, not a dig 
 nity. * * * When I look upon this seat; when I think how great and 
 what kind ot personages have possessed this place before me; when 
 I call to mind who he was that sat in it last of all, a man of what 
 singular wisdom, of what notable experience, what a prosperous and 
 favorable fortune he had for a great space, and how at last, de 
 jected with heavy downfall, he hath died inglorious I have cause 
 enough by my predecessor s example to think honor but slippery and 
 this dignity not so grateful to me as it may seem to others. * * * 
 Wherefore I ascend this seat as a place full of labor and danger 
 void of all solid and true honor; the which by how much the higher 
 it is, by so much greater fall I am to fear, as well in respect of the 
 very nature of the thing itself as because lam warned by this late 
 fearful example." 
 
 Of his deportment, both as judge of Common- 
 law courts and in Chancery, nothing ever has been 
 said but what was in his praise. True to the be 
 hests both of Law and Equity, yet, whenever consis 
 tently with these, he yielded to the suggestions of 
 compassion and charity. To poor litigants he was 
 particularly gracious, and many times remitted to 
 them the fees that were perquisites of his office. 
 He was the first English judge to maintain that the 
 dispute (never yet fully decided) between Law and 
 Equity, might be ended by assigning to only one 
 court adjudication of the claims of each. A man 
 upright as he was learned could not but look with 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 6 1 
 
 disfavor upon the continued jealousies of two tribu 
 nals, the province of each being protection of the 
 citizen in all of his legal rights. On this question 
 many of the greatest minds from that period until 
 now have differed. In furtherance of his peculiar 
 views he often in private appealed to the Law judges 
 to abate some of the rigor of their rulings, and 
 whenever not able to succeed in such appeals he 
 resolutely enjoined the execution of their judgments 
 when to him they seemed unconscionably strict 
 in accord with Law, which by reason of its univer 
 sality is not adequate for every species of equita 
 ble relief. Once he invited the judges to dine with 
 him at Westminster, and while in the midst of 
 excellent Gascony wine and other good cheer he 
 proposed : 
 
 "That if the justices of every court unto whom the reformation of 
 the rigor of the law, by reason of their office, most especially apper 
 tained would, upon reasonable considerations, by their own discretions 
 (as they were, he thought, in conscience bound) mitigate and reform 
 the rigor of the law themselves, there should from henceforth by 
 him no more injunctions be granted." 
 
 When they declined, after they had taken their 
 leave he said to his son-in-law : 
 
 "I perceive, son, why they like not so to do. For they see that 
 they may, by the verdict of a jury, cast off all quarrel from them 
 selves, and therefore am I compelled to abide the adventures of all 
 such reports." 
 
 It is curious that out of the decrees made during 
 his chancellorship there should be but one that has 
 
62 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 descended to us, and that one of the parties liti 
 gant should have been his own wife. Lady More, 
 a good wife and stepmother, yet had her own opin 
 ions about some things, and not unfrequently sought 
 to enforce them, even with an ejaculation as threat 
 ening as tilly vally! all of whose import was 
 known, possibly, to none except herself. 
 
 "It happened on a time that a beggar-woman s little dog, which 
 she had lost, was presented for a jewel to Lady More, and she had 
 kept some se night very carefully; but at last the beggar had 
 notice where the dog was; and presently she came to complain to 
 Sir Thomas, as he was sitting in his hall, that his lady withheld her 
 dog from her. Presently my lady was sent for, and the dog brought 
 with her; which Sir Thomas taking in his hands, caused his wife 
 because he was she worthier person, to stand at the upper end of the 
 hall, and the beggar at the lower end; and saying that he sat there 
 to do every one justice, he bade each of them call the dog; which, 
 when they did the dog went presently to the beggar forsaking mv lady. 
 When he saw this, he bade my lady be contented, for it was none of 
 hers; yet she, repining at the sentense of my lord chancellor, agreed 
 with the beggar, and gave her a piece of gold which would well have 
 bought three dogs, and so all parties were agreed; every one smil 
 ing to see his manner of inquiring out the truth." 
 
 The same sweetness was manifested in his filial as 
 in other relations. His father continued, although 
 past ninety years, to sit as one of the puisne judges 
 of the King s Bench, and for him the affection of 
 this son was just as it was when as a little child he 
 was dandled upon his knee. It was his daily habit, 
 when repairing to his own court, first to enter that 
 of the King s Bench, kneel, ask, and receive the 
 old man s blessing. When the latter died, weeping 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 63 
 
 as a young child would have wept, he embraced his 
 body while commending to heaven the soul that 
 had departed. At length, as he had foreseen from 
 the period when, grown weary of faded beauty, the 
 king turned his eyes upon Anne, the time of trial 
 came it cannot be called temptation, for it does 
 not appear that at any time he hesitated what he 
 must do when demand would be made upon him 
 for co-operation of a kind that his conscience must 
 condemn. When the demand came, in the kneeling 
 suppliant before him Henry saw, and he knew it, a 
 courage intrepid as ever fired warrior s breast upon 
 any field. His resignation was accepted, and the 
 subject greatest in fame, honor, learning, and genius 
 retired to his simple home, having saved from all the 
 avails of his various work and service a property 
 whose income was not above one hundred pounds 
 sterling. In one of the biographies there is a de 
 lightful account of the merry conference had with 
 his children who, with their consorts and children, 
 had always dwelt with him touching the still more 
 economical living to which they thereafter must 
 descend when these "must be content to be contrib- 
 utaries together." If, beginning with Lincoln Inn s 
 fare, and, descending, they might not be able to 
 maintain even Oxford fare 
 
 "where many great, learned, and ancient fathers and doctors are con 
 tinually conversant, * * * then may we after, with bag and wallet, 
 
64 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 go a begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will 
 give us their chanty, and at every man s door to sing a Salve 
 Regina whereby we shall keep company and be merry together, 1 
 
 In the brief respite he enjoyed to the full the retire 
 ment which, as was shown in his letters to Erasmus, 
 he had always desired in order that he might live 
 "only to God and himself." But when a committee 
 of bishops, with twenty pounds for the purchase of 
 a dress suitable for the occasion, brought an invita 
 tion to attend at Anne s coronation, and it was de 
 clined, the new queen was resolved upon his death. 
 All the world knows how he endured her ruthless 
 pursuit. There is to be witnessed in the midst of 
 dangers sometimes a quality higher than the highest 
 courage. It is the uncomplaining, almost unsuffer- 
 ing, submission of innocence to injustice that it 
 knows it can neither resist nor avoid. In More this 
 virtue took on a beauty yet more exquisite from his 
 temporary child-like apprehension of insufficiency for 
 the ordeal before him. It makes the heart leap to 
 be told of his joyousness while, after his appearance 
 before Cranmer, Lord Chancellor Audley, the Duke 
 of Norfolk, and Cromwell, a royal committee ap 
 pointed for his trial as an accomplice with the "holy 
 maid of Kent," he was returning home in company 
 with Roper. Said the latter: 
 
 " I trust, sir, all is well you are so merry." 
 
 " It is so indeed, son, thank God! " 
 
 u Are you then, sir, put out of the bill ? r 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE 65 
 
 " Would st thou know, son, why I am so joyful? " In good faith, I 
 rejoice that I have given the devil a foul fall; because Ihave with 
 those lords gone so far, that without great shame I can never go 
 hack." 
 
 It was the gleefulness of a child after successful essay 
 of steps for which its young strength was doubted 
 to be fully adequate. 
 
 It was at. his own trial for high treason that ap 
 peared the majestic courage of whose fame four 
 centuries are full. Neither desiring nor shunning 
 martyrdom, standing upon the right of a British 
 subject to be condemned only after fair trial by 
 his peers, he put the marks of everlasting infamy 
 upon his judges and prosecutors by exposure of the 
 gross unlawfulness of their proceedings and the au 
 dacious falsehood of their testimony. His cross- 
 questioning of Rich, the solicitor-general, the most 
 infamous lawyer that ever belonged to the English 
 bar, reads almost like a denunciation from a He 
 brew prophet. Yet when the trial was over he 
 lapsed again into the simple merry-heartedness that 
 now was to be with him to the end. It appears 
 almost preterhuman, his absolute freedom from 
 resentment. 
 
 " I believe, Meg, "he said one day to his daughter, who had come to 
 visit him in the Tower, " they that have put me here weene they 
 have done me a high displeasure; but I assure thee, on my faith, mine 
 own good daughter, if it had not been for my wife and ye that be 
 my children 1 would not have failed long ere this to have closed my 
 self in as strait a room, and straiter too. But since I am come hither 
 without mine own desert, I trust that God by his goodness will dis- 
 
66 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 charge me of my care, and, with his gracious help, supply my lack 
 among you." So his compassionate regard for the sovereign: "And 
 surely, daughter, it is a great pity that any Christian prince should, 
 by a flexible council, ready to follow his affections, and bv a weak 
 clergy lacking grace constantly to stand to their learning, with 
 flattery be so shamefully abused." 
 
 As for the vengeful woman who had been the 
 chief leader in his persecution, the feeling indulged 
 by him may be known by the following talk with this 
 same daughter : 
 
 u How goeth the world, Meg, and how doth the Queen Anne? " 
 " In faith, father, never better; there is nothing else in the court 
 
 but dancing and sporting." 
 " Never better! Alas! Meg, it pitietli me to remember unto what 
 
 misery, poor soul! she will shortly come. These dances of hers will 
 
 prove such dances that she will spurn our heads oil like footballs; 
 
 but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance." 
 
 To the very last obedient to the king s pleasure, 
 that he use not many words at his execution, he 
 answered: "I did purpose to have spoken some 
 what, but I will conform myself to the king s com 
 mandment." And so, pronouncing on his knees 
 the Miserere, and after giving a piece of gold and 
 a merry word to the executioner, he laid his head 
 upon the block. 
 
 In fine, whose career among the not inspired 
 and the unsainted shall we compare with this in the 
 matter of the peculiar characteristic which this ar 
 ticle has attempted to portray? If any, that of 
 Socrates. Yet Socrates was and showed himself to be 
 conscious of superiority to the men of his time. 
 
A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 67 
 
 Certainly the courage of Socrates never has been 
 outdone. Still (though not with boasting) he 
 would tell of occasions whereon it had been exert 
 ed. When along with others, ordered by the 
 Thirty to bring Leon from Salamis that he might be 
 put to death, 
 
 "I made known to them," he said afterwards, "both in word and 
 deed, that (if it be not too hard an expression) I did not care at all for 
 death provided I did nothing unjust or unholy, which was the great 
 object of my solicitude. The great authority of the government did 
 not influence me to violate any Sense of right." 
 
 He knew and he so said, that the calumnies heaped 
 upon him had their main foundation in the contem 
 plation of his superior wisdom. He had excited an 
 tipathy long and general by refusing to speak in 
 terms other than were deserved of the abuses and 
 follies of his time. Before the court that tried him 
 he stood, though without anger, as an accuser 
 rather than as a defendant. If there was pathos 
 there also was scorn in the words with which, after 
 condemnation, he left the judgment-hall: "It is now 
 time for us to go our respective ways, I to die 
 and you to live; and which of us is going on a 
 better voyage is known to God alone." Of such a 
 man his loving biographer could say well: "To me 
 as I have described him, he seemed such as the 
 best and happiest of men would be." Outside of 
 Christian history, without doubt he is the most illus 
 trious example. Sir Thomas More, his equal in 
 
68 A CHARACTERISTIC OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 other gifts, had the unspeakable advantage of having 
 and of learning, perfectly as is possible to human 
 nature, the precept that to become fittest for the 
 kingdom of heaven a man must be ever as a child. 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 1T\R. Johnson once said that whenever he found 
 *-* himself in a place where a monk of former 
 times had been, his feeling was to kneel and kiss 
 the ground on which he had walked. It was a bold 
 and a startling speech for the people and the times. 
 It is not the purpose of this article to praise the 
 monasteries of the Middle Age, although we know 
 now that except for them almost all of the little 
 that was saved of the learning and wisdom of the 
 ancients would have been lost. The historians, 
 philosophers, and poets of Greece and Rome, such 
 as were spared in the ravaging search by barbarians 
 and fanatical Christians, owed their rescue to the 
 humble, devout men who dwelt in the houses built 
 by themselves in order, by separation from the 
 world, to become wholly consecrated to religious and 
 charitable uses. Of their churches at York, Dur 
 ham, Antwerp, Amiens, Cologne, Strassburg, and 
 elsewhere, each, like the temple of Ephesus, remains 
 one of the wonders of the world. Yet the names 
 of most of their builders died and were buried with 
 
 them. They had raised these temples to the glory of 
 69 
 
70 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 the Master to whom all their being was devoted, and 
 when their work, done for the most part in secrecy 
 and silence, was ended, they were laid away in their 
 own crypts by surviving brothers, who then at once 
 returned to their own unfinished careers. This 
 was all as the departed had wished; for they had 
 looked for their rewards in a different country which 
 they had been allowed to foresee, wherein rewards 
 were richer, more precious than what could be be 
 stowed by men, contemporary or to come in future 
 ages, and they would never lose any of the prec- 
 iousness that was to make them so ineffably dear. 
 
 But, turning from the general work of these religious, 
 a brief consideration is asked of an individual monk 
 of that period, who in the picture-books during the 
 childhood of the oldest among us was represented 
 as a malignant sorcerer, but whom now all the 
 world unites in commending not only as the great 
 est of his class, at least in the department of earthly 
 science, but as second, if to any, only to his name 
 sake who came three hundred years after him. 
 
 It is curious to contemplate the long, winding 
 course taken by Greek literature after its decay in 
 Athens, to find its way into Europe, and first in the 
 extreme West. Having been exiled from its native 
 country and found a temporary sojourn in Alexan 
 dria, where it was gradually grafted by the school 
 of Proclus on the mystic philosophy of the East, 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 7 1 
 
 again banished by Theodosius, it was hospitably 
 received by Mahomet and his followers, and later 
 was as firmly fixed at Cordova as in Bagdad. Thus 
 introduced by the Arabs into Spain, the Opydvov 
 of Aristotle effected vast changes in the methods of 
 Christian theological teaching and discussion. Phil 
 osophy, termed Scholastic from the schools insti 
 tuted by Charlemagne, became absorbed into Scho- 
 lasticTheology. Herein was a vast change, and it 
 was wrought necessarily by the conditions of con 
 temporary thought. Very many great minds in the 
 thirteenth century,, minds of extensive and varied 
 cultivation, were among the enemies of Christianity. 
 Learned Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews, sometimes 
 it was found difficult to oppose in debate by even 
 the most gifted of the Christian clergy, because the 
 latter were less familiar with dialectic principles. 
 Thitherto theology had been taught mainly by ref 
 erence to the traditions of the church, and by ap 
 peals on disputed points to the authority of the 
 Fathers, as those writers were styled who came 
 next to the Apostolic Fathers who had been contem 
 porary with the Twelve. Acquaintance with Aris 
 totle s philosophy after its introduction by the Arabs 
 into Spain led naturally, and in not long time, to 
 its employment in religious controversy, and it 
 seems curious how absorbed became not only lead 
 ing but intellects of all degrees in its use. One 
 
72 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 reason doubtless was that philosophy, and particu 
 larly occult sciences, the Arabs had studied much 
 more than the other departments of Greek literature, 
 because the former harmonized to some degree with 
 their own studies of astrology and kindred subjects. 
 While they knew Aristotle well, they had little 
 knowledge of Homer and Sophocles. These last 
 for a time, and a long time, must give place to the 
 former, who had preceded them in Europe. Not 
 that the poets were altogether neglected, but these 
 harmless singers were submitted to harsh treatment 
 at the universities, which the scholastics dominated 
 to such a degree that, in Oxford especially, during 
 a period of many years, heads were made sore by 
 clubs and stones for no other cause than efforts to 
 put other Greeks along by the side of the great despot 
 of the Lyceum. Plato, for reasons of his own, would 
 have excluded poets from his Republic. For other 
 causes Aristotle excluded them for a strangely long 
 period from Europe. 
 
 In the mouths of disputants of all grades wrang- 
 lings must become numerous like the sands of the 
 sea-shore, and well-nigh as unprofitable. Roger 
 Bacon was the first to find out clearly their absurd 
 inutility. He had studied this philosophy first at 
 Oxford, afterwards at Paris and when he became a 
 Franciscan monk and returned to his native coun 
 try, having taken his abode at the friary hard by 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 73 
 
 the seat of the university, he set out upon that bold 
 career which was to be attended by many anguish 
 ing sufferings, but followed in time by undying re 
 nown. No man of his generation so well as he 
 knew the enormity of the evils which were to be 
 combated, none but he foresaw the trials of the com 
 bat, For the feeling had for philosophy by the 
 Christian prelates had come down to them from the 
 Greeks along with the books wherein mainly its 
 discipline had been inscribed. With the Greeks 
 philosophy was regarded as a something sacred, 
 almost divine. As such, it was a desecration to 
 employ it for mere human uses. Roger Bacon was 
 the first to maintain, if not in the same words, in 
 precisely the same spirit as his illustrious successor 
 and namesake, that instead ot man having been 
 made for philosophy, philosophy was made for man. 
 Philosophy, indeed, had come down from heaven, but 
 not for the purpose of being enshrined in temples 
 before whose altars mankind must bow in adoration 
 as to a God. But it was a gift from heaven to man 
 to be accepted with thankfulness, and to be used, not 
 only as a means of attaining heaven after this mor 
 tal being shall be ended, but of increasing the con 
 veniences and pleasures, and alleviating the burdens 
 and sufferings, of this lower life a boon, in fine, 
 to be made available in every sphere of man s en. 
 deavors and hopes for the attainment of good, spir- 
 
74 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 itual and temporal. None but a sublime genius, 
 and brave to audacity, could so have opposed him 
 self to the most ancient, universal, deeply-set prej 
 udices of the world. His courage was the more 
 magnificent because he was too wise not to foresee 
 the martyrdom which was to come, the sorest ele 
 ment of which was the foreknowledge that it was to 
 come from his own brethren. 
 
 It was in the year 1240, when twenty-six years 
 old, that, having learned all that was in Scholastic 
 Philosophy, he left the University of Paris and re 
 turned to Oxford. Long afterwards he spoke with 
 deep pain of the years upon years that he had 
 wasted in study to him barren, both at the universi 
 ties and then with his brothers at the friary, regret 
 ted that he had not sooner begun the search for 
 the material good which it was the chief mission of 
 his philosophy to teach mankind. Already he had 
 become well cultured in languages and particularly 
 so in mathematics. It was when he had begun 
 with experimental philosophy that he began to 
 speak with boldness against unquestioning subjec 
 tion to the authority of antiquity in physics. "We 
 are the ancients." No saying of Lord Bacon has 
 been more highly lauded than this. Yet Roger 
 Bacon said the same or its equivalent three hun 
 dred years before Francis Bacon was born. The 
 authority of the ancients, founded on the fact 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 75 
 
 they were the ancients, was ridiculous in the mind 
 of this young monk. In what the world calls an 
 cient times the world was as to science yet in its 
 infancy. We, we moderns, are the ancients. He 
 would not discredit the achievements of man when 
 the world was young. But the world is like man, 
 its life as his life. It must advance and does ad 
 vance from infancy, through childhood, youth, 
 young manhood, mature age. A man is older than 
 a child, and has profited, if he has not been a fool, 
 by the experiences of childhood, and learned by 
 those experiences to give up and turn away from 
 its mistakes or fall into irrecoverable disasters. 
 There is much that is touching in the solemn rever 
 ence and the fond affectionateness with which we 
 remember the remote past even in our own lives. 
 The long silence of those from whom our earliest 
 lessons came leads us sometimes to feel reluctant 
 to vary from their teachings, even when our own ex 
 perience has shown them to have been erroneous. 
 Until Roger Bacon , rather until long after his time, 
 so had mankind at every period felt towards the 
 wise men of former periods. There seems to have 
 been a feeling, strong like a conviction, that the 
 teachers of remote ages were taught directly from 
 heaven, and taught all that it was good for man 
 kind to know, and that it behooved those who came 
 after mainly to gather up by pious search the things 
 
? A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 that during the lapse of time had been lost from 
 the inspired wisdom of yore. Such a condition of 
 the mind of humanity seems strange in this age, 
 when inquiry has gone to the extreme of boldness; 
 but in former times it was as if men felt that the 
 eye of God was upon them when they even im 
 agined calling in question the sacred wisdom 
 which the wise of old had received immediately 
 from his mouth. This huge, time-honored tradi 
 tion the young monk of Ilchester was the first who 
 dared to question. "I spent twenty years," he said, 
 almost in anger with himself, and referring to the 
 natural sciences, "in the study of authority!" And 
 afterwards he wrote these audacious words: "Do 
 you wish to know what, if I had the power, I would 
 do with the works of Aristotle? I would burn 
 them up!" Nothing like this had a human being 
 ever dared to say regarding this king of men, whose 
 reign had began with Alexander of Macedon and 
 was destined to extend two hundred years yet 
 longer, to the times of Cosmo de Medici. 
 
 In the silence of his cell the thought had come 
 to this Franciscan that the despotism of authority 
 in the natural sciences must be overturned, or the 
 world remain forever in ignorance of the things 
 which, next to the true worship of God, it was 
 most important to know. His studies had led him 
 to the assurance of having found what were the 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 77 
 
 means for this overthrow so needed for the weal of 
 mankind. This was experimental science. In the 
 investigations conducted in the workshop which he 
 had built he had ascertained many natural facts, 
 and he argued that the material world was full of 
 such, created therein for man s uses, which philoso 
 phy not only did not know but would have taught 
 and commanded to ignore ; and then he wrote these 
 memorable words: "Experimental Science does 
 not receive verity at the hands of superior sciences. 
 It is she who is the mistress, and the other sciences 
 are her servants. She has the right, in effect, to 
 give command to all the sciences, because it is she 
 alone who certifies and consecrates their resultants. 
 Experimental science, therefore, is the queen of the 
 sciences and the limit of all speculation." 
 
 Fully convinced as to the justice and the strength 
 of his position, he began that system of inquiry 
 which was to devolve the greatest part of his credit 
 upon his countryman who was to come on long 
 afterwards, following his ideas, but unrestrained by 
 authority and aided by the discoveries of three cen 
 turies which had been made mainly by accident. 
 His first most noted endeavors were devoted to the 
 reformation of the Julian Calendar. Julius Caesar, 
 as all know, had reckoned the length of the year at 
 three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours 
 a wonderful approximation to verity in the existing 
 
78 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 state of astronomical science. The error of some 
 what less than twelve minutes in the lapse of many 
 centuries had induced a state of confusion that not 
 only wrought much inconvenience in general, but 
 interfered more and more seriously with the regula 
 tions of the church respecting proper times for the 
 observance of days of special religious obligation. 
 That is one of the most eloquent letters ever writ 
 ten in which Bacon appealed to Pope Clement IV. 
 in behalf of the rectification of the calendar, whose 
 defects he characterized as having become "intole 
 rable to the sage, and the horror of the astronomer." 
 In it were exhibited the solicitude of a Christian 
 priest, the eager desire for certitude of the man of 
 science, and the winsome courteousness of the dip 
 lomat. It is most touching to read, after his allu 
 sion to the infidel philosophers, Greek and Arabian, 
 his appeal to that liberal and enlightened prince to 
 signalize and make for ever renowned his pontif 
 icate by an action that would be as benignly ser 
 viceable to Christianity as to science. The hopes 
 entertained were ended by the death of that emi 
 nent pope, and three more centuries must go by 
 before, under Gregory XIV., would be accomplished 
 what Bacon so ardently had wished. 
 
 It is sad to contemplate this unhappy miscarri 
 age. That great genius had foreseen the invention 
 of the telescope. The honor bestowed upon Gali- 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 79 
 
 leo has been proven to belong in its greatest part 
 to Roger Bacon, and, but for his imprisonment and 
 other persecutions, there is little, if indeed any, 
 doubt that he would actually have invented not only 
 that instrument but the microscope also. In the 
 Opus Majus submitted to Clement occur passages 
 which clearly indicate this assumption. Having 
 noticed the curious reflections from polished surfa 
 ces, casting images, some greater, some smaller than 
 what was real, he was led to conclude that contin 
 ued experiment might produce instruments that 
 would magnify to degrees according as human in 
 genuity and control of metallic substances could 
 construct them. Mankind never has had too much 
 to say in praise of Sir Isaac Newton; yet centuries 
 before him Roger Bacon had struck out the path in 
 the science of Optics in the pursuit of which this 
 philosopher attained such splendid successes. In 
 the contemplation of the work done by this monk 
 in the midst of circumstances so adverse to his aims 
 and endeavors, Humboldt named him "La plus 
 grande apparition du Moyen Age." 
 
 The genius of a man who could have escaped 
 that delusion of the "philosopher s stone" which 
 took such long hold upon all men s minds in the 
 Middle Age must have been preterhuman. Roger 
 Bacon believed with the rest in the transmutation 
 of the inferior metals into gold and silver; yet he 
 
80 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 was not only free from the superstitions which were 
 indulged by some of the alchemists, but his practi 
 cal sense rejected that infinity of fantastic imagina 
 tions respecting the influence of the planets and 
 other agencies in hastening or retarding the process 
 of obtaining the lapis philosophorum a mineral 
 substance which, by mixing with the base, would 
 transmute them into the precious metals. He sim 
 ply believed that the metals were compound, and 
 that repeated experiment would lead to the dis 
 covery of the processes employed by nature in 
 those combinations. In all his metallurgic work, 
 limited as it was in comparison with his other in 
 the service of science, the mere search for gold and 
 silver, it is most probable, was never among his 
 thoughts, especially his desires. A devotee to ex 
 perimental science, in what time he could get from 
 his religious duties, he took an interest in metallur 
 gy, as he did in other branches. If he fell into the 
 general error respecting the convertibility of the 
 inferior metals, the error, so far as he was concerned, 
 was free as well from the superstitions as from the 
 frauds into which many who dealt in such practic 
 es were led. Partly these superstitions, mainly these 
 frauds, are what induced the infamy which has been 
 attached to the name of alchemy. Yet science ad_ 
 mits that it owes much to the alchemists. To one and 
 another of the numerous adepts among them is to be 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 8 1 
 
 attributed not only the discovery of phosphorus but 
 the concentrated acids; and it is almost certain that 
 to Roger Bacon in special mankind is indebted for 
 the invention of gunpowder. That a pious and en 
 lightened priest enlightened far above all the men 
 of his time should have believed in the elixir vitcn 
 which was to abolish death is an idea too absurd to 
 be considered for a moment in connection with him. 
 In Sir F. Palgrave s fiction, The Merchant and the 
 Friar, there occurs what seems a just opinion about 
 the connection of Roger Bacon with the vagaries of 
 the alchemists in general. He was simply dazzled, 
 according to this writer, by his inability, on account 
 of the existing paucity of known natural principles, 
 to comprehend the possible extent of the wonder 
 ful discoveries that were continually being elimina 
 ted in his workshop, and doubtless he suffered from 
 the impostures practised in his name by his servants 
 and others upon the credulity and fears of the vulgar. 
 
 And now let us consider briefly the penance that 
 this illustrious man underwent for his devotion to 
 the interest of science a penance more remarkable 
 and more to be compassionated because he must 
 have foreseen its coming, and that from those of his 
 own household. 
 
 That preternatural gifts in remote former times 
 were bestowed by the Creator upon some of the hu 
 man race, or at least that such bestowal was per- 
 
82 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 mitted by Him, and even in cases wherein the re 
 cipients were ignorant of Him or hostile to Him, 
 cannot be doubted. When Moses, who had been 
 divinely appointed the god of Pharao, and Aaron 
 his prophet, turned the rod into the serpent, "Pha 
 rao called the wise men and the magicians; and 
 they also by Egyptian enchantments and certain 
 secrets did in like manner. And they every one 
 cast down their rods and they became serpents."* 
 Even as late as St Paul, Simon for a long time had 
 "bewitched the Samaritans with his sorceries." In 
 vain these arts were proscribed by the Roman laws 
 as proceeding from the powers of evil. The multi 
 tudes were credulous still, not only to those that 
 were native, but to the practises of the Thessalian 
 witches, the magi, the sorcerers of Egypt and Phry- 
 gia, and other foreign nations, whose manners and 
 opinions they were brought by continued conquests 
 of Roman arms to learn. Christianity must oppose 
 itself to these as to all other practises of heathen 
 ism. St. John, in the Apocalypse (xxi. 8), we re 
 member, devoted to the second death, in the pool 
 burning with fire and brimstone, sorcerers along 
 with the "fearful and unbelieving, the abominable, 
 and murderers, and fornicators, and idolaters, and 
 all liars. " Among Christians, henceforth, arts which 
 even heathen emperors had condemned must seem 
 
 *Exochas vii. n, 12. 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 83 
 
 yet more black and diabolical, and be forbidden by 
 yet more certain and severe restrictions. Natural, 
 therefore, were the jealousies of the Church always 
 of whatever might obstruct the universal prevalence 
 of the Christian faith. We are now considering 
 nearly the most unenlightened period of the Middle 
 Age, a period poor in general culture yet rich in 
 religious tervor. Ever struggling, the Church was 
 struggling yet against the powers of darkness, and 
 was timorous against everything that bore even the 
 appearance of an enemy. The Mendicant orders, 
 newly established, had lost none or little of the en 
 ergetic devoutness of their founders. Called into 
 being in great emergencies, they were among the 
 chiefest supports to the Papacy, whose fortunes 
 then were those of the whole Church. Besides, hu 
 man infirmities belong to men in all conditions, 
 the pious and the wicked. A very great man al 
 ways lives in advance of his times, and is never 
 rightly appreciated because never fully understood 
 by his contemporaries, even those with whom he 
 lives upon terms of most intimate relationship. Es 
 pecially is this the case with those who, though less, 
 are yet highly gifted, and have those aspirations 
 that are found most often and most eager among 
 the greatest of earth. There is no place so holy, 
 said Thomas a Kempis, wherein temptations do 
 not enter, and the most insidious are they which 
 
84 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 assail those otherwise most unassailable by evil in 
 fluences. Leaders of multitudes next below him 
 who towers far above them are few who, in one 
 form or another, do not undertake to persuade their 
 followers to drag him down from his threatening 
 height, sometimes in order to cast him to death. 
 Socrates nearly foresaw the Messias. At least he 
 demonstrated the inevitable necessity of his being. 
 In his opinion God, the great Unknown, could 
 never become known to the world with satisfaction 
 unless he would clothe Himself in human form, and, 
 descending from heaven, exhibit Himself in such 
 form before the world, so prone not only to evil 
 deeds but evil opinions. And so, at the instigation 
 of those who stood nearest to him in men s estima 
 tion, his people, to whose weal his whole being had 
 been devoted, seized upon and slew him even in the 
 midst of those teachings which, of all that have 
 ever fallen from human tongues not divinely in 
 spired, were nearest to the oracles of God. 
 
 Roger Bacon was too far in advance of his time 
 not to foresee that his generation would not be led 
 by him, and that for his persistent refusal to stay 
 behind he must suffer the penalties common to 
 extraordinary greatness. It may have been impru 
 dent, but it was of a part of the integrity and bold 
 ness with which he was in the pursuit of science not 
 to attempt to conceal the results of any of his work. 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE, ^ 
 
 His brother Franciscans, timorous like the rest of 
 the Christian world respecting the horrors of de- 
 monology, looked upon him with suspicion and ap 
 prehension which grew with the ever-increasing 
 wonderful discoveries, all of which were proclaimed 
 with the joyous readiness with which an ardent 
 searcher for truth loves to make it known when he 
 has found it. In time these brothers were driven 
 to fear what outsiders had already charged upon 
 this monk, so strangely wise, the exhibitor of such 
 startling things that, like the sorcerers, he was 
 possessed of demoniacal spirits, and, if not arrested, 
 he would inflict great harm upon the Church in gen 
 eral and the order of Franciscans in particular; and 
 so he was ordered to communicate knowledge of 
 his investigations to no one, under pain of impris 
 onment and being fed upon bread and water only. 
 The order was obeyed, most of the discoveries he 
 had made were locked in the recesses of his own 
 brain and partly in those manuscripts to which he 
 gave the name of Opus Majus. Extreme penalty 
 for his wisdom was postponed for a season by the 
 promptness of his obedience, and in the course of 
 time occured events which led to the hope that the 
 ban of silence would be removed and the student be 
 permitted to pursue the career which, if unmolested, 
 would have added untold blessings to mankind. 
 Guy Foulquois, a native of St. Gilles, France, came 
 
86 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 late to the priesthood. He had been a soldier, a 
 distinguished lawyer, and a high official at the 
 court of Louis IX. When his wife died, leaving 
 him with two daughters, he left the world for the 
 church. He had the good fortune to enjoy the in 
 timate society of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bon- 
 aventure. His mind, from these associations and 
 his previous studies, had risen to a condition 
 wherein it could note with pleasure the progress of 
 general enlightenment. Pope Urban IV. appointed 
 him legate to England, in order to aid in bringing 
 about a reconciliation between King Henry III. 
 and Simon de Montfort. Pleased with the service 
 rendered by him, upon his return he created him Car 
 dinal Bishop of Sabina. While sojourning in England 
 he did, rather he tried to do, a work far more impor 
 tant than that of conciliating to the king s interest 
 that turbulent noble whose factious endeavors were 
 to be ended only by the defeat at Evesham. He 
 had heard of some of the discoveries of the Francis 
 can monk at Oxford, and he became exceedingly 
 anxious to be made acquainted with them. He suc 
 ceeded to a limited extent through the connivance 
 of his agent, Remond de Laon, who managed to 
 evade the surveillance under which the monk was 
 held by his brethren. Delighted with what he had 
 obtained, for some years he could only regret that 
 such a man should be the victim of a prejudice so 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 87 
 
 hostile to the interests of mankind. But in the 
 year 1265, on the death of Urban he was elected to 
 succeed him. In vain he remonstrated with the 
 cardinals, as a truly pious ecclesiastic must do 
 when exalted to such eminence. He could not 
 prevail, and on the 22d day of February of that year 
 assumed the tiara with the title of Clement IV. 
 
 It is most grateful to consider the career of this 
 eminent pope. Pious as enlightened, humble as 
 great, he dwelt during all of his pontificate in the 
 town of Viterbo, never for one time entering the 
 great Eternal City, the capital of Christendom. 
 The members of his family, though of noble extrac 
 tion, he kept far from him, notifying them, early 
 after his ascension, that they were not to expect 
 any special favors at his hands. Following his ex 
 ample, his two daughters gave themselves to the 
 church, becoming nuns in the Abbey of St. Saviour s 
 at Nismes. Often had he reflected upon what he 
 had learned of the work of the humble Franciscan, 
 and pitied his contracted life and the ignorant 
 fears that had constrained it within its narrow limits. 
 Now, when he had risen to_be head of the church, 
 he bethought him to do what was possible in the 
 interests as well of science as of charity. Then he 
 wrote that letter, which is still extant, in which he 
 adjured him, by the respect which he was bound 
 to pay to the Apostolic See, to send to him in pri- 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 vate an account of the investigations which he had 
 made in behalf of science and their results. It 
 seems now curious that the head of the church 
 should use such precautionary means for the attain 
 ment of ends so desirable and so benign. But the 
 Franciscan Order were devoted to pious works and 
 to the See of Rome. If he must do contrary to 
 what they had commanded within their own socie 
 ty, he will endeavor to do so without the notoriety 
 that would inflict pain upon followers so devoted 
 and otherwise so helpful to the cause of Christianity. 
 Yet in the letter was an allusion to the restraints 
 under which these writings had been put, and his 
 orders were, that, however binding these were, the 
 manuscripts must be sent notwithstanding. It was 
 thus that the world became acquainted with that 
 Opus Majus, without doubt the most important 
 work in the service of the physical needs of man 
 kind that had ever yet been done. 
 
 We can only speculate what might have been 
 done by Clement, both for science and its suffering, 
 ablest, and most devoted votary, but for his ad 
 vanced age and engrossment not only with the gen 
 eral affairs of the church, but with the settlement of 
 the Two Sicilies upon the house of Anjou. In less 
 than four years he died, and Bacon was thus left 
 friendless: 
 
 Among the Franciscans was one Tineus, of Ales- 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 89 
 
 siano, in the diocese of Ascoli, Italy. Of an ob 
 scure family, he had distinguished himself by his 
 devotion to the party who were desirous of retur 
 ning to the stricter discipline of their founder, and 
 who, in distinction to the Recollets were called 
 Brothers of the Observance, sometimes Minors Ob- 
 servantines. At the death of St. Bonaventure he 
 became general of the order. The death of Clem 
 ent revived the charges of sorcery against Ba 
 con, and the hostility became so acrimonious that 
 he was summoned to appear before a tribunal 
 met at Paris for his trial. He was found guilty 
 and the judgment pronounced by D Ascoli was per 
 petual imprisonment. He was then not far from 
 being seventy years old. 
 
 So harsh a judgment it is sad to think of at any 
 period. Yet one cannot forget the hard trials of 
 the Church with evils so manifold that it was im 
 possible in every instance to separate the innocent 
 from the guilty. In vain had the laws of the em 
 pire endeavored to suppress what were considered 
 the worst evils that could befall mankind. The in 
 fusion of barbaric blood from the northern regions 
 of Europe had deepened the belief in diabolic 
 influences. We have seen what was the judgment 
 of St. John upon sorcerers, and we remember that 
 St. Paul denounced Elymas as a "child of the devil." 
 What wonder, then, that the Franciscans, an order 
 
9 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 in which a large party had already risen who were 
 departing from the stern rule of the glorious Saint 
 of Assissium, should feel it their solemn duty to shut 
 for ever the mouth of one among them whose exper 
 iments, with results hitherto unknown, were astound 
 ing even more than the most audacious of all the 
 "black art s" achievements? We wish we could 
 know some of the incidents of this trial. What 
 may have been the bearing of the accused, whom 
 we know to have been as brave as he was gifted, as 
 true to the cause of religion as that of science? He 
 certainly did not recant, because he would not; did 
 he defy? What was said in his defence, even with 
 caution and timidity, by the few who hoped he 
 might be less wicked than he seemed, or who loved 
 him too well not to murmur some regrets that his 
 face was to be withdrawn wholly from their sight, 
 and its aged wearer to languish the poor remains of 
 life in a dungeon? What affectionate tears were 
 shed at the parting and afterwards in remembering 
 what he was elsewhere than among those horrid 
 implements of his satanic practises? Answers to 
 these questions we can imagine only, and then re 
 flect that it could not have been otherwise. He 
 came into the world before his time, and must suffer 
 the penalties always inflicted upon premature ad 
 vents. The world could not take the mighty strides 
 needed to follow in his lead. This great truth was 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCK. 9! 
 
 felt never so sadly as by our Lord when to his di 
 sciples he spoke these parting words: 
 "Adhuc mult a habeo vobis die ere, sed non potestis 
 portare modo." * He had been charged with cas 
 ting out devils through Beelzebub. Even one of 
 the Twelve, after the Resurrection, before believing, 
 must lay his hand upon the prints of His wounds. 
 No ; non possunt modo. They could not bear until 
 another should come and by degrees lead them up 
 the dazzling heights. So St. Paul wrote to the Cor 
 inthians: "Lac vobis potum dedi, non escam: non- 
 dum enim poteratis, sed nee nunc quidem potestis: 
 adhuc enim carnales estis, " t 
 
 Tineus of Ascoli was neither a bad man nor a 
 cruel. The privations of his imprisoned brother 
 probably were not harder than those which he vol 
 untarily inflicted upon himself as the leader of one 
 of the strictest of monastic orders, chosen from the 
 straitest of its parties. A Franciscan must not 
 only be, but to his brethren, the Church, and the 
 world he must appear, guiltless of whatever dero 
 gates from the solemnity of his vows. Seven years 
 after these events this leader, on the death of Hono- 
 rius IV., was raised to the papal throne, taking the 
 name of Nicholas IV. This honor was due mainly 
 to his reputation for sanctity and acquaintance with 
 the wants of the Church, and partly to the cour- 
 
 *St. John xvi. 12. f i Cor. iii. 2. 
 
9 2 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 age with which he had withstood the pestilence at 
 Sabina during the sitting of the conclave after the 
 death of his predecessor. Yet he besought the 
 cardinals to recall their votes, and on his dying 
 bed declared, with a simple sincerity that no one 
 doubted, "We accepted the purple from fear of of 
 fending our order." Nor was he hostile to learning. 
 On the contrary and it seems like a grim mockery 
 he not only granted large privileges to the Uni 
 versity of Lisbon, founded by King Denis, but he 
 founded himself that at Montpellier. Yet during 
 his pontificate he seems never to have given a 
 thought to the aged brother who still was lingering 
 in the prison to which he had consigned him ten 
 years before, and it was not until after his death 
 that the sufferer was released and allowed to return 
 to his native country. While he was languishing, 
 shut out from the world, some ot the irrefragable 
 truths which he had propounded, in such wise as 
 could not fail to become known, made here and 
 there impressions upon minds more cultured and 
 liberal than the rest which induced interventions in 
 his behalf. Besides silence, the coming on of old 
 age, long absence, subsidence of jealousies among 
 his own brethren, another factor in the persecutions 
 by which he had been beset, prevailed at last. An 
 exile of fourscore granted leave to return to his 
 home ! What was left for him was to die. Poignant 
 
A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 93 
 
 in the highest degree, doubtless, is the suffering of a 
 great soul which suffers not only unjustly but while 
 laboring for the weal of its persecutors, who inflict 
 because they cannot rise to see its good, grand 
 purposes. Resentment is kept in abeyance because 
 it knows that such inflictions have not been dictat 
 ed by cruelty but ignorance, which is as implaca 
 ble. Sadder words never came from the mouth of 
 a dying man than those spoken by the returned 
 exile who, after so many years of anguish, was 
 allowed to die in his native home:"y> me repens de 
 m etre donne tant de peine dans rinteret de la 
 science." The illustrious namesake who appropri 
 ated so many of his ideas and almost all of his 
 praise, he also made touching appeals to foreign 
 nations and future ages to ignore the things of 
 which never a temptation came to the humble 
 monk to be guilty. The one anguished in the rec 
 ollection of infirmities which it is almost incredible 
 that such a man would not have been able to cure ; 
 the other, having none of such sort to remember, 
 must repent only of having been made to suffer for 
 the time which, as it seemed to him in his dying 
 hour, had been wasted in the interest of science. 
 So Marcus Brutus, after his desertion by the people 
 and after the defeat of Philippi, turned his eye re 
 gretfully back upon the literary and philosophic 
 pursuits of his youth and young manhood, ar.d 
 
94 A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 
 
 wished he had never left them for the vain purpose 
 of saving a republic that was already in ruins. Fi 
 nally, we are reminded in this connection of the 
 last words of Gregory VII. at Salerno: "We have 
 loved justice and hated iniquity, and for ihis we 
 die in exile." 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 A MONG those who have written ot mankind, Dick- 
 ** ens knew best the world around him, especially 
 in that class whom, being a large majority, it is most 
 important to understand. Sprung from almost the 
 lowest stratum, having suffered many of the pains 
 which befall their varied conditions, even when a 
 little child his eyes were ever looking around him, 
 and, though unconsciously then, studying and 
 learning them well, destined never to lose the in 
 terest which such knowledge inspired, but to devote 
 a hard working life to imparting it to others, among 
 other purposes, in order to impart to them a com 
 passion which he never ceased to feel. Never a 
 demagogue, nor a vulgarian, nor a snob, when rich, 
 illustrious, courted by the great, he busied himself 
 as when poor, unknown and friendless, and died in 
 the midst of his benign work. The recollection of 
 some accidents of his childhood was always painful, 
 not from shame at the contrast with established 
 prosperity, yet not without some, a shade of bit 
 terness in the reflection that a child so sensitive to 
 hurt should have been subjected, sometimes unnec- 
 
 95 
 
g SOMK HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 essarily, to such privations. Before reading the 
 Biography of Forster we knew that to him who had 
 written the histories of Tiny Tim and Jo of Tom- All- 
 Alone s early sorrows had come that could not be 
 forgotten. 
 
 Such things as these, as was the case with Aken- 
 side and Gifford, sometimes make either a satirist 
 or a despiser of those in one s same lot. In minds 
 except the greatest it is not unnatural for both 
 shame and resentment to rise from such humilia 
 ting recollections. Even among the greatest, tears 
 must come in the eyes and a shadow be upon the 
 heart; but these qualify them better for the histories 
 which they are to indite. They are only the 
 greatest also who can become just historians of the 
 poor and humble. Of these Dickens was never an 
 undiscriminating champion. As the best of his 
 creations were taken from their midst, so were his 
 worst. The latter, indeed, had become known 
 right well in the jails and ships of transport to penal 
 colonies. He would make known the former as 
 well important information in a community such 
 as London city, where, not as in country life, the 
 social positions of the high and the low are so far 
 apart that, passing and repassing each other every 
 day, not only is there little accord of sentiments 
 and feelings, but unhappily often an utter ignorance 
 on the part of the upper of the characters of the 
 
 x * t, 
 
SOMK HKROES OF CHAKI.KS DICKENS. C)J 
 
 lower, their conditions, aims, and possibilities. The 
 poor are known to be poor indeed, and many the 
 charities that are extended. Yet money-charities 
 are far from being the highest. Indeed, money- 
 charities, when bestowed not from a sense of their 
 necessity to the receiver, or from a sort of pleasant 
 consciousness in the giver of a condescension from 
 peculiar loftiness of mind, are sometimes bestowed 
 for the purpose of buying one s self off from those 
 more benignant, seeking acquaintance with the afflic 
 ted and oppressed, and visiting them with intent to 
 comfort and relieve. Dickens knew these classes,* 
 their squalid poverty, their sickliness, their hopes 
 and despairs, their desires to pull the rich out of 
 their great houses and splendid equipages, and soil 
 
 *Forster in his biography says: " That he took from the very be 
 ginning of this Bayham-Street life his first impression of that 
 struggling poverty which is nowhere more vividly shown than in 
 the commoner streets of the ordinary L,ondon suburb, and which 
 enriched his earliest writings with a freshness of original humor 
 and quite unstudied pathos that gave them much of their sudden 
 popularity, there cannot be a doubt. I certainly understood it, he 
 has often said to me, quite as well then as I do now. But he was 
 not conscious yet that he did so understand it, or of the influence it 
 was exerting on his life even then. It seems almost too much to 
 assert of a child, say at nine or ten years old, that his observation of 
 everything was as close and good, or that he had as much intuitive 
 understanding of the character and weakness of grown-up people 
 around him, as when the same keen and wonderful faculty had made 
 him famous among men. But my experience of him led me to put 
 implicit faith in the assertion he unvaryingly himself made, that he 
 had never seen any cause to correct or change what in his boyhood 
 was his own secret impression of any boy whom he had had, as a 
 grown man, the opportunity of testing in later years. " 
 
98 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 their fair garments in the dirt on which their own 
 beds were laid, their children born, and their poor 
 meals spread. But he knew as well their integrity, 
 their fear of God, their unvaunting courage, their 
 love of wives, parents, children, brothers, sisters, 
 friends, their merry-hearted drolleries, their absurd 
 sentimentalities. He knew all their grief and 
 their frolic, sympathized where sympathy could be 
 afforded, pitied where it could not, and laughed 
 when he could laugh without the petulance that em 
 bitters instead of sweetening mirth. It is a rare 
 gift when one who portrays the earnest can do as 
 well with the sportive. Scott had done so, and, to 
 a less degree, Miss Edgeworth also; both late, 
 because readers of books had not yet come to be 
 profoundly interested in the multitudes. It was 
 reserved for Dickens to bring in the satyr as he is 
 in his native wilds. I say satyr, for in such con 
 dition, between man and beast, the multitudes 
 seemed long to have been regarded. By the hand 
 of Dickens these were shown to be human beings 
 with eyes, ears, wants, aspirations like those of the 
 gifted and the fortunate. 
 
 There is somewhat surprising in the rashness 
 with which, when first feeling his mission, he went 
 to its work. Yet rashness belongs to the young, 
 and, when it succeeds, its successes are splendid. 
 Witness the Cockney in Pickwick; in Barnaby 
 
SOME HEROES OK CHART.KS DICKENS. 99 
 
 Rudge the idiot and the raven; the pauper in Oli 
 ver Twist \ the child of shame under a coward 
 schoolmaster s rod in Nicholas Nickleby ; in Curi 
 osity Shop a motherless child with no friend but 
 God; in Bleak House another, most unhappy for 
 not being fatherless also, and yet another, even 
 nameless, persecuted for the sake of a secret acci 
 dentally lodged in his, simple breast and dying in 
 neglect, want, and exile; in Copper field a. perenni 
 al prisoner in the Marshalsea. 
 
 What reflections were to be had, what morals 
 deduced, from these histories of the lowly? Better 
 ment of the conditions of poor-houses and mean 
 boarding-schools, awakening to the miseries en 
 tailed by the endless delays, hinderings, and sell 
 ings of Chancery decrees, and fixing regard upon 
 other evils which had shocked him when a child, and 
 now nigh overwhelmed him with horror to recall. 
 The eminent success of his efforts for these super 
 ior purposes was due, perhaps, mainly to the humor 
 which he possessed in greater abundance than any 
 novelist of any time. Fortunate for his own being, 
 fortunate for us, that his spirit was so healthy. 
 Bitterness could never rise in the heart of one who 
 could laugh as heartily as he could weep. Not less 
 did he pity the privations of the lowly because he 
 could be amused by their harmless absurdities. 
 What these were he knew not only from observa- 
 
100 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 tion bat experience. His "home," as he styled it 
 had once been the Marshalsea, its inmates his pa 
 rents, brothers, sisters, special friends and acquain 
 tance. Suffering, unmixed, constant, dwelt not here 
 more than pleasure unalloyed among the prosper 
 ous. The little joys of the humble how he loved 
 to exaggerate, in order to show how easy it was to 
 multiply and enhance them, and thus concilliate 
 and persuade to this humane purpose! For char 
 ity comes from the laughers oft-times more abound 
 ing than from the weepers. The singing girl, who 
 in tattered garments stands upon the cold pave 
 ment and carols a merry roundelay, will often delay 
 some that hasten past her who lifts only the song 
 of wailing that is known to belong to all her kind. 
 Often it is that the mirthful man, more readily than 
 the serious, will draw from his pockets and bestow 
 to what has made him laugh yet another time. 
 
 It is not contended herein that the mind of Dick 
 ens was always bent mainly to the production of 
 beneficent results; though we do believe that these 
 were never wholly absent from it. He was intent 
 upon describing states of existence in all their 
 phases of lights as well as shadows. That the 
 sportive in him predominated over the serious was 
 a special felicity. Whoever has read Forster s 
 Biography has been amused as heartily by the real 
 as ever he was by the unreal. Take the following : 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARGES 1&POHEN3. TCfa 
 
 "1 was such a little fellow, with my poor white hat, little jacket, 
 and corduroy trousers, that frequently, when I went into the bar of a 
 strange public-house for a glass of porter or ale to wash down the 
 saveloy and the loaf 1 had eaten in the street, they did not like to 
 give it me. I remember, one evening (I had been somewhere for my 
 father, and was going back to the borough over Westminster 
 Bridge), that I went into a public-house on Parliament Street which 
 is still there, though altered at the corner of the short street lead 
 ing into the Cannon Row, and said to the landlord behind the bar, 
 What is your very best the very best ale a glass? 1 For the occa 
 sion was a festive one for some reason; I forget why. It may have 
 been my birthday or somebody else s. Twopence, says he. Then, 
 says I, just draw me a glass of that, if you please, with a good head 
 to it. The landlord looked at me in return, over the bar, from head 
 to foot, with a strange smile on his face, and, instead of drawing the 
 beer, looked around the screen and said something to his wife, who 
 came out from behind it with her work in her hand, and joined him 
 in surveying me. Here we stand, all three, before me now in my 
 study in Devonshire Terrace the landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, lean 
 ing against the bar window-frame; his wife looking over the little 
 half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside 
 the partition. They asked me a good many questions, as what my 
 name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, etc., 
 etc. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented ap 
 propriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I suspect it 
 was not the strongest on the premises; and the landlord s wife, open 
 ing the little half-door and bending down, gave me a kiss that was 
 half-admiring and half-compassionate, but all womanly and good, 
 I am sure." 
 
 This occurred when he was about nine years of age, 
 living on seven shillings a week, "insufficiently fed." 
 "I know," he says, "that but for the mercy of God I 
 might easily have been, for any care that was taken 
 of me, a little robber or a little vagabond." 
 
 The man who could thus write about his own child, 
 hood s existence showed that the droll was remem 
 bered and dwelt upon as often as the sad. It was 
 
7. 02 <JMK HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 a pleasure-giving smile with which he contemplated 
 the urchin balancing his economic resources with 
 the importance of producing effect upon the trading 
 world. 
 
 The hero of many of the children in the novels 
 of Dickens was himself.* At one time he was Jo, 
 
 *" My father had left a small collection of books in a little room 
 up-stairs to which I had access (for it adjoined my own), and which 
 nobody in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room 
 Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, 
 The Vicar of Wakeneld, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Robinson Cru 
 soe came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive 
 my fancy and my hope of something bevond that place and time 
 they and the Arabian Nights and the Tales of the Genii and did 
 me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there 
 for me: I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now how I 
 found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier 
 themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I 
 could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which 
 were great troubles to me) by impersonating mv favorite characters 
 
 in them 1 have been Torn Jones (a child s Tom Jones, a harmless 
 
 creature; for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of 
 Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a 
 greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and travels I forget 
 what now that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can 
 remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with 
 the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees, the perfect realiza 
 tion of Captain Somebody, of the Royal Navy, in danger of being 
 
 beset by savages and resolved to sell his life at a great price 
 
 When I think of it the picture always rises in my mind, of a sum 
 mer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard and I sitting on my 
 bed reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighborhood, every 
 stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard had some as 
 sociation of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and 
 stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom 
 Pipes go climbing up the church steeple; I have watched Strap, with 
 the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself on the wicket 
 gat & n d I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr t 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 103 
 
 moving, ever moving before the pursuant detective; 
 at another he was Paul Dombey looking up with 
 awe to Mrs. Pipchin, and when alone wondering 
 what may be the voices of the sad sea-waves; yet 
 at another Kit honorably bent upon the fulfilment 
 of his promise to lead his younger brother to the 
 knowledge of "what oysters is." Childhood, in 
 its privations, in its innocence, in its ambitions, in 
 its dreams, no man was ever so acquainted withal, 
 and none ever so delighted to portray it. In the 
 case of Little Nell there was danger, for a space, 
 that the judgment of the artist would be swayed by 
 the feeling of the man and fall short of consumma 
 tion of a creation so felicitously conceived. Con 
 vinced by the reasons of a friend, who argued that 
 the survival of sufferings of the kind undergone 
 would not well comport with the ends of fiction, he 
 yielded; and when the picture was finished Jeffrey 
 said there had been nothing to compare with it 
 since Cordelia. It is among these children that 
 we must look for the pathos needed as well by a 
 novel as a tragedy. The story of Jo of Tom-All- 
 Alone s, more brief, is scarcely less touching than 
 that of Little Nell. He whose home had been in 
 the Marshalsea had known Jo long before his story 
 
 Pickle in the parlor of our little village ale-house." Then the bi 
 ographer adds: "Every word of this personal recollection had been 
 written down as fact some years before it found its way into David 
 
 Copperfield, " 
 
104 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 was to be told, and others like him. Homeless, 
 nameless, friendless, and harmless, except that a 
 fatal secret in a great family had been lodged by 
 accident in his simple breast, he moves and moves 
 till the powers of locomotion are exhausted, when 
 a good man appears, too late for any other office 
 than to teach him a little part of one prayer and 
 fold his arms upon his breast. Hereat comes that 
 outburst of indignant remonstrance against a Christ 
 ian community wherein such things are allowed to 
 exist : 
 
 "The light is come upon the dark, benighted way. Dead! 
 
 "Dead, your majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, 
 right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men 
 and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And 
 dying thus around us every day." 
 
 With self-made men who try not to forget nor 
 conceal their lowly origin there is often the dispo 
 sition to talk of it much, and exaggerate the hin 
 drances which their extraordinary genius and spirit 
 have overcome. With others the proclivity is to 
 praise their forebears when these are so far re 
 moved that praise, not known to be unmerited, will 
 not be ridiculous. From both these infirmities 
 Dickens seemed to have been uncommonly free. 
 He neither ignored nor sought to praise. Forster 
 tells that the original of Micawber was the novel 
 ist s own father, and that he was quite vain of the 
 office of an amanuensis to his son. We can well 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 105 
 
 believe this of one whose creations so frequently 
 were elaborated from characters whom he had well 
 known. There are few things in literature more 
 humorous than the intimacy between this boy of 
 a man and little Davie. The taste of such a work 
 it is not to the point here to discuss; it is men 
 tioned as another proof of how closely the author 
 had studied human life among its humblest ele 
 ments, and with what consummate skill he could 
 invest them with unflagging interest. 
 
 Fortunate it was, we repeat, that the mind of 
 Dickens was not embittered by the poor life of his 
 childhood. The love and the power to write satire 
 rise in either an unloving or a disappointed spirit. 
 The sadness that darkened his young life was upon 
 that of all his manhood, often drawing from his 
 eyes floods of tears; but it was of a kind to create 
 compassion for distress such as no English writer 
 has ever evinced, yet a compassion tender, loving, 
 sometimes, indeed, changing to indignation, not 
 against individuals, nor even against society for 
 acts of positive injustice, but for neglect or tardi 
 ness in ascertaining the wants of the destitute mul 
 titudes and providing for their betterment. Such 
 a man can look upon the sportive as well as the 
 earnest side of life among these multitudes. The 
 more he compassionated the one the more he could 
 be amused by the other. For, indeed, it would be 
 
106 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 a hard life for the poor if they had no seasons of 
 fun and frolic, no simulations of sentimental ex 
 periences, no harmless exaggerations of their own 
 importance, no attempts of enacting upon their 
 own little stages representations of the doings of 
 the gifted and the great. Therefore merry-hearted- 
 ness is among them as well as privations and sor 
 rows. The poor man s holidays have a relish pe 
 culiar to themselves, and their gushing abandon in 
 merry-makings is one of the most pleasing things 
 to witness, one of the most interesting themes for 
 the study of the philosopher. 
 
 In the portrayal of this side of humble life doubt 
 less all agree that Dickens has never been equalled. 
 From Pickwick to Drood in the great novels, the 
 novelettes, the Christmas Stories, the brief sketches, 
 humorous characters come on and on, making us 
 wonder if the list is never to have an end. How 
 many thousands have they made actually weep with 
 laughter ! 
 
 The prodigious success of these works was almost 
 as surprising to the English public as was the geni 
 us to construct them. Let us reflect somewhat 
 upon this success. How was it that the man who 
 presented characters taken from the lowly exhibited 
 them so that we looked and listened with an inter 
 est beyond that ever felt in contemplation of the 
 great lords and dames in fiction heretofore? How 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. loy 
 
 is it that these uncultured, poorly-fed, often home 
 less waifs on the ocean of society, persons with 
 whom ourselves had no previous acquaintance, de 
 lay us as much as, even more than, Montrose, Lei 
 cester, Osbaldiston, Bradwardine, even kings and 
 queens of English or Scottish story? It is because 
 the historian of those, better than any other, knew 
 how to wake the chords of human sympathy, the 
 emotion which when exalted to its utmost is our 
 most powerful, our most benign, our fondest and 
 dearest. This world is far more sympathetic than 
 generally it seems to be. No man can live without 
 sympathy of some sort. Even old Timon was put 
 to shame by the philosopher pointing to his eagerness 
 that the indifference which he pretended should be 
 known and observed. They are few, and they 
 not of the best, on whom neither a sad nor a hu 
 morous story can make an impression and prompt 
 to charitable action. One may claim to despise 
 this world, yet he will linger and mingle in it as 
 long as he can, and, when about to depart from it, 
 indulge the hope that he will not be forgotten ex 
 cept for the evil that he has done. Even the gos 
 sip, as Carlyle says, is a lover of mankind, and 
 backbites because the standard that she has fixed 
 for her victims they persist in refusing to attain. 
 Dickens was almost the first who was really great 
 to attempt, not, indeed, a diversion of sympathy 
 
108 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 from any of those to whom heretofore it had been 
 extended, but to include within its sweet influences 
 those who needed it most. It seems like an anom 
 aly that the course of pity should so long have been 
 mainly upward. The tragic poets made mankind 
 weep over the sufferings of Prometheus, Orestes, 
 (Edipus, Medea, Lear, the Prince of Denmark; and 
 it was beautiful how even the humblest pitied the 
 misfortunes of the great. The multitudes who con 
 stitute nations, who make up the world, who build 
 cities and highways, who fight wars and defend and 
 uphold kings and governments these had small 
 space in books or upon the stage. In the fullness 
 of time Richardson, a commoner, gave representa 
 tions from among them, and even the prosperous 
 and titled, notwithstanding the weak sentimentality 
 of these new endeavors, felt how abundant and re 
 freshing were the tears that came to their eyes. 
 Then Fielding, of the blood of the Denbighs, 
 laughed his laugh at the misdirected feeling and 
 Tom Jones made ashamed those who had wept with 
 Pamela and Clarissa. Scott came on, a scion of 
 the stock of the Buccleughs, and he dwelt mainly on 
 the sorrows of Montrose, Amy Robsart, and others 
 of noble and gentle blood. But he was a man with 
 a heart in his breast that could feel for men and 
 women less than these. The most pathetic, the 
 most admired recital that he ever made was that, in 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 1 09 
 
 The Heart of Midlothian, of the sorrows and strug 
 gles of the daughters of Deans, the cow-feeder. 
 The success of these few tentative endeavors in sym 
 pathies of the cheapest was prophetic of what was to 
 be when a man born and reared amid the scum of 
 mankind should have the heart, and the genius, and 
 the opportunities to represent life therein in such 
 forms as to enlist men s attention to all the pur 
 poses which he had in view. At first he was 
 thought to be interested only in the sportive side 
 of that humble existence, and would lead men of 
 leisure to laugh at what was baldly ludicrous and 
 nothing more. But when he had exposed their lev 
 ities, lest men should conclude that they had been 
 created only to be ridiculed, he proceeded to show 
 the serious and the respectable among those who, 
 even as the prosperous, reflected the image of the 
 Creator. It is very pleasing to contemplate how he 
 strove to exhibit in some of his very humblest char 
 acters loyalty to every behest of honorable man 
 hood. Take the nameless Jo for whom what might 
 not have been done but for the want of examples 
 and opportunities? Let us hear the words of the 
 dying little exile when they have at last driven him 
 where he can "lie down and get a thorough good 
 dose of sleep. " They had asked him if he knew 
 any prayers. 
 
110 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 "No, sir, nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a prayin wuns 
 at Mr. Snagsby s, and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he was 
 a-speakin 1 to hisself and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn t 
 make out nothink on it. Different times there wos other gen l men 
 come down Tom-all-Alone s a-prayin , but they all mostly said as 
 the t other ones prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talkin 
 to their selves, or a-passin blame on the t others, and not a-talkin 
 to us. We never knowed nothink. I never knowed what it was all 
 about." 
 
 Yet he begged them to put in his will his mes 
 sage to Mr. Snagsby that "Jo, what he knowed 
 once, is a-moving on right for ards with his duty, 
 and I ll be wery thankful." Or let us take Joe 
 Gargery. What a limited volume of understand 
 ing! What a blundering giant of a booby! blun 
 dering the more ridiculously when specially striving 
 with the proprieties of deportment and conversa 
 tion ! How humbly triumphant at his one great es 
 say at elegiac verse! These make us laugh until 
 we cannot sit longer in our chairs, but must go lie 
 down and rest our heads upon pillows. Yet how 
 loyal was Joe to his shrew of a wife, always mak 
 ing prominent her one great distinction, she being 
 "a fine figger of a woman;" to his ungrateful and 
 rather worthless brother-in-law, even while, with the 
 delicacy of the best society-man, keeping himself 
 aloof when his presence was embarrassing to one who 
 had risen so far above his beginnings. Courageous 
 as simple, manlike as humble, Joe Gargery merited 
 the name which a true man likes most to be given 
 him. He was a gentleman. 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. I I I 
 
 To interest justly in these multitudes required 
 pre-eminent genius and the spirit of an apostle. 
 Dickens had both. A patriot, his love of country 
 radiated from its central point, warming most his 
 familiars with whom he had freely shed tears both 
 of sorrow and of joy, and, when become renowned 
 and powerful, striving to draw closer together the 
 widely-separated constituents that made up the 
 people of his native country. Faithful to the de 
 mands of fiction, he taught more continuously than 
 any novelist that neither the greatest good nor the 
 most despicable evil is peculiar to any class, and 
 that among the very humblest were characters equal 
 to the best and equally to be respected by all 
 mankind. 
 
 It is not difficult to account for some of the ad 
 verse criticism of Dickens (especially of late) on the 
 ground that his characters were so much overdrawn, 
 and therefore less faithful representatives of real life 
 than those of Thackeray, George Eliot, and more 
 particularly some recent novelists. The characters 
 of Thackeray are indeed natural, often painfully so; 
 and if the purpose of fiction were to represent life 
 just as it is, he would be at the head of the list of 
 artists of all times. Many women are like Rebecca 
 Sharpe, and many men like Barnes Newcome. 
 Many doubtless are the quarrels among the genteel 
 in the privacy of home, and the disputants come 
 
112 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 forth with smiling faces and deceitful words. But 
 is the purpose of fiction to represent this life just as 
 it is, and worse than it is to exhibit birds in their 
 cages at seasons when in their most revolting un- 
 cleanness? Is it to put before our eyes men and 
 women, boys and girls, and, tearing away the veils 
 with which they try to hide their deformities, show 
 us that these husbands and wives, ostensibly dis 
 charging relative duties with reasonable fidelity, 
 are all perfidious to solemnest obligations, accus 
 tomed in secret to quarrelings and abusings; and 
 that these boys and girls, even the best, apparently 
 pliant to sweet domestic control, long to see their 
 parents dead, and then, while clothed thickly in 
 black, and subdued to demureness in walk and con 
 versation, chuckling in secret at the removal of 
 constraints and the fulfilment ot post-obit expecta 
 tions? More than these, when such things are 
 shown in the strongest as the weakest, must we be 
 reminded that we are no better, we nor our 
 children, but that we, like all gone before and all to 
 come after us, reek with ingratitude and perfidy? 
 No. This is not the purpose of fiction. It is to 
 represent human life, indeed, but, in its most elab 
 orate endeavors, to represent the extremes of good 
 and evil and to lead each to its appropriate conse 
 quences. The poet (and for this end the novelist 
 is a poet) makes new concretes out of the discordant 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 1 13 
 
 elements of this lower world. He paints virtue with 
 as little blemish as is possible to a fallen estate, and 
 vice irredeemable except by repentance and aban 
 donment. The struggle between these combatants 
 may be fierce, sometimes appearing doubtful even 
 to the most valiant; yet in time either victory or 
 deliverance must come to the upright who have re 
 fused to despair whether present triumph, like that 
 of Nicholas Nickleby over the reprobate Ralph, or 
 translation, like that of Little Nell or Jo of Tom- 
 all-A tone s? It is easy, therefore, to understand 
 why many of the great poets have been unhappy. 
 From their efforts to rescue themselves from despair 
 by means of the creation of better worlds than this 
 have we gotten some of our most important lessons 
 and sweetest consolations. 
 
 For what end did God impart to a few of those 
 fashioned in his image a portion of this his most pe 
 culiar attribute this power to create worlds wherein 
 the virtuous man is more surely and highly exalted, 
 and the vicious more surely and condignly pun 
 ished, than at the bar of this world s tribunals? 
 Partly that we might get the benefit of examples 
 always more efficacious than the most studied pre 
 cepts of the wise, and partly that we might be kept 
 from despondence, from the jarring discords around 
 us. It is a wholesome thought that the good are 
 better than really they be. It is hurtful to believe 
 
114 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 them to be worse. For our human hearts take on 
 other forms of ambition than to surpass in goodness 
 the best of those around us. The multitudes of 
 mankind are not only more capable, but they prefer 
 to follow than to lead. There is a certain degree, 
 if not of self praise, of self gratulation when we 
 sincerely point to one whom we admit to be supe 
 rior not only to what we are, but what it is possible 
 for us to become. We often assuage our remorse 
 for failing in the practice of virtue by the hearty 
 praise we bestow upon those whom we acknowledge 
 it to be not possible for us to imitate, and such 
 praise often rescues one who otherwise might lapse 
 into despair. Let the artist, therefore the artist 
 who is not a mere painter of portraits bestow, if 
 he will, upon his pictures a touch here and there to 
 render more attractive the beauty which we love to 
 admire. Even the painter of portraits does a grace 
 less thing when he lifts the hair or tears away the 
 kerchief of his original, merely to show a ghastly 
 scar whose existence we would rather have ignored. 
 So of the sportive. When the time comes for us to 
 laugh, let us laugh with breasts healthy, full of mirth 
 that is as harmless as exuberant. Such as these are 
 imparted by the characterizations of Dickens. The 
 best things and the worst are ever in contrast and 
 conflict. We see the saddest and the gayest, and 
 for both tears come to our eyes, bringing the sweetest 
 
SOME HEROES OF* CHARLfeS DICKfeNS. 115 
 
 relief that the human heart ever gets from a surfeit, 
 whether of sorrow or gladness. In reading the 
 Biography these tears, so like and yet so dissimilar, 
 will often flow as they flowed from his own eyes in 
 contemplation of the varying conditions of mankind. 
 With him humor was an antidote to the sadness 
 which, if he had yielded to it, would have over 
 whelmed him. In one of his letters he tells of a 
 strange dream that he had in Italy, wherein a lately 
 separated relative seemed to have appeared before 
 him and advised him to seek refuge from his relig 
 ious doubts in the Catholic faith. It is painful to 
 contemplate how a mind in which the serious pre 
 dominated could never find the assurance which it 
 sought. There was some bitterness mingled with 
 the tenderness in inditing the will of poor Jo; and 
 herein we can tell some of the thoughts of the great 
 writer when putting into the mouth of a dying child 
 words humbly complaining of the insufficiency of 
 those who undertake to guide in the Way of Life. 
 A man so beset must often turn for relief from the 
 severe to the lively ; and the more profound has been 
 his sadness, the higher in hilarity will he rebound. 
 
 One cause for the relegation of Dickens by some 
 from the position he once occupied has grown out of 
 a change in the tastes of the reading public that has 
 led to preference for the delicate and the nice in art, 
 literary as well as pictorial. It is the miniature 
 
Il6 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DfCKENS. 
 
 rather than the life-size that pleases now, or, if the 
 life-size, with curious, elaborate drapery. Favorite 
 is the mosaic, compounded, like the melancholy of 
 Jacques, of many simples, and conjoined with mi 
 croscopic painstaking and accuracy. The analyst 
 of a hero s or heroine s motive for conduct more 
 and less important, especially in genteeler circles, 
 finds now more admirers than not only Dickens but 
 Thackeray and George Eliot. Even the Becky 
 Sharps and Maggie Tullivers are postponed to opu 
 lent ladies with trains sweeping with pleasant rust 
 ling over costly carpets, jewelled hands daintily 
 plying fragrant fans, and tongues chattering with ex 
 quisite modulation on somethings, and on nothings 
 also. But such a taste will be, as its likes have ever 
 been, of temporary duration. Genuine art will 
 ever endure, however often it may be passed by for 
 a brief space by those who are beguiled by new 
 ornamentations in unimportant particulars. We 
 remember how Cowley was for a time preferred to 
 Milton, and the poets of the Restoration to those 
 ot the period of Elizabeth, and how dramatic poetry 
 in general declined with the rise of scenic decora 
 tion. The bonanza kings, their wives and daughters; 
 the nouveaux riches, removed from low to up-town, 
 or from East to West End, are pleased, or believe 
 themselves to be pleased, with witty sayings, bright 
 dinner and tea-parties among the gentility, cunning 
 
SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. II J 
 
 analyses of human motives in varying positions, and 
 just enough of pathos and humor as may effect a 
 pleasing sigh or an unexpected brief smile. As in 
 the time of Richardson, even thoughtful minds have 
 become somewhat wearied of being stirred by the 
 thrillingly earnest and comic, and ask for repose. 
 Writers of ability notice this condition of things in 
 the reading public, and more or less reluctantly con 
 form to their demands. How often does history repeat 
 itself! In his twenty years of exile Charles II. grew 
 to be not only not a patriot, but not even an En 
 glishman. Restored to the throne of his ancestors, 
 he brought to his court those tastes which the French 
 men of letters had been forced to adopt by the lack 
 of rhythm and melody in their language. Lord 
 Orerry, a time-serving courtier, was the first to 
 begin with the use of rhyme in dramatic composi 
 tion. An interesting chapter is that which tells of 
 the struggles of Dryden in these degenerate times. 
 If otherwise he could have gotten his bread, "The 
 Indian Emperor" and "The Conquest of Grenada" 
 would never have been put into rhyme. Even as it 
 was, he turned at length from the pursuit of things 
 foreign to his native country, and languished in poor 
 old Soho, with what consolation was to be had in 
 thought of being again faithful to the behests of 
 patriotism. 
 
 It was always curious what various and often 
 
Il8 SOME HEROES OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 what trifling and unsubstantial causes may divert 
 art from its legitimate purposes, and with what 
 little complaining artists themselves real artists, 
 with genius and feeling will work in conformity 
 with tastes which they know and feel to be not only 
 untrue but vicious, and prefer to an enduring fame 
 a capricious favor whose end they cannot fail to 
 foresee. It is so with pictorial art, as those most 
 versed in such matters tell us. It is less sincere, 
 less genuine than it was a score or two of years ago. 
 But they tell us also that it is bound to return to its 
 native simplicity and integrity. So it will be with 
 fictitious narrative. So will it ever be with contend 
 ing forces. The fittest shall survive. 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 "When such a one as she, such is her neighbor." 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 *T^HE faculty of composing interesting concretes, 
 * whether in verse or in prose, out of the discor 
 dant elements of this lower life was bestowed by 
 the Almighty for benign purposes. In this lower 
 life good and evil, their actions and results, are 
 often so confounded that the industrious and the 
 honorable often seem to fail of their reward, while 
 the indolent and the vicious triumph over and mock 
 at them. In addition to the consoling hope of im 
 mortality, in which good and evil are to be separ 
 ated for ever, God has imparted a supplemental. 
 Next and subsidiary to the preacher, whose office 
 is to remind us constantly of the Last Judgment, 
 is the poet, who leads our minds, inconstant enough 
 to need such aids, to trustful expectation of that 
 Judgment by creating from among the inhabitants 
 of this present world those of his own in which 
 justice is administered in ways at least approximat 
 ing the justice of eternity. For this purpose, less, 
 
120 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 exalted, indeed, than that of the priesthood, we be 
 lieve that poesy was bestowed upon mankind. In 
 these new creations the jarring elements of human 
 life are so joined as to appear to harmonize in some 
 degree, or made to cease their conflict by the tri 
 umph of the good even on this side of the grave. 
 This is the leading, legitimate purpose of fiction to 
 show us a more excellent way than the present in 
 which we travel, and so to hold us from discourage 
 ment for the irregularities and failures that we con 
 tinually witness and experience. 
 
 We have made these observations prefatory to 
 some reflections upon satire, particularly as exhib 
 ited in the works of Thackeray. 
 
 Suggestive were the motives that impelled the first 
 of the satirists of Greece. What might have been 
 done by Archilochus of Paros but for the accidents in 
 his earliest ambition we cannot say, knowing so 
 little of his youth. But it was his lot to love the 
 fair Neobule, daughter of Lycambes. The maid 
 returned his passion, and her father at first gave 
 consent to their union, but, having ascertained 
 that the mother of the youth had been a slave, with 
 drew it. Thereupon the lover gave vent to his dis 
 appointment and indignation in such verses (the 
 first of their kind) that not only Neobule but her 
 sisters also hanged themselves. Results so tragic 
 have not often followed the scourgings of the Par- 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 121 
 
 ian s successors, but they sometimes have been 
 painful and hurtful. Let us consider briefly some of 
 those in the productions of him whom many regard 
 the greatest of the novelists. 
 
 In the drolleries of Michael Angelo Titmarsh 
 there was a sufficiency of bitterness. The name was 
 prophetic, and its prophecies ran along in rapid 
 fulfilment in the Times, the New Monthly Maga 
 zine, and Punch. Yet nothing seriously ambitious 
 seemed to have been attempted in The Fat Con 
 tributor, Miss Tickletoby s Lectures, Jeames 1 Diary, 
 Mrs. Perkiris Ball, The Journey from Cornhill to 
 Grand Cairo. The characters thus far created had 
 been laughed at, and some of them despised, but 
 none were destined to become immortal. If the 
 artist was ever to take more thoughtful views of 
 men and things, it was time he had begun, for he 
 was now forty years old. So Michael Angelo Tit- 
 marsh retired from public view, and his place was 
 taken by William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 
 Vanity Fair another prophetic name! The 
 wisest of mankind, he who had tried every form of 
 prosperity, riches, power, glory, love, revenge, even 
 wisdom, had pronounced them vanity. In vain the 
 men-singers and the women-singers; in vain the 
 trumpet of triumphant war; in vain the sweet peace- 
 fulness of the lute, dulcimer, and harp; in vain the 
 soft words of wives, concubines and parasites; in 
 
122 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 vain the royal diadem; in vain all human knowledge. 
 The aged king, turning his eye back upon the past 
 and reviewing his career, could only drivel out in 
 impotent* complaint, " Vanitas vanitatum ! " A 
 mournful judgment to make of human life, yet not 
 unfitted to one who had used its best things intem- 
 perately, and who, in spite of his wisdom, in spite 
 of his commission from" heaven to build the Temple, 
 had turned his way from the true God and bent his 
 knee before Baal. 
 
 We are now to have a Vanity Fair exhibited by 
 Mr. Thackeray. Well, men are fond of spectacles, 
 even the grotesque. Invited to this Vanity Fair, 
 although warned that we are to see deformities in 
 stead of excellences, we accept the invitation. 
 What have we here? Representatives of several 
 estates a marquis, a baronet and his family, a 
 tradesman and his family, some officers of the army, 
 and a governess. We had been led to believe 
 that they were a brave set of men, the peers and 
 the knights of England. But when we see two of 
 their representatives in the Marquis of Steync and 
 Sir Pitt Crawley, we are made to doubt if history 
 be not in error to assign to the ancestors of such as 
 these the wresting from despotic kings, Magna 
 Carta, Habeas Corpus, and the Bill of Rights. 
 But let these go. Yet we may be allowed to hope 
 that persons in our class, without ancestral image or 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 123 
 
 tradition, the necessarily self-reliant that some of 
 these are worth the bread they eat, the breath they 
 draw, and the clothes they wear; and that the lives 
 they lead, or try to lead, may encourage us some 
 what in efforts to walk honestly among men and 
 reverently before God. Then who are these Os- 
 bornes, Sedleys, Dobbins, and Sharps? Indeed, 
 with one exception, they are vicious or contempti 
 ble. That exception is Dobbin. Dobbin did have 
 a heart, and therefore was made awkward and un 
 lovable. It would not have suited the showman, 
 who had advertised for monstrosities, that a man 
 who had a heart should also have a proper figure and 
 winsome manners. The only apparent purpose for 
 which this heart had been given was that it might 
 be wounded and trampled upon with levity and im 
 punity. Behold what a run of loves is here. Hon 
 est, clumsy Dobbin, risen from little beginnings, 
 gives his single love to Amelia Sedley, who cannot 
 endure to hear his name mentioned along with that 
 of George Osborne, handsome, but ignorant and a 
 scoundrel. The wife believed him glorious until 
 Waterloo, when it was found that had he not fallen 
 in battle he would have forsaken her and run away 
 with Mrs Rawdon Crawley. Years afterwards, 
 when the widow has lost youth and beauty, and 
 been broken by solitude and privation, Dobbin, now 
 
124 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 high in fame and rank, comes in for the poor rem 
 nant of what is left of her. 
 
 How has it been with Rebecca Sharp? The ar 
 tist tried his hand on her. He gave the beauty, 
 social position, other goods to Amelia. But the 
 things which sometimes captivate men more than 
 these were bestowed upon the poor, plain governess. 
 The very relation of such men as the Crawleys to 
 each other made their pursuit more shamefully 
 eager. What a scene was there when on the death 
 of the old dotard s wife, reaching his withered hand 
 to grasp the coveted prize, he found that she, not 
 having foreseen this opportunity, had become the 
 wife of his son! Then ensued a career which it is 
 surprising that a most gifted man should narrate 
 through long years of circumstantial details. We 
 look on and watch how this wife manages to pre 
 serve that middle place, tormenting her husband 
 with jealousies that do not amount to full assur 
 ances, and avoiding the disgust of other lovers by 
 semblance of the chariness of her favors. We can 
 not but be fascinated by a certain sort of heroism, 
 evil as it is, and we are not too indignant when we 
 find her at last enjoying comparative triumph, be 
 come a snug widow, and dispensing in chanties a 
 commendable safe part of the property so unexpect 
 edly devolved upon her. Dowerless, without beauty, 
 without family, without heart, without honesty, she 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 125 
 
 fought her way, outlived most of those with whom 
 she had to do, and, so far as the world knew, 
 was not very far from being about as respectable 
 as any. 
 
 We have been to the show. What now are our 
 reflections? What higher and braver thoughts have 
 come to our minds when, wearied with toil and the 
 witness of life s discordant realities, we turned 
 aside to dream of the unreal? What encourage 
 ment have we gained for efforts at well-doing by 
 the sight of honest work and patient endurance re 
 warded? Or what warning have we had from the 
 contemplation of vice and intrigue overtaken by 
 disaster, or at least by disappointment? Instead 
 of these we have found and to some extent been 
 ashamed to find ourselves admiring a creation that 
 is as seductive as it is evil. Added to this we were 
 conscious of a loss of some portion of that which it 
 is most calamitous to lose. Woe to him who parts 
 from his trust in mankind, who does not believe that 
 in this world there is goodness beyond that which he 
 has ever found in his own being the capacity to 
 practise. 
 
 In this book the artist and he was an eminently 
 great artist seemed to have endeavored to drive 
 mankind to their own unaided struggles, taking 
 away from them all good examples, and leaving 
 them to conclude that nothing is real but folly and 
 
126 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 perfidy. Let us read this extract, like which very 
 many might be made : 
 
 " Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters. 
 Take a bundle of your dear friend s ten years back how you clung 
 to each other before you quarrelled about the twenty-pounds legacy! 
 Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son, who has broken your 
 heart since with selfish undutifulness: or a parcel, breathing 1 endless 
 ardor and love eternal, which were sent back by your mistress when 
 she married the Nabob your mistress for whom now you care no 
 more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows, loves, confidences, promises, 
 gratitude how queerly they read after a while! There ought to be 
 a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written docu 
 ment (except receipted tradesmen s bills) after a certain brief and 
 proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who advertise in 
 delible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their wicked 
 discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that 
 faded utterly in a couple of days and left the page clean and blank, 
 so that you might write on it to somebody else." 
 
 Surely the Preacher himself would have been 
 puzzled to put more strongly the case of vanitas 
 vanitatum. 
 
 In the literature of fiction there is not to be 
 found a picture drawn more artistically than Re 
 becca Sharp. She was of the sort upon whom it 
 suited the author to exert his consummate powers. 
 He painted her to the life, with pretended reluctance 
 to evil, suspected, yet not fully known to be per- 
 suasible to consent, demanding risk, high pay, so 
 that the pursuit, of which, if easy, a bold lover 
 would weary, acquired the eagerness which must not 
 be allowed to abate. No woman could better un 
 derstand the trick, as sung by the shepherd in Virgil, 
 
TJIE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 127 
 
 of casting her apple and then fleeing to the covert 
 of willows : 
 
 "Malo me Galatea petit lasciva puella; 
 
 Et fugit ad salices; et se cupit ante videri." 
 
 It is a sad commentary on the powerlessness and 
 hopelessness of a poor young woman without other 
 gift then mere virtue to obtain success which 
 appears to attend upon insidiousness and fraud. 
 It would have been a good sight to see the lifting 
 of such a one, even though slowly and through 
 difficulties, where so many thousands of poor girls 
 do rise through toil and patient waiting. In default 
 of this the next best would have been to contem 
 plate her driven to the frustration of every dishon 
 orable purpose that had tempted her from the path 
 of rectitude. Better than both of these, for the 
 highest purposes of instruction, would have been 
 pictures of young women who endured temptation 
 and outrage without expecting and without receiv 
 ing reward except such as came from the testimony 
 of a good conscience and of suffering for the sake 
 of Him who ennobled suffering and put it above 
 successes, victories, and triumphs. For had there 
 not lived in such a career Agnes and Afra, Rose 
 and Eulalia, Lucy and Blandina? If such as these 
 be outside of the art of the novelist, then surely 
 he may hold up to our view young girls such 
 as Richardson presented with generous sympathy 
 
128 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 to the public of his day. Alas! the eyes of that 
 public were yet moist with tears when the prof 
 ligate Fielding made them laugh both at them 
 over whom they had wept and at themselves. It 
 was such a joke to imagine it possible for as poor 
 a girl as Pamela to marry a rich, hardened bach 
 elor and reform him after marriage, or for an 
 other like Clarissa to endure such trials and yet 
 continue spotless in her virtue! No, no; Rebecca 
 Sharp must be what she was, have a better time 
 than even Amelia Sedley, and thus be made to ex 
 hibit that virtue is worth not even as much as a 
 semblance that is suspected and almost known to 
 be false. Satire, indeed! Satire upon the men in 
 highest society, for of the two from this class whom 
 he exhibited one was a heartless profligate, the 
 other a loathsome brute; satire even upon marriage, 
 for the couple who were truest to each other were 
 the O Dowds, whose rudeness was sufficient to make 
 all of both sexes feel like keeping away from mar 
 riage altogether, if this is to be considered a fair il 
 lustration of its most honorable estate. 
 
 In Pendennis Thackeray s sarcasm, if somewhat 
 less painful because more playful, is yet more un- 
 distinguishing. On its appearance men of letters 
 were disposed to regard it as a satire upon the lite 
 rary profession. The truth is that whoever reads the 
 book, if he be one who considers himself superior 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 129 
 
 in gifts and conditions to a rather low plane of human 
 life, will find himself jeered at on occasions wherein 
 he will be most surprised to find himself an object 
 of reproach. A rtliur Pendennis lived to become a 
 person of whom the author was proud that he was 
 considered a gentleman to be admired. When a 
 boy he was polite, good-looking, well cared for, of 
 sufficient fortune and thoroughly respectable family. 
 Such advantages naturally lead us to expect a quick 
 ly-developed, worthy manhood. Yet very soon 
 after first looking upon the goodly lad we are 
 made acquainted with some little matters which, 
 but for remembering that he is a special friend of 
 the distinguished author of Vanity Fair, would 
 lead us to infer that the youngster has already been 
 sold to the devil and is destined to do faithful work 
 for his master. He had the misfortune, when in 
 his seventeenth year and while absent from home 
 at a boarding-school, to lose his father, of whom he 
 was the only child. This father, though formal in 
 his exterior, was a devoted family man, "adored his 
 wife, and loved and admired his son with all his 
 heart." To the young generally death seems an 
 awful event, and the death of one s father is cer 
 tainly one of the most appalling of all its forms. 
 Even when the parent has been harder than is con 
 sistent with such relation, surely it must be seldom, 
 except among the very worst specimens of boyhood, 
 
13 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 that one feels like triumphing at the very hour and 
 in the very presence of such a death, and strutting 
 amid the possessions which it has devolved upon 
 him. Let us see, according to the testimony of 
 his most intimate friend, how young Arthur be 
 haved when, summoned from Gray Friars , he 
 entered the room where lay the corpse of him who, 
 in his life, had "loved and admired his son with all 
 his heart," to whom, so says this most intimate 
 friend, 
 
 "Arthur had been his lather s pride and glory through life, and his 
 name the last which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while IK- 
 lay with his wife s hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as 
 the flickering- spirit went out into the darkness of death, and life and 
 the world passed away from him. 
 
 "As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which the sight 
 of his dead father must have produced on him, and the pity and feel 
 ing which such an event no doubt occasioned, I am not sure that in the 
 very moment of grief, and as he embraced his mother and tenderly 
 condoled her, and promised to love her for ever, there was not 
 springing up in his breast a feeling of secret triumph and exultation. 
 He was chief now, and lord. He was Pendennis, and all around 
 about him were his servants and handmaids. In the midst of the 
 general grief and the corpse still lying above he had leisure to con 
 clude that he would have all holidays for the future, that he wouldn t 
 get up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the doctor, and had 
 made a hundred such day-dreams and resolves for the future. How 
 one s thoughts will travel, and how quickly our wishes beget them? 
 When he, with I>aura in his hand, went into the kitchen on his way 
 to the dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, and his other favorite haunts, all 
 the servants assembled there in great silence with their friends, and 
 the laboring men with their wives, and Sally Potter, who went with 
 the post-boy to Clavering all there assembled and drinking beer on 
 the melancholy occasion rose up on his entrance, and bowed and 
 curtsied to him. They never used to do that last holidays, he felt at 
 once and with indescribable pleasure. The cook cried out, O Lord!, 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 13! 
 
 and whispered, How Master Arthur do grow! Thomas, the groom, 
 in the act of drinking put down the jug, alarmed before his master. 
 Thomas 1 master felt the honor keenly. lie went through and 
 looked at the pointers. As Flora put her nose up to his waistcoat, 
 and Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled at his chain, Pen patronized 
 the dogs, and said, Poo Ponto! poo Flora! in his most condescend 
 ing manner. And then he went and looked at Laura s hens, and at 
 the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the dairy. Perhaps he blushed 
 to think that it was only last holidays he had in a manner robbed the 
 great apple-tree and been scolded by the dairy-maid for taking 
 cream." 
 
 If anything equal to this can be found in another 
 book purporting to represent highly respectable 
 people, imaginary or real, we do not know where. 
 Yet this youth grew up to be a fine gentleman, a 
 favorite of the author, an author himself, a great 
 author, charming the best society, marry a sweet 
 girl that is, sweet enough, we judge; the same 
 Laura, indeed, who went tripping it along with him 
 on that same morning, patronizing the servants, and 
 dogs, and chickens, and pigs. Why not? What 
 has he done that we would be above doing in the 
 same circumstances? We are told over and over 
 again, by the author, that we need not turn away with 
 disgust from the sight of such things, and congratulate 
 ourselves that we would not and could not do them. 
 He looks us calmly in the face and asserts that we 
 both could and would, and that we actually do them 
 constantly. One of us may have a rosy-cheeked, 
 full-eyed boy, in whom he may believe to see the 
 promise of a manhood that will rise fully to the 
 
132 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 needs of his time. As he looks into those full 
 eyes he may believe he sees the filial love which is 
 desired and professed to be in the boy s breast, 
 and that when himself shall come to die that fair 
 son, even if yet a boy, will grieve away down in 
 the depths of his true heart, will sometimes repair to 
 his father s tomb to weep there, and ever afterwards 
 remember him with pious regret. If we who are 
 parents could not thus believe, we should pity and 
 almost feel like cursing ourselves that God had not 
 made us childless. 
 
 Such sarcasms, the very quintessence of bitterness, 
 abound throughout Thackeray s works, and we are 
 sometimes made to feel how insultingly they are 
 turned from the meanest characters and inflicted 
 upon ourselves. He seemed to take a special 
 pleasure in recounting the quarrels of married per 
 sons. Bad as such things may be, we dare not ex 
 press our disgust, because we foresee that we are to 
 be told, almost apace, that we are not better nor 
 happier than those whom we think we despise or 
 compassionate; that our "silly-headed" wives, when 
 they seem most affectionate, have least concern for 
 us, and that all of us, husbands and wives, are but 
 "pairs of infinite isolations, with some fellow-islands 
 a little more or less near between us." Alas! there 
 be some, too many, who thus outrage the holy estate 
 of matrimony,and lose or trample upon the good in- 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 133 
 
 fluences and the pure enjoyments which it was de 
 signed to impart. But it is a poor lesson that such 
 persons learn when they read in a famous book by 
 a famous man that their own lives are but miniatures 
 of the world around them. They have weak incen 
 tives to amendment when they are taught by such 
 high authority that such amendment is not only un 
 necessary but impossible. Human nature wants 
 supports and incentives from every source whence 
 they can be brought. Out of harmony as is this 
 lower life, beset with perfidies and wrong-doings of 
 many sorts, it would be intolerable if, in the ab 
 sence of all real, we should be forbidden to contem 
 plate imaginary good examples. If these evils 
 abound in us and among those we know around as, 
 we might be allowed, at least, to hope that some 
 where, beyond the pale of our poor acquaintance, 
 there are some, if only a few, among whom vulgar 
 ity and lies and perfidy have no abiding-place. 
 Such sarcasms, therefore, even if they were just, 
 would do harm. But they are not just. In every 
 society there are husbands and wives who not only 
 love but respect one another, and there are boys 
 and girls who love and honor their parents sincerely, 
 heartily weep when they die, and feel a sense of loss 
 that only God can repair. Everywhere there are 
 thousands upon thousands, of both sexes and all 
 conditions and all ages, among whom the appear- 
 
1 3/| THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 
 
 ances and avowals of love and friendship and honor 
 are not mockeries and lies; and such persons be 
 come more numerous as the world grows older and 
 approaches the fulness of the times of God. 
 
 As Thackeray grew older his writings afforded 
 somewhat more comforting, at least less despairing, 
 views of human life. In The Newcomes Mr. Arthur 
 Pendennis seemed to have moderated considerably 
 since the day when he strutted about his possessions 
 close to the yet unfilled grave of his father. Yet in 
 this most studied and consummate story and in 
 Henry Esmond there are flings against society in 
 general which show that, if the bitterness was sub 
 dued, the lack of any confidence yet remained. 
 The latter work, with all its splendid writing and 
 its several instances of profound feeling, is a great, 
 broad satire on life. Our hearts had been made 
 sick in Vanity Fair by the contest of a father and 
 his son for the love of the same woman, and we 
 had strengthened ourselves, as well as we could, by 
 reflections that such hideous montrosities were to 
 be seen only in the ruder of the sexes; but in Hen 
 ry Esmond this sickness returns and in more painful 
 form when we see a young man, who has been 
 jilted by the girl of his choice, seeking and finding 
 consolation in the arms of that girl s mother! O 
 shade of Sir Pitt Crawley! thoti wast defeated in 
 that unnatural strife with thy son for the possession 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 135 
 
 of Rebecca Sharp; but it might have subtracted 
 somewhat from the anguish and the shame of defeat 
 hadst thou foreseen that, in such another struggle, 
 age in its turn would triumph, the young daughter 
 fall down, and the mother rise upon her ruin ! We 
 may have thought it had been enough for us to be 
 made to contemplate the horrible history of the 
 family of Laius of Thebes a history made in obe 
 dience to the decrees of Fate, and which, though 
 in a barbaric age, filled mankind with consternation, 
 drove Jocasta to suicide, and (Edipus to tear out 
 his eyes with his own hands. Yet now in Christian 
 times, in high society, we are made to look upon 
 careers not very far less revolting, entered upon 
 and run deliberately, and not only see the runners 
 not ashamed, but be forbidden to feel, or at least 
 to express, shame for ourselves for being in such 
 presence. 
 
 If what we have said of the purpose of fiction be 
 just, that it was to aid in consoling for the want of 
 harmony and the wrong-doings in this life, then we 
 must conclude that Mr. Thackeray, with all his 
 pre-eminent talents, if he did not pervert and dis 
 honor his art, at least came short of its noblest be 
 hests. From the contemplation of his masterpieces 
 we turn with sadder instead of more cheerful views 
 of life, with less instead of more cordial charity for 
 mankind, with diminished instead of enhanced con- 
 
136 THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRF!. 
 
 fidence in men and hope for ourselves, with lowered 
 instead of exalted aspirations for the good. In that 
 series of powerful creations by Hogarth, The Har 
 lots Progress, we are led along in natural, inevita 
 ble gradation from little Kate, innocent as a flower 
 in her native Yorkshire, alighting from the old wag 
 on at the "Bell Inn" in Cheapside, to that last 
 scene of Dolours and Death in the garret of Drury 
 Lane, and we turn away shuddering for the sure 
 end of vicious living. A mournful lesson, but not 
 without its benefits. But what if the artist had re 
 tired her into decent widowhood, or many times 
 worse if he had accosted us at the door of his 
 studio, as, exhausted with horror and pity, we were 
 making our way out, and, grinning the while at our 
 excited state, charged us, and not only us but all 
 the world else, with being no better than his picture, 
 and declared that our escape thus far from a fate 
 unhappy as that of her whom he named "the crea 
 ture of the pest-pit and perdition" was due, and our 
 possible escape from it hereafter would be due, 
 either to the want of sufficient temptation or the 
 absence of detection? Alas! that we should be al 
 lowed to look upon no good examples, real or imag 
 inary, and even be discouraged from making them 
 of ourselves. ILThackeray in his work had motives 
 which were meant to be generous, we can conceive 
 of none other than that he believed the only way 
 
THE EXTREMITY OF SATIRE. 137 
 
 possible to amend mankind was to render everybody 
 contemptible in the eyes of everybody else and his 
 own besides. The latter, indeed, is in harmony 
 with the teachings of the church, which always com 
 mends to its children to be modest, even lowly, in 
 mind. But the former is a dangerous method of 
 instruction. It is, indeed, an evil disease to which 
 the remedy to be applied is worse than itself. 
 Nothing is more salutary than humility, but for its 
 best uses it must be in the heart of him who "in the 
 midst of reproaches remaineth in great peace." 
 "Never think that thou hast made any progress until 
 thou feel that thou art inferior to all." In order to 
 avail of this counsel of Thomas a Kempis one must 
 have set before him a standard of excellence of some 
 sort, be made to believe that outside of himself there 
 is good, and that it is attainable by persistent en 
 deavor. Otherwise his humility must turn back 
 upon, rend, and drive him to despair of all con 
 ditions for the human heart the most deplorable. 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 TN his Life of Agricola Tacitus wrote that the 
 Romans, after the conquest of Great Britain, 
 were waiting for a convenient season wherein to ac 
 complish that of Ireland. The principal reason 
 assigned for this intention was that the vanquished 
 in the greater island would become more reconciled 
 to the loss of their own independence if they could 
 see it overthrown in the less. But throughout those 
 four hundred years of occupation, although the 
 Eagles went conquering into the fastnesses of the 
 upper mountains, and even crossed to the Orkneys, 
 Ireland was left untouched, and it remained for 
 Rome afterwards with a different symbol to subdue 
 and ever retain her willing submission. 
 
 It is a proud history, that of this brave, suffering, 
 constant people. In it are things of which no 
 other among moderns more justly may boast. Its 
 illustrious men of every period, prosperous and ad 
 verse, in the enjoyment of freedom or writhing 
 under oppression, have been the equals of the best 
 elsewhere; its generals have led the armies of Eng 
 land, its statesmen have led in the making of her 
 138 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 13^ 
 
 laws, its priests have carried into Europe a civiliza 
 tion higher than what it had known before, and its 
 music is of the oldest and sweetest in the world. It 
 is of some characteristics of this music that it is 
 proposed herein to treat. 
 
 We say music, adopting the language of Homer, 
 who was wont to stvle the poet MozSoS, a Singer. 
 The poetry of Ireland for the most part has been of 
 the lyric, and, sometimes in triumphant, more often 
 in wailing strains, has sung of the glories and hopes, 
 the oppressions and sufferings, of its native country. 
 Of all the forms of poetry the lyric most fitly repre 
 sents the conditions of our interior being. Its best 
 songs have been its serious. In the oldest times these 
 were serious only, and for the most part religious. 
 Plutarch complained when the song that had been 
 theretofore consecrate to the temple had been 
 raised, by voices not pious, in the theatre. Not 
 that the Greeks of a more ancient day had not 
 sung of women and wine, but their best strains had 
 been of gods, demigods, and heroes. Votaries had 
 gone to the shrine and warriors to the battle-field 
 to the sound of the flute and the lyre. The one 
 eyed Tyrtneus, whom the Athenians in sport sent as 
 a general to the Lacedemonians, led them to unex 
 pected victory, and the bard was made a hero even 
 above any who had wielded the sword, the javelin, 
 and the spear. 
 
140 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 The indvvellers of such a country as Ireland 
 must be patriotic; and if they are brave they must 
 be poetic. Like Greece, exceeding beautiful, giv 
 ing birth to the gifted, the sentiments most dear to 
 the heart must find oft expression in song. In the 
 Ireland of remote foretime the harp was to be seen 
 more often, perhaps, than in any other country, an 
 cient or modern. It was in nearly every household; 
 if not for the use of the inmates, for that of the guest, 
 to whom the hospitality that was denied to none was 
 extended with greater cordiality according as he 
 touched it more deftly to the lays, especially those 
 in honor of deity and national heroes. When the 
 Gospel was first preached in the island, its teach 
 ings were accepted without the shedding of blood. 
 Not that the Bards at first did not demur to the 
 announcement that there had been, and that there 
 were, those who were greater than the greatest 
 whom they had sung; but the wise Patrick was not 
 long in subduing their jealousies, and afterwards 
 the monasteries which he founded became the 
 chief centres of Irish poetry. Monastic legends 
 fondly tell of the interest evinced by heavenly 
 spirits in the new music of the Irish harp; "and 
 this," said Montalembert, "explains the reason why 
 the harp of the Bards has continued the symbol and 
 emblazonry of Catholic Ireland. " 
 
 One of the characteristics of this poetry is the 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 141 
 
 ardent love of country by which it is inspired. 
 This love sometimes has been only sweet, sometimes 
 highly passionate, but always most fond. Sometimes 
 it is evinced for the whole country, sometimes for 
 a whole district or county, and yet sometimes for 
 one specially dear spot, as in St. Columba s "Song 
 of Derry :" 
 
 "My Derrv, my fair oak grove, 
 My dear little cell and dwelling-. 
 
 Beloved are Burrow and Derry, 
 Beloved is Kaphoe the pure, 
 Beloved the fertile Drumhome, 
 Beloved are Swords and Kells: 
 But sweeter and fairer to me 
 The salt sea where the sea-gulls cry; 
 \Vhen I come to Derry from far, 
 It is sweeter and dearer to me. 
 Sweeter to me." 
 
 This special fondness for the place where were sit 
 uate his "dear little cell and dwelling," though not 
 forgotten, was merged, when in exile, in the greater 
 regrets for the whole of which it was a part. The 
 banishment that was allowed of Heaven, and en 
 dured for the sake of the great mission to lona 
 and Caledonia, instead of subtracting from his 
 patriotism, made it only more general, constant, 
 and heartfelt. Few things are more touching than 
 the words set down when he was an old man, and 
 around him were a thousand evidences of the bles 
 sings that had been bestowed upon his missionary 
 
142 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 labors. In the midst of his visions of heaven, and 
 the rewards coming on his speedy ascension thither, 
 the longing for his native land remained as in the 
 time of his young manhood, and thus he wrote: 
 There is a gray eye which ever turns to Erinn; but 
 never in this life shall it see Erinn, nor her sons, 
 nor her daughters. I look over the sea, and great 
 tears are in my eye. " There was told a pretty stcry 
 of a stork that, having come from Ireland and de 
 scended, in order to rest her wings, near the spot 
 where the exile was sitting, he had her cared for 
 with tenderness; and when, with renewed strength, 
 she rose, he knew that she would return whence 
 she had come, to "her dear native country where 
 she was born where I, too, was born. " 
 
 The harp, so sad in the hands of Columbkill, had 
 been struck long before his day to mournful notes. 
 Among a people brave and gifted, wherein were 
 many independent chieftains emulous in the con 
 tinuance and extension of power, the death and the 
 exile of many a hero must be sung. Since the 
 time of this poet-priest Irish poetry has been mainly 
 sad. Sufferings, national, tribal, family, and indi 
 vidual, have been the principal themes for its ex 
 pression. Occasionally this sadness takes on a 
 self-reprehending tone, when, after indulging one 
 fond personal regret, the singer pauses to reflect 
 either upon the greater sorrows common to the whole 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 143 
 
 country, or the coming of old age, which ought to 
 put an end to such regrets, since they have been, 
 shown to be vain; as in Duhallow, " an ode trans 
 lated by Clarence Mangan. The poet, an exile in 
 Gal way. has been singing of the good old times 
 once spent in Duhallow, and he then concludes as 
 follows ; 
 
 But my hopes, like my rhymes, 
 Are consumed and expended; 
 What s the use of old times 
 When our time is ended? 
 
 Drop the talk Death will come 
 
 For the debt that we all owe, 
 And the grave is a home 
 Quite as old as Duhallow, 
 
 Sometimes the bard seeks to console the warrior 
 who has fled, or whom he is urging to flee from in 
 vasion that it is impossible to resist, and from 
 exactions that he foresees will be impossible to be 
 endured- There is much pathos in such consolation 
 (in "The Parting from Slemish") as offered by Tur- 
 lough, the harper, to O Niell, one of the princes of 
 Claneboy, on the night of his crossing the Bann, 
 which at that time was the boundary of the English 
 Pale. After some most affectionate praise of his 
 hero, whom he styles Owen Bawn Con, he briefly 
 mentions some of the exactions of the successful 
 invader: 
 
 " They tell me the stranger has given command 
 That crommeal and coolun shall cease in the land; 
 
144 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 That all our youth s tresses of yellow be shorn, 
 And bonnets, instead, of a new fashion worn; 
 
 Thai mantels like Owen Bawn s shield us no more 
 That hunting and fishing henceforth we give o er 
 That the net and the arrow aside must be laid 
 For hammer and trowel, and mattock and spade; 
 
 " That the echoes of music must sleep in their caves 
 
 That the slave must forget his own tongue for a slave s, 
 That the sounds of our lips must be strange in our ears, 
 And our bleeding hands toil in the dew of our tears. 
 
 Then he offers his counsel that they both retire 
 to Tyrone, and the mingling of sorrow and hope is 
 exquisitely touching : 
 
 " C) sweetheart and comfort! with tliee by my side 
 I could love and live happy whatever betide; 
 But thou, in such bondage, wou d die ere a day 
 Away to Tir-oen, then, Owen, away! 
 
 "There are wild woods and mountains, ami streams deep and 
 There are rocks in Tir-oen as lovely as here; [clear, 
 
 There are silver harps ringing in Yellow Hugh s hall, 
 And a bower by the forest side sweetest of all. 
 
 " \Ve will dwell by the sunshiny skirts of the brake, 
 AVliere the sycamore shadows grow deep in the lake, 
 And the snowy swan, stirring the deep shadows there 
 Afloat on the water, seems floating in air. 
 
 " Farewell, then, black Slemish! green Collon, adieu! 
 My heart is a-breaking at thinking of you; 
 But tarry we dare not when freedom hath gone 
 Away to Tir-oen, then, Owen Bawn Con. 
 
 " Away to Tir-oen, then, Owen, away! 
 
 We will leave them the dust from our feet as a prey, 
 
 And our dwelling in ashes and flames for a spoil [Foyle." 
 
 Twill be long when they quench them with streams from the 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 145 
 
 It is interesting to notice always the devotion 
 evinced by the bard to his chieftain, living or dead. 
 His affection was as tender as his pride was exul 
 tant, and at his fall he wept with a grief that is to 
 hardly be found in any other poetry. We know not 
 where to go in order to look for a more touching 
 lamentation than in the "Kinkora" of the bard Mac 
 Liag, translated, as the one just quoted, by Man- 
 gan. It was composed after the battle of Clontarf 
 (A. D. 1014), m which the great Brian Boru, with 
 many of his auxiliary chiefs, was slain. After com 
 memorating and lamenting Morogh, Donogh (Brian s 
 son), and Conaing, and Kian, and Core, and Dur- 
 lann, and others, he thus concludes: 
 
 u They are gone, those heroes of royal birth, 
 
 Who plundered no churches and broke no trust; 
 Tis weary for me to be living on earth 
 When they, O Kinkora,* lie low in the dust! 
 Low, O Kinkora! 
 
 "Oh! dear are the images my memory calls up 
 
 Of Brian Boru how he never would miss 
 To give me at banquet the first bright cup. 
 Ah! why did he heap on me honor like this? 
 Why, O Kinkora? 
 
 "I am Mac Liag, and my home is on the lake: 
 
 Thither oft to that palace whose beauty is fled 
 Came Brian to ask me, and I went for his sake. 
 O my grief! that I should live, and Brian be dead! 
 Dead, O Kinkora!" 
 
 Of the odes addressed to individual heroes we 
 
 *Kinkora, the name of Brian s palace. 
 
146 fkisn LVktc f>o?kY. 
 
 cannot refrain from quoting a few stanzas from one 
 whose grief is as profound, yet is tempered by re 
 ligious meditations and hopes. It is a translation 
 (again by Mangan) from the "Lament for the Prin 
 ces of Tyrone and Tyrconnell," composed by Owen 
 Roe, the bard of the O Donnells, and addressed to 
 Nuala, the earl s sister. It was written some time 
 after the death of these princes in Rome, whither 
 with several of their kinsmen and families they had 
 repaired (in 1607) to avoid being taken to Lon 
 don, by the orders of the English government, to 
 answer charges which have since been proven to 
 have been wholly without foundation. 
 
 "The youths whose relics moulder here* 
 
 Were sprung from Hugh, high prince and lord 
 
 Of Aileach s lands: 
 Thy noble brothers justly dear, 
 Thy nephew long to be deplored 
 
 By Ulster s bands. 
 
 Theirs were not souls wherein dull time 
 Could domicile decay or house 
 
 Decrepitude! 
 
 They passed from earth ere manhood s prime, 
 Ere years had power to dim their brows 
 Or chill their blood. 
 
 * And who can marvel o er thy grief, 
 Or who can blame thy .flowing tears, 
 
 That knows their source? 
 O Donnell, Dunnasava s chief, 
 Cut oflF amid his vernal years^ 
 
 Lies here a corse 
 Beside his brother Cathbar, whom 
 
 *They were buried in one grave on St. Peter s Hill. 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRV. 147 
 
 Tirconnel of the Helmets mourns 
 
 In deep despair, 
 
 For valor, truth, and comely bloom, 
 For all that greatens and adorns 
 A peerless pair." 
 
 The concluding stanzas of this fine ode show an 
 other marked characteristic of the lyric poetry of 
 Ireland a never-faltering trust in God that he in 
 His own time will bring deliverance to the beloved 
 land. After singing what mournings would have 
 been had these chiefs fallen in battle, he ends thus: 
 
 " What do I say? Ah, woe is me! 
 Already we bewail in vain 
 
 Their fatal fall! 
 And Erin, once the great and free, 
 
 Now vainly mourns her breakless chain 
 
 And iron thrall! 
 
 Then, daughter of O Donnell! dry 
 Thine overflowing eyes, and turn 
 
 Thy heart aside; 
 For Adam s race is born to die, 
 And sternly the sepulchral urn 
 Mocks human pride! 
 
 "Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne, 
 Nor place thy trust in arm of clay; 
 
 But on thy knees 
 Uplift thy soul to God alone, 
 
 For all things go their destined way 
 
 As he decrees. 
 Embrace the faithful crucifix } 
 
 And seek the path of pain and prayer 
 
 Thy Saviour trod; 
 Nor let thy spirit intermix 
 With earthly hope and worldly care 
 Its groans to God! 
 
148 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 And thou ? O mighty Lord! whose ways 
 Are far above our feeble minds 
 
 To understand, 
 
 Sustain us in these doleful days, 
 And render light the chain that binds 
 
 Our fallen land! 
 
 Look down upon our dreary state, 
 And through the ages that may still 
 
 Roll sadly on 
 
 Watch thou o er hapless Erin s fate, 
 And shield at least from darker ill 
 The blood of Conn." 
 
 It is interesting to contemplate in Irish poetry 
 the love and fidelity to country, clan, and chief. If 
 those clans had been united and so remained, sub 
 ject only and with reasonable willing relation to one 
 lord paramount, their country never could have 
 been subdued. But as it was with Ireland, so it 
 had been with Greece, similarly prolific of heroes, 
 who each had his following of the bravest of the 
 brave. Yet the glories of Greece have suffered no 
 diminution of lustre because of the internal strifes 
 that led to her fall. Leuctra is not less famous 
 than Marathon, but Ireland has often been re 
 proached for yielding to Grecian example, and 
 gone unpitied for the loss of what otherwise she 
 might have kept. This is one of the saddest things 
 in her history. In the midst of those lamentations 
 sung by the bards for the ruin of whatever was dear, 
 the most sorrowful are those that were poured for 
 the whole country, the mother of all her clans. It 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 149 
 
 was said that when Lysander had taken the city of 
 Athens, he ordered, and his orders were obeyed, 
 that its walls be demolished at the sound of its na 
 tive flute-players. How different the conduct of 
 the Irish bards, who shared in the fate of lords and 
 country, and who, when invited with offers of great 
 indulgence and great pay to sing in honor of Eliz 
 abeth, despised the bribe, and, with harps in hands, 
 repaired to their hiding-places, to come forth in the 
 intervals of security and strike them again, whether 
 in sorrow for the past or in hope of a happier fu 
 ture. It was vain that the minions of power broke 
 to pieces wherever found the instruments of nation 
 al music and forbade to those who touched them 
 even the necessaries of life. Persecution served 
 but to make it more loved and sacred in the island, 
 and some of its songs six hundred years after the fall 
 of Irish independence were as bold and inspiriting 
 as when Tara was in the flushest of its glory. 
 
 That pride of ancestry, patriotism, and ever-strug 
 gling but never-dying hopefulness should have 
 stayed among the Irish so long is one of the won 
 ders of history. If ever a whole people have illus 
 trated the blessedness of suffering they have. The 
 deep abjectness of this suffering has served to keep 
 it unknown to all except themselves and God; and 
 so they have writhed for the most part in silence 
 and secrecy, and, receiving little sympathy from 
 
150 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 mankind, have clung the closer to the compassion 
 of Heaven and striven to wait its deliverance. Un 
 til only of late the sufferings of the Irish people 
 have gone with less pity from the outside world 
 than those of any people who have been sorely op 
 pressed. After they had civilized Europe, their 
 subjugation, followed by well-nigh as hard exactions 
 as were ever put upon the vanquished, has been lit 
 tle considered when compared with Poland, Greece, 
 and others that have fallen before or been threatened 
 with ruin by stronger powers. Not because the 
 world is wanting in compassion, but that these cen 
 turies of writhings have been unknown to it. The 
 prisoner with the Iron Mask languished unpitied 
 because unknown even to those who dwelt hard by 
 the battlements wherein he was confined, and 
 whence he was drawn forth only to be assassinated. 
 So with Ireland. The chains that were riveted upon 
 her were so binding that her very longings to break 
 them were kept from the world, and every endeavor 
 thereto punished with a silent rigor which it seems 
 strange that a magnanimous victor, however power 
 ful, would have had the heart to inflict. To the 
 English people the Irishman has been made to ap 
 pear fit only to wield the mattock and the spade, 
 and the Irishwoman to be intended by Heaven 
 mainly as a maid foi the chamber or a scullion 
 for the kitchen; and the cheerfulness which, because 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 151 
 
 of their religious faith, they have been able to main 
 tain in these lowly conditions, has been construed 
 into evidence of a lack of the sensibility that would 
 render them worthy of freedom. Even in this gen 
 eration essayists in English reviews and literary 
 magazines, while contributing articles upon matters 
 of present or past concern in the condition of Ire 
 land, would calmly write of the ignorance of the 
 English people touching Irish affairs an ignorance 
 admitted to be as great as it was in the times of 
 the oldest Plantagenets. As for its language and 
 literature, these were not known as well as those of 
 the Sanscrit. Indeed, until the coming of Thomas 
 Moore the outside world knew not, and hardly be 
 lieved it worth while to inquire, if Ireland ever had 
 a literature or a language beyond that common to 
 all savage peoples for the expression of necessary 
 wants. The idea of Europe seems to have been 
 that Ireland ought to submit resignedly, as in time 
 it must, to the destiny which had rendered vain her 
 obsolete traditions, and fall in with the line of march 
 on the new fields of national endeavor. By the na 
 tion of whom she has been the spoil she has been 
 regarded with a sentiment that conceived itself to be 
 contempt, and this has been partaken in some part 
 by the rest of the world. The greater power has 
 seemed not only indifferent to the advancement of 
 civilization in the less, but hostile to it. The 
 
152 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 ing of colonists upon confiscated lands, the re 
 strictions upon commerce, industry and education, 
 all seemed to have been intended to repress all hope 
 and eventually suppress all desire, of independence. 
 The Irish people have not seemed important 
 enough for serious attempts for their welfare. They 
 have been suffered to till the ground under the su 
 pervision of middlemen who were robbers both of 
 the tenantry and the absentee landlords, and, in 
 obedience to their habitude to chastity, multiply 
 and overrun and migrate to other lands. Ever 
 holding their religious faith, from which nothing 
 has been strong enough to force them to part, the 
 ruling country has done little except by penal laws 
 for their conversion. For, with the average English 
 mind, they may worship Baal or a stone, provided 
 only that they will keep the peace. We were read 
 ing lately The State of Ireland, by Edmund Spen 
 ser. The gentle poet, for want of more honest re 
 ward for his verse, accepted the castle of Kilcolman 
 on the Mulla. Here he appealed for "learned, pi 
 ous and faithful preachers that would have out- 
 preached and outlived the Irish priests in holy and 
 godly conversation," and he pleaded, with what 
 boldness his meek nature could employ, "that it be 
 not sought forcibly to be impressed into them with 
 terrors and sharp penalties, as now is the manner, 
 but rather delivered and intimated with mildness 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 153 
 
 and gentleness, so as it may not be hated before it 
 is understood, and its professors despised and re 
 jected. " With much sadness he further on calls 
 attention to the difference between the clergy of the 
 established and those of the proscribed faith: 
 
 " Wherein it is a great wonder to see the odds which is between 
 the zeal of popish priests and the ministers of the Gospel. For they 
 spare not to come out of Spain, from Rome, and from Rheims, by 
 long toil and dangerous travelling, hither, where they know peril of 
 death awaiteth them, and no reward of riches is to be found, only to 
 draw the people into the Church of Rome. Whereas some of our 
 idle ministers, having a way for credit and estimation opened to 
 them, and having the livings of the country offered to them without 
 pains and without peril, will neither for the same, nor any love of 
 God, nor zeal of religion, nor for all the good they may do by 
 winning souls to Christ, be drawn from their warm nests." 
 
 Burnet, in his Life of Bishop Bedell, wrote: 
 
 "Bedel!, then Bishop of Kilmore,had fifteen Protestant clergy, all 
 English, unable to speak the tongue of the people or converse with 
 them, which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in 
 popery still. The bishop observed with much regret that the English 
 had all along neglected the Irish, as a nation not only conquered but 
 indisciplinable, and that the clergy had scarce considered them as a 
 part of their charge, but had left them wholly in the hands of their 
 own priests, without taking any other care of them but the making 
 them pay their tithes." 
 
 That was a curious kind of religious missionary 
 work when the clergy who were sent out to those 
 whom they assumed to be worse and more needy 
 than the heathen, not only neglected to learn the 
 language of those to whom they were sent, but 
 openly were guilty of conduct whose atrocity was 
 the greater in that it did not seek to be concealed. 
 
154 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 In the reports of Irish matters made by Strafford 
 daring the reign of Charles I., among other enumer 
 ated things are the following: 
 
 " The people untaught through the non-residence of the clergy, 
 occasioned by the unlimited shameful numbers of spiritual pnomo- 
 tions with cure of souls which they hold by commendams; the 
 rites of the church run over without all decency of habit, order, or 
 gravity in the course of the service; the possessions of the church to 
 a great proportion in lay hands ; the bishops aliening their verv 
 principal houses and demesnes to their children and strangers, farm 
 ing out their jurisdictions to mean and unworthy persons; the popish 
 titulars the whilst obeying a foreign jurisdiction much greater than 
 theirs." 
 
 It seemed to have been a maxim with the con 
 quering power, obtaining through centuries, that it 
 was important, not that Ireland should be devel 
 oped and cultivated, and made prosperous and 
 happy, but that it should be kept in subjugation, 
 poverty and despair. The bard must be persecuted 
 like the lord whom he had served and sung. The 
 legislation done in pursuance of this policy was as 
 effectually comprehensive as the human understand 
 ing was ever able to accomplish. If ever a work 
 done on such a line deserves praise for the sagacity 
 which rendered it complete for its purposes to re 
 press instead of to exalt, it was this. The poverty 
 of resources, born as much of neglect as from the 
 resolution to hinder their improvement, served to 
 keep from Ireland not only sympathy with its condi 
 tion, but acquaintance with it and even its former- 
 history and literature, 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 155 
 
 But within this century over the minds of the na 
 tions has come a change, and it has been wrought 
 in great part by the revival of Irish lyric poetry, 
 partly new, but chiefly translations of the old. It 
 is not suitable in this connection to speak of the 
 struggles of Irish statesmen like Tone, and Emmet, 
 and O Donnell, and O Brien, and others such. It 
 is necessary to say of them only that they were 
 free to acknowledge how much they owed to the 
 Irish harp for the support that the cause they advo 
 cated received at home and abroad. The "Irish 
 Melodies" of Thomas Moore drew to his native 
 country the minds of cultivated people all over the 
 world. Doubtless this result was accomplished the 
 more easily because they were composed away 
 from that native country by a poet who, having 
 narrowly escaped suffering, when a boy, for the in 
 terest taken by him in the movement of the United 
 Irishmen, gave up his revolutionary ideas when all 
 hope of their success had disappeared, and threw 
 his lot among those from whom it had appeared to 
 be vain to effect a separation. Moore was a true 
 patriot; but he was not one to be made a martyr. 
 The great Erasmus said that not all and not many 
 are adequate for the endurance of martyrdom. Yet 
 there is a love of truth, and country, and freedom, 
 and every good that is as pure, though it may not 
 be as courageous and as daring, as that of those 
 
156 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 who are willing to suffer for it, and to fight for it 
 with unswerving eagerness even when defeat and 
 death are unmistakably seen at the end of the con 
 flict. Moore was not like Pindar, but like Anac- 
 reon. Pindar, secure in Thebes, could boldly cele 
 brate the heroes of his choice, and even admonish 
 Hiero, Arcesilaos, and other princes of his time. 
 Anacreon, an exile first from his native Teos, and 
 afterwards from Abdera and Samos, must console his 
 griefs as he might with light songs in honor of wine, 
 beauty, and youth. Yet he was far from being the 
 sensualist that he often has been regarded. The pious 
 Plato commended him well, and by Athenaeus he was 
 styled vf]q>&v nal ayaQ6$ sober and honorable. 
 Beneath his outward levity was a profound sense of 
 the seriousness which an exile can never forbear to 
 feel. It subtracts little from this argument that so 
 many of his verses are addressed to Chloe, Pyrrha, 
 and other women; for all who are familiar with the 
 poets know the wont of those whose muse is fettered 
 to sing, under one or another maiden name, the 
 perfections of their native lands. Without country 
 and home, instead of resigning himself to useless 
 regrets he would mingle in the sportive throng to 
 whom "measured cups" were to be brought, and so 
 ever be striving to live 
 
 "Warm in heart, but wisely gay." 
 
 We cannot doubt that sometimes in his breast 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 157 
 
 were thoughts like those that inspired the poet who 
 has been likened to him as when he wrote : 
 
 "Then blame not the bard if in pleasure s soft dream 
 
 He should try to forget what he never can heal; 
 Oh! give but a hope, let a vista but gleam 
 
 Through the gloom ot his country, and mark how he ll feel! 
 That instant his heart at her shrine would lay down 
 
 Every passion it nursed, every bliss it adored, 
 While the myrtle, now idly entwined with his crown, 
 
 Like the wreath of Harmodius, should cover his sword." 
 
 In England, Moore was in exile, knowing it and 
 feeling it. But his was not the soul to rouse others 
 to things impossible ; and so he submitted and bore 
 part in a government that he could not hope to 
 overthrow, laughed and jested among the gay and 
 cultured; but, when alone, yielding to patriotic 
 memories or fired with patriotic pride, mused upon 
 and put into song the noble deeds of his ancestors 
 of the far-distant time. His songs begat an interest 
 in his native country that was felt everywhere, and 
 the world was surprised and pleased to find that the 
 people whom they had despised or ignored had so 
 glorious a history, and that their bards, unknown 
 for six centuries, were superior to those of which 
 any European nation could boast. 
 
 Throughout these poems runs a vein of sadness 
 whose pathos has touched, even to the shedding of 
 tears, many a heart outside as well as inside of 
 Ireland. The laments for the braves of old times, 
 the illustrious and the humble, the soul-felt praise of 
 
15 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 their never-outdone prowess, even the songs of love, 
 especially when unrequited or otherwise disappointed 
 of its hopes of fruition, are such as lead one to 
 melancholy that seeks its most comforting relief in 
 tears. For we know, I repeat, that the bards, in 
 making their songs of devotion to their native 
 country, used to substitute for its dear name that of 
 a maiden. This name was generally one or an 
 other of the daughters of hereditary chiefs, such as 
 Grace O Malley, or Cecilia O Gara, or Kathleen 
 NyHoulahan, or Sabia, daughter of the great Bri 
 an Boru. 
 
 The amount of good done by Moore to his coun 
 try can never be calculated. But better than him 
 the Irish people of to-day love Mangan, and Davis, 
 and McGee, and others poets who knew not them 
 selves to be poets until the risings of forty years 
 back inspired them to strike the neglected harp 
 in unison with the brave efforts made by some 
 Irishmen who, conscious of not being inferior to 
 the men who fought in the days of old, were re 
 solved to strive to rival their deeds. It is interest 
 ing, but it is most sad to contemplate the brief, 
 ever-struggling careers of these patriotic singers. 
 The Irish cause, at the establishment of the Nation, 
 its journal, demanded songs, and men who had 
 never sung, and knew not that they could sing, 
 answered to the call. In poverty, sickness, abscond- 
 
IkISM LYRIC POETRY. 1 59 
 
 ings from officers of English laws, they sang their 
 songs, some old, some new; and the world marvelled, 
 as it could not but pause and listen to strains so in 
 spiriting proceeding from the mouths of young men 
 who poured them forth in obedience to an inspira 
 tion as instantaneous as exalted. Their season was 
 brief. McGee-was driven into exile, Davis died of 
 overwork and a broken heart, and Mangan, worn 
 out with disease and the contemplation of his glo 
 rious work, which seemed to have been done in 
 vain, was found dead in his poor abode, where, in 
 his tattered hat, they found, on soiled scraps of pa 
 per, fragmentary parts of other verses upon which 
 he had been employed to the last in endeavors to 
 weave them into songs for further incitement to the 
 cause for which he had died. 
 
 Some of the lyrics of these young men may be 
 compared safely with the best in any tongue, such 
 as "The battle of Fontenoy," "The Sack of Balti 
 more," "The True Irish King," and others of 
 Thomas Davis. Of the kind we know not where to 
 seek for better than the verses entitled "My Grave." 
 After answering "Oh! no, oh! no," to questions re 
 garding various spots in one of which it might be 
 digged, he thus gives directions: 
 
 " No! on an Irish green hillside, 
 On an opening lawn, but not too wide! 
 For I love the drip of the wetted trees; 
 I love not the sales, but the gentle breeze, 
 
160 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 To freshen the turf. Put no tombstone there, 
 But green sods decked with daisies fair; 
 Nor sods too deep, but so that the dew 
 The matted grass-roots may trickle through. 
 Be my epitaph writ on my country s mind, 
 He served his country and loved his kind. 
 
 " Oh! twere merry unto the grave to go, 
 If one were sure to be buried so." 
 
 These were written by a young man of twenty- 
 eight, who wrote only because the endeavors made 
 by the leading spirits of his country "required of 
 him a song." He answered with a humility less 
 only than his genius. Two years afterwards he 
 died. John Mitchell said of him: "He, more than 
 any one man, inspired, created and molded the 
 strong national feeling that possessed the Irish 
 people in 1843, made O Connell a true uncrowned 
 king, and 
 
 " Placed the strength of all the land 
 Like a falchion in his hand. " 
 
 But to our minds James Clarence Mangan must 
 rise superior to Davis and outlive him. It was he 
 who did more than any other to call out of oblivion 
 the music of Ireland s foretime. An invalid, almost 
 a dwarf, inadequate to the big dangers on the open 
 field, his cheeks grew white as the hair that prema 
 turely had bleached in comparing existing condi 
 tions of his country with those when she was the 
 educator of all Europe and her chiefs admitted to 
 be the flushest flower of chivalry. Unable to carry 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. l6l 
 
 a gun or proclaim before the multitude, he searched 
 for and brought forth the songs of his ancestors, he 
 put them in the publicly-spoken language of the 
 time, and the Irish people, as the rest of mankind, 
 were surprised to know how fertile their native 
 country had been both in great deeds and in the 
 records made of them by contemporary bards. A 
 melancholy man ; for ever melancholy has been the 
 Irish bard. Sometimes, but not often, into the 
 great deep of his country s sorrow he pours his own; 
 but he warns against the despondency that has 
 fallen upon his heart, and tries to extol the suffer 
 ings that God sends most abundantly upon those 
 who are His best beloved. Let us listen to these 
 verses from "Have Hope:" 
 
 " The wise, the thoughtful know full well 
 
 That God doth naught in vengeful ire; 
 But this deep truth all ages tell 
 
 He purifies his own by fire. 
 Woe to the man who. knows not woe, 
 
 Who never felt his soul grow dim! 
 Him threateneth dreadful overthrow; 
 
 Heaven s love and care are not for him. 
 
 I too have sorrows, unseen, alone: 
 
 My own deep griefs, griefs writ on sand, 
 Until my heart grew like a stone; 
 
 I struck it, and it hurt my hand. 
 My bitter bread was steeped in tears; 
 
 Another Cain s mark marred my brow; 
 I wept for long my wasted years: 
 
 Alas! too oft I weep them now!" 
 
1 62 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 Mangan had studied the history of other strug 
 gling peoples, and he loved to sing of what their 
 bravest had done, and hold them up as examples; 
 as in the following from "The Highway of Freedom," 
 when, after praising the brave Winkelried, he breaks 
 forth: 
 
 " We want a man like this, with power 
 
 To rouse the world with one word; 
 We want a chief to meet the hour, 
 
 And march the masses onward. 
 But, chief or none, through blood and fire, 
 
 My Fatherland, lies thy way; 
 The men must fight who dare desire 
 
 For Freedom s course a highway." 
 
 Of all peoples since the establishment of Chris 
 tianity the Irish people, though they have been the 
 most sorely tried, are most free of that sin, num 
 bered among those called by the church mortal, of 
 despairing of the mercy of God. It is this freedom 
 from despair that has upheld them throughout so 
 many vicissitudes, all of which were unhappy, 
 and made them cling with unfaltering devotion to 
 their country and the religious faith of their ances 
 tors. They have always felt that deliverance, how 
 ever long delayed, must come in the times of God, 
 if, uncomplaining to him, they will persevere in 
 endurance, striving, and prayer. This truth is well 
 illustrated in the following, the last quotation from 
 Irish lyric poetry which this article will allow. 
 
 Among many names given by the bards to Ire- 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 163 
 
 land that of Banba was one especially dear. The 
 verses following are from "The Lament for Banba." 
 They were translated from the Irish by Mangan: 
 
 "As a tree in its prime 
 
 Which the axe layeth low, 
 Didst them fall, O unfortunate land! 
 
 Not by Time, nor thy crime, 
 
 Came the shock and the blow: 
 They were given by a false felon hand! 
 
 Alas, and alas, and alas 
 For the once proud people of Banba! 
 
 " Oh! my grief of all griefs 
 
 Is to see how thy throne 
 Is usurped, whilst thyself art in thrall! 
 
 Other lands have their chiefs, 
 
 Have their kings; thou alone 
 Art a wife, yet a widow withal! 
 
 Alas, and alas, and alas 
 For the once proud people of Banba! 
 
 " The high house of O Neill 
 
 Is gone down to the dust. 
 The O Brien is clanless and banned; 
 
 And the steel, the red steel, 
 
 May no more be the trust 
 Of the faithful and brave in the land! 
 
 Alas, and alas, and alas 
 For the once proud people of Banba! " 
 
 But the bard, even if he feels, must admonish 
 against despair; for God 
 
 ** He made his prophets poets," 
 
 and he can not but foretell in tuneful measures the 
 balmy morning that will come when the night of 
 darkness is overpast; and so he concludes: 
 
164 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 tk But, no more! This our doom, 
 
 \Vhile our hearts yet are warm, 
 Let us not over-weakly deplore, 
 
 For the hour soon may loom 
 
 When the Lord s mighty hand 
 Shall be raised for our rescue once more; 
 And our grief shall be turned into joy 
 For the still proud people of Banba." 
 
 This is at last the most distinguishing character 
 istic of the lyric poetry of Ireland its unshaken 
 trust, amid innumerable sufferings, in God. The 
 Irish patriot often may feel like crying out with the 
 Hebrew: "How long, O Lord! how long?" but 
 this avails not to hinder his ever-during confidence 
 in the ultimate deliverance of his country through 
 agencies that will be of divine appointment. 
 
 Important have been the results of these attempts 
 at the revival and the imitation of the old Irish 
 lyric poetry. Not only are the other nations 
 coming to understand and sympathize with the suf 
 ferings of Ireland, but the English, the last, who 
 ought to have been first, are being led thus to un 
 derstand and sympathize. The cause of Ireland 
 has become the foremost of all causes. Its espousal 
 by Mr. Gladstone is the most important gain that 
 till now it has achieved. In the late efforts of this 
 great man in behalf of Ireland there is a pathos not 
 less striking than their grandeur. We would, and 
 we cannot help from imagining that he would, that 
 he could "return to the days of his youth," and 
 
IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 165 
 
 have again the opportunity of spending his giant 
 strength for the cause which so sorrowfully and so 
 rightfully appeals for the justice that has been with 
 held so long. Mr. Gladstone is generous as he is 
 great. But in his youth who knew or cared to know 
 anything about Ireland? Or if he knew, and if he 
 cared, there was the dread of casting away the 
 ambitions which, to young statesmen, it seems so 
 important to regard. Like the son of Gedeon, they 
 must forbear on account of their youth: 
 
 "And he said unto Jether, his first-born, Up and slay them (Zebee 
 and Salmana). But the youth drew not his sword; for he feared be 
 cause he was yet a youth." 
 
 What might he not have done if, when young and 
 strong, he had given his powerful support to this 
 cause, instead of waiting to crown his splendid 
 career by an act of justice that now, when on the 
 verge of the grave, he sees to have been due long, 
 long ago? He has fallen because of extreme age, 
 and because not yet, not quite yet, is the English 
 mind prepared to admit its mistakes and correct 
 them, and so yield to what all the world outside 
 foresees to be inevitable. Yet this instance of his 
 magnanimity, more than all his other achievements, 
 will contribute to make resplendent and enduring 
 the glory that shall be around his name. Mean 
 while the Muse of Ireland, always sad but never 
 despairing, and now more hopeful than at any time 
 
1 66 IRISH LYRIC POETRY. 
 
 since the beginning of her travail, yet prays Him 
 whom, though often sorely tempted, she has never 
 distrusted, 
 
 "To cast a look of pity on Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan." 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 \I 7ITHIN these last three centuries the histories 
 * " have spoken of the times between the fifth 
 and fifteenth centuries as the Dark Ages. This 
 habit has led a large portion of mankind to con 
 clude that, during those thousand years, the Al 
 mighty, disgusted with the failure of his purposes 
 and the thwarting of His predictions and promises, 
 withdrew the light of His countenance from the world 
 and left it to grope its way as it could amidst dark 
 ness. Even yet there are many most excellent per 
 sons who believe that in those centuries nothing 
 good was produced, for the want both of talent and 
 virtue. Such persons, concluding that there was 
 nothing worth knowing therein, study with com 
 mendable zeal the histories of ancient times down 
 to the fall of the Empire in the West, and then, 
 skipping over the intervening centuries, dwell with 
 fondness upon what has been done since. 
 
 But within the last fifty years honest minds have 
 been traveling a good deal over what had long been 
 considered execrated ground, and many an old 
 167 
 
I 68 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 error has been dispelled. This is not exactly the 
 occasion to speak of the attitude of the church 
 during that period, although it is beginning to be 
 known that it was eminently distinguished for intel 
 ligence and zeal, for founding civilizations and 
 producing saints. We are now to speak of litera 
 ture, especially as it was in Germany in the very 
 middle of that long night. 
 
 Some writer who, we do not remember just 
 now in contrasting the Germans with the French 
 and the English especially, mused about thus: To 
 the French nature assigned the land, to the English 
 the water. Land-locked on the east, the west, the 
 south, and mostly so on the north, the German, 
 having dominion only of the air, separated from the 
 rest of mankind, has lived mainly upon his own 
 resources, and living thus, he has become the most 
 thoughtful of men, the most earnest, the most sensi 
 tive, the most tender and faithful in his loves,and, 
 in the times whereof we write, the most religious. 
 Another writer* thus speaks : 
 
 "The proper germ of the romantic is the German heart, the pro 
 found sentiment, that love under many forms, which was introduced 
 into life as well as into art by the Germans first and displaced the 
 antique, unsentimental mode of living and thinking, which regarded 
 the senses and the understanding only, and wavered between pas 
 sion and philosophy. The consecration of woman, and of love 
 itself, by adoration of the earthly beloved object, is purely of Ger 
 man origin, and I might call this the leading trait of the romantic." 
 
 *Wolfgang Menzel. 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 169 
 
 We are not quite sure that this may not be re 
 garded as the most distinguishing mark of romanti 
 cism the single, the sentimental, and the honorable 
 love of women. If so the Germans are to be cred 
 ited with the highest place in its original, for they 
 are the first people who paid to woman the devo 
 tion due as to the friend of man in all the purposes 
 of his creation. In the times when other peoples 
 regarded their women quasi slaves, to be kept or 
 parted from at pleasure, the wild Germans treated 
 theirs with consideration and tenderness unknown 
 elsewhere. These followed their husbands, lovers, 
 brothers and sons to the wars, often determined the 
 occasions of battle, and in the times of defeat 
 perished along with their beloved, preferring death 
 to survival for whatever fortune might be offered by 
 the victors. Love and chastity were common pos 
 sessions to these barbarians when the latter es 
 pecially was little known elsewhere. They seemed 
 to feel that the female sex were not only to be loved 
 and defended, but to some degree, reverenced also. 
 Such sentiments led them to adopt, almost without 
 questioning, the Christian faith and the veneration 
 of the Blessed Virgin, whom they celebrated in 
 songs as sweet as mortal ears have ever heard. 
 
 English scholars have always known of the beau 
 tiful literature of the Trouveres and the Troubadours, 
 
176 THE MINNESINGER AND MEfST ERSINGER. 
 
 themes of which were the legends of Arthur and 
 the deeds of Charlemagne and his Paladins. But 
 they have known little, until lately, of how the spirit, 
 that produced it, spreading eastward and northward 
 penetrated into Germany, where it found a purer, 
 more felicitous expression in the Minnesong. 
 
 During the twelfth century among the princes of 
 Germany the Hohenstaufens of Swabia were emi 
 nently distinguished in all qualities becoming rulers 
 of a generous people. Under their benignant sway 
 Swabian manners and speech became the standard 
 for all Germans, and originated a poetry which, if 
 it had been preceded, has certainly not been suc 
 ceeded, by a better in its kind. As poetry is older 
 than prose, so the old poetry, in some of the chief- 
 est purposes for which poesy was given to mankind 
 for the subduing of their evil and the solacement of 
 their griefs, has been better than the new. It is 
 probable that the poems of Homer were invented 
 before the author had learned to write. It is cer 
 tain that the most gifted, if not all, of the Minne 
 singer could neither read nor write, and that their 
 songs, like their forerunners in Greece in the mouths 
 of the rhapsodists, owed their preservation to that 
 exquisite sweetness which led them to be memo 
 rized by a whole people and carried down by 
 fondest tradition throughout the ages of the relig 
 ious faith by which they were mainly inspired. The 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 171 
 
 devout knightly princes who ruled during a century 
 over those regions along the Rhine and the moun 
 tain land of Germany gave generous encourage 
 ment to this literature. 
 
 The Minnesinger were so called from their being 
 devoted entirely to love, when love as never before 
 nor since seized upon, and occupied, and thrilled, 
 and purified, and ennobled the heart of man. 
 Whatever there was upon earth to be loved these 
 tuneful brethren sang in strains as freshly, gushingly 
 sweet as have ever been heard in this world. They 
 sang of the brooks and woods, the flowers and 
 lakes, the hills and valleys, and their songs were 
 inspired by woman s love, and their best and fond 
 est were in honor of Mary, the Blessed Virgin, 
 Mother of God. 
 
 Now, the greatest wonder about this poetry is 
 that the most of it was produced by those who 
 knew not letters. The lover made his song in his 
 heart and his head, and then recited it. It was so 
 enchanting that all who heard would commit to 
 memory. When a bard made a song in honor of 
 his mistress it was in the fashion following that it 
 was communicated to her in confidence : He taught 
 it first to a trusted boy, who, when he had learned 
 it well, hied to where the lady dwelt, and, after she 
 had learned to recite, ate the piece of cake and 
 drank the glass of wine which she gave, and took 
 
172 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 back the message which she might deign to send to 
 the poet, his master. There is a story of a lady who 
 sent her response by letter, and quite a time elapsed 
 before the lover could find a friend who could read 
 and tell him the glad news it contained. 
 
 These poems were constructed with an artfulness 
 of rhythm and such arrangement of stanzas as no 
 poets of modern times have been able to equal. 
 The varieties among these are as numerous as are 
 those of the songs themselves. For there seemed 
 to have been an understanding, not only among the 
 poets, but of every one with himself, that no two 
 songs should be alike in rhythm. Some rhymes 
 are in immediate sequence at the ends of lines, 
 some at alternate, some in the midst, some begin 
 nings rhyming with endings, and endings rhyming 
 with beginnings. 
 
 It must be enchanting to one who knows well 
 the German language to hear these poems in the 
 original. A German-English scholar* some years 
 ago translated some of them into English, and suc 
 ceeded often in preserving the rhymes employed in 
 the original. Speaking of them, the translator says : 
 
 "We have minnesongs wherein every word of every line rhymes 
 with the other, while the lines again rhyme in the usual way amongst 
 themselves; poems wherein the last word of the line is rhymed by 
 the first of the next line; poems wherein the last word of the strophe 
 
 *A. E. Kroeg-er, " The Minnesinger of Germany." Boston: 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 173 
 
 rhymes with its first word; poems built in strophes of twenty and 
 more rhymes; poems of grammatical rhyme in the most various pos 
 sibilities; poems of word-playing rhymes, etc.; and in most cases 
 the fundamental rhythmical beauty reigns supreme and makes the 
 ornamentation seem natural outgrowth." 
 
 Let us listen to the following rhymes of endings 
 with following initials, and endings with beginning 
 words in stanzas, and then conjecture how they 
 must sound in the original: 
 
 " Rosy-colored meadows 
 To shadows we see vanish everywhere. 
 
 Woodbirds warbling dieth: 
 Sore trieth them the snow of wintry year. 
 Woe! woe! what red mouth s glow- 
 Hovers now o er the valley? 
 Ah! ah! the hours of woe! 
 
 Lovers it doth rally 
 No more; yet, its caress seems cosy. 
 
 " Ever her sweet greeting, 
 When meeting, my dear love stirs wondrous joy. 
 
 As she walks so airy. 
 
 The fairy, look! my heart leaps wondrous high. 
 Woe! woe! what red mouth s glow 
 Hovers now o er the valley? 
 Ah! ah! the hours of woe! 
 
 Lovers it doth rally 
 No more; yet I shall leave it never. 
 
 "Pleasure, sweet and steady, 
 My lady scatters with her red mouth s smile, 
 
 And her eyes sweet beaming 
 
 My dreaming, venturous thoughts with bliss beguile. 
 Woe! woe! what red mouth s glow 
 Hovers now o er the valley? 
 Ah! ah! the hours of woe! 
 
 Lovers it doth rally 
 No more, and 1 regrets must treasure. 1 
 
174 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 Fine as this is, the author is not known. The 
 following, yet finer, is from Ulricht von Lichtenstein : 
 
 "Blessed the feeling 
 That taught me the lesson thou hearest, 
 
 Gently appealing: 
 To love thee the longer the dearest, 
 And hold thee nearest; 
 
 Yea, as a wonder 
 From yonder, that bearest 
 
 Rapture the wildest, 
 Thou mildest, thou purest, thou clearest. 
 
 "I faint, I die, love, 
 With ecstasy sweetest and rarest, 
 
 When thou draw st nigh, love, 
 And me thy sweet pity declarest. 
 Then, as thou sharest, 
 
 Love, oh! I ll sing thee, 
 And bring thee bonairest 
 
 Redress, and over 
 Thee hover, thou sweetest, thou fairest. 
 
 " My hands I fold, love. 
 And stay at thy feet, humbly kneeling, 
 
 Till, like Isolde, love, 
 Thou yield to the passionate feeling 
 O er thy heart stealing; 
 Till thy behavior s 
 Sweet favors reach healing 
 
 My heart, and tender 
 Love s splendor to thee be revealing. 
 
 "I pray but send me 
 A hope ere my locks shall turn gray, love; 
 
 Thou wilt befriend me, 
 And 1 of thy grace catch a ray, love. 
 To light my way, love, 
 Thine eyes were fated 
 And mated: their swav, love, 
 
 My soul beguiling, 
 Shall smiling revive me for aye, love," 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 175 
 
 Amatory as is this poetry, it is amongst the most 
 pure. One notices that the names of the mistresses 
 of these lovers are never or seldom mentioned, being 
 supposed to be known only to themselves and the 
 boy who went between. In this respect the Minne 
 singer were superior to the Troubadours : 
 
 " The Troubadour was gay, thoughtless, and licentious, and the 
 Minnesinger were tender and plaintive, spiritual and lofty. The 
 former sings of love and chivalry, and of the various incidents of 
 love and "courtoisie;" the latter, although many Minnesinger had 
 been with the Crusaders to Palestine, seldom, if ever, alludes to the 
 adventures of chivalry and romance. He dwells principally upon 
 the inward feelings of the soul, upon the refined sentiments and 
 pang of the tender passion. His strains are chaste and melancholy; 
 they are marked by a disdain of sensuality and of the corruptions of 
 the world, with allusions to the contemporary history of Germany, 
 and occasional aspirations after the purer joys of another world and 
 the sublime visions of eternity."* 
 
 Such delicacy was a most fitting quality in the 
 heart of a poet who would essay to celebrate the 
 excellence of the Blessed Virgin. Of the number 
 less poems in her honor are the Lay by Walther 
 von der Vogelweide; "The Golden Smithy" of Con 
 rad von Wurzburg; and the "Great Hymn" that 
 has been assigned to Gottfried von Strassburg. Of 
 all these the Hymn of Gottfried is at the head. It 
 is wonderful how many images of exquisite beauty 
 rose to the mind of the bard in contemplating the 
 matchless excellence of the Mother of our Lord, 
 comparing, or trying to compare, with her all beau- 
 
 *" Foreign Quarterly Review," xx. 71. 
 
176 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 tiful things and all combinations of beautiful things 
 upon earth. We think, when we have read many 
 of these, that the singer must soon end his song from 
 exhaustion of all that we remember to have seen 
 that was most fair; but it continuously rises in fervor 
 in new and fresher images, through pages and pages, 
 with such as these : 
 
 " Thou bloom of rose, thou lily grace, 
 Thou glorious queen in that high place, 
 
 Where ne er the face 
 Of woman shone before thee. 
 
 " Thou rosy vale, thou violet plain. 
 
 u Thou lovely, golden flower-glow, 
 Thou bloom st on every maiden s brow; 
 
 And glory s glow 
 E en like a robe floats on thee. 
 Thou art the blooming heaven-branch 
 AVhich blooming blooms in many a grange. 
 
 Great care and strange 
 God lavishes, maid, upon thee. 
 
 "Thou sheen of flowers through clover-place. 
 
 u O beauty o er all beauty s birth! 
 Never rare stone, or herb, or earth, 
 
 Or man bring forth 
 Such wondrous beauty, maiden " 
 
 and many, many more as beautiful, until, as if rec 
 ognizing, late, reluctant, that his song must come to 
 an end, he pours out this last fond praise : 
 
 " Thou of pure grace a clear, fair vase! 
 Of steady virtue an adamas, 
 
 A mirror glass 
 Of bliss to bliss surrendered. 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 177 
 
 Thou fortune s and salvation s host, 
 Thou love-seed of the Holy Ghost; 
 To all sin lost 
 
 Thy image was engendered 
 On sacred place, where at God s call 
 
 God s Son sank down from heaven. 
 Like on the flowers sweet rain doth fall, 
 Such gentle sweetness He to all 
 Whom reached his call, 
 
 Early and late hath given." 
 
 E en now it appears that he could not have ceased 
 except to rise to a loftier theme 
 
 " Oh sweet, fair Christ." 
 
 Those of us who do not know the German language 
 well may be excused for some envy for those who 
 do, when Kroeger s translation sounds with such 
 rapturous sweetness in our ears. Von der Hagan, 
 a German critic, speaking of this hymn, says : 
 
 " It is the verv glorification of love (minne) and of minnesong; it 
 is the heavenly bridal song, the mysterious Solomon s Song-, which 
 mirrors its miraculous object in a stream of deep and lovely images, 
 linking them all together into an imperishable wreath; yet even 
 here, in its profundity and significance of an artistic and numerously 
 rhymed construction, always clear as crystal, smooth, and graceful." 
 
 Except the earliest bards of ancient Greece, the 
 Minnesinger are the most wonderful that are known 
 to history. They illustrate what may be done by a 
 gifted, loyal, devout people in a country whose rul 
 ers they love and ought to love. During a period of 
 one hundred and fifty years these unlettered min 
 strels poured forth a music that had not been heard 
 since the days of Alcaeus and Sappho. 
 
178 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 The Swabian dynasty passed away and the house 
 of Hapsburg under Rudolph, came to the throne. 
 The increase of power and wars among them, dis 
 couraged both religion and song. To gentle 
 influences succeeded the rude manners of the war 
 rior, and the Minnesinger laid aside the cithern. 
 Heretofore poesy dwelt in the country, in the woods 
 and fields, by the margins of lakes and streams, on 
 the sides of hills and mountains, near to the church 
 or monastery where the Blessed Virgin inspired its 
 best endeavors. Henceforward the muse forsook 
 these sylvan retreats and took up its abode in 
 towns, such as Mentz, Augsburg, Strassburg, and 
 Nuremberg. Yet, assuming to be moral and seri 
 ous, if not devout, the new poets, in some things 
 more learned than the old, for the unlicensed, ever- 
 varying, yet ever-sweet rhythm of their songs substi 
 tuted those arbitrary rules which took away most of 
 the sweetness from German poetry. Their very dis 
 dain of the Minnesinger showed their unworthiness 
 to be their successors. Henceforth song must en 
 ter upon a new career. The tenderness, the fresh 
 ness of love withered away, and a music insipid 
 came on after one that was unapproachably delic 
 ious. This was the music of the Meistersinger. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the best poets have 
 been from the country, either born therein or there 
 in dwelling, and fond of country existence. On 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 179 
 
 the increase of the importance of the German 
 barons, and the constant feuds and wars risen among 
 them, poetry left the fields of strife and carnage and 
 sought the security needed for one free, simple, 
 gentle of spirit, within the walls of fortified towns. 
 The merchant, the artisan, the inventors of paper 
 and the printing-press, the builders of houses, horse- 
 shoers, cobblers these took up the lyre at the gates 
 where the Minnesinger had dropped it in his flight 
 from scenes of violence and his grief for the de 
 cline of the child-like devoutness of his country 
 men. It is a curious commentary upon the poetry 
 of the Meistersinger that its culmination took place 
 in the person of one who stood among the hum 
 blest classes of artisans. Yet Hans Sachs, the 
 shoemaker, was a great genius. Had he lived a 
 century or two before, had he been an indweller of 
 a home remote from towns, had he had the ancient 
 simple love of his countrymen for the good, the 
 simple, the innocent, he would have been one of 
 the greatest of the bards. Except Lope ie Vega, 
 he is the most voluminous of writers. For years 
 upon years this artisan of the town plied his talent 
 for verse-making, and Germany was flooded with 
 his productions on the endless varieties of themes 
 which he sang. Though not without his seasons of 
 feeling, deep and intense, yet we look to him in 
 vain for the chivalrousness, the gallantry, the de- 
 
l8o THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 vout fervor of the minnesong. The music he made 
 was not for high-born maiden in bower or captivity, 
 nor for the benign Queen of Saints, nor even for 
 simple damsel of the valley, but mainly for those 
 of his own class in the streets, and taverns, and 
 wine-houses of the town. Of his six thousand 
 poems the far greater part has been lost, and his 
 celebrity rests mainly on his having been the great 
 est of that class which came in with the new depar 
 ture of German literature. 
 
 Henceforward was a marked declension from the 
 gentle manners of the Swabian dynasty. Among 
 the makers of the earlier songs were many of that 
 old German aristocracy who, though unlearned in 
 books, were most gifted in courtly graces and in the 
 training of the heart to the behests of honor and 
 religion. Poetry, descending from lords and knights 
 to tradesmen and artisans, lost most of its warmth 
 and tenderness and accommodated itself to their un- 
 romantic lives. Germany was now engaged more 
 in working for the future than in meditating upon 
 and praising the past. Towns and cities were to 
 be multiplied, and enlarged, and fortified, trade 
 and commerce extended the practical to supplant 
 the poetical. To the undoubting docility and obedi 
 ence to religious authority was to succeed a sullen in 
 dependence in harmony with the wordly spirit of the 
 age among a people who, notwithstanding all their 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEIST ERSINGER. l8i 
 
 vicissitudes, have ever been noted for thoughtfulness 
 and earnestness of purpose beyond every other. 
 For it is to the earnest thoughtfulness of Germans 
 that are to be attributed those religious conflicts 
 more fierce, more disastrous than have been known 
 to other peoples. Long before Luther the simple 
 faith of the times of the Minnesinger had been 
 giving way to another. That other was as serious 
 as its predecessor more serious, indeed; for the 
 former, without questioning, accepted the teachings 
 of the Church as a child takes its first lessons from 
 its mother, and the adult Christian did not lose in 
 that primeval time the faith and the tenderness 
 of childhood. In the development of arts and 
 science, and trade and politics, that German in 
 tellect, always earnest, began to subject the dogmas 
 of religion to the same tests of investigation that 
 accompanied that of sublunary affairs. 
 
 The poetry of Germany in the hands of the 
 Meistersinger must follow in that march of trade, 
 and mechanics, and politics. The gentle songsters 
 of the foretime had sung of female loveliness mainly, 
 and after that perfect type set by Mary the Immac 
 ulate. It was a poetry unconfined by critical rules 
 of verse or rhythm, pouring itself joyous, tender, 
 irregular, just as love and devoutness find sponta 
 neous expression from one and another loving, 
 overflowing heart. And now frequenters of shops 
 
1&2 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 and taverns, without depth of sentiment of any 
 sort, unsimple, hilarious with wine, emulous of 
 wealth, measured their verses as they measured 
 their cloths and their boards, and, instead of the 
 bird, the purling stream, the gentle wind, made their 
 song keep time to the watchman s beat, the ham 
 mer, and the anvil. 
 
 We do not mean by such comparison to deny 
 that there was a considerable part of the new form of 
 poetry that was good. Some of it was very good, 
 a small portion excellent. The writer in the For 
 eign Quarterly Review before quoted speaks thus 
 of the popular songs and ballads : 
 
 "They were of many sorts: religious songs; there were ballads 
 for the different trades and callings of life, such as the fisherman s, 
 the hunter s, the shepherd s, the husbandman s, of which the melody 
 as well as the words are imitative of the sounds and scenes familiar 
 to each. The fisherman s song is distinguished by a monotonous, 
 hollow tune resembling the moaning of the wave striking against 
 the shore. That of the hunter is shrill and wild; that of the shep 
 herd soft and calm. The songs of the husbandman are varied, some 
 for each season, adapted to the various works of the field. In several 
 towns and villages in Germany, towards the beginning of the spring, 
 winter, represent by a jack-straw, is driven out by the children 
 amidst joyous clamors. The wine-dresser s song is like those of 
 old, satirical and somewhat licentious. The miner s lays are among 
 the best. They are marked by a sort of religious awe, as his labor is 
 among the mysteries of the subterraneous creation; they tell of 
 sylphs and other genii which guard the treasures concealed in the 
 bowels of the earth." 
 
 Some of the religious ballads and songs have 
 much depth of feeling. They are without the 
 sweetness and the joyousness of the minnesong, 
 
THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSlNGER. 183 
 
 but in great part are hymns upon the mysteries of 
 Christianity faith, eternity, etc. Long before Lu 
 ther, we repeat, the earnest, deeply religious mind 
 of the Germans had grown restive under the con 
 straints of the Church, and, because of the very 
 simplicity of her teachings, been gaining habits of 
 questioning and doubting that were destined, under 
 a bold leader, to culminate in revolt and war. Lu 
 ther was a man of eminent gifts. He was an orator 
 and he was a poet two gifts that seldom unite in 
 an individual. Not that he was a great poet, nor 
 great as an orator. His poetry is hard, severe ; but 
 much of it is deep, melancholy and wonderfully 
 impressive. Then he was a statesman, and could 
 have been a warrior. We have seen that the mind 
 of Germany had been already growing restive with 
 thoughts of independence. Upon this current of 
 change the young monk, more fitted for the forum 
 and the field than for the altar and the cloister, 
 found himself drifting. The consciousness of ex 
 traordinary powers to lead and control mankind, 
 courage that no danger seemed to daunt, a will 
 changeless as the course of the stars, a temper that 
 burned with the fierceness of a furnace seven times 
 heated, he led that career the culmination of which 
 himself, with all his powers, did not clearly foresee. 
 
 With the advent of Luther came on a wonderful 
 change in the prose literature of Germany. Hith- 
 
I&4 THE MINNESINGER AND MEISTERSINGER. 
 
 erto it was almost entirely worthless, the great prose 
 writers employing the Latin tongue. The lead of 
 Luther excited the nation throughout to all its bor 
 ders. The Meistersinger, almost the only poets who 
 then existed, lent their art, such as it was, to the 
 new doctrines. The German nation became dispu 
 tants with tongue, and pen, and sword. When 
 men s minds are occupied mainly with thoughts and 
 discussions upon the forms of religious worship and 
 the dogmas of conflicting faiths, the muses, averse to 
 such conflicts, absent themselves from earth and 
 leave mankind to wrangle out their lives in such 
 language as they can find without inspiration from 
 them. Already had poesy drooped her wings when 
 she was taken from the fountain and the hill-side, 
 the meadow and the lake, and made to dwell in 
 walled towns and mingle in the business of the 
 streets and the workshops. But now, when she 
 was called upon for rhymes upon free-will, justifica 
 tion by faith, the worthlessness of works, and such 
 like themes, she ceased to soar at all, and retired, 
 to be again invoked in another age. 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GOETHE. 
 
 THE revolution produced in Germany by the 
 movement known as the "Reformation" was 
 most discouraging to polite literature. The song, 
 devout and cheerful as it had been, was hushed, 
 and German imagination for a hundred years 
 brooded in silence or gave utterance to its dreams 
 in verses worse even than those of the Meistersinger. 
 Those minds, always thoughtful, yearned for they 
 knew not precisely what, and must come at length 
 to let other peoples direct their aspirations and 
 give them strange tongues. It is most remarkable 
 what, in the midst of this season of inactivity and 
 discouragement, the other nations of Europe did 
 for Germany. 
 
 The Saxon period, so named from the native 
 home of Luther, was essentially prose, but it did 
 wonders in developing German intellect and lan 
 guage. The fierceness with which Luther warred, 
 his mighty influence among his countrymen, aroused 
 within them a new impulse both to read and to write, 
 and the German language became one of the richest 
 in Europe for the discussion of the serious concerns 
 85 
 
1 86 THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 
 
 of man, mortal and eternal. But it is tiresome and 
 it is sad to read the literature of that period, its 
 gloomy complainings, its unrelenting warrings, its 
 gradual, inevitable descent into the depths of mys 
 ticism and doubt, which have made faithless and 
 godless so many of that gifted and naturally most 
 religious people. To the influences of these in 
 ternal struggles were added, among others less impor 
 tant, those of the Thirty Years War, similar in du 
 ration and disastrous consequences to the Wars 
 of the Roses. No people fight like the Germans, es 
 pecially when they fight with one another. So brave, 
 so serious, the German knows not to yield, except to 
 superior physical force, and when he yields at length 
 to that, it is a sullen submission that waits for other 
 times and other opportunities to renew the conflict. 
 In these terrific wars of many kinds German litera 
 ture, poor as it had become for the soothing, sweet 
 behests of poetry, seemed destined to return into 
 the barbarism of the past, until finally, ashamed, 
 disgusted with its own doings, and discouraged with 
 the possibilities of its endeavors, the German mind 
 sought, as it seemed, to ignore what it had known, 
 to yield its individuality, and engraft upon itself a 
 foreign existence. 
 
 It is interesting to contemplate that continuous 
 travelling hither and thither, during the latter part 
 of the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth cen- 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GOETHE. 1 87 
 
 turies, in search of foreign sentiments and foreign 
 forms of expression. It reminds one of the mis 
 sions of the first rude Romans, seeking amid cultured 
 peoples for laws with which to control and guide 
 their ignorant and lawless populace. Fortunately 
 for German literature, no single foreign nationality 
 could please universally. Fierce were the struggles 
 among the different invaders who had been invited 
 the Greeks, the French, the Dutch, the English. 
 Of these the French under the lead first of Opitz, 
 and afterwards and especially of Voltaire, seemed 
 as if they must prevail; and the German nation ap 
 peared as if anxious to give themselves up entirely 
 to the people who in all respects were least similar 
 to themselves. The German, naturally simple, 
 thoughtful, tender, in the times whereof we write 
 seemed to have grown ashamed of himself for being 
 such, and endeavored to become gay, supple, affec 
 ted. "German simplicity of manners, nay, the 
 very language itself, disappeared from the court 
 and from the castles of the nobility. The higher 
 literati, the public officials, even the richer burghers, 
 ceased to speak their mother-tongue."* Menzel 
 says that French influence extended even to the 
 habits of physical life: "Paleness came into favor; 
 a lady without the vapors belonged not to good so 
 ciety. The hearty daughters of German country 
 
 *Metcalf s "German Literature." 
 
I 88 THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 
 
 gentlemen, sound to the core, painted themselves 
 white, starved themselves thin, and drank vinegar, 
 in order to get up the genuine invalid look. " What 
 was to become of the patriotism and the morals of 
 a people thus habituated was plain to foresee. 
 
 We have made these observations preliminary to 
 a brief study of that man who. belonging not 
 specially to any of the various schools, employed 
 the ideas and the discipline of each as it hap 
 pened to suit his purposes or his whims. There 
 has never lived a man about whom have been more 
 conflicting opinions than Goethe. Not as to his 
 claims to be regarded as a great genius. On 
 these there has been and can be but one opin 
 ion. It is the most illustrious name in the litera 
 ture of Europe since Shakespeare. In some re 
 spects Goethe went beyond even him. For not 
 only was he a great poet, but he was a scientist 
 and a discoverer in science. He was conversant 
 with art. From his youth, even his childhood, to 
 old age, far-advanced old age, the possession of 
 health, pecuniary means, all good opportunities, 
 combined with sleepless industry in study and in 
 work all these allowed him to do his very best in 
 the various fields of his endeavors. An aristocrat, 
 or at least of aristocratic ambitions and pretensions 
 sympathizing only with the aristocracy or other 
 fortunates who, like the rich Persicus of Juvenal, 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCKTHE. 189 
 
 during an insignificant misfortune are wont to re 
 ceive contributions that compensate over and over 
 for all losses, real and imaginary he became a 
 trimmer in literature as in politics. The distin 
 guishing characteristic of Goethe s being was selfish 
 ness. He was the most exquisitely, imperturbably, 
 continuously selfish mortal that has ever lived in 
 this world, at least among those of, or in approxi 
 mation to, his own social and intellectual rank. 
 Some years ago we read his Autobiography, which, 
 instead of an apologia, a name usually given by 
 modest men to such a work, he styled "Poetry and 
 Truth." We have been sometimes sorry that we 
 read it. In this book it is wonderful to notice the 
 coldness with which he alludes to the various love- 
 passages he had with young girls; how he trifled 
 with their affections; how little he cared for their 
 disappointments, their sense of humiliation, and how 
 he seemed to have neither remorse nor regret for 
 the unhappiness that resulted from changes of his 
 purposes and violations of his pledges. It was suf 
 ficient, in his mind, for them to remember that such 
 changes and violations had been done by Johann 
 Wolfgang von Goethe, to whom all mankind owed 
 too much gratitude for service upon various fields 
 to let him be disturbed by remembrance of what, 
 in hours of youthful levity, he may have said and 
 done in the society of a few individual girls and 
 
19 THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 
 
 women. Not that even in this world he did not 
 have to pay for such things, and in ways poignant 
 and humiliating. 
 
 In an age of despotism a selfish man will ever be 
 a time-server. This was an age of despotism man 
 ifold, not only political, as Prussia has ever wielded 
 but religious and literary. French literature first 
 and most powerful, Greek literature next, English 
 literature last. Lessing, single-minded, combative, 
 heroic, had to fight single-handed, and died reeking 
 with the sweat of battle before he could raise or 
 hear a shout of victory. Had he been joined by 
 Goethe, whom without a pang he would have been 
 ready to acknowledge and follow as leader, the war 
 would sooner and easily have been ended. Yet 
 this man, in whose intellect were characteristics of 
 the most gifted of all ages, ancient and modern, 
 gave himself to the management of the political 
 affairs of a German duke, and in hours of leisure 
 humored and flattered and tantalized these several 
 despotisms, according to the individual caprices 
 and whims of each. In this various work the 
 things which he did are among the wonders of the 
 world. Yet of all wonders connected with them this 
 is the chiefest: that none of them were done by 
 actuation of love of country, love of mankind, or 
 love of God. Not that Goethe was not a man of 
 feeling. So much the worse, and he pursued that 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 191 
 
 role of the great poet in creating concrete exist 
 ences out of his own heart s experiences. He had 
 loved the lithe little Gretchen, and her he immortal 
 ized in Faust. He knew all that is to be felt by 
 an ardent nature. 
 
 In the case of Margaret in Faust, that one of 
 the most powerful of the productions of the human 
 intellect, it is piteous to witness how soon and how 
 far one heretofore innocent may fall when tempted 
 beyond endurance by the evil spirit. Mephistoph- 
 eles, who at first is represented as sufficiently 
 reprobate and hideous, has already grown, by the 
 time he has first seen this poor child of fifteen 
 years, to feel apparently some pity, and he avows 
 that such perfect innocence is beyond his power to 
 corrupt. To Faust, who has pointed her out to 
 him, he says : 
 
 " She there? She s coming from confession, 
 Of every sin absolved; for I 
 Behind her chair was listening nigh. 
 So innocent is she, indeed, 
 That to confess she had no need. 
 I have no power o er souls so green."* 
 
 Yet he is held to his compact, and, to satisfy the 
 eager lover, that very night begins the attack by 
 placing a casket of jewels on a press in the child s 
 chamber. Preparing herself for her couch, singing 
 the while "There was a king in Thule," and notic- 
 
 * Scene vii., Bayard Taylor s translation. 
 
192 THE AUDACITY OF GCKTHE. 
 
 ing the casket, it appears that the evil one has 
 found at once the weakness it will be most prom 
 ising to assail. After adorning herself with the 
 jewels and getting before her poor mirror, how 
 mournful these words which she utters: 
 
 u Were but the ear-rings mine alone! 
 One has at once another air. 
 What helps one s beauty, youthful blood? 
 One may possess them well and good; 
 But none the more do others care. 
 They praise us half in pity, sure: 
 
 To gold still tends, 
 
 On gold depends, 
 All, all! Alas, we poor! * 
 
 Never was a tale of ruin more pitifully told. The 
 pinching of the \vants of a poor estate, harsh do 
 mestic rule, notice, attentions, and devotions from 
 a young man handsome, aristocratic, courtly, and 
 wealthy; then native innocence, habitual piety, ab 
 horrence of dishonor, wickedness, and shame, wail- 
 ings, and prayers before and after her fall these 
 fill one s heart with a sympathy that brings frequent 
 tears to one s eyes : 
 
 " My peace is gone, 
 My he art is sore; 
 I never shall find it, 
 Ah! never more. "f 
 
 "Incline, O Maiden, 
 
 Thou sorrow-laden, 
 Thy gracious countenance upon my pain! 
 
 * Scene xv. { Ib., scene viii. 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 193 
 
 The sword thy heart in, 
 With anguish smarting, 
 Thou lookest up to where thy Son is slain." * 
 
 That by her spinning-wheel at home, this in the 
 donjon cell to an image of the Mater Dolorosa 
 fixed in a shrine in a niche of the wall. Of these 
 lyrics Bayard Taylor says: "If the reverie at the 
 spinning-wheel be a sigh of longing, this is a cry 
 for help equally wonderful in words and metre, yet 
 with a character equally elusive when we attempt 
 to reproduce it in another language." The slaying 
 of Margaret s brother Valentine by Faust, the un 
 intentional death of her mother produced by the 
 daughter, the discovery of her shame, the charge of 
 infanticide when these have brought insanity, we 
 should have to search long to find a scene so heart 
 rending as that in prison the night before her exe 
 cution, when the seducer, who appears to be more 
 disconcerted than remorseful, essays her rescue. 
 When she has recognized him at last, refusing his 
 persuasions, though without reproach, she tells him: 
 
 * Now I ll tell thee the graves to give us. 
 Thou must begin to-morrow 
 
 The work of sorrow! 
 The best place give to my mother, 
 Then close at her side my brother, 
 
 And me a. little away, 
 But not too very far, I pray! 
 And here, on my right breast, my baby lay! 
 Nobody else will lie beside me!"f 
 
 *Scene xviii. f Scene xxv. 
 
THE AUDACITY OF fJCK 
 
 Now, one reading this poem for the first time 
 might suppose that this miner of female innocence 
 Would remain and share her fate, or live to be con 
 sumed of remorse and be for ever lost. Not he. 
 When Mephistopheles, at the dawning of the day, 
 cries petulantly and threateningly to him: "Come! 
 or I ll leave her in the lurch and thee," not another 
 word from Faust of sympathy, counsel or remon 
 strance. What is worse, and what seems incredi 
 ble, the poet, departing from the legend, leaves us 
 to infer that he, too, like the poor penitent girl, 
 has escaped the perdition of the soul. The Ger 
 man historian before quoted, speaking of Goethe s 
 habitual compounding with vices, even those the 
 most hideous and revolting, writes thus. 
 
 " Goethe did not shrink from playing this part even into the next 
 life. His Faust was meant to show that the privilege of the aristo 
 cratic voluptuary extended beyond the grave. This, F^aust may 
 offend against every moral feeling, against fidelity and honor; he 
 may constantly silence the voice of conscience, neglect every duty, 
 gratify his effeminate love of pleasure, his vanity, and his caprices, 
 even at the expense and the ruin of others, and sell himself to the 
 very devil; he goes to heaven notwithstanding, for he is a gentleman, 
 he is of the privileged class. 
 
 In his youth Goethe had paid some slight respect 
 if not to religion, at least to the regard that all 
 communities have or profess to have for morality 
 and decency. But by the times wherein Faust, 
 2 he Elective Affinities and Wilhelm Meister s Ap 
 prenticeship were produced the new religion that 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 195 
 
 he had invented, a Neo-Platonism founded after 
 long studies of Paracelsus and Boer-haave, had de 
 veloped to his satisfaction; and the founder being 
 leader at the court of Weimar, at the head of the 
 literature of Germany, having watched not only 
 without pain but with pleasure the growing demor 
 alization among all ranks of his countrymen, 
 henceforth his lovers, loving whom and how they 
 may, are to receive no punishment, not only from 
 the municipal laws and from public opinion, but 
 even from remorse and from hell ! It was, indeed, 
 a humiliated state of domestic society when mar 
 riages "under the apron," as they were called, were 
 common, whereat clergymen were required, without 
 much urging thereto by the dukes and barons on 
 whom they depended, to take in wedlock country 
 girls and housemaids whom ///<?>> had wearied of. In 
 such a society a man gifted, rich, powerful may do 
 and say about as he pleases, and, instead of losing, 
 continue to gain more and more in influence upon 
 opinions and habits. Then the exquisite pathos, 
 the delicate tenderness, the marvellous dramatic 
 interest of many portions of these works, inter 
 spersed often with lyrical verses of almost une 
 qualled excellence, serve to lead even virtuous and 
 pious minds to withhold much of that condemnation 
 which as a whole they deserve. In Wilhelm Meis- 
 tcr the old harper and the child Mignon cannot but 
 
196 THE AUDACITY OF GfKTHE. 
 
 be remembered with a tender sadness that it is grate 
 ful to feel. Let us notice this extract from book ii. 
 chapter xi., at the conclusion of the previous play 
 ing and singing that the old man had rendered 
 before Meister and his motley suite of women: 
 
 " The old harper remained silent; his fingers wandered carelessly 
 among the chords of his instrument; finally he struck them more 
 boldly and sang as follows: 
 
 " What sounds are those which from the wall 
 
 And o er the bridge I hear? 
 Those strains should echo through this hall, 
 
 And greet a monarch s ear. 
 So spake the king; the page retires: 
 His answer brought, the king desires 
 
 The minstrel to appear. 
 
 " Hail, sire! and hail, each gallant knight! 
 
 Fair dames, I greet ye well! 
 Like heaven, this hall with stars is bright. 
 
 But who your names may tell? 
 What matchless glories round me shine! 
 But tis not now for eyes like mine 
 
 On scenes like these to dwell. 
 
 "The minstrel raised his eyes inspired, 
 
 And struck a thrilling strain: 
 Each hero s heart is quickly fired, 
 
 Each fair one thrills with pain; 
 The king enchanted with the bard, 
 His magic talent to reward, 
 
 Presents his golden chain. 
 
 " Oh! deck me with no chain of gold; 
 
 Such gift becomes the knight, 
 Before whose warrior eyes so bold 
 
 The rushing squadrons fight. 
 Or let the glittering bauble rest 
 Upon your chancellor s honored breast 
 
 He ll deem the burden light. 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 197 
 
 " I sing but as the young- bird 
 That carols in the tree; 
 
 The rapture of the music brings 
 Its own reward to me. 
 
 Yet would I utter one request, 
 
 That of your wine one cup the best- 
 Be given to-day by thee. 
 
 "The cup is brought; the minstrel quaffed. 
 
 He thrills with joy divine. 
 Thrice happy home, where such a draught 
 
 Is given, and none repine! 
 When fortune smiles, then think of me, 
 And thank kind Heaven, as I thank thee, 
 
 For such a cup of wine. " 
 
 When the harper, at the conclusion of the song, seized a goblet of 
 wine that stood before him, and turning towards his benefactors^ 
 quaffed it off with a look of thankfulness, a shout of joy rose from 
 the whole assembly." 
 
 Touching as this is, the one following, from book 
 iii. chapter i., is more so. Mignon, yet a child in 
 years, though now grown towards womanhood in 
 heart from sorrow, the fruit of a love not only for 
 bidden but revolting in its kind, had been spirited 
 away from Italy, her native country, and had been 
 made to promise, amid circumstances most impres 
 sive upon her sensitive nature, never to divulge the 
 fact of her expulsion, nor the place, nor even the 
 country, of her birth. The softness of the manners 
 of Meister had served to draw her affections towards 
 him, and, longing ever for the home of her childhood 
 she hoped that this young man, who seemed so good, 
 and was so kind, might eventually carry her there. 
 But, remembering her promise, the little outcast 
 
198 THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 
 
 could only strive to make known by innuendo the 
 place whither she yearned to go. Taught by the 
 master of a troop of strolling players to sing and 
 play upon the cithern, one day she sang before 
 Meister this song: 
 
 Know st thou the land where the lemon-tree blows, 
 Where deep in the bower the gold orange grows? 
 \Vhere zephyrs from Heaven die soltly away, 
 And the laurel and myrtle tree never decay? 
 Know st thou it? Thither, oh! thither with thee, 
 My dearest, my fondest! with thee would I flee. 
 
 " Know st thou the hall with its pillared arcades, 
 Its chambers So vast and its long colonnades, 
 Where the statutes of marble with features so mild 
 Ask, Why have they used thee so harshly my child? 
 Know st thou it? Thither, oh! thither with thee, 
 My dearest, my fondest! with thee would I flee. 
 
 " Know st thou the Alp which the vapor enshrouds, 
 Where the bold muleteer seeks his way through the clouds? 
 In the cleft of the mountain the dragon abides, 
 And the rush of the stream tears the rock from its sides. 
 Know st thou it? Thither, oh! thither with thee, 
 Leads our way, father; then come, let us flee. 
 
 "She commenced each verse in a solemn, measured tone, as if she 
 had intended to direct attention to something wonderful and had 
 some important secret to communicate. At the third line her voice 
 became lower and fainter; the words Know st thou it? were pro 
 nounced with a mysterious, thoughtful expression, and the Thith 
 er, oh! thither was uttered with an irresistible feeling of longing, 
 and at every repetition of the words Let us flee! she changed 
 her intonation. At one time she seemed to entreat and to implore, 
 and at the next to become earnest and pursuasive. After having 
 sung the song- the second time she paused for a moment, and, atten 
 tively surveying Wilhelm, she asked hin^ Know st thou the land? 
 It must be Italy, he replied; but where did you learn the sweef 
 little song? Italy! observed Mignon thoughtfully; if you are 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 199 
 
 going thither, take me with you. 1 am too cold here. Have you 
 ever been there, darling? asked Wilhelm; but Mignon made no 
 reply, and could not be induced to converse further." 
 
 Now, would it not be supposed that the hero of 
 a tale in which there are such as these was one of 
 heroic spirit indeed, fit for the achievement of 
 heroic action? He was scholarly as he was conde 
 scending to such as the harper and Mignon. 
 Among other things in that line he has studied 
 what one might style the sphynx of literature, 
 Shakespeare s Hamlet, and come nearer than any 
 other critic before or since, in interpreting its sub 
 tle, multifold meanings. On the contrary, this 
 Wilhelm Meister, for any manly purpose, was not 
 worth, not only the salt he ate, but the air he 
 breathed. He had been created, it seemed, merely 
 to show with what unlicensed liberty a young man 
 of education and means to keep himself from ser 
 vile work might disport himself with any pleasure 
 to whicn his selfish, indolent being might have a 
 fancy. Then in Elective Affinities, as if to put 
 down in history and show to coming generations 
 how lost to religious obligation, how fallen from 
 common decency, was that in which he lived, 
 Gcethe composed, though in forms most singularly 
 attractive, a history of loves whose equals, every 
 thing considered, in sinfulness, and nastiness, man 
 kind have never known, at least in books, It is 
 
200 THE AUDACITY OF GCPLTHE. 
 
 simply diabolical, this history of the love of Ed 
 ward and Ottilie for each other, and that between 
 the former s wife and his friend. Surely there was 
 no belief in God in the man who, at the death of 
 this false husband, following soon after that of her 
 whom he foolishly, forbiddenly loved, whose body was 
 so placed by the side of hers that no other could be 
 put with them in the same vault, concludes thus : 
 "So lie the lovers, sleeping side by side. Peace 
 hovers above their resting place. " 
 
 Goethe seemed to have regarded himself as the 
 poet for the aristocrat and the voluptuary. It is 
 strange that in a Christian age its greatest intellect 
 should have so outraged, in his published works, the 
 ideas of honor and religion; stranger that such out 
 rages should have been commended by a majority 
 of the great, the titled, the wealthy, and the culti 
 vated of his countrymen. There were, and are, 
 those who suspect that Goethe had no belief in God, 
 or at least none in a fature state of punishment 
 and reward. At all events, he must have been 
 among those, now so numerous, who regard what 
 Christians call the Bible as a book of man s crea 
 tion, containing fond allegories and fables in the 
 midst of narratives fit only for primers of school 
 children or Sunday evening readings of ignorant 
 aged crones, who must have, and ought to be kindly 
 afforded, some little light, genuine or spurious, as 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 2OI 
 
 they are about to immergeinto the "dark valley and 
 the shadow of death." 
 
 Honor and patriotism were words which with 
 Goethe seemed to have been mere sounds signifying 
 nothing. As for honor in love, wherein that noble 
 sentiment may sometimes be made to pass over its 
 most trying ordeal, this he treated with undisguised 
 contempt. His most distinguished and interesting 
 lovers were those who felt and indulged dishonora 
 ble loves. A genuinely honorable love, inspired by 
 that tender, faithful sentiment of the German of the 
 foretime, mutually felt between one honest man and 
 one honest woman, so told as to be made interes 
 ting to readers, is not, or scarcely, to be found in all 
 of Goethe s works. To make his lovers interesting 
 he seemed to have believed it necessary to spice 
 them with dishonor. He made one and another of 
 his heroes false, treacherous, seeking the beloved 
 object mainly because, the property of another, he 
 could not possess her without risk and dishonor. 
 Wifehood, upon which the blessing of Heaven 
 might be confidently invoked, compared with love 
 illicit and ever new, he looked at as a dammed and 
 stagnant pool compared with the first gushings of 
 ever-fresh waters from the fountain before reaching 
 the channel that was made for their confined and 
 legitimate course. Never had been such a time- 
 server, such a flatterer of his own age, in which, 
 
202 THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 
 
 among those who stood in the very lead of social 
 existence, there was no love worth feeling or none 
 worth talking about except such as was forbidden 
 of God and man. In fine, he, the grandest intel 
 lect that three centuries have produced, more grossly 
 and recklessly dishonored the best traditions of his 
 country than any German of any age. He gazed 
 with leering eye, and chuckling showed to the eyes 
 of others evil as his own, sights from which his 
 ancestor of two thousand years before, on the banks 
 of the Danube, the Rhine, or the Weser, would have 
 turned his face away in modesty and chaste fear. 
 
 Now, what was the secret by which, in the treat 
 ment of such themes, Gcethe so charmed and yet 
 charms so many of mankind? It was that knowl 
 edge of form which he possessed beyond the poets 
 of all times. It may have been partly from the 
 consciousness of this being his chief power that he 
 chose to set it off with the bad, the trifling, and the 
 contemptible in his generation. The single beau 
 ties in his works are the greatest in their kind, and 
 mankind, in admiration of them, have been less 
 disgusted than they ought to have been with the 
 general evil tendencies of the whole. The works 
 of Gcethe are more remarkable even than those of 
 the great artists in the classic age in this respect: 
 that whereas these had moulded into beauty the ex 
 cellent material in which their country and times 
 
THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 203 
 
 abounded, he had to work amid the gross things 
 which he found for his plastic hand in his own coun 
 try and his own time. He was not the seducer of 
 his generation. No one man can ever be that. 
 The age was already corrupt. A noble work was 
 before him, which he selfishly neglected. Instead 
 of lifting his age out of the slough into which it 
 had fallen, he got down himself into this slough and 
 took a vain, wicked pleasure in showing to his be 
 smirched companions into what fair forms these 
 foul elements might be shaped, fair to look upon, 
 but frail, perishable, and easily resolvable into the 
 things out of which they had been taken. He toyed 
 with the Romantic, the French, the English, the 
 Greek. He employed each and all when they 
 suited his fancy, and calmly, coldly dominated in 
 his autocracy even down to the last of extremest 
 old age. Never having been a patriot, among the 
 productions of his last endeavors was that which 
 seemed as if intended as an apology, the best that 
 he could devise, for the want of fidelity to Germany 
 during the period of her humiliation. When she 
 lay prostrate and full of sorrow before Napoleon, he 
 had sung the praises of the conqueror. In after- 
 times, when Germany had risen to its native man 
 hood and had been numbered among the powers 
 of Europe, the time-serving poet brought out his 
 drama of "Epimenides. " It is universally admitted 
 
204 THE AUDACITY OF GCETHE. 
 
 to be his very feeblest work, and that because it 
 was a too late rendition of what was due from one 
 who, far from raising his hand or his tongue in the 
 times of sorest need, had fawned and cringed be 
 fore him, who had been the chief occasion of her 
 longest, most sorrowful wailing, and therefore was 
 now the very last man in Germany to be called up 
 on to sing or pretend to rejoice in her deliverance. 
 
 Here was indeed a giant a giant, however, not 
 after the type of Christopher, the bold ferryman, 
 sure reliance of timid travellers in stormy weather. 
 To bear the disguised Infant over swollen waters 
 was not after his liking. He was rather a Goliath 
 of Gath, "a man of war from his youth," that defied 
 the armies led by the Most High, not foreseeing the 
 fall to which he was doomed. The men and women 
 of his generation lauded him for his strength and his 
 audacity, and there be many yet, who, charmed by 
 the witchery of his words, are led into places which 
 all benignant spirits would warn them to avoid. 
 Than Goethe never has lived a man who employed 
 his gifts less faithfully for the ends for which they 
 were bestowed. 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 SALUTARY are the lessons to be learned from 
 studies of the conflicts between the English 
 people and their kings. Looking upon the serene, 
 benignant rule of Victoria, strange indeed seem 
 the multitude of these conflicts, their duration, and 
 their varying results throughout the centuries ante 
 rior to the ascertainment of British liberty. In 
 this article, we propose to notice briefly some of 
 those which took place in the reign of one who, 
 in some respects, was the most notable of all. He 
 was born in a time favorable for the growth of the 
 mind of a prince in the knowledge of the just pur 
 poses of empire. The second son of Henry the 
 Seventh, and thus, at first, without prospect of in 
 heriting the crown, his boyhood was spent in learn 
 ing the principles of literature, music, and religion; 
 and it was intended and foretold that in time he 
 would occupy the See of Canterbury. His elder 
 brother had been married to a princess who, in 
 wealth and family renown, was the most brilliant 
 match to be made in Europe. The death of Arthur 
 
 and his becoming heir apparent, did not seem to 
 205 
 
2o6 RING HENRY VIII. 
 
 cast even a shade upon the fair promise of his 
 youth, nor hinder the pursuit of his peaceful studies. 
 When, at eighteen years of age, he was called to the 
 throne, the culture of his understanding, the beauty 
 of his person, and the sweetness of his manners, 
 led all men to expect a blessed rule. His father 
 had not well employed his own opportunities. He 
 was yet too fresh from the thirty years conflict of 
 the Roses, too long imbued with the partisanism of 
 the Lancasters, to be an entirely just sovereign, un 
 less he had been a great and a good man. He was 
 neither. He came to the throne when the nation, 
 having lost the best part of its nobility and gentry, 
 so longed for peace that they gladly postponed the 
 superior claims of the House of York to the acci 
 dent of Bosvvorth Field. The king s hereditary 
 hatred for that family instead of being appeased by 
 their fall, took on that deeper malignity which 
 comes always with the end of warfare to mean- 
 spirited conquerors. To silence their claims, right 
 eous, both in the light of reason, and the loving 
 memories of Edward IV, he married the young 
 princess, Elizabeth, whom, although a model of vir 
 tue and conjugal fidelity, he hated and maltreated, 
 both because she was a York and because she 
 was beloved by the people who rejoiced at her 
 coronation. 
 
 But Henry VII had sagacity enough to discover 
 
kiNG HENRY VIH. 2O7 
 
 what exactions might be laid upon a people ex 
 hausted by wars. The men who were old enough 
 to remember the Plantagenets grew sad to feel that 
 they had been looking in vain for the return of the 
 rule which a foreign historian, in admiration of par 
 liamentary influence, had described as "among all 
 the world s lordships, that where the public weal is 
 best ordered, and where least violence reigns over 
 the people." A Lancasterian faction helped to 
 stretch every prerogative to the last possible limit, 
 with no regard to that parliament without whose co 
 operation, in the olden times, no great business of 
 peace or war was wont to be undertaken. 
 
 It suits not the scope of this article to speak of 
 the adroitness with which he succeeded in his usur 
 pations, and of the oppressions which, mainly to 
 gratify his avarice, he inflicted upon his people. 
 The security of his foreign connections, closely al 
 lied as he was with Scotland and Spain, aided by 
 the national dread of more domestic bloodshed, 
 enabled him to make himself the most arbitrary 
 monarch that had ever sat upon the English throne. 
 In his dying hours, the remorse which, not always, 
 but most often, comes to evil-doers, beset him sorely, 
 and in the midst of the exactions which his ava 
 ricious soul could not yet altogether repress, he dis 
 tributed alms, founded religious houses, announced 
 his desire that the wrongs which he had perpetrated 
 
208 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 might be redressed by his successor, implored him 
 not to consummate the espousal he had contracted 
 with his brother s widow, and then closed, by death, 
 his eventful reign. 
 
 The new king ascended to his place with brilliant 
 prestige. Though the son of Henry of Lancaster, 
 he was also the son of Elizabeth of York. His de 
 votion hitherto to mild and refining arts, his bloom 
 ing youth, and gracious carriage attracted all hearts. 
 When, in disregard of his dying father s injunctions, 
 he married Katharine, Princess of Wales, it was 
 mostly because at the age of twenty-four no fade 
 had yet come to the cheek of the lovely daughter of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella. There were a few to shake 
 their heads and murmur in secret at this connection; 
 but the conscience of the bridegroom was without 
 a shadow. Marriage bells never rang merrier. On 
 the throne, with a queen by his side, he gave up 
 the habits of a student in which he had been hith 
 erto mostly employed. Yet he seemed disposed, in 
 the exuberance of youth and felicity, not to burthen 
 himself with the cares of empire, and, with a gener 
 ous hand, he lavished the treasures that, for a quar 
 ter of a century, his father had been hoarding. 
 Fox, his aged treasurer, grew solemn and scolded 
 his prodigality, and brought in Thomas Wolsey to 
 assist in controlling it. Men and women shed 
 tears of joy and gratitude at the proclamation to 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 209 
 
 all who had suffered from the extortions of his 
 father s favorites, inviting their complaints. The 
 pillory, the prison, and ultimately death, were their 
 punishment. It was noticeable, however, that in 
 the case of Empson and Dudley, the great ones on 
 this list, most infamous of all pairs of names to be 
 found among the instruments of tyrants, these, be 
 cause they had acted notoriously by the permission 
 and commands of the late king, were given over to 
 the hangmen, not for their extortions, but upon an 
 impossible and absurd charge of conspiracy against 
 himself. The people, hungry for their blood, blessed 
 the monarch who allowed them to shed it, without 
 inquiring into the reasons, which, if they had under 
 stood, would have made them tremble for themselves 
 and their children. 
 
 But that the limited length of this article forbids, 
 we should like to consider Henry s foreign policy, 
 at first so apparently generous, afterwards so wholly 
 selfish. But we are thinking of him now mainly as 
 an individual among the kings of England. His 
 individual kingship speedily grew into the boldest 
 relief. The Plantagenets, thinking of their people 
 along with themselves, had suffered their separate 
 individualities to become merged into theirs. Hen 
 ry VIII soon learned to regard himself as the imper 
 sonation of the English State; and he had not been 
 wearing the crown but for a brief period before it 
 
210 KING HENRY VITI. 
 
 was found that, withal so frank, so gracious, so gay, 
 he had inherited the tastes and ambitions of the 
 most imperious of both lines of his ancestors, and 
 that in the craft of employing and controlling men 
 and circumstances, he was superior to them all. 
 
 We spoke of the use which Fox had intended to 
 be made of Wolsey when the latter was invested 
 with partial power. At this late day, it is curious 
 to reflect how adroitly the young monarch employed 
 the transcendant talents of this man as long as they 
 were needful for his purposes, and when these were 
 accomplished, how easily and ruthlessly they were 
 flung aside. The career of Wolsey was so magnifi 
 cent that it is useless to look for its parallel in 
 courts. "THE KING AND I." How fond had he 
 been to write those words! How gracious his 
 majesty to allow it ! How serious the warnings 
 from the older councillors against the consequences 
 of such presumption in a subject. Gifted with 
 powers of a Roman legate, the great churchman 
 did not, but the king did foresee that such an office 
 in the hands of a servile subject would contribute 
 to place the monarch above all human control and 
 expose the subject more easily to his own ruin. 
 With all his talents and sagacity, Wolsey did not 
 know all the audacity in the temper of his master. 
 The man of God had long ceased to prefer divine 
 worship to the human; and, perhaps, his fondest 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 211 
 
 thoughts, even at the altar, were in looking upon 
 the bowing and kneeling forms of the highest no 
 bles of the land, who served in his ministrations. 
 Yet, if he had studied this human master better, he 
 might have avoided the ruin that had already been 
 projected in the secret chambers of the palace. 
 But for our repeated observation of the apparently 
 trivial means by which Infinite Justice sometimes 
 accomplishes its purposes, we should wonder at the 
 surprise when, after the disgust with Katharine, 
 which, in his exalted priestly office, he had not dis 
 couraged, instead of a European princess, Anne 
 Boleyn, a maid of the bed-chamber, was the one 
 chosen to be exalted to the throne. His ill-con 
 cealed contempt cost all he had won. To this day, 
 it is curious to consider how easily he was ruined: 
 the mockery of reluctance with which the king 
 parted from him; the playfulness with which, as 
 sometimes a wild beast does with his victim, he 
 alternated between clemency and severity, and, in 
 stead of giving him over to the headsman, suffer 
 ing him to languish in unwholesome places, as his 
 queen was destined to do afterwards, and die with 
 a heart broken by failure and remorse. They are 
 the saddest words ever uttered by one who had fal 
 len from so exalted an office: "If I had served my 
 God with half the zeal I served my prince, he 
 would not have left me in mine old age." "Mv 
 
212 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 PRINCE!" This was his service; a service which 
 while it could not save himself from ruin, put 
 back British liberty a hundred years. The an 
 guish of the dying parasite was not so much that 
 he had postponed the service of his country to that 
 of God, as it was, that, he had magnified his prince 
 above country and above God. Commiserate his 
 grief as we may, we could wish, especially for the 
 sake of literature, which he encouraged, that it had 
 been less abject; that, in the first disappointment, 
 he had given himself like Bacon afterwards, to 
 studies fitted to his genius. In the intervals of 
 hope he projected the employment of yet greater 
 servilities. In those of despair, he must have 
 shuddered to remember how he had contributed, by 
 failing to consult Parliament, to destroy the influ 
 ence of what, to his ancestors, had been the source 
 of their loftiest pride. The oppressions and exac 
 tions that were already overtopping those of the 
 preceding reign were committed with greater im 
 punity, because this bulwark of national liberty 
 ceased to be summoned, and what courage and 
 patriotism were yet in the land had thus no oppor 
 tunities to coalesce for organized resistance. "The 
 king and I" became the State. At the bidding of 
 an adulterous woman, the first turned his eye from 
 the second, and those who had waited for the op 
 portunity set upon him in full cry. Crafty as cruel. 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 213 
 
 the king, as in the case of Empson and Dudley, 
 saw to it that he should fall upon an unjust imputa 
 tion, of having exercised legatine power in deroga 
 tion of the rights of the prince whose service he 
 acknowledged, on his dying bed, that he had preferred 
 to that of God. 
 
 Henry had now been upon the throne twen 
 ty-one years. His character had taken on the 
 hardness which unbridled indulgence could impart. 
 With all the subserviency of Wolsey, he had a mo 
 dicum of conscience and delicacy. Out of appre 
 hension of what parliament might do if summoned, 
 he had forborne to summon it. What was wanted 
 now, was a minister Avho would summon a par- 
 liment, but for no purpose except to demor 
 alize, corrupt, overawe and destroy it. Such a 
 minister was already at hand. Thomas Crom 
 well, son of a Putney blacksmith, who had been 
 an adventurer in many lands, an acknowledged 
 ruffian in the Italian wars, yet a student and admi 
 rer of Machiavelli, was the last to forsake Wolsey, 
 in whose service he had lived. Shakespeare, it will 
 be remembered, represents the dying cardinal charg 
 ing his follower to fling away ambition, and thus 
 avoid the shoals on which he had been wrecked. 
 In the courage with which he pleaded for his mas 
 ter, men of all parties spoke of him as "the most 
 faithfullest servant." But among the words of this 
 
214 KING HENRY VIIL 
 
 pleading were inserted others in private that fell 
 upon the ear of the king more gratefully than any 
 that had ever been uttered by human lips. It was 
 he who, having first obtained the commutation of 
 Wolsey s punishment to the penalty of pramunire 
 for the exercise of Roman legatine powder, afterwards 
 suggested to the despot that the most effectual way 
 in which to settle the matter of the divorce with 
 the queen, was to stand upon his royal supremacy, 
 and cut, with the sword of Alexander, the knot that 
 others were incompetent or reluctant to untie. 
 This proposal, so audacious, lifted the blacksmith s 
 son to the acme of his sovereign s regard. It was 
 too audacious to be yet practicable. The principles 
 of the Reformation had come into England, and 
 were growing, but this king was especially odious 
 to the German Protestants because of his hostility 
 to Luther, and they were a unit on the side of 
 Queen Katharine. He would have resorted to it 
 as it was, but that he foresaw that he could corrupt 
 the universities, and what was of far greater signifi 
 cance, because the whole people of England, cleri 
 cal and lay, found, to their horror, that in submit 
 ting to the legatine power, for the exercise of which 
 within the realm, Wolsey had suffered, they were 
 partners of his guilt, and liable to all the penalties 
 cf treason. The universal terror in this conjuncture 
 was alleviated after some delay of the king and his 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 215 
 
 minister by a free pardon of the people who were 
 graciously presumed not to have known all the 
 enormity of the crime and a promise of pardon to 
 the clergy upon the payment of heavy fines, and an 
 acknowledgment in convocation of the king to be 
 "protector and only supreme head of the clergy and 
 church of England." 
 
 The events that followed the exaltation of Crom 
 well constitute what is the most thrilling part of the 
 history of modern times. What these two men 
 perpetrated have no parallel. Their very shame- 
 lessness was not less enormous than in the days of 
 the worst Caesars. The repairing of Anne Boleyn 
 to the palace while the divorce was pending, the 
 expulsion of the queen to the sickly atmosphere of 
 Buckden in the hope that she might die there, the 
 denial to her of the sight of her child, the flouting 
 gayety upon her loneliness and despair, cried aloud 
 for the vengeance which it was strange they could 
 not foresee. Such as these are credible; for all 
 times have instanced what the unlawful loves of men 
 and women may perpetrate. Credible also was the 
 faithful courage of More, Fisher, and a few others 
 who died for their opinions, for such examples be 
 long to all ages of despotism. But what is almost 
 incredible is the persistent application by this low 
 born minister of systematic measures for the over 
 throw of justice and liberty, religion and honor. 
 
2l6 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 Among those who, in the history of mankind, have 
 bowed before tyrants, there is nowhere to be found 
 language so contemptibly mean, so abjectly unmanly 
 as that with which the leading men of those times 
 yielded, submitted, begged and implored. Those 
 bishops consented to the first demand of Cromwell, 
 almost with a smile, as if it were a pleasant joke of 
 the king s. It grew serious when the demand came 
 to convocation for the right of nomination, by the 
 king, of all bishops henceforth. On the final sep 
 aration from Rome, every clergyman in England 
 was required, on a named day, to proclaim Henry 
 VIII as supreme head of the Church. The words 
 of the summons were handed to the sheriffs, who 
 copied them for the bishops, and they, sheriffs and 
 bishops, were required to see that the requisition was 
 obeyed without exception. There was a profounder 
 depth yet for this servile priesthood. Though 
 prostrate upon their knees, they, such as were not 
 afraid to die, had not yet been made to place their 
 mouths upon the ground, and kiss, and bite, and 
 feed upon the dirt. When Henry separated from 
 Rome, the Protestant spirit of the nation looked 
 forward to independence of private judgment. They 
 did not yet understand the compass of his imper- 
 iousness. This was to culminate in his demand, 
 as head of the church, to dictate the whole religious 
 faith of the nation. Although it is now three him- 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 2 I 7 
 
 dred and fifty years since this compliance was 
 accorded in convocation, we cannot recall without 
 shame the grossness of the flattery bestowed upon 
 the minion by whose counsels it had been enslaved. 
 "The vicar-general of England! He is worthy to 
 be the vicar-general of the universe!" 
 
 The prostitution to which Cromwell subjected the 
 bishops in convocation was inflicted upon parlia 
 ment and upon the courts of justice. Parliament 
 was summoned only to ratify the acts of personal 
 government, to extend the royal prerogative, to 
 create new statutes and bills of attainder for the 
 more easy, rapid and condign punishment of real 
 and imaginary offenders, and, as if to show to the 
 whole world, as well the English people as Europe 
 ans, that this ancient institution, which foreign 
 publicists had lauded so highly, was powerless hence 
 forth for any of the benign purposes of its origin. 
 Cromwell had gathered into his hands the whole 
 administration of the state, foreign and domestic, 
 political, judicial and religious. Unlike his prede 
 cessor, free from the love of ostentation and wealth, 
 the enormous sums which he extorted were divided 
 among the spies who were scattered throughout the 
 land, and he calmly looked on as he saw every sub 
 ject of the realm in terror of his name. There was but 
 one prominent man in England who did not pray for 
 his fall, and that was the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
2l8 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 We have not time to speak of the destruction of 
 religious houses and the creation from their spoils 
 of those new families, the Russels, the Cavendishes, 
 the Fitzwilliamses, and their likes. Nor can we 
 linger with the continued persecution of the queen 
 to her grave, the careers of Anne Boleyn, Jane Sey 
 mour and Katharine Howard, except to say in 
 passing, that in going from one to another of these 
 loves, his conduct was like that of a beast rather 
 than of a lover and husband, licensed by the laws 
 jof God, and the unwritten laws of gentlemen in the 
 humblest degree. Whether the charge against Anne 
 Boleyn was satisfactorily maintained is yet in dis 
 pute. But it is certain that her husband did not 
 pretend to suspect her until the charms that had 
 seduced him had faded, and his evil eye had fallen 
 upon the fair and fresh Jane Seymour. The noble 
 anger of an outraged husband for the greatest grief 
 that a man of honor can suffer he never had felt. 
 With his huntsmen and hounds he waited in Epping 
 Forest for the sound of the cannon which an 
 nounced her execution, and then, with horn and 
 halloo, he dashed across the country to Wolf Hall, 
 in Wiltshire, where Jane Seymour, in the midst of 
 her maidens, her flowers and gorgeous vestments, 
 awaited the bridal of to-morrow. He was not ag 
 grieved, as husband, at the irregularities of Katha 
 rine Howard. As an imperious monarch he pun- 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 2IQ 
 
 ished them with death, and then waited for her 
 whom Cromwell had provided, and whom, misled by 
 the pictures of Holbein, he believed to be beautiful. 
 
 Here was the rock on which the infamous Crom 
 well was ruined. When the king, though now grow 
 ing old and bloated with excesses, looked upon 
 Anne of Cleves, the new bride who had been pro 
 vided, he cried in his wrath: "You have brought 
 me a great Flanders mare." This was enough. 
 Once more he turned his eye away from his minis 
 ter and let the dogs tear him in pieces. In vain 
 Cranmer reminded the king that Cromwell had 
 loved him "not less than he loved God," an assur 
 ance deemed of great value by him who, in defer 
 ence to the royal mandate, in exchange for Lambeth 
 palace, had given up his wife and children and sent 
 them to their kindred in a foreign land. But it was 
 of no avail. Cromwell heretofore had wrested from 
 parliament that most odious of all enactments, at 
 tainder without summons and without evidence, a 
 curious instance of retribution, when himself was 
 the first and the only one to suffer from its enforce 
 ment. It was like the fate of him whom old tra 
 dition made the inventor of the brazen bull, thought 
 the most horrible of the punishments of ancient 
 despotism, and who, in accordance with a caprice 
 of the tyrant to whom it was presented, was sub 
 jected first to its awful ordeal. 
 
220 < KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 The last years of Henry VIII are interesting 
 mainly for the evidences of that strange impunity 
 with which, even when prostrated in physical in 
 firmities he persisted in his enormities. Katharine 
 Parr escaped the fate of her predecessors only by a 
 felicitous compliment which a timely hint enabled 
 her to make, and by concealing, with womanly in 
 stinct, her disgust in beholding and tending the 
 loathsome diseases that were hurrying him to the 
 grave. The cruelties he practiced on those who 
 would not accept all of his Six Articles, his burning 
 the Anabaptists for rejecting the Real Presence, 
 these and numberless similar, were submitted to 
 without audible complaint to the end. The very 
 last act of his reign was the attempt to destroy the 
 Duke of Norfolk, the mightiest lord of the realm. 
 Even when death was upon him, the commons 
 passed his demand for hastening the execution, and 
 the very next morning the victim s head would have 
 fallen, but that, in the hours of the night, the royal 
 murderer had met his own doom, and the lieuten 
 ant of the tower laid aside his axe. 
 
 The history of mankind affords no similar exam 
 ple of security in the life of a tyrant continuing 
 undisturbed to the close of his rule. Around his 
 dying bed not a single witness dared, until the very 
 last, to warn him of his approaching death. It 
 came upon him in the midst of his worst thoughts, 
 
KING HENRY VIII. 221 
 
 and was the only enemy against whom he had not 
 been able to prevail. 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS 
 
 T^HE friendships among mankind are themes for 
 * frequent thoughtful speculation. The needs and 
 obligations of other relations in this life are of 
 sufficiently easy understanding and exposition. It 
 is not so with friendships. The subtlety of their 
 essence, the absence of regularity in their formation, 
 the varieties among the strains which they will en 
 dure, have seemed ever to hinder their reduction to 
 ascertained terms. Husbands and wives, parents 
 and children, brothers, sisters, and other kindred, 
 colleagues in whatever department of endeavor, 
 magistrate and private citizen, clergy and laity all 
 know well what these owe among one another. 
 But who shall say the same of friends? The poet 
 and the philosophers have said some beautiful 
 things and some contemptuous, and all maintain 
 that perfect friendships are most rare. "Ramm 
 genus!" exclaimed Cicero. Said Lilly in Endymi- 
 011: 
 
 u Friendship! of all things the 
 Most rare, and therefore most rare because most 
 Excellent." 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 223 
 
 So nigh is friendship akin to love that the Greeks, 
 and after them the Romans, gave to it a name de 
 rived from that dear word. English-speaking people 
 have done differently, but neither can they, any 
 more than could the ancients, define the boundary 
 between the two. 
 
 There is something quite interesting in reflections 
 upon the few friendships among eminent persons 
 that have been handed down through the literatures 
 of the ages. Curious illustrations some of them 
 are. Take that of Orestes and Pylades, exhibited by 
 their becoming principal and accessory to the mur 
 der of the mother of the one and the aunt of the other, 
 the accessory rewarded for his part with the hand of 
 another parricide, Electra, the tale of whose suffer 
 ings makes up one of the greatest essays of the 
 tragic muse. 
 
 Then Theseus and Pirithous. The history of the 
 friendship of these two heroes affords somewhat of 
 humor, grim though it be. Plutarch, after an account 
 of the help rendered by the former to Adrastus of 
 Thebes, thus proceeds: 
 
 "The friendship of Theseus and Pirithous is said to have com 
 menced on this occasion. Theseus being much celebrated for his 
 strength and valor, Pirithous was desirous to prove it, and therefore 
 drove away his oxen from Marathon. When he heard that Theseus 
 pursued him in arms he did not fly, but turned back to meet him. But 
 as soon as they beheld one another each was so struck with admira 
 tion of the other s person and courage that they laid aside all thoughts 
 of fighting; and Pirithous, first giving Theseus his hand, bade him 
 
224 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 be judge in this cause himself, and he would willingly abide by his 
 sentence. Theseus in his turn left the cause to him and desired him 
 to be his friend and fellow-warrior. Then they confirmed their 
 friendship with an oath." 
 
 This reminds us somewhat of the inception of the 
 alliance between Robin Hood and Little John after 
 the scuffle on the log that lay across the stream. 
 The historian does not record whether or not the 
 oxen were restored, but we conclude that perhaps 
 the robbery was treated as a harmless practical joke 
 and that both were thankful for the happy results to 
 which it had led. 
 
 We are not informed as to the age of the king of the 
 Lapithae at the beginning of the confederate achieve 
 ments of these distinguished cronies; but Theseus 
 was fifty years old, and seemed to have lost no part 
 of the ardor which had been wont to impel him to 
 the obtaining of wives by conquest and rape, al 
 though foreseeing that he must wait some years 
 longer for the fruition of his next endeavor. His 
 comrade also, whatever may have been the number 
 of his years and of his wives, was equally impressed 
 by the infantile beauty that had captivated the 
 veteran lover. Let us hear Plutarch again : 
 
 u The two friends went together to Sparta, and, having seen the 
 girl (Helen, then nine years old) dancing in the temple of Diana 
 Orthia, carried her off and fled. The pursuers that were sent after 
 them following no further than Tegea, they thought themselves se 
 cure, and, having traversed Peloponnesus, they entered into an agree 
 ment that he who should gain Helen by lot should have her to wife, 
 but be obliged to assist in providing a wife for the other. In consc- 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 225 
 
 quencc of these terms, the lots being cast, she fell to Theseus, who 
 received the virgin and conveyed her, as she was not yet marriage 
 able, to Aphidnae. Here he placed his mother with her and com 
 mitted them to the care of his friend Aphidnus, charging him to 
 keep them with the utmost secrecy and safety; whilst, to pay his 
 debt of service to Pirithbus, himself travelled with him into Epirus, 
 with a view to the daughter of Aidoneus, king- of the Molossians. 
 This prince named his wife u Proserpine," his daughter " Core," and 
 his dog "Cerberus." With this dog he commanded all his daughter s 
 suitors to fight, promising her to him who should overcome him. 
 But understanding that Pirithous came not with an intention to court 
 his daughter, but to carry her off by force, he seized both him and 
 his friend, destroyed Pirithous immediately by means of his dog, and 
 shut up Theseus in close prison." 
 
 These and similar friendships among the great, 
 doubtless were in the mind of Addison when (in 
 Cato) he wrote : 
 
 " The friendships of the world are oft 
 Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure." 
 
 The last was indeed costly to both; for Theseus, 
 though delivered from prison by Hercules, was des 
 tined for his baleful work, confederate and single, 
 to be cast down the Scyrian promontory; and Vir 
 gil represents him afterwards in Tartarus, ever re 
 peating to the shades therein the admonitory words, 
 
 "Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere divos." 
 
 As for the friendship of Damon and Pythias, its 
 story would seem to have been handed down for 
 the purpose mainly of illustrating how rarely, under 
 the government of such a prince as Dionysius, can 
 exist a friendship which to a less, yet a high degree 
 is very common in modern times, particularly 
 
226 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 among free peoples, wherein on every business-day 
 in every year men become sureties for the perform 
 ance of the most difficult obligations and risk the 
 most stringent penalties, not only in behalf of friends 
 but of others whom they believe to have the sense 
 of honor which alone is necessary to save from 
 losses. The return of Damon did indeed operate 
 as a surprise upon the despot, so great as to induce 
 a solicitation to be admitted into a friendship so 
 far beyond all his notions of what was possible to 
 humanity. 
 
 We cannot be too thankful for the account given 
 by Cicero of the friendship of Scipio and Laelius. 
 Not that we have been made familiar with any 
 special incidents of their mutual rendering of ser 
 vices. Yet in the mouth of the less eminent of 
 these two were put some of the sweetest words that 
 were ever spoken. In this treatise (De Amicitia) 
 may be seen, we think, the justice of what was said 
 in the beginning of this article about the subtlety 
 that makes any definite exposition concerning 
 friendship impossible. We know not what depth of 
 sorrow had been felt by the survivor when death, in 
 circumstances of special horror, took from his em 
 brace the beloved companion in military and civic 
 achievements; but his absence shortly afterwards 
 from the college of augurs in the gardens of De- 
 cms Brutus was found to have been attributed erron- 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 227 
 
 eously to his indulgence of grief instead of being 
 detained at home by sickness. We are led by 
 Cicero, who lets him discourse upon the subject 
 with his sons-in-law, to notice how different is 
 friendship from love, how far below it indeed if 
 measured by the feelings that arise when lovers 
 have seen their best beloved depart from this life. 
 "Moveor" calmly said the survivor, "sed non egeo 
 medicina. " Indeed, it appears that he was afraid 
 to indulge in grief to any extent. "Mcerere hoc 
 ejus eventu vereor ne invidi magis quam amid sit." 
 All grief has yielded to the sweetness mostly of re 
 membering of what sort was the illustrious man 
 whose companionship he had enjoyed so long, and 
 partly in speculating upon the exalte d estate to 
 which he believes him to have risen. It is very en 
 tertaining to listen to such eloquent discourse from 
 one in whom there seems no sorrow, almost no 
 feeling of regret, and muse upon the reflections 
 which this disciple of the Stoics makes upon a rela 
 tion that left such solace on its dissolution, summing 
 up with the conclusion that friendship friendship 
 that is to endure throughout life (than which nothing 
 is more difficult or more rare) can obtain only 
 among the good. Such had been the friendship of 
 ^Emilius and Luscinius, of Curius and Coruncanius. 
 Yet what shall we say of the instance given, though 
 with lofty indignation, of Blossius Cumanus and Ti- 
 
228 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 berius Gracchus, which survived the tomb, and was 
 avowed by the survivor when pleading for mercy 
 before the consuls, Laenas and Rupilius, before 
 whom he declared that such had been his affection 
 for the great tribune that if the latter had asked 
 him to put the torch to the Capitol he would have 
 complied. " Videtis quam nefaria vox!" exclaimed 
 the aged patriot. Yet the instance disproved his 
 theory. 
 
 Here it seems apposite to remark that those 
 friendships that have become historic have subsisted 
 for the greater part between men who were not 
 equals, and that the warmth of their devotion has 
 been in inverse ratio to the inequality. But for 
 Theseus we might never have heard of Pirithous, 
 yet it was the latter who took the initiative in that 
 famous alliance; and we know too much of the 
 temper of him who had vanquished the Minotaur, 
 the Bull of Marathon, and the Centaurs to be in 
 much doubt how he would have behaved had the 
 Spartan princess fallen to the other s lot. So of Py- 
 lades, in whom the fierce blood of the Atreidai had 
 been mingled with the un warlike of the Phocian. 
 He became never the leader, but was ever the fol 
 lower, both in the assassination of Clytemnestra 
 and the expedition into Taurica Chersonesus. So 
 of Pythias, whose name it is probable, would never 
 have been transmitted but for his standing bail for 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 2 29 
 
 the distinguished disciple of Pythagoras. Even of 
 Laelius the most of what we know is from the pen 
 of the great orator who, in his name, put forth that 
 splendid panegyric. In this his sense of inferiority 
 is apparent in the praise he bestowed, and a pardon 
 able pride in having enjoyed the friendship of such 
 a man, the recollection of which subdued most of 
 the grief at his death. It was exquisite tact, the 
 selection of the lesser but more devoted friend. 
 We cannot but suspect that in the other case the 
 most eloquent words in the discourse would have 
 been employed upon his own and the renowned 
 deeds of the rest of the Scipios. 
 
 The same may be said, and with greater fitness, 
 of the friendship of David and Jonathan. The in 
 itiative is from the inferior. Not all of the pro 
 phetic gift imparted by tasting the honey-comb at 
 Beth-aven had been lost, and in the stripling holding 
 in his hand the Phillistine s head he recognized a 
 rising star before which his father s would disappear. 
 Most pathetic is the history of this friendship, be 
 ginning at first sight : 
 
 "And Saul said to him, \Vhose son art thou, thou young man? And 
 David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse the Beth-lehemite. 
 
 "And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto 
 Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and 
 Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 
 
 "Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved 
 him as his own soul." 
 
 It is touching to consider the ministrations in 
 
230 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 this alliance, all on the part of the interior, the 
 melancholy Jonathan. Pursued by the frightened 
 jealousy of the king, David flees from Ramah to the 
 faithful prince, by whom he is hidden in the field. 
 Even here protection is bespoke for himself and 
 his house when the fugitive, his enemies being over 
 come, shall rise to the kingdom: 
 
 "And thou shalt not only while yet I live show me the kindness of 
 the Lord, that I die not: 
 
 "But also thou shalt not cut off thy kindness from my house for 
 ever; no, not when the Lord hath cutoff the enemies of David every 
 one of them from the face of the earth. 
 
 " So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, 
 Let the Lord even require it at the hand of David s enemies. 
 
 "And Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him 
 as he loved his own soul." 
 
 Once, and once only, is it recorded that the 
 feeling of David was the stronger. Yet even this 
 may be attributed to gratitude for his rescue more 
 than response to the love that at such risk had been 
 expended upon him: 
 
 "And as soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of a place 
 towards the south, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed him 
 self three times: and they kissed one another, and wept with one 
 another, until David exceeded. 
 
 "And Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, forasmuch as we have 
 sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord be be 
 tween me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever. 
 
 "And he arose and departed and Jonathan went into the city." 
 
 Yet another service and another reminder are 
 made in the wilderness of Ziph: 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 231 
 
 "And Jonathan, Saul s son, arose and went to David in the wilder 
 ness, and strengthened his hand in God. 
 
 "And he said unto him, Fear not: for the hand of Saul my father 
 shall not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be 
 next unto thee: and that also Saul my father knoweth. 
 
 "And they two made a covenant before the Lord; and David abode 
 in the wood, and Jonathan went to his house." 
 
 It was a merciful lessening of the prophetic inspira 
 tion of Jonathan when, always sad but ever hoping, 
 he fondly dreamed of becoming second to the loved 
 of his soul in the coming kingdom. Beautiful was 
 the song of the royal poet over the bodies of father 
 and son at Gilboa; but there is .no noticeable dif 
 ference in the sorrow he felt for both in the praises 
 he bestowed: 
 
 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow 
 of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not 
 empty. 
 
 " Saul and Jonathan were lovely in their lives, and in death they 
 were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger 
 than lions. 
 
 " Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, 
 with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. 
 
 u How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle. O Jona 
 than! thou wast slain in thine high places. 
 
 " I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast 
 thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love 
 of woman. 
 
 " How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished! 1 
 
 A beautiful song. Amid high-sounding strains of 
 lament for the fall of the powerful is interlude d 
 one, tender and brief, for the friend, not so much 
 for the sake of the survivor s love as of that of the 
 dead, which was passing the love of woman, it 
 
232 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 is the most interesting in all the annals of friend 
 ship, and, like most others, whether among the pow 
 erful or the lowly, the wise or the simple, its incip- 
 iency and its preponderance of fondness were with 
 the one whose capacities were the least for every 
 purpose except that of ever-abiding affection and 
 unalterable faithfulness to its behests. 
 
 In other historic though less noted friendships, as 
 that between Sts. Cuthbert and Herbert, and that 
 between Xystus II. and St. Lawrence, may be seen 
 also the greater devotion of the lesser friend. The 
 humble monk of Derwentwater besought the great 
 bishop of Lindisfarne to obtain for him the felicity 
 of dying at the same hour with him, and the request 
 was kindly granted. So the poor deacon, following 
 behind the great pontiff as he was led to execution, 
 put forth a similar request; and his lamentation 
 was subdued when assured that after three days 
 more, to be spent in distributing among the poor 
 the treasures of the church, he should get also his 
 crown of martyrdom and rejoin his beloved in a 
 better world. 
 
 Other thoughts come to the mind while reflecting 
 upon these and the common friendships of the 
 world. There is among mankind a respect for 
 friendship that may be named almost unique. 
 There is no term that indicates pitifulness like 
 "friendless," For rare as may be the friendships 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 233 
 
 that are reasonably cemented, and that continue 
 long faithful and fond, yet how few so poor as not to 
 have one or more whom they may justly call friends. 
 To no condition of human life do not friendships of 
 some sort seem to have a necessity peculiar to them 
 selves, differing from and independent of that per 
 taining to other conditions. The possession of 
 wives and children, the possession or pursuit of rich 
 es, power, and honor, seldom if ever are satisfactory 
 without the added possession of friends. The di 
 visions that friendships allow in felicities, the solace 
 they impart in miseries, are unlike those in any 
 other relation. Perhaps causes of this are their 
 calmness, their comparative freedom from eagerness 
 things that render communion among those who 
 feel them, whether often or seldom together, whether 
 dwelling near or remote, so practicable and even. 
 The husband, to be content, must live with his wife, 
 and a parent among or near his children. But the 
 dearest friends may dwell far apart, and the pressure 
 of life that has separated them alters not the sweet 
 ness of communions that are only silent. When death 
 comes to one, if tears flow not as at the departure of 
 those bound by a more passionate feeling, the minds 
 of survivors are often more true to the memory of 
 this bond than to some of those which in life were 
 stronger. 
 
 As to the origin of friendships it is useless to s;>ec- 
 
234 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 ulate; so as to the occasions of their cementation; 
 sc as to the inherent fitness of particular classes ot 
 persons for their fondest and most faithful manifes 
 tations. If the loves between men and women 
 often seem fitful or dependent upon accidents, what 
 shall we say ot the friendships of this life? In all 
 this earth there is nothing that, if not accidental, 
 seems so incomprehensibly capricious. In loves 
 dissimilarities, whether of person or of mind and 
 disposition, oftener than otherwise are what first 
 united them. The man with dark hue and eyes 
 commonly finds the maid with the blonde and blue. 
 The maid light-hearted and petite is commonly 
 won by the man lofty and saturnine. In loves the 
 things are sought which the seekers do not already 
 possess. It is a law like that of lower nature 
 which delights in oppositions or in compositions, 
 and will not be content with one of its kind though 
 most excellent. We notice often how variant from 
 the leaf of a tree is its flower, and how variant from 
 both the fruit. What thousands of compositions 
 dot every vernal landscape ! 
 
 But friendships cannot be traced commonly either 
 to unlikenesses or likenesses. The unlike and the 
 like sort in circumstances that often seem as acci 
 dental as the fall of leaves that have been lifted by 
 one wind and deposited softly upon the bosoms of 
 Others that were brought by a contrary. As for 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 235 
 
 the dependence of friendships upon special charac 
 teristics of mind and temper, and the dogma that 
 they cannot exist except among the good, nothing 
 seems more remote from reality. Not only do 
 friendships subsist among the bad, but they subsist 
 between the good and the bad. There is hardly 
 any community, however small, wherein friendships 
 of greater or less intensity are not found that seem 
 most incongruous; wherein the conduct, the senti. 
 ments, the aspirations, of one friend are unexcep 
 tionable, and those of the other, if not degraded, 
 seem to be ever tending downwards. What is yet 
 more curious among such is that the example of one 
 has seldom appeared to have been very salutary, or 
 that of the other pernicious. There jmay be repri 
 mands frequent and earnest, and acceptance of them, 
 whether with or without resentment, but often with, 
 out amendment; yet alliances continue to subsist, if 
 seldom offensive, at least always defensive, and the 
 one with all his virtuous conduct, sentiments, and 
 aspirations will risk all he values most highly in 
 public opinion to defend his comrade and rescue 
 him from punishment that he knows would be just. 
 
 Much has been said about the defence rendered 
 by members of the Bar to those who have been 
 charged with crimes of various magnitude, and the 
 world outside of courts has its stereotyped words of 
 condemnation for conduct seeming to them incon- 
 
236 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 sistent with the conservation of tranquillity, honor, 
 and respect for law for which men of this profession 
 ought to be particularly noted. Yet among these 
 brave, ardent, persistent defences one may often see 
 what is only a discharge of what is felt to be a be 
 hest of friendship of more or less affectionateness, 
 whose risks and sacrifices are the greater as the 
 danger is more threatening and public hostility and 
 prosecution more exacerbated. For even the felon 
 when arrested seeks aid, not always from counsel 
 who are most distinguished, but rather from him 
 whom he knows and likes most, on whose recipro 
 cation of his good-will he relies for successful ren 
 dering of the service which he so sorely needs more 
 trustingly than he would rely upon the superior 
 adroitness and eloquence of the greatest advocate. 
 
 As to the rarity of friendships asserted by the good 
 Laelius, he was referring, of course, to such as that 
 which marked the companionship of himself with the 
 illustrious man whose departure he contemplated 
 with feelings so calm and painless. Friendships 
 may indeed be not only rare but impossible when the 
 highest heights of ambition admit but one among 
 the sealers, if only two in number, to attain. The 
 instance is yet to be found wherein of two friends, 
 equal in every particular and both desirous of renown, 
 one stepped aside and allowed the other to plant 
 his foot upon the acme of public honors. But there 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 237 
 
 is no rarity of devoted friendships among the mul 
 titudes friendships that delight in services which it 
 is even sweeter to bestow than it is to receive. 
 
 The poets have been prone to lament the evanes 
 cence of friendships. But this is rather from the 
 fact that their spirits are tuned to a sensibility so 
 high that they set an inadequate value on what is 
 possible to the multitudes who are not so finely 
 and tensely strung. Their lamentations are for the 
 absence of those emotions which only spirits like 
 them can feel, ethereal and of some semblance to 
 the divine. But let any man of experience count 
 up, if he will, the number of those which have been 
 wholly dissolved in the period of his observations. 
 How few among them have been found grossly un 
 faithful ! We will not say that the friendships of hu 
 man life have been more enduring in the main than 
 its loves, though we are not quite sure of being wrong 
 if we should. For loves, though more ardent, are 
 more exacting, and they often lose all because dis 
 satisfied and complaining of what seems to them the 
 little received compared with the abundance which 
 they bestow. Loves demand reiterated assurances 
 and proofs which lovers, on the one hand, sometimes 
 grow resentful for the few they receive, and, on the 
 other, grow weary of their repeated rendering. 
 Hence the numbers of the neglects of parents, of 
 the disinheritances of children, and especially of di- 
 
238 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 vorces of husbands and wives, that would be multi 
 plied ten thousand fold except partly for the scandal to 
 be incarred, partly for the inconveniences resultant to 
 families, but mainly the restraining laws of the church 
 and the state. 
 
 "A question was started whether the state of marriage was natural 
 to man. JOHNSON Sir, it is so far from being natural lor man to live 
 in a state ot marriage that we find all the motives which they have 
 for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized 
 society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep 
 them together. "* 
 
 These were the words of one of the most loving and 
 devoted of husbands, who during the whole of his 
 widowed life mourned the departure of the wife of 
 his bosom. 
 
 On the other hand, friendships receive and be 
 stow with little jealousy, and some of their dearest 
 results follow services in which those who bestow 
 are hardly conscious of the exertion which they 
 cost. It is not often, we believe, that friendships 
 that have once been fond are dissolved, at least to 
 the degree as to become hostilities. Such an end 
 shocks the minds even of the simple and humble. 
 On the contrary, such friendships usually survive 
 even the tomb, and the affection telt by those who 
 have departed are often inherited and treasured by 
 their children. Common life abounds in them, and, 
 though not demonstrative, self-asserting, and exact- 
 
 *Boswell s " Life of Dr. Johnson." 
 
CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 239 
 
 ing like loves, they impart to the multifold misfor 
 tunes of this lower life a solace without which they 
 would be far harder to endure. They help to sup 
 port poverty, exile, imprisonment, loss of kindred, 
 youth, health, honor, name, even loves; and as old 
 wine is the sweeter, so, after the lapse of long time, 
 thoughts of them are more comforting and more 
 fond. 
 
 We would not be understood as maintaining that 
 friendship is either superior or equal to love: for 
 love is undoubtedly the supreme of all the emotions 
 of the human heart. It is the very exaltation of 
 its supremacy more than all other causes that gives 
 rise to the jealousies by which it is often so sorely 
 beset. To these jealousies friendship itself some 
 times makes the incipient if not controlling occasion. 
 We remember, in Dickens Household Words, a 
 somewhat blase account of the loss of one friend by 
 another after the marriage of the former. "I had 
 an old friend" the bachelor s story about thus ran 
 "and he got married. After sometime I went to 
 see him and his wife. As I entered the room some 
 thing stood up, having on my old friend s clothes, 
 standing in his shoes, speaking in his voice. But it 
 was not my old friend; he was gone." 
 
 In this instance, as in most others of the dissolu 
 tions of friendship, is to be noticed the manner in 
 which they occur. Sad as they may be to all par- 
 
240 CELEBRATED AND COMMON FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 ties, they are seldom accompanied by violence, and 
 more seldom are succeeded by enmities. Such 
 friendships commonly subside beneath the pressure 
 of life, that substitutes other ties in their stead, and, 
 instead of being rudely cast aside, become only ob 
 solete. " Sunt remissione usus eluendce," as the 
 elder Cato used to say, "dissuendce magis quam dis- 
 cindendcz" Whereas loves when dissolved are dis 
 solved for the most part abruptly, if not with anger 
 and violence ; hearts once beating in happy unison 
 are torn and bleeding, and if hate, does not succeed 
 it is mainly because pride or pious submission keeps 
 it away. 
 
 Loves and friendships happy they who may claim 
 or who may believe they can claim, to have both, 
 genuine and constant. Not all are blessed with the 
 greater; but the less hardly any is so poor as to be 
 wholly without. 
 
Studies, 
 
 iterary and 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY